CHAPTER II ISLANDS OF THE BLEST _TRANSLATION_ The Homeric picture of the shadow-life of the disembodied soul is the work of resignation, not of hope. Hope would never have beguiled itself with the anticipation of a state of things which neither afforded men the chance of further activity after death, nor, on the other hand, gave them rest from the toil of life; one which promised them only a restless, purposeless fluttering to and fro, an existence, indeed, but without any of the content that might have made it worthy of the name of life. Was there never any aspiration after a more consolatory picture of the life after death? Did the tremendous vital energies of that time really devote themselves so completely to the realms of Zeus that not even a ray of hope penetrated to the House of Hades? We should have had to suppose so were it not for a single passing glimpse which we get of a distant land of hearts' desire, such as even the Greece that lay under the sway of the Homeric order of things still imagined for itself. When Proteus, the sea-god who could foretell the future, has finished informing Menelaos, on the sea-shore of Egypt, of the circumstances of his return home to his country and of the fate of his dearest companions, he adds the prophetic words--so Menelaos himself informs Telemachos in the fourth book of the Odyssey (560 ff.): "But thou, god-like Menelaos, art not ordained to die in horse-pasturing Argos or to meet thy fate there; for the immortals shall send thee far away to the Elysian plain, to the ends of the world where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthys, and where life is most easy for men. There is neither snow nor heavy storms nor rain, but Okeanos ever sends zephyrs with soft-breathing breezes to refresh men--because thou hast Helen to wife and art thereby in their eyes the son-in-law of Zeus."