It is generally agreed by most scholiasts that, after the engagement with the sirens, there followed additional trials for the oar-worn Odysseyians, numerous afflictions of the ear — the extraction of beeswax having been, in those years, a labour worthy of Heracles himself, even with recourse to the most modern of medical practices, namely fingers, sticks, and seawater.The otological case of one Tinnitus of Cephallenia, an oarsman of the highest order from the lower bench, is preserved by Hellanicus:
the sufferer is reported to have complained that the sirens’ echoes rang in him still, after the most vigorous shaking of the head, on multiple occasions.
Tinnitus was eventually sent home on a raft.
No sooner had the song-spinning Sirens fallen silent than upon the wine-dark did later come a god-sent mist, a god-swirled whirlpool, and a god-knows-what — a multi-headed Scyllaean serpent of inconsiderate disposition, perhaps a teratological plaything of Amphitrite, the moist queen herself.Such was the much-suffering Ithacan king’s Trolley Problem: his swift black ship the trolley, his — “But trolleys didn’t exist,” I hear you screech, like a whiny siren bitch who hasn’t tasted sailor since the fall of Troy.How can one honestly test the deontological ethics of death-doomed mortals when Circe is trotting about the ancient world pulling on divine, dilemma-spoiling trolley levers? When the gods transform toil-worn human problems into prudence, they are turning trailers into spoilers, which is still, more or less, a lesser evil.
