e Greek Mythus
is always portraying, because these struggles were the ever-present
fact in Greek life. The God has been circumvented by the speed of the
navigators; Ulysses without suffering, without a storm, has reached
Ithaca. "No more honor for me from mortals or Gods," cries Neptune, "if
I can be thus defied?" He makes his appeal to the Highest God, and we
hear the decision: "Turn the ship to a stone and hide the city with a
mountain." The first is accomplished in view of the Phaeacians; the
second is possibly prevented by their speedy sacrifices to Neptune, and
the new decree of the ruler, which forbids their giving further escort
over the sea to strangers. At any rate Phaeacia is shut off from the
world, and has not been heard of since; there have been no more
transitions thence since that of Ulysses. The marvelous ship and the
marvelous city vanish forever by a divine act, even by the will of
Zeus. Yet, on the other hand, they eternally remain, crystallized in
these verses of Homer, more lasting than the rock of Neptune.

Why this interference from above? Wherein is the escort by the
Phaeacians a violation of the divine order as voiced by the Supreme God?
Note that Ulysses has escaped, which is the will of Zeus; note, too,
that the Phaeacians are punished for helping him escape, which is also
the will of Zeus. The sailors bring the wanderer to his home without
trouble, but they are smitten by the God while returning.

For the primal suggestion of the legend, may we not say that the sea,
that enormous force of Nature with many reserved energies in its vast
bosom, though bestrid and subdued by a ship, at times breaks loose and
destroys, in spite of skillful navigation and perfect machinery? Still
to-day the sea has a residue of the uncontrollable, and probably will
have for some ages to come. Neptune has not ceased from his wrath
against the man of thought, who tries to straddle and ride him, and
Zeus still supports at times the Sea-god's appeal for honor, when his
prerogative is violated. Yet not always by any means, for Zeus belongs
to the true Olympians, deities of intelligence, who once put down the
old Gods of Nature.

Still Nature has its right, nay, its law with the penalty. The poet
looks upon the sea as a great deity demanding sacrifice and honor.
Furthermore, for every conquest made over it, there is the
counterstroke, the resistance, which is the vengeance of the God. Thus
says Zeus: "If any man, trus