II.

We now have reached the second portion of the Book, which is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the first portion; moreover we see how the forewarnings are heeded. Ulysses and his companions enter their vessel and start once more upon the sea, leaving the island of Circe, who sends them a favorable wind. We note also that Ulysses always repeats the warning to his companions, and tells to what they are coming next; they are to share in his knowledge. Three times he does this, just before each incident, and thus prepares them, though he does not tell everything. The experience with the Bag of Winds has taught him much; his companions through ignorance of its nature opened it and the fatality followed. So he received the penalty of not sharing his knowledge with his fellows; now he avoids that mistake, for his conduct at present shows that he regards his failure to impart his information as a mistake. He was the cause of the ignorance of his companions, which was brought home to him by their deed. Now he tells them, still he will not be able to save them; the fault is theirs when they transgress, and they will receive the penalty.

1. In accord with the plan already foretold, the ship approaches the island of the Sirens, Ulysses fills the ears of his men with wax and enjoys the song, being tied firmly to the mast. It is evident that he cannot control himself from within, he wishes to be loosed, but is only fastened the more tightly by his deafened associates. Foreseeing his own weakness he guards against it, yet brings out the more strongly his lack of self-mastery. He gives up his freedom in order not to perish through enjoyment. Herein we find suggestive hints concerning the natural man; he must be governed from without, till he become self-governable. Truly this is the first stage both in the individual and in history, and Ulysses is the typical personality representing both.

The song of the Sirens is given, which we did not hear in the previous prophetic portion. We may note in it touches of flattery, of enticement, of boundless promises, even of wisdom for the wise man. Then that favorite theme, the Trojan War, they claim to know, "and all that has ever happened upon the foodful earth." Such are the gorgeous promises to the man thirsty for knowledge; but mark in their meadow the bones and decaying bodies of dead men. Evidently their sweet song, promising all, lures only to destroy. Their power, however, lasts but for the moment, while the senses are tingled; when the fit is over, Ulysses is set free and he makes no attempt to return to them. Indeed another problem is upon him; he sees "a great wave and mist," to which is added a loud sound of rushing waters. Again he exhorts his companions and tells them all that he dares about the approaching dangers.

2. Now we are to witness a practical dealing with the Double Alternative, which was theoretically set forth in the previous portion. But the first Alternative, those bi-valvular rocks called Plangctae, which clasped the sea-faring man between their valves and crushed him to death, is wholly avoided, is not even mentioned in the present passage, though it is possibly implied in one place. At any rate the grand stress is laid upon the second Alternative, Scylla and Charybdis, between which the ship is to pass.

Here again Ulysses shows his limitation. In spite of Circe's warning, he puts on armor, takes two spears, and goes on deck, like a Homeric hero, to fight Scylla. He tries to solve his problem externally, as he did in the case of the Sirens. In vain; he could not see his foe anywhere, and his eyes grew weary, peering about at the mist-like rocks.

Not thus was Scylla to be met, a monster not of mortal mould, hardly attainable by the senses. Still she was present somehow, and made herself valid. The whirling waters roared and seethed, all were intent upon the maelstrom, Charybdis, the other side; "we looked at her, fearing destruction," and destruction came just from the direction in which they were not looking. Scylla, watched, remains invisible; unwatched, she appears and snaps up six companions; external weapons can effect nothing against her. Still Ulysses gets through, scotched somewhat; he has failed to see both sides at one and the same time; mind, intelligence alone can rise out of the particular thing of the senses, and grasp the two things in opposition. As we read the story here, it suggests the man, the life-faring man, who is so drawn to one part that he neglects the counterpart, which has equal validity and soon makes itself felt by the penalty. Not the Alternative, then, Scylla _or_ Charybdis, but the combined Scylla _and_ Charybdis is the word of mastery. The two kept in separation destroy, the two held in unity are conquerable. Under all difference of Nature lies the Thought's oneness, which is the true synthesis of every Scylla and Charybdis. Such is the experience of Ulysses now; the Sirens, the creatures of the senses, may be thwarted by a species of external force; but not the present monsters can be so treated. The dualism exists doubtless, and we can be caught in it, but the function of mind is to overspan it, and so transform all difference, discord, diabolism into unity, harmony, deity.

Thus Ulysses disobeys Circe's command not to attempt to fight Scylla with weapons; the reason of her injunction becomes plain. Not a sensuous thing to be slain is Scylla, in spite of her animal figure; the poet hints that she is to be encountered by mind, which must here see both sides at once and so assert its supremacy over both. To be intent upon the one and disregard the other--that is the grand human danger. Hence the thought of Scylla and Charybdis has passed into the literature of the world, nay into the proverbs of the people, to express the peril of one-sidedness, as well as the inherent dualism in all conduct. Moreover the golden mean is suggested, that principle of

## action so familiar in later Greek philosophy. Deeper than this golden

mean, however, runs the idea here; the dialectic of existence, the twofoldness which must be made one, the higher synthesis over all analysis are dimly intimated in the marvelous tale.

3. Having escaped through the two rocks, Ulysses and his companions come to "the flawless island of the Sun," the all-seeing luminary of Heaven. It is the total light beholding the totality. Is it not manifest that we have passed out of dualism into unity, out of strife into harmony? The island is represented as pastoral, peaceful, idyllic, with its herds reposing in sunlight; certainly a decided contrast to the noise and struggle in the region of Scylla and Charybdis. Or we may give the matter a psychological turn and say: Such is the transition from the Understanding with its finitude to Reason with its universality, to the all-seeing light within. Ulysses, having transcended the limit he showed in his last experience, has gone forward to the clear sunlit realm which illumines all limitations.

But just at this point danger arises. On the island are pasturing herds of oxen and sheep sacred to the Sun, things of light consecrated to light. The temptation will be to use them for the gratification of appetite, perhaps under some strong stress. Already both Tiresias and Circe have given the warning, which Ulysses now repeats to his companions and even exacts an oath from them not to harm the holy flocks. But hunger pinches, Ulysses again goes to sleep at the wrong moment, and the oxen of the Sun are slain by his men. It is true that the test is a hard one, death by starvation is impending, and they yield, not only violating their oaths but their light. Then they defiantly repeated their deed, "for six whole days they feasted, selecting the best of the Sun's oxen." When Ulysses awoke, he chid them sternly, but did not, or could not, stop them. The result was, they perished.

Already we have touched upon the physical basis which underlies this tale. The symbolism we may consider somewhat more closely. The sin against light on the part of the companions is double: they knew better because they had been forewarned, they were not ignorant as when they opened the Bag of Winds. Secondly, they destroyed objects sacred to the grand luminary, they assailed the very source of light. Ulysses has shared in the act also, he too must take his part of the penalty. He is saved, for he forbade the wrong, yet he went to sleep at the critical moment. To be sure the companions were hungry; but that is just the test; if they had had plenty to eat, there would have been no real trial of their fidelity to principle.

The ancient poet, throwing deepest glances into the soul and into the world, beholds the supreme negative act of man, and seeks to clothe it in a symbol. Mind turns against mind, when the man does what he knows is wrong, and the destructive side is doubly re-inforced when he assails light itself, and knowledge slays knowledge. When a person who knows affirms in word and deed that his knowing is a lie, his light puts out a light, he destroys the Oxen of the Sun. What then? It is no wonder that the great luminary threatens "to go down to Hades and there shine among the dead," unless the full penalty is exacted for such a deed. In fact, he is already extinguished mentally for these men, and Zeus, voicing the world-order, can only hurry them off into darkness. Very wonderful is the thought lurking in the symbolism of the old seer: intellectual negation, skepticism, denial, culminating in the negative deed, will at last drive the Sun himself out of Heaven and send him below into the Underworld. It is highly probable, however, that the negative man will be sent down there first, as is done in the present case.

After slaying the Oxen of the Sun and repeating the offense many times, Ulysses and his companions must again meet life, and accordingly they set sail upon the sea, bound for home and country. But such men have not in them the elements of the Return. Storms arise, winds blow, the helmsman is killed by the falling mast, and the ship is struck by lightning. The destructive powers of nature seem to concentrate upon these destroyers; such is the decree of Zeus, carrying out his promise to the Sun; verily the Supreme God could not well do otherwise. Ulysses alone barely saves himself upon a fragment of the mast and keel; manifestly there is a difference between him and his companions, who disobeyed his order. The text says that "the companions feasted for six days," it would seem that he did not; still he is involved in their calamity, though not fully in their guilt. Here is, then, a distinction of importance, since upon it is based the saving of Ulysses, who is yet to have a career.

While Ulysses may not have personally participated in the guilty deed, he was not active against it, he did not apparently seem to restrain the repetitions of it, he was paralyzed in energy. It was his will which was defective, not his intellect; he did not commit the offense, but he did not stop it, and try to conciliate the wrath of the Gods by sacrifices, by what we now call repentance. Hence, while he does not perish, he is still unfinished, incomplete, with a limit to be removed. A training of the Will is to be gone through next, till it be able to do what Reason commands. A new discipline therefore is in store for the Hero after the loss of his ship and his companions.

What will this discipline be? To a degree his entire career must be worked over again from the beginning. Upon his fragment of wood he floats back to Scylla and Charybdis; he falls into the old dualism in one of its phases, for he cannot stay upon the Island of the Sun, the place of unity and rest and light. Indeed have we not just seen him in the fierce conflict between knowing and doing, which he has not been able to unify in the last adventure? So he drops back between the grinding mill-stones of two opposites; one of these opposites, the maelstrom Charybdis, is sucking him in, but he clutches the branches of a large fig-tree overhanging the whirlpool, and holds fast till his mast and keel return to the surface of the water, upon which he escapes.

One cannot help feeling that the poet in this description has a conscious meaning underneath, it is more or less allegorical. The will of Ulysses was paralyzed in the Island of the Sun, he is helplessly carried forward on the sea, till the yawning gulf of Charybdis (Despair) threatens to swallow him, when he puts forth a mighty effort of will, represented in his clinging to the branches of the fig tree, which extends Hope to him, and thus he rescues himself. Now he rows his raft "with both his hands," it is indeed time to exert anew his volition. Charybdis could not take him, on account of a saving germ in him still; she has to let him pass. Whither?

Naturally the next station rearward is that of the Sirens, and this in a general way is what Ulysses reaches in his relapse. He comes to the realm of the senses, for the fact is that this was the source of the great trouble in the Island of the Sun. The companions, pressed by appetite and the needs of the body, yielded up their conviction, their intelligence; they had not reached that strength of the spirit which prefers the death of the body to a surrender of the soul. Ulysses at last acquiesced, the problem was too great for him and so he also is cast out of the Island of the Sun back into the region of the senses. But it is a new region of the senses, not that of the Sirens, not that of Circe, both of which he has transcended by an effort of will-power; it is the realm of Calypso, the Concealer, which has been reached through the collapse of the will after the sin against light. There is unquestionably an affinity between Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso, yet there is also such a difference between them that the poet has assigned to them distinct domains, It is plain, too, that Ulysses in his present paralysis will remain long with Calypso, not at once will he recover his power after such a negation. He is hidden, as it were, in her Dark Island Ogygia after that undoing of light; he passes from the sun-world of Reason to its opposite. Calypso, therefore, is reached through the grand Relapse, not through the progressive movement, which we have seen him going through hitherto.

Still Ulysses has in him the germ of betterment, of salvation. He longs to reach home and country, to return to his institutional world; that spark of aspiration has a saving power; it will not be extinguished even in the sensuous delights of Calypso's bower.

_Observations._ In looking back at the Twelfth Book and thinking it over as a Whole, the reader will always feel that he has not fully sounded its depths. It has not exercised so great an influence upon mankind as the Eleventh Book, but it is probably profounder. It lures specially the thinker and the psychologist, it seems not only to set forth thought but the thought of thought. Very difficult is the poetic problem in such a case, the imaginative form really is driven to its utmost limit in order to express the content.

I. The first thing to be fully grasped and thoroughly studied is the structure of the Book. For structure is the primordial fact of any work, and especially of any great work, structure has always its own meaning and far-reaching suggestiveness, and it points directly to what the Book signifies, being its inner vital organism. In the Twelfth Book we shall ponder a little the three essential facts of its structure.

(1) There is the twofold division of the Book, while the other Books of Fableland have distinctly a threefold division. Herewith is coupled the duplication of its content; the second part repeats what is contained in the first part; or the first part tells in advance what is to be done in the second part. Thus the structure images dualism: Thought and

## Action, Word and Deed, Idea and Reality, Prophecy and Fulfillment. Yet

it also hints the oneness in the dualism.

(2) The next point in structure is the threefold subdivision of each of the two parts. That is, now the structural principle falls back into that of the preceding Books of Fableland. Each part has its three main adventures with their respective environments and shapes, quite as each Book hitherto has had. What does this suggest to the reader--this duplication of the threefold form of the Book?

(3) Finally comes the very peculiar structure of the second adventure, which we have above called the Double Alternative. The dualism of the Book we may say, is now doubled, and transformed into the middle one of the three grand trials or exploits which the Hero has to pass through. The monster Scylla is here to be noted, with its six necks and heads, three on each side of the body, wherein again the triple is duplicated, though the body is certainly one. It was this monster which did most harm to Ulysses, snapping up six of his companions in the passage.

Such are the main points in the structure of the present Book, assuredly as great a marvel as anything recorded in the same, when it is once fully beheld. That it is intimately connected with the thought of the Book, is indeed the very form and mould thereof, is felt by every careful reader. But what is this thought? Here the difference begins, and the conflict of opinion ranges over and into fields diverse and far apart.

II. It may be said that the interpretations suggested by these three adventures--with the Sirens, with Scylla and Charybdis, and with the Oxen of the Sun--belong to two extremes; those of Nature and of Mind. Readers and commentators of different character and training will differ; one set will lean to the physical view, the other to the spiritual. It is our opinion that both views can find justification in the poem. We may first look at the physical interpretation.

All these monsters have been supposed to represent perils of navigation, especially in the Italian seas, which were frequented by the early Greek navigator. They have also been located geographically, to be sure in a variety of places. The Sirens dwelt on three dangerous rocks near the island of Capraea, according to ancient authorities; or they were found on the promontory between Paestum and Elea, or even down at Cape Pelorum in Sicily. Why should they not be indeed everywhere! Then they have been supposed to personify the secret dangers of a calm sea, and their song is the music of splashing waters. Undoubtedly a physical substrate must be granted in the case of the Sirens, and in the Mythus generally; still they are truly everywhere, not only in the Italian Sea, but also in the sea of life, and they appear not only to the professional sailor but to every human navigator. Are literal rocks passed by putting wax into the ears of the crew and by tying the captain to the mast? Surely some other peril is suggested.

In the second adventure, the Plangctae (the Claspers, not the Wanderers, as some translations give it), have been located at the Lipari Islands in the Sicilian Sea, where there is strong volcanic action. The well-known Symplegades of the Argonautic expedition which were placed at the entrance of the Euxine, were probably patterned after this Homeric conception, and transferred to the North-east. The two terrors, Scylla and Charybdis, lie in the straits of Messina, according to the accepted view, the former on the Italian side, the latter on the Sicilian. A town named Scilla still exists in those regions, and an eddy in the straits of Messina is still called Charilla (from Charybdis doubtless.) Etymologically Scylla means a bitch, Charybdis is allied with Chaos (from a Greek word meaning to yawn). Later legend gave to Scylla a great variety of forms, which were reproduced in art and poetry. One story represents her as having been a beautiful maiden who was loved by Glaucus, and who was turned into her present monstrous shape by Circe through jealousy, for the enchantress loved Glaucus too. The sucking-in of the waters by Charybdis, and her disgorging of them has been connected with the ebb and flow of the tides. It may also be added that the Plangctae (in the sense of wandering or floating islands) have been supposed to refer to icebergs, some report of which may have reached the Homeric world through the Phoenician sailor, who must have passed outside of the straits of Gibraltar, into the Atlantic.

III. Such are some of the physical explanations which this Book has suggested; we may now consider it in relation to certain mental phenomena. Already we have unfolded the ethical meaning which especially lies in these shapes, and the Hero's struggle with them. But they have another and deeper suggestion; they adumbrate the nature of mind itself and the process of thinking; both in form and content the whole Book strangely points to psychology, as if the poet, having created these wonders of Fableland, were going to create his own creative act and present it in an image.

(1) The division of the Book into the two parts already alluded to in which each is what the other is, in which there are both separation and identity, calls up the fundamental fact of self-consciousness, which is often expressed in the formula Ego=Ego. Mind, Ego, separates itself into two sides, yet each side is the whole and recognizes the other side as itself. This act is the condition of knowing of every kind, which always differentiates then identifies. One step more: Circe in her prophecy gave the pure form of the idea, then came its realization, so that there is suggested the primordial distinction of the mind into Intellect and Will, or the Thought and the Deed. Thus we see in this division of the Twelfth Book the exact characteristic of subject-object, and there is still further suggested the distinction between Thinking and Willing.

(2) Passing to the threefold subdivision of each of the two parts, we observe that it also calls up psychological distinctions. Three stages of the knowing mind, Senses, Understanding, Reason, may be found here, not very definitely given, still distinctly implied. The Sirens represent the Sensuous, especially in its moral aspect; the Plangctae with Scylla and Charybdis set forth a vivid image of the divisions and conflicts of the finite Understanding; the Oxen of the Sun point to the central light, that of Reason, which, when destroyed in any way, constitutes the chief human calamity.

Another curious psychological hint may be noted in the text of Homer. The Sirens, the first or implicit stage, are sometimes spoken of in the dual and sometimes in the plural; Homer would seem to imply that they are two in number, yet they always act and sing as one. That is, the dualism or separation is as yet implicit; but in the second stage (that of Scylla and Charybdis) it will become explicit with decided emphasis. Later legend made the Sirens three in number, and gave them names, and otherwise distinguished them; but this is not Homeric and indeed has lost the Homeric consciousness.

(3) The fact that the previous Books of Fableland have a threefold division only, while this threefold division is duplicated in the Twelfth Book, has also its psychological bearing in connection with the foregoing views. In the first case, the poet was not aware of his process, he yielded to the poetic act immediately; but in the second case, he is conscious, he knows his own process and prefigures it; he holds it up before himself in advance, just as Circe holds up before Ulysses his future career. Ulysses also must know in advance, hitherto he has simply followed instinct and chance, whithersoever they led. In like manner, the poet now shows himself knowing what he will do; his threefold organic movement, hitherto more or less implicit and unconscious, has become explicit and conscious, and can be prophesied. He himself thus is an example of the Ego which both casts before and forecasts itself, in other words is self-duplicated.

(4) Here, however, we must note a distinction. In all four Books of Fableland, Ulysses is the poet himself in a sense, he is singing his own adventures to the Court of Phaeacia, he is well aware of what he has passed through and to what he has come.

He is not a Demodocus chanting heroic strains of the Trojan Past; he is Ulysses telling his own spiritual experiences after the taking of Troy. It has been already unfolded (p. 246-7) that he was in a negative, alienated condition; he had fallen out with and was separated from his Hellenic world, whereof this Fableland is the record. But he arrives at Phaeacia, an harmonious institutional realm, then he becomes fully conscious of his negative condition and projects it out of himself in these Tales or Songs. So all Fableland shows this consciousness in the man; but the Twelfth Book shows him conscious not only of his negative state, but of his mental process, conscious of his consciousness, we may say; he is not only Thought, but is Thought thinking Thought, or at least imaging the same; that is, Thought has itself as its own object or content. So much we are inclined to find hinted in this duplication of the movement in the Twelfth Book.

At this point we hear the cry of dissent: You make Homer too introspective, you make him a self-introverted, self-torturing nineteenth century man, whereas he is the most unreflective, unconscious of poets. Very natural is such a protest, my good reader; this sort of thing may be carried too far, and become fantastic. Still it is a great mistake to think that Homer never takes a glance at his own mind and its workings. He must have looked within in order to see his world; where else was it to be found in any such completeness? He has built it, and he must have taken some interest in the architect and in his processes. Homer himself is a greater wonder than any wonder he has created, and he probably knew it.

It is by no means the purpose to affirm in the preceding remarks that Homer intended to make an allegorical psychology. He simply had a mind, and the essence of mind is to be able to look at mind. So Homer saw himself and his own process, and set it forth in an imaginative form. Very similar is the plan of Shakespeare in the _Tempest_. Prospero is the poet, not only as poet, but the poet making his drama in the drama. There is also a significant duplication both of structure and character: Prospero is at one time magician, that is, poet, and commands the elements and the spirits, especially Ariel; at another time he assumes his ordinary relations as parent and as king, and is as limited as other mortals. Shakespeare made many dramas, then he saw himself making dramas, then he put into a drama himself making dramas. That is, he in the end (Tempest is usually held to be the last of Shakespeare's plays) took up his own poetic process into a poem, and thus completed the arch of his great career.

So much for the psychological aspect of these Books of Fableland. It must be stated again that abstract terms, so necessary for an exact science of mind, had not been elaborated to any extent in Homer's day. Reflective language is a later product of Greek spirit. Still the philosopher is anticipated and prophesied in the poet, and it certainly cannot be amiss to trace vague premonitions and promises of the coming Plato and Aristotle in the old poet. Homer has in him the germ of the whole Greek world, and for that matter, much of the modern world also; the best commentary upon him is the 2500 years since his time.

IV. The slaying of the Oxen of the Sun has also its searching suggestiveness, and is found in one form or other in the World's greatest Books. Mind destroying mind may be shown as light extinguishing its own luminary; some such hint lies in the symbolism both of the act and its punishment. It is indeed the culminating point of negation--spirit denying spirit. This is the real sin against the Holy Spirit, unpardonable because repentance, all possibility of pardon is denied by the doer of the deed. As I understand him, this is the essence of the sin of Dante against Beatrice, with which she reproaches him in the last part of the Purgatorio. Suggestions of the same kind of guilt may be found in the characters of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Banquo, in whose cases the violation brings on a tragic fate; indeed every true tragedy has some touches of the light-denying or light-defying deed and its penalty. Above all rises in this respect the Faust of Goethe, the theme of which is explicitly intelligence denying intelligence, whereby the human mind becomes utterly negative, begets the Devil, and enters into compact with him for a life of indulgence. While such a state lasts, repentance is impossible.

Some such intimation ancient Homer must have had, and shadowed it forth in this strange symbolic deed. Ulysses having disregarded all he had learned by his long and bitter experience, leaving unheeded the warnings and prophecies of the Supersensible and the Sensible World (Tiresias and Circe), drops back into the sphere of Calypso, and has to serve the senses seven years till will and aspiration lift him again. Such a servitude was not uncommon in Greek legend, Hercules is the very embodiment thereof; even a God, Apollo, Light itself, has to serve Admetus, a mortal, in expiation of undivine guilt.

An important element of structure is to be noted at this point: the poem bifurcates and the reader has to move in two directions. If he wishes to follow the development of Ulysses, (which is indispensable) he must return with the latter to Calypso's Island and trace him through his three grand experiences--Oyggia, Phaeacia, and Fableland. But if the reader wishes to continue in the action of the poem, he must now pass out of Fableland to Ithaca in the company of the Hero. (For this double movement of the Ulyssiad, see pp. 121-8.)

But before Fableland is left behind, its full sweep may be called up once more: from the Upperworld of Earth (Ninth and Tenth Books, both belong together in a general survey), which shows the negation of Greek ethical life and its conflicts, we pass to the Underworld of Hades, which on the one hand is the negation of all Greek sensible existence, and on the other hand is the revelation of the supersensible (soul, idea, world-justice); thence we come back to the Upperworld in which the idea, obtained beyond, is seen struggling with the reality in various negative phases--Ulysses, knowing in advance, is shown in his attempt to realize his knowledge in the deed. Such then, is this grand threefold sweep of Fableland.

One more retrospect: let us glance back at the whole Twelve Books, this first half of the Odyssey, composed of the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad. Both are parts of one whole; father and son acquire each his special discipline for the coming deed. Both are brought to a recognition of the Divine Order, the son mainly through tradition, the father mainly through experience. Both reach beyond the sensible into the supersensible or ideal realm; Telemachus hears the story of Proteus, which teaches the essence in all appearance; Ulysses descends to Hades and there communes with pure mind without its terrestrial incumbrance, in the case of Tiresias and others. Such is the internal preparation; now they are to do the deed. The idea they possess, the next is to make it real.

Accordingly the action of the poem, with Ulysses as its center, moves next to Ithaca, the realm in which the idea is to be realized: wherewith we enter upon a new grand division of the poem.

(The reader who wishes to study the parallelism between this Twelfth Book and Prospero can consult the author's Commentary on Shakespeare, where it treats of the _Tempest_. In fact, the entire play, which is also a kind of Fairy Tale, has many correspondences with Homer's Fableland.)

_ITHAKEIAD._

Such is the designation which we have concluded to give to the last twelve Books of the Odyssey, inasmuch as a name is needed for this portion corresponding to the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad. The scene is laid wholly in Ithaca, the characters of the poem are all brought together, and the main conflict takes place. It is the country which is to be cleansed of violence and guilt; that Divine Order which father and son have learned about, each in his own way, they must now make real in the world, especially in their own land. Manifestly Ithaca represents the realm of wrong, of hostility to the social system of man; the Suitors defy Law, Family, State, Gods.

But Ulysses, before he can reform his country, has had to reform himself. When he attacked the Ciconians, he was as negative to institutional order as the Suitors themselves; he was not the man to destroy them at that time, he was too like them to undo their work. Hence the long discipline in Fableland, which has been fully explained in the preceding comments; hence too he had to see Phaeacia, the ideal institutional life realized in Family and State, as well as in Industry and the Fine Arts. Let the reader note that he passes, not from Fableland, but from Phaeacia, to Ithaca; having that Phaeacian Idea in his soul, he can transform his own country. Thus he will truly save his companions, namely, the people, whom before he lost in Fableland.

Telemachus also in his training has seen much and brought back an ideal with him. He has heard the wise man Nestor and witnessed the religious life of Hellas in its highest manifestation. Pylos, Nestor's kingdom, is almost a Greek theocracy; the Gods appear visible at the feasts and hold communion with the people. Likewise at Sparta Telemachus saw a realm of peace and concord, in striking contrast with his own Ithaca; but chiefly he heard the Marvelous Tale of Proteus, after which he was eager to return home at once. Thus he too has had his experience of a social order, as well as his ideal instruction. Previous to his journey he had shown a tendency to despair, and to a denial of the Gods on account of the disorders of the Suitors in his house. Unquestionably he comes back to Ithaca with renewed courage and aspiration, and with an ideal in his soul, which makes him a meet companion for his father.

The third character is the swineherd Eumaeus who is the great addition in this portion of the Odyssey. He too has had his discipline, which is to be recounted here; he has been stolen as a child and sold into slavery; still the most terrible calamities to himself and his master and to the House of Ulysses, have not shaken his fealty to the Gods. Thus in common with Telemachus and Ulysses he has faith in the Divine Order, and can cooperate with them in realizing the same in Ithaca. Very different has been his discipline from that of the other two, both of whom became negative and had to be sent away from home for training, but Eumaeus has remained in his hut and never swerved in his fidelity to his sovereigns above and below, though he does not understand the providential reason for so much wrong and suffering.

To these three men we are to add the woman, Penelope, who has her part, perhaps the most difficult in this difficult business. She cannot resort to violence, she must use her feminine weapon, tact, with a degree of skill which makes her an example for all time. Indeed not a few of her sex declare that she has overdone the matter, and that her acts are morally questionable. But there can be no doubt that it is the part of tact to find fault with tact, and that woman will always decry woman's skill in artifice, without refraining from its employment altogether; indeed just that is a part of the artifice.

For this and similar reasons the moral bearings of this portion of the Odyssey have always aroused discussion. In general, the question comes up: What constitutes a lie? Is the disguise of Ulysses justifiable? Is the subtlety of Penelope morally reprehensible? The old dispute as to conduct rises in full intensity: Does the end justify the means? Two

## parties are sure to appear with views just opposite; the one excuses,

the other condemns, often with no little asperity. The Odyssey has been denounced even as an immoral Book and both its hero and heroine have been subjected to a burning ordeal of literary damnation.

The poet has, however, his wrongful set, the Suitors, about whose character there is no disagreement. They are the negation of that Divine Order which is to be restored by those who believe in it--the three men who come together at the hut of the swineherd, and who have been trained by the time and circumstances just to this end. Ulysses has had to pass through his negative period and overcome the same within; now he is prepared to meet the Suitors and to destroy them without the negative recoil which came upon him after destroying the city of Troy. He can do a necessary deed of violence without becoming violent and destructive himself; he will not now re-enact the Ciconian affair.

Let us look into the inner movement of the matter here indicated. The slaughter of the Suitors by Ulysses was undoubtedly a negative act, yet the Suitors also were negative in conduct, wholly so; thus violence is met and undone by violence, or negation negates negation. What is the outcome? Manifestly a double result is possible: if a negative cancels a negative, there may remain still negation, or there may be a positive result. Ulysses has passed through the first of these stages by his discipline already recorded, after which he is master of the negative; the destruction of the Suitors will not now make him destructive, as did the destruction of Troy. It will be seen, therefore, that the poem has a positive outcome; after some trouble, Ulysses will renovate the country, will restore Family and State, in fine the whole Order which had been upset by the Suitors.

With the transition from Fableland occurs a marked change in the style of the poem. In the previous portions we have already noted the Marvelous Tale of Fairyland, the Heroic Tale of Troy, the Idyllic Epopee of the Present, the latter especially in Phaeacia. But in these last twelve Books we read a story of actual social life, a story which almost strikes into the domain of the modern Novel. Still fabulous adventures will be interwoven--now more in the form of the novelette--with Phoenician and Egyptian backgrounds. Also a tone of humanity, even of sentiment, makes itself felt in various places. A new situation brings with it a new style, yet Homeric still. Hereafter these points will be more fully noticed.

We have already indicated the fact (p. 19) that Pallas starts to organize the Odyssey in Book First. Two portions she designates, the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad, which really belong together, showing the spiritual palingenesis, or internal renovation of son and father ere they proceed to the renovation of their country. Such in general are the first twelve Books, showing the two masters of destiny, the two positive men with their idea; the second twelve Books show them realizing their idea, and doing the great deed for which they have been prepared.

This second half of the Odyssey falls into two divisions. The first is located at the hut of the swineherd and brings the three men together, whose general character has been already indicated; they have been trained by life to a living realization of the Divine Order. This division consists of four Books (XIII-XVI). The second division transfers the scene from country to town, from hut to palace. Ulysses in disguise will witness personally the full course of the wrong of the suitors, against his property, his family, his state, and against the Gods. Then he becomes the minister of the world-justice which he has already seen in Hades. Finally he harmonizes the distracted institutional life of his country and the poem ends. This second division embraces the last eight Books, and has its own special stages in its movement.

_Survey of Books Thirteenth to Sixteenth._ In this portion we are to witness the leading transition of the poem, that of Ulysses and Telemachus to Ithaca, the transition from the long and elaborate preparation for the act to the act itself, which is the supreme one of man, that of asserting and realizing the Divine Order. In these four Books is the gathering of the chosen forces into one spot and into one purpose--which forces have been hitherto separately developed; here it is that we behold the practical preliminary movement for destroying the Suitors. Hence arises the feeling which most readers express on a sympathetic perusal, that these four Books of the Ithakeiad, which is the name already given to the present division of the Odyssey, have enough in common to cause them to be grouped together in an organic survey of the poem. They have, first of all, unity of locality--the hut of the swineherd--to which, round which, and from which their incidents move. To be sure there is a glance at the enemy, the Suitors, who are at a different point; but even this glance serves to emphasize the setting common to these four Books, which is the abode of Eumaeus. Very humble it is, but it stands in every way as the contrast to the palace.

This unity of place naturally suggests unity of action as to what is going on in that place. All the forces in opposition to the Suitors are secretly gathering there and organizing. It is the center of attraction which is drawing out of the universe every atom of congenial energy for punishing the transgressors. It has brought Ulysses from Phaeacia, Telemachus from Sparta, and possesses already the faithful Eumaeus in its own right. This is the fortress, and these are the three men who make the attacking army. They are now getting themselves together. All three have passed through a grand discipline just for the present end, which is to be the great deed of deliverance.

Moreover the place has a character of its own, a peculiar atmosphere in sympathy with its purpose. Its strength we feel, its adamantine fidelity to the House of Ulysses. It is a secluded spot in contrast to the palace; its occupant is a slave in contrast to the kings who are suitors; his business is to be the companion of swine in contrast to the regal entertainment at court. The highest and the humblest of the social order are here placed side by side; with what result? The unswerving rock of loyalty is the hut and the heart of the swineherd; upon it as the foundation the shattered institutional world of Ithaca is to be rebuilt. The lowest class of society is, after all, the basis of the edifice; if it remain sound, then the superstructure can be erected again after the fiery purification. But if it be utterly rotten, what then? Such, however, is not the case in Ithaca, as long as there exists a man like the swineherd. From his rock, then, and, still more, from his spirit, is to issue the energy which is to transform that perverted land of Ithaca.

Still, here too Ulysses is the pivot, the central character; the hero both in thought and action, for whom Eumaeus furnishes a spatial and spiritual environment. The hut of the swineherd is but a phase, one landing-place in the career of Ulysses. An idyllic spot and forever beautiful; who but Homer has ever gotten so much poetry out of a pig-sty? We witness the transfiguration of what is the very lowest of human existence into what is the very highest, veritably the Godlike on earth.

Ulysses, however, has to remain in disguise even to his most faithful servant; not out of distrust we must think, but out of prudence. Knowing his master, the swineherd would be a different person in the presence of the Suitors; he has an open, sincere, transparent heart, and he would probably let the secret be seen which lay therein. The gift of disguise he possesses not, as Ulysses has clearly observed in his conversation; in this respect he is the contrast to the Hero himself. But Telemachus will get the secret, for he has craft, is the true son of his father; has he not just shown the paternal trait in cunningly thwarting the Suitors who are lying in wait for him, by the help of Pallas, of course?

In these four Books, accordingly, we behold one stage of the great preparation for the deed which is the culmination of the poem. Not now the disciplinary, but the practical preparation it is, when one is ready and resolved internally, and is seeking the method and means. Both Ulysses and Telemachus have had their training; now it must pass into action.

We behold, first, Ulysses making the transition from Phaeacia to Ithaca, and thence to the fortress of loyalty, from which the movement is to be made. Secondly we see all the instruments getting together, and being prepared for the work, particularly the three heroes of the attack. Finally we observe Ulysses inquiring and learning all about the situation in Ithaca; he obtains everything that information at second hand can give. But hearsay is not enough; he must see at first hand. Thus we pass to the palace, and out of the first series of four Books, which we are next to consider separately.

_BOOK THIRTEENTH._

In general, we have in this Book the grand transition from Phaeacia to Ithaca, in both of its phases, physical and spiritual. The sea is crossed from land to land in a ship; the idyllic realm is left behind, and the real world with its terrible problem is encountered. Phaeacia was quite without conflict. Ithaca is just in the condition of conflict and discord. Phaeacia, moreover, was a land of looking back at the past, of reminiscence and retrospection; Ithaca is the land of looking directly into the face of the future, with the deed to follow at once; it is the field for action and not contemplation. Not only spatially, but also in thought we must regard this transition.

Ulysses has both these worlds in him; he is the man of thought and the man of action. Hitherto in his career the stress has been upon the former; henceforth it is to be upon the latter. In this Book, which is the overture marking the change in the key-note of the poem, we have three distinct facts brought out prominently and through them we can grasp the general structure. There is, first, the departure of Ulysses from Phaeacia and arrival at Ithaca; secondly, when this is finished, there is the glance backward, on the part of the poet, to the miraculous voyage and to Phaeacia itself, in which glance Neptune plays an important part; thirdly, there is the glance forward, which occupies most of the Book, taking in Ithaca and the future, in which glance Pallas, the Goddess of foresight, gives the chief direction, and Ulysses is her mortal counterpart. This is, accordingly, to a large extent a Book of divine suggestion; two deities appear, the Upper World plays into the Lower World, yet in very different manners. The God of the Sea seems to be an obstructionist, a reactionary, with look turned behind, an old divinity of Nature; while Pallas always has her look turned forward, and is furthering the great deed of purification, is wholly a divinity of Spirit. These three phases of the Book we shall note more fully.

I. We have a glimpse of the court at Phaeacia; Ulysses has ended the long account of his experience, the time of action has arrived. The formal yet hearty farewell is described; the gifts of the host are given, and the guest is sent on his way. Nor must we forget the bard Demodocus, still singing at the banquet, but the theme of his song is not now mentioned; evidently it was some tale of Troy, as before, and this stage of song has been far transcended by Ulysses. Very eager the Hero was to start; "often he turned his head toward the all-shining Sun" to see how far away the hour still remained. He wishes to listen to no more lays of the Past, sweet though they be, nor does he desire to tell any tales himself.

Moreover we hear the great longing of his heart: "May I, returning, find at home my blameless wife!" In like manner he wishes domestic joy to the king, as this whole Phaeacian world partakes more of the Family than of the State. Of course, he cannot leave without going to the heart and center of the Family, namely, Arete, wife, mother, and even judge of the people. So we hear from the lips of Ulysses a final salutation to her in her threefold character, "Within thy household rejoice in thy children, thy people and thy husband the king." She looks to the domestic part on the ship for Ulysses; she sends servants bearing bread, wine and garments for the passage. Nausicaa we feel to be present in the last interview, but not a word from her or from the departing guest to her; self-suppression is indeed the law for both, for is not Penelope the grand end of this voyage?

The ship of the Phaeacians in which the passage is made is a miraculous one, and yet prophetic; it is gifted with thought and flies more fleet than a falcon, swiftest of birds. Again the mythical account prefigures the reality, and this little marvelous story of the sea hints, yes, calls for the speed of modern navigation. It is not a matter to be understood; Ulysses, the wise man, knows nothing about it, he is sunk in sleep while making the passage. But the wise man is to come to knowledge hereafter.

He has arrived in Ithaca, and entered a safe port; he, still deep in slumber, is laid on the shore with all his goods and gifts, when the mariners turn back. At this point we have an interesting description of the surroundings, wherein we may observe the poet's employment of nature as a setting for the returned Ulysses. There is the secure haven shutting off the winds and waves of the sea; at the end of the haven stands the olive tree, product of culture, and hinting the civilized world, which Ulysses now enters; it was a tree sacred to Pallas in later Greek legend, and, doubtless, in Homer's time also. Next came the cave of the Nymphs called Naiads, with its curious shapes of stone, the work of the Nymphs to the old Greek eye, but named stalagmites and stalactites in modern speech. Two are the entrances, one for Gods and one for men; both human and divine visitors come thither, it is indeed a point of meeting for the two influences, which is its essential suggestion. Ulysses, lying with his goods beneath the olive tree and near the cave, is under divine protection, which here Nature herself is made to declare. This scenery is not introduced for its own sake, but for the divinity in it, whereof another example is to follow in the case of Neptune.

There have been repeated attempts to identify the locality described by the poet with the present geography of Ithaca. Travelers have imagined that they have found the haven and cave, notably this was the case with Sir William Gell; but the more common view now is that they were mistaken. Homer from his knowledge of Greece, which has everywhere harbors, caves and olive-trees, constructed an ideal landscape for his own purpose, quite as every poet does. He may or may not have seen Ithaca; in either case, the poetic result is the same.

II. The physical transition from Phaeacia to Ithaca is accomplished; while Ulysses is asleep, the poet casts a glance backward at the marvelous ship and at the marvelous land which has just been left behind. Both are henceforth to be forever closed to the real world and its intercourse; the realm of fable is shut off from Ithaca, and from the rest of this poem.

The matter is presented in the form of a conflict between the Phaeacians and Neptune, between the sea-faring people and the sea; clearly it is one of the many struggles between Man and Nature which the Greek Mythus is always portraying, because these struggles were the ever-present fact in Greek life. The God has been circumvented by the speed of the navigators; Ulysses without suffering, without a storm, has reached Ithaca. "No more honor for me from mortals or Gods," cries Neptune, "if I can be thus defied?" He makes his appeal to the Highest God, and we hear the decision: "Turn the ship to a stone and hide the city with a mountain." The first is accomplished in view of the Phaeacians; the second is possibly prevented by their speedy sacrifices to Neptune, and the new decree of the ruler, which forbids their giving further escort over the sea to strangers. At any rate Phaeacia is shut off from the world, and has not been heard of since; there have been no more transitions thence since that of Ulysses. The marvelous ship and the marvelous city vanish forever by a divine act, even by the will of Zeus. Yet, on the other hand, they eternally remain, crystallized in these verses of Homer, more lasting than the rock of Neptune.

Why this interference from above? Wherein is the escort by the Phaeacians a violation of the divine order as voiced by the Supreme God? Note that Ulysses has escaped, which is the will of Zeus; note, too, that the Phaeacians are punished for helping him escape, which is also the will of Zeus. The sailors bring the wanderer to his home without trouble, but they are smitten by the God while returning.

For the primal suggestion of the legend, may we not say that the sea, that enormous force of Nature with many reserved energies in its vast bosom, though bestrid and subdued by a ship, at times breaks loose and destroys, in spite of skillful navigation and perfect machinery? Still to-day the sea has a residue of the uncontrollable, and probably will have for some ages to come. Neptune has not ceased from his wrath against the man of thought, who tries to straddle and ride him, and Zeus still supports at times the Sea-god's appeal for honor, when his prerogative is violated. Yet not always by any means, for Zeus belongs to the true Olympians, deities of intelligence, who once put down the old Gods of Nature.

Still Nature has its right, nay, its law with the penalty. The poet looks upon the sea as a great deity demanding sacrifice and honor. Furthermore, for every conquest made over it, there is the counterstroke, the resistance, which is the vengeance of the God. Thus says Zeus: "If any man, trusting in his own strength, refuses to give unto thee honor, always vengeance is thine afterwards."

We have already noticed the creed of the poet to be that every action has its penalty; the deed, even the good deed, is the fruit of a conflict and puts down something which has its might, aye its right, which is soon to make itself felt in counteraction. _Es raecht sich alles auf Erden_, sings our last world-poet in full harmony with his eldest brother.

It is not surprising that Alcinous at this point remembers an "ancient God-spoken oracle," which had uttered in advance the wrath of Neptune and the present penalty. In like manner, Polyphemus, in his crisis, remembered a similar oracle. It is indeed the deep suggestion of Nature which the sages have heard in all times. The poet takes his thought and works it into a mythical shape, in which, however, we are to see not merely the story but the insight into the world order.

Ulysses now leaves the sea, after having been chiefly in a struggle with it for years, ever since he sailed from Troy. It was the element in his way, the environment always hostile to him; Neptune was the deity who was angry and made him suffer. Still the God of the sea could not prevent his Return, such was the will of Zeus. Thus we cast a glance back at the Phaeacians who vanish, and at Neptune who also vanishes.

The poem henceforth quits the sea, after marking the fate of the sea-faring people of Phaeacia. That great mysterious body of water, with its uncertainties of wind and wave, with its hidden rocks and magic islands, is now to drop out of the horizen of the Odyssey. It is the great sea-poem of the Greeks, yes of the world; the sea is the setting of its adventurous, marvelous, illimitable portion. It comes out the sea, with its realm of wonders; henceforth it is a land poem in the clear finite world. Ulysses the Hero must turn his face away from the briny element; not without significance is that command given him that he must go till he find a people who take an oar for a winnowing-fan ere he can reach peace. So the fairy-ship ceased to run, but the steam-ship has taken its place in these Ithacan waters. Still the poetic atmosphere of the Odyssey, in spite of steam, hovers over the islands of western Greece to-day; the traveler in the harbor of Corfu, will look up at the city from the deck of his vessel and call back the image of Phaeacia, and if he listens to the speech of the Greek sailors, he will find words still in use which were employed by old Homer, possibly were heard by the poet in this very harbor.

III. Next comes the most important and longest portion of the Book, turning the glance forward to Ithaca and the future, also to the great deed of the poem. A new deity appears when Neptune vanishes, not a hostile power of Nature but a helpful spirit of Intelligence--it is the Goddess of Wisdom, Pallas. This divine transition from the one God to the other is the real inner fact, while the physical transition is but the outer setting and suggestion.

Accordingly, the theme now is the man and the deity, Ulysses and Pallas in their interrelation. We are to have a complete account of the human unfolding into a vision of the divine. The movement is from a complete separation of the twain, to mutual recognition, and then to co-operation. Pallas has had little to do with Ulysses during his great sea-journey, and since he left Troy. That long wandering on the water was without her, lay not at all in her domain, which is that of clear self-conscious Intelligence. That misty Fableland is the realm of other divinities, though she appeared in Phaeacia.

The question, therefore, is at present: How shall this man come into the knowledge of the Goddess? How shall he know the truth of the reality about him in his new situation, how understand this world of wisdom? The sides are two: the man and the deity, and they must become one in spirit. The supreme thing, therefore, is that Ulysses hear the voice of Pallas, and develop into unity with her; indeed that may be held to be the supreme thing in Religion and Philosophy: to hear the voice of God. Even in the business of daily life the first object is to find out the word of Pallas.

Such is the dualism in the world, which must be harmonized; but in the individual also there is another dualism which has to be harmonized. Ulysses is mortal, finite, given over to doubt, passion, caprice, is the unwise man, subjective; but he is also the wise man, has an infinite nature which is just the mastery of all his weakness; he has always the possibility of wisdom, and will come to it by a little discipline. He will rise out of his subjective self into the objective God. This is just the process which the poet is now going to portray; the Hero overwhelmed in his new situation and with his new problem, is to ascend into communion with Pallas, is to behold wisdom in person and hear her voice, and then is to advance to the deed. This process we may look at in four different stages, as they unfold on the lines laid down by the poet.

1. First we have quite a full picture of Ulysses before he reaches the recognition of the Divine, and of his gradual climbing-up to that point. At the start he is asleep, is not even conscious of the external world about him, he has indeed entered a new realm, yet old. As long as the Phaeacian spell is upon him, he can do nought but slumber. Then he wakes, he sees but does not recognize his own country. He doubts, he blames the Phaeacians wrongfully, in his distrust of them he counts over his treasures. He is now the unwise, capricious man; he has no perception of Pallas; not only the land is in disguise to him, he is in disguise to himself, to his better self.

Yet the poet is careful to mark the providential purpose just in this disguise. The Goddess threw a mist over things, that he might not know them, or make himself known till all was in readiness for the destruction of the Suitors, till she had told him what he had to do. Still it is his own act or state that he cannot at first hear the voice of the Goddess.

The next step is that he recognizes the country, it is described to him and named by Pallas. But she is in disguise now; she has appeared, but not in her true form; she is not yet wisdom, but simply identifies the land, telling him: "This is Ithaca." Thus he recognizes the external landscape, but not the Goddess, who is as yet but a simple shepherd describing things.

Now what will he do? He also will disguise himself to the shepherd, because he does not recognize who it is. He makes up a fable to account for his presence and for his goods. Both are now in disguise, the man and deity, to each other. They are doing the same thing, they are one, with that thin veil of concealment between them.

Then comes the mutual recognition. She tears away the veil, laughs at his artifice, and calls out her own designation: Pallas Athena. She had previously named Ithaca, which brings the recognition of the outer world; now she names herself, which brings the recognition of the divine world. Thus Ulysses has rapidly passed from sleep through a series of non-cognizant states, till he beholds the Goddess.

2. Both the deity and mortal have now reached the stage of mutual recognition, and thrown off their mutual disguise, which was a false relation, though it often exists. Does not the man at times conceal himself to the God, by self-deception, self-excuse, by lying to his higher nature? In such case is not the God also hidden, in fact compelled to assume a mask? Thus the poet brings before us the wonderful interplay between the human and divine, till they fully recognize each other.

At once Pallas changes, she assumes a new form, the outward plastic shape corresponding to her Godhood in the Greek conception, that of "a woman beautiful and stately." Nor must we forget that Ulysses has also changed, the two transformations run parallel, in the spirit of the man and in the form of the Goddess. This unity of character also is stated by Pallas; "both of us are skilled in wiles; thou art the best of mortals in counsel and in words; I am famed among the Gods for wisdom and cunning." Hence her argument runs, let us throw off disguise to each other, for we have a great work before us.

It is also to be noted by the reader that each, the man and the Goddess, ascribes to the other the credit of skill and forethought, specially the credit of coming to Ithaca in disguise to discover the true situation. Says Pallas: "Another man would have rushed to see wife and children in his house, but thou wilt first test thy wife." Here the Goddess gives the thought to the man. Says Ulysses: "Surely I would have perished in my own palace, like Agamemnon, if thou, O Goddess, hadst not told me everything aright." Here the man gives the thought to the Goddess. This is not a contradiction, both are correct, and the insight is to see that both are one, and saying the same thing at bottom. The deity must be in the man, as well as in the world; and the man must hear the deity speaking the truth of the world ere he attain unto wisdom.

Even the mist which hung over the landscape at first, has now completely vanished; Ulysses recognizes all the local details--the haven, the olive-tree, the grot of the Nymphs, and the mountain; all the Ithacan objects of Nature come back fully. But chiefly he recognizes the Goddess, whereupon both can pass to the great matter in hand--the deed.

3. This deed has been often mentioned before--the purification of Ithaca, chiefly by the slaughter of the Suitors, "the shameless set, who usurp thy house and woo thy wife." Sitting on the roots of the sacred olive, the two, the man and the deity, plan destruction to the guilty. Verily those double elements, the human and the divine, must co-operate if the great action be performed. The eternal principle of right, the moral order of the world, must unite with the free agency of the individual in bringing about the regeneration of the land. Thus after their complete recognition and harmony, which takes place out of separation, Ulysses and Pallas look forward to the impending deed, which is their unity realized and standing forth as a fact in the world.

4. Finally we have the manner of doing the deed, the plan is laid before us. Pallas tells Ulysses that he must again assume his disguise, both in the hut of the swineherd and in the palace at Ithaca. She does not propose to do his work for him; on the contrary it must be his own spontaneous energy. In fact, Pallas is in him making this suggestion, yet outside of him, too, speaking the voice of the situation.

The scheme shows the structure of these four Books (XIII-XVI), organized of course by Pallas. Ulysses is to go to the swineherd who is loyal, and will give shelter. Telemachus is to be brought to the same place by Pallas, not externally, as we shall see, but through the free act of Telemachus himself. Thus the three chosen men are gathered together in their unsuspected fortress. Two things we must note in regard to these movements: they are wholly voluntary on part of the persons making them, yet they belong in the Divine Order, and thus are the work of the deity. Free-Will and Providence do not trammel each other, but harmoniously co-operate to the same end. So carefully and completely is this thought elaborated that we may consider it fundamental in the creed of the poet.

In such manner the weak, finite Ulysses is brought into communion with the immortal Goddess. Yet he, the poor frail mortal, drops for a moment even here. When Pallas speaks of Telemachus having gone to Sparta, to learn about his father, Ulysses petulantly asks: "Why did not you, who know all things, tell that to him" without the peril of such a journey? The answer of Pallas is clear; I sent him in order that he might be a man among men, and have the good fame of his action. Telemachus, too, must be a free man; that is the education of Pallas. The Goddess will help him only when he helps himself. Divinity is not to sap human volition, but to enforce it; she would unmake Telemachus, if she allowed him to stay at home and do nothing, tied to his mother's apron strings.

And here we cannot help noting an observation on Homer's poetry. It must be in the reader ere he can see it in the book. Unless he be ready for its spirit, it will not appear, certainly it will not speak. There must be a rise into the vision of Homeric poetry on the part of the reader, as there is a rise into the vision of the Goddess on the part of Ulysses. The two sides, the human and the divine, or the Terrestrial and the Olympian, must meet and commune; thus the reader, too, in perusing Homer, must become heroic and behold the Gods.

_BOOK FOURTEENTH._

The Book begins with another transition in place; Ulysses passes from the sea-shore, with its haven, grot, and olive-tree up into the mountain, to the hut of Eumaeus. We have quite a full description of the latter's abode; there is a lodge surrounded by a court and a wall; within this inclosure are the sties, and the droves of swine over which he is the keeper, with four assistants. Nor must we omit the fierce dogs, savage as wild beasts. Such is the new environment which Ulysses enters, and which has at its center a human being who gives character to this little world. Again we catch a clear quick glimpse of the Greek landscape in one of its phases.

The spiritual transition is, however, the main thing. Ulysses passes from Pallas, the deity of pure wisdom, to Eumaeus, the humblest of mortals in his vocation. Yet this poor man too has the divine in him, and manifests it in a supreme degree, not, however, in the form of reflective wisdom, but in the form of piety, of an immediate faith in the Gods. Still this faith has its sore trial. Such is the contrast between the two men. Ulysses has brought with him the Goddess of Wisdom, whose words he has heard, and with whom he has held communion. Hardly does Eumaeus know Pallas, he has not the internal gift of seeing her in her own shape. Thus both these men share in the divine, but in very different ways.

From this difference in the two men spring both the character and the matter of the Book. It is a play, a disguise; a play between Wisdom and Faith, in which the former must be in disguise to the latter, yet both have the same substance at bottom. For Faith is Faith because it cannot take the form of Intelligence, yet may have in its simple immediate form all the content of Intelligence.

Eumaeus has an open single-hearted piety; he cannot play a disguise, he hates it for he has been deceived by it when assumed by lying fablers. For this reason he is not intrusted with the secret of his master's return till the last moment, he would have to dissemble, to violate his own nature, and then perhaps he would not have succeeded in his attempt. So Ulysses with a true regard for his man withholds the great secret, and has to play under cover in order to get the needful information.

Accordingly the present Book has a decided tinge of comedy. There is, on the one hand, the disguise, external and internal--in garments and in identity; on the other hand, there is the error which takes one person for another, and produces the comic situation. Thus the Book is prophetic of a great branch of Literature, and may be considered as a starting-point of Greek Comedy, yes, as one of the origins of Shakespeare. To be sure, it is not mere fun or amusement; it is the Comedy of Providence, who often is in disguise bringing his blessing. Eumaeus in his piety has just that which he thinks he has not; his loyalty has brought to him just that which he most desired; his mistake is in reality no mistake, but a mere appearance which will vanish in the end.

It is true that this sport of comic disguise began in the previous Book with Pallas. But can the mortal hide himself from the deity, specially from the deity of wisdom? Hence the Goddess tears away the mask with a smile, and there follows the recognition. But at present it is the mortal who is the victim of disguise, by virtue of his limitations. Still the mortal, when he cannot see, can believe, and so transcend these same limitations. Thus it is with Eumaeus, his mistake is a comic nullity.

In the hut of the swineherd, there is no domestic life, the woman is absent. This condition is specially ascribed to the present state of things in Ithaca. Eumaeus, though he be a slave, could have a household, "a dwelling and ground and wife," if his old master were at home. Even now he has his own servant, bought with his own wealth. Slavery was not a hard condition in the house of Ulysses; it was domestic in the best sense probably. Indeed the slaves were often of as high birth as their masters, who in turn might be slaves in the next fluctuation of war. Eumaeus himself was of kingly blood, and he retains his regal character in his servitude.

Ulysses has now reached the fortress which is to be the rallying-point of his army of three heroes, and from which he is to issue to the work of the time. But that is hereafter. In the present Book, we have his play with Eumaeus, his disguise, which assumes three main attitudes. First, he is passive, chiefly asking and listening; thus he gets out of Eumaeus what information he wishes; then he plays an active part in his disguise, telling his own history under the mask of fiction; finally he assumes an open disguise, that is, he tells of one of his artifices at Troy, and then states his present object in telling it. The simple Eumaeus, however, does not suspect him in all these transformations. Still we may notice in the swineherd a strong feeling of oneness with the stranger, an unconscious presentiment of who he is.

I. The approach of Ulysses to the lodge of Eumaeus is an experience which one may have in the mountains of Greece to-day. We can find the same general outline of a hut with its surrounding fence and court, in which domestic animals are penned, particularly during the night. Then there is that same welcome from the dogs, which issue forth in a pack with an unearthly howling, growling and barking at the approaching stranger, till somebody appear and pelt them with stones. Often must the wandering Homer have had such a greeting! The hospitable swineherd, Eumaeus, the poet must have met with in his travels; the whole scene and character are drawn directly from real life. A similar reception we have had in a remote pastoral lodge, dogs included. But the modern pedestrian will hardly employ the ruse of Ulysses, that of sitting down on the ground and letting his staff drop out of his hand. He will use his weapon and grasp for a stone everywhere present on the Greek soil, though the fight be unequal. Still the sentence of Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ VIII. 61) deserves always to be cited in this connection: _impetus eorum (canum) et soevitia mitigatur ab homine considente humi_; as if dogs in the height of their rage might be touched with the plea of piety.

The character of the swineherd straightway shows itself by his conduct toward this poor hungry stranger, a vagabond in appearance. To be sure, hospitality was and is a common virtue in Greece; but Eumaeus saw at once in the wretched looking man his master "wandering among people of a strange tongue, needing food." Therefore come, old man, and satisfy yourself with bread and wine. Such is the strong fellow-feeling warming the hearth of that humble lodge. Misfortune has not soured the swineherd, but he has extracted from it his greatest blessing--an universal charity. This is not a momentary emotion, but has risen to a religious principle: "All strangers and the poor are of Zeus;" such is the vital word of his creed. He is a slave and has not much to share; "our giving is small but dear to us;" very dear indeed, a mite only, but it is as good as a world. Well may we call him, with the poet, in the best sense of the title: "the divine swineherd." We should note too that the poet addresses Eumaeus in the second person singular, with a tone of loving familiarity very seldom employed elsewhere in his two poems. Was there some intimate personal relation figured in this character which we still seem to feel afar off there in antiquity?

At any rate the picture of the swineherd has the most modern touch to be found in Homer. It shows the feeling of humanity developed quite to its supreme fullness; it has modern sentiment, nay, it borders at times upon modern sentimentality. It recalls the recent novel, which takes its hero from the lowest class and garnishes him with regal virtues. Strange old Homer, prophetic again! He seems to have anticipated the art-forms of all the ages, and to have laid down the lines on which the literary spirit must move forever. Otherwise, indeed, it could not be; he has in him the germs of future development; the last novel is contained in the first, which is the tale of Eumaeus.

In the character of the swineherd, the central point is his loyalty, adamantine as the rock of his humble home. It is loyalty in a double sense: to his divine and to his human master, to God and to man, Zeus and Ulysses. The same trait it is, in a terrestrial and a celestial manifestation. Both sides of this loyalty are just now under the sorest trial; there is every temptation to fall away from God and man and become wholly disloyal. Many have yielded but he will not; in his solitary abode he keeps piety and patriotism aflame with the breath of his spirit. Hence he furnishes the rock on which the new order can be built; without this loyalty in the humble class, no restoration would be possible, even with the presence of Ulysses.

First we may notice that he is loyal to his human master though he believes that the latter is dead and cannot return. Still he does not pass over to the side of the Suitors, who are doing that master and his house the great wrong. Secondly, the swineherd is loyal to Zeus and the Divine Order of the World. Hear him: "The Gods love not deeds of violence; they honor justice and the rightful works of men." Such is his faith; still this faith is passing through the ordeal of fire: why should the Gods, being good, keep the good Ulysses away from his Return? The simple swineherd cannot fathom the ways of Providence, still he believes in that Providence; he is divinely loyal. His allegiance does not depend upon prosperity, not even upon insight. Zeus may rule the world as he pleases, I shall still have faith: "Though he slay me, I shall believe in him."

Now we may turn for a moment to Ulysses. He is a passive learner from the swineherd, calling forth information by subtle inquiry; much, indeed, has he learned from the humble, pious man. First, he has seen a shadow of his own doubt, and how it may be dispelled. Then he has discovered loyalty in this representative of the people, who must still possess it in their hearts, though suppressed in the present, untoward time. Also he hears again of the Suitors and their guilty deeds, viewed with a loyal eye. Finally he plays the prophet to Eumaeus and foretells the return of Ulysses. This is the height of his disguise, wherein he rises to the humor of Providence, who has brought to the swineherd the realization of his strongest wish without his knowing it. His prayers have come to pass, could he but see. Herein Ulysses suggests the part of Providence in disguise, bringing the fulfillment of his own prophecy.

II. It is now the turn of Ulysses to give some account of himself in answer to the swineherd's pressing questions. He tells a famous story, a fiction of his own life, yet it has in its disguise the truth of his career. The outer setting is changed, but the main facts are the same. Still there is enough difference to prevent it from being a repetition. It is the Odyssey told over again with new incidents, and variations upon an old theme. We behold here the conscious storyteller, clothing the events of life in the garb of a marvelous adventure. Ulysses had in mind his own experience in this account, and he adapts it to the time and place.

The main points of its contact with himself we may note. First, there is the pre-Trojan period, a time of roving and marauding, which is true of that age in general, and may have some touch of Ulysses in

## particular. Second is the Trojan war, the epoch of heroic conflict to

which all had to go, so strong was the public sentiment. Third comes the post-Trojan epoch, with the wanton attack on the AEgyptians, very much like the attack upon the Ciconians in the Ninth Book. From these attacks in both cases the grand calamity results, which causes the long wandering. The Phoenician episode, however, has no counterpart in the career of Ulysses. Fourth is the storm at sea, with the clinging to the mast, and the landing upon the coast of the Thesprotians, all of which is a transcript of the experience of Ulysses in getting to Phaeacia from Calypso's isle. Fifth is the arrival at Ithaca, which shows the actual fact, with changed circumstances. Thus we may say that the true Ulysses in disguise tells the true story of his life in disguise. This gift is what makes him the poet.

Indeed we are compelled to think that Homer here suggests his own poetic procedure. What he narrates is his own experience, in the form of art. His poetry is and must be his own life, though in disguise. Goethe has said something similar: All that I have written is what I have experienced, but not quite as I experienced it. In this story we may hear in an undertone the old Greek poet telling one of his secrets of composition.

Moreover, it is a tale of providential escapes; thrice has the so-called Cretan been saved specially, in AEgypt, from the Phoenicians, from the Thesprotians. Thus the story aims to encourage Eumaeus, and to answer his doubt; it affirms the return of Ulysses, and tells even the manner thereof; it is a story of Providence appealing to the swineherd's faith. On this line, too, it touches the ethical content of the Odyssey, as the latter was sung to the whole Greek world.

Looking at the external circumstances of the story we note that it takes them from the social life of the time. There is universal slavery, with its accompaniment, man-stealing; the pirate and the free-booter are still on the seas and furnish incidents of adventure, yet commerce has also begun; the perils of navigation turn the voyage into a series of miraculous escapes. It is a time of dawn in which many distinctions, now clear, have not yet been made.

We may also see the lines, though they be faint, of the movement of the world's culture in this story. Crete, on the borderland between East and West, is the home of the daring Greek adventurer who attacks Troy on the one hand and AEgypt on the other. From Crete we pass backwards to Phoenicia, as well as to the land of the Nile, and we catch a glimpse of the current of Oriental influence flowing upon Greece. Already we have seen the spiritual gift of Egypt to the Greek mind shadowed forth in the story of Menelaus in the Fourth Book. In these latter Books of the Odyssey the Phoenician intercourse with Hellas is more strongly emphasized, with glances into their art, their trade, their navigation. All this Phoenician development the Greek looks at in a wondering way as if miraculous; he is reaching out for it also. To be sure the Phoenician has a bad name, as a shrewd, even dishonest trader. Still he is the middleman between nations, and a necessity.

Thus it appears that the Greeks have lost their Aryan connection, and have become the heirs of a Semitic civilization. Homer does not seem to know his Indo-European kinship, but he does connect Hellas with Phoenicia and Egypt in many a spiritual tie. These ties take, for the most part, a mythical form, still they must have been a great fact, else they could not have influenced the mythology of the Greek race. So the present tale through the fiction of the myth-maker, hints the chief social fact of the time.

The fiction in the previous Book, which Ulysses began to tell to Pallas, also started in Crete, looked back at the Trojan war, and connected with Idomeneus, the great hero of Cretan legend in the affair of Troy. The Phoenican trader in his ship comes in there too. But that tale is cut short by the Goddess, who knows the disguise. In the present case, however, the swineherd makes no such discovery. The next Book will also have its corresponding tale.

Ulysses has thus told all about himself to the swineherd, has even hinted in one place his disguise. He speaks of Ulysses having gone to Dodona to consult the sacred oracle "whether he should return to Ithaca openly or secretly, after so long an absence." He runs along the very edge of discovering himself. But the swineherd will not believe; "the Gods all hate my master" is still his view. Already a lying AEtolian had deceived him with a similar tale, which also introduced Idomeneus and the Cretans. Ulysses has before himself a new picture of doubt, and its blindness; quite a lesson it must have been to the skeptical man.

The story, in its deepest suggestion, hints the manner of providential working, as seen by the old bard. Eumaeus has already had his prayers for the return of his master fulfilled, though he does not know it, and believes that they never will be fulfilled. Still he never gives up his divine loyalty and turns atheist. By his charity and piety he has helped, indeed has brought about the return of Ulysses unwittingly. The man, if he follow the law, is always helping, though he may not see that he is, may even think that he is not. This ethical order of the world underlies the tale, and is what the ancient listener must have felt so that Homer's poems became a bible to him. Providence in disguise is its title, here represented by the Hero in disguise.

III. The supper and its preparation are quite fully described; it is the second meal of pork in this Book. This we may pass over, to note the stratagem of Ulysses to obtain a cloak from the swineherd. The stranger tells his stratagem once upon a time at Troy for the same purpose; whereat the swineherd takes the hint and says: "Thou shalt not lack for a garment or anything else which is befitting a suppliant." Thus Ulysses obtained his cloak, and slept warm by the hearth.

But the other hint the swineherd did not take, the hint of the disguise. He sees the artifice of his guest to obtain the cloak, but never thinks in his own mind: This is Ulyssess himself, the man of wiles trying to get the cloak again tonight. Yet Ulysses has gone far toward telling him just that. The swineherd cannot suspect, it is foreign to his nature; this is just his beauty of character and its limitation.

But Ulysses has to disguise in order to do his work. He is in his own land, on his own territory, yet he dares not appear as he is. This is not his fault. His whole object is to get rid of this necessity of disguise, so that he may be himself. The time will not permit candor, hence his call is to correct the time. Violence is met by disguise, as it always is; fraud destroys itself; the negation negates itself. Such is the process which we are now beholding.

_BOOK FIFTEENTH._

In contrast with the previous Book, the present Book has not so much disguise; Ulysses falls somewhat into the background, and several undisguised characters came forward. Still there are points in common, the most striking of which is the tale of Eumaeus, the correspondence of which with the tale of Ulysses in the Fourteenth Book impresses itself upon every careful reader.

But the main fact of the present Book is the bringing together of the various threads for the grand final enterprise, which is the punishment of the guilty Suitors. Ulysses and Eumaeus are already on hand; to them now Telemachus is to be added, who comes from Sparta, whither he had gone for the completion of his education. Thus the present Book goes back and connects with the Fourth Book in which we left Telemachus. Still further, the Ithakeiad is linked into and continues the Telemachiad (the first four Books), inasmuch as we now see the purpose of that famous journey of the son to the courts of Nestor and Menelaus. It was the training for a deed, a great deed which required knowledge, skill, and resolution, and which was to show the youth to be the son of his father.

Such is another organic link which binds the whole Odyssey together. The two threads, separately developed hitherto, are now united and interwoven with a third, that of Eumaeus. Telemachus has seen two Trojan heroes and heard their varied history, he has learned about his father whom he is prepared in spirit to support. So the son has his Return also, a small one, yet important, be returns to Ithaca after the experience at Pylos and Sparta and is joined to the great Return of his father.

But just here with these evident marks of unity in the poem, occurs a slip in chronology which has given the most solid comfort to those who wish to break up the Odyssey and assign its parts to different authors. In the Fourth Book (l. 594) Telemachus proposes to set out at once for home, he will not be detained even by the charm of Menelaus and Helen. That was the 6th day of the poem, whereas we find him here leaving Sparta on 36th day of the poem, according to the usual reckoning. Two inferences have been drawn from this discrepancy, if it be a discrepancy. The Wolfian School cries out in chorus: two different poets for the two different passages; it would have been impossible for old Homer singing without any written copy thus to forget himself, whatever a modern author might do with the manuscript or printed page before him. The other set of opinions will run just in the opposite direction: the connection between the Fourth and the Fifteenth Books is perfect, as far as thought, narrative, and incident are concerned; the ancient listener and even the modern reader could pay no attention to the intricate points of chronology in the poem, especially when these points lay more than ten Books or 5,000 lines apart from each other. There is no real sign of discrepant authorship, therefore, but rather a new indication of unity.

The general theme of the Book is, accordingly, the Return of Telemachus, and his uniting with his father and the swineherd, who are still further characterized in their relation. The structure of the Book falls easily into three portions: first is the separation of Telemachus from Menelaus and Helen till his departure on the ship; second is the end to which he is moving just now, the hut of Eumaeus, where are Ulysses and the swineherd, the latter of whom tells his tale of discipline and is seen to be a hero too in his sphere; the third

## part is the coming of Telemachus.

I. In the departure of Telemachus from Sparta, we witness the divine and human elements again in co-operation. The former is represented by Pallas who came down to Sparta to "remind the son of Ulysses of his Return(_nostos_)." She appears to him in the night as he lies awake full of care; he is ready to see her plan and so she appears on the spot and tells it, not in the form of a dream. In the first place, he is to hasten home in order to save his substance, which is threatened with new loss through the possible marriage of Penelope with one of the suitors, Eurymachus. The son (through the mouth of Pallas) here shows some bitter feeling toward his mother, whose mind be manifestly does not understand; she is altogether too subtle for her own boy, who has not seen through her disguises. In the second place Pallas warns him against the ambush of the Suitors, which was no doubt his own forecast of the situation. In the third place, the Goddess sends him to the hut of the faithful swineherd, whose character he must have already known. In this speech of Pallas we feel everywhere the subjective element; she is certainly the voice of Telemachus, yet also the voice of the situation; the divine and human side easily come together, with a stronger tinge of the human than is usual in Homer. Still we must not forget that Pallas, Goddess of Intelligence, suggests the processes of mind more directly than any other deity. Thus we again see that Pallas is the organizer of the poem; she brings its threads together through her foresight; she sends Telemachus where he unites with Ulysses and Eumaeus.

The separation from Menelaus and Helen is told in the style of lofty hospitality. Menelaus brings as his present a wine-bowl wrought by divine skill, "the work of Vulcan," which was given him by the king of the Sidonians--another glance back to Phoenicia and its art. Helen gives a garment of her own making, which thou shalt preserve as "a keepsake of Helen" till the day of thy marriage, "when thy bride shall wear it." A most beautiful motive, worthy indeed of Helen and of Helen's art; Telemachus is to transfer to his bride, and to her alone, his "keepsake of Helen," his memory of her, his ideal gotten during this journey. Finally Helen appears as prophetess and foretells the total destruction of the Suitors at the hands of returning Ulysses. Such is the last appearance of Helen to Telemachus, giving strong encouragement, suggesting in her two acts a new outlook for the youth both upon Family and State. No wonder his words to her rise into adoration: "Zeus so ordering, there at home I shall pray unto thee as unto a God."

Telemachus in his return will not pass through Pylos lest he be delayed by the importunate hospitality of good old Nestor. And indeed what can he gain thereby? He has already seen and heard the Pylian sage. So he sends the latter's son home while he himself goes aboard his ship. But just before he sets sail, there comes "a stranger, a seer, a fugitive, having slain a man." Theoclymenus it is, of the prophetic race of Melampus, the history of which is here given. The victim of a fateful deed now beseeches Telemachus for protection and receives it; the prophet hereafter will give his forewarnings to the Suitors. Yet he could not save himself from his own fate in spite of his foresight; so all the seers of the family of Melampus have a strain of fatality in them; they foreknow, but cannot master their destiny.

II. The scene shifts (l. 301) to the hut of the swineherd, which is the present destination of Telemachus. The reader beholds a further unfolding of the character of Eumaeus, in fact this portion of the Book might be called his discipline or preparation to take part in the impending enterprise.

Ulysses still further tests the charity and humanity of the swineherd by offering to go to town in order to beg for his bread among the Suitors, as well as to do their menial tasks. Whereat Eumaeus earnestly seeks to dissuade him, reminding him of the insolence of those men and of their elegant servants in livery, and assuring him that "no one here is annoyed at thy presence, neither I nor the others." Well may Ulysses respond to such a manifestation of charity. "May thou be as dear to Zeus, the Father, as thou art to me!"

The stranger now tests the swineherd's interest in and devotion to Laertes and Eurycleia, who are the parents of Ulysses, the old father and mother of the house. So Eumaeus gives an account of his relation to them, as well as to Ktimene, sister of Ulysses; "with her I was reared, and was honored by her mother only a little less." Eumaeus will soon tell how he came so young to the family of Laertes. Indeed Ulysses is moved by his narrative to ask just this question. It is to be noted that the report of the swineherd about Penelope is not so certain; "from the queen I have had no kindly word or deed, since that evil fell upon her house--the haughty Suitors." Here lies one motive why Ulysses must go to the palace and test Penelope. Thus Eumaeus shows his love for the family of Ulysses, and responds deeply to the test of universal charity.

Very naturally rises the question as to the history of his life. What experience has called forth such a marvelous character? Eumaeus now gives his fateful story. The Phoenician background is again employed, with its commerce in merchandise, with its stealing and selling of free, high-born people into slavery, with its navigation. The pith of the story is, a Phoenician female slave, who had been stolen and bought by the king of the country, plays false to her master, steals his child and what valuables she can carry off, and escapes on a Phoenician trading vessel after an intrigue with one of its crew. The captive woman avenged her wrong, but was struck on "the seventh day by Diana, archer-queen," for her own double guilt. Eumaeus was that child, also stolen and enslaved, but he is her emphatic contrast; he has been able fully to digest his fate. The Phoenician galley came to Ithaca, "and there Laertes purchased me." The swineherd is of royal birth and retains his more than royal character; in being the humblest he can rise to the highest.

Interesting touches of the Phoenician traders are given: "Sharp fellows, having myriads of trinkets in their ship:" surely it is the ancient Semitic retailer of jewelry, going from town to town in his boat. Then note specially "the cunning man who came to my father's house, showing a golden necklace strung with amber beads;" this amber was obtained doubtless through commerce from the Baltic, by the Phoenicians, whose workmanship is also suggested. "The palace servants and my mother took the trinket into their hands, turning it over and over; they kept gazing at it haggling about the price;" the same scene can be witnessed today in our own country towns when the Jewish peddler appears in the household. In the present case, however, it was part of the scheme of stealing the child.

Eumaeus says that his father ruled a city in the island of Syria. But where is this Syria? Some think it is conceived by Homer as lying in the extreme West, "where the Sun turns;" but the Sun turns anywhere. Rather is its position eastward toward Phoenicia; the Taphian pirates who stole the Sidonian woman and sold her into Syria, dwelt not far from Ithaca and preyed upon Phoenician commerce, stealing and selling in the Eastern Mediterranean. Certainly they could find little business of their kind in the West. Some vague idea of the actual land of Syria must have flashed in Homer's mind; no more definite description is possible.

It is plain, however, that the poet makes Eumaeus a foreigner, not a Greek, whose birth-land lies beyond the Hellenic boundary to the East. But he is not a Phoenician, his character is different, and his people seem not to have been sea-faring. His fundamental trait is religiosity; he lives in the eternal presence of the Divine Ruler of the World. His character is that of the Old Testament; some of his utterances are strong reminders of the Psalms. We cannot help reading in him something of David and of Job; misfortune he here has had, but he retains an unshaken faith in the deity; intense wrestling he shows, but it has been with him the process of purification. He is not a Greek at all; he has a Hebrew character, not of the modern mercantile type, which resembles more the Phoenician, but of the old Hebrew strain. In those times of man-stealing, Homer could easily have met him in one of the Greek islands, a slave yet a spiritual prince, have drawn his portrait, and have heard his story substantially as here given.

Indeed we think we can trace in the swineherd's thoughts and sometimes in his expressions a marked monotheistic tendency. Undoubtedly Eumaeus speaks fluently of the Greek Gods, as Diana and Apollo; especially does he mention and honor Zeus, the supreme God; still he is prone to employ the word Gods in the unitary sense of Providence, and he repeatedly uses the singular _God_ without the article, as in the passage: "God grants some things and withholds others at his will, for he is all-powerful" (XIV. 444). And it is characteristic that he does not like Helen, for thus he says in an outburst of anti-Greek spirit: "O would that Helen and her tribe had utterly perished, for whose sake so many fell!" (XIV. 68.) Striking is his contrast herein with the Phaeacians, and with their love of the Trojan conflict.

We have already stated that this entire Ithakeiad resembles the novel, giving pictures of the social life of the time, and elevating the humblest man into heroship. In like manner, this story of Eumaeus might almost be called a novelette, truly an Homeric novelette interwoven into the greater totality of the novel here presented in the Ithakeiad, and finally into the entire Odyssey. It has its correspondence with the Fairy Tale of the previous portions of the poem, yet stands in sharpest contrast. Here is no supernatural world far away, but it is the present, it is human life just now, and the hero lives before us. Here are no superhuman beings, like Calypso, Circe, Polyphemus, Proteus; the environment, the coloring, the art-form are totally changed. Nor is it an heroic tale of Troy, with its order of Gods, descending and interfering in human affairs; no grand exploits of arms, no mighty mustering of glorious warriors. Not high and magnificent Achilles in all the pride of his colossal individuality, but humble Eumaeus, a slave and a swineherd, has become the Homeric hero. Surely a new style, and a new world-view; yet surely Homer's, not the work of any other man.

It has been already made plain that we have passed from the Idyl, and Heroic Epos, and the Fairy Tale of the first portions of the Odyssey into the Social Romance, which takes the picture of society as its setting. Every human being can now be made a slave; man-stealing, woman-stealing, child-stealing, give the motives for the strangest turns of destiny. Already Ulysses in his fictitious tale of the previous Book has become a maker of the novelette; but Eumaeus tells a true tale of his own life, it has no disguise; he knows his past, he is aware of his origin. Thus he is an example, showing how the man is still a fate-compeller in such a state of society. Though a slave externally, he can still be a king within; though struck by the hardest blow of destiny he can still remain loyal to the Divine Order and obtain its blessing.

It is interesting to note the significance of this Phoenician background, with its universal commerce. The Phoenician traded already in remote antiquity with the extremes of the Aryan race, from India in the East to Britain in the West, including the whole intervening line of Aryan migration, Persia, Greece, Italy, Gaul. The Aryan race is indeed a separative, self-repellent, distracted race, always on the move out of itself, without returning into itself. The Phoenician, on the contrary, in his farthest voyages, came back home with news and merchandise; the remotest Phoenician settlements kept up their connection with the mother country. Deep is the idea of the Return to the parent city in the Semitic consciousness for all time; the Phoenician returned anciently to Tyre and Sidon; the Arab Mahommedan returns to-day to Mecca, home of the Prophet; the Jew experts to return to Jerusalem, the holy city of his fathers. The entire Odyssey may well be supposed to show a Semitic influence, in distinction from the Iliad, for the Odyssey is the account of many returns and of the one all-embracing Return to home and country. It is, therefore, very suggestive that the Odyssey has this Phoenician background of a world-commerce, which is only possible for a city whose people, going forth, come back to it as a center. Moreover this world-commerce is a kind of unification of the ever-separating Aryan race, a bond created through the exchange of commodities. Thus the Semitic character has always shown itself as the unifier and mediator of Aryan peoples, first through an external tie of trade, which was the work of Phoenicia, and, secondly, through the far deeper spiritual tie of religion, which was the later work of Judea. The Semitic mind has always been necessary to the inherently centrifugal Aryan soul in order to bring it back to itself from its wanderings, inner and outer, and to reconcile itself with itself and with the Divine Order. The Semite has been and still is the priest to all Arya, by the deepest necessity of the spirit.

Another word we may add in this connection. The Semitic race has also separated itself, and shown three main branches--Phoenician, Hebrew, Arab--a sea-people, a land-people, and a sand-people. In all three cases, however, they have a returning and therewith a mediating character. In their wildest wanderings, on water, and in the desert, and in the soul, they have the power of getting back; and that which they do for themselves, they aid others in doing.

So much by way of tracing the universal relations of this poem with its Phoenician background of commerce as well as with its Semitic character of Eumaeus. For, somehow, we cannot help seeing in this latter certain traits of the old Hebrew.

III. The last part of the Book returns to Telemachus and his ship; he has escaped the men in ambush, and has reached the Ithacan shore at a distance from the palace; he sends the vessel to the town while he goes to the hut of the swineherd in accord with the plan of the Goddess.

But he has on his hands the seer Theoclymenus, whom he first thinks of sending to one of the Suitors; but when the seer utters a favorable prophecy, Telemachus sends him to one of his own friends for entertainment. A curious touch of policy; it was well to have the prophet in a friendly house, where he might be ready for service; even prophetic vision can be colored by personal attachments.

_BOOK SIXTEENTH._

This Book connects directly with the preceding Book, and brings about not only the external meeting and recognition of father and son, but their spiritual fusion in a common thought and purpose. The scene is still laid in the swineherd's hut, but the swineherd himself must be eliminated at this point. The question rises, Why does the poet hold it so necessary to keep the matter secret from Eumaeus? The care which Homer takes with this object in view, is noteworthy. Evidently the swineherd was not ready to participate, or would endanger the scheme. Yet of his fidelity there could be no question.

We have already stated our opinion on this subject. Various external reasons may be suggested but the real reason lay in the character of Eumaeus. He was too sincere, open-hearted, transparent for those wily Greeks; he might let out the great secret in pure simplicity of mind; he is their contrast just herein, he is not a Greek. The situation demanded disguise, dissimulation, possibly downright lying; Eumaeus was not the man for that. Such is his greatest honor, yet such is also his limit; if Ulysses and Telemachus were such as he, they would have all died nobly in their cause, but the Suitors would have triumphed, and the institutional world of Ithaca would have gone to the dogs. At least its rescue could not have taken place through them. Such is the moral contradiction which now rises, and will continue to rise more and more distinctly to view throughout the rest of the poem.

There are the two strands in the Book which are the main ones of the poem, that of the father and son, and that of the Suitors. Both are here put together and contrasted with new incidents, which are leading inevitably to the grand culmination. These two strands we shall now briefly follow out in order. There is also a third portion, the return of Eumaeus from the palace to the hut, which portion is short and unimportant.

I. Telemachus arrives at the hut of the swineherd, the dogs give him a friendly greeting in contrast to that which they give to Ulysses--a fact which shows that the youth must have been in times past a good deal with Eumaeus. Also the affectionate meeting of the two suggests the same thing. Herein we note a reason for Pallas sending him hither--the Goddess and the youth coincided. Of course the conversation soon turns toward the stranger present, the disguised Ulysses. Now occurs a subtle movement between father and son who are to be brought together.

(1) First they are in a state of separation, but the disguised Ulysses holds the bond of unification in his power. Eumaeus first tells to Telemachus the fictitious Cretan story concerning the stranger; then Ulysses gives a note of his true self: "Would that I were Ulysses' son or the hero himself!" What then? "I would be an evil to those Suitors." Thus the father secretly stirs the spirit of the son, in fact spiritually identifies himself. The son sends off the swineherd on an errand to Penelope, in order to announce his safe arrival from his journey to the mainland. In this way one obstacle is removed--the swineherd; now the second obstacle, the disguise is to be stripped away.

(2) Herewith occurs a divine intervention, hinting the importance of the present moment. Pallas appears to Ulysses, "but Telemachus beheld her not;" Why? "For not by any means are the Gods manifest to all men." As already stated, Ulysses has the key of the situation, and sees what is now to be done; Telemachus does not see and will not see till his father's disguise be removed. So again the Goddess Pallas appears to the wise man and addresses him because the two are one in thought; no other person not in this oneness of the human and divine can see her. In like manner Pallas appears to Achilles, "seen by him alone," in the First Book of the Iliad; similar too is the case of Telemachus when Pallas comes to him among the Suitors under the form of Mentes in the First Book of this Odyssey (see p. 26).

But just here is added a fact in strangest contrast with the foregoing view; "The dogs (as well as Ulysses) saw the Goddess; they barked not, but ran off whining through the gate in the opposite direction." In the old Teutonic faith (and probably Aryan) the dog can see a ghost, hence his unaccountable whine at times. The lower animals and even the elements recognize the approaching deity by some unusual commotion. But mark the contrast: the dogs ran in terror from the presence of the Goddess; Ulysses, observing her, "went out of the house and stood before her alongside the wall of the court." The rational man, beholding, must commune with the deity present, and not run off like a dog. If he does not see the Goddess, as in the case with Telemachus here, he is simply outside of her influence.

Pallas gives to Ulysses the strong promise of help, reflecting his own internal condition. She transforms him, he appears a new man, nay a God to his son, "some divinity whose home is the broad heaven." Then the recognition follows, with its various doubts and its emotional ups and downs. "In the breasts of both rose the desire of tears; they wept shrilly, and louder their screams than those of the eagle whose young have been stolen from its nest." Lamentation is a trait of the Homeric hero; in the present case it asserts its fullest right. But enough! let us pass from heroic tears to heroic deeds.

(3) Next comes the general plan of action. What have we to encounter? Telemachus gives a catalogue of the Suitors; they reach the surprising number of 108 persons plus 10 attendants, including the bard and the herald. We now begin to appreciate the greatness of the task. The Ithacan people are helpless or hostile, the Suitors have friends and relatives everywhere, yet they must be punished, they cannot be allowed to escape. But the aid for such an enterprise--whence? asks Telemachus, and also the reader. Listen to the answer of Ulysses: "I shall tell thee, and thou bear it well in mind; think whether Pallas with her father Zeus be not sufficient for us, or shall I look about for some other defender?" Such a believer has the skeptic become; he now has faith in the Gods, and in a World Order. It is also a lofty expression of belief in his divine mission; the spirit of Eumaeus, which dwells in that humble hut, has entered the heart of the hero. Such are the two allies: Pallas, wisdom, and Zeus, fountain of the world's justice, which had been deeply violated by the Suitors. Telemachus in response, assents to his father's words, and acknowledges the supremacy of the Gods. He also lays aside his doubt and shows himself in a spiritual harmony with his father, which must be antecedent to the deed.

The next part of the plan is that Ulysses in disguise shall go to the palace and see for himself the wrongs done to his House, and experience some of these wrongs in his own person. Then too he can make preparations on the spot and select the time for striking. Also he wishes to test a little further the wife Penelope. Another period of disguise is necessary in order to get rid of the necessity of disguise and vindicate the right. Zeus is with him, he is the bearer of universal justice, which he is to establish anew; but Pallas must also be with him in the act, for it requires all his skill and cunning and forethought.

Thus the father and son are united in spirit; the last obstacle, which was the disguise, is removed, and they behold each other as they are in truth. The recognition is not merely an external one of face and form, or even of the tie of kinship and affection; it is in both a recognition of the Divine Order of the World, which they are now called upon to maintain in their own persons, and to re-stablish in their country.

II. The scene passes from the hut of the swineherd to the palace, where the Suitors soon hear of the safe return of Telemachus. Antinous also comes back, foiled and evidently angered; he proposes to the Suitors that they should slay Telemachus "in the fields or on the highway" wherever found, or renounce the suit for Penelope in the palace: "Let each one woo her from his own house with gifts."

It is clear that such a violent measure as the assassination of the royal heir in his own territory finds small response even among the Suitors. Antinous says that the people are no longer friendly; he thinks, when they hear of the recent ambush, that they may rise and drive out the aggressors. Still they do not rise, and probably Antinous tried to frighten the Suitors into his drastic method. But he did not succeed, Amphinomus clearly voices their sentiment, and the council dissolves.

Soon it is seen that Antinous has lost his cause. Penelope appears and gives him a thorough tongue-lashing, in which she also tells his antecedents. "Thy father came to us, a fugitive from the people," who were angry at him on account of his piratical misdeeds; "they wanted to kill him, and tear out his heart, and pillage his large wealth" evidently gotten unlawfully. "But Ulysses restrained them," and now this is your gratitude: "you waste his property, woo his wife, slay his son, and worry me to death." Antinous is true to his ancestry, he is still a pirate. Strong words are these, which call forth a hypocritical reply from another Suitor, Eurymachus, which she probably saw through, for she goes into her upper chamber, where "she weeps for her dear spouse Ulysses, till blue-eyed Pallas cast upon her eyelids sweet sleep."

The internal weakness of the Suitors is exposed; it is manifest that they are divided among themselves. In fact, how can they have any unity? Each wishes to win the fair prize, which can belong only to one; hence every other man is his rival, whom he tries to thwart. Hence come jealousy and suspicion. The single bond they have in common is their wrong-doing, which they feel cannot much longer continue, with Telemachus so active.

III. On the other hand, we pass to the hut of the swineherd, where the father and son show a complete unity of spirit and purpose. Eumaeus returns from his errand; he brings no news specially except that the Suitors who formed the ambush have come back to the town. But he is not yet to be admitted into the grand secret; so Pallas stood again near Ulysses, "striking him with her staff she made him an old man in wretched rags." He resumes his disguise "lest the swineherd might recognize him and hasten to announce the fact to Penelope, instead of keeping the secret looked in his bosom." So the kind-hearted, sincere Eumaeus cannot yet be entrusted with the important secret.

_BOOKS XVII-XXIV._

The time has arrived for this exposition of the Odyssey to be brought to a close with some degree of rapidity. It has already expanded itself beyond its original purpose; it, too, like Ulysses, has asserted itself as limit-transcending. We shall try to indicate the general character of these remaining eight Books, to find their place in the total organism of the poem, and then give a brief outline of each Book separately.

It has already often been stated that the Odyssey is a Return, an outer, but specially an inner Return from the Trojan War and from the alienation and disruption produced by the same. This Return, narrated in the twenty-four Books of the poem, divides itself into two equal halves, each containing twelve Books. The first half moves about two centers, Telemachus and Ulysses; the former is to be trained out of his ignorance, the latter is to be disciplined out of his negative attitude toward institutional life, and thus be prepared to rescue institutional life. The first twelve Books are, therefore, the getting rid of the destructive results caused by the Trojan War and all war, in the human soul.

Still Ulysses, with Telemachus, is to do a deed of destruction, he is to destroy the Suitors, who are themselves destructive of institutional order in Ithaca. In a general way they are like the Trojans, they are assailing the domestic and political life of the Greek world; they too must be put down at home by the hero, as Troy was put down abroad by him. But at Troy he became negative through the long training of a ten years' war, the spirit of which he must get rid of before he can slay the Suitors, for he is too much like them to be their rightful destroyer. This, then, is the discipline of the first twelve Books: through the experience of life to get internally free of that destructive Trojan spirit, to overcome the negative within, and then proceed to overcome it without.

Now this overcoming of the negative without (embodied in the Suitors) is just the work of the last twelve Books of the Odyssey, which we have called the Ithakeiad, as the scene is laid wholly in Ithaca. Internally both Ulysses and Telemachus are ready; they have now externally to make their world conform to their Idea. The trend of the poem is henceforth toward the deed which destroys the outer negation, as hitherto the trend was toward the deed which overcame the inner negation. To be sure, the destruction of the Suitors has hovered before the poem from the beginning; but in the second half it is explicit, is the immediate end of the action.

This second half divides itself into two distinct portions. It being the direct movement toward the deed shows in the first portion the preparation of the instruments, which takes place at the hut of the swineherd. Ulysses is alone, he must find out upon whose aid he can rely; his helpers must show not only strength of limb, but strength of conviction. Two persons appear--his son and his swineherd; they believe themselves to be the bearers of a Divine Order as against the Suitors; they are the army of three to whom the cowherd is to be hereafter added on manifesting his loyalty. This part of the poem has been unfolded in the preceding four Books.

The second portion of this second half of the poem, consisting of eight Books, we are next to consider. Ulysses has hitherto only heard of the excesses of the Suitors; he is now to see them directly and to experience their violence in his own person. He is in disguise and gets full possession of the fact before he proceeds to the deed. The insolent, destructive conduct of the Suitors is set forth in all fullness, as well as the subtle attempt of the wife to thwart them; then the blow falls which sweeps them and their deeds out of existence. Restoration follows after this terrible act of vengence; Ulysses, having done his great destructive work, is to show himself constructive, not simply the destroyer, but the healer and restorer.

How can we best see the sweep of these eight Books and their organic connection with the total Odyssey? No mere formal division will answer, nor any external separation into parts. The inner movement of the thought is to be found and shown as the organizing principle. On the whole the joints of the structure are not so manifest as in the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad; still they exist. Already it has been often said that the essential character of the Suitors is that of destroyers; Ulysses is the destroyer of these destroyers; but in destroying destruction he is also the restorer. Now just these three stages of the movement of the inner thought are the three organic divisions of the last eight Books; that is, the thought organizes the poem. Let us look more closely.

I. The first five Books (XVII-XXI) are devoted to revealing the Suitors as destroyers to Ulysses in person, though he be disguised. Three strands are interwoven into the texture, which we may separate for the purpose of an examination.

1. The Suitors are destroying what may in general be called the institutional world in its three leading forms: (1) Property, (2) Family, (3) State. To these may be added their disregard and even open defiance of the Gods, who are the upholders, or rather the personified embodiment of all institutional life. Hence the statement may be made that the Suitors are, as far as their deeds go, the destroyers of the Divine Order of the World; they are spiritually negative.

2. The second strand is that of Ulysses (to whom Telemachus and the swineherd can be added) who is to behold with his own eyes, to experience in his own person, the character and acts of the Suitors; then he is also to plan and prepare for their destruction. As he has overcome his own negative condition inwardly, in the spirit, he must be able to overcome the same condition outwardly, in the world.

3. The third strand is that of Penelope, the wife, who is seeking to thwart the attempt of the Suitors to make her marry one of themselves; thus she is heroically preserving the Family. She, with the loyal part of her household, co-operates with Ulysses, though not aware who he is. Between the second and third strands are many interweavings, both being opposed to the Suitors. Penelope, to delay her marriage, proposes the Bending of the Bow, which gives the weapon and the opportunity to Ulysses. (Book XXI.)

II. The second stage of the grand movement is given in one Book (XXII). This is the single bloody Book of the poem, it makes up all deficiencies in the way of sanguinary grewsomeness. The destroying Suitors are themselves destroyed by Ulysses, who therein is destroyer. Hence the blood-letting character of the Book and of the deed; 116 men skin, 12 women hung, and one man mutilated unto death.

III. But the destroyer Ulysses destroys destruction, and so becomes positive; in the last two Books he is shown as the restorer of the institutional order which the Suitors had assailed and were undermining. He restores the Family (Book XXIII), and the State (Book XXIV). This is, then, the end of the Return, indeed the end of the grand disruption caused by the Trojan War, to which Ulysses set out from Ithaca twenty years before. The absence of the husband and ruler from home and country gave the opportunity for the license of the Suitors. But the Return has harmonized the distracted condition of the land; institutions, Family and State, are freed of their conflict; even the Gods, Zeus and Pallas (authority and wisdom) enforce the new order, bringing peace and concord.

Still, despite the bloody death of the Suitors, there runs through this portion of the Odyssey (the last eight Books) a vein of charity, of humanity, sometimes even of sentiment, which seems to link the poem with our own age. Yet the other side is present also; there is little pity for the unrighteous, and justice is capable of becoming cruel. The Suitors and their set of servants are represented as unfeeling and inhuman; Penelope and the whole loyal household on the other hand show sympathy with poverty and misfortune. Such, indeed, has been their discipline, that of adversity, which softens the heart toward the victims of hard luck.

The disguise of Ulysses is continued, and also the craft of Penelope. The moral questioning which these two characters have always roused does not diminish. The hardest practical problem of life comes to the front in their case. Both are willing to meet unjust violence with dissimulation, till they get the power to act openly. They put down a dishonest world with dishonesty, and then proceed to live honestly. It is another phase of that subtle play of the Negative, with which Ulysses had to grapple repeatedly in Fableland, and of which the Odyssey is full. Every situation seems to have its intricate ethical problem, which the reader has to solve as he solves such questions in actual life. Our opinion upon this element in the poem we have already given, and need not repeat it here.

We must note that Ulysses still keeps up his romancing in order to explain his presence in Ithaca and his beggarly appearance. He introduces a kind of story, which we have called the Novelette in distinction from the Fairy Tale. The scene is usually thrown back eastward to Crete, the Trojan War furnishes the background, the famous Cretan hero Idomeneus is usually in some way connected with the stranger who is speaking. No less than five such Novelettes are found in the last twelve Books--some long, some brief. He tells one to Pallas (XIII. 256), to Eumaeus the longest one (XIV. 199), to Antinous a short interrupted one (XVII. 425), to Penelope (XIX. 172), finally one to his father Laertes (XXIV. 304), in which the scene seems to be changed to the West from the mention of Sicania.

For the reader who may wish to follow out in detail these eight Books, we append a general survey of each, in which the thought and the structure are suggested, yet by no means elaborated. We have in the preceding pages given quite fully what we deem the main points of the Odyssey; there remains only this winding-up of the work in a rapid summary.

_Book Seventeenth._ We now pass from the country and the hut of the swineherd to the town and the palace of the king. This is an important transition, and evidently marks a turning-point in the last twelve Books of the Odyssey. The change of location brings us to the scene of the forthcoming deed, and into the presence of the two conflicting sides. The structure of the Book moves about two centers, Telemachus and Ulysses.

I. Telemachus is first to start for the city, where he arrives, and is received with great joy by the household. The mother asks him whether he has obtained any tidings from his father. But he shuns her question, bids her make fresh vows to the Gods, and goes off to look after his guest, the prophet Theoclymenus. The Suitors throng about him, but do him no harm; a number of his friends are near at hand, and the Suitors are divided among themselves.

After his return to the palace, Telemachus tells his mother the story of his journey. First he went to Pylos and "saw Nestor there," and held intercourse with the wise old man of the Greeks, which was certainly a memorable event in the life of the youth. But Nestor could tell him nothing about the present condition or dwelling-place of Ulysses, so the son was sent onwards to Sparta, to Menelaus, where "I saw Argive Helen, for whose sake the Greeks and Trojans suffered many evils by will of the Gods." Menelaus tells Telemachus the words of Proteus concerning his father Ulysses, gently touching the story of the nymph Calypso, whereat the queen was deeply moved. His news is that his father cannot return.

At this point the prophet comes in with his prophecy. "I declare that Ulysses in his own land again, sitting or creeping about in secret; he is taking note of these evil deeds just now, and plans destruction for the Suitors." The response of Penelope shows her mind. "May thy prophetic word be fulfilled!" It is well to note the art with which this prophet has been brought to the palace of Ulysses to foreshadow the coming event.

Moreover this whole passage connects with the Third and Fourth Books, which recounted the Journey of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta. Of course the school of dissectors have sought to show the entire narrative here to be an interpolation by a later hand. One says that the brief allusion to the trip is tiresome to the reader. As if Homer composed for readers! But what reader ever found these few lines tiresome? The whole account of the son to the mother is one of the links which bind the Odyssey into unity, hence the wrath against it in certain quarters.

II. The second part of the present Book gives the movements of Ulysses, and is more important and more fully elaborated than the preceding part. The hero is in disguise, he is to take his first glimpse of the state of affairs in his palace. He will experience in his own person the wrongs of the Suitors and their adherents; he will apply a test to bring out their character. This test is that of humanity, of charity toward a beggar; how will the Suitors behave toward him?

While he is on the way to the city with Eumaeus, he has his preliminary skirmish. They meet the goatherd Melanthius, who at the sight of the beggar breaks out into abuse. There is an inhuman note in his speech, which we may regard as one result of the present disorder of the country. Doubtless the swineherd and the goatherd were rivals, and showed a professional jealousy; but Melanthius had extracted from his humble calling a disposition quite opposite to that of Eumaeus, and had become disloyal to his master's House.

The approach to the palace is indicated by the song of the bard and the noise of feasting guests. Still the disguised Ulysses is recognized by one living object: his old dog Argo, who dies on the spot out of joy at seeing his master again. Full of sentiment and tenderness is the description; it has a modernity of touch which will be often noticed in this second half of the Odyssey. Much comment has been bestowed upon the incident; but its most striking characteristic is its symbolism. The old dog, neglected now, full of vermin, hardly able to crawl, yet loyal in his heart; why should he not receive the praise of Eumaeus, who tells of his former skill in the chase! The dog Argo images the House of Ulysses at present; to such straits has fidelity come. A famous statement here by Eumaeus cannot be passed over: "The day which makes the man a slave, Zeus takes half his worth away." True generally of men, but not of the slave who utters it, he being the fate-compeller.

Ulysses now applies his test of charity to the Suitors. He goes around to them, asking for alms, like a beggar, that he might observe them all, and "know who was better and who was worse." But in the end not one of them was to be spared. Such was the supreme test, that of charity; how will the Suitors treat the poor beggar? Will they behave toward him as Eumaeus has? Not by any means; the test calls out the worst suitor of the lot, Antinous, who finally hurls a stool at the supposed intruder. The other Suitors give something, not their own; still they share in the guilt. Is this test of charity, selected by the poet here, a true test of such characters? One result of the present violation of law and order is inhumanity, cruelty, disregard of the fellow-man. Especially marked is their contrast with Eumaeus, who, in response to the harshness of Antinous, says: "The famous men of earth (such as the seer, the doctor, the builder, the bard) are invited to the feast; no one would invite a beggar to an entertainment." Still the beggar is here to be invited. A ring of modern sentiment is surely heard in this passage; the subjective element of Christendom seems embodied in that swineherd a thousand years before its time.

The poet does not leave out of this Book the previous tendency of Ulysses to romancing. In the talk with Antinous he begins another tale or rather the old one, with Egypt and Cyprus in the background. It is, in substance, the story of the attack on the Ciconians, which Ulysses cannot help telling when he looks back toward his Trojan period. Here again it is truth in the form of fiction.

Meantime the uproar has called forth Penelope, who desires to see the strange beggar. The wish is conveyed to Ulysses, who artfully requests that the interview be deferred till night-fall; the wife might see through his disguise. The time for this recognition has not yet come. She wishes to hear of her husband, thinks of him in some such pitiable plight as this beggar is in; she shows sympathy. A charitable disposition is indeed a characteristic of the whole household, nurses and all; misfortune has brought its blessing. Herein the contrast with the Suitors is emphatic, they are a stony-hearted set, trained by their deeds to violence and inhumanity.

Eumaeus praises the minstrel talent of Ulysses; the poet endows his hero with the gift of song in this poem; compare the praise given by Alcinous to the singer of Fableland. So Achilles in the Iliad was found by the embassy singing the glory of heroes. Nor must we pass by that deeply-grounded belief in the good-luck which comes from a sneeze. Telemachus sneezes at the right moment, and Penelope interprets the omen, with a smile, however, which hints a touch of humorous incredulity. Finally we may reflect upon that true Homeric view of the world indicated in the words of Telemachus: "All these matters will be cared for by myself and the Immortals." These are the two sides working together throughout the poem.

_Book Eighteenth._ Ulysses, as beggar, has now gotten a foothold in his own house. He has made the transition in disguise from the hut to the palace; he has tried his preliminary test upon the Suitors, the test of charity, and found out their general character. He is not recognized, on account of external disguise in part; yet this disguise has its internal correspondence.

The present Book is one of warnings; on all sides the Suitors are admonished of the day of wrath which is coming. In Homeric fashion they are told to change, to repent, to cease their wrong-doing. We observe three parts: first is the conflict with the beggar Irus, foreshadowing the conflict and outcome with the Suitors; second is the appearance of Penelope, the female Ulysses in craft and in disguise, here hoodwinking the Suitors; third is the male Ulysses, in craft and in disguise, observing, testing, planning fate for the guilty.

I. Ulysses has assumed the part of a beggar, but he finds a real beggar on the ground ready to dispute his right. Irus, this mendicant, has a character on a par with the Suitors, violent, inhuman, insolent; he is, moreover, one with the Suitors in taking other people's property for nothing. There is no doubt that the poet casts an image of the Suitors in the portrait of Irus, who acts toward Ulysses the beggar, as they do toward Ulysses the ruler. It is manifest by word and deed that his humble life has not given him the training to charity.

The result of the competition between the real and the disguised beggar is a fight, which is urged on by the Suitors for the sport of the thing; Antinous is specially active in this business, which is a degraded Olympic contest. Homer too shows his love of the athlete by his warm description of the body and limbs of Ulysses, who "showed his large and shapely thighs, his full broad shoulders, his chest and sinewy arms," when he stripped for the contest.

There can be only one outcome of such a fight under such circumstances, especially in an heroic poem. But is not Ulysses himself inhuman and uncharitable toward his poor beggar rival? Certainly he does not deal with him gently, and the modern reader is apt to think that Ulysses ought now to have his own test of charity applied to himself. Still his defense is at hand: Irus sided with the Suitors, had their character, Telemachus says they favored him; he is harsh and merciless to his seeming fellow-beggar, and so he gets his own, though Ulysses at first warns him, and wishes to be on good terms with him: "I do not speak or do thee any wrong, nor do I envy thee getting alms; this threshold is large enough for both of us; thou art a beggar as well as I. So beware my wrath." Surely a sufficient warning, which, if unheeded, draws down the fateful consequences.

But the chief justification of the poet lies in the fact that this contest with Irus is sent before the main conflict as a prototype and a warning. The Suitors looked on and saw the miserable beggar completely undone; "they threw up their hands and nearly died laughing;" a case of blind fatuity, for they were soon to be in the place of Irus, every one of them. A little later Telemachus suggests the connection: "Would that the Suitors might droop their heads overcome in our house, as now Irus sits at the hall gate with drooping head like a drunken man, and cannot stand erect or walk home, since his dear limbs have been loosened."

Another note of warning is given specially to Amphinomus, who had extended a very friendly salutation to Ulysses after the victory, and who was the most honorable man of the Suitors. Ulysses again resorts to fiction in order to convey his lesson, "Many were the wrongs I did;" hence my present condition. "Let no men ever work injustice," such as these Suitors are guilty of; the avenger "I now declare to be not far away from his friends and his country." Hence the warning: "May some God bring thee home" at once, for bloody will be the decision. But Amphinomus does not obey, though "his mind foreboded evil;" he remained in the fateful company and afterwards fell by the hand of Telemachus.

II. The real person for whose possession this whole contest is waged is now introduced--Penelope. She appears in all her beauty; Pallas interferes divinely in order to heighten the same, making her "more stately in form and fairer than the ivory just carved." She is indeed the embodiment of all that is beautiful and worthy in that Ithacan life; loyalty to husband, love of her child, devotion to family, the strongest institutional feeling she shows, with no small degree of artifice, of course. Just now she reproves her son for having permitted the recent fight: "thou hast allowed a stranger guest to be shamefully treated." Thus she shows her secret unconscious sympathy with her husband in disguise.

Then she turns her attention to the Suitors. She alludes to the parting words of her husband as he set out for Troy: "When thou seest thy son a bearded man, marry whom thou wilt and leave the house." The time has come when she has to endure this hateful marriage; how the thought weighs upon her heart! But we catch a glimpse of her deeper plan in the following: "The custom of Suitors in the olden time was not such as yours; they would bring along their own oxen and sheep and make a feast for the friends of the maiden whom they wooed, and give her splendid gifts; they consumed not other folk's property without recompense." What does all this mean?

One result takes place at once. The Suitors all hasten to bring her their presents, and thus conform to the good old time and to her opinion. Great was the hurry: "Each dispatched his herald to bring a gift." Does the poet hint through a side glance the real state of the case? Hear him: "Ulysses wad delighted when he saw her wheedling the Suitors out of their gifts and cajoling their mind with flattering speech, while her heart planned other things." Cunning indeed she has and boundless artifice; what shall we make of her? As already often said, craft is her sole woman's weapon against man's violence, and she uses it with effect for the defense of her home and her honor. Is she justified? Is such deception allowable under the circumstances? Thus the poem puts the test to the modern reader, and makes him ponder the moral problem of life.

One other point we should note in this speech of Penelope to the Suitors. She says that their method of wooing was not the accustomed way; they had no right to expect such entertainment for such a body of men. They had the right of suit, but it must be conducted in a lawful manner. Thus they are violating custom, or making it a pretext for doing injustice. But she meets violence with cunning, and rude force with craft.

III. Ulysses now takes note of another phase of the wrong done to his household by the Suitors; they debauch the female servants, of whom Melantho is an example. The seeming beggar wishes to stay all night by the fires kindled in the palace, and take care of them, instead of the maids who usually looked after them. This plan of his evidently interferes with an existing arrangement, hence the abusive words of Melantho toward him first, and then the scoffing speech of Eurynomus, her lover, who lets fly at him a footstool which hits the cupbearer. General confusion results, in the midst of which Telemachus commands order which is seconded by Amphinomus. After a cup of wine, all retire to their homes. But Ulysses has got an inkling of what is transpiring between the Suitors and some of the maid-servants. Hereafter we shall see that both share in the punishment.

_Book Nineteenth._ This is a strong Book of its kind. Penelope is the center, her difficulties are shown anew, moreover they are about to reach their culmination. The husband disguised here tests the wife, and finds out by his own personal observation her fidelity. Her womanly instincts are still intact, in spite of the dissolute surroundings. Ulysses discovers that he is not to meet with the fate of Agamemnon on his return home.

From the preceding Book, which was occupied with the external conflicts in the palace, we move in the present Book more and more to the heart of the business, which is the union in the hearts of husband and wife. The oneness of the Family after long separation of its two members is the ethical theme, showing that such union is eternal, as far as the eternal can be shown in Time. Two divisions we shall mark: Ulysses and his son Telemachus first, then Ulysses and his wife Penelope.

I. The two men, father and son, are seen preparing for the conflict which is drawing on--just that being the duty of men. The weapons which were hanging on the walls of the banqueting-room are removed in the absence of the Suitors and of the servants. Also a pretext is framed for their removal. Moreover "Pallas, holding before them her golden lamp, made very beautiful light." Certainly the Goddess was there, the scene shows her in every part; "Such is the wont of the Olympians," says Ulysses; divine illumination descends upon a work of this kind.

II. But by far the longest portion of the Book is devoted to the interview between Ulysses and Penelope. Telemachus goes off to his chamber to rest for the night; Ulysses is now received by his wife at the hearth. The various turns of this lengthy account we shall throw into four divisions.

1. By way of introduction, the faithless handmaid Melantho again shows her character in a harsh speech to Ulysses, "Get out, you beggar! Will you still keep sneaking through the house by night to spy out women?" So she reveals plainly what she is, and even mentions the test which she cannot stand. Ulysses in his reply enforces charity: "I was once rich, but I gave the poor wanderer alms." Beware of the day of reckoning: such is his repeated warning to all these people.

Penelope also gives a sharp reproof to the shameless handmaid, and intimates the fate impending: "Thou hast done a deed which thy head shall atone for." It is again to be noted that the guilty are the inhuman, while the faithful have charity. Penelope specially shows this trait in the present Book, though her threat to Melantho is not gentle. Quite as Ulysses served Irus, Penelope is ready to serve Melantho; both can become uncharitable toward the uncharitable; both can meet evil with evil, and fight the negative with negation.

2. The main purpose of this portion of the interview is to furnish Penelope with hope. She seems on the point of giving up the long contest, she has played her last stratagem against the Suitors. Now she must choose one of them, her parents urge it, her son demands it; there seems no escape, though she hates the marriage like black Death. In such a frame of mind, the disguised Ulysses is to divert her thoughts with a story, to gain her confidence in his honesty, and to give a strong promise of her husband's speedy return. The manner in which he puts these three points in succession is worthy of study.

First, he must give some account of himself, of his lineage and of his connections. Here he employs his old fiction, he feigns a tale, putting the scene into Crete, and allying himself with the famous stock of Minos, as well as with the well-known Cretan hero Idomeneus so often celebrated in the Iliad, whose brother he claimed to be. "There I saw Ulysses and entertained him." This story of his life has an analogy to what he told Eumaeus (Book XIV. 199) and Antinous (Book XVII. 425). All three differ in details, being adjusted to the person and the occasion; still all are cast into the same general mould, with the scene placed in the East on the borderland toward Phenicia and with the Trojan war in the background. It is another Homeric novelette suggesting a life of adventure on sea and land, and showing sparks of that enterprising Greek spirit, of which the Odyssey is the best record. But the poet adds: "So he went on fabricating lies like truth;" which indicates that he told more than is in the text and completed his story.

In the second place, Penelope applies her test, for she is not so credulous as to believe every wandering story-teller: "Describe me the garments he had on." Truly a woman's test. It is needless to say that Ulysses responds with great precision. She, however, had no suspicion, which might arise from such a complete account. It is no wonder that Penelope proposed to entertain this beggar guest, one who has been so hospitable to her husband, of whom she declares in an outburst of despair: "I never shall behold him returning home."

At this point the disguised Ulysses makes his third and principal speech to his wife, imparting to her the hope that Ulysses will return. This completes his story, introducing the Thesprotians again (as in other tales) and the oracle of Dodona. He almost lets the secret out: "He is alive and will soon be here; not far off is he now, I swear it." Not much further could disguise be carried. Still Penelope remains skeptical: "I must think he will not come home." Her hard lot, however, has not hardened her heart, but softened it rather; she reveals her native character in the words here spoken (Bryant's Translation):--

Short is the life of man, and whoso bears A cruel heart, devising cruel things, On him men call down evil from the gods While living, and pursue him when he dies, With scoffs. But whoso is of generous heart, And harbors generous aims, his guests proclaim His praises far and wide to all mankind, And numberless are they who call him good.

3. Having been brought so near to a discovery, we next come to an actual discovery by the nurse Eurycleia. She is commanded by Penelope to bathe the beggar's feet, which she does with no little sympathy and lamentation. The character of the nurse is in a certain sense the echo of that of Penelope, the echo in emotion, and in fidelity, if not in intelligence. She gives way to her feelings, she recalls the image of Ulysses, whom she nursed, and addresses him as present. She beholds in the stranger the resemblance at the start. "I have never yet seen any one so like Ulysses as thou art in body, voice and feet." We now observe that Ulysses really selects Eurycleia, "a certain old woman, discreet, who has endured as much as I have: she may touch my feet" (line 346). He sought for some confidant among the servants, one who might be needed for important duties before and during the fight; Eurycleia is chosen, since Ulysses knew that she would discover the scar on his foot and thus recognize him. All of which takes place, Ulysses exacts secrecy, and she replies, giving a hint of her character as well as the reason why she was chosen: "Thou knowest my firmness, I shall hold like the solid rock or iron."

There is a long narrative pertaining to the manner in which Ulysses received the wound which caused the scar. Much fault has been found with this story for various reasons, but it gives a certain relief as well as epical fullness to the movement of the Book. It is, however, one of those passages which may have been interpolated--or may not, and just there the argument stands. It traces the character of Ulysses back to his grandfather Antolycus, the most cunning of mortals, and also gives the etymology (fanciful probably) of the name of Ulysses. (Odysseus, the Greek form of Ulysses, is here derived from a Greek word meaning _to be angry_.)

4. After the bath Ulysses returns to the hearth where Penelope is still sitting. She tells her dream of the eagle which destroyed her geese, and which then spoke by way of interpretation: "The geese are the Suitors and I, once the eagle, am now thy husband." Such is the deep-lying presentiment of Penelope, indicated by the dream, which crops out in spite of her declared skepticism. Note that she dreams not only the dream but also dreams its interpretation; surely she is conscious of some hope now.

The legend at the end of the Book, which tells of the two Gates of Dreams, one of ivory and one of horn, has roused much curiosity among readers about its purport, and has inspired much imitation from later poets. Through the Gate of Horn (dimly transparent) comes the true dream; through the Gate of Ivory (polished on the outside, but letting no light through) comes the false dream. Such is the more common explanation, but Eustathius derives the whole story from two puns on Greek words for horn and ivory. At any rate there are the two sorts of dreams, one getting the impress of the future event, the other being merely subjective.

But Penelope has another suggestion, which is found widely scattered in folk-lore, the Bending of the Bow. This incident, however, is developed in a later Book. It is one of her schemes to defer the hated marriage, after the new hope given by the stranger. She will not yet give up.

_Book Twentieth._ This book is devoted to describing more fully the situation in the house of Ulysses just before the slaying of the Suitors. The guilty and the guiltless are indicated anew, with fresh incidents; especially the fatuity of the Suitors is set forth in a variety of ways. The scene is in the palace.

The Book may be divided into three portions, which deal with (1) the royal pair, (2) the servants faithful and faithless, (3) the Suitors at their banquet.

I. Ulysses is lying on the porch, restless, unable to sleep; he sees the disloyal women of the household come forth to the embraces of the Suitors. He commands himself: "Endure it, heart; thou hast borne worse than this." Pallas has at last to come and to answer his two troublesome thoughts: "How shall I, being only one, slay the Suitors, being many?" And still, that is not the end. "How shall I escape afterward, if I succeed?" Wherein we may note already a hint of the last Book of the Odyssey. Pallas reproves him, yet gives him assurance. "If fifty bands of men should surround us," still we shall win, "for I am a God, and I guard thee always in thy labors." Whereupon Ulysses at once went to sleep.

The wife Penelope is also having her period of anxiety and of weeping for her husband; she prays to Diana and wishes for death, being awake. But when asleep, her unconscious nature asserts itself: "This very night a man like him lay by me, my heart rejoiced, I thought it no dream." Such is the contrast between her waking and her sleeping state; in the one her skepticism, in the other her instinct manifests itself.

II. We now pass to quite a full survey of the servants of the household. Female slaves have to grind the corn to make bread for the Suitors; one of these slaves is still at her task, though past daybreak, she being the weakest of all. Standing at her hand-mill she utters the ominous word: "O Zeus, ruler, fulfill this wish for me wretched: may the present feast of the Suitors be their last, they who have loosed my limbs with painful toil in grinding their barley meal!" Thus the prayer of the poor overworked slave-woman calls down the vengeance of the Gods, giving the word of friendly omen to the avenger. Certainly a most powerful motive; but again we think, how modern it sounds! Yet ancient too the thought must have been, for here it stands in Homer truly prophetic of many things.

Eurycleia is the controlling power among the handmaids, of whom there was a large number; "twenty went to the spring to fetch water, while others were busy about the house," preparing for the coming banquet. The swineherd Eumaeus came with three fat porkers; his disloyal counterpart, Melanthius, also appeared with goats for the feast; both again show their character to Ulysses. The cowherd Philoetius is now introduced, in a full account; he is one of the faithful, has charity for the beggar, and shows his fidelity in a number of points. The beggar assures him: "Ulysses will return, thou shalt see him slaying those Suitors," whereupon Philoetius volunteers his aid.

Thus the forces are assembling; the two sides, loyal and disloyal, are separating more and more, preparatory to the grand struggle. Ulysses in his disguise has discovered those upon whom he can depend. But the banquet is ready, the Suitors, who have been plotting against the life of Telemachus, enter; they are divided among themselves, and can show no concerted action.

III. This banquet is noticeable, inasmuch as Telemachus asserts the mastery in his own house and defies the Suitors. He honors the beggar as his guest, and gives warning that nobody insult the poor stranger, "lest there be trouble." A number of Suitors show their ill feeling; one of them, named Ktesippus, flings a bullock's foot at Ulysses "for a hospitable present," at which the latter "smiled in sardonic fashion," but said nothing. Telemachus, however, reproves the agressor with great spirit, and asserts himself anew against all deeds of violence. One of the more reasonable Suitors, Agelaus, makes a speech, which commends Telemachus but insists upon his ordering his mother "to marry the man who is best and who will give most presents." In reply Telemachus declares that he does not hinder the choice of his mother, but that he will not force her to marry. "That may God never bring about." (_Theos_ without article.)

Now follows a series of miraculous signs, prodigies, mad doings, which prefigure the coming destruction. Insane laughter of the Suitors, yet with eyes full of tears, and with hearts full of sorrow: what does it all forbode? Here comes the seer Theoclymenus with a terrible interpretation uttered in the true Hebrew prophetic style: "The hall I see full of ghosts hastening down to Erebus; the sun in Heaven is extinguished, and a dark cloud overspreads the land." The Suitors bemock the prophet, who leaves the company with another fateful vision: "I perceive evil coming upon you, from which not one of you Suitors shall escape." More taunts are flung at Telemachus who now says nothing; he, his father, and his mother, witness the mad banquet, which is a veritable feast of Belshazzar, and which has also its prophet. The Hebrew analogy is striking.

_Book Twenty-first._ The test presented in many a tale is here introduced at the turning-point of destiny. The Bending of the Bow and skill in the use thereof are incidents in the folk-lore of every people. The theme is naturally derived from a social condition, in which the bow and arrow are the chief weapons of defense and offense, employed against human foes and wild animals. Hence the strong man, the Hero, is the one able to bend the strong bow and to use it with dexterity. Such a man uses the chief implement of his time and people with the greatest success, hence he is the greatest man. So we have the test of bending the bow, which simply selects the best man for the time and circumstances.

In recent interpretations of mythology, this employment of the bow and arrows has been connected with the sun and its rays. Ulysses is declared to be really a sun-god, a form of Apollo, deity of archery; he shoots his arrows which are sunbeams and destroys the Suitors, who are the clouds obstructing his light, and wooing his spouse, the day or the sky. It is also noteworthy that on this very day of the slaughter of the Suitors, there is a festival in Ithaca to Apollo, god of light and archery. This is usually regarded as the New Moon (_Neomenios_) festival. Antinous refers to it (l. 259) and proposes to defer the contest on that account. But Ulysses is made to shoot on the festal day of the sungod.

There is no doubt that mythology is closely connected with Nature, out of which it develops. In the Vedic hymns we see this connection in the most explicit manner, and threads of the old Aryan Mythus can often be picked out in Homer. Still we must recollect that it was the archer man who first projected the archer god out of himself, and it is no explanation of Ulysses to say that he represents the sun-god; rather the sun-god represents him. Moreover, the ethical purpose of Ulysses in slaying the Suitors is the soul of the poem, which is to find its adequate interpretation in that purpose and in that alone. The incident of Bending the Bow is wrought into a grand scheme of indicating the ethical order of the world.

The three divisions of the Book we shall briefly note, observing how the bow rejects the unfit, and selects the right man.

I. It is Pallas (not Apollo, the archer) who started in the mind of Penelope this scheme of testing the Suitors. Why a Goddess here? It is first a chance thought of the woman, but then it becomes an important link in the movement of divine nemesis; hence the poet, according to this custom, traces the inspiration of the idea to a deity. The history of the famous bow is given with an especial delight in details. Penelope herself goes to the room where the armor of the house was kept, gets the bow, and announces the contest to the Suitors.

The man who can bend the bow and send the arrow through the twelve rings, is to bear her away as his bride. The trial is made, no Suitor is able to bend the weapon. Interesting is the prophet among the Suitors, Leiodes, who tries his hand, yet gives the warning: "This bow upon this spot will take from many a prince the breath of life." He foresees and forewarns, but still acts the transgressor; he prophesies death to the Suitors, but remains himself a Suitor, and so perishes in accord with his own prophecy.

II. Ulysses, going to one side with the cowherd and swineherd (Philoetius and Eumaeus), whose loyalty has been so conspicuous, now discloses himself to them, and assigns their duties in the approaching conflict. "I know that you alone of the servants (men) have desired my return." He will give them wife and property if he conquers the Suitors, "and to me ye shall be as companions and brothers of Telemachus." Deserving to be adopted into the royal house of Ulysses they both are, being of this little army of four against more than a hundred enemies. Eumaeus is to put the bow into the hands of Ulysses, after the Suitors have tried the test; Philoetius is to fasten the gates that none escape.

III. After the Suitors have failed to bend the bow and a delay is proposed, Ulysses, the beggar, comes forward and asks to make the trial. Violent opposition rises on part of the Suitors, but Penelope in two speeches insists that he shall try. Here again we must ascribe to her unconscious nature some strong affinity with the ragged man before her. She praises the form of the stranger and notes his noble birth, though she denies the possibility of herself becoming his bride. Still she shows a deep attraction for him, which she cannot suppress.

Telemachus now takes the matter in hand, orders his mother out of the way somewhat abruptly (since the fight is soon to start), and bids the bow to be carried to Ulysses in face of the outcries of the Suitors. Eurycleia, the nurse, is commanded to fasten the doors of the house; now we see why Ulysses let her recognize him by the scar. Meanwhile Philoetius fastens the gates of the court. Apparently there is no escape for the Suitors; Ulysses has the bow; he has tested its quality and possesses a quiver full of arrows.

Such is the famous deed of Bending the Bow, which is a symbolic act pointing out and selecting the Hero. Ulysses is revealed by it to the Suitors even before he calls out his name and throws off his disguise; he performs the test, he shoots through the rings without missing, he has strength and skill for the emergency. If hitherto stress has been laid upon his mind and cunning, now his athletic side is brought to the front. But it required all his intelligence to reach the point at which his will is to act.

We have now gone through what may be called the first stage of this final part of the Odyssey. The Suitors have fully shown their destructive spirit, disregarding property, family, state, the Gods. Ulysses has seen and felt in person their wrongs; their negative career has reached its last deed, he has the bow in his hands and is ready for the work of retribution. Such is the general sweep of the last five Books; but now the destructive deeds of the Suitors are to meet with a still mightier destruction.

_Book Twenty-second._ The final act of justice, the Day of Judgment, perchance the Crack of Doom; such conceptions have long been familiar to man and still are; in the present Book they find one of their most striking embodiments. That for which so long preparation has been made, is now realized: the vindication of the Ethical Order of the World. There is, however, little feeling for that charity and humanity before noticed; stern, inflexible, merciless justice is the mood and meaning of this piece of writing.

The Book has essentially two parts: the punishment of the guilty men (Suitors and Servants) with the sparing of the innocent, and the punishment of the guilty women (servants) with the sparing of the innocent. Thus in both parts there is the penalty, yet also the discrimination, according to the deed.

I. The first part is mainly a battle, an Homeric battle, and reminds the reader of many a combat in the Iliad. Of the conflict with the Suitors here described we can discern three stages, which are marked also by the use of different weapons, the bow, the spear, and the sword.

(1) The first stage of the battle opens with the slaying of Antinous, the ringleader of the band, who is pierced by an arrow from the bow of Ulysses. The crowd threatens Ulysses, who now utters to them what may be called their last judgment, announcing who he is, and his purpose to punish their crimes: "Dogs! you thought I would not come back from Troy, and therefore you devoured my substance, debauched my maid-servants; and wooed my wife while I was still alive. You feared not the Gods, nor the vengeance of man afterwards; now destruction hangs over you all." This may be taken as a statement of the ethical content of the poem from the mouth of Ulysses himself at the critical moment. The Suitors feared not the Gods, were violators of the Divine Order, for which violation man was to punish them. Again the two sides, the divine and human, are put together. In vain Eurymachus, a spokesman for the Suitors, offers amends, guilt cannot now buy itself free when caught. Ulysses answers: "If thou shouldst offer all that thou hast and all that thy father has, and other gifts, I would not desist." So Eurymachus, perishes by the second arrow and still another Suitor, Amphinomus is pierced by the spear of Telemachus. Thus three leaders are slain in this preliminary stage.

(2) The second stage of the conflict begins by Telemachus bringing a shield, two spears, and a helmet for his father, whose arrows are not enough for the enemies. Also he brings armor for the cowherd and swineherd, as well as for himself; thus the four men get themselves fully equipped.

But in order to make a fair fight, it is necessary that the Suitors be armed, in part at least. Melanthius, the goatherd, finds his way to the chamber where the arms are deposited. Arms for twelve he brings, and then goes for more, when he is caught. But now Pallas has to appear in the form of Mentor, in order to put courage into the heart of Ulysses. The first armed set of Suitors advance and throw their javelins without effect, while the four on the side of Ulysses kill four men. Four more Suitors are slain in a fresh onset, then two more; now their store of weapons is exhausted. Thirteen mentioned here by name have fallen beside those unnamed ones whom the arrows of Ulysses slew. The most prominent Suitors are weltering in their blood, there are no more weapons, the result is a panic.

(3) This is the third stage of the battle. A large majority of the Suitors, probably 80 or more out of the 108 plus 10 attendants are still alive, though without weapons and completely paralyzed with terror. "Pallas held from the roof her man-destroying aegis, their hearts trembled with fear, they fled through the palace like a drove of cattle." The four men now use their swords upon the terrified, defenseless crowd, and cut them down. Leiodes, the soothsayer of the Suitors, begs for mercy and recounts his attempts to restrain their violent deeds; vain is his prayer, he perishes with his company of brigands, "for if thou wert their soothsayer, thou must often in my palace have prayed the Gods against my return" and for the Suitors. Thus the priestly man too is involved in the net, he knew the wrong, yet remained the chaplain of that godless company.

Two, however, are saved, the guiltless. The bard, who "sings for Gods and men" is spared, because he sang "by necessity for the Suitors, and not for sake of gain;" also Telemachus intercedes for the herald Medon, who "took care of me as a child," a beautiful gleam on this ghastly scene. From Ulysses, however, we hear the moral of the event proclaimed, which the reader may take unto himself: "From this thou mayst know and tell to another how much better well-doing is than evil-doing." So speaks the slayer over these corpses, which utterance we may at least regard as an attempt of the poet once more to enforce the ethical purpose of his work. Not a single living Suitor or attendant can be found skulking anywhere, and none have escaped.

II. Having completed his task in regard to the guilty men, Ulysses now turns his attention toward the guilty women of his household. For this purpose Eurycleia is called, and is brought to him; when she sees the deadly work, she shouts for joy. Ulysses restrains her: "It is an unholy thing to exult over the slain." Here again the ethical nature of this act is emphasized: "The decree of the Gods and their own evil deeds overwhelmed these men; they paid respect to no human being, high or low, who approached them." Yet there are modern writers who can see no ethical purpose in the Odyssey.

Eurycleia gives her report: out of fifty serving maids in the palace, "twelve have mounted the car of shamelessness." These latter are now called, are compelled to carry out the dead (among whom are their lovers), and to make clean the place of slaughter. Then they are led out and hung: such was the ancient fate of the prostitute in the household.

A still harsher and more ignoble punishment awaits the goatherd Melanthius, a cruel mutilation is inflicted upon him, horrible to the last degree, but it grades his punishment according to his offense. A fumigation with sulphur we find here, as old as Homer. Then all the rest of the handmaids are summoned along with Penelope, to witness the deed and to see the hero.

Such is this terrible Book in which destruction is fully meted out to destroyers. According to our count 129 people are here dead, all of them guilty. A doomsday spectacle for that household, and for all readers and hearers since; it shows the return of the deed negatively upon the negative doer. But Ulysses, the hero sitting amid these corpses, is simply the Destroyer, the very picture and embodiment thereof. Is there to be no positive result of such bloody work? Yes; that is the next thing to be shown forth in the two following Books; Ulysses is also the restorer, wherewith his career and this poem will terminate.

_Book Twenty-third._ The essential fact of this Book is the reunion of husband and wife after twenty years separation. The eternal nature of the bond of the Family is thus asserted as strongly as is possible in the world of Time. This is the deep institutional foundation upon which the Odyssey reposes. Still the wife also has to be conquered, that is, she has to be convinced that the beggar is her husband. All along we have seen the struggle between her instinct and her intellect; her understanding persists in thinking that Ulysses will not come back, yet she dreams of his restoration, and she feels a strange sympathy with the old man in rags. Thus the two opposing elements of female nature have been in a conflict with each other; her instinct tries to surge over her intellect, but does not succeed; she demands the complete test of identity and gets it in the present Book. The old nurse, her son, and finally Ulysses himself become impatient with her delay and her circumspection, still she holds out against them all, though she has, too, her own inner emotions to combat. The gradual unfolding of this scene to the point of recognition must be pronounced a masterpiece of character evolution.

The book may be divided into two portions--before and after the Recognition, which culminates when Penelope accepts the test of the secret bed which was once made by Ulysses.

I. The movement up to the Recognition shows Penelope undergoing a double pressure, from without and from within. Yet it shows too a corresponding double resistance on her part. First Eurycleia goes to her chamber, and tells her in great glee that the Suitors are slain and her husband has returned. She can accept the slaughter of the Suitors, that could have been done by some God, angry at their injustice; but she will not believe that Ulysses is really in the palace. The nurse cries out: "Truly thou hast ever had a disbelieving mind," and then tells of the scar. Still incredulous; but she goes down to the court, and there sees Ulysses in his rags. No sufficient proof yet, though she has a strange inner struggle not to run up to him that she might clasp his hands and kiss him. But her understanding conquers, she keeps at a distance, scrutinizing, till Telemachus, impulsive youth, breaks out into a reproach: "Mother, thy heart is harder than a rock." But Ulysses himself speaks to his son: "Suffer that thy mother test me;" she is like himself, he understands her better than the son does. Finally Ulysses takes the bath and puts on fresh garments, while Pallas gives him fresh grace and majesty, and increased stature; he comes before Penelope again; still no yielding. Ulysses himself is now forced to exclaim: "Above all women the Gods have given thee a heart impenetrable." Thus the nurse, the son, the husband in turn have failed to shake her firmness, she must have an absolute test, which is "known to him and me, and to us alone."

This is that strange bed, which Ulysses is unconsciously provoked by his wife to describe. Penelope commands the nurse: "Bring the bed out of the chamber which he made." But really it could not be removed, it was constructed of the trunk of an olive tree rooted in the soil and its construction was the secret of himself and wife. Very strong is the symbolism of this bed, and is manifestly intended by the poet. It typified the firm immovable bond of marriage between the two; their unity could not be broken. Mark the words of Ulysses: "Woman, thou hast spoken a painful word," when she commanded the bed to be removed; "who hath displaced my bed?" In it there was built "a great sign" or mystery; "now I do not know if my bed be firm in position, or whether some other man has moved it elsewhere, cutting the trunk of the olive tree up by the roots." Such is his intense feeling about that marriage bed, deeply symbolic, truly "a sign," as here designated.

Now this is just the test which Penelope wanted, a double test indeed, not only of the head, but also of the heart. He reveals to her not merely that he knows about the bed, but how strongly he feels in reference to it, and to what it signifies. For he might be the returned Ulysses, and yet not be hers. But now she has yielded, she explains the reason of her hesitation, defends herself by the example of Helen who was cozened by a stranger. She used her craft to defend the unity and sacredness of the Family, against Suitors and even against husband. After some talk, the servant lights them to their chamber, "they in great joy take their customary place in their ancient bed."

II. With the line just quoted (296 of the original) the Alexandrian grammarians, Aristarchus and Aristophanes, concluded the Odyssey, and declared the rest to be a post-Homeric addition. Still, this part of the poem must have been in existence and accepted as Homer's long before their time. Both Aristotle and Plato cite portions of it without any declared suspicion of its genuineness. What reason the old grammarians had for this huge excision is not definitely known; we can see, however, that they wished to end the poem with complete restoration, outer and inner, of the domestic bond between husband and wife. Certainly a very noble thought in the poem, but by no means a sufficient end; beside the domestic, the political bond also must be restored, and the ethical harmony be made complete both in Family and in State. Ulysses, moreover, has spoken of the duty laid upon him by Tiresias in Hades: he must carry an oar till he comes to a land whose people take it for a winnowing fan; there he is to plant it upright and make an offering to Neptune. So there is a good deal yet to be done, which the poem has already called for.

But just now she tells him her story, quite briefly; then he tells her his story, more at length. This has the nature of a confession, with its Circe and epecially Calypso, which she has to hear and he to make. Through it all runs his yearning to reach home and wife.

But with the sun risen, new duties press upon him. First he will seek some compensation for his property taken by the Suitors; secondly, he will have to meet the vengeance of their relatives and friends. So the army of four, himself, Telemachus, swineherd and cowherd, march forth in arms from the palace gate, through the city to the country.

_Book Twenty-fourth._ This is another Book over which there has been much critical discussion. Its thought, whatever may be said about its execution, is absolutely necessary to bring the Odyssey to an organic conclusion, and make the poem a well-rounded totality. There is the political trouble generally, and specially the blood feud caused by the slaying of the Suitors, which has to be harmonized. Repeatedly hitherto we have had hints of this coming difficulty; Ulysses thought of it, and made his plan concerning it before the slaughter took place. (XX. 41.)

In fact the complete restoration of Ulysses is both to Family and State, the two great institutions which form the substructure of the Odyssey. His country was quite as deeply distracted and perverted as his household; both had to undergo the process of purification. In Book Twenty-third we had the restoration of Ulysses to Family, in Book Twenty-fourth we are to have essentially his restoration to State; then he will truly have returned to prudent Penelope and to sunny Ithaca, and the poem can end. Moreover his restoration _to_ Family and State involves the restoration of Family and State; the rightful husband and the rightful ruler heals the shattered institutions.

But it is undeniable that this Book is the most poorly constructed of any Book in the Odyssey. There is undue repetition of previous matters, yet certainly with important additions; there is unnecessary expansion in the earlier parts of the Book, and too great compression and hurry at the end. In general, the subject-matter of the Book is completely valid and necessary to the poem, but the execution falls below the Homeric level, specially in its constructive feature. Still we see ino reason why it may not be Homer's; he too has his best and worst Books.

Of the present Book there are two parts: the Underworld and the Upperworld.

I. The Suitors have been sent down to the realm where Ulysses in the Eleventh Book found the souls of the Trojan Heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax. These three again are introduced with some others. The death of Achilles is described quite fully, when the souls of the Suitors arrive, and one of them, Amphimedon, recapitulates the story of the Odyssey. It tells of the craft and fidelity of Penelope, and of the return of Ulysses and his destruction of the Suitors. The words of Agamemnon recognize the pair, Ulysses and Penelope, as the supreme Greek man and woman, as those who have mastered the greatest difficulties of their epoch. The Trojan cycle is now complete, the separation caused by the war is bridged over, both Family and State are restored after the long disruption. In striking contrast was the case of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, both of whom perished without restoration. Thus by means of the ghosts of the Suitors, the famous careers of Ulysses and Penelope are taken up into the realm of the Supersensible, of ideal forms, whose fame is to last forever.

This part of the Book (the so-called second Nekyia) in which Hades appears the second time, has been sharply questioned both by ancient and modern critics on a number of grounds. These we shall not discuss, only stating that they are by no means conclusive against the genuineness of the whole passage. The general idea of it belongs here; the dead Suitors represent the grand end of the Trojan movement, and its reception into the Hades of famous deeds done and past, and very significantly Agamemnon voices the praise of Ulysses and Penelope, the great winners in the long struggle. Still the repetitions of previous portions of the Odyssey are to our mind unnecessary and prolix, though the literary skill manifested just herein has been highly lauded by Saint Beuve and Lang.

II. Coming back to the Upperworld we find a series of incidents following one another both slowly and hurriedly. These we shall throw in groups for the sake of a rapid survey.

1. Ulysses with his three companions comes to the country seat of his father Laertes. With him, too, he plays the same disguise as heretofore with Penelope, Eumaeus and others, though its necessity is not now so plain. "I shall test my father, to see if he will know me;" how fond Ulysses is of this! So we have more fictions, masquerading, and final recognition by the scar and other proofs. Also an old servant here, Dolius, is recognized.

2. Now the scene passes to the city. The friends of the Suitors have called an assembly; a strong party rises in opposition to Ulysses, though two men, Medon and Halitherses, speak on his side. The result is, a band under Eupeithes, father of Antinous, marches forth to wreak vengeance upon Ulysses.

3. Hereupon a divine interference. Zeus decrees that there must be no blood-feud between the relatives of the slain and the House of Ulysses, but a league of friendship. Revenge must no longer beget revenge.

4. Still a fight occurs in which Laertes and Dolius with his six sons, take part. Old Laertes is now to have his warlike meed, be kills old Eupeithes, so that the male members of the House of Ulysses for three generations--son, grandson, grandfather--have each killed his man.

5. Pallas hereupon stops the conflict, and the last lines of the poem announce the peace which she makes under the form and voice of Mentor. Surely the work of wisdom (Pallas) as well as of supreme law (Zeus)--to stop the self-repeating blood-feud. Thus is the deep rent in the State healed by aid of Zeus and Pallas. It should be observed that Pallas at the end of the _Eumenides_ of the poet AEschylus released Orestes, who is pursued by the Furies, from the guilt of his mother's blood, by casting the decisive ballot in the court of Areiopagus. Here we find another link between Homer and AEschylus.

Very hurried are these later incidents of the Book, but they are necessary to complete the poem. The blood-feud is harmonized, the Gods again make themselves valid in the land by introducing peace and harmony, which had been undermined by the Suitors. Property, Family, State, are restored, and the Divine Order of the World in the person of the Gods is recognized. Only with this conclusion is the negative conduct of the Suitors completely undone, and a positive institutional life becomes possible. It is true that in the hurry of coming to an end, the poet says nothing of the journey enjoined by Tiresias in Hades, the journey to a distant people who would take an oar for a winnowing fan. Still we may suppose that it was performed, and that angry Neptune, the great enemy of Ulysses among the Gods, was also reconciled. But, chiefly, Ulysses has above on this earth realized the idea of a world-justice, which we found running through all Hades, in the statements of Tiresias, in the fates of the great Greek heroes, in the punitory portion presided over by Minos. From this point of view the Odyssey may be truly regarded an image of the working of the Spirit of History, and the poem holds good for all time.

_SUMMARY._

In concluding these lengthy studies of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we shall try to grasp each of the poems as a whole, and then the two together is one great totality sprung of one people and of one consciousness. The central fact out of which both poems arise, to which and from which both poems move, is the Trojan War. This War, whether mythical or historical, is certainly the most famous, and probably the most significant that ever took place on the earth.

As to the Odyssey, the first thing to be seized is the complete career of its Hero Ulysses. This career has naturally two parts: the going to Troy from Ithaca, and the coming back from Troy to Ithaca. Every Greek hero had a similar career, wholly or in part; many, of coarse, never returned. The two parts together constitute a total movement which begins at a certain point and returns to the same; hence it may be called a cycle, and its two parts may be designated in a general way as the Separation and the Return.

The Odyssey has as its theme the second half of the cycle, though, of course, it presupposes the first half, namely the going to Troy and the stay there. The poem, accordingly, does not give the entire life of Ulysses; what may be called the Trojan half must be looked for elsewhere, mainly in the Iliad. Of course there are in the Odyssey many allusions to incidents which belong to the first half of this career.

The Ulysses of the Iliad is one of the great leaders and one of the great heroes, but he is neither the chief leader nor the chief hero. Already he appears in Book First as a member of the Council, and an epithet is applied to him which suggests his wisdom. Thus at the start of the Iliad he is designated as the man of thought, of intelligence, of many resources. But in the Second Book he shines with full glory, he is indeed the pivot of the whole Book. On account of a speech made by Agamemnon, their leader, the Greeks start at once for home, they are ready to give up the great enterprise of the restoration of Helen, they act as if they would abandon their cause. It is Ulysses who calls them back to themselves and restores order; he shows himself to be the only man in the whole army who knows what to do in a critical emergency. He suppresses Thersites, he exhorts the chieftains, he uses force on the common people. He finally makes a speech to the entire body of Greeks in the Assembly, which recalls the great national purpose of the War, and is the true word for the time. Nestor follows him in a similar vein, and the Greek host again takes its place in line of battle and prepares for the onset upon Troy. Here we have a typical action of Ulysses, showing his essential character, and revealing the germ out of which the Odyssey may well have sprouted.

Other matters may also be noticed. Pallas, the Goddess of Wisdom, appears to him in the midst of the tumult, and gives him her suggestion. She will remain with him ever afterwards, manifesting herself to him in like emergencies till the end of the Odyssey. Telemachus is mentioned in this Book of the Iliad. The distinction between Ulysses and the aged Nestor is drawn: the latter has appreciative wisdom, that of experience, while Ulysses has creative wisdom, that of immediate divine insight, coming directly from Pallas. This distinction also will show itself in the Odyssey. Ulysses is the real hero of the Second Book of the Iliad; he appears in other Books with the same general character, but never so prominently again.

In the Post-Iliad, or that portion of the Trojan war which lies between the Iliad and Odyssey, Ulysses will become the chief hero. After the death of Achilles, there will be a contest for the latter's arms between him and Ajax; Ulysses wins. That is, Brain not Brawn is to control henceforth. Under the lead of Intelligence, which is that of Ulysses, Troy falls.

The Odyssey, then, deals with the return of Ulysses from the Trojan War, and lasts ten years, as the account runs. But the poet is not writing a history, not even a biography, in the ordinary sense; he does not follow step by step the hero's wanderings, or state the events in chronological order; we shall see how the poem turns back upon itself and begins only some forty days before its close. Still the Odyssey will give not merely the entire return from Troy, but will suggest the whole cycle of its hero's development.

The first half of the cycle, the going to Troy and the stay there, lasted ten years, though some accounts have made it longer. The Iliad, though its action is compressed to a few days, treats generally of the first half of the cycle and hence it is the grand presupposition of the Odyssey, which takes it for granted everywhere. The Iliad, however, is a unity and has its own center of action, which is the wrath of Achilles and his reconciliation also; it is in itself a complete cycle of individual experience in the Trojan War.

We now begin to get an outline of the Unity of Homer. In the first place the Iliad is a unity from the stand-point of its hero Achilles, who has a completely rounded period of his life portrayed therein, which portrayal, however, gives also a vivid picture of the Trojan War up to date. As an individual experience it is a whole, and this is what makes it a poem and gives to it special unity. But it is only a fragment of the Trojan cycle--a half or less than a half; it leaves important problems unsolved: Troy is not taken, Achilles is still alive, the new order under the new hero Ulysses has not yet set in, and chiefly there is no return to Greece, which is even more difficult than the taking of Troy. Hence the field of the second poem, the Odyssey, which is also an individual experience--has to be so in order to be a poem--embraces the rest of the Trojan cycle after the Iliad.

Thus we may well hold to these unities in Homer: the unity of the Iliad, the unity of the Odyssey, and the unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Both together make one grand cycle of human history and of human consciousness; they portray a complete world in its deed and in its thought, as well as in manners and institutions.

Here is, then, the highest point of view from which to look at these poems: they are really one in two parts, written by one epoch, by one consciousness, and probably by one man. The Iliad as a poem is a complete cycle of individual experience, but as an epoch is only half a cycle. In like manner the Odyssey as a poem is a complete cycle of individual experience, but as an epoch is the second half of the cycle of which the Iliad is essentially the first. Both together constitute the one great movement usually called the Trojan War.

Much time has been spent in discussing the question whether the Trojan War was historical or mythical. We make bold to affirm that it was both--both historical and mythical. It began long before the dawn of history and it exists to this day. For the Trojan War is the conflict between Orient and Occident, starting in the twilight of time, and not yet concluded by any means. The conflict between Orient and Occident runs through all Greek Mythology, is indeed just the deepest, tone-giving element thereof. It also runs through all Greek history from the Persian War to the conquests of Alexander, and lurks still in the present struggle between Greek and Turk. The true Mythus gives in an image or event the events of all time; it is an ideal symbol which is realized in history.

We have above said that the Trojan War was a complete cycle, of which the two poems portray the two halves. Still further can the matter be carried. The Trojan cycle, complete in itself as a phase of Greek consciousness, is but a fragment, a half of a still larger cycle of human development. The Iliad and the Odyssey give the Greek half of the grand world-movement of the Trojan epoch; there is also an Oriental half which these poems presuppose and from which they separate. Thus the grand Homeric cycle, while a unit in itself, is really a separation from the East, a separation which rendered the Occident possible; the woes before Troy were the birth-pangs of the new-born child, Europe, now also grown a little old.

The reader naturally asks, will there be any return to the Orient after the grand Greek separation, first heralded on the plains of Ilium? It may be answered that Europe has often returned to the East in the course of history--Alexander, Rome, the Crusades; at present, western Europe seems bent on getting to the far East. But the true return of the Occident to the Orient will be round the globe, by way of America, and that will be complete. The recent war between Japan and China is really a stage of the great new epoch in the world-historical return to the Orient.

Such is the more external, the historical phase of the Iliad and Odyssey. But they have also a deep internal ethical phase, they show two sides of one grand process of the human soul which has been called self-alienation, the sacrifice of the immediate self in order to gain true self-hood. The Greeks had to immolate their dearest ties, those of home and country, in order to preserve home and country, which had been assailed to the very heart by the rape of Helen. They had to educate themselves to a life of violence, killing men, women, even children, destroying home and country. For Troy also has Family and State, though it be a complete contradiction of Family and State by supporting Paris. But when the Greeks had taken Troy, they were trained destroyers of home and country, they were destruction organized and victorious, yet their whole purpose was to save home and country. Thus their self-alienation has deepened into absolute self-contradiction, the complete scission of the soul.

Now this is the spiritual condition of which they are to get rid, out of which they are to return to home and country. As before said it may be deemed a harder problem than the taking of Troy, which was simply a negative act, the destroying the destroyers of home and country. But the great positive act of the Trojan heroes is the restoration, not merely the outer but the inner restoration, to home and country.

With these considerations before the mind of the reader, he is now ready to grasp the full sweep of the Odyssey and understand its conflict. It springs from the separation caused by a war, here the Trojan War. The man is removed from his institutional life and thrown into a world of violence and destruction. Let us summarize the leading points of the process.

I. The absence of Ulysses leaves his family without a head, his country without a ruler, and his property without an owner. All these relations begin to loosen and go to pieces; destructive forces assail the decaying organism; the Suitors appear, who consume his property, woo his queen, and seek to usurp his kingly authority. Such are the dissolving energies at work in Ithaca. Also his son Telemachus is left without paternal training.

II. Next let us glance at the individual. Ulysses, released from domestic life and civil order, gives himself up to destroying domestic life and civil order, though they be those of the enemy. For ten years he pays no respect to Property, Family and State in Troy; he is trained into their annihilation, and finally does annihilate them. Yet his object is to restore Helen, to vindicate Family and State, and even Property.

III. Troy is destroyed because it was itself destructive; it assailed the Greek domestic and civil institutions in the rape of Helen. So the destroying city itself is destroyed, but this leaves Ulysses a destroyer in deed and in spirit; home and country he is not only separated from but is destructive of--he is a negative man.

The previous three paragraphs contain the leading presuppositions of the Odyssey, and show the first half of the life of Ulysses. They indicate three phases of the working of the negative--in Ithaca, in Troy, and in Ulysses. But now that Troy is destroyed, how will Ulysses return to institutional life, which he has destroyed in Troy, in himself, and, through his absence, in Ithaca?

IV. The Return must in the first place be within himself, he must get rid of the destructive spirit begotten of war. For this purpose he has the grand training told in his adventures; he must put down the monsters of Fableland, Polyphemus, Circe, Charybdis; he must endure the long servitude under Calypso; he must see Phaeacia. When he is internally ready, he can go forth and destroy the Suitors, destroy them without becoming destructive himself, which was his outcome at Troy. For the destruction of Troy left him quite as negative as the Suitors, of which condition he is to rid himself ere he can rid Ithaca of the Suitors. This destruction thus becomes a great positive act, now he restores Family and State, and brings peace and harmony.

One result of separating from the Family is that the son Telemachus has not the training given by the father. But the son shows his blood; he goes forth and gets his own training, the best of the time. This is told in the Telemachiad. Thus he can co-operate with his father.

_The movement overarching the Odyssey._ The reader will note that in the preceding account we have tried to unfold the movement of the Odyssey as the return from the Trojan War. But as already stated, it is itself but a part of a larger movement, a segment of a great cycle, which cycle again suggests a still greater cycle, which last is the movement of the World's History. Recall, then, that the Odyssey by itself is a complete cycle as far as the experience of its hero is concerned; but as belonging to an epoch, it is but half of the total cycle of the Trojan War. Then again this Trojan War is but a fragment of a movement which is the total World's History. Now can this be set forth in a summary which will suggest the movement not of the Odyssey alone, but also the movement underlying and overlying the poem? Let us make the trial, for a world-poem must take its place in the World's History, which fact gives the final judgment of its worth.

I. In the prehistoric time before Homer, there was an Orient, but no Occident; the spiritual day of the latter had not yet dawned. Very early began the movement toward separation, which had one of its greatest epochs in the Trojan War.

1. Greece in those old ages was full of the throes of birth, but was not yet born. It was still essentially Oriental, it had no independent development of its own, though it was moving toward independence. The earliest objects dug out of the long buried cities of Greece show an Oriental connection; the famous sculptured lions over the gate of Mycenae last to this day as a reminder of the early Hellenic connection of European Greece with the Orient, not to speak of Cyprus, Crete, and the lesser islands of the AEgean.

2. Then came the great separation of Greece from the Orient, which is the fundamental fact of the Trojan War, and of which the Homeric poems are the mighty announcement to the future. Troy, an Orientalizing Hellenic city in Asia, seizes and keeps Greek Helen, who is of Europe; it tears her away from home and country, and through its deed destroys Family and State. Greek Europe restores her, must restore her, if its people be true to their institutional principles; hence their great word is restoration, first of their ideal Helen, and secondly of themselves.

So all the Greeks, in order to make the separation from the Orient and restore Helen, have to march forth to war and thus be separated themselves from home and country, till they bring back Helen to home and country. The deed done to Helen strikes every Greek man till he undoes it. The stages of this movement may be set down separately.

(_a_) The leaving home for Troy--Achilles, Agamemnon, Ulysses; all the heroes had their special story of departure. Ulysses had to quit a young wife, Penelope, and an infant son, Telemachus. For if Helen can be abducted, no Greek family is safe.

(_b_) Stay at Troy for 10 years. This is also a long training to destruction. Ulysses is an important man, but not the hero. Here lies the sphere of the Iliad.

(_c_) Destruction of the city and the restoration of Helen to her husband, both of which are not told in the Iliad but are given subordinately in the Odyssey. Thus is the separation from the Orient completed on its negative side, that is, as far as destruction can complete it.

3. The return to Greece of the survivors. The question is, How can they truly get back after so long a period of violence? The Odyssey has this as its theme, and will give an account of all the returns. Here, too, we observe various stages.

(_a_) Leaving Troy for home. This means a complete facing about and a going the other way, not only in geography, but also in conduct. The Greeks must now quit destruction and become constructive.

(_b_) It is no wonder that the journey home was very difficult. Quarrels arose at the start (see Nestor's account Book III., and that of Menelaus Book IV.). Many perished on the way; some were lost in a storm at sea, Agamemnon was slain on the threshold of his own palace.

(_c_) Those who reached home, the successful returners, were of three main kinds, represented by Nestor, by Menelaus, and by Ulysses. These were restored to home and family, and brought peace and harmony. Such is the positive outcome of the Trojan War, and the completion of its cycle.

II. But this rounding-off of the Trojan cycle is, on the other hand, a final separation from the Orient; the scission is now unfolded, explicit, quite conscious. When Ulysses comes back to Ithaca, and re-establishes Family and State, Greek life is independent, distinct, self-determined. The Hellenic world rises and fulfills its destiny in its own way; it creates the Fine Arts, Literature, Science; it is the beginning of the Occident.

Still the thought must come up that the Orient is also a part of the grand movement of the World's History, whose cycle embraces both Occident and Orient. The Odyssey has many glimpses of this higher view. The first 12 books move westward and have their outlook in that direction, the last 12 books have their outlook eastward toward Egypt, Phoenicia, and the Oriental borderland. The earlier fairy tales of Ulysses have their scene in the West, while the later romances or novelettes interwoven in the last 12 Books have their scene in the East, with one exception possibly.

The main fact, however, of the Trojan cycle is the great separation, deepest in history, between Orient and Occident, through the instrumentality of Greece. The civilization of Europe and the West is the offspring of that separation, which is still going on, is a living fact, and is the source of the vexed Eastern question of European politics.

III. We are living to-day in that separation; our art, science, education, poetic forms, our secular life largely come from ancient Greece. Oriental art, customs, domestic life, government, we do not as a rule fraternize with; the Greek diremption is in us still; only in one way, in our religious life, do we keep a connection with an Oriental people. But is this separation never to be overcome? Is there to be no return to the East and completion of the world's cycle?

_The Cycle._ We have often used this word, and some may think that we have abused it; still our object is to restore the Greek conception of these poems, as they were looked at and spoken of by Hellas herself. The idea of the cycle was fundamental in grasping the epics which related to the Trojan War, and this War itself was regarded as a cycle of events and deeds, which the poets sang and put into their poetic cycle. Let us briefly trace this thought of the cycle as developed in old Greece.

I. In two different passages of his _Organon_, Aristotle calls the epic a cycle and the poetry of Homer a cycle. Now both passages are employed by him to illustrate a defective syllogism, hence are purely incidental. But no instance could better show the prevalence of the idea of a cycle as applied to Homer and epic poetry, for the philosopher evidently draws his illustration from something familiar to everybody. It had become a Greek common-place 350 B.C., and probably long before, that an epic poem, such as the Iliad or Odyssey, is cyclical, and that both together make a cycle.

II. But this idea develops, and expands beyond the Iliad and Odyssey, which are found to leave out many events of the Trojan Cycle. Indeed the myth-making spirit of Greece unfolds new incidents, deeds, and characters. The result is that many poets, after Homer had completed his cycle, began filling the old gaps, or really making new ones that these might be filled by a fresh poem. Hence arose the famous Epic Cycle, which has been preserved in a kind of summary supposed to have been written by Proclus, not the philosopher, but a grammarian of the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Meantime, let us carefully distinguish some of our Cycles. The Trojan Cycle is one of events and deeds, in general is the going to and the returning from Troy. The Homeric Cycle is Homer's account, in his two poems, of this Trojan Cycle. Finally the Epic Cycle is the expansion of Homer and includes a number of Epics, which fill out to ultimate completeness the Trojan Cycle. The latter, according to Proclus, is made up of six Epics beside the Iliad and Odyssey, to which they stand in the following relations.

1. The _Cypria_, which deals with events antecedent to the Iliad, such as the apple of Discord, the visit of Paris at Sparta and the taking of Helen, the mustering at Aulis, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and many incidents at Troy. Ulysses, to avoid going to the war, feigns madness (his first disguise) and ploughs the sea-sand; but he is detected by Palamedes who lays his infant Telemachus in the track of the plough. The name _Cypria_ comes from Kypris, Venus, who caused the infatuation which led to the war.

2. Four different epics fill in between the Iliad and the Odyssey. The _AEthiopis_ takes up the thread after the death of Hector, introducing Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, and Memnon, son of the Dawn, both of whom are slain by Achilles who is himself slain and is buried with funeral games. After the death of Achilles, the _Little Iliad_ continues the story, installing Ulysses as hero over Ajax in the contest for the arms of Achilles. This is the grand transition from Brawn to Brain in the conduct of the war. The Wooden Horse is made, and the Palladium is carried out of Troy--both deeds being the product of the brain, if not of the hand, of Ulysses. Next comes the _Sack of Troy_, whose name indicates its character. Laocoon and Sinon appear in it, but the main thing is the grand slaughter (like that of the Suitors) and the dragging of women and children into captivity; the city is burned. Then follows the epic called the _Nostoi_ or the Returns, really an elaboration of the Odyssey, specially of the Third Book, which tells of these antecedent Returns. Then comes the great Return, which is the Odyssey.

3. After the Odyssey follows the _Telegonia_ written by Eugammon of Cyrene in two Books. It continues the life of Ulysses; he now goes to that people who take an oar for winnowing fan, and there he makes the offering to Neptune, enjoined by Tiresias in Hades. Other incidents are narrated; the final winding-up is that Ulysses is unwittingly slain by Telegonus, his and Circe's son, who appears in Ithaca and takes Telemachus and Penelope to Circe, who makes them immortal. The grand Epic Cycle concludes with the strangest set of marriages on record: Telegonus marries Penelope, his step-mother, and Telemachus marries Circe who is also a kind of step-mother.

III. After such a literary bankruptcy, it is no wonder that we find the later Greek and Roman writers using the words _cyclic_ and _cyclic poet_ as terms of disparagement. The great Mythus of Troy had run its course and exhausted itself; the age of imitation, formalism, erudition had come, while that of creation had passed away. Still it has preserved for us the idea of the cycle, which is necessary for the adequate comprehension of Homer, and which the Greeks themselves conceived and employed.

_Structure of the Odyssey._ A brief summary of the structural elements of the poem may now be set forth. It falls into two grand divisions, both of which are planned by Pallas in Book I and XIII respectively. In the main these divisions are the following:--

I. The first takes up about one-half of the Odyssey--twelve Books, which have as their chief object instruction and discipline--the training for the deed. This training has two very distinct portions, as it pertains to a young man and a middle-aged man--Telemachiad and Ulyssiad.

1. The Telemachiad, or the education of Telemachus, who has been left without the influence of his father, when the latter went to Troy. But he has his father's spirit, hence he must know; from Ithaca he goes to Nestor and Menelaus for instruction. Four Books.

2. The Ulyssiad, or the discipline of Ulysses, who must have been a man over 40 years old. He is to be trained out of the negative spirit which he imbibed from the Trojan war. Herein lies his analogy to Faust, who is also a middle-aged man, and negative, but from study and thought.

Both the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad are essentially one great movement in two phases, showing the bud and the flower, the young and the mature man. Father and son reveal an overcoming of limitation; Telemachus overcomes his limit of ignorance, Ulysses overcomes his limit of negation--the one by the instruction of the wise, the other by the experience of life. Both are trained to a belief in an ethical order which rules the world; therein both are made internally ready for the great act of delivering their country. The training of both reaches forward to a supreme practical end--the destruction of the Suitors and the purification of Ithaca. (For the further structure of these two parts--the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad--see preceding commentary under these titles.)

II. The second grand division of the Odyssey is the last twelve Books. The scene is laid in Ithaca, where the great deed, to which the poem hitherto has looked forward, is to be done. The wanderings of the father have ceased, the son returns from his schooling; every movement is now directed toward action. Again Pallas (XIII. 393-415) plans two subdivisions, without the Council of the Gods however.

1. The hut of the swineherd. Here the forces hostile to the Suitors gather in secret and lay their plan. Ulysses, Telemachus, Eumaeus, the gallant army of three, get ready for the execution of the deed. Four Books.

2. The palace of the King. Ulysses in disguise beholds the Suitors in their negative acts; they are as bad as the Trojans, assailing Property, Family, State, the Gods; they are really in their way re-enacting the rape of Helen. Ulysses, as he destroyed Troy, must destroy them, yet not become merely destructive himself. Eight Books, in which we can discern the following movement: (1) Suitors as destroyers--five Books; (2) Ulysses as destroyer--one Book; (3) Ulysses as restorer--two Books. Thus the outcome is positive..

The career of Ulysses is now complete, and with it the Homeric Cycle has rounded itself out to fullness. The Epic Cycle in the _Telegonia_ will expand this conclusion, but will deeply mar its idea.

Note that the structure of the two grand divisions of the Odyssey are symmetrical, each a half of the poem; then each half subdivides into two parts, and each of those parts is symmetrical, being composed of four and eight Books each. To be sure, the joint is not so plain in the second division as in the first, which has the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad. Pallas is the orderer of both divisions, and she orders them in a symmetrical manner.

For both divisions the grand horizon is the Trojan War, yet both reach beyond it, the one toward the West, the other toward the East. The one weaves into its regular narrative the Fairy Tale, the other takes up into its text what we have called the Romantic Novelette. The former looks toward the West and the Future, the latter looks back at the East and the Past. Hence the Fairy Tale is prophetic and has supernatural beings, the Novelette is retrospective, giving the experiences of life without supernatural agencies. In scenery also the contrast is great: the one is largely a sea poem, the other is a land poem.

_Structural analogy between Iliad and Odyssey._ We have before said, and we may repeat here at the end, that the final fruit of Homeric study is to see and to fully realize that the Iliad and Odyssey are one work, showing national consciousness, and unfolding one great epoch of the World's History. Just here we may note the fundamental analogies of structure between the two poems.

I. Both poems have the dual division, separating into two symmetrical portions. The Iliad has two Wraths of Achilles, and also two Reconciliations; thus each division is subdivided:

1. His first attitude or cycle of conduct toward the Greeks.

(_a_) His wrath--both rightful and wrongful.

(_b_) His reconciliation with Agamemnon and his own people.

2. His second attitude, or cycle of conduct toward the Trojans.

(_a_) His wrath--both rightful and wrongful.

(_b_) His reconciliation with Priam and the Trojans.

Such is the general organism of the Iliad which is seen to be perfectly symmetrical within itself. (For a fuller account see author's Commentary on the Iliad, pp. 36-8.) Note that the negative attitude of Achilles is that of wrath; in his anger he will destroy his people and his cause, and finally, in the dragging of Hector's corpse, he disregards the Gods. Yet be overcomes both these negative attitudes in himself and becomes reconciled.

II. The Odyssey has two phases of Negation, both of which the heroes (father and son) must overcome.

1. The negative spirit caused by the Trojan War and its overcoming.

(_a_) The ignorance of the son and its overcoming.

(_b_) The destructive tendency of the father and its overcoming.

2. The negative spirit abroad in Ithaca (Suitors) and its overcoming.

(_a_) The hut of the swineherd (preparation).

(_b_) The palace of the King (execution).

That is, Ulysses and Telemachus have the double problem, which organizes the Odyssey: they must conquer their own internal negation, then proceed to conquer that of the Suitors. Both poems divide alike; both have the same fundamental thought: the individual as hero is to master his own negative spirit and that of the world, and then be reconciled with himself and the world. The Iliad has essentially but one thread of movement, that of Achilles; the Odyssey has two such threads, if not three--father, son, and perchance wife, making the total Family as the unit of movement.

Thus the Iliad and Odyssey are one poem fundamentally, showing unity in thought and structure, and portraying one complete cycle of national consciousness, as well as one great phase of the World's History.

* * * * *

BOOKS BY DENTON J. SNIDER

PUBLISHED BY

SIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY

210 Pine Street, St. Louis, Mo.

I. Commentary on the Literary Bibles, in 9 vols. 1. Shakespeare's Dramas, 3 vols. Tragedies (new edition) $1.50 Comedies (new edition) 1.50 Histories (new edition) 1.50 2. Goethe's Faust. First Part (new edition) 1.50 Second Part (new edition) 1.50 3. Homer's Iliad (new edition) 1.50 Homer's Odyssey 1.50 4. Dante's Inferno 1.50 Dante's Purgatory and Paradise 1.50

II. Psychology, System of, in 16 vols. 1. Organic Psychology. 1. Intellect 1.50 2. Will 1.50 3. Feeling 1.50 2. Psychology of Philosophy. 1. Ancient European Philosophy 1.50 2. Modern European Philosophy 1.50 3. Psychology of Nature. 1. Cosmos and Diacosmos 1.50 2. Biocosmos 1.50 4. Psychology of Art. 1. Architecture 1.50 2. Music and Fine Arts 1.50 5. Psychology of Institutions. 1. Social Institutions 1.50 2. The State 1.50 6. Psychology of History. 1. European History 1.50 2. The Father of History 1.50 3. The American Ten Years' War 1.50 7. Psychology of Biography. 1. Abraham Lincoln 1.50 2. Frederick Froebel 1.25

III. Poems in 5 vols. 1. Homer in Chios 1.00 2. Delphie Days 1.00 3. Agamemnon's Daughter 1.00 4. Prorsus Retrorsus 1.00 5. Johnny Appleseed's Rhymes 1.25

IV. The Lincoln Tetralogy An Epos. 1. Lincoln In the Black Hawk War 1.50 2. Lincoln and Ann Rutledge 1.50 3. Lincoln in the White House 1.50 4. Lincoln at Richmond 1.50

V. Kindergarten. 1. Commentary on Froebel's Mother Play-Songs 1.25 2. The Psychology of Froebel's Play-Gifts 1.25 3. The Life of Frederick Froebel 1.25

VI. Miscellaneous. 1. A Walk in Hellas 1.25 2. The Freeburgers (a novel) 1.25 3. World's Fair Studies 1.25 4. A Tour in Europe 1.50 5. A Writer of Books in His Genesis 1.50

For sale by A. G. McCLURG & CO., Chicago, Ill.