François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon: Telemachus, son of Ulysses. Patrick Riley translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Telemachus has one virtue Minerva cannot give him: courage. Although she placed him under her aegis of protection, he doesn’t know that she has. After leaving Salente for the war, “he applied himself to gain the affection of the old commanders,” Nestor and Philoctetes (XII.198). Nestor treats him like a son, but Ulysses’ old enemy, Philoctetes has initial reservations before the young man’s moderation (another virtue Minerva can’t bestow) “at last overcame the resentment” (XII.199); he too begins to call Telemachus “my son,” explaining that “virtue, when it is gentle, genuine, modest, and unaffected, at last surmounts everything” (XII.199).
The older man ventures to explain his “violent hatred against Ulysses” (XII.199). Philoctetes had been a companion of Hercules, the monster-slayer who in turn fell victim to Cupid, lacking Telemachus’ moderation. Hercules’ wife punished him for his infidelity by laying out a tunic soaked in the poisonous blood of the Hydra of Lerna. In severe pain, he built a funeral pyre and asked Philoctetes to light it. “I saw him once more through the flames, and he appeared as calm and serene as if he had been partaking with his friends of the mirth and delicacies of a feast, crowned with flowers, and scented with perfumes” (XII.201-02). By the grace of Jupiter, his immortal soul ascended to Olympus to drink nectar and to marry the goddess of youth. In return for the favor of lighting the pyre, Hercules had given Philoctetes arrows dipped in the Hydra’s blood; when, at Troy, the allied kings were advised by the oracle of Apollo that they could not win the war without the arrows of Hercules, they sent word-savvy Ulysses to persuade Philoctetes to bring them. Accidentally poisoned by one of the arrows, Philoctetes “suffered the same excruciating pain as Hercules had undergone”; “the whole army shuddered to see me in such horrible pain, and concluded that it was a punishment inflicted on me by the just gods” (XII.203). His friend, Ulysses, “was the first to abandon me” in his concern for the soldiers’ morale, “preferr[ing] the common interests of Greece and victory to the obligations of private friendship and decorum” (XII.203). But Philoctetes didn’t know Ulysses’ motive at that time, instead taking his action as “the most horrible barbarity, and the blackest treachery” (XII.203).
The Greeks needed those arrows. Ulysses and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, came to beg for them. Philoctetus refused until Jupiter intervened, commanding him to give them up. Philoctetus survived the poisoning, cured by two sons of Esculapius, the god of medicine. He then returned to Troy, confronting Paris, whose seduction of Helen had triggered the war. “I slew Paris like a timorous fawn,” and Troy itself “was soon lain in ashes,” but “I still retained a great antipathy to the sage Ulysses” which even “his virtue could not overcome.” However, “my acquaintance with his son, who resembles him, and whom I cannot help loving, has softened my heart for the father himself” (XIII.212). Thus Telemachus’ first achievement in a camp of war is an act of peace. At times, as he listened to the story, “he appeared very thoughtful, like one meditating deeply upon the consequences of things” (XIII.212).
The army broke camp, “marching in good order against Adrastus king of the Daunians, who despised the gods, and sought only to deceive mankind” (XIII.214). Telemachus finds it difficult to “manage so many kings who were jealous of one another,” and even his nobility, benevolence, and sincerity didn’t help, unleavened as they were by liberality, “gratitude for the kindnesses done him,” or a “desire to reward merit” (XIII.214). “His mother Penelope, in spite of Mentor, had cherished in him a haughtiness and pride that tarnished all his good qualities” (“he had been flattered by his mother from his infancy”); as a result, he “looked upon himself as of a superior nature to the rest of mankind,” whom he conceived as his divinely appointed servants (XIII.214). (It is conceivable that Fénelon as his own pupil, the future Louis XV, in mind, although the king himself had been over-indulged by his own mother, Anne of Austria, who filled him with her notions of absolutism founded upon the supposed divine right of kings.) “Full of a noble ardor,” Telemachus “could be curbed and governed by Mentor alone,” but Mentor is no longer with him (XIII.215).
He came into conflict with the Lacedaemonian king, Phalantus, who treated his advice with contempt and ridiculed him in the war council. He fights with Phalantus’ brother, Hippias, a “quarrelsome and brutal” man; thanks to Minerva’s intervention, Telemachus wins” (XIII.216). “With victory, wisdom again took possession of the heart of Telemachus,” regretting “the fault he had committed in thus attacking a brother of one of the allied kings”; he “recollected, with shame and confusion, the sage counsels of Mentor” and “blushed for his victory,” which was undeserved (XIII.217). Accordingly, when attacked in turn by Phalantus, enraged by defeat of his brother, Telemachus “thought of nothing but repairing his fault by showing moderation” after drubbing Phalantus in turn (XIII.217). “He recognized how unjust and unreasonable he was in being carried away; he found something, vain, weak, and low in this measureless and unjust haughtiness of his,” losing “all patience with himself and roar[ing] like a furious lion” (XIII.218). He aspires to moderation but cannot attain it.
Except in one important respect. Adrastus orders his forces to attack, his timing based on intelligence he had gathered by bribed members of the allied camp, who in their turn had overheard the two garrulous elders, Nestor and Philoctetes, as they discussed their battle plans. Having “from his infancy” habituated himself to concealing his thoughts from his mother’s importunate suitors, Telemachus “knew how to keep a secret,” and did. He warns his elders that “some knowledge of what had passed in council had spread into the camp,” but is ignored: “old age has no pliancy; chained down by inveterate habits, it has no resource against its own defects”; “youth is the only season when a man may hope to combat bad habits”—another likely glance at Bourbons old and young (XIII.218).
The chief traitor is Eurymachus, “an adventurer who had attached himself to Nestor,” feeding information to Adrastus, from whom he “had received large sums” (XIII.222). In the battle, Adrastus’ troops rout the allies and burnt their camp; even Phalantus “was no longer able to make a stand against the enemy” (XIII.225). Armed by Minerva in the person of Mentor, who had suddenly arrived, Telemachus intervenes. Recalling Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield, Fénelon describes the engravings on Telemachus’ armor: they depicted the triumph of Minerva over Neptune, who had offered the inhabitants of a newly-founded city an olive tree, “emblem of peace and plenty, much to be preferred to the devastation of war,” symbolized by the horse offered by Neptune; for this, the people named their city ‘Athens’ (XIII.225). Other images include a representation of Minerva “giving counsel to Jupiter himself” and aiding Ulysses by giving him the stratagem of the ‘Trojan horse.’ A final engraving showed the goddess Ceres teaching agriculture to savages in Sicily, converting the iron they had used for weapons into plows for tilling the soil. “Even wolves were seen playing among the sheep in their pastures, and the lion and tiger had forgot their fierceness,” frolicking with lambs—all a picture of the “happiness of the golden age” (XIII.226-27). In this armor, Telemachus displays Minervan wisdom, launching a surprise attack on the Daunians, saving Phalantus from them. The gods allowed Adrastus to escape, since Telemachus needed to “encounter more hardships and disasters, to learn the better how to govern mankind” (XII.228). Visiting the wounded allied troops, Telemachus “could not, without shuddering, and feeling the deepest compassion, behold [them] still alive, and doomed to a lingering, painful death,” looking like sacrificial victims “whose flesh has been burnt upon the altars” (XIII.229). “‘Alas,’ said Telemachus, ‘see what horrible scenes war produces! How great is the blindness and infatuation of wretched mortals! As life is short and miserable, why will they still make it shorter?” (XIII.229). “Man alone, despite his reason, does what animals without reason never did,” preying upon their own species (XIII.229). Kings ought to be “cautious…about engaging in wars,” fighting them only when they are not only just but “necessary for the public good” (XIII230). As he visits the sick and dying, he wins the esteem of the troops for his compassion, for which (no longer the callow, arrogant man he had been) he thanks Minerva. As do his men, who credit the goddess for giving Telemachus ‘the most valuable gifts which the gods can confer upon men,” namely “wisdom, and a heart susceptible of friendship” (XIII.234). As Phalantus recovers from his wounds, he reconciles with Telemachus, who now rules the camp. Even his body has matured, hardened by the exercise of war, manly.
For all his struggles, Telemachus seems no closer to finding his father. At the camp, preoccupied by day with plans for advancing upon and defeating the Daunians, he finds himself haunted at night by dreams of Ulysses in the Elysian Fields. He determines to venture into the Underworld, which courageous mortals may do without dying, as its entrance is in a physical place, Acheruntia, not far from where he is. Minerva prevails upon Pluto “to receive him favorably,” and Jupiter himself intervenes to guarantee his safe passage (XIV.240).
Once there, he first meets the ghost of a Babylonian king, the very type of an absolute monarch, who confesses that in life “no one dared to contradict me without being immediately punished”; “I pursued pleasures and amusements but never enjoyed tranquility” (XIV.242). “Perpetually agitated by new desires, by hope and fear,” he sought to deaden his heart “by continual dissipation and amusement,” as “the least intrusion of reason, or calm serious reflection, would have been too bitter” (XIV.243). “So saying, the Babylonian wept like a weak man debauched by prosperity, who, by never having experienced adversity, was incapable of supporting it” (XIV.243).
Telemachus also sees many “impious hypocrites who had pretended to love religion, but in reality made use of it only as a plausible pretext to gratify their ambition, and impose upon credulous men” (XIV.245). Not even children who murdered their parents or wives who murdered their husbands, or traitors “who had betrayed their country and violated every oath” suffered so much as these (XIV.245-46).
Having thus warned Louis XIV and Bossuet, respectively, Fénelon draws Telemachus’ attention to a good man—a “magnificent, liberal, just, and compassionate” man—who nevertheless would spend eternity in the Underworld because he “charged all [his] virtue to [his] own account and not to the gods, whose gift it was” (XIV.246). More, he practiced virtue “only for the reputation and advantage of it”; “the only divinity you adored was yourself” (XIV.247). “There is no true virtue without love and reverence for the gods, to whom all is due” (XIV.247), and in the Underworld “a divine light reveals the error of [men’s] superficial judgment; for those whom they admired are often condemned; and those whom they condemned, acquitted and justified” (XIV.247). “At these words, the philosopher was struck as with a thunderbolt, and could not support himself: the complacency with which he formerly contemplated his own moderation, fortitude, and generous inclinations, was now changed into despair” (XIV.247). “My wisdom was but folly,” he cries; he knew neither the gods, mankind, or himself (XIV.248). Only now does the philosopher come to Socrates’ understanding, knowing that he knew nothing.
Returning to kings, Telemachus sees those “condemned for abusing their power,” in contradistinction from the Babylonian king who seems to have done very little but indulge himself (XIV.248). This is the other side of the Louis XIV coin: the man of “excessive vanity,” of hardness toward men, of insensibility to virtue, of “dread of hearing the truth,” of partiality to flatterers and other hangers-on, of pomp and magnificence “supported by oppression and the ruin of their people,” and of military ambition that purchases “a little glory by the blood of their subjects” (XIV.248). And, just as the philosopher was deemed a good man when alive, many kings consigned to the Underworld “were accounted tolerably good when on earth” (XIV.250). The reason for their punishment is their failure to rein in subordinates who committed “enormities…under the sanction of their authority” (XIV.251). Whatever the nature of their failures, bad kings are punished “much more rigorously” than “other guilty men”—so much so that Telemachus deems it “madness, to desire to be a king!” (XIV.251).
But then Telemachus ventures on to the Elysian Fields, where he hopes to find his father. That is where the souls of the few good kings are. “As in Tartarus wicked princes were doomed to a punishment infinitely more rigorous than that of other bad men in private life, so on the other hand good kings enjoyed in the elysian fields a happiness infinitely superior to that of other men who had loved virtue on earth” (XIV.251). They are rewarded with “crowns that never fade,” but “there are only a few kings who have fortitude and resolution to guard against the intoxication of power, and the flattery of so many sycophants, continually endeavoring to excite their passions” (XIV.254). The shade who tells him this is his great-grandfather, Arcesius, who assures him that Ulysses is still alive and father and son will soon be reunited in Ithaca. Arcesius guides Telemachus through the rest of his journey in the Underworld, pointing out the “wise, just, and beneficent” kings, who “are indeed heroes”: Theseus, Ajax, Hector, Agamemnon, Inachus of Argos, and the Egyptian Cecrops (XIV.257-58).
Arcesius also remarks Erycthon and Triptolemus, who give him the occasion for a final lesson, this on political economy. Erycthon invented silver money in order “to facilitate commerce among the isles of Greece” (XIV.259). It did, but it also became (as Erycthon himself foresaw and warned) “an incitement to avarice, ambition, and vanity,” vices which “soften and corrupt manners” and “make you despise agriculture, which is the support of human life, and the source of all its true riches” (XIV.259). Triptolemus, in contrast, “came with a plow in his hand, to make an offer of the gifts of the goddess [Ceres] to all those who should have resolution enough to overcome their natural sloth, and apply themselves vigorously to tillage” (XIV.259-60). In doing so, he “made the Greeks feel the pleasure of owing all their riches to their own labor,” the foundation of civilized life (XIV.260). “Even those fierce savages, that wandered through the forests of Epirus and Etolia, in quest of acorns for their food, became more civilized, and submitted to laws, after they had learned to raise crops of corn and to live on bread” (XIV.260). The preference for agriculture over mercantile commerce carries into Rousseau’s political thought and also that of Thomas Jefferson and some of the other American Founders; the recognition of the civilizing effect of agriculture carries into the political thought of George Washington and his policy respecting the Indians. “Happy would the Greeks have been,” Arcesius teaches, “had they steadfastly adhered to these maxims, so proper to render them powerful, free, happy, and worthy of being so by their genuine virtue. But alas! they begin to admire false riches, by little and little to neglect true wealth, and to degenerate from that marvelous simplicity” (XIV.26).
Back under the light of the sun and in the allies’ camp, Telemachus learns that a city formally allied with his coalition has now in fact allied with the Daunians, their rulers having been corrupted by Adrastus. Telemachus opposes a plan to seize the city, first, because that would be a violation of their treaty, and second, because the success of the attack would depend upon a traitor in that city, who has offered to open one of its gates to the allied troops. Even if the city rulers have surreptitiously broken our treaty with them, we must not betray our side of the bargain. “If the fear of the gods and the love of virtue do not move you, at least you ought to be influenced by your own interest and reputation,” which would be irretrievably damaged by such a “violation of your oaths of faith” (XV.265). It will even through the alliance itself into question: Why should we trust one another, if we are willing to violate the terms of treaties we make? And if the alliance breaks up, Adrastus and his Daunians will win the war. Nestor concurs, the other kings agree, and the alliance remains strong.
Telemachus goes on to make some additional, equally high-minded, decisions, including his choice to turn over a would-be assassin of Adrastus to Adrastus. The tyrant “shuddered at the thoughts of the danger he had been in, and was quite amazed at the generosity of his enemies; for pure virtue is above the comprehension of bad men” (XV.270). As it happens, Adrastus has little time further to reflect upon virtue. In hand-to-hand battlefield combat with Telemachus, he attempts to kill the young hero after Telemachus had defeated him and offered him mercy. “Adrastus was no sooner dead than the Daunians, far from regretting their defeat and the loss of their chief, rejoiced at their deliverance; offering their hands to the allies, in token of peace and reconciliation” (XIV.280). Adrastus’ son, “whom his father had trained to maxims of dissimulation, injustice, and cruelty, like a coward, basely fled,” only to be stabbed in the back by one of his former slaves (XV.280). This gives Telemachus occasion to lament, “Thus it is that young princes are spoiled by prosperity; the greater their elevation and vivacity are, the farther do they recede from every virtuous principle they may have: and, perhaps, that would now have been my case, had not I thanks to the gods, by the misfortunes I have undergone from my infancy, and the instructions of Mentor, been taught moderation” (XV.280). Immediately aimed at the Bourbon father and Bourbon son, the lesson as well applies to monarchs generally.
By now, Telemachus’ reputation among the kings and soldiers alike has turned completely around. Whereas they once had deemed him gifted but arrogant, they now call him—not to his face but “to one another in private”—the “greatest hero of the age,” a “humane, benevolent…fair and affectionate friend, compassionate, liberal, beneficent, and wholly attached to those whom he is bound to love,” having “entirely shaken off his former haughtiness, indifference, and pride” (XVI.285). He’s offered the kingship by the Daunians but remains steadfast in his intention to return to Ithaca, finding them a worthy king among their own people.
Telemachus then voyages back to Salente, to be welcomed by King Idomeneus and Mentor. “I am content with you,” his governor tells him; “you have, it is true, committed great faults; but they have taught you to know yourself better, and to be more diffident than you were before,” inasmuch as failure so often teaches better than pride-swelling success (XVII.295). Prosperity exiles wisdom. And “is it not true” that your great actions during the war “were suggested and directed by something independent of yourself,” that “Minerva had, as it were, transformed you into something above yourself, to enable you to perform what you have achieved” by “suspend[ing] all your natural defects”? (XVII.295). Indeed.
Telemachus remarks the great improvement of Salente, how “well cultivated” it has become, and “how little magnificence” there remains in it (XVII.294). Like Telemachus on the battlefield and in the Underground, Idomeneus had divine help, Mentor assures him. Monarchs incline to assume “unjust and violent authority” and to introduce luxury, which “corrupts moeurs” (XVII.296). Idomeneus was dethroned at Crete for his absolutism; “it was necessary that the gods should send us hither”—to Salente, where he had fled—to “disabuse him of that blind and excessive power, for which men are altogether unqualified; a kind of miracle was required to open his eyes” (XVII.297). As for luxury, it causes every social class in the city it infects to “live above their rank and income, some from vanity and ostentation, and to display their wealth; others from a false shame, and to hide their poverty” (XVII.297). Under such conditions, “a whole nation goes to wreck; all ranks are confounded” and “wealth is the sole pursuit,” poverty “accounted scandalous” (XVII.297). A pre-revolutionary condition prevails, and its evils can only be remedied “by changing the taste and manners of [the] whole nation” by giv[ing] it new laws” (XVII.298). “But who will undertake it,” Mentor asks, Socratically, “unless it be a king who is a philosopher, and who by setting an example of moderation, may bring contempt on those who love an expensive show, and give a sanction to the manners of the wise, who will be glad to have their decent frugality supported by such authority” (XVII.298).
As for Idomeneus, he is “wise and enlightened,” Mentor allows (having made him so), but “too attentive to details” (XVII.299). In a king, this is a well-intended error. It is, nonetheless, an error. “To form great designs, the mind must be free and composed: it must meditate without restraint, wholly disengaged from the dispatch of thorny matters”; minds “engrossed” with “the affair of the day” slowly lose their ability for prudential reasoning, as they magnify the immediate at the expense of consideration of medium- and long-term consequences (XVII.299). The Idomenean-Mentorian re-founding of Salente resulted from precisely the kind of thinking a wise king needs to do: “forming a sound judgment of affairs…by comparing them all together, and ranging them in a certain order, so as to have sequence and proportion” (XVII.299). And Salente’s laws, institutions, and moeurs can be “only the shadow of what you will do one day in Ithaca, if your virtue responds to your destiny” (XVII.302).
Telemachus is reluctant to depart, admitting that he’s fallen in love with the king’s daughter, Antiope. “It is not a blind passion like that of which you cured me in the island of Calypso,” but a love based on “taste, esteem, and regard for merit”; in addition to her piety, “what charms me is her silence, her modest reserve, her constant employment…her attention to the economy of her father’s house, since the death of her mother; her contempt of the ornaments of dress, and her forgetting, or even seeming to be ignorant of her beauty” (XVII.302-03). It is as if she were Minerva incarnate, he says to Minerva incarnate. All this notwithstanding, he remains intent on returning to Ithaca; marriage can wait. Mentor approves.
He does hesitate, however, when Idomeneus goes into mourning over the prospect of his departure. Mentor strengthens his resolve. Such compassion is good; “you were born hard and haughty,” but “at last you have become a man, and by the experience of your own misfortunes, you have learned to sympathize with those of others”—and indispensably kingly virtue, as “without such compassion, there is no good nature, virtue, nor capacity for the government of mankind” (XVII.311). Still, compassion “must not be carried to far, nor must an unmanly tenderness be indulged” (XVII.311). He insists that Telemachus tell the king of his continued resolve to return home, which he does, disclosing his intention to marry Antiope, once “I render myself worthy of her” (XVII.314).
Looking ahead not only to his return to Ithaca but to his eventual accession to kingship there, Telemachus confides that while he considers the ability to “discern well the different characters of men, and to employ them according to their talents” crucial to ruling well, “I am at a loss to know” how to acquire such discernment (XVIII.318). Mentor replies, “To know men you must not only study them, but keep their company and deal with them” in speech and action—conversing with them and “test[ing] them” in minor positions to “discover whether they are qualified for higher functions” (XVIII.318). Also, talk about them “with other wise and virtuous men, who have long studied their characters”; just as one learns to distinguish good and bad poets by “the frequent reading of them, and talking of them with those who [have] a taste for poetry, just as you become a good judge of music by “diligent attention to the performances of good musicians,” so you must learn “human nature” by living among human beings (XVIII.318). Along with this practical understanding, however, you need theoretical understanding: “to be able to form a sound judgment of men, you must begin with knowing what they ought to be,” to have a standard of judgment (XVIII.318). “As in taking the dimensions of several bodies there must be a fixed measure, so there must be certain fixed principles by which we must regulate our judgment”; that standard is the purpose of human life, “what ought to be the end proposed in governing” men (XVIII.319). The elements of that standard have already been demonstrated in the course of the novel. They are the virtues of courage, moderation, justice, practical wisdom, compassion, and magnanimity, all conducing to happiness or the fulfillment of human nature. Given the thumotic character of Telemachus, he has especially needed to practice the virtue of patience. “It is in order to teach you patience, my dear Telemachus, that the gods oblige you to practice it so much, and seem to make sport of you, by keeping you continually wandering about in suspense and uncertainty” (XVIII.330)
Here is the task of the “wise prince” (XVIII.321). “It is not enough to find good subjects in a nation; one must also form new ones”—a task Telemachus immediately sees as “a matter of great difficulty” (XVIII.321). Mentor denies it. If you, as king, exert yourself “to search for able and virtuous men, in order to prefer them, you stimulate all who have spirit and talents, so that they exert themselves to the utmost. How many languish in indolence and obscurity, who would become great men, if they were excited by emulation and the hopes of success?” (XVIII.321). In addition, if you advance your subjects “step by step from the lowest to the highest employments” you will by that practice ‘train them up’ under your observation (XVIII.322). This as it were ‘institutionalizes’ the kind of struggle the gods have caused you, Telemachus, to undergo; unlike you, most men won’t be heroes, nor will they need to be, but their virtues can be cultivated in a kingly regime that rewards virtue. Do not imitate tyrants. Do not make your subjects “miserable by your ambition, your ostentation, or imprudence; for if a nation suffers, it is owing to the maladministration of its rulers, whose duty it is to watch over it, and prevent its suffering” (XVIII.323).
But will ruling this way not make me miserable? Telemachus asks. Under your plan, a king is “the slave of all those whom he seems to command,” devoting himself to their interests, not his own, supplying their needs, serving the state and his subjects (XVIII.323); “he is a slave who has sacrificed his liberty and repose to the happiness and liberty of the public” (XVIII.324). But why should this make unhappy? Mentor answers. In “promoting the good of such a number of people” a king “represents the gods in leading the whole human race to virtue” (XVIII.324). Is there “not glory enough in maintaining the laws,” and in not grasping for the “false glory” vanity desires? (XVIII.324). Although you should expect “the ingratitude of mankind” for your efforts, “If genuine,” virtue “will always attach them to him who will have inspired it” (XVIII.324-325).
“Mentor resolved to put the patience of Telemachus to the last, but severest trial” (XVIII.330). Before allowing him to board the ship that will return him to Ithaca and his father and mother, he proposes a ceremony of sacrifice to Minerva. Telemachus obeys, and Mentor metamorphoses into Minerva. “I am now going to leave you, son of Ulysses; but my wisdom shall never leave you, provided you always retain a due sense of your inability to do anything well without it” (XVIII.333). In regarding prudence or practical wisdom as the most important of the many virtues a good ruler needs to cultivate, Fénelon carries forward in modernity the classical line of moral thought, while inflecting it in some Christian directions.
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