ABSTRACT
The “Agon,” which in its present form does not antedate the second century A.D., attributes to Homer the statement, “Never to be born at all is best for mortal men, and if born to pass as soon as may be the gates of Hades.” But this is apocryphal. There is in the “Odyssey,” however, an account of the Elysian plain and also of the Phseacians, dear to the immortals, whose banquets the gods visited in person. The golden palace of Alcinous, in which the leaders of the Phseacians eat and drink to their content, stands gleaming like the sun, while without are various kinds of trees which bear never-failing fruits. Their large black marvelous ships speed smoothly and swiftly, without oar, sail, or crew, to the remotest ends of the earth, and bring back highly valued merchandise. Olympus, the abode of the gods, is without wind, rain, or snow, the sun eternally bright, the skies cloudless. Homer describes also an island on which hunger and disease are unknown and goods are abundant. To it Apollo and Artemis remove men by an easy death when old age encroaches. The king of the island is compared with the immortal gods. Menelaus is told that he will not die in Argos: the gods will transport him to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where men have an easy life, for Ocean sends up the breezes of Zephyrus to soften the climate, and there is no rain, snow, or cold. The “Odyssey” speaks also of
an island called Syria, as you may have heard, over above Ortygia where are the turning places of the sun [that is, where the sun turns back from its setting in the west]. It is not very thickly peopled, but a good land, rich in herds and flocks and wine and corn. No death is there nor sickness for mortals; but when people grow old, silver-bowed Apollo comes and slays them with his painless arrows. In the island there are two cities, and all the land is divided between them. 1
