Bright one, light one

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In Book 12 of the Odyssey, the voyagers are forced to land on an island that they have been warned to avoid, because it contains cattle sacred to Helios (a sun god who later became identified with Apollo), and the god will punish any harm that comes to them. When they run out of food, the men break their vow to Odysseus and slaughter some of the cattle. Helios appeals to Zeus, who destroys the Greek warriors' ship with a lightning bolt when they depart.

Joyce certainly intended the link between Horne and Helios: the Gilbert schema identifies the Irish doctor as the counterpart of the Homeric god and the nurses in his hospital as analogues to Helios' daughters Phaethusa and Lampetie—facts which Gilbert emphasizes in his James Joyce's Ulysses (1930). But the anger of Homer's god introduces a new element into what so far has been an evocation of human worship and divine benevolence. By killing the sacred oxen, Odysseus' men commit an offense against life. The theme of a god being displeased because men disrespect the fertility that he sanctions will be picked up in the chastising tone of the chapter's fourth paragraph, and in many later sections of the episode.

Other echoes probably lurk within "Horhorn." Jeri Johnson hears a play on the expression "horn of plenty," consistent with the idea of "wombfruit." J. S. Atherton observes in Critical Essays that the doctor's "conveniently phallic surname allowed Joyce to use him as a fertility symbol" (314)––a view supported by the plays on "horn" in Sirens.