Homer's Odyssey (part 1)

A Commentary

Denton J. Snider

The Sigma Publishing Co. 10 Van Buren St., Chicago, Ill. 210 Pine St., St. Louis, Mo.

BOOK FIRST—INTRODUCTION.

The Odyssey starts by organizing itself; it maps out its own structure in what may be called a General Introduction. Herein lies a significant difference between it and the Iliad, which has simply an Invocation to the Muse, and then leaps into the thick of the action. The Iliad, accordingly, does not formulate its own organization, which fact has been one cause of the frequent assaults upon its unity. Still the architectonic principle is powerful in the Iliad, though more instinctive, and far less explicit than in the Odyssey. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the poet has reached a profounder consciousness of his art in his later poem; he has come to a knowledge of his constructive principle, and he takes the trouble to unfold the same at the beginning. To be sure, certain critics have assailed just this structural fact as not Homeric; without good grounds, in our judgment.

The First Book, accordingly, opens with an Introduction which belongs to the entire poem, and which embraces 95 lines of the original text. This portion we shall look at separately in some detail, as it throws a number of gleams forward over the whole action, and, as before said, suggests the poetic organism. It has three divisions, the Invocation, the Statement of the Obstacles to the return of the Hero, and the Assembly of the Gods, who are represented as organizing the poem from Olympus. The Divine thus hovers over the poem from the first, starting with one grand, all-embracing providential act, which, however, is supplemented by many special interventions of deities, great and small.

The Invocation. The first line speaks of the man, Ulysses, and designates his main attribute by a word, which may be translated versatile or resourceful, though some grammarians construe it otherwise. Thus we are told at the start of the chief intellectual trait of the Hero, who "wandered much," and who, therefore, had many opportunities to exercise his gift. In the second line our attention is called to the real starting point of the poem, the taking of Troy, which is the background of the action of the Odyssey, and the great opening event of the Greek world, as here revealed. For this event was the mighty shake which roused the Hellenic people to a consciousness of their destiny; they show in it all the germs of their coming greatness. Often such a concussion is required to waken a nation to its full energy and send it on its future career.

Note that Ulysses is here stated to be the taker of Troy, and this view is implied throughout the Odyssey. Note Achilles is the final Greek hero; he perished without capturing the city, and in his hands alone the Greek cause would have been lost. The intellectual hero had to come forward ere the hostile town could be taken and Helen restored. Herein the Odyssey does not contradict the Iliad, but is clearly an advance beyond it.

But Troy is destroyed and now the second grand question of the Greeks arises: How shall we get back! Only one half of the cycle is completed by the conquest of the hostile city; the second half is the restoration. For this disjunction from Hellenic life, brought about by war, is not only physical but has become spiritual. The theme, therefore, deals with the wise man, who, through his intelligence, was able to take Troy, but who has now another and greater problem—the return out of the grand estrangement caused by the Trojan expedition. Spiritual restoration is the key-note of this Odyssey, as it is that of all the great Books of Literature.

Here at the start we note two things coupled together which hint the nature of the whole poem: "He saw the cities of many men and knew their mind." Not alone the outer habitations of people Ulysses beheld, but also their inner essence, their consciousness. This last faculty indeed is the very vision of the sage; he looks through the external sensuous appearances of men into their character, into their very soul. The poem will describe many incidents, wanderings, tempests, calamities; but in them the poetic glance is to behold a great spiritual experience. The reader of the Odyssey must himself be a Ulysses, to a degree, and not only "see the cities of many men," but also he must "know their mind." Then he, too, is heroic in his reading of this book.

But not merely knowledge the Hero is to acquire, though this be much; the counterpart to knowledge must also be his, namely, suffering. "Many things he suffered on the sea in his heart;" alas! that too belongs to the great experience. In addition to his title of wise man, he will also be called the much-enduring man. Sorrow is his lot and great tribulation; the mighty sea will rise up in wrath and swallow all, except that which is mightier, namely his heroic heart. Knowledge and suffering—are they not the two poles of the universal character? At any rate the old poet has mated them as counterparts in his hero; the thirst to know drives the latter to reach beyond, and then falls the avenging blow of powers unseen.

Furthermore, there is a third trait which is still higher, also mentioned here: he sought to save not only himself but also his companions. That wisdom of his was employed, and that suffering of his was endured, not for his own good merely, but for the good of others. He must think and suffer for his companions; a suggestion of vicariousness lies therein, a hint of self-offering, which has not yet flowered but is certainly budding far back in old Hellas. He must do for others what he does for himself, if he be truly the universal man, that is, if he be Hero. For is not the universal man all men—both himself and others in essence? So Ulysses tries to save his companions, quite as much he tries to save himself.

But he did not do it, he could not do it; herein lies his limitation and theirs also, in fact, the limitation of the entire Greek world. What did these companions do? "They perished by their own folly;" they would not obey the counsel of their wise man; they rejected their Hero, who could not, therefore, rescue them. A greater wisdom and a deeper suffering than that of Ulysses will be required for their salvation, whereof the time has not yet come. He would bring them home, but "they ate of the oxen of the sun;" they destroyed the attribute of light in some way and perished. The fact is certainly far-reaching in its suggestion; a deep glance it throws into that old heathen world, whose greatest poet in the most unconscious manner hints here the tragic limitation of his people and his epoch. It is a hint of which we, looking back through more than twenty-five centuries can see the full meaning, as that meaning has unfolded itself in the ages. Time is also a commentator on Homer and has written down, in that alphabet of his, called events, the true interpretation of the old poet. Still the letters of Time's alphabet have also to be learned and require not only eyesight but also insight.

The Invocation puts all its stress upon Ulysses and his attempt to save his companions. It says nothing of Telemachus and his youthful experience, nothing of the grand conflict with the suitors. Hence fault has been found with it in various ways. But it singles out the Hero and designates three most important matters concerning him: his knowledge, his suffering, his devotion to his companions. Enough; it has given a start, a light has been put into our hand which beams forward significantly upon the poem, and illumines the mazes of the Hero's character.

Mark again the emphatic word in this Invocation; it is the Return (nostos), the whole Odyssey is the Return, set forth in many gradations, from the shortest and simplest to the longest and profoundest. The idea of the Return dominates the poem from the start; into this idea is poured the total experience of Ulysses and his companions. The two points between which the Return hovers are also given: the capture of Troy and the Greek world. Not a mere book of travels or adventure is this; it contains an inner restoration corresponding to the outer Return, and the interpreter of the work, if he be true to his function, will trace the interior line of its movement, not neglecting the external side which has also a right to be.

The Obstacles. Two of these are mentioned and carried back to their mythical sources. All the returning heroes are home from Troy except the chief one, Ulysses, whom Calypso detains in her grot, "wishing him to be her husband;" she, the unmarried, keeps him, the married, from family and country, though he longs to go back to both. She is the daughter of "the evil-minded Atlas," a hoary gigantesque shape of primitive legend, "who knows the depths of all the sea,"—a dark knowledge of an unseen region, from which come many fatalities, as shipwreck for the Greek sailor or earthquake for the volcanic Greek islands; hence he is imagined as "evil-minded" by the Greek mythical fancy, which also makes him the supporter of "the long columns which hold Heaven and Earth apart"—surely a hard task, enough to cause anybody to be in a state of protest and opposition against the happy Gods who have nothing to do but enjoy themselves on Olympus. Sometimes he refuses to hold the long columns for awhile, then comes the earthquake, in which what is below starts heavenward. Of this Atlas, Calypso is the offspring, and possibly her island, "the navel of the sea," is a product of one of his movements underneath the waters.

Here we touch a peculiar vein in the mythical treatment of the Odyssey. The fairy-tale, with its comprehensive but dark suggestiveness, is interwoven into the very fibre of the poem. This remote Atlas is the father of Calypso, "the hider," who has indeed hidden Ulysses in her island of pleasure which will hereafter be described. But in spite of his "concealment," Ulysses has aspiration, which calls down the help of the Gods for fulfillment. Such is the first obstacle, which, we can see, lies somewhere in the sensuous part of human nature.

The second obstacle is Neptune, whom we at once think of as the physical sea—certainly a great barrier. The wrath of Neptune is also set off with a tale of wonder, which gives the origin of Polyphemus, the Cyclops—a gigantic, monstrous birth of the sea, which produces so many strange and huge shapes of living things. But Neptune is now far away, outside of the Greek world, so to speak, among the Ethiopians. This implies a finite element in the Gods; they are here, there, and elsewhere; still they have the infinite characteristic also; they easily pass from somewhere into everywhere, and Ulysses will not escape Neptune.

Such, then, are the two obstacles, both connected far back with mythical beings of the sea, wherein we may note the marine character of the Odyssey, which is a sea-poem, in contrast with the Iliad, which is a land-poem. The physical environment, in which each of these songs has its primary setting, is in deep accord with their respective themes—the one being more objective, singing of the deed, the other being more subjective, singing of the soul.

And even in the two present obstacles we may note that the one, Neptune, seems more external—that of the physical sea; while the other, Calypso, seems more internal—that of the soul held in the charms of the senses.

The Assembly of the Gods. The two obstacles to the return of Ulysses are now to be considered by the Gods in council assembled. This is, indeed, the matter of first import; no great action, no great poem is possible outside of the divine order. This order now appears, having a voice; the supreme authority of the world is to utter its decree concerning the work. The poet at the start summons before us the governing principle of the universe in the persons of the Olympian deities. On the other hand, note the solitary individual Ulysses, in a lonely island, with his aspiration for home and country, with his plan—will it be realized? The two sides must come together somehow; the plan of the individual must fit into the plan of the Gods; only in the cooperation of the human and divine is the deed, especially the great deed, possible. Accordingly we are now to behold far in advance the sweep of the poem, showing whether the man's purpose and hope be in harmony with the government of the Gods.

Zeus is the supreme divinity, and he first speaks: "How sorely mortals blame the Gods!" It is indeed an alienated discordant time like the primal fall in Eden. But why this blame? "For they say that evils come from us, the Gods; whereas they, through their own follies, have sorrows beyond what is ordained." The first words of the highest God concern the highest problem of the poem and of human life. It is a wrong theology, at least a wrong Homeric theology, to hold that the Gods are the cause of human ills; these are the consequences of man's own actions. Furthermore, the cause is not a blind impersonal power outside of the individual, it is not Fate but man himself. What a lofty utterance! We hear from the supreme tribunal the final decision in regard to individual free-will and divine government.

Not without significance is this statement put into the mouth of Zeus and made his first emphatic declaration. We may read therein how the poet would have us look at his poem and the intervention of the Gods. We may also infer what is the Homeric view concerning the place of divinity in the workings of the world.

Such being the command of Zeus, the interpreter has nothing to do but to obey. No longer shall we say that the Gods in this Odyssey destroy human freedom, but that they are deeply consistent with it; the divine interference when it takes place is not some external agency beyond the man altogether, but is in some way his own nature, veritably the essence of his own will. Such is truly the thing to be seen; the poem is a poem of freedom, and yet a poem of providence; for do we not hear providence at the very start declaring man's free-will, and hence his responsibility? The God, then, is not to destroy but to secure human liberty in action, and to assert it on proper occasions. Thus Zeus himself has laid down the law, the fundamental principle of Homer's religion as well as of his poem.

Have the Gods, then, nothing to do in this world? Certainly they have, and this is the next point upon which we shall hear our supreme authority, Zeus. He has in mind the case of Ægisthus whom the Gods warned not to do the wicked deed; still he did it in spite of the warning, and there followed the penalty. So the Gods admonish the wrong-doer, sending down their bright-flashing messenger Hermes, and declaring through him the great law of justice: the deed will return unto the doer. Zeus has now given expression to the law which governs the world; it is truly his law, above all caprice. Moreover, the God gives a warning to the sinner; a divine mercy he shows even in the heathen world.

The case of Ægisthus, which Zeus has in mind, is indeed a striking example of a supreme justice which smites the most exalted and successful criminal. It made a profound impression upon the Greek world, and took final shape in the sublime tragedy of Æschylus. Throughout the Odyssey the fateful story peeps from the background, and strongly hints what is to become of the suitors of Penelope, who are seeking to do to Ulysses what Ægisthus did to Agamemnon. They will perish, is the decree; thus we behold at the beginning of the poem an image which foreshadows the end. That is the image of Ægisthus, upon whom vengeance came for the wrongful deed.

The Gods, then, do really exist; they are the law and the voice of the law also, to which man may hearken if he will; but he can disobey, if he choose, and bring upon himself the consequences. The law exists as the first fact in the world, and will work itself out with the Gods as executors. Is not this a glorious starting-point for a poem which proposes to reveal the ways of providence unto men? The idea of the Homeric world-order is now before us, which we may sum up as follows: the Gods are in the man, in his reason and conscience, as we moderns say; but they are also outside of man, in the world, of which they are rulers. The two sides, divine and human, must be made one; the grand dualism between heaven and earth must be overcome in the deed of the hero, as well as in the thought of the reader. When the God appears, it is to raise man out of himself into the universal realm where lies his true being. Again, let it be affirmed that the deities are not an external fate, not freedom-destroying power, but freedom-fulfilling, since they burst the narrow limits of the mere individual and elevate him into unity and harmony with the divine order. There he is truly free.

Thus we hear Zeus in his first speech announcing from Olympus the two great laws which govern the world, as well as this poem—that of freedom and that of justice. The latter, indeed, springs from the former; if man be free, he must be held responsible and receive the penalty of the wicked deed. Moreover, it is the fundamental law of criticism for the Odyssey; freedom and justice we are to see in it and unfold them in accord with the divine order; woe be to the critic who disobeys the decree of Zeus, and sees in his poem only an amusing tale, or a sun-myth perchance.

But here is Pallas Athena speaking to the supreme deity, and noting what seems to be an exception. It is the case of Ulysses, who always "gave sacrifices to the immortal Gods," who has done his duty, and wishes to return to family and country. Pallas hints the difficulty; Calypso the charmer, seeks to detain him in her isle from his wedded wife and to make him forget Ithaca; but she cannot. Strong is his aspiration, he is eager to break the trance of the fair nymph, and the Gods must help him, when he is ready to help himself. Else, indeed, they were not Gods. Then there is the second obstacle, Neptune; he, "only one," cannot hold out "against all," for the All now decrees the restoration of the wanderer. Verily it is the voice of the totality, which is here uttered by Zeus, ordering the return of Ulysses; the reason of the world we may also call it, if that will help the little brain take in the great thought.

But we must not forget the other side. This divine power is not simply external; the mighty hand of Zeus is not going to pick up Ulysses from Calypso's island, and set him down in Ithaca. He must return through himself, yet must fit into the providential order. Both sides are touched upon by Zeus; Ulysses "excels mortals in intelligence," and he will now require it all; but he also "gives sacrifices to the Gods exceedingly," that is, he seeks to find out the will of the Gods and adjust himself thereto. Intellect and piety both he has, often in conflict, but in concord at last. With that keen understanding of his he will repeatedly fall into doubt concerning the divine purpose; but out of doubt he rises into a new harmony.

When the decree of the Highest has been given, Pallas at once organizes the return of Ulysses, and therewith the poem. This falls into three large divisions:—

I. Pallas goes to Ithaca to rouse Telemachus, who is just entering manhood, to be a second Ulysses. He is to give the divine warning to the guilty suitors; then he is to go to Pylos and Sparta in order to inquire about his father, who is the great pattern for the son. Thus we have a book of education for the Homeric youth whose learning came through example and through the living word of wisdom from the lips of the old and experienced man. This part embraces the first four Books, which may be called the Telemachiad.

II. Mercury is sent to Calypso to bid the nymph release Ulysses, who at once makes his raft and starts on his voyage homeward. In this second part we shall have the entire story of the Hero from the time he leaves Troy, till he reaches Ithaca in the 13th Book. As Telemachus the youth is to have his period of education (Lehrjahre), so Ulysses the man is to have his experience of the journey of life (Wanderjahre). Both parts belong together, making a complete work on the education of man, as it could be had in that old Greek world. This part is the Odyssey proper, or the Ulyssiad.

III. The third part brings together father and son in Ithaca; then it portrays them uniting to perform the great deed of justice, the punishment of the suitors. This part embraces the last twelve Books, but is not distinctly set forth in the plan of Pallas as here given.

Such is the structure of the poem, which is organized in its main outlines from Olympus. It is Pallas, the deity of wisdom, who has ordered it in this way; her we shall follow, in preference to the critics, and unfold the interpretation on the same organic lines. Every reader will feel that the three great joints of the poetical body are truly foreshadowed by the Goddess, who indeed is the constructive principle of the poem. One likes to see this belief of the old singer that his work was of divine origin, was actually planned upon Olympus by Pallas in accordance with the decree of Zeus. So at least the Muses have told him, and they were present. But the grandest utterance here is that of Zeus, the Greek Providence, proclaiming man's free will.

Very old and still very new is the problem of the Odyssey; with a little care we can see that the Homeric Greek had to solve in his way what every one of us still has to solve, namely, the problem of life. Only yesterday one might have heard the popular preacher of a great city, a kind of successor to Homer, blazoning the following text as his theme: God is not to blame. Thus the great poem has an eternal subject, though its outer garb be much changed by time. The soul of Homer is ethical, and that is what makes him immortal. Not till we realize this fact, can we be said in any true sense, to understand him.

Telemachiad.

The Introduction being concluded, the story of Telemachus begins, and continues till the Fifth Book. Two main points stand forth in the narrative. The first is the grand conflict with the suitors, the men of guilt, the disturbers of the divine order; this conflict runs through to the end of the poem, where they are swept out of the world which they have thrown into discord. The second point of the Telemachiad is the education of Telemachus, which is indeed the chief fact of these Books; the youth is to be trained to meet the conflict which is looming up before him in the distance. Thus we have one of the first educational books of the race, the very first possibly; it still has many valuable hints for the educator of the present age. Its method is that of oral tradition, which has by no means lost its place in a true discipline of the human spirit. Living wisdom has its advantage to-day over the dead lore of the text-books.

Very delightful is the school to which we see Telemachus going in these four Books. Heroes are his instructors, men of the deed as well as of the word, and the source from which all instruction is derived is the greatest event of the age, the Trojan War. The young man is to learn what that event was, what sacrifices it required, what characters it developed among his people. He is to see and converse with Nestor, famous at Troy for eloquence and wisdom. Then he will go to Menelaus, who has had an experience wider than the Trojan experience, for the latter has been in Egypt. Young Telemachus is also to behold Helen, beautiful Helen, the central figure of the great struggle. Finally, he is to learn much about his father, and thus be prepared for the approaching conflict with the suitors in Ithaca.

Book First specially. After the total Odyssey has been organized on Olympus, it begins at once to descend to earth and to realize itself there. For the great poem springs from the Divine Idea, and must show its origin in the course of its own unfolding. Hence the Gods are the starting-point of the Odyssey, and their will goes before the terrestrial deed; moreover, the one decree of theirs overarches the poem from beginning to end, as the heavens bend over man wherever he may take his stand. Still there will be many special interventions and reminders from the Gods during this poetical journey.

In accordance with the Olympian plan, Pallas takes her flight down to Ithaca, after binding on her winged sandals and seizing her mighty spear; thus she humanizes herself to the Greek plastic sense, and assumes finite form, adopting the shape of a stranger, Mentes, King of the Taphians. She finds a world full of wrong; violence and disorder rule in the house of the absent Ulysses; it is indeed high time for the Gods to come down from lofty Olympus and bring peace and right into the course of things. Let the divine image now be stamped upon terrestrial affairs, and bring harmony out of strife. Still, it must not be forgotten that the work has to be done through man's own activity.

The conflict which unfolds before our eyes in a series of clear-drawn classic pictures, lies between the House of Ulysses on the one hand and the Suitors of Penelope on the other. He who is the head of the Family and the ruler of State, Ulysses, has been absent for twenty years; godless men have taken advantage of the youth of his son, and are consuming his substance wantonly; they also are wooing his wife who has only her cunning wherewith to help herself. The son and wife are now to be brought before us in their struggle with their bitter lot. Thus we note the two main divisions in the structure of the present Book: The House of Ulysses and the Suitors.

I.

The Goddess Pallas has already come down to Ithaca and stands among the suitors. She has taken the form of Mentes, the King of a neighboring tribe; she is in disguise as she usually is when she appears on earth. Who will recognize her? Not the suitors; they can see no God in their condition, least of all, the Goddess of Wisdom. "Telemachus was much the first to observe her;" why just he? The fact is he was ready to see her, and not only to see her, but to hear what she had to say. "For he sat among the suitors grieved in heart, seeing his father in his mind's eye," like Hamlet just before the latter saw the ghost. So careful is the poet to prepare both sides—the divine epiphany, and the mortal who is to behold it.

Furthermore, the young man saw his father "scattering the suitors and himself obtaining honor and ruling his own house." This is just what the Goddess is going to tell with a new sanction, and it is just what is going to happen in the course of the poem. Truly Telemachus is prepared internally; he has already everything within him which is to come out of him. Throughout the whole interview the two main facts are the example of the parent and the final revenge, both of which are urged by the Goddess without and by the man within.

Still there is a difference. Telemachus is despondent; we might almost say, he is getting to disbelieve in any divine order of the world. "The Gods plot evil things" against the House of Ulysses, whose fate "they make unknown above that of all men." Then they have sent upon me these suitors who consume my heritage. The poor boy has had a hard time; he has come to question providence in his misery, and discredits the goodness of the Gods.

Here, now, is the special function of Pallas. She instills courage into his heart. She gives strong hope of the return of his father, who "will not long be absent from Ithaca;" she also hints the purpose of the Gods, which is on the point of fulfillment. Be no longer a child; follow the example of thy father; go and learn about him and emulate his deeds. Therewith the Goddess furnishes to the doubting youth a plan of immediate action—altogether the best thing for throwing off his mental paralysis. He is to proceed at once to Pylos and to Sparta "to learn of his father" with the final outlook toward the destruction of the suitors. She is a veritable Goddess to the young striver, speaking the word of hope and wisdom, and then turning him back upon himself.

Here again we must say that the Goddess was in the heart of Telemachus uttering her spirit, yet she was external to him also. Her voice is the voice of the time, of the reality; all things are fluid to the hand of Telemachus, and ready to be moulded to his scheme. Still the Goddess is in him just as well, is his thought, his wisdom, which has now become one with the reason of the world. Both sides are brought together by the Poet in the most emphatic manner; this is the supreme fact in his procedure. The subjective and objective elements are one; the divine order puts its seal on the thought of the man, unites with him, makes his plan its plan. Thus the God and the Individual are in harmony, and the great fulfillment becomes possible. But if the thought of Telemachus were a mere scheme of his own, if it had not received the stamp of divinity, then it could never become the deed, the heroic deed, which stands forth in the world existent in its own right and eternal.

The Goddess flits away, "like a bird," in speed and silence. Telemachus now recognizes that the stranger was a divinity. For has he not the proof in his own heart? He is indeed a new person or the beginning thereof. But hark to this song! It is the bard singing "the sad return of the Greeks"—the very song which the poet himself is now singing in this Odyssey. For it is also a sad return, indeed many sad returns, as we shall see hereafter. Homer has thus put himself into his poem singing his poem. Who cannot feel that this touch is taken from life, is an echo of his own experience in some princely hall?

But here she comes, the grand lady of the story, Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, as it were in response to the music. A glorious appearance at a happy moment; yet she is not happy: "Holding a veil before her face, and shedding tears, she bespoke the bard: Phemius cease from this sad song, it cuts me to the heart." It reminds her of her husband and his sorrowful return, not yet accomplished; she cannot endure the anguish and she begs the bard to sing another strain which may delight his hearers.

This, then, is the sage Penelope whose character will be tested in many ways, and move through many subtle turns to the end of the poem. In this her first appearance we note that she proclaims in the presence of the suitors her undying love for her husband. This trait we may fairly consider to be the deepest of her nature. She thinks of him continually and weeps at his absence. Still she has her problem which requires at times all her female tact, yes, even dissimulation. Reckless suitors are pressing for her hand, she has to employ all her arts to defer the hateful marriage; otherwise she is helpless. She is the counterpart of her husband, a female Ulysses, who has waited twenty years for his return. She also has had a stormy time, with the full experience of life; her adventures in her world rival his in his world. But underneath all her cunning is the rock of eternal fidelity. She went back to her room, and wept for her husband "till Pallas closed her eye-lids in sweet sleep."

Nor can we pass over the answer of Telemachus, which he makes at this point to his mother. It may be called a little Homeric treatise on poetry. "Mother, let the poet sing as his spirit moves him;" he is not to be constrained, but must give the great fact; "poets are not to blame but Zeus," for the sad return of the Greeks; "men applaud the song which is newest," novelty being already sought for in the literature of Homer's time. But the son's harsh reproof of the mother, with which his speech closes, bidding her look after her own affairs, the loom and distaff and servants, is probably an interpolation. Such is the judgment of Aristarchus, the greatest ancient commentator on Homer; such is also the judgment of Professor Nitzsch, the greatest modern commentator on the Odyssey.

II.

The other side of the collision is the party of suitors, who assail the House of Ulysses in property, in the son, in the wife, and finally in Ulysses himself. They are the wrong-doers whose deeds are to be avenged by the returning hero; their punishment will exemplify the faith in an ethical order of the world, upon which the poem reposes as its very foundation. They are insolent, debauched, unjust; they defy the established right. Zeus has them in mind when he speaks of Ægisthus, who is an example of the same sort of characters, and his fate is their fate according to the Olympian lawgiver. They too are going to destruction through their own folly, yet after many an admonition. Just now Telemachus has spoken an impressive warning: "I shall invoke the ever-living Gods, that Zeus may grant deeds requiting yours."

Still their insolence goes on; the ethical world of justice and institutions has to be cleared of such men, if it continue to exist. Who does not love this fealty of the old bard to the highest order of things? The suitors are indeed blind; they have not recognized the presence of the Goddess, yet there is a slight suspicion after she is gone; one of the suitors asks who that stranger was. Telemachus, to lull inquiry, gives the outer assumed form of the divine visitor, "an ancestral guest, Mentes of Taphos;" the poet however, is careful to add: "But he (Telemachus) knew the immortal Goddess in his mind."

The conflict with the suitors is the framework of the entire poem. The education of Telemachus as well as the discipline of Ulysses reach forward to this practical end—the destruction of the wrong-doers, which is the purification of the country, and the re-establishment of the ethical order. All training is to bring forth the heroic act. The next Book will unfold the conflict in greater detail.

Appendix. The reader will have observed that, in the preceding account of Book First, it is regarded as setting forth three unities, that of the total Odyssey, that of the Telemachiad, and that of the Book itself. We see them all gradually unfolding in due order under the hand of the poet, from the largest to the least. Now the reader should be informed that every one of these unities has been violently attacked and proclaimed to be a sheer phantasm. Chiefly in Germany has the assault taken place. What we have above considered as the joints in the organism of the poem, have been cut into, pried apart, and declared to make so many separate poems or passages, which different authors have written. Thus the one great Homer vanishes into many little Homers, and this is claimed to be the only true way of appreciating Homer.

The most celebrated of these dissectors is probably the German Professor, Kirchhoff, some of whose opinions we shall cite in this appendix. His psychological tendency is that of analysis, separation, division; the very idea of unity seems a bugbear to him, a mighty delusion which he must demolish or die. Specially is his wrath directed against Book First, probably because it contains the three unities above mentioned, all of which he assails and rends to shreds in his own opinion.

The entire Introduction (lines 1-88) he tears from its present place and puts it before the Fifth Book, where it serves as the prelude to the Calypso tale. The rest of the Telemachiad is the work of another poet. Indeed the rest of the First Book (after the Introduction) is not by the same man who produced the Second Book. Then the Second Book is certainly older than the First, and ought somehow to be placed before it. The real truth is, however, that the First Book is only a hodge-podge made out of the Second Book by an inferior poet, who took thence fragments of sentences and of ideas and stitched them together. In the Invocation Kirchhoff cuts out the allusion to the oxen of the Sun (lines 6-9) as being inconsistent with his theory.

After disposing of the Introduction in this way, Kirchhoff takes up the remaining portion of the First Book, which he tears to pieces almost line by line. In about forty separate notes on different passages he marks points for skepticism, having in the main one procedure: he hunts both the Iliad and the Odyssey through, and if he finds a line or phrase, and even a word used elsewhere, which he has observed here, he at once is inclined to conclude that the same must have been taken thence and put here by a foreign hand. Every reader of Homer is familiar with his habit of repeating lines and even entire passages, when necessary. All such repetitions Kirchhoff seizes upon as signs of different authorship; the poet must have used the one, some redactor or imitator the other. To be sure we ought to have a criterion by which we can tell which is the original and which is the derived; but such a criterion Kirchhoff fails to furnish, we must accept his judgment as imperial and final. Once or twice, indeed, he seems to feel the faultiness of his procedure, and tries to bolster it, but as a rule he speaks thus: "The following verse is a formula (repetition), and hence not the property of the author." (Die Homerische Odyssee, p. 174.)

Now such repetitions are common in all old poetry, in the ballad, in the folk-song, in the Kalevala as well as in the Homeric poems. Messages sent are repeated naturally when delivered; the same event recurring, as when the boat is rowed, the banquet prepared, or the armor put on, is described in the same language. Such is usually felt to be a mark of epic simplicity, of the naive use of language, which will not vary a phrase merely for the sake of variety. But Kirchhoff and his followers will have it just the other way; the early poet never varies or repeats, only the later poet does that. So he seeks out a large number of passages in the rest of the Odyssey, and in the Iliad also, which have something in common with passages of this First Book, especially in the matter of words, and easily finds it to be a "cento," a mixed mass of borrowed phrases.

But who was the author of such work? Not the original Homer, but some later matcher and patcher, imitator or redactor. It is not easy to tell from Kirchhoff just how many persons may have had a hand in this making of the Odyssey, as it lies before us. In his dissertations we read of a motley multitude: original poet, continuator, interpolator, redactor, reconstructor, imitator, author of the older part, author of the newer part—not merely individuals, but apparently classes of men. Thus he anatomizes old Homer with a vengeance.

BOOK SECOND.

The general relation between the First and Second Books is to be grasped at once. In the First Book the main fact is the Assembly in the Upper World, together with the descent of the divine influence which through Pallas comes to Telemachus in person, gives him courage and stirs him to action. This action is to bring harmony into the discordant land. In the Second Book the main fact is the Assembly in the Lower World, together with the rise of Telemachus into a new participation with divine influence in the form of Pallas, who sends him forth on his journey of education. We behold, therefore, in the two Books a sweep from above to below, then from below back to the divine influence. Earth and Olympus are the halves of the cycle, but the Earth is in discord and must be transformed to the harmony of Olympus.

Looking now at the Second Book by itself, we note that it falls into two portions: the Assembly of the People, which has been called together by Telemachus, and the communion of the youth with Pallas, who again appears to him at his call. The first is a mundane matter, and shows the Lower World in conflict with the divine order—the sides being the Suitors on the one hand and the House of Ulysses on the other. The second portion lifts the young hero into a vision of divinity, and should lift the reader along with him. Previously Pallas had, as it were, descended into Telemachus, but now he rises of himself into the Goddess. Clearly he possesses a new power, that of communion with the Gods. These two leading thoughts divide the Book into two well-marked parts—the first including lines 1-259, the second including the rest.

I.

The Assembly of the Ithacans presupposes a political habit of gathering into the town-meeting and consulting upon common interests. This usage is common to the Aryan race, and from it spring parliaments, congresses, and other cognate institutions, together with oratory before the People. A wonderful development has come of this little germ, which we see here still alive in Ithaca, though it has been almost choked by the unhappy condition of things. Not since Ulysses left has there been any such Assembly, says the first speaker, an old man drawing upon his memory, not for twenty years; surely a sign of smothered institutional life. The first thing which Telemachus in his new career does is to call the Assembly, and start this institutional life into activity again. Whereof we feel the fresh throb in the words of the aged speaker, who calls him "Blessed."

Now the oratory begins, as it must begin in such a place. The golden gift of eloquence is highly prized by Homer, and by the Homeric People; prophetic it is, one always thinks of the great Attic orators. The speakers are distinctly marked in character by their speeches; but the Assembly itself seems to remain dumb; it was evidently divided into two parties; one well-disposed to the House of Ulysses, the other to the Suitors. The corruption of the time has plainly entered the soul of the People, and thorough must be the cleansing by the Gods. Two kinds of speakers we notice also, on the same lines, supporting each side; thus the discord of Ithaca is now to be reflected in its oratory. Three sets of orators speak on each side, placing before us the different phases of the case; these we shall mark off for the thought and for the eye of the reader.

1. After the short opening speech of the old man, Ægyptius, the heart of the whole movement utters itself in Telemachus, who remains the chief speaker throughout. His speech is strong and bold; from it two main points peer forth. The first is the wrong of the Suitors, who will not take the right way of wooing Penelope by going to her father and giving the bridal gift according to custom, but consume the son's property under pretense of their suit for the mother. The second point is the strong appeal to the Ithacans—to their sense of right, to their sense of shame, and to their fear of the Gods, who "in their divine wrath shall turn back ill deeds upon the doer." But in vain; that Ithacan Assembly contains friends and relatives of the Suitors, and possibly purchased adherents; nay, it contains some of the Suitors themselves, and here rises one of them to make a speech in reply.

This is Antinous, who now makes the most elaborate defense of the case of the Suitors that is to be found in the poem. The speech is remarkable for throwing the whole blame upon Penelope—not a gallant proceeding in a lover; still it betrays great admiration for the woman on account of her devices and her cunning. She has thwarted and fooled the whole band of unwelcome wooers for three years and more by her wonderful web, which she wove by day and unraveled by night. And even now when she has been found out, she holds them aloof but keeps them in good humor, though clearly at a great expense of the family's property, which fact has roused Telemachus to his protest. Antinous, though feeling that he and the rest have been outwitted by the woman, does not stint his praise on that account, he even heightens it.

But we hear also his ultimatum: "Send thy mother away and bid her be married to whomsoever her father commands, and whoso is pleasing to her." So the will of the parent and the choice of the daughter had to go together even in Homer's days. Of course Antinous has no ground of right for giving this order; he is not the master of the house, though he hopes to be; his assumed authority is pure insolence. Then why should the Suitors injure the son because they have been wheedled by the mother? Still they will continue to consume "his living and his wealth as long as she keeps her present mind."

But the most interesting thing in his speech is to discover the attitude and motives of Penelope. We see her fidelity, but something more than fidelity is now needed, namely the greatest skill, dissimulation, or female tact, to use the more genteel word. She has a hard problem on her hands; she has to save her son, herself, and as much of the estate as she can, from a set of bandits who have all in their might. Were she to undertake to drive them away, they would pillage the house, kill her boy, and certainly carry her off. They have the power, they have the inclination; they are held by one small thread in the weak hands of a woman, but with that thread she snares them all, to the last man. Love it may be called, of a certain sort; we see how Antinous admires her, though conscious that she has made a fool of him and his fellows. Each hopes to win the prize yet, and she feeds them with hope, "sending private messages to each man;" thus she turns every one of them against the other, and prevents concerted action which looks to violence. That wonderful female gift is hers, the gift of making each of her hundred Suitors think that just he is the favored one, only let it be kept secret now till the right time comes!

But Penelope uses this gift as a weapon, it is her means of saving the House of Ulysses, while many another fair lady uses it for the fun of the thing. Is she right? Does her end justify her means? True she is in the highest degree to Family and State, is saving both; but she does dissemble, does cajole the suitors. One boy, one woman, one old man in the country constitute the present strength of the House of Ulysses; but craft meets violence and undoes it, as always.

And yet we may grant something to the other side of her character. She takes pleasure in the exercise of her gift, who does not? Inasmuch as the Suitors are here, and not to be dismissed, she will get a certain gratification out of their suit. A little dash of coquetry, a little love of admiration we may discern peeping through her adamantine fidelity to her husband, recollect after an absence of twenty years. As all this homage was thrust upon her, she seeks to win from it a kind of satisfaction; the admiration of a hundred men she tries to receive without making a sour face. Still further she takes pleasure in the exercise of that feminine subtlety which holds them fast in the web, yet keeps them off; giving them always hope, but indefinitely extending it. Verily that web which she wove is the web of Fate for the Suitors. So much for Penelope at present, whom we shall meet again.

To this demand of Antinous to send the mother away, Telemachus makes a noble, yes, a heroic response. It would be wrong all around, wrong to the mother, wrong to her father, unless he (Telemachus) restored the dower, wrong to the Gods; vengeance from the Erinyes, and nemesis from man would come upon him for such a deed. Thus the young hero appeals to the divine order and puts himself in harmony with its behests. Boldly he declares, that if the Suitors continue in their ill-doing, "I shall invoke the ever-living Gods; if Zeus may grant fit retribution for your crimes, ye shall die within this palace unavenged." Truly a speech given with a power which brings fulfillment; prophetic it must be, if there be any Gods in the world. Already we have seen that Telemachus was capable of this high mood, which communes with deity and utters the decree from above. Behold, no sooner is the word uttered by the mortal, than we have the divine response. It is in the form of an omen, the flight of two eagles tearing each other as they fly to the right through the houses of the town. Also the interpreter is present, who tells the meaning of the sign, and stamps the words of Telemachus with the seal of the Gods.

2. Here we pass to the second set of speeches which show more distinctively the religious phase, in contrast to the preceding set, which show rather the institutional phase, of the conflict; that is, the Gods are the theme of the one, Family and State of the other. The old augur Halitherses, the man of religion, explains the omen in full harmony with what Telemachus has said; he prophesies the speedy return of Ulysses and the punishment of the Suitors, unless they desist. Well may the aged prophet foretell some such outcome, after seeing the spirit of the son; Vengeance is indeed in the air, and is felt by the sensitive seer, and also by the sensitive reader.

But what is the attitude of the Suitors toward such a view? Eurymachus is the name of their speaker now, manifestly a representative man of their kind. He derides the prophet: "Go home, old man, and forecast for thy children!" He is a scoffer and skeptic; truly a spokesman of the Suitors in their relation to the Gods, in whom they can have no living faith; through long wickedness they imagine that there is no retribution, they have come to believe their own lie. Impiety, then, is the chief fact of this speech, which really denies the world-government and the whole lesson of this poem. Thus the divine warning is contemned, the call to a change of conduct goes unheeded.

3. Then we have the third set of speeches which are personal in their leading note, and pertain to the absent Ulysses, whose kindness and regal character are set forth by Mentor, his old comrade, with strong reproaches toward the Ithacans for permitting the wrong to his house. It is intimated that they could prevent it if they chose; but they are evidently deaf to this appeal to their gratitude and affection for their chieftain.

Leiocrates, the third Suitor, responds in a speech which is the culmination of insolence and defiance of right. The Suitors would slay Ulysses himself, should he now appear and undertake to put them out of his palace. He dares not come and claim his own! Right or wrong we are going to stay, and, if necessary, kill the owner. It is the most open and complete expression of the spirit of the Suitors, they are a lot of brigands, who must be swept away, if there be any order in the world. Leiocrates dissolves the Assembly, a thing which he evidently had no right to do; the people tamely obey, the institutional spirit is not strong enough to resist the man of violence. Let them scatter; they are a rotten flock of sheep at any rate.

Here the first part of the Book concludes. The three sets of speakers have given their views, one on each side; each set has represented a certain phase of the question; thus we have heard the institutional, religious and personal phases. In such manner the sweep of the conduct of the Suitors is fully brought out; they are destroying State and Family, are defying the Gods, and are ready to slay the individual who may stand in their way. Certainly their harvest is ripe for the sickle of divine justice, upon whose deep foundation this poem reposes.

The Assembly of the People now vanishes quite out of sight, it has indeed no valid ground of being. The young men seem to be the chief speakers, and show violent opposition, while the old men hold back, or manifest open sympathy with the House of Ulysses. The youth of Ithaca have had their heads turned by the brilliant prize, and rush forward forgetful of the penalty. It is indeed a time of moral loosening, of which this poem gives the source, progress, and cure. Telemachus, however, rises out of the mass of young men, the future hero who is to assert the law of the Gods. In such manner we are to reach down to the fact that the spirit of the Odyssey is ethical in the deepest sense, and reveals unto men the divine order of the world.

II.

We now pass to the second part of the book, which shows Telemachus accomplishing with the aid of the deity what human institutions failed to do. If the Assembly will not help him in the great cause, the Gods will, and now he makes his appeal to them.

The Ithacans had refused a ship in order that he might go and learn something about his father; that is, they will not permit his education, which is at present the first object.

He goes down to the seacoast, where he will be alone, communing with the Goddess and with himself, and there he prays to Pallas, washing his hands in the grey surf—which is, we may well think, a symbolic act of purification. Is it a wonder that Pallas, taking the human shape of Mentor, comes and speaks to him? She must, if she be at all; he is ready, and she has to appear. Her first words are but the echo of his conduct all through the preceding scene with the Assembly: "Telemachus henceforth thou shalt be wanting neither in valor nor in wisdom." She rouses him by the fame and deeds of his father, because he is already aroused. Still she is a very necessary part; she is the divine element in the world speaking to Telemachus and helping him; she shows that his thought is not merely subjective, but is now one with hers, with objective wisdom, and will rule the fact. He ascends into the realm of true vision, and from thence organizes his purpose. It is true that the poet represents Pallas as ordering the means for the voyage, as at first she ordered the work of the whole poem. Yet this is also done by Telemachus who has risen to participation in that glance which beholds the truth and controls the world.

Often will the foregoing statement be repeated; every divine appearance in Homer, of any import, is but a repetition of the one fact, which must always be re-thought by the reader. That which Telemachus says is no longer his mere wish or opinion, but it is the reality, the valid thing outside of him, hence it is voiced by the Goddess, and must take place. Thus the poet often compels his reader to rise with him into the sphere of the divine energy, where thinking and willing are one, and man's insight is just the word of the God.

The remaining circumstances of the Book group themselves around the two centers—Telemachus and Pallas—as the Goddess orders them in advance: "Go thou home and get the stores ready, while I shall engage a ship and crew among the Ithacans."

1. Telemachus goes among the Suitors, evidently to avoid suspicion, which his absence might provoke. They taunt and deride him, whereof three samples are again given. He goes his way, conscious of his divine mission, not failing however to tell them: "I shall surely make the voyage, not in vain it will be." He obtains food and wine from the aged stewardess Eurycleia, who seeks to dissuade him. Then too his mother must not know of his plan, she would keep him still a boy in the house, whereas he has become a man.

2. Pallas in the semblance of Telemachus goes through the town to secure the ship and crew. Then she pours over the Suitors a gentle sleep after their revel; she takes away their wisdom, yet it is their own deed, which just now has a divine importance. Finally she brings all to the ship, seizes the helm and sends the favoring breeze. Or, as we understand the poet, intelligence brings about these things under many guises; even nature, the breeze, it takes advantage of for its own purpose.

Thus Pallas has the controlling hand in this second part of the Book, she is above man and nature. We can say that the controlling spirit is also Telemachus, who manifests Reason, controlling and directing the world. Note the various forms which she assumes, as Mentor, as Telemachus; then again she works purely through mind, in the natural way, as for example, when Telemachus goes home and obtains his food and wine for the voyage. The poet thus plays with her shape; still she is essentially the divine intelligence which seizes upon men and circumstances, and fits them into the order universal, and makes them contribute to the great purpose of the poem. Still the Goddess does not destroy man's freedom, but supplements it, lifting it out of the domain of caprice. Telemachus willingly wills the will of Pallas.

Already it has been remarked that the Goddess is made to command nature—the breeze, the sleep of the Suitors. It is the method of fable thus to portray intelligence, whose function is to take control of nature and make her subserve its purpose. The breeze blows and drives the ship; it is the divine instrument for bringing Telemachus to Pylos, a part of the world-order, especially upon the present occasion. The born poet still talks that way, he is naturally a fabulist and cannot help himself. In his speech, the hunter does not chase the deer, but brings it before his gun by a magic power; the mystic fisher calls the fishes; the enchanted bullet finds its own game and needs only to be shot off; the tanner even lays a spell upon the water in his vat and makes it run up hill through a tube bent in a charm. But back of all this enchantment intelligence is working and assumes her mythical, supernatural garb when the poet images her control of nature.

Thus in general the Mythus shadows forth objective mind, not subjective; it springs from the imaginative Reason, and not from a cultivated Reflection. In our time the demand is to have these objective forms translated into subjective thoughts; then we can understand them better. But the Homeric man shows the opposite tendency: he had to translate his internal thoughts into the external shapes of the Mythus before he could grasp fully his own mind. His conception of the world was mythical; this form he understood and not that of abstract reflection. We may well exclaim: Happy Homeric man, to whom the world was ever present, not himself. Yet both sides belong to the full-grown soul, the mythical and the reflective; from Homer the one-sided modern mind can recover a part of its spiritual inheritance, which is in danger of being lost.

It is therefore, a significant fact that the education of the present time is seeking to restore the Mythus to its true place in the development of human spirit. The Imagination is recognized to have its right, and unless it be taken care of in the right way, it will turn a Fury, and wreak treble vengeance upon the age which makes it an outcast. Homer is undoubtedly the greatest of all mythologists, he seizes the pure mythical essence of the human mind and gives to it form and beauty. Hence from this point of view, specially, we shall study him.

In the present Book the fact is brought out strongly that little or nothing is to be expected from the Ithacan people toward rectifying the great wrong done to the House of Ulysses. In part they are the wrong-doers themselves, in part they are cowed into inactivity by the wrong-doers. Corruption has eaten into the spirit of the people; the result is, the great duty of deliverance is thrown back upon an individual. One man is to take the place of all, or a few men the place of the many, for the work must be done. The mightiness of the individual in the time of a great crisis is thus set forth in vivid reality; the one man with the Gods on his side is the majority. With truest instinct does the old poet show the Goddess Pallas directing Telemachus, who participates in the Divine and is carrying out its decree. This communion between man and deity is no mere mythologic sport, but the sincerest faith; verily it is the solidest fact in the government of the world, and the bard is its voice to all ages.

This Second Book has its import for the whole poem. It is now manifest that Ulysses, when he returns, is not to expect a grand popular reception; he must bring himself back to his own by his skill and prowess alone. The people will not help him slay the wrong-doers; rather the contrary will happen. Again the individual must work out the salvation of himself as well as of his family and his country. Telemachus has shown himself the worthy son of the heroic father; the present Book connects him intimately with the return of Ulysses, and binds the entire Odyssey into unity; especially does this Book look to and prepare for the last twelve Books, which bring father and son together in one great act of deliverance.

If in the previous Book we beheld the depravity of the Suitors, we now witness the imbecility of the People. Still the spark of hope flashes out brightly in this Ithacan night; something is at work to punish the guilty and to redeem the land.

BOOK THIRD.

In narrative, the present Book connects directly with the preceding Book. Pallas is still with Telemachus, they continue the voyage together till they reach Pylos, the home of Nestor. They have left Ithaca, and come into another realm; this change of place, as is often the case in Homer, carries with it a change of inner condition; the voyage is not simply geographical but also spiritual; indeed it must be so, if the young man is to derive from it any experience.

Great and striking is the difference between Ithaca and Pylos. The latter is the abode of religion primarily, the new-comers find the Pylians engaged in an act of worship, in which the whole people participate, "nine rows of seats and five hundred men in each row."

Too large a number, cry some commentators, but they have not looked into the real meaning of such a multitude. Here is sacrifice, reverence, belief in the Gods; while among the Ithacans is neglect of worship, religious paralysis, and downright blasphemy on the part of the Suitors. Furthermore, in one country order reigns, in the other is anarchy. Such is the contrast between the Second and Third Books, the contrast between Ithaca and Pylos. We can well think that this contrast was intended by the poet, and thus we may catch a glimpse of his artistic procedure.

The center of the picture is Nestor, a very old man, who, accordingly, gives soul to the Book. He is so near the world of the Gods in the present life, that he seems already to dwell with them; age brings this serene piety.

No accident is it that this Book of Nestor begins and ends with a festival of sacrifice and prayer; that is the true setting of his character. What he says to the visitors will take color and meaning from his fundamental trait; we may expect in his words a full recognition of divinity in the events of the world.

But he has been a stout fighter in his time, he was in the Trojan War, though old already at that period. He will give the lesson of his life, not during that war, but afterwards. He was one of the heroes of the Iliad, which poem the Odyssey not only does not repeat, but goes out of its way to avoid any repetition thereof. Moreover he was one of those who returned home successfully, can he tell how it was done? This is the question of special interest to Telemachus, as his father, after ten years, has not yet reached home.

Herewith the theme of the Book is suggested: the Return. Physically this was a return from the Trojan War, which is the pre-supposition of the whole Odyssey; all the heroes who have not perished, have to get back to Hellas in some way. These ways are very diverse, according to the character of the persons and the circumstances. Thus we touch the second grand Homeric subject, and, indeed, the second grand fact of the Greek consciousness, which lies imbedded in the Return (Nostos). A short survey of this subject must here be given. We have in the present Book several phases of the Return; Nestor, Menelaus, Ulysses are all Returners, to use a necessary word for the thought; each man solves the problem in his own manner.

Now what is this problem? Let us see. The expedition to Troy involved a long separation from home and country on the part of every man who went with it; still this separation had to be made for the sake of Helen, that she, the wife and queen, return to home and country, from which she had been taken. Her Return, indeed, is the essence of all their Returns. We see that through the war they were severed from Family and State, were compelled to give up for the time being their whole institutional life. This long absence deepens into alienation, into a spiritual scission, from mere habit in the first place; then, in the second place, they are seeking to destroy a home and a country; though it be that of the enemy, and the act, even if necessary, brings its penalty. It begets a spirit of violence, a disregard of human life, a destruction of institutional order. Such is the training of the Greeks before Troy. The wanton attack of Ulysses and his companions upon the city of the Ciconians (Book Ninth) is an indication of the spirit engendered in this long period of violence, among the best and wisest Greeks.

Still, in spite of the grand estrangement, they have the aspiration for return, and for healing the breach which had sunk so deep into their souls. Did they not undergo all this severing of the dearest ties for the sake of Helen, for the integrity of the family, and of their civil life also? What he has done for Helen, every Greek must be ready to do for himself, when the war is over; he must long for the restoration of the broken relations; he cannot remain in Asia and continue a true Greek. Such is his conflict; in maintaining Family and State, he has been forced to sacrifice Family and State. Then when he has accomplished the deed of sacrifice, he must restore himself to what he has immolated. A hard task, a deeply contradictory process, whose end is, however, harmony; many will not be able to reach the latter stage, but will perish by the way. The Return is this great process of restoration after the estrangement.

Many are the Returners, successful and unsuccessful in many different ways. But they all are resumed in the one long desperate Return of Ulysses, the wise and much-enduring man. In space as well as in time his Return is the longest; in spirit it is the deepest and severest by all odds. The present poem, therefore, is a kind of resumption and summary of the entire series of Returns (Nostoi). In the old Greek epical ages, the subject gave rise to many poems, which are, however, at bottom but one, and this we still possess, while the others are lost. Spirit takes care of its own verily.

The true Returner, accordingly, gets back to the institutions from which he once separated; he knows them now, previously he only felt them. His institutional world must become thus a conscious possession; he has gone through the alienation, and has been restored; his restoration has been reached through denial, through skepticism, we may say, using the modern term. The old unconscious period before the Trojan war is gone forever; that was the Paradise from which the Greek Adam has been expelled. But the new man after the restoration is the image of the complete self-conscious being, who has taken the negative period into himself and digested it. Fortunate person! he cannot now be made the subject of a poem, for he has no conflict.

But the young man beginning life, the son Telemachus, is to obtain the same kind of knowledge, not through experience but through inquiry. Oral tradition is to give him the treasures of wisdom without the bitter personal trial. It is for this reason that Pallas sends him to find out what his father did, and to make the experience of the parent his own by education; it is, indeed, the true education—to master the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the race up to date. So we are now to have the school period of the son, who is thereby not merely the physical son (which, he remarks, is always a matter of doubt), but the spiritual son of his father, whereof there can be no doubt.

The Odyssey proper, toward which we may now cast a glance, contains the wanderings of Ulysses, and is the work of the grown man who has to meet the world face to face and conquer it; thus he obtains the experience of life. The two parts are always to be placed together—the education of the young man and the experience of the mature man; they constitute a complete history of a human soul. Both are, indeed one—bud and flower; at bottom, too, both mean the same thing—the elevation of the individual into an ethical life in which he is in harmony with himself and with the divine order. True learning and true experience reach this end, which may be rightfully called wisdom.

So Telemachus the youth is to listen to the great and impressive fact of his time, containing the deep spiritual problem which is designated as the Return. Nestor is the first and simplest of these Returners; he is an old man, he has prudence, he is without passion; moreover he has not the spirit of inquiry or the searching into the Beyond; he accepts the transmitted religion and opinions without question, through the conservatism of age as well as of character. It is clear that the spiritual scission of the time could not enter deep into his nature; his long absence from home and country produced no alienation; he went home direct after the fall of Troy, the winds and the waters were favorable, no tempest, no upheaval, no signs of divine anger. But he foresaw the wrath of the Gods and fled across the wave in all speed, the wrestle with the deity lay not in him.

It is worth our while to make a little summary of these Returners in classes, since in this way the thought of the present Book as well as its place in the entire Odyssey can be seen best. First are those who never succeeded in returning, but perished in the process of it; of this class the great example is the leader himself, Agamemnon, who was slain by his own wife and her paramour. Second are those who succeeded in returning; of this class there are three well-marked divisions, which are to be sharply designated in the mind of the reader.

(1). The immediate Returners, those who went straight home, without internal scission or external trouble; unimportant they are in this peaceful aspect though they were formerly heroes in the war. Four such are passingly mentioned by Nestor in his talk: Diomed, Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, Philoctetes, and Idomeneus. Nestor himself is the most prominent and the typical one of this set who are the Returners through Hellas.

(2). The second one of those who have succeeded in getting home is Menelaus, whose sweep is far beyond that of Nestor and the immediate Greek world, taking in Egypt and the East. He was separated from Nestor, having delayed to bury his steersman; then a storm struck him, bore him to Crete and beyond, the wind and wave carried him to the land of the Nile. He is the Returner through the Orient.

(3). Finally is Ulysses, not yet returned, but whose time has nearly arrived. In comparison with the others he is the Returner through the Occident. But his Return gives name to the poem, of which it is the greater portion.

Still the universal poem is to embrace all these phases of the Return, and the son, through education, is to know them all, not by experience but by information. Thus his training is to reach beyond what the life of his father can give him; it must be universal, and in this way it becomes a true discipline. We must note too, that this poem reaches beyond the Return of Ulysses, beyond what its title suggests, and embraces all the Returns, Hellenic, Oriental, Occidental, as well as the grand failure to return.

Such are some of the thoughts which gleam out the present Book and illuminate the whole Odyssey. We can now consider structure of the Book, which falls into two distinct parts, determined by the Goddess. When she makes ready to quit Telemachus, we enter the second portion of the Book, and Telemachus continues his journey without direct divine supervision. As the previous Book was marked by the coming of the Goddess, the present Book is marked by her going. The intercourse of the youth with Nestor is the extent of her immediate guardianship; after such an experience, he must learn to make the rest of the journey through his own resources. Even the deity teaches that there must not be too much reliance upon the deity. The first portion of the Book extends to line 328, where Nestor ends his story of the Returns and suggests the journey to Menelaus for another phase thereof: "the sun set and darkness came on." The second portion embraces the rest of the Book. Again we must note that the fundamental Homeric division into the Upper and Lower Worlds is what divides the Book, thus giving to the same its organic principle.

I.

The religious setting of Nestor's world has been noticed already. Into it Telemachus comes, out of a realm of violence; it must indicate some cure for the ills of Ithaca. But he is now to show himself a man. Pallas orders him to put aside his youthful modesty, and boldly make the inquiry concerning his father. And here the Goddess utters a remark which the student may well ponder: "Some things thou wilt think of in thine own mind, but a God will suggest others." Again the Homeric dualism—the human and the divine—and also their harmony; the two elements must come together in every high thought or action. The double relation of the individual—to himself and to the God—is necessary for all worthy speech; his own activity and that of the deity run together in true discourse as well as in true action. So the whole poem is made up of man's self-determined energy and the interference of the Gods; yet both are to be seen as ultimately one in the deed.

The new-comers are asked to pray, and we hear the famous utterance, which is characteristic of Nestor's world, "All men have need of the Gods." This is said by one of his sons. Pallas makes the prayer, a happy one, which brings forth a feeling of harmony between the strangers and all the People. The sympathy is complete, and Telemachus can proceed to ask concerning his father, after he has told who he himself is, and whence he has come. In response, Nestor begins to tell the fateful story of the Returns after the fall of Troy. In his narrative we behold the starting-point of the calamities, the difference between Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed by a series of separations in succession. "Zeus planned for them a sad Return," which, however, was their own fault, "for all were neither wise nor just." It is clear that the Greek unity is utterly broken, a spiritual disruption sets in after the capture of the city. It is, indeed, the new problem, this Return to peace and institutional order after ten years' training to violence. Such is the penalty of all war, however just and necessary; after it is over, the fighting cannot stop at once, and so the victors divide into two camps and continue the fight. Nestor gives the picture of these repeated divisions; once, twice, thrice the breach occurs; first he separates from Agamemnon, the second time from Ulysses, the third time from Menelaus. He will go directly home, and thus he has to leave the others behind; the scission is not in him as in them; he can be restored, in fact he restores himself. He has the instinctive pre-Trojan character still, being an old man; but Ulysses has lost that, and so separates from Nestor, though never before had they differed "in the Council of the Chiefs or in the Assembly of the People." But Ulysses has to return by a far different road, and now each of the two wise men takes his own way, though both have to return.

Aged Nestor manifestly does not belong to the new epoch, he seems to have no sense of the deep spiritual struggle involved. He instinctively went home, shunning the conflict; the others could not. In the Iliad the relation between the two wise men, Nestor and Ulysses, is subtly yet clearly drawn; the one—the younger man—has creative intelligence, the other—the older man—has appreciative intelligence. In the Odyssey, the relation is plainly evolved out of that described in the Iliad; the one is the boundless striver, the other rests in the established order of things.

Nestor, therefore, cannot tell much about Ulysses, who lies quite out of his horizon, at least in the Odyssey. He can only give hope that the man of wisdom will yet return. This Telemachus doubts, dropping into one of his low human moods, even in the presence of Pallas, who rebukes him sharply. It is, indeed, the great lesson; he must have faith in the reality of the Gods, this is the basis of all his future progress, the chief attainment of wisdom. The young man must not fall away into denial, he must be taught that there is a divine order in the world. Old Homer, too, had his notions about religion in education, and the Goddess herself is here introduced giving a lesson.

Nestor, though unable himself to give much information about the Return, can point to the second grand Returner, Menelaus, who has lately come from a distant land, and may have something to say. In fact Menelaus was the last to separate from Nestor, Ulysses had separated long before.

One other story Nestor tells with great sympathy, that of Agamemnon, who represents a still different form of the Return. The great leader of the Greeks can master the Trojan difficulty, can even get back to home and country, but these are ultimately lost to him by his faithless spouse. Still, after the father's death, the son Orestes restores Family and State. Therein Telemachus sees an image of himself, the son, who is to slay his mother's suitors; he sees, too, the possible fate of his father. Ulysses has essentially the same problem as Agamemnon, though he has not the faithless wife in addition; Telemachus beholds his duty in the deed of Orestes, according to Greek consciousness. We shall see hereafter how Ulysses takes due precaution not to be slain in his own land, as Agamemnon was. In disguise he will go to his own palace and carefully note the situation in advance, and then strike the blow of deliverance.

Several times Homer repeats in the Odyssey the tragic story of Agamemnon, the great Leader of the Greeks at Troy. An awe-inspiring tale of destiny; out of it Æschylus will develop his great tragedy, the Oresteia. Indeed the epos develops into tragedy with the full mythical unfolding of this story. Æschylus will deepen the motives into internal collisions; he will show the right and the wrong in Agamemnon, and even in Clytemnestra. Orestes, however beneficent his deed in avenging his father, will not escape the counterstroke; Æschylus will send after him the Furies for the guilt of having murdered his mother. Thus the double nature of the deed, its reward and its penalty, unfolds out of Homer into Æschylus, and creates the Greek drama as we know it at present.

Nestor has now told what lay in the immediate circle of his experience: the Return direct through Hellas. Again he mentions the last separation; it was that of himself from Menelaus, when the latter was swept beyond the limit of Hellas into Egypt, from which he has now returned. What next? Evidently the young man must be sent to him at Sparta in order to share in this larger circle of experience, extending to the Orient. So Greece points to the East in many ways; Nestor, the purely Hellenic soul, knows of that wider knowledge, though it be not his, and he knows that it should be possessed.

In this Book as elsewhere in the Odyssey the grand background is the Trojan war. The incidents of the Iliad are hardly alluded to, but are certainly taken for granted; the Post-Iliad is the field of interest, for in it the Returns take place. Thus the two great poems of Homer join together and show themselves as complements of each other.

II.

Now comes the separation which marks the second portion of the Book. Pallas, in the guise of Mentor, coincides with Nestor in advising Telemachus to pay a visit to Menelaus, and then she departs, "sailing off like a sea-eagle," whereat great astonishment from all present. That is, she reveals herself; all recognize the Goddess, and probably that is the reason why she can no longer stay. She has become internal. Telemachus is now conscious, as she disappears, and he has his own wisdom; he has seen Pallas, and so he must go without her to Sparta. Hardly does he need her longer, being started upon the path of wisdom to know wisdom. At the court of Nestor, with its deeply religious atmosphere, she can appear; but she declines to go with him in person to Menelaus, though she advises the journey. All of which, to the sympathetic reader, has its significance. Still Pallas has by no means vanished out of the career of Telemachus; she at present, however, leaves him to himself, as she often does.

Nestor, too, responds to the marvelous incident in true accord with his character; he invokes her with prayer and institutes a grand sacrifice, which is now described in a good deal of detail. Just as the Book opens with a sacrifice to a deity, so it closes with one—the two form the setting of the whole description. Thus the recognition of the Gods is everywhere set forth in Nestor's world; he is the man of faith, of primitive, immediate faith, which has never felt the doubt.

It is well that Telemachus meets with such a man at the start, and gets a breath out of such an atmosphere. He has seen the ills of Ithaca from his boyhood; he may well question at times the superintendence of the Gods. His own experience of life would lead him to doubt the existence of a Divine Order. Even here in Pylos he challenges the supremacy of the Olympians. When Nestor intimates that his father will yet return and punish the Suitors, with the help of Pallas, or that he himself may possibly do so with the aid of the same Goddess, Telemachus replies: "Never will that come to pass, I think, though I hope for it; no, not even if the Gods should so will." Assuredly a young skeptic he shows himself, probably in a fit of despondency; sharp is the reproof of the Goddess: "O Telemachus, what kind of talk is that? Easily can a God, if he wills it, save a man even at a distance." Thus she, a Goddess, asserts the supremacy of the Gods, even though they cannot avert death. But the youth persists at present: "let us talk no more of this; my father never will return." But when Nestor has told the story of Ægisthus punished by the son Orestes, the impression is strong that there is a divine justice which overtakes the guilty man at last; such is the old man's lesson to the juvenile doubter. The lesson is imparted in the form of a tale, but it has its meaning, and Telemachus cannot help putting himself into the place of Orestes.

Such is, then, the training which the young man, shaken by misfortune, obtains at the court of Nestor; the training to a belief in the rule of the Gods in a Divine Order of the World—which is the fundamental belief of the present poem. It is no wonder that Telemachus sees Pallas at last, sees that she has been with him, recognizing her presence. To be sure, she now disappears as a personal presence, having been found out; still she sends Telemachus on his journey to Sparta. Thus the Third Book has a distinctive character of its own, differing decidedly from the Book which goes before and from that which follows. Here is a religious world, idyllic, paradisaical in its immediate relation to the Gods, and in the primitive innocence of its people, who seem to be without a jar or inner scission. No doubt or dissonance has yet entered apparently; Pylos stands between Ithaca, the land of absolute discord, and Sparta, the land recently restored out of discord. The Book hears a relation to the whole Odyssey in its special theme, which is the Return, of which it represents in the ruler Nestor a particular phase. It prepares the way for the grand Return, which is that of Ulysses; it is a link connecting the whole poem into unity. Moreover it shadows forth one of the movements of Greek spirit, which seized upon this idea of a Return from Troy to express the soul's restoration from its warring, alienated, dualistic condition. It is well known that there were many poems on this subject; each hero along with his town or land had his Return, which became embodied in legend and song. All Hellas, in a certain stage of its spiritual movement, had a tendency to break out into the lay of the Return. One of the so-called cyclic poets, Hagias of Troezen, collected a number of these lays into one poem and called it the Nostoi or Returns, evidently an outgrowth of this Third Book in particular and of the Odyssey in general.

Thus Telemachus has witnessed and heard a good deal during his stay with Nestor. He has seen a religious world, a realm of faith in the Gods, which certainly has left its strong impression; he has been inspired by the example of his father, whose worth has been set forth, and whose place in the great Trojan movement has been indicated, by the aged Hero. Still further, Telemachus has been brought to share in the idea of the Return, the present underlying idea of the whole Greek consciousness; thus he must be led to believe in it and to work for it, applying it to his own case and his own land. Largely, from a negative, despairing state of mind due to his Ithacan environment, he has been led into glimpses of a positive believing one; this has sprung from his schooling with Nestor, who may be called his first schoolmaster, from whom he is now to pass to his second.

The reader must judge whether the preceding view be too introspective for Homer, who is usually declared to be the unconscious poet, quite unaware of his purpose or process. No one can carefully read the Third Book without feeling its religious purport; an atmosphere it has peculiar to itself in relation to the other Books of the Telemachiad. To be sure, we can read it as an adventure, a mere diverting story, without further meaning than the attempt to entertain vacant heads seeking to kill time. But really it is the record of the spirit's experience, and must so be interpreted. Again the question comes up: what is it to know Homer? His geography, his incidents, his grammar, his entire outer world have their right and must be studied—but let us proceed to the next Book.

BOOK FOURTH.

The transition from Book Third to Book Fourth involves a very significant change of environment. In Sparta, to which Telemachus now passes, there is occurring no public sacrifice to the Gods, but a domestic festal occasion gives the tone; he moves out of a religious into a secular atmosphere. Pylos allows the simple state of faith, the world unfallen; Sparta has in it the deep scission of the soul, which, however, is at present healed after many wanderings and struggles. Nestor, as we have seen, is quite without inner conflict; Menelaus and Helen represent a long, long training in the school of error, tribulation, misfortune. Pylos is the peace before the fall, Sparta is the peace after the fall, yet with many reminiscences of the latter. This Fourth Book reaches out beyond Greece, beyond the Trojan War, it goes beyond the Hellenic limit in Space and Time, it sweeps backward into Egypt and the Orient. It is a marvelous Book, calling for our best study and reflection; certainly it is one of the greatest compositions of the human mind. Its fundamental note is restoration after the grand lapse; witness Helen, and Menelaus too; the Third Book has no restoration, because it has no alienation.

The account of the various Returns from Troy is continued. In the preceding Book we had those given by Nestor, specially his own, which was without conflict. He is the man of age and wisdom, he does not fall out with the Gods, he does not try to transcend the prescribed limits, he is old and conservative. The Returns which he speaks of beside his own, are confined to the Greek world; that was the range of his vision.

But now in the Fourth Book we are to hear of the second great Return, in which two Greeks participate, Menelaus and Helen. This Return is by way of the East, through Egypt, which is the land of ancient wisdom for the Greek man, and for us too. It is the land of the past to the Hellenic mind, whither the person who aspires to know the antecedents of himself and his culture must travel; or, he must learn of those who have been there, if he cannot go himself. Egyptian lore, which had a great influence upon the early Greek world in its formative period, must have some reflection in this primitive Greek book of education. So Telemachus, to complete his discipline, must reach beyond Greece into the Orient, he must get far back of Troy, which was merely an orientalizing Hellenic city; he must learn of Egypt. Thus he transcends the national limit, and begins to obtain an universal culture.

But the moment we go beyond the Greek world with its clear plastic outlines, the artistic form changes; the Hellenic sunshine is tinged with Oriental shadows; we pass from the unveiled Zeus to the veiled Isis. Homer himself gets colored with touches of Oriental mystery. The Egyptian part of this Fourth Book, therefore, will show a transformation of style as well as of thought, and changeful Proteus will become a true image of the Poet. The work will manifest a symbolic tendency; it will have an aroma of the wisdom of the East, taught in forms of the parable, the apologue, with hints of allegory. The world, thrown outside of that transparent Greek life, becomes a Fairy Tale, which is here taken up and incorporated into a great poem. We shall be compelled to look thoroughly into these strange shapes of Egypt, and, if possible, reach down to their meaning, for meaning they must have, or be meaningless. We shall find that this Fourth Book stands in the front rank of Homeric poetry for depth and suggestiveness, if not for epical lucidity.

What did not Telemachus see and hear at Sparta? That was, indeed, an education. He saw the two great returned ones, the woman and the man. Helen he saw, who had passed through her long alienation and was now restored to home and country after the Trojan discipline. In her, the most beautiful woman, the human cycle was complete—the fall, the repentance, the restoration. Then the eager youth saw Menelaus, and heard his story of the Return; he is the man who seeks the treasures of the East, and brings them to Hellas in the Hellenic way. He finds them, too, after much suffering, never losing them again in the tempests of his voyage, for does he not spread them out before us in his talk? Both the man and the woman, after the greatest human trials, have reached serenity—an institutional and an intellectual harmony. The young man sees it and feels it and takes it away in his head and heart.

The present Book falls easily into two distinct portions. The first is the visit of Telemachus to Sparta and what he experiences there. Sparta is at peace and in order; the youth to a degree beholds in it the ideal land to which he must help transform his own disordered country. The second portion of the Book goes back to Ithaca (line 625 of the Greek text). Here we are suddenly plunged again into the wrongful deeds of the suitors, done to the House of Ulysses. They are plotting the death of Telemachus, the bearing of whose new career has dawned upon them. Ithaca is truly the realm of discord in contrast to the harmony of Sparta and the House of Menelaus, which has also had sore trials. Hence Sparta may be considered a prophecy of the redemption of Ithaca.

Following out these structural suggestions, we designate the organism of the Book in this manner:—

I. The visit of Telemachus at Sparta in which he beholds and converses with two chief Returners from Troy, those who came back by way of the East, Menelaus and Helen. This part embraces the greater portion of the Book and falls into three divisions.

1. The arrival and recognition of the son of Ulysses by Menelaus and Helen who are in a mood of reminiscence, speaking of and in the Present with many a glance back into the Past. The Oriental journey to Cyprus, Phœnicia, and specially Egypt, plays into their conversation, making the whole a Domestic Tale of real life with an ideal background lying beyond Hellas.

2. When the son is duly recognized and received, the father Ulysses comes in for reminiscence; with him the background shifts from the Orient to Troy, where he was the hero of so many deeds of cunning and valor, and where both Menelaus and Helen were chief actors. The literary form passes out of the Domestic Tale of the Present into the Heroic Tale of the Past, from sorrowful retrospection to bracing description of daring deeds. Helen and Menelaus, each in turn, tell stories of Ulysses at Troy to the son, who thus learns much about his father. As already said, the background of this portion is the Trojan war which was the grand Hellenic separation from the Orient. The Iliad, and specially the Post-Iliad are here presupposed by the Odyssey.

3. The Return of Menelaus is now told to Telemachus, which Return reaches behind the Trojan war into the East and beyond the limits of the real Hellas into Egypt. Thus the spatial and temporal bounds of Greece are transcended, the actual both in the Present and Past goes over into the purely ideal, and the literary form becomes a Marvelous Tale—that of Proteus, which suggests not only Present and Past, but all Time.

II. Such is the grand Return of Menelaus out of struggle and dualism into peace and reconciliation with himself and the world, barring certain painful memories. The poet next, in sharp contrast throws the reader back to Ithaca, the land of strife and wrong, in general of limits for young Telemachus, who is reaching out for freedom through intelligence, and is getting a good deal thereof. Two phases:

1. The Suitors' limits, which he has broken through; their wrath and their plan of murdering him in consequence.

2. The mother's limits, which he has also broken through; her paroxysm in consequence, and final consolation.

I.

The first portion of the Book, as above given, is by all means the greatest in conception and in execution as well as the longest. As already indicated there are three kinds of writing in it, yet fused together into unity, which makes it a most varied, yet profoundly suggestive piece of Art. The simple idyllic, domestic strain of ordinary real life we hear at the start in the reception and recognition of Telemachus at Sparta; the scene lies in the sunshine of a serene existence, yet after mighty tempests. Thence we pass into the heroic world of Troy out of Greece and the Present, and listen to an epical story of heroism told by Menelaus and Helen, of the Hero Ulysses; finally we are brought to Egypt, and hear a prophecy concerning the same Hero, who is now the subject of the Fairy Tale. In other words, in this portion of the Fourth Book we observe a change of scene to three localities—Greece, Troy, Egypt, which correspond to Present, Past, and Future, and which attune the soul respectively to Sorrow, Reminiscence, Prophecy. In accord with this variety of place and circumstance is the variety of literary form already noted: the ordinary Descriptive Tale of the Present, the Heroic Story of the Past, and the Fairy Tale imaging what is distant in space and time.

1. As Telemachus arrives, he notes the outer setting to this noble picture of Menelaus and Helen. There is the magnificent palace with many costly ornaments of "bronze, gold, silver, amber and ivory;" it has the ideal of Greek architecture, not yet realized doubtless, still it suggests "the Hall of Olympian Zeus" to the admiring Telemachus. The new-comers happen upon a wedding-festival, which connects the place and the occasion with the Trojan war and its Hero Achilles, whose son is now to marry Helen's daughter, betrothed to him while at Troy. Moreover it is a time of joy, which brings all before us at first in a festal mood.

Nor must we pass by that astonishing utterance of Menelaus to his servant who proposed to turn away the guests: "Thou prattlest silly things like a child, verily have we come hither partaking of the hospitable fare of other men." Therefore we ought to give that which we have received. One likes to note these touches of humanity in the old heathen Greek; he too knew and applied the Golden Rule. The wisdom of life here peers forth in the much-traveled Menelaus; suffering has taught him to consider others; sorrow he has experienced, but it has brought its best reward—compassion. This sorrow at once breaks forth in response to the admiration of Telemachus for the outward splendor of his palace and possessions.

The Spartan king takes a short retrospect of life as it has been allotted him; the sighs well out between his words as he tells his story. Eight years he wandered after the taking of Troy; for he passed across the sea, to Egypt, even to Æthiopia and Lybia, which he portrays as a wonderland of golden plenty. But while he was gone, "gathering much wealth," his brother Agamemnon was slain; "therefore, small joy I have bearing rule over these possessions." But chiefly he laments the loss of one man, on account of whom "sleep and food become hateful to me when I think upon him." That man is Ulysses, who has suffered more than any other Greek. Thus a strong deep stream of sympathy breaks forth from the heart of Menelaus, and the son, hearing his father's name, holds up the purple mantle before his eyes, shedding the tear. A strong unconscious bond of feeling at once unites both.

How can we fail to notice the clear indication of purpose in these passages! The Poet brings Menelaus, as the culmination of his story, to strike the chord which stirs most profoundly the soul of Telemachus. The son is there to inquire concerning his father; without revealing himself he learns much about the character and significance of his parent. The same artistic forethought is shown, when, at this sad moment, Helen enters, the primal source of all these calamities, in a glorious manifestation of her beauty. Telemachus sees or may see, embodied in her the very essence of Greek spirit, that which had to be restored to Hellas from Asia, if Hellas was to exist. The Poet likens her to a Goddess, and places her in surroundings which are to set off her divine appearance. In her case, too, we notice the distant background: Egyptian presents she has, as well as Menelaus, "a golden distaff and a silver basket bound in gold." Mementos from far-off wonderland are woven into the speech and character of the famous pair.

Now for a true female trait. Helen at once recognizes the young stranger as the son of Ulysses, wherein she stands in contrast to her husband Menelaus, who, in spite of his thinking about his friend just at that moment, had failed to see before him the son of that friend. But no sooner had the woman laid eyes upon Telemachus than she personally identified him. When the wife had spoken the words of immediate insight and instinct, the wise husband sees the truth and gives his reasons. When the fact has been told him, he can easily prove it.

Supremely beautiful is this appearance of Helen in the Odyssey; she is the completion of what we saw and knew of her in the Iliad. Now she is restored to home and country, after her long alienation; still she has lurking moments of self-reproach on account of her former deeds. Though she has repented and has been received back, she cannot forget, ought not to forget the past altogether. The conduct of the husband is most noble in these scenes; he has forgiven her fully, never upbraiding, never even alluding to her fatal act, excepting in one passage possibly, in which there is a gentle palliation of her behavior: "Thou camest to the place, moved by some divinity who wished to give glory to the Trojans." The husband will not blame her, she acted under the stimulus of a God. The fallen woman restored is the divinest of all pictures; we wonder again at the far-reaching humanity of the old bard; to-day she would hardly be taken back and forgiven by the world as completely as she is in the pages of Homer. She is indeed a new Helen, standing forth in the purest radiance within the shining palace of Menelaus. Long shall the world continue to gaze at her there.

Telemachus is to see and to hear Helen; that is, indeed, one of his supreme experiences. But it is not here a matter of superficial staring at a beautiful woman; all that Helen is, the total cycle of her spirit's history, is to enter his heart and become a vital portion of his discipline. It is probable that the youth does not realize every thing that Helen means and is; still he beholds her, and that in itself is an education. Helen is not merely a figure of voluptuous beauty, which captivates the senses; she bears in her the experience of complete humanity; she has erred, she has transformed her error, she has been restored to that ethical order which she had violated. All of which the young man is to see written in her face, and to feel in her words and conduct, though he may not consciously formulate it in his thought. This is the true beauty of Helen, not simply the outer sensuous form, though she possesses that too. She could not be the ideal of the Greek world, if she were merely an Oriental enchantress; indeed it is just the function of the Greeks to rescue her from such a condition, which was that of Helen in Troy.

Already the heart of Menelaus is full at the thought of his friend Ulysses, and he warms toward the latter's son now present. He again utters words of sympathetic sorrow. All are touched; all have lost some dear relative at Troy; it is a moment of overpowering emotion. The four people weep in common; it is but an outburst; they rally from their sorrow, Menelaus commands: "Let us cease from mourning and think of the feast."

It is at this point that Helen again interposes. Her experience of life has been the deepest, saddest, most complete of all, she has mastered her conflicts, inner and outer, and reached the haven of serenity; she can point out the way of consolation. In fact it is her supreme function to show to others what she has gone through, and thereby save them, in part at least, the arduous way. For is not the career of every true hero or heroine vicarious to a certain degree? Assuredly, if they mean any thing to the sons and daughters of men. Helen can bring the relief, and does so in the present instance.

She fetches forth that famous drug, the grand antidote for grief and passion, and all life's ills, the true solacer in life's journey. It had been given her by an Egyptian woman, Polydamna, whom she had met in her wanderings, and it had evidently helped to cure her lacerated soul. Again Egypt lies in the background, as it does everywhere in this Book, the veritable wonderland, from which many miraculous blessings are sent. Moreover it is the land of potent drugs, "some beneficial and some baneful;" its physicians too, are celebrated as excelling all men. Still more curious is the fact that women possess the secret of medicine as well as men, and Polydamna may be set down as the first female doctor—she who gave the wonderful drug to Helen. Surely there is nothing new under the sun.

This marvelous drug, often called Nepenthe from one of its attributes, has naturally aroused much curiosity among the many-minded readers of Homer down the ages. Some have held that it was an herb, which they have pointed out in the valley of the Nile. Others hold it to be opium literally, though it does not here put to sleep or silence the company. On the other hand allegory has tried its hand at the word. Certain ancients including Plutarch found in it an emblem hinting the charm of pleasing narrative. As Helen at once passes to story-telling about Ulysses at Troy, changing from sad reminiscences of the dead to stirring deeds of living men, we may suppose that this has something to do with her Nepenthe, which changes the mind from inward to outward, from emotion to action. The magic charm seems to work potently when she begins to talk. Through her, the artist as well as the ideal, we make the transition into the Heroic Tale of the olden time, of which she gives a specimen.

2. Very naturally the Trojan scene is next taken, that greatest deed of the Greek race, being that which really made it a new race, separating it from the Orient and giving it a new destiny. Helen now tells to the company myths, particularly the labors of Ulysses. She narrates how he came to Troy in the disguise of a beggar; none knew him, "but I alone recognized him," as she had just recognized Telemachus. Thus she celebrates the cunning and bravery of Ulysses; but she also introduces a fragment of her own history: "I longed to return home, and I lamented the infatuation which Venus sent upon me." She wished to be restored to her husband who was "in no respect lacking in mind or shape." We must not forget that the husband was before her listening; she does not forget her skill. Also Telemachus was present and hears her confession of guilt and her repentance—important stages in her total life, which he is to know, and to take unto himself.

Menelaus has also his myth of Ulysses at Troy, which he now proceeds to tell. It brings before us the Wooden Horse, really the thought of Ulysses, though wrought by Epeios, by which the hostile city was at last captured. Here the Odyssey supplies a connecting link between itself and the Iliad, as the latter poem closes before the time of the Wooden Horse. Ulysses is now seen to be the Hero again, he is the man who suppresses emotion, especially domestic emotion in himself and others for the great end of the war. It suggests also the difficulty of Ulysses; he had so long suppressed his domestic instincts, and done without the life of the family, that he will have great trouble in overcoming the alienation—whereof the Odyssey is the record. In this story of Menelaus, Helen has her part too; she came to the Wooden Horse, "imitating in voice the wives of all the Greek leaders," who were deeply moved, yet restrained themselves except one, Anticlus, "over whose mouth Ulysses clapped his powerful hands, and saved the Greeks." Truly a strong image of the suppression of feeling in himself and in others.

But why did Helen do thus? Was it a hostile act on her part? Menelaus hints that it was at least very dangerous to the Greeks, though he delicately lays the blame of it on some God, "who must have inspired thee." She was testing the Greeks whom she supposed to be inside the horse. Will they answer the call of their wives? Do they still retain their affection for their families? Above all, does Menelaus love me still? Such was her test, in which we witness another of her many gifts. At any rate, she is not yet free, she is still married in Troy, though the hour of her release be near.

With these two stories, the note changes; the sad turn of the talk is transformed into a quiet earnest joy, the sorrows of the present vanish in the glorious memories of the past. The moment Troy is introduced, the narrative becomes an Heroic Tale, a sort of Iliad, with its feats of arms. Thus we hear the story of Ulysses while at Troy, giving two instances of his craft and his daring. Next we are to hear of him after his Trojan experience, this now theme will give the new poem, the Odyssey, which, however, is seen to interlink at many points with the Iliad.

But this is sufficient, night has come on, Telemachus has heard and beheld enough for one day. Helen disappears from the scene, she has contributed her share, her own selfhood, to the experience of the young man. Telemachus has seen Helen, and thus attained one supreme purpose of Greek education. Never can that face, beautiful still, yet stamped with all the vicissitudes of human destiny, pass out of his mind; never can that life of hers with its grand transformation pass out of his soul. The reader, too, has at this point to bid good-bye to Homer's Helen, the most lasting creation of a woman that has yet appeared upon our planet. A power she has, too, of continuous re-embodiment; every poet seeks to call her up afresh, that is, if he be a poet. It may be said that each age has some incarnation of Helen; the Greek myth for two thousand years, Medieval legend, even Teutonic folk-lore have caught up her spirit and incorporated it in new forms. The last great singer of the ages has in our own time, evoked her ghost once more in the shining palace of Menelaus at Sparta. Farewell, Helen, for this time, but we shall meet thee again; yesterday thou didst show thyself in a new book under a new garb, to-morrow thou art certain to appear in another. Thine is the power to re-create thyself in the soul of man with every epoch and in every country. Great is that discipline of Telemachus, which we still to-day have to seek: he has seen Helen.

3. The preceding story was the Heroic Tale, which goes back to the Past, especially to Troy, as the grand deed done by the united Hellenic race, whereof the Iliad is a sample. But now we enter a new field, and a new sort of composition, which, in default of a better name, we shall call the Fairy Tale. Helen is not now present, nor is her struggle the theme; Menelaus, the man, is to recount his experience in his return to Hellas.

The story is inspired by the desire of Telemachus to know about his father. As that father is not present the question arises, Where is he? Menelaus will undertake to answer the question by a tale which shadows forth the Distant and the Future—a prophetic tale, which casts its glance through the veil of Time and Space.

A mythical figure appears, Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, who is to foretell to the inquiring mortal what may be needful for his safety. Not an Olympian God is Proteus, yet a supernatural shape standing between man and deity and mediating the two, the human and the divine. For it is Proteus who sends Menelaus back to the Gods whom he has neglected and offended.

The Fairy Tale which we are now to consider, is not to be looked upon as an allegory; it is a story with incident, movement, character, all in their own right, and not for the sake of something else. But we must not, on this account, imagine that it has no thought; in fact, the Fairy Tale is just the way in which primitive peoples think. It has thought, often the profoundest thought, which darts through it, not steadily, but fitfully in flashes at the important links, like electric sparks. This thought we are to catch and hold, and not rest satisfied with the mere outer form of the story.

Persons we can always find who are strongly prepossessed against seeing any meaning in the Fairy Tale, or in the Mythus. Modern usage of these literary forms, doubtless, justifies such an opinion. Still we must remember that Homer was not playing, but thinking with his Fairy Tale; he had no technical terms, and almost no abstract language for expressing thought; the day of philosophic reflection had not yet dawned upon Greece. Homer has a great and deep thought to utter, but his utterance is and must be mythical. His problem, too, he has, and it is spiritual; the Mythus is his statement, honest, earnest, final. No, he was not playing at story-telling, though it must have given him pleasure; nor was his object merely to delight somebody, though he certainly has delighted many by his song. He was the true Poet, upholding his own worth and that of his vocation; he was loyal to the Muse whose word he must sing whether it find listeners or not. Homer built his legendary structure to live in, not to play in; with all his sportiveness, he is a deeply earnest man; if his Zeus sometimes takes on a comic mask, it is because Providence is a humorist. Homer, when he mythologizes, is thinking, thinking as profoundly as the philosopher, and both are seeking to utter to men the same fundamental thought. The reader is to think after the poet, if not in the immediate mythical form, then in the mediate, reflective way.

The present Tale seeks to give an answer to the two main questions of Telemachus: Where is my father now? And, Will he return home? To answer the one question requires a knowledge of what is distant in Space; to answer the other question requires a knowledge of what is distant in Time. Can we not see that herein is an attempt to rise out of that twofold prison of the spirit, Space and Time, into what is true in all places and times? In other words, Menelaus unfolds in a mythical form, the Universal to his young pupil, and we may now see in what manner he gives the lesson.

He leaps at once into the middle of his theme; he was in Egypt and detained there by the Gods, "though longing to return home." Such is the great initial fact, he did not do his duty to the Gods. Without their aid or without their adequate recognition, he seeks to come home. This indicates the spiritual difficulty; he is indifferent to or a disbeliever in the Divine. The Gods are the upholders of the world-order, they are the law and the spirit of the reality. Clearly Menelaus could not or did not fit himself into the providential system. Neglect of the Gods—that detains him, must detain him. The result is, he and his companions are wasting away on an island, without any chance of return.

The question of the hour is, How shall I get out of the difficulty? Only in one way: Acknowledge the Gods, put yourself into harmony with their order, then the outer world and the inner man will be one, and must bring about the deed, which is the return. We are now to witness the process whereby this reconciliation between man and the Gods takes place—surely the supreme matter in life. It is told in the form of the Fairy Tale or Marvelous Legend, which shifts and changes; we, however, must cling to the essence else it will escape us, Proteus himself we must hold fast, and not be misled by his many appearances.

Menelaus begins to feel sorrow, which is a penitent condition antecedent to all help. Moreover he wanders alone, he has gone apart from his companions; behold, the Goddess steps out of the air and speaks. She reproaches him with folly, and turns him to the deity who can assist him. Who is this Goddess?

It is Eidothea, the Goddess of Appearance, yet the daughter of Proteus, the old First One, to whom she directs Menelaus, as the only means of salvation. Mark how she designates Proteus: "he is the true, the immortal; without error, without death; he knows the depths of all the sea"—the great sea of Time and Space, which envelops the poor mortal. But he must be snared and held—surely not an easy task it is to catch him.

The etymology of the names of these two deities indicates their meaning and relation. The grand dualism of the world is clearly suggested: Appearance and Substance, the Transitory and the Eternal, that which seems and that which is. Menelaus had gone astray, he had neglected the Gods, he had followed Appearance, Delusion, Negation; the result could only be death. But even Appearance points to something beyond itself, something true and eternal. So Eidothea suggests Proteus, who is her parent; that is, she is the manifestation of his being. She is the many, he is the one underneath and in the many; she is change, he is the permanent in all change. He may well be designated as her father, whose transformations she knows and declares. These transformations are called his tricks or stratagems, the shapes he puts on in the world of Appearance; they are indeed Eidothea herself along with her voice telling what is higher than herself.

When this one first principle is clearly revealed, then all is revealed; the future becomes transparent, and the distant becomes near. But you must hold fast to the one true Proteus; he will turn to fire—hold fast; he will become running water—hold fast; he will change to tree, beast, reptile—hold fast. Then he will show himself in his right shape, and will speak the fact. Hold fast; the One is under all, and is a God, who will lift the veil of Space and Time from the visage of Truth. But unquestionably the man in his desperate struggle must never forget the injunction. Hold fast to old Proteus.

We must note, too, that the poet has shown Menelaus as prepared to receive this divine revelation; the Greek wanderer has been brought to contrition by manifold sufferings. "I surely must have sinned against the Immortals," is his penitent outcry. Thus he is ready for the new truth, and the voice of the Goddess speaks, when he is internally in condition to hear it. The divine word is not forced upon him; he must do his share even toward creating the same within himself. Now, along the shore of the sea, "he prays the Gods fervently," ere he goes to his task. Egyptian Proteus he seeks to catch and to hold, for it is Proteus who is to point out to him the way of reconciliation with Zeus and the Olympian Gods.

Stress is strongly laid by the poet upon the fact that Proteus is of Egypt. Evidently, in the mind of Homer, the thought of this Fourth Book connects with the land of the Nile. What hint lies in that? The highest wisdom of Egypt, indeed, of the Orient, is just this grand distinction between Appearance and Substance, the Transitory and the Eternal, the Many and the One. What Egypt gave to Hellas is here suggested, nay, said directly. In fact, the first great step in wisdom, is still to make the above distinction, which in many ways has been handed down to us from the East.

But the Greeks united the two sides—that which appears and that which is, or the world of sense, and the world of spirit—and thereby produced art, the plastic forms of Gods and Men. Hellas brought forth to the sunlight Beauty, which Egypt never could. Even here Egyptian Proteus leads Menelaus to the Greek Gods, and becomes himself a kind of antecedent Hellenic deity. Egypt means to Greek Menelaus two things: first, it is a land of error, of alienation, of darkness; secondly, it has its light, its wisdom, which, when he finds, points him homeward to Hellas, to his own Gods.

Deeply suggestive become all these mythical hints, when we once are in touch with their spirit. We naturally pass to the Hebrew parallel, since that other great world-historical people of antiquity, the Israelites, had their experience also with Egypt. For them, too, it was a land of darkness, slavery, divine estrangement. They also sought a Return, not dissimilar to the Greek Return, to their true home. It was a long, terrible time, a wandering not on the water, like the sea-faring Hellene, but in the wilderness and desert, like the sand-faring Semite. All the companions (but two) were lost, and the leader also; moreover that leader was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but had to get out of it and away from it, and lead his people into their own possessions. Much light Egypt with all its darkness furnished to Moses and Judea; much to Menelaus and to Hellas. So the two chief streams of human culture, the Greek and the Hebrew, are traced back to the Egyptian source in the earliest books, or Bibles of the two peoples themselves.

Moreover we find the form of the two grand experiences quite the same; there is a going into Egypt, the land of dazzling riches and power and civilization; there is the misfortune and trial in that land after a time of prosperity, finally, there is the Return home, with many wanderings and sufferings. Both peoples bring with them what may be called the Egyptian idea, yet each transforms it into its own spirit after its own fashion.

Still further we may follow this thought and behold it as universal. The form of separation and return is fundamental in human spirit; this is its inherent movement, and the shape which it imparts to the great works of literature. The very destiny of man is cast into this mould; there is, first, his estrangement, the fall from his high estate; then is his return to harmony with the divine order. The Hebrew Bible begins with the Fall of Man; that is the first chapter; the rest of the book is his rise, and marks out the path of his Return which, of course, shows many sinuosities. Such is the deepest fact of the human soul, and to image it, there springs into existence the corresponding literary form. Not that it was taken consciously by the poet or maker after much ratiocination; he has to take it, if he sees the universe as it is. This form is the form of the everlasting reality, of which he has the immediate vision, it is also the form of very selfhood, of the Ego.

Though different in many things, the Odyssey and the Bible are both, at bottom, Returns. They restore the man after alienation. Indeed we may behold the same form as fundamental in all Great Literary Books—in Homer, in Dante, in Shakespeare, in Goethe.

Many things connected with this catching and holding of Proteus are suggestive, but they are the flash of the poet into the depths, and must be seen with the poetic glance, for they bear with much loss the heavy translation into thought. How this Eidothea, the Goddess of Appearance, turns against her own father, and helps to make him reveal himself in his true shape; how Menelaus and his three comrades put on the skins of the sea-calves, and deceive the deceiver, applying the latter's art of transformation to himself, and destroying appearance with appearance; how the poor mortals almost perish through the odor of the skins of the sea-calves, thus showing their human weakness and limitation, till ambrosia, the food of the Immortals, is brought by the Goddess, which at once relieves them of their mortal ailment—these and other incidents have their subtle, far-reaching hint of the supersensible world. The whole story is illumined with one thought, how to master the material show of things and reach their spiritual inwardness.

But the chief duty of these people, now disguised to destroy disguise, is to hold the Old Man fast when they have once caught him, that shifty, ever-changing Old Man of the Sea. Let him turn to water, to a snake, to a lion, to a tree—hold him fast; he is the One under them all and will at last reveal himself. Very necessary, indeed, is it to hold fast, and never let go in the grand play of Appearances; the strength of the man is shown by his ability to hold fast, amid the fleeting shadows of Time.

Menelaus holds the Old Man fast, and asks: What God detains me from my return? The answer comes home strong: Thou hast neglected the sacrifice due to Zeus and the other deities; thou hast not recognized the Gods. Verily the heart of the difficulty; Menelaus has not placed himself in harmony with the divine order, in which he must act. What then? Go back to the beginning, back to Egypt, and start aright; commence thy return again with the new light, recognize Zeus and the Gods by sacrifice there, and thou shalt see home. Thus the Egyptian estrangement is removed, the Greek hero of wisdom must reach beyond the experience of Egypt and be restored to the Greek Gods.

At once Menelaus was ready to obey, though "his heart was broken" at the thought of recrossing the sea to Egypt, for the "way was long and difficult." Still he will do it; and next he is given a look into the Distant and Future, a glance into the soul of things separated from him by Space and Time. He will know concerning the Returners, in deep accord with the spirit of the poem. He hears of the awful death of Ajax, son of Oileus, he hears of the sad fate of his brother Agamemnon; also the Old Man of the Sea tells him a few words concerning Ulysses, who is still alive but cannot get away from the isle of Calypso. News just good enough to give hope to the son who is eagerly listening, and hears that his father still lives.

Finally, Menelaus learns of his own future existence from the Old Man, who is in person the very embodiment of what lies beyond the senses, of immortality. "The Gods have decreed thou shalt not die, O Menelaus, but shalt dwell in the Elysian Plain, at the ends of the earth." He is the husband of Helen, and coupled forever with her destiny; he is, through her, of the divine family of Zeus. Such is the promise, has it not been fulfilled?

The poet thus brings to an end his Fairy Tale, with its deep-reaching glances into Egypt as one of the antecedent sources of Hellenic civilization. We find therein hinted a double relation: first, Egypt was the giver of much wisdom to Greece especially the distinction into Appearance and the one First Principle; secondly, it was hostile to Greek spirit, which had to pass through the Egyptian stage to reach its own destiny. Homer spins, in this Book, a thread which connects the culture of Hellas with that of Egypt, So much we dare find in the present legend without much straining. The distant background of this entire visit of Telemachus to Sparta is Egyptian and Oriental, as we see from the talk of both Helen and Menelaus.

We may now be certain that Homer, the poet, had before him a thought of this kind: the inner soul of things and the outward manifestation. The story of Proteus we may call not merely a Fairy Tale, but the Fairy Tale, which images its universal self in setting forth its special theme; it has the one meaning, which, however, takes on many varieties of external shape; it is the essence of all Fairy Tales. Still you have to catch the Proteus and make him tell his secret; I can only advise you to hold fast, and finally the true form of the Old Man will reveal itself, and speak the truth of many appearances, nay, of all. In reading this poem of Homer we are only following the poet, if we seek to lay hold of its essence under its varied manifestations. The whole Odyssey is a Proteus, ever changing, assuming new forms, which will utterly bewilder the reader until he reaches its first principle. Homer probably suggests that his own Fairy Tale, nay, his own poem, is a Proteus, which must be grasped and held by the one central thought. In fact, does not the modern reader, like ancient Menelaus, in his wanderings need an Eidothea, an interpreter, to point out the Old Man of the Sea, the First One, and to tell how to catch him? In the very names of Proteus and Eidothea we feel the intention, the conscious etymology which borders on personification. Yet around this simple substrate of thought are woven so many wonders, so many suggestions, far-hinting and deep-glancing, that it becomes truly the Tale of Tales (Märchen aller Märchen).

The Fairy Tale will appear again in the Odyssey, and take possession of the whole poem for a time when we come to the wanderings of Ulysses. Now it is but a slight bubbling-up of what will be a great stream. At present it turns to the East and unfolds the Greek relation thereto; hereafter it will turn to the West, and unfold the Greek relation thereto. Both have their wise men, and the Return is from each direction to Greece. The distinction between them we may suggest in advance: the one has more of the speculative, of the spirit; the other has more of the active, of the will, though neither side excludes the other. Both men return to Hellas as the common destination; hence, we find in this Book everywhere expressed the intimate brotherhood between Menelaus and Ulysses.

It is of great interest to see the poet build his Fairy Tale, which is but one form of his mythical procedure. Instinctively he builds it, as the bee does the honey-cell. He places the God or Goddess at the center of every movement or event; by divine will it is all brought about. The sea which stands in the way of the return of Ulysses is a deity, Poseidon; Eidothea is a person, the voice of the world of Appearance, and she leads to Proteus, the Primal One. To Homer personality is at the heart of this universe. Such is truly the mythical mind; all phenomena are the product of an intelligent will, not of blind law. Not a long chain of cause and effect hovers before Homer's soul, thus his work would be prose; but he sees self-cause at once, and so cannot help being poetical, as well as religious. The culture of to-day tends too much to divest us of the mythical spirit—which is not altogether a gain. Homer, if rightly studied, will help restore that lost gift of the early ages.

But now we must turn our look to the youth for whom the tale has been told—the learner Telemachus. He hears of the Orient and its principle; the antecedents of his people, their origins, separations, their advance upon the older nations are significantly hinted. All this is an education. For its function is to bring together the scattered wisdom of the Past and to give it to the youth who is coming upon the stage of life; thus he is made the spiritual heir of all that his race has achieved in word and deed. Telemachus has learned about the history of Troy, the great event of the early Greek world; he has heard the Returns of the Heroes, and he has seen Helen. But, chiefly, he has been taught the grand distinction between Appearance and Substance; he has come to know, if he has learned his lesson, the One in the Many; he has been shown how to reach beyond the sensuous appearances of things and enter the realm of spirit. Such is still the best education to-day, though the manner of it be so different. There were no books in those days, no schools but the lips of the aged; every Greek youth, to a degree, was a Telemachus, and had a similar discipline. Tradition, song, folk-lore are also means of education; we cannot do without the mythus even now, and we are in many ways seeking to restore it to its place in the training of the child, and of the grown man too. Telemachus has graduated, he can now go home; so he asks to be permitted to depart for Ithaca, where the hardest practical problem of life is awaiting him. But mark, he carries with him the grandest of all hospitable presents: the knowledge of the true and eternal in contrast to the unreal and transitory.

In these four Books of the Odyssey the education of the Homeric youth has been given. Next we are to have the experiences of the man—those of the typical man Ulysses, as he works out his own problem. Menelaus could not tell that tale; the man himself must be seen doing, overcoming his obstacles by the deed. He will present a phase of life not known to the East, not known to Egyptian Proteus. Thus the Odyssey will be an entire book, a veritable Bible for young and old, with its complete cycle of human discipline.

The story of Proteus itself is Protean, and must be grasped in its essence through all its appearances. The whole Odyssey is veritably a Protean poem as already said, whose study is to seize the one truth which is underneath all these shifting shapes and manifold events. What are we doing now but trying to grasp Proteus in this exposition? There is no mythus in Homer which has wound itself so deeply and so variously into the literature of the world. It would be an interesting history to trace its employment by later poets, and see how it has mirrored itself in the consciousness of the ages. The last world-poet, Goethe, takes the figure of Proteus from his eldest brother, the first world-poet, and transplants it into the Second Part of Faust, where it has its place in the development of the modern man. The Mythus of Evolution the tale of Proteus becomes in Goethe's hands, and hints of Darwinism long before Darwin.

Still the most significant historical fact of this Fourth Book is the connection which it makes between Egypt and Greece. In another Greek legend, that of Œdipus, the same connection is made through the Sphinx, whose riddle the Greek hero solves, whereat the Egyptian monster destroys itself.

The Sphinx, the grand symbol of Egypt and chief product of its Art, may be taken as the Egyptian starting-point for both Greece and Judea. The Sphinx is half human, half animal; the two are put together in stone and thus stand a fixed, unreconciled contradiction. Such was just the Sphinx-riddle of humanity to the old Egyptian: man is a beast and a spirit, linked together without any true mediation. Both the Hebrew and the Greek sought to solve this grand riddle, each in his own way. The Hebrew attempted to extirpate the sensuous element; he would have no graven image, no idolatry, he would worship only the pure spirit, and obey only the divine law. The Greek reconciled the two sides, by making the sensuous element the bearer and the revealer of the spiritual. The animal must be subordinated to the spirit, then it can live, nay can have a new and higher existence. Thus Art arose in Greece, and not in Judea.

The interpretations which the story of Proteus has received are simply infinite. Probably it appeals to every reader in a somewhat different fashion; he pours into this marvelous form certain phases of his own experience and is satisfied. Indeed Proteus is not only a Form, but a Form of Forms for the human mind, hinting both the oneness and the multiplicity of the Ego itself. We may go back to the Vedas and find traces of it there in some sun-myth; we may go to the sea and find it a miraculous legend in which the Greek sailor set forth his perils and his escapes. It certainly connects Hellas with Egypt, and suggests the movement of ancient civilization. Menelaus in his voyage transcends the Greek world of the Trojan epoch, and brings back the story thereof to his country. The tale of Proteus is said to have been carried back to Egypt, where Herodotus, several hundred years after Homer, found it in a new transformation, Proteus being a king of Egypt, who took Helen from Paris and kept her till Menelaus arrived and received her from the Egyptian ruler. Thus the Fairy Tale raised the Old Man of the Sea to the royal dignity, changing sovereignty from water to land. (Herodotus, II. 112-20.) Plato makes him typical of a sophist, Schlegel of a poet, Lucian of a dancer.

We shall now take a glance backwards and give a short summary of the story, that its inner development in the hands of the poet may be more fully seen.

1. The desolation of Menelaus and his companions on the island of Pharos; no Return possible, death from hunger imminent. Moreover, disregard of the Gods, internal estrangement, a condition of separation from the Divine, truly an Egyptian condition.

2. Eidothea appears to him, just the Goddess of Appearance, and points him to a power beyond herself. Hitherto he was lost in the world of Appearance; but when he thinks of it, he separates himself from it, and sees its nullity. So the Finite points to the Infinite, the Fleeting to the Permanent, the Sensible to the Supersensible, Eidothea to Proteus, who is the First One, or the First Principle underlying all Appearance, hence her father.

3. She tells also how to catch him. When he emerges from the water, source of all Forms, indeed just the Formable (see Goethe's Faust, Part II. in the Classical Walpurgisnight), he will count by fives all his sea-calves, or sea-forms, offspring of the sea (Halosydna). This counting by fives, is significant, hinting the earliest abstraction from the sensuous through number, specially by means of the five-system, though Homer knew well the decimal system (see Od. XVI, 245. Iliad II. 126). Menelaus with his companions is to take on this sea-form, and be counted with the rest, though in disguise; then when Proteus lies down to sleep with his herds or Forms, he is to be seized; that is, seized in repose, as he is himself, not in relation to his shapes. They must continue to hold fast to this primal Form of Proteus, or the archetype, through all his changes, till he resumes his first shape, "the one in which thou sawest him in repose." Then they possess the Essence as distinct from the Phenomenon; they know that their disguise has torn off all disguise, and attained the real.

4. Proteus will now tell Menelaus the truth devoid of all delusive shows; ere the latter can leave Egypt and return to Greece he must put himself into harmony with the Greek Gods, Zeus and the rest. So he has to go back to Egypt's river and start over again in the right way. Then he will make the Return to Hellas.

5. Proteus also gives the fate of a number of Returners. Ajax he specially speaks about—Ajax, son of Oileus (not the greater Ajax), the blasphemer, who said he would return in spite of the Gods, and at once perished. The account of the death of Ajax has its meaning for Menelaus, who thought of getting home with paying due regard to the Gods. Once more Agamemnon's dire lot is told with some new incidents added. Thirdly Proteus has seen Ulysses in an ocean isle with the nymph Calypso who detains him though eager to get away. Thus the son hears the fact about his father. Finally Proteus prophesies the immortality of Menelaus, for has not the latter reached beyond Appearance into the Eternal already, just by catching and holding Proteus? So the Old Man of the Sea cannot help giving this prophecy, which lives directly in his own experience.

Though Telemachus is not told that his father is returning, still he may draw such an inference from the story of Menelaus, who was also detained on an island longing to get home. If the Gods, being duly recognized, will give their help in the one case, they will in the other; they too, will come to the aid of Ulysses, when he has placed himself in harmony with them. This is what is about to happen.

As already set forth, there are three divisions of this first part of the Fourth Book: the simple idyllic Present at Sparta, the disrupted strifeful Past at Troy, the movement out of the latter by way of Egypt. Taking the three divisions together, we note that they form the total sweep of one great Return, that of Menelaus, from unity through separation back to harmony. Thus Menelaus and also Helen are shown to have solved their problem.

But there remains the harder and deeper problem of Ithaca, which is that of Ulysses. Here enemies have possession of the man's home, and he brings back no help, only himself. It is therefore, a natural transition to introduce at this point the Ithacan condition which is seen to be more difficult than the Spartan one, for Menelaus seems to have had no enemies in his house to dispute his Return, as Agamemnon had and also Ulysses has. But Agamemnon perished, Ulysses will not.

II.

Accordingly the affairs of Ithaca are introduced, as they happened after the departure of Telemachus. This thread is picked up from the Second Book, where he had his final conference with the Suitors and told them his mind. We must recall that Ithaca is the abode of conflict and disorder; the Suitors and Household of Penelope are the two antagonistic elements; upon both the secret departure of Telemachus explodes like a bomb, and brings the characters of each side to the surface.

Telemachus stands in relation to the Suitors as well as to his mother; both are putting their restraints upon him which he has broken through and asserted his freedom, his new manhood. One, however, is the restraint of hate, the other is the restraint of love; both stand in the way of his development. He must get his great education in defiance of Suitors and of mother. The attitudes of these two parties are described, and form the two divisions of this second part of the Fourth Book.

1. The Suitors, when they hear of the deed of Telemachus, are not only surprised but startled, and they at once recognise that a new power has risen which threatens to punish their misdeeds. The youth has plainly become a man, a man showing the skill and courage of his father, and with the sense of wrong burning in his breast. Already he has declared that he would wreak vengeance upon them, the day of reckoning seems to have dawned. Previously they despised his warnings as the helpless babble of a mere boy; now they have to meet him, returning, possibly, with help from his father's friends.

What will the Suitors do? The most audacious one, Antinous, is ready with a proposal. The boy will prove a pest, we must waylay him on his return and murder him. Such is their final act of wrong, which is now accepted by all, and the proposer gets ready to carry out his plan. Hitherto it may be said the Suitors had a certain right, the right of suit, which, however, becomes doubtful through the uncertainty about the death of the husband, and through the unwillingness of the wife. But now their guilt is brought out in strong colors, there can be no question about it. They man a boat and lie in wait for their prey on a little island which the youth has to pass in coming home.

2. The mother Penelope hears of the daring act of her boy, done without her consent or knowledge. The news is brought to her, just as she is recounting the goodness of Ulysses and the wrongs of the Suitors. This new misfortune, for so it seemed to her, is quite too great a burden to bear; she breaks out into lamentations find recites her woes: a husband lost and now a son in the greatest danger. But she is to get both human and divine consolation. Eurycleia, the old nurse, confesses to her part in the affair, and advises the queen "to put on fresh garments and to pray to Pallas, ascending to the upper chamber."

Pallas sends to the distressed mother a refreshing sleep and a consoling dream, which we may consider to have been suggested by the words of Eurycleia. Her sister who dwelt far away, appears to her and says that her son, guided by Pallas, will surely return. Doubtless we see here an expression of the deepest instinct of Penelope; the outer suggestion of the nurse and her own unconscious faith fuse together and form the phantom and give to the same an utterance. The youth who can plan and carry out such an expedition will probably be able to take care of himself. Penelope of course has some doubt, since the good Ulysses has had to suffer so much from the Gods. About him, too, she will know and so inquires of the phantom. Doth he live? But the shadowy image can tell nothing, the act of Ulysses lies not in its field of vision, it declines to speak further and vanishes.

Thus Telemachus has broken through the two restraints which held him in bondage at his Ithacan home, both keeping down his manly endeavor. The first comes from the Suitors and is the restraint of hate, which would give him no opportunity in the world of action, and in addition is destroying his possessions. The second restraint springs from love, and yet is injurious. The solicitude of the mother keeps him back from every enterprise; having lost her husband, as she deems, by his too adventuresome spirit, she is afraid of losing her boy for the same reason, and is in danger of losing him anyhow, by making him a cipher. Such are the two obstacles in Ithaca which Telemachus is shown surmounting and asserting therein his freedom and manhood. The whole is a flash of his father's mettle, he is already the unconscious Ulysses; no wonder that he inquires after his parent in Pylos and Sparta. The poet will now carry him forward to the point where he will actually meet and know Ulysses himself; the son is to advance to direct communion with his great father.

Here the Fourth Book, or rather the Telemachiad, reaches out and connects with the Ithakeiad, which begins in the Thirteenth Book. Ulysses returns to Ithaca and steals to the hut of the swineherd Eumæus; Telemachus comes back from Sparta, and, avoiding the ambush of the Suitors, seeks the same faithful servant. Thus father and son are brought together, and prepare themselves for their heroic task.

But before this task can be accomplished, the grand experience of Ulysses is to be told in the eight following Books (V-XII); that is, we are now to have the Ulyssiad, just as we have had the Telemachiad. Father and son are now separated from home and country; both are to return through a common deed of heroism.

General Observations. Looking back at the Telemachiad (the first four Books) we observe that it constitutes a very distinct member of the total organism of the Odyssey. So distinct is it that some expositors have held that it is a separate poem, not an integral portion of the entire action. The joint is, indeed, plain at this place, still it is a joint of the poetic body, and not a whole poetic body by itself. Only too easy is it for our thought to dwell in division, separation, scission, analysis; let us now turn to the opposite and more difficult habit of mind, that of uniting, harmonizing, making the synthesis of what seems disjointed. In other words let us find the bonds of connection between the last four Books and the coming eight Books, or between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad.

1. We have already noticed the three grand Returns, rising one above the other to the culmination—that of Nestor, of Menelaus, of Ulysses. Now the first two are told in the Telemachiad; but they openly lead up to the third, which is the complete Return, and which is just the theme of the Ulyssiad. Nestor makes the immediate Return, without conflict, through Greece, but he points directly to Menelaus, and foreshadows the coming of Ulysses. Menelaus, however, prophesies the third Return, and thus directly joins his account with the Ulyssiad. In this manner we see and feel the intimate bond between these two grand divisions of the total Odyssey.

2. We notice the same general movement in the Telemachiad and in the Ulyssiad; the same fundamental scheme underlies both. There is the real Present, in the one case Ithaca, Pylos, Sparta, in the other ease Phæacia; then there is in the same heroic Past the Trojan war and its deeds of valor; thirdly there is a movement in both to an ideal world, to a Fableland, outside of Hellas and beyond even Troy; finally there is a Return in both to Greece and to the Present. Setting the stages of this movement down in definite numbers, we have, first in the Telemachiad: (1) Hellas, the Present; (2) back to Troy, the Past, in the reminiscences of Nestor, Menelaus, Helen; (3) forward to the Fairy World in the account of Proteus; (4) return to Ithaca at the end of the Fourth Book. Secondly in the Ulyssiad we may here note in advance the same general movement: (1) Phæacia, the Present; (2) back to Troy in the strains of Demodocus; (3) forward to the Fairy World of Polyphemus and Circe; (4) return to Ithaca in the Thirteenth Book. Thus we reach down and grasp the fundamental norm according to which the poet wrought, and which holds in unity all the differences between these two divisions of the poem. The spiritual basis of this movement, its psychological ground, we shall endeavor to unfold more fully hereafter.

3. In correspondence with the preceding, we can distinguish in both divisions the same kinds of style: (1) the symple Idyllic Tale of the Present; (2) the Heroic Tale recounting the Past and specially the Trojan war; (3) the Fairy Tale which introduces a supernatural realm. Each of these styles is poetic, yet with its own coloring and character. Here again we should observe the author employing his fundamental norm of composition a second time, and thus re-asserting himself as the same person in both divisions of the poem—in the Telemachiad as well as in the Ulyssiad.

4. In each division, again, there is a supreme woman at the center of domestic life—Penelope in the one, Arete in the other, each being wife and mother, each supremely faithful to her institution, the Family. This predominance and glorification of the married woman and the home constitute a common characteristic of both divisions, and show the same fundamental conception of her worth, as well as of her position in the social order. It may be doubted if Modern Literature has improved upon this Homeric representation.

5. Then the contrasts between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad link them together. Disturbed Ithaca, peaceful Phæacia; the theoretic education of the son, the practical discipline of the father; Telemachus, the son of his father, Nausicaa, the daughter of her mother, the Ithacan boy and the Phæacian girl—such are a few of these contrasts. Finally father and son, strongly contrasted, yet having their unity in this family of which they are members, suggest the unity of the poem of which they are characters.

These bonds of connection are so strong that they overbalance all discrepancies of single passages, interpolations, and inconsistencies of detail. Still, if the mind of the critic refuses the general sweep, and insists upon prying asunder the joints, and upon looking through its microscope at the little things, it will find only separation, discord, and many small Homers instead of a single great Homer. The particular always divides, but the general unites; so the Homeric poems will have two sets of reader, the dividers and the unifiers.

The Education of Telemachus. This is another name, which we have frequently used, for the Telemachiad. The Homeric youth is also to get his training for life; he is to find and to take possession of his inheritance transmitted from the Past. The general statement of this educational fact occurs frequently in the work: Telemachus wishes to know about his father. That is his immediate inquiry, which will extend to knowing something about the fathers and what they did; then his investigation will go beyond the fathers and the Greek world, reaching over into Egypt and the East. The function of education is to put into possession of the coming man the wisdom of the Past, and specially the means for acquiring this wisdom; then he can transmit the intelligence of the race to those who are to follow him. So Telemachus has attained the age when he must know ancestral wisdom. Such is his strong instinct, he feels his limitation, he is penned up in a narrow life at Ithaca, whose barriers cramp his free spirit. This intense desire for education, for finding out something about the world in which he is placed, is the starting point for the boy. He shows his spirit by breaking through the restraint of the Suitors and his mother in order to get an education. Like many a youth to-day, he has to leave home, has to run away, in fact, that he may have his opportunity. What does he get? Or, what is the content of this education! Let us see.

1. We find that he gets a fair amount of religious training. He has been led through the misfortunes of his House to question the goodness of Providence and the superintendence of the Gods. But Minerva gives him a strong lesson, so does Nestor. He obtains a glimpse of the Divine Order, and feels the necessity of keeping in harmony with the same. The outcome of his visit must impress him with the providential side in human action.

2. He sees new countries, talks with famous men, and partakes of their wisdom. Chiefly, however, he hears of the grand Return in its manifold phases; he learns the story of those who failed, of those who reached home, like Nestor and Menelaus. Great is the lesson; this Return images the movement of the soul, the breach within and the restoration. It is remotely his own inner life outlined, and that of every man; Telemachus has just made a separation from home and country, to which he must come back and be reconciled. His own soul-form he must dimly feel in the great Return of the Heroes from Troy, and their various destinies he must recognize to be his own possibilities.

3. Telemachus the aspiring youth, is trying to recover his patrimony, which is of two kinds, physical and spiritual. The Suitors are destroying the one, and keeping it out of his hands; with them is one conflict, that of justice. But he must also inherit his father's mental riches; he has to separate from home and his mother to find this form of wealth or even to learn of its nature. So Telemachus has his Trojan expedition, not so great in itself, yet, adventurous enough for a boy. He is moving on the lines of his father when the latter went to Troy—a national affair; but his deed is a breaking loose from boyhood—the breach out of which he is to come back a man.

4. The form of this educative process of the Odyssey is very different from ours. It seizes hold of the mythical element in man, and the reader of to-day is to penetrate to the meaning by something of an effort. Telemachus is to see Helen; what does that signify in education? He is to hear the Tale of Proteus and feel its purport in relation to his own discipline. One asks: Is not this imaginative form still a vital element of education? The Odyssey has been and is now a school-book of the race.

THE ULYSSIAD.

We have now reached the second grand division of the poem, the Odyssey proper, which we have named under necessity the Ulyssiad, and which gives an account of the adventures of Ulysses before he comes to Ithaca and joins Telemachus. If the division which we have just had may be called the education of a youth, this division may be called the discipline of a man through experience of the world. The whole embraces eight Books, fifth to twelfth inclusive, with a little of the thirteenth. There is no doubt that this is the most subtly constructed piece of writing in existence, transparent in the highest degree, and yet profound as thought itself. We may therefore, look a little at the structure in advance.

The first thing to be noticed is that there are two very distinct movements in the present division. On the one hand the action moves through three separate localities—Ogygia or Calypso's Island, Phæacia, Fableland. This external movement of the poem has its inner counterpart, which the reader is to penetrate. On the other hand there is the movement of the individual, the Hero Ulysses, who begins with Fableland, passes through Ogygia and comes to Phæacia. This movement also has its corresponding internal significance. As the first movement is that of the poem, or of the world, we may call it objective; as the second movement is that of the individual man, we may call it subjective. The two together, accordingly, spin the two strands of the world and of man into the one thread of existence. Both we shall consider.

I.

The objective sweep with its three localities is coupled with geographical names which have given to the erudite guild a great deal of trouble, with very small reward. In general these names of places may be deemed to be mythical, yet with certain far-off gleams of actual lands. Much more distinct and real is their spiritual significance. The objective movement shadows forth the movement of society, the rise of civilization, the becoming of the institutional world, which is here unfolded through three stages in the following order:—

• 1. Ogygia.
• 2. Phæacia.
• 3. Fableland.

1. Ogygia is the pure product of nature without cultivation or with very little. It is the place where the natural man must conquer his appetites, and long for, and finally seek for, a realm of order. Calypso is the concealer, she who conceals spirit in the jungle of nature. Here, then, occurs the primordial breach between the physical and spiritual, out of which an institutional world can rise.

2. Phæacia now appears, in which we behold the fundamental institutions of man, Family and State, in their primitive idyllic condition, yet transcendently pure and beautiful. The evolution of this new order from the savage Cyclops is hinted in the poem. Only after Calypso is put aside, do Arete the wife and Nausicaa the maid become possible. Upon such a foundation a social system can be developed, with commerce, navigation, etc. Still further, Phæacia can begin to mirror itself in art, as it does here in the songs of the bard, and also in games.

3. Fableland comes next, really a product of self-conscious art. In it are set forth the struggles which arise between man and the civilized order. Phæacia is the simple condition of peace; man is in complete harmony with himself and his institutional environment. But what if he falls out with both? That will be a new stage, represented by a new set of beings, who are to indicate not so much the conflict with nature as the conflict with spirit. The world of reality is transcended, marvelous shapes sweep into view, Polyphemus, Circe, the Sirens, even the supersensible realm of Hades—all of which, however, must await a special exposition. Still we should note that after this ideal realm of struggle and desperate enterprise comes the real world of strife, Ithaca, which is to be harmonized by the man who has passed through this Fableland, and has reached an ideal harmony in Phæacia.

II.

We soon find that Ulysses has been thrown back to Calypso's Isle from Fableland, of which in a certain sense it is the continuation. The circle which he has passed through is, therefore, the following:—

• 1. Fableland.
• 2. Ogygia.
• 3. Phæacia.

This is, then, the movement of the individual, in contrast with the previous sweep of the poem as a whole, which represents the movement of the world. Both are bound together, both pass through the same stages, though in a different order. The process of social development begins with the state of Nature, with Ogygia, unfolds into a simple institutional life, into Phæacia, which then enters into certain negative phases, such as are seen in Fableland. But the man from Troy, Ulysses, begins with the last, and is whelmed back into the first, and finally rests in the second before going to Ithaca. Let us note this personal movement in a little more detail.

1. Ulysses passes into Fableland, having wantonly done a deed of violence against civilized life and order by destroying the city of the Ciconians (Book IX), as he was returning from the Trojan War. Such is the negative element in him, which has been engendered by that war, and which now appears in various manifestations, such as his doings with Polyphemus and Circe, till his career in Fableland winds up with destroying the Oxen of the Sun. This is the extreme negative act which throws him back beyond Circe's into Calypso's realm. He assaults really his own will in this last act, he undermines his own power of recovery, he puts out his own light. Circe would have sent him forward again, leaving intact his will-power; Calypso detains him lulled in the sensuous delights of her bower. He denies his own reason; how then can he rise after a fall? Indeed what use is there of rising? So he sinks down into Ogygia, the Dark Island.

2. It is no wonder, therefore, that he remained with Calypso seven years and more, draining to the dregs the cup of that life. Still he has desire to return home, must have it, he must possess reason to deny reason. He longs for what he has not, sensuous charms cannot drown his aspiration; such is the Hell in which he has placed himself. Still even here when he has passed his probation, he must be released by a decree of the Gods, who, formerly favorable to Neptune, the divine foe of Ulysses, have now become friendly to Minerva, the Hero's protectress. Why this change in the everlasting powers? When Ulysses is ready to leave Ogygia, the Gods cannot keep him there, they have to change; the divine Order must help him escape, if it be divine. This is just what happens; Zeus, voice of the Olympian law, commands his departure, and Calypso must obey.

3. Ulysses, then, comes to Phæacia, an institutional land with social, domestic, and political life. From the grot of Calypso he passes to the home of Arete; both woman and man are in an ethical relation. He sees a world of peace and harmony, he witnesses the corrective of his own negative Trojan experience. He, having taken Phæacia into himself, has a remedy for distracted Ithaca; he has beheld an ideal to which he can adjust his own land. He was not the man to bring civil order to Ithaca just after the destruction of Troy; now he has passed through his own destructive phases, has become conscious of them, has told them to the Phæacians, which long account has in it the character of a confession. All is given in a mythical form, but it is none the less an acknowledgment of error from first to last. He is the poetical confessor of himself, and the Phæacians are contemplating the grand experience in the mirror of art.

We may now see the reason why the poet began the story of Ulysses with the stay at Calypso's Isle. Thus the poem unfolds in the order of society, starting with the state of nature, passing thence to a civilized condition, and showing finally the conflicts of the same with the negative forces which develop in its own bosom. Homer could have landed Ulysses at Phæacia, and could have made the Ulyssiad start in that sphere, placing Calypso's Book just after the account of the slaughter of the Oxen of the Sun. But what a loss would that have been! No social development would thus be suggested in the movement of the poem, and the individual Ulysses would have to pass, not from institutional Phæacia, but from savage Ogygia to the reformation of Ithaca. In this way we realize to ourselves the true instinct, or perchance the profound thought which underlies the structure of this portion of the poem.

Thus we conceive the double movement of the Ulyssiad through its three main stages, in which we feel strongly emphasized the idea of development, of a genetic process. These lands and peoples are generated by the wanderer's own spirit, though they all exist in their own right and are carefully set down in Homeric geography. Ogygia is the product of Ulysses himself, and so he goes thither to the reality. The misfortunes in these lands are the very deeds of the offenders returning upon them. As the Gods are both subjective and objective, so are these poetic places and persons; they are both in Ulysses and outside of him, they are the inner change of the individual and the outer development of the world. Each, however, fits into the other, is inseparably intertwined with the other; both together form the double movement which is the fundamental structural fact of the present division of the Odyssey.

Of course our unfolding of the subject must follow the movement of the poem, but we shall not neglect the movement of the individual. Accordingly Calypso's Island, Ogygia, is the realm which is to be first considered.

BOOK FIFTH.

In this Book the reader will observe two distinct parts, which are so often found in Homer and constitute the deepest distinction in his poems: these two parts are the Upper World of the Gods and the Lower World of Man, both of which are shown in action and counteraction. The grand dualism between the mortal and the immortal is fused into a living narrative and makes the warp and woof of Homeric poesy. The general purport of both parts is seen to be the same at bottom: it is to remove the obstacles which stand in the way of the Return of Ulysses to home and country. These obstacles arise from the Gods above and from Nature below—the divine and the physical, though the latter also is presided over by deities. Thus the Greek hero, with the aid of the higher Gods, is to put down the lower ones, or convert them into aids for his advancement towards the grand end, which is his institutional life in Family and State. In this way only can Ulysses, from his alienation, attain unto harmony with himself and with the Divine Order.

The first part of the Book gives the Council of the Gods and its consequences reaching down to the mortal who is the subject of deliberation. We shall note three stages in this movement from Olympus to Earth: (1) Zeus to Hermes, (2) Hermes to Calypso, (3) Calypso to Ulysses. Thus from the highest the decree is brought below and opens the providential way.

The second part deals with the mortal, who is brought into relation with three Gods, all representing phases of the physical element of water: (1) Neptune, the great deity of the sea, (2) Ino Leucothea, a lesser deity of the same, (3) the River-God, through whose channel Ulysses comes at last to land. It is manifest that he must rise beyond these water-divinities with their uncertain fluctuating element, and attain to the fixed earth with its life, ere he can find repose. We shall now develop these two parts of the Book with their subdivisions in the order stated above.

I.

First then is the divine obstacle, which has to be removed by the Gods in Homer, when the individual is ready to have it removed. This obstacle is at present centered in the Goddess Calypso, the marvelous concealer and extinguisher of the Hero in her island Ogygia. Neptune is not here spoken of, though his element, the sea, is mentioned as something which must also be met and transcended; the Hero through his own will can surmount this difficulty. Verily Calypso is the grand spiritual hindrance of Ulysses, and, to help him get rid of it, the Olympians assemble and start the movement, the conditions being that he is internally prepared to be helped by the Gods. Of the latter fact we shall note a number of indications hereafter.

Of this divine activity in removing the first obstacle we may distinguish three phases:—

1. The council of the Gods on Olympus under the presidency of Zeus, and the decree there.

2. Hermes is sent by the supreme deity to Calypso, with the decree.

3. Calypso imparts the decree to Ulysses, who soon sets about doing his part.

In this brief outline we see the descent of the divine influence from Zeus the Highest, through Hermes messenger of the Gods, to Calypso, a local subordinate deity, down to the mortal Ulysses who is to get the benefit thereof. Thus the poet makes his world-order ready for the deed of the man, who is now to act with all the energy of his being, and not lie back expecting the Gods to do everything for him. Such is the situation between the divine and human sides, of which we shall elaborate the former a little more fully.

1. The council of the Gods in which the matter is now discussed, seems somewhat like a repetition of the one at the beginning of the First Book, which indeed starts the whole poem. At present we may suppose that the poet wishes to recall that first council and its decree to the mind of the reader, inasmuch as the latter is now to begin the second grand division of the poem, the Odyssey proper, or Return of Ulysses.

Pallas takes up the complaint and arraigns Providence on an ethical ground: the good king is forgotten and the good man suffers. To the face of the Supreme Ruler she draws the conclusion: "Let not any sceptered king henceforth be kind to his people and recognize justice, but always let him be harsh and work unrighteousness." Then she cites the unhappy lot of Ulysses. But Zeus throws the charge back upon Pallas, for she already had laid the divine plan that Ulysses was to take vengeance on wrong-doing suitors, and Telemachus she could save "by her skill," if so she chose. Here Pallas again hints as she did in the First Book, the two lines on which the poem moves (Telemachus and Ulysses), and she also notes the two present obstacles (Calypso and the sea) in the way of the Return of Ulysses.

The divine activity begins work at once: Zeus sends Hermes to Calypso with the Olympian decree. Ulysses, however, is to reach home "without any escort of the Gods or of mortal men;" that is, he must exercise his own free-will tremendously, there is to be no special intervention of the Gods without the corresponding human effort. Note this passage as indicating the consciousness of the poet respecting divine help; it is not to take the place of free agency, but to complement the same. The Hero will have to sail on a raft, "suffering evils;" but he will reach "the land of the Phæacians, near of kin to the Gods," where he will be "honored as a God," and will be sent home with abounding wealth, "more than he would ever have received at Troy, returning unharmed with his share of the booty." Such is the promise of the world-governor to the self-reliant man; this promise is not fate but foresight on the part of the Supreme God. "Thus is the Hero destined to see again his friends," namely by means of a small raft or float, which he alone must control in his own strength, without the help of God or man. Such is the reward of heroic endeavor, proclaimed by Zeus himself.

2. The messenger Hermes begins his flight down to Calypso, holding his magic wand, with which he puts men to sleep or wakens them, imparting the power of vision or taking it away. He reaches the wonderful island with its grot, the account of which has been a master-stroke in literature, and shows that the description of nature was not alien to the Greek poet, though he rarely indulges in it. One thinks that the passage contains a suggestion of much modern writing of the kind.

It is to be noted that this island is mostly a wild product, it has had very little training from its resident. A natural house and garden we see it to be in the main; the senses, especially sight and smell, are gratified immediately by physical objects. There is little indication of Art, possibly a beginning in the singing and weaving; rude nature may have been transformed somewhat in the four fountains and in the trailing grape-vine. But this description is not made for its own sake, as are many modern descriptions of nature; the whole is the true environment for Calypso, and suggests her character.

Her name means the concealer, concealed herself in that lone sea-closed island, and concealing others. Undeveloped she is, like nature, yet beautiful; sunken still in the life of the senses, she dwells in her little paradise without any inner scission. But it must be recollected that Ulysses is not native to the island, he has come or rather fallen hither, from a higher condition. He, therefore, has the scission in himself, he longs to leave and be restored out of this realm of mere nature.

With such a longing the Gods must coincide, for they are the Gods of culture, of the rise out of the physical. The long Journey of Hermes hints the distance between Olympus and Calypso's isle—a distance which has its spiritual counterpart. The command of the Olympians is borne to this lower Goddess; Hermes is the voice of the higher ethical divinity to the lower one of mere nature. But even the higher God has his physical counterpart, is not yet wholly a spirit; so Hermes eats his ambrosia and drinks his nectar set before him by Calypso in true Greek fashion and misses the smoke of sacrifices along his barren route.

It is curious to see how Hermes plays with polytheism, hinting ever so slyly the contradiction in the Greek Pantheon. "Why dost thou a God ask me a God why I come?" It is indeed an absurd question, for a God ought to know in advance. In numerous places we can trace a subtle Homeric humor which crops out in dealing with his many deities, indicating a start toward their dissolution. Then with a strong assertion of the supremacy of one God, Zeus, Hermes utters the unwilling word: Ulysses must depart from this island.

The answer of Calypso is significant, she charges the Gods with jealousy; "Ye grudge the Goddesses openly to mate with men," which proposition she nails by several examples. But the Gods reserve to themselves the privilege of license with mortal women. A complaint still heard, not in the Olympian but in our Lower World; men are not held to the same code of morals that women are! But Calypso yields up her lover whom she "thought to make immortal and ageless." What else can she do? It is true that she saved him once and has preserved him till the present; she is, however, but a stage which must now be transcended. Appetite may preserve man, still he is to rise above appetite.

3. Now Ulysses is brought before us. The first fact about him is, his intense longing to return home; he is found "sitting on the shore, and his eyes were never dry of tears" as he looked out on the sea toward his country; "for the nymph was no longer pleasing to him," whatever may have been the case once. Surely the hero is in bonds which he cannot break, though he would; a penitential strand we may well find in his sorrow; thus he is ready for release.

Calypso, therefore, announces to him the divine plan: he must make a raft and commit himself to the waters. She has to obey, for is she not really conquered by Ulysses? Certainly the divine order requires her to send the man away from her island. Yet the return is by no means made easy, but is to be won by hardest effort; he must grapple with the waves, with angry Neptune after leaving Calypso. No wonder that Ulysses shuddered at the proposition; truly he has the choice between the devil and the deep sea, and he manfully chooses the latter. First, however, the Goddess has to take the great oath "by Earth, by Heaven above and Styx below," the sum total of the physical universe, from whose presence the perjurer cannot escape, though a God, that she is not practicing any hidden guile against her much-desired guest. Always the doubter, the skeptic Ulysses will show himself, even toward a divinity. He must test the Gods also, as well as man. Very beautiful and humane is the answer of the Goddess: "Such things I plan and deliberate for thee as I would devise for myself, were I in so great straits. For I too have a righteous mind, and the heart within my breast is not of iron, but compassionate."

Has a change come over the Goddess through this visit from Olympus? Hardly could she have felt this before, else she would have sent away Ulysses of her own accord. Her adjustment to the divine decree seems now to be internal, and not simply a yielding to an external power. Still the separation costs her deep pangs, and she wonders how Ulysses, a mortal, can give her up, who is immortal, with all her beauty and the pleasures of her paradise.

The answer of Ulysses reveals the man in his present stale of mind. He recognizes Calypso as beautiful, deathless, ever young; still he must have something more than sensuous life and beauty; though it last forever, it can never satisfy. Not to be compared with the Goddess in grace and stature, is his wife Penelope, still he longs for his home; "yea, though some God wreck me on the wine-dark deep, I shall endure." But there is no doubt the other side is also present in Ulysses; he has within himself a strong sensuous nature with which is the battle, and the poem does not disguise the matter, for he is again ready to enjoy all the pleasures of Calypso's bower, after this paroxysm of home-sickness.

Such is the deep struggle of the man; such is also the divine obstacle, which has to be removed by an Olympian interference before he can return. We see that Ulysses in spite of all blandishments of the Goddess and momentary weakness of himself, was ready for its removal; in his heart he has overcome Calypso, and wishes to get back to his institutional life in Family and State. Such a man must return, the Gods must be on his side, else they are not Gods. According to the Greek conception, Calypso is a subordinate deity who must be put down by the Olympians; appetite is not a devil, but a lower good, which must be adjusted to the higher. Note, then, that the external stream, or the world-movement represented by the Gods, now unites with the internal stream, the spirit of the individual, and brings forth the great event. As stated often before, these two streams run through all Homeric poetry.

Ulysses now makes his raft; the hero is also a ship-builder, being the self-sufficient man, equal to any emergency, in whom lie all possibilities. The boat, still quite primitive, is constructed before our eyes; It is the weapon for conquering Neptune, and prophesies navigation. Calypso aids him in every way, she even supplies him with tools, the axe, the adze, the augur, which imply a more advanced state of civilization than has hitherto appeared in the Dark Island. Whence did she obtain them? No special answer is given; hence we are thrown back upon a general answer. Calypso is the original wild state of nature; but her transformation has begun, she helps Ulysses in her new character. These tools are themselves formed from nature into means for subduing nature; the instrument of bronze in the hands of the wood-cutter is the master of the tree. At present Calypso is also such an instrument; she, the wild product of nature, is herself transformed into a means for helping Ulysses conquer the mighty physical element before him; an implement she has become in the hand of the Gods for restoring the heroic endurer, and hence she can emblematically hand him these material implements, for they are one with her present spirit. Indeed we may carry the analogy one step further, turning it inwardly: Calypso, though once the inciter to sensuous desire, now helps the man put it away and flee from it; ethically she is converted into an instrument against her former self. In like manner nature is turned against nature by the thinking artificer.

Also food and drink and raiment the Island Goddess furnishes for the voyage; with rare skill she tells him how to direct his course by the stars; she is mistress over the winds, it seems, for she sends the right one to blow. Wonderful indeed is the change; all those forces of nature, formerly so hostile, have been transformed into helpers, Calypso herself being also transformed. Thus we catch the outlines of the Fairy Tale or marvelous story, which tells, in a supernatural way, of man's mastery of the physical world, once so destructive, now so obedient.

Cloth for his sails she brought him, but we must recollect that she was a weaver at the start of the story. At last Ulysses pushes his raft down into the fair salt sea; Ogygia, the place of nature's luxuriance and delight, is left behind; he must quit the natural state, however paradisaical, and pass to the social order, to Ithaca, though the latter be poor and rocky. Still we may well recall the fact that the island and Calypso once saved Ulysses, when wrecked elsewhere, on account of the slaughter done to the Oxen of the Sun; this wild spot furnished him natural shelter, food, gratification; nay, it gave him love.

To be sure, the other side is not to be forgotten: it had to be transcended, when it kept him away from the higher institutional life. Ulysses, the wonderful, limit-transcending spirit, unfolds within even while caught in this wild jungle; he evolves out of it, as man has evolved out of it, thus he hints the movement of his race, which has to quit a cave-life and a mere sensuous existence. Such is the decree of the Gods, for all time: the man must abandon Calypso, who is herself to be transformed into an instrument of his progress.

We may now begin to see what Calypso means, in outline at least. The difficulty of comprehending her lies in her twofold character: at one time she is nature, then she is the helper against nature. But just therein is her movement, her development. She is Goddess of this Island, where she rules; but she is a lesser deity who has to be subordinated to the Olympians, as nature must be put under spirit. The Greek deified nature, not being able to diabolize it; still he knew that it must be ruled and transmuted by mind. Thus Calypso is a Goddess, inferior, confined to one locality, but having sensuous beauty as nature has. She, without ethical content, as purely physical, stands in the way of institutions, notably the Family; she seduces the man, and holds him by his senses, by his passion, till he rise out of her sway. On this side her significance is plain: she is the female principle which stands between Ulysses and his wedded wife, she not being wedded. Thus she is an embodiment of nature, from the external landscape in which she is set, to internal impulse, to the element of sex. So it comes that she is represented as a beautiful woman, but beauty without its ethical content can no longer chain Ulysses. That charm is broken, in spite of passing relapses.

Then comes the other side of Calypso's character, as already indicated: she changes, she turns and helps Ulysses put down herself and get away from her world, furnishing him quite all the means for his voyage. Not without a certain regret and parting display of her charms does she do this; still the change is real, and at the last stage we must imagine a Calypso transformed or partially so.

The enchantress on her magic island is a favorite theme with the Fairy Tale, and the situation in itself rouses curiosity and wonder. The bit of land floating on the sea in appearance, yet withstanding wave and tempest, is, to the sailor, the home of supernatural beings. The story of Calypso has the tinge of nautical fancy. In like manner the story of Robinson Crusoe is that of a sea-faring people. We see in it the ship-wrecked man, the lone island, the struggle with nature for food and shelter. But Defoe has no supernatural realm playing into his narrative—no beautiful nymph, no Olympian Gods. That twofold Homeric conception of an Upper and Lower World, of a human and divine element in the great experience, is lost; the Englishman is practical, realistic, utilitarian even in his pious observations, which he flings into his text from the outside at given intervals.

Ogygia, the abode of Calypso, means the Dark Island, upon which Ulysses is cast after the destruction of the Oxen of the Sun. Calypso, in harmony with the name of her abode, signifies the concealer—and that is what has happened to Ulysses, his light is hidden. She is the daughter of Atlas, who has two mental traits assigned to him; he is evil-minded and he knows all the depths of the sea. A demonic being endowed with his dark knowledge of things out of sight; he has a third trait also, "he upholds of himself the long pillars which keep Heaven and Earth apart" (Book I. 53). Naturally under such a burden he is not in good humor. Calypso is the daughter who, along with her grot, may be conceived to have risen out of the obscure depths of the sea, with something of her father's disposition. Doubtless Greek sailors could behold in her image the dangerous rocks which lurked unseen beneath the waters around her island. The comparative mythologist finds in her tale the clouds obscuring or concealing the Sun (here Ulysses) till the luminary breaks out of his concealment and shines in native glory. Something of truth lies in these various views, but the fundamental meaning is not physical, but ethical.

II.

We now come to the great physical obstacle standing in the way of the Return of Ulysses, the sea, which, however, has always its divine side to the Greek mind. A series of water-deities will rise before us out of this mighty element, assuming various attitudes toward the solitary voyager. Three of them, showing themselves as hostile (Neptune), as helpful (Ino Leucothea), as saving (the River-God); all three too seem in a kind of gradation, from the vast total sea, through one of its phases, to the small stream pouring into the sea from the land. Thus the Greek imagination, playing with water, deified the various appearances thereof, specially in their relation to man. The introduction of these three marine divinities naturally organizes this second part of the Fifth Book into three phases or stages. Such is the divine side now to be witnessed.

Parallel to this runs the human side, represented by the lone hero Ulysses, who is passing through a fearful ordeal of danger with its attendant emotions of anxiety, terror, hope, despair. A very hard test is surely here applied to weak mortal flesh. We shall observe that he passes through a series of mental perturbations at each divine appearance; he runs up and down a scale of doubt, complaint, resolution. His weakness he will show, yet also his strength; dubitation yet faith; he will hesitate, yet finally act. Thus he saves himself at last through his own will, yet certainly with the help of the Gods; for both sides have to co-operate to bring about the heroic act of his deliverance.

Pallas also comes to the aid of her favorite, but in an indirect manner. The sea does not seem to be her element. She stops the winds and "informs his mind with forecast," but she does not personally appear and speak, nor is she addressed, as is the case with the water-gods. She plays in by the way in this marine emergency; her appearances now do not organize the action. But the three appearances of the water-gods are the organic principle, their element being at present the scene of the adventure. On these lines we shall note the course of the poem in some detail.

1. Neptune returning from the Ethiopians to Hellas, sees the lone sailor with his little craft from the heights of the mountain called Solyma; at once the God's wrath is roused and he talks to himself, "shaking his head." The clouds, the winds, the ocean obeyed his behest, and fell upon the voyager in a furious tempest. A huge billow whirled the raft around and threw Ulysses off into the deep; with difficulty be regained his place, and escaped death.

A vivid picture of the grand obstacle to early navigation, of which Neptune is the embodiment. Why should he not be angry at the man who seeks to tame him? The raft means his ultimate subjection. Nature resists the hand which subdues her at first, and then gracefully yields. To be sure there had to be a mythical ground for Neptune's anger at Ulysses: the latter had put out the eye of his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, which was another phase of the subjection of wild nature to intelligence. For seventeen days Ulysses had easy sailing, guided by the stars; but the sea has its destructive side which must also be experienced by the much-enduring man.

Corresponding to this outer tempest, we observe an inner tempest in the soul of Ulysses. "O me wretched! what is now to happen to me!" Terror unmans him for the time being; regret weakens him: "Thrice happy, four times happy the Greeks who fell on Troy's broad plain!" Thus he goes back in memory to his heroic epoch and wishes for death then. Too late it is, for while he is lamenting, a wave strikes him and tosses him out into the deep; now he has to act, and this need of action saves him from his internal trituration, as well as from external death.

With this renewed energy of the will, a new help appears, a divine aid from the sea. For without his own strong effort, no God can rescue him, however powerful. That toss out into the waves was not without its blessing.

2. Ino Leucothea, Ino the white Goddess, beholds him with pity in his extremity—she was once mortal herself but now is divine. Her function seems to be to help the shipwrecked mariner; her name reminds the reader of the white calm of the sea, elsewhere celebrated by Homer (Book X, 94; Nitzsch's observation). Thus she appears to represent the peaceful placid mood of the marine element, which rises in the midst of the storm and imparts hope and courage, nay predicts safety. She gives her veil to Ulysses, in which commentators trace a suggestion of the fillet or sacred cloth which was given out from a temple in Samothrace, and had the power of saving the endangered mariner, if he had tied it round his body. As it is here employed, it strangely suggests a life-preserver. At any rate Ino is the calming power opposed to angry Neptune, and she works upon both the waters and the man.

"Ill-fated man," she cries, "why hast thou so angered Neptune?" Then she changes her note: "Still he shall not destroy thee, however much he desires." She bids him give up his raft to the anger of Neptune, throw away his clinging wet garments of Calypso, and swim to the land of the Phæacians. Then she hands him the veil which he is to "bind beneath his breast," and, when he has reached land, he is to throw it back into the sea. A ritual of some kind, symbolic acts we feel these to be, though their exact meaning may be doubtful. Ino, "the daughter of Cadmus," is supposed to have been a Phœnician Goddess originally, and to have been transferred to the Greek sailor, just as his navigation came to him, partly at least, from the Phœnicians. If he girded himself with the consecrated veil of Leucothea, the Goddess of the calm, Neptune himself in wrath could not sink him.

Such was the faith required of Ulysses, but now comes the internal counterstroke: his skepticism. "Ah me! what if some God is planning another fraud against me, bidding me quit my raft!" The doubter refuses to obey and clings to his raft. But the waves make short work of it now, and Ulysses by sheer necessity has to do as the Goddess bade him; "with hands outspread he plunged into the sea," the veil being underneath him. When he quits his raft, and is seen in the water, Neptune dismisses him from view with a parting execration, and Pallas begins to help him, not openly, but indirectly.

In such manner the great doubter is getting toward shore, but even here his doubts cease not. Steep jutting cliffs may not permit him to land, the billows may dash him to death on the sharp shoaly rocks, or carry him out again to sea, or some huge monster of the deep may snap him up in its jaws; thus he is dashed about internally, on the billows of doubt. But this grinding within is stopped by the grinding he gets without; a mighty surge overwhelms him, he clutches a rock and saves himself, but leaves flakes of flesh from his hands behind on the rock. "He swam along the coast and eyed it well," he even reaches the mouth of a soft-flowing river, where was a smooth beach and a shelter from the wind. Here is the spot so long desired, here then he passes to an act of faith, he prays to the river which becomes at once to the Greek imagination a God.

3. This brings us to the third water deity, and we observe a kind of scale from the universal one, Neptune, down to a local one, that of the river. The middle one, Ino, is the humane kindly phase of the great deep, showing her kinship with man; Neptune was the ruder god of the physical sea, and, to the Homeric Greek, the most powerful and natural. No wonder that he was angry at that little raft and its builder; it meant his ultimate subjection.

The prayer of Ulysses to the River-God is, on the whole, the finest passage in the present Book. It shows him now a man of faith, humbled though he be to the last degree of misery: "Hear me, ruler, whoever thou art, I approach thee much-besought. The deathless Gods revere the prayer of him who comes to them and asks for mercy, as I now come to thy stream. Pity, ruler, me thy suppliant." Certainly a lofty recognition of the true nature of deity; no wonder that the River stayed his current, smoothed the waves and made a calm before him. Such a view of the Gods reveals to us the inner depths of the Hero's character; it calls to mind that speech of Phœnix in the Iliad (Book Ninth) where he says that the Gods are placable. As soon as Ulysses makes this utterance from his heart, he is saved, the Divine Order is adjusted to his prayer, he having of course put himself into harmony with the same. He has no longer any need of the protecting veil of the sea-goddess Ino, having escaped from the angry element, and obtained the help of the new deity belonging to the place. He restores the veil to the Goddess according to her request, in which symbolic act we may possibly read a consecration of the object which had saved him, as well as a recognition of the deity: "This veil of salvation belongs not to me, but to the Goddess." Not of his strength alone was he saved from the waves.

Such is one side of Ulysses, that of faith, of the manifestation of the godlike in man, especially when he is in the very pinch of destruction. But Ulysses would not be Ulysses, unless he showed the other side too, that of unfaith, weak complaint, and temporary irresolution. So, when he is safe on the bank of the stream, he begins to cry out: "What now am I to suffer more! If I try to sleep on this river's brink for the night, the frost and dew and wind will kill me; and if I climb this hill to yonder thicket, I fear a savage beast will eat me while I slumber." It is well to be careful, O Ulysses, in these wild solitudes; now let the petulant outburst just given, be preparatory to an act of will which will settle the problem. "He rose and went to the wood near by; he crept under two bushes that grew from the same place, one the wild and the other the tame olive." There in a heap of leaves—man's first bed—he slept under the intertwined branches of the two olives—nature's shelter against wind, rain, sun. He, with all his cultivation is quite reduced to the condition of the primitive man.

One cannot help feeling a symbolic intention in these two olive trees, one wild and one cultivated. They represent in a degree the two phases of the man sleeping under them; they hint also the transition which he is making from the untamed nature of Calypso's island to the more civilized land of Phæacia. The whole Book is indeed the movement to a new life and a new country. We might carry out the symbolic hint much further on these lines, and see a meaning in their interwoven branches and the protection they are giving at present; but the poetic suggestion flashing afar over poem backwards and forwards is the true effect, and may be dimmed by too much explanation.

Such is this marvelous storm with its ship-wreck, probably the first in literature, but often made use of since. The outer surges of the tempest are indeed terrific; but the main interest is, that along with this external description of the storm, we witness the corresponding internal heaving and tossing of a human soul. Everywhere we notice that Ulysses doubts at first, doubts Calypso, doubts Ino, doubts even his final safety when on land. He is the skeptical man, he never fails to call up the possibilities on the other side. Though a God give the promise, he knows that there are other Gods who do not promise, or may give a different promise to somebody else. It is the experience of life, this touch of doubt at first; it always accompanies the thinking man, who, like Ulysses, must be aware of a negative counterpart even to truth. Not pleasant, but painful is this doubt shooting through the soul, and keeping it in distress and often in lamentation. So even the Hero breaks out into unmanly complaint, and reveals to the full his finite nature.

Yet if Ulysses doubts, he always overcomes his doubt in the end; he sees the positive element in the world to be deeper than the negative one, after a little access of weakness. Under his doubt is the deeper layer of faith, so he never gives up, but valiantly holds on and conquers. The Gods come to his aid when he believes and acts. His intellect is doubt, his will is faith: wherein we may trace important lines which unite him with Faust, the chief character in our last world-poem. Ulysses will complain, and having freed his mind, will go to work and conquer the obstacle. He struggles with the billow, clinging to the mast, though he had just said: "Now I shall die a miserable death."

Parallel to this human side runs the divine side, which we need not further describe here, with its three water-deities. A little attention we may give to the part of Pallas. At one time she seems to control the outer world for her favorite, sending the wind or stopping it; then she is said to inform his mind with forecast, that he may do the thing in spite of wind or other obstacle; finally he often does the deed without any divine suggestion, acting through himself. In these stages we can see a transition of the Mythus. The first stage is truly mythical, in which the deity is the mover, the second is less so, the Goddess having become almost wholly internal; in the third stage the mythical is lost. All these stages are in Homer and in this Book, though the first is still paramount.

Taking into view the general character of the mythical movement of this Fifth Book, we observe that there is a rise in it from a lower to a higher form; Calypso and Neptune are intimately blended with their physical environments, the island and the sea. Though elevated into persons, they are still sunk in Nature; it is the function of the Hero, especially the wise man, to subordinate both or to transcend both: which is just what Ulysses has done. His Mythus is, therefore, a higher one, telling the story of the subjection of nature and of her Gods. This story marks one phase of his career.

The reader will probably be impressed with the fact that in the present Book the stress is upon the discipline of the will. The inner reactions of complaint, doubt, or despair turn against the deed, to which Ulysses has to nerve himself by a supreme act of volition. The world of Calypso is that of self-indulgence, inactivity, will-lessness, to which Ulysses has sunk after his sin against the source of light, after his negation of all intelligence. It is not simply sensuous gratification with the mind still whole and capable of resolution, as was the case with Ulysses in the realm of Circe, in which he shows his will-power, though coupled with indulgence. Such is the difference between Calypso and Circe, which is always a problem with the reader. In this way, too, we see how the Fifth Book before us is a direct continuation and unfolding out of the Twelfth Book. Indeed the very movement of the poem is significant, which is a going backwards; so Ulysses drops far to the rear out of that light-loving Island of the Sun, against which is his violation, when he comes to Ogygia.

But Ulysses has now, after long discipline, transcended this sphere, and has reached a new land, of which the account is to follow next.

BOOK SIXTH.

We are now to make one of the chief transitions of the poem, we are going to pass from the Dark Island and the stormy sea to Phæacia, a bright, sunlit land, where reign peace and harmony. Moreover, we move out of the realm of nature to that of institutions. Still more significant are the central figures of the two localities, both women; one of these we have seen, Calypso, who is now to give way to Nausicaa.

This Book may, therefore, be called Nausicaa's Book, as she is the leading character in it, imparting to it a marvelous mood of idyllic beauty and womanly purity. She is the person chosen by the poet to introduce the Hero into the new realm, Phæacia, being in sharp contrast to Calypso, who detained Ulysses in dark Ogygia away from his family, and whose character was adverse to the domestic relation. But Nausicaa shows from the start the primal instinct of the true woman for the home. She is still young, but she has arrived at that age in which she longs with every throb of her heart to surrender her own separate existence, and to unite it with another. She manifests in all its attractiveness the primordial love of the woman for the Family, basis of all institutional life, as well as fountain of the deepest joys of our terrestrial sojourn.

On this account she represents the place of Phæacia in the Greek world as well as in the present poem; perhaps we ought to add, in the whole movement of civilization. That land may be called the idyllic one, a land of peace and of freedom from all struggle; the borderland between the natural and the civilized spheres. Man has risen out of the grossness of mere sensuous individualism, such as we see in Polyphemus and in other shapes of Fairyland; but he has not yet reached the conflicts of higher forms of society resulting from a pursuit of wealth, from ambition, from war. Here is a quiet half-way house on the road from nature to civilization; a sweet reposeful realm, almost without any development of the negative forces of society; a temporary stopping-place for Ulysses in his all-embracing career, also for individuals and nations in their rush forward to reach the great end. The deep collisions of social life belong not to Phæacia, nor to Nausicaa, its ideal image.

It is the virgin land, the virgin world, which now has a young virgin as its central character and representative, to mediate Ulysses with itself, the universal man who must also have the new experience. Still she is not all of Phæacia, but its prelude, its introductory form; moreover, she is just the person to conduct Ulysses out of his present forlorn condition of mind and body into a young fresh hope, into a new world. The Calypso life is to be obliterated by the vision of the true woman and her instinctive devotion to the Family. We are aware that Ulysses has not been contented with the Dark Island and its nymph, he has had the longing to get away and has at last gotten away; but to what has he come? Lost the one and not attained the other, till he beholds Nausicaa, who grasps him by the hand, as it were, and delivers him wholly from Calypso, leading him forth to her home, where he is to witness the central phase of domestic life, the mother.

The organism of the Book easily falls into two parts, one of which portrays Nausicaa at home, the other gives the meeting between her and Ulysses. Yet over this human movement hovers always the divine, Pallas is the active supernal power which brings these events to pass, introducing both the parts mentioned. She is the providence which the poet never permits to drop out. Most deeply does the old singer's sincerity herein move the reader, who must rise to the same elevation; Homer's loyalty is to faith, faith in the Divine Order of the World, for this is not suffered to go its way without a master spirit; the individual, especially in his pivotal action, is never left alone, but he fits in somewhere; the Whole takes him up and directs him, and adjusts him into the providential plan; not simply from without but through himself. Such is this poet's loyalty to his Idea; he has faith, deep, genuine faith, yet unostentatious, quite unconventional at times; a most refreshing, yes, edifying appearance to-day, even for religious people, though he be "an old heathen."

Such continual recurrence of the God's interference with the course of events—what does it mean? This is unquestionably the fundamental problem with the earnest student of Homer. Let us observe, then, first, that the poet's principle is not to allow a divine intervention to degenerate into a merely external mechanical act; himself full of the spirit of the God, he puts the divine influence inside the individual as well as outside, and thus preserves the latter's freedom in the providential order. The faithful reader will never let these movements of the deity drop into mere machinery; when he does, he has lost the essence of Homer. Doubtless it requires an alert activity of mind to hold the Gods always before the vision in their truth; they must be re-thought, or indeed re-created every time they appear. The somnolescent reader is only too ready to spare himself the poetic exaltation in which the old bard must be read, if we would really see the divinities, and grasp the spirit of their dealings with man. Speak not, then, of epical machinery in Homer, the word is misleading to the last degree, is indeed libellous, belieing the poet in the very soul of his art.

In the present Book there is not by any means as much divine intervention as in the preceding one; we pass from the lower realm of the water-gods to that of Pallas, the goddess of intelligence, who is the sole active divinity in this Book. She appears to Nausicaa at the beginning in the form of a dream, and bids the maiden look after some washing. Our first question is, why call in a goddess for such a purpose? The procedure seems trivial and unnecessary, and so it would be under ordinary circumstances. But through this humble and common-place duty Nausicaa is made a link in the grand chain of the Return of Ulysses, which is the divine plan underlying the whole poem, and is specially the work of Pallas. To be sure this had no place in Nausicaa's intention, but it does have a place in the providential scheme, which has, therefore, to be voiced by the Goddess. Yet that scheme does not conflict with the free-will of the maiden, which finds its fullest scope just in this household duty, and brings out her character. She reveals to Ulysses her nature, this is the occasion; she had to be free to represent what she truly was to the much-experienced man. An ordinary wash-day has little divinity in it, but this one is filled with the divine plan. Thus small events, otherwise immediately forgotten, may by a mighty co-incidence he elevated into the sphere of the World's History, and become ever memorable. That French soldier who threw a camp-kettle over the head of Mirabeau's ancestor and thus saved him from being trampled to death by a passing troop of cavalry, made himself a factor in the French Revolution, and was inspired by whom, demon or angel?

As already hinted, the structure of the Book is determined by the two interventions of Pallas, which divide it into two portions; these are shown in the following outline:—

I. (1.) Pallas appears to Nausicaa in a dream, and gives the suggestion.

(2.) Nausicaa, when she awakes, obeys the suggestion and proceeds to the place of the washing.

II. (1.) Ulysses also asleep, lies in his cover not far from the same spot, when Pallas starts the plan for his waking.

(2.) Meeting of Ulysses and Nausicaa, and the going to the city.

In both parts we observe the same general method; the divine influence, beginning above, moves below and weaves the mortal into its scheme through his own action.

I.

First is a short introduction giving a bit of the history of the Phæacians, in which we catch a glimpse of their development. They once dwelt near the Cyclops, the wild men of nature, from whom they moved away on account of injuries received; they could live no longer in such a neighborhood. Here we note an important separation, probably a change of life which leaves the ruder stage behind. The colony is led forth to a new land by its hero, who lays the foundation of a social order by building houses, temples to the Gods, and a wall round the city, and who divides the territory. Thus a civil polity begins by getting away from "the insolent Cyclops" or savages. On the other hand, civilized enemies who might bring war, seem not to dwell near the Phæacians, beloved of the Gods. Beyond all conflict, inner and outer, lies the fortunate realm; it touches the happy mean between barbarism and civilization, though perchance on the road from former to latter; at present, however, it is without the evils which go before it and come after it. As already stated, it is an idyllic world, life appears to be one continued festival, with song and dance of youth. It is not real Greece, not Ithaca, which just now is a land of discord and conflict. What the poet says of Olympus in a famous passage a little further on in this book, seems applicable, in spirit at least, to Phæacia:

The storm-wind shakes it not, nor is it wet

By showers, and there the snow doth never fall;

The calm clear ether is without a cloud,

And over all is spread a soft white sheen.

1. Now comes the appearance of Pallas, who "like a breath of wind" approaches the couch of the maiden in slumber, and admonishes her about the washing. Some such care the Goddess does impose upon the housekeeper to this day, and if report be true, at times troubles her dreams. It is indeed an important duty, this necessity of keeping the household and its members clean, specially the men, too often indifferent. Young Nausicaa, just entering upon womanhood, is ready for the divine suggestion; plainly she has come to that age at which the Goddess must speak to her on such matters. So much for Pallas at present.

2. Therewith we touch another fact; the maiden has reached the time when she must think, of marriage, which she instinctively regards as her true destiny in life. Still it does not appear that she is betrothed though "the noblest Phæacians are wooing thee." In simple innocence there hovers in her mind the thought of Family, yet she shows a shy reserve even before her father. With that sweet thought is joined the primary household care, which naturally enough comes to her in a dream. Cleanliness is next to godliness is our modern saying; it is certainly the outward visible token of purity, which Nausicaa is going to bring into her domestic surroundings. We may reasonably think that in the present scene the external deed and the internal character mirror each other.

It must be confessed, however, that to the modern woman wash-day, "blue Monday," is usually a day bringing an unpleasant mood, if not positive terror. She will often declare that she cannot enjoy this Phæacian idyl on account of its associations; she refuses to accept in image what in real life is so disagreeable. As a symbol of purification the thing may pass, but no human being wishes to be purified too often. Nausicaa's occupation is not popular with her sex, and she herself has not altogether escaped from a tinge of disrelish.

It is curious to note how customs endure. What Homer saw, the traveler in Greece will see to-day wherever a stream runs near a village. The Nausicaas of the place, daughters and mothers too, will be found at the water's side, going through this same Phæacian process, themselves in white garments even at their labor, pounding, rubbing, rinsing the white garments of their husbands, brothers, sons. Not without sympathy will the by-stander look on, thinking that those efforts are to make clean themselves and their household, life being in truth a continual cleansing for every human soul. So Hellas has still the appearance of an eternal wash-day. (See author's Walk in Hellas, passim.)

Nausicaa obtains without difficulty wagon and mules and help of servants. After all, the affair is something of a frolic or outing; when the task is done, there is the bath, the song, and a game of ball. It is worthy of notice that the word (amaxa) here used by old Homer for wagon, may still be heard throughout Greece for the same or a similar thing. In the harbor of Piræus the hackman will ask the traveler: "Do you want my amaxa?" The dance (choros), is still the chief amusement of the Greek villagers, and, as in Nausicaa's time, the young man wishes to enter the dance with new-washed garments, white as snow, whose folds ripple around his body in harmony with his graceful movements. Many an echo of Phæacia, in language, custom and costume, can be found in Greece at present, indicating, like the Cyclopean masonry, the solid and permanent substructure of Homer's poetry, still in place after more than 2500 years of wear and tear.

II.

The washing is done now, the sport is over, and the party is getting ready to go home; but the main object is not yet accomplished. Ulysses and Nausicaa are here to be brought together—the much-experienced man and the innocent maiden with her pure ethical instinct of Family. In many ways the two stand far asunder, yet in one thing they are alike: each is seeking the domestic relation, each will consummate the bond of love which has two phases, the one being after marriage and the other before marriage. Both are moving in their deepest nature toward the unity of the Family, though on different lines; Ulysses and Nausicaa have a common trait of character, which will be sympathetically found by each and will bring them together.

I. At this fresh turn of affairs there is an intervention of Pallas, not prolonged, but sufficient: "Thereupon Athena (Pallas) planned other things, that Ulysses should wake, and see the fair-faced maiden who would conduct him to the city of the Phæacians." The Goddess does not appear in person, as the deities so often do in the Iliad, nor does she take a mortal shape, or move Ulysses through a dream; she simply brings about an incident, natural enough, to wake the sleeping hero. Why then introduce the Goddess at all? Because the poet wishes to emphasize the fact that this simple incident is a link in the providential chain; otherwise it would have no mention. The ball is thrown at one of the servants, it falls into the stream, whereat there is an outcry—and Ulysses wakes.

Of course, the latter had at first his usual fit of doubt and complaint, just when the Gods are helping him: "Ah me! to what land have I come! What men are here—wild, insolent, unjust, or are they hospitable, reverencing the Gods? I shall go forth and test the matter"—and so by an act of will he rescues himself from inner brooding and finds out the truth.

2. Now we are to witness the gradual outer approach between Ulysses and Nausicaa, till it becomes internal, and ends in a strong feeling of friendship if not in a warmer emotion. The wanderer, almost naked, with only "a branch of thick leaves bound about his loins," comes forth from his hiding place, a frightful object to anybody, a wild man apparently.

All the servants run, but Nausicaa stands her ground before the nude monster; being a Princess she shows her noble blood, and, being innocent herself, what can she he afraid of? Thus does the poet distinguish her spiritually among her attendants, as a few lines before in the famous comparison with Diana he distinguished her physically: "Over all the rest are seen her head and brow, easily is she known among them, though all are fair: such was the spotless virgin mid her maids." Thus is hinted the outer and also the inner superiority which has now revealed itself in the Phæacian Princess.

Henceforth a subtle interplay takes place between her and Ulysses, in which we observe three main stages: First, the wild man in appearance he steps forth, yet he succeeds in touching her sympathy, wherein her charity is shown; Second, the transformed man, now a God in appearance he becomes, at whose view the maiden begins to show deep admiration, if not love; Third, the passing of Ulysses to the city to which he is conducted by the maiden, who also tells him how to reach the heart of the family, namely, the mother Arete. Thus she seeks to mediate him with her country and her hearth.

(1) Ulysses, issuing from his lair, addresses her in a speech which shows superb skill on account of its gradual penetration to the soul of the fair hearer. He praises first her external beauty with many a happy touch, yet with an excess which seems to border on adulation. This reaches her outer ear and bespeaks his good-will and gentleness at least. Then he strikes a deeper chord: he mentions his sufferings, those which are past, and forebodes those which are yet to be, perchance upon this shore. "Therefore, O Princess, have compassion, since I have come to thee first; none besides thee do I know in this land. Give me some old rag to throw around me, some useless wrappage which you may have brought hither." Pathetic indeed is the appeal; therewith comes sympathy, the man is no wild Cyclops, whom all Phæacians still remembered with terror, but a victim of misfortune.

Now comes the culmination of his speech, which shows his keen insight into human nature, as well as his own deepest longing: "May the Gods grant thy heart's desire—-husband, home, and wedded harmony." With this praise of domestic life upon his lips he has touched the profoundest chord of her heart; he has divined her secretest yet strongest instinct, and has appealed to it in deep emotion. Yet mark! in the same general direction lies his own dearest hope: he also will return home, to wife and family. Thus he has found the common meeting-place of their souls; the two strike the absolutely concordant note and are one in feeling—he the husband, she the maiden.

In her answer she expresses her strong sympathy, her words indeed rise into the realm of charity. It is no mark of baseness to be unfortunate; "but these must endure," what Zeus lays upon them. Such is the exhortation of the young maiden to the much-enduring man; she has divined too the ground-work of his character. "But now, since thou hast come to our land, thou shalt not want for garment or anything else proper for the needy suppliant." Then she recalls her attendants, reproving them for their flight, and orders them to give to Ulysses food and drink, oil to be used after bathing, and ample raiment. Nor should we pass by that other expression of hers: "all strangers and the poor are Jove's own," under the special protection of the Supreme God, who will avenge their disregard. Such is this ideal world of Phæacia, still ideal to-day; for where is it realized? The old poet has cast the imago of a society which we are still trying to embody. Well can she say that the Phæacians dwell far apart from the rest of the nations, "nor does any mortal hold intercourse with us." Thus, too, she marks unconsciously the limit of her people.

(2) The reader, along with Nausicaa, is to see the transformation of the beggarly wanderer, who, having taken his bath and put on his raiment, comes forth like a God. This is said to be the work of Pallas, "who caused him to appear taller and more powerful, with flowing locks, like the hyacinth." He becomes plastic in form, beautiful as a statue, into which the divine soul has been transfused by the artist. Such a transforming power lies within him, yet is granted also by a deity; the godlike in the man now takes on a bodily, or rather a sculpturesque appearance, and prophesies Greek plastic art.

The echo of this change is heard in the words of the maiden: "Hear me attendants; not without the will of the Olympians does this man come to us; lately I thought him unseemly, now he is like the Gods who hold the broad Heavens." Such is her lively admiration now, but what means this? "Would that such a man might be called my husband, dwelling here in Phæacia!" That note is indeed deeper than admiration.

(3) The third phase of this little play is the bringing of Ulysses to the city and home of Nausicaa. He, having satisfied his hunger, and being ready to start, receives some advice from the maiden, who seeks to conduct him at once to the center of the home. They will pass first through the outlying country, which shows cultivation; then they will go up into the city, with its lofty tower and double harbor; the seafaring character of the people is especially set forth by Nausicaa, whose name is derived from the Greek word for a ship. Particularly we must notice her fear of gossip, which also existed in Phæacia, ideal though the land was. She must not be seen with Ulysses; men with evil tongues would say: "What stranger is this following Nausicaa? Now she will have a husband." The sharp eye of Goethe detected in this passage the true motive; it is love, always having the tendency to deny itself, which dictates so carefully this avoidance of public report; the thing must not be said just because there is good reason for saying it. Her solicitude betrays her feeling. In pure simplicity of heart she pays the supreme compliment to Ulysses, likening him indirectly to "a God called down from Heaven by her prayers, to live with her all her days." Still further she intimates in the same passage, that "many noble suitors woo her, but she treats them with disdain, they are Phæacians." To be sure she puts these words into the mouth of a gossipy and somewhat disgruntled countryman, but they come round to their mark like a boomerang. Does she not thus announce to the much-enduring man that she is free, though under a good deal of pressure? All this is done in such an artless way, that it becomes the highest art—something which she does not intend but cannot help. Surely such a speech from such a source ought to repay him for suffering shipwreck and for ten years' wandering.

We cannot, therefore, think of calling this passage spurious, with some critics both ancient and modern. The complaint against it is that the young Phæacian lady shows here too much reflection, in conjunction with a tendency to sarcasm foreign to her life. But we find it eminently unreflective and naive; the very point of the passage is that she unconsciously reveals the deepest hidden thought and purpose of her heart to Ulysses. With all her being she must move toward the Family, she would not be herself unless she did; yet how completely she preserves modesty and simple-heartedness! Nor is the sarcastic tinge foreign to young girls. So we shall have to set aside the objections of Aristarchus the old Greek, and Faesi the modern German, commentator.

But the final instruction of Nausicaa is the most interesting; the suppliant is not to go to the father but to the mother. Nay, he is to "pass by my father's throne and clasp my mother's knees," in token of supplication; then he may see the day of return. Herein we may behold in general, the honored place of the mother as the center of the Family, its heart, as it were, full of the tender feelings of compassion and mercy. In the father and king, on the other hand, is the man of the State with its inflexible justice, often putting aside sympathy and commiseration with misfortune. The woman's heart may indeed be called the heart of the world, recognized here by the old poet and his Phæacians.

This mother, however, is in herself a great character; she is next to have a Book of her own, which will more fully set forth her position.

The character of Nausicaa, as here unfolded in the ancient poet, has captivated many generations of readers since Homer began to be read. The story has lived and renewed itself in manifold forms; it has that highest power of a genuine mythus, it produces itself through all ages, taking on a fresh vesture in Time. In old Hellas the tale of Nausicaa was wrought over into various shapes after Homer; it was transformed into a drama, love-story, as well as idyl. The myth-making spirit did not let it drop, but kept unfolding it; later legend, for instance, brought about a marriage between Telemachus and Nausicaa. Our recent greatest poet, Goethe, also responded mightily to the story of Nausicaa; he planned a drama on the subject, of which the outline is to be found in his published works. He did not find time to finish his poem, but there is evidence that he thought much about it and carried it around with him, for a long period. One regrets that the German poet was not able to give this new transformation of his ancient Greek brother, with whom he has manifested on so many lines an intimate connection and poetical kinship. In portions of the Italian Journey specially we see how deeply the Odyssey was moving him and how he was almost on the point of reproducing the whole poem with its marine scenery. But Nausicaa in particular fascinated him, and it would have been the best commentary on the present Book to have seen her in a now grand poetic epiphany in the modern drama of Goethe.

BOOK SEVENTH.

If the last Book was Nausicaa's, this one is Arete's; there is the transition from the daughter to the mother, from the maiden to the wife. Still it is not quite so emphatically a woman's Book, since the wife has to include the husband in her world. Ulysses now goes to the center of the Family, to its heart, that he may meet with compassion. Still she withholds her sympathy at first for a good reason; Arete is not wholly impulse and feeling, she has thought, reflection. So, after all, it is left to the men to take up the suppliant.

Very surprising to us moderns is the picture drawn by the old Greek poet of this woman, and of her position: "the people look upon her as a God when she goes through the city;" her mind is especially praised; she has a judicial character, supposed usually to be alien to women: "she decides controversies among men," or perchance harmonizes them. To be sure her position is stated as exceptional: "her husband honors her, as no other woman on earth is honored;" she is evidently his counselor as well as wife. Thus the poet would have us regard Arete not merely as a person of kind feelings and of sweet womanly instincts, but she has also the highest order of intelligence; she is united with her husband in head as well as in heart, perchance overtopping him in ability. Not domestic simply is the picture, it rises into the political sphere, even into the administration of justice.

Is the character of the woman, as thus set forth, possibly a thousand years before Christ, by a heathen poet in an uncivilized age comparatively, to be a prophecy unto us still at this late date? Certainly the most advanced woman of to-day in the most advanced part of the world as regards her opportunities, has hardly reached the height of Arete. Unquestionably a glorious ideal is set up before the Sisterhood of all time for emulation; or is it unattainable? At any rate the woman in Homer stands far in advance of her later historical position in Greece.

We may now turn to the husband for a moment, Alcinous the King, the man of civil authority who represents the State, whose function is to be the protector of the Family and of whomever the family receives into its bosom rightfully. He is the element surrounding and guarding the warm domestic center; still he seems to have stronger impulses, or probably less governed, than his wife. Distinctly is the superiority accorded to the woman in this discourse of Pallas to Ulysses; possibly the Goddess may have overdrawn the picture a little in favor of her sex, as really Alcinous becomes the more prominent figure later one.

So we catch a very fascinating glimpse of the Phæacian world. Two prominent characters representing the two great institutions of man, Family and State, we witness; thus is the spirit of the whole poem ethical. Here is no longer the realm of Calypso, the nymph of wild untrained nature, but the clear sunlit prospect of home and country, the anticipation of sunny Ithaca and prudent Penelope to the hapless sufferer. Ulysses sees his own land in the image of Phæacia, sees what he is to make out of his own island. Verily it is a great and epoch-making experience for him just before his return; he finds the ideal here which he is to realize.

Accordingly we have in line three women, Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete, through whose spheres Ulysses has passed on his way to his own female counterpart, Penelope. We may see in them phases of man's development out of a sensuous into an institutional life. Nor is the suggestion too remote that we may trace in this movement certain outlines in the progress of mankind toward civilization.

In the mythical history of Phæacia which is also here given, we can observe the same development suggested with greater distinctness. Already in the previous Book it was stated that the Phæacians at first "dwelt near the insolent Cyclops," from whom they had to make the removal to their present island on account of violence done them by their neighbors. But now we hear that both Alcinous and Arete are descended on one side from the daughter of King Eurymedon, "who ruled over the arrogant race of Giants," all of whom, both king and "wicked people," had perished. On the other side the royal pair had the sea-god Neptune as their progenitor who was also the father of the Cyclops Polyphemus. It is impossible to mistake the meaning of this genealogy and the reason of its introduction at the present conjuncture. The Phæacians likewise were sprung of the wild men of nature, and had been at one time savages; but they had changed, had separated from their primitive kindred and begun the march of civilization. The poet has manifestly before his mind this question: why does one branch of the same people develop, and another branch lag behind; why, of two brothers, does one become civilized and the other remain savage? Of this dualism Greece would furnish many striking illustrations, whereof the difference between Athena and Sparta is the best known. Here the change from the locality of the Cyclops, implying also the change in spirit, is made by a hero-king, "the large-souled Nausithous," evidently a very important man to the Phæacians. Then this respect given to the woman has often been noted as both the sign and the cause of a higher development of a people. At any rate the Phæacians have made the great transition from savagery to civilization, and thus reveal the inherent possibilities of the race.

We now begin to catch a hint of the sweep of the poem in these portions. Ulysses who has lapsed or at least has become separated from his institutional life, must travel back to the same through the whole rise of society; he has to see its becoming in his own experience, and to a degree create it over again in his own soul, having lost it. Hence the evolution of the social organism passes before his eyes, embodied in a series of persons and places.

In this Seventh Book, therefore, Ulysses is to make the transition to Family and State as shown in Phæacia, and as represented by Arete and Alcinous. We shall mark three leading divisions:—

I. Ulysses enters the city in the dark, when he is met by Pallas and receives her instructions. The divine principle again comes down and directs.

II. The external side of this Phæacian world is shown in the city, garden, and palace of the king; nature is transformed and made beautiful for man. All this Ulysses now beholds.

III. The internal side of this Phæacian world, its spiritual essence, is shown in the domestic and civil life of the rulers and nobles; of this also Ulysses is the spectator, recognizing and appropriating.

Thus we see in the Book the movement from the divine to the human, which we have so often before noticed in Homer. The three parts we may well put together into a whole: the Goddess of Intelligence informs the mind of man, which then transforms nature and builds institutions. Here Pallas simply directs Ulysses, who, however, is now to witness the works of mind done in Phæacia, to recognize them and to take them up into his spirit.

I.

Ulysses follows the direction of Nausicaa and passes to the city stealthily in a kind of concealment; "Pallas threw a divine mist over him," the Goddess now having the matter in hand. Moreover she appeared to him in the shape of a young girl with a pitcher, who points out the house of Alcinous and gives him many a precious bit of history in her prattle. Again we must see what this divine intervention means; Pallas is in him as well as outside of him. These are suggestions of his own ingenuity on the one hand, yet also the voice of the situation; indeed he knew them essentially already from the instructions of Nausicaa. Still further, they are now a part of the grand scheme, which is in the Olympian order, and hence is voiced by the Gods.

The poet introduces his mythical forms; we hear also the fabulous genealogy of the Phæacian rulers, the meaning of which has been above set forth. They, too, Arete and Alcinous, have come from the Cyclops, and have made the same journey as Ulysses, though in a different manner. It must be remembered that he has had his struggle with the giant Polyphemus, one of the Cyclops, whereof he will hereafter give the account. But the chief matter of the communication of Pallas is to define to Ulysses the position and character of Arete, evidently a woman after her own heart. In this way the Goddess, taking the part of a prattling maid, gives the royal pedigree, and especially dwells on the importance of the queen. Also she throws side glances into the peculiar disposition of the Phæacians, needful to be known to the new-comer. They are a people by themselves, distrustful of other peoples; they too must be transcended.

It is well at this point to observe Homer's procedure in regard to Pallas. We can distinguish two different ways of employing the Goddess. The poet says that Pallas gives to the Phæacian women surpassing skill in the art of weaving. This is almost allegorical, if not quite; the Goddess stands for a quality of mind, is subjective. Again, when she endows Ulysses with forecast in an emergency, it is only another statement for his mental prevision. Many such expressions we can find in the Odyssey; Pallas is becoming a formula, indicating simply some activity of mind in the individual. But in the important places the Goddess is kept mythical; that is, she voices the Divine Order, she utters the grand ethical purpose of the poem, or makes herself a vital part thereof. Thus she is objective, truly mythical; in the other case she is subjective and is getting to be an allegorical figure. The Odyssey, with its greater internality compared with the Iliad, is losing the mythus.

There is a third way of using Pallas and the Gods which is hardly found in Homer, indeed could not be found to any extent without destroying him. This is the external way of employing the deities, who appear wholly on the outside and give their command to mortals, or influence them by divine authority alone. Thus the Gods become mechanical, and are not a spiritual element of the human soul. Virgil leaves such an impression, and the Roman poets generally. Even the Greek tragic poets are not free from it; especially Euripides is chargeable with this sin, which is called in dramatic language Deus ex machina.

Though the Homeric poems as wholes are not allegories, yet they have allegory playing into them. Indeed the mythus has an inherent tendency to pitch over into allegory through culture. Then there is a reaction, the mythical spirit must assert itself even among civilized peoples, since allegorized Gods are felt to be hollow abstractions, having nothing divine about them.

There can hardly be a doubt that a proper conception of the relation of the deities to men is the most important matter for the student of Homer. But it requires an incessant alertness of mind to see the Homeric Gods when they appear to the mortal, and to observe that they are not always the same, that they too are in the process of evolution. For instance, in the present Book as well as elsewhere, Pallas must be noted as having two characters, a mythical and allegorical, as above unfolded. Nitzsch, whose commentary on the Odyssey, though getting a little antiquated, is still the best probably, because it grapples with so many real problems of the poem, says: "It is wholly in Homer's manner to represent, in the form of a conversation with Pallas, what the wise man turns over in his own mind and resolves all to himself" (Anmerkungen zu Homer's Odyssee, Band II, S. 137). Very true, yet on the next page Nitzsch says that it is "entirely wrong to suppose that Pallas represents the wisdom of Ulysses allegorically." But what else is allegory but this embodiment of subjective wisdom? Now Nitzsch truly feels that Pallas is something altogether more than an allegory, but he has failed to grasp distinctly her mythical character, the objective side of the Goddess, and so gets confused and self-contradictory.

One of the best books ever written on Homer is Nägelsbach's Homerische Theologie, which also wrestles with the most vital questions of the poem. But Nägelsbach's stress is almost wholly on the side of the Gods, he seems to have the smallest vision for beholding the free, self-acting man in Homer. In his first chapter (die Gottheit, the Godhead) he recognizes the Gods as the upholders and directors of the Supreme Order (sec. 28); also they determine, or rather create (schaffen) man's thought and will (sec. 42). What, then, is left for the poor mortal? Of course, such a view is at variance with Homer in hundreds of passages (see especially the speech of Zeus with which the action of the Odyssey starts, and in which the highest God asserts the free-will and hence the responsibility of the man). Nägelsbach himself suspects at times that something is wrong with his view and hedges here and there by means of some limiting clauses; note in particular what he says about Ulysses (sec. 31), who is an exception, being "thrown upon his own resources in cases of extreme need," without the customary intervention of the Gods. But the man in his freedom, who co-operates with the God in the providential order, is often brought before the reader in the Iliad as well as in the Odyssey (see author's Com. on the Iliad, pp. 129, 157, 216, etc.).

II.

We now come to one of the most famous passages in Homer, describing the palace and garden of Alcinous. First of all, we must deem it the outer setting of this Phæacian world with its spirit and institutions, the framework of nature transformed which takes its character from within. Civilized life assumes an external appearance corresponding to itself; it remodels the physical world after its own pattern. The result is, this garden is in striking contrast with the bower of Calypso, which is almost a wild product of nature. The two localities are mirrored surrounding each home respectively. Again we observe how Homer employs the description of scenery: he makes it reflect the soul as its center.

In a certain sense we may connect these Phæacian works with Pallas, who has directed Ulysses hither; they are the works of intelligence. The arts and the industries spring up through the transformation of nature. Here is first noted the palace of the king with certain hints of its materials and construction; especially have the metals been wrought and applied to human uses. Gold, silver, steel, brass or bronze are mentioned in connection with the palace and its marvelous contents. Thus an ideal sense of architecture we note; still more strongly indicated is the feeling for sculpture, the supreme Greek art. Those gold and silver watch-dogs at the entrance, "which Vulcan made by his skill, deathless and ageless for all time;" those golden boys "upon their well-built pedestals holding lighted torches in their hands" are verily indications that the plastic artist has already appeared. The naive expression of life which the old poet gives to the sculpturesque shapes in the palace of Alcinous, is fresh as the first look upon a new world, which is indeed now rising.

But not only the Fine Arts, the Industries also are touched upon. Weaving is specially emphasized along with navigation, one being the Phæacian woman's and the other being the Phæacian man's most skillful work. Other occupations are involved in these two. Thus is marked the beginning of an industrial society.

After the palace the garden is described with its cultivated fruit-trees—pear, pomegranate, apples—a good orchard for to-day. Of course the vineyard could not be left out, being so important to the Greek; three forms of its products are mentioned—the grape, the raisin, and wine. Finally the last part is set off for kitchen vegetables, though some translators think that it was for flowers. Nor must we omit the two fountains, such as often spout up and run through the Greek village of the present time.

Undoubtedly fabulous threads are spun through this description. Quite too lavish a use is made of the precious metals in the house of Alcinous, as in some fairy tale or romantic ballad; so much gold is found nowhere outside of wonderland. In the garden fruit is never wanting, some of it just ripe, some still green, some in flower. No change of season, yet the effect of all seasons; surely a marvelous country it appears; still we learn that in Campania are some sorts of grapes which produce thrice a year. A mythical garden is indeed the delight of human fancy. Eden has its counterparts everywhere. Indeed a significant parallel might be drawn between Greek Phæacia and the Hebrew Paradise; in the one, man unfolds out of savagery, in the other he is created at once by a divine act. Can we not see Orient and Occident imaging themselves in their respective ideal products? The one from below upwards, the other from above downwards; both movements, the Greek and the Hebrew, belong to man, and have entered into his civilization. The next world-poet, Dante, will unite the two streams.

III.

Ulysses now comes to the internal element of Phæacia, to its soul as it were, manifested in the institutional life of Family and State. From this indeed is derived the beautiful world which we have just witnessed; Art builds up a dwelling-place, which images the spirit of the people to themselves and to others.

In accord with his instructions from both. Pallas and Nausicaa, he first goes to Arete and clasps her knees in supplication, begging for an escort to his country. But behold! She hesitates, notwithstanding his strong appeal to her domestic feeling and her sympathy with suffering. What can be the matter? Another Phæacian, not of the royal house apparently, but of the nobles, is the first to speak and command the stranger to be raised up and to be hospitably received. An old religious man who sees the neglect of Zeus in the neglect of the suppliant, a man of long experience, "knowing things many and ancient," is this Echeneus; him at once the king obeys, the queen still remaining silent.

Soon, however, we catch the reason of her conduct in the question: "Stranger, where did you get those garments?" She noticed Ulysses wearing the mantle and tunic "which she herself had made with her servants," and which Nausicaa had given him. Surely this is a matter which must be accounted for before proceeding further. Herein the woman comes out in her own peculiar province; no man would ever have noticed the dress so closely; Alcinous did not, and wise Ulysses in this case did not forecast so far out of his masculine domain. But the poet had made the subtle observation and uses it as a turning-point in his little drama. Now we see the queen before us: imagine a pair of dark eyes shooting indignation upon the man clothed with garments intrusted this very morning to the daughter.

Nor should we fail to scan her second question: "Do you not say that you have come hither a wanderer over the deep?" Verily the case is suspicious. Ulysses sees his plight, and at once offers the most elaborate explanation, going back and giving a history of himself for the last seven or eight years. Now we know why the poet specially praised the mind of Arete, and why her husband so honored her, and why she could be judge of disputes among men. She shows the keenest observation united with reasoning power; she stands out in contrast with the Phæacian men, who follow impulse more readily than she, as she keeps the judicial balance, though a woman, and demands evidence of truth from the uncertain stranger.

We may draw from this scene certain traits of the Phæacians, as we see here a man, a typical man probably who is outside of the royal family. An ideal humanity seems to live in them; they will receive the unfortunate wanderer and succor him to the fullest extent. More impressive still is their religious faith; they live in intimate communion with the Gods, who appear in person at the feast "sitting among us;" nor do the deities conceal themselves from the solitary wayfarer; "since we are as near to them as are the Cyclops and the wild tribes of Giants." So speaks Alcinous, hinting that kinship, which has been previously set forth; both himself and Arete are the descendants of savages, who were children of the Gods of nature. But they have risen into fellowship with the higher Gods of Olympus. The words of the king seemed to be tinged with sarcasm at those inferior deities, parents of savagery, from whom, however, they themselves are sprung. He cannot forget the Cyclops, the men of violence who once did his people wrong.

In these mythical allusions, obscure enough just here, we have already traced the rise of Phæacia into an ethical existence. The worship of the higher Gods is the emotional side of such a condition, and the treatment of the suppliant marks an advance toward the conception of an universal humanity. Still Phæacia, has its spiritual limits, genuine Greek limits, of which hereafter something will be said.

It is sufficient to state that the speech of Ulysses has its effect, it contains a great deal which appeals to the character of Arete; his leaving Calypso and his desire to return to his home-life must be powerful motives towards winning her sympathy. Then she cannot help recognizing and admiring his skill; there is an intellectual bond between them, as well as an ethical one. Not much does she say hereafter, her part being finished; her husband takes the lead henceforth. She has tested the wanderer, Alcinous can now preform the ceremonies.

We soon see that the king needs a counterpart in such a wife, he being impulsively generous; he blames his daughter for her backwardness in not coming to town with Ulysses, whereat the latter frames one of his smallest fibs in excuse of the maiden. Still further, the king in a surprising burst of admiration, wishes that Ulysses, or "such an one as thou art," might stay and be called his son-in-law. Altogether too sudden; Arete would not have said that, though the woman be the natural match-maker. Still Alcinous, in a counter-outpouring of his generosity, promises to send Ulysses to his own land, though "this should be further off than Eubœa, the most distant country." Thus overflows the noble heart of the king, but he clearly needs his other half, in the thorny journey of life.

Thus has Ulysses reached the heart of Phæacia and found its secret beat; he has felt its saving power, not simply externally but also internally; it rescues him from dangers of the sea and of himself too. The truly positive side of life begins to dawn upon him again, after his long career of struggle with dark fabulous shapes. Well may he pray Zeus for Alcinous: "May his fame be immortal over the fertile earth"—a prayer which has been fulfilled, and is still in the process of fulfillment. Arete gives the order to the servants to spread his couch for the night's repose, she has received him.

In the sweep of the present Book, many origins are suggested. The genealogy of the king and queen and people is significant, it might be called the genealogy of civilization. The woman is placed at the center; out of her springs the family, and with it come society, state, the institutional world.

Of such a world the external environment is seen in the garden, palace, and city of the Phæacians, which are built by the spirit for its dwelling-place and reflect the spirit. The Greek world of Beauty is born, and its course is foreshadowed; this ideal Homeric realm is prophetic of what Greece is to become. The plastic arts and the industrial arts are suggested, and to a degree are realized.

The artistic soul of Hellas is fully felt in Homer's Phæacia. The formative impulse is everywhere alive and at work; the instinctive need of shaping and transforming nature and life is here in its first budding, and will bloom into the greatest art-people of all time. Those two supreme Fine Arts of mature Greece, Architecture and Sculpture, are present in examples which foretell plainly Phidias and the Parthenon.

King Alcinous; thy fair palace has had fairer offspring,

Thou art ruling the world still by the beautiful form;

Out of thy mansion majestic was born in a song the Greek Temple,

Sentineled round with a choir—Titans columnar of stone,

Bearing forever their burden to hymns of a Parian measure,

Wearing out heaviest Fate to a Pindaric high strain.

Look! those boys of thy garden with tapers are moving to statues,

Seeming to walk into stone while they are bringing the light;

Hellas springs out of thy palace all sculptured with actions heroic,

Even the God we discern turning to marble by faith.

Such is the originative, prophetic character of Phæacia, which the reader must take profoundly into his soul, if he would understand the genetic history of Greek spirit. Verily the poet is the maker of archetypes and reveals in his shapes all that his people are to become.

Thou, old Homer, wert the first builder in Greece, the first carver,

Afterward she could but turn fancies of thine into stone;

Architects followed thee, building thy poem aloft into temples,

Sculptors followed thee too, thinking in marble thy line.

Nor must we forget the Industrial Arts here suggested—weaving, ship-building, the working of metals; in general, there is hinted the varied transformation of nature, which begets a civilized life. Agriculture is present, also horticulture, which the garden of Alcinous presupposes. Such, then, is the grand frame-work for the social order as here portrayed.

But the chief art of the Homeric world has not yet been given, though it is at work now, and is just that which has reproduced Phæacia with all its beauty. This is the poet's own art, which having set forth the other arts, is next to set forth itself. Accordingly we are to see the poet showing the poet in the following Book, which may, therefore, be named the Book of the Bard. Thus we pass out of the industrial and plastic arts of Phæacia, into the supreme art, the poetic, as it manifests itself in the Phæacian singer.

BOOK EIGHTH.

We observe a decided change in the present Book; it has a character of its own quite distinct from the preceding Books. Yet it is on a line of development with them, we note a further spiritual evolution which must be looked into with some attention. In general, Phæacia is now seen as an art-world, in true correspondence with Hellas, of which it is a kind of ideal prototype. In the two previous Books we saw portrayed chiefly institutional life in Family and in State. But in this Book institutional life, though present and active, is withdrawn into the background, and becomes the setting for the picture, yet also is the spirit which secretly calls forth the picture. A poetic art-world now passes before us in entrancing outlines, a world filled with song, dance, games, with all the poetry of existence.

Such an artistic development follows from what has gone before. Man, having attained culture, civilization, and a certain freedom from the necessity of working for his daily bread, begins to turn back and look at his career; he observes the past and measures how far he has come. The image of himself in his unfolding he beholds in art, specially in the poetic art, whose essence must at last be just this institutional life which has been described in Phæacia. He attains it and then steps back and portrays his attaining of it; having done the heroic deed, he must see himself doing it forever, in the strains of the bard. Art is thus the mirror of life and of institutions; it reflects the grand conflict of the times and the people; it seizes upon the supreme national event, and holds it up in living portraiture along with its heroes.

Now the great event which lies back of Phæacia at the present time, in fact lies back of all Greece for all ages, perchance lies back of all Europe, is the Trojan War. It was the first emphatic, triumphant assertion of the Greek and indeed of the European world against the Orient. The fight before Troy was not a mere local and temporary conflict between two quarrelsome borderers, but it cuts to the very marrow of the World's History, the grand struggle between East and West. Family and State are most deeply concerned in it, the restoration of the wife is the main object of the Trojan War, which the chieftains of Greece must conclude victoriously or perish. A new world was being born on this side of the Ægean, and the Greeks were its first shapers and its earliest defenders. This occidental world, whose birth is the real thing announced at Troy in that marvelous cradle-song of Europe, called the Iliad, has already begun its career, and shows its earliest period in Phæacia. It is no wonder, then, that the Phæacian people wish to hear the Trojan song, and it alone, and that the Phæacian poet wishes to sing the Trojan song, and it alone.

Thus we behold in the present Book a quiet idyllic folk on their island home out in the West listening to the mighty struggle of their race, with dim far-off anticipations of all that it involved. Nor were the women indifferent. Arete, the wife and center of the Family, is not henceforth to be exposed to the fate of Helen; think what would Phæacia be without her, or she without Phæacia; think what she would be in Troy, for instance. Strong emotions must rise in the breasts of all the people at hearing such a song.

But still stronger emotions well out of the heart of Ulysses. He is one of the heroes of the Trojan War not yet returned, a living image of its sacrifices. Of course, he is the main hero sung of by the bard in the present Book; such is the artistic adaptation of the Homeric work, clearly done with a conscious design. Ulysses has already passed through several stages—Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete; now he has reached the poet, Demodocus certainly, and perchance Homer himself, who is to sing not only of the Trojan War, but also of its consequences—this rise of man's spiritual hierarchy as here unfolded, from Nature, into Institutions, and thence into Art. After hearing Demodocus, Ulysses picks up the thread and becomes his own poet, narrating his adventures in Fairyland with the free full swing of the Homeric hexameter. Thus he acquires and applies in his own way the art of Phæacia; the arch of his life spans over from the heroic fighter before Troy to the romantic singer before the Phæacian court.

It is plain, therefore, that this Book is distinctively the Book of the Bard. In the experience of Ulysses, Demodocus is placed on a line with the three leading figures in the last three Books—they being women, while the singer must be a man. One reason is, possibly, that a Phæacian woman could not be permitted to sing such a strain as the story of Venus and Mars. At any rate, he is fourth in the row of shapes, all of which are significant. We catch many touches of his personality; he is blind, though gifted with song; "evil and good" he has received, and is therein a typical man. It is in every way a beautiful loving picture, painted with strong deep undertones of sympathy; no wonder is it, therefore, that Demodocus in all ages has been taken as a portrait of Homer by himself, showing glimpses of the man, of his station in life, and of his vocation. Later on we shall consider this point in more detail.

The three songs of the bard furnish the main landmarks for the organism of the Book. All of them will be found more or less intimately connected with the great event of the immediate Past, the story of Troy. Phæacia shows an intense interest in that story and the bard approves himself its worthy singer. Indeed the three songs stand in direct relation to the Iliad; the first deals with an event antecedent to the Iliad; the second has the theme of the Iliad, though in a changed form, inasmuch as the seducer, the wife and the husband are here Gods (Mars, Venus, Vulcan) instead of mortals (Paris, Helen, Menelaus); the third deals with an event subsequent to the Iliad. Yet the singer carefully avoids repeating anything in the Iliad. It is almost impossible not to think that he had not that poem in mind; or, rather, we are forced to conclude that the present author of the Odyssey knew the Iliad, and we naturally think that both were by the same man. Demodocus is the singer of the Trojan War, yet he shuns singing what has already been sung about it. Herein we may catch another faint reflection of Homer, the organizer, the transfigurer of old legends into his two poems. Note also that he hovers around the Iliad, before and after it, yet never into it, here and elsewhere in the Odyssey; specially in the Third Book have we observed the same fact.

In the present Book, however, is another strand; besides these songs of the bard belonging to the past are the doings in Phæacia belonging to the present, which doings have a connection and a correspondence with the songs. Thus we observe three divisions in the Book, and two threads which run through these divisions. The following outline may serve to show the general structure:—

I. There is the representation of the struggle between the physical and mental in what may be called Phæacian art; skill and strength have an encounter shown in two ways:

1. Past, heroic, ideal; the contest between Ulysses and Achilles at Troy; intelligence vs. mere courage. Sung by the bard. Pre-Iliad.
2. Present, real, not heroic; the games in which there is a contest also, and in which both skill and strength are involved, with the preponderance of the physical.

II. Now we drop to the sensuous inactive side of the Phæacian world, the luxurious, self-indulgent phase of their life, which is also imaged in their art doubly:

1. Past; an Olympian episode, a story of illicit love among the Gods, corresponding to the story of Helen on earth. Sung by the bard.
2. Present; hints concerning the sensuous life of the Phæacians who love the feast, the song, the warm bath and bed, along with dance and music, showing their pleasure in art. Return of the men from the market-place to the palace and into the presence of Arete.

III. We pass to what may be called the triumph of intelligence and the recognition thereof,—Phæacian art is again introduced, Ulysses is revealed.

1. Past, heroic, ideal; Troy is taken by skill, by the Wooden Horse, not by the physical might and courage of Achilles. Sung by the bard. Post-Iliad. This may be considered also a triumph over Venus who favored Troy.
2. Present; Ulysses weeps, his tears are noticed by Alcinous, who demands his name, country, travels. Ulysses has already in a number of ways discovered himself as connected with the past, with the Trojan War. In the next Book he tells his name, country, character, adventures.

If we scan the sweep of this outline, we observe that it opens with the conflict between Brain and Brawn, or between Mind and Might, and ends in the victory of Mind in the grand Trojan conflict. Similar has been the movement hitherto, from Calypso onwards, which, however, shows the ethical conflict. Still the intellectual and the ethical spheres have to subordinate the natural, and mind is the common principle of both.

As an introduction to the Book we have an account of the men assembling in the marketplace, where "they sat on polished stones near one another." Pallas has, of course, to be employed, though in a passing and very subordinate way; she acts as herald to call the assembly together, and thus stamps it with a divine import. We must grant to the poet his right, but the Goddess seems almost unnecessary here, as the herald could have done the same work. Once more Pallas interferes: "she sheds a godlike grace upon the head and shoulders of Ulysses," imparting to him majesty and beauty, "that he might be dear to all the Phæacians," those lovers of the beautiful in art and life. Thus, like a visible deity, he was "to be feared and to be revered;" strength also the Goddess gave him, "that he might accomplish all the contests which the Phæacians would try him with." Thus is the Hero prepared divinely.

Alcinous makes a speech to the assembly, touching the wanderer, who is again promised an escort to Ithaca; the king chooses the crew, and the ship is launched. Meanwhile, however, there is to be a sacrifice with festival, the bard is led in and his harp adjusted, his portion of food and drink not being omitted, for he is not a hired musician, but an equal at the feast.

We are now to witness two kinds of entertainment, both of which according to the Greek conception, belong to the sphere of art. The one is an heroic song, and is thrown into the past; the other is a trial of bodily skill and strength, and belongs to the present. Both kinds show contest, and this contest is mainly between the physical and the spiritual elements in man. Which is paramount? Each is necessary, yet one must be subordinate.

1. Note, first of all, the theme of the bard: "The Muse inspired him to sing the strife between Ulysses and Achilles, the fame whereof had reached high Heaven." The Trojan War lies manifestly in the background of the quarrel. When did it take place, at what period during the struggle? There is nothing to settle the question decisively, such a dispute might have arisen almost at any time. But as it is the antecedent trouble in the Greek army, a dualism which this army brings with itself in its leaders, we may reasonably put it somewhere towards the beginning. This is also the opinion of Nitzsch (Com. ad loc.), who places the scene of the dispute on the island of Tenedos, in sight of the walls of Troy and who cites the old Cypria in support of his opinion. Other ancient authorities place it after the death of Hector; not long before the fall of the city.

Concerning the subject of the dispute there is little difference of opinion. The Greek commentator, Eustathius (died about 1200 A.D.) cites the following legend in reference to it: "Agamemnon, having consulted the Delphic Oracle about the result of the Trojan War, received the answer that Troy would be taken when the best men of the Greeks would begin to quarrel. At a feast a dispute arose between Achilles and Ulysses, the former maintaining that Ilion would be captured by bravery, the latter by skill and cunning." Hence the joy of Agamemnon at what would otherwise be regarded as a ground for sorrow.

The response of the Oracle was ambiguous, yet even out of its ambiguity we may read something. Achilles, the man of courage, was regarded as the hero of the Greeks, but this opinion must be contested, and wisdom must also have its place in the management of the war, before the hostile city can be taken. These two principles are represented by Achilles and Ulysses respectively. The God of Wisdom, Apollo, responds, therefore, in accord with his character, carefully, doubtfully, not taking a decisive stand on either side, uttering an oracle which itself needs interpretation. Still we can see that it means a protest against mere brute courage—a protest which Ulysses voices. The Trojan Horse, the grand successful stratagem, may be considered as the outcome.

In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the same subject is worked over very fully and is indeed the main pivot of the drama, in which Achilles is substantially deposed from his heroship and replaced by Ulysses. The contest between mind and might or skill and courage, is what the English poet took from his Greek elder brother in part and in part derived from later legend. The struggle between brain and brawn was indeed a vital one in the Greek camp; there was always the danger lest the spirit would got lost in its physical manifestation. Indeed the danger of the Greek world was just this, and it perished at last of the same disease which we already notice at Troy. It fell to a worship of the sensuous in life and art, and so lost its soul in a grand debauch.

2. King Alcinous has noticed that Ulysses hid his face and wept at the song of the bard. Thus strong emotion seizes him on hearing the strife at Troy, while the Phæacians listen with delight. Such is the contrast, hinting two very different relations to the song. But the king will divert him from his grief, and so calls for the games to show him "how much we excel others in boxing, wrestling, leaping and running." The quoit was also one of the games.

In like manner Achilles is diverted from his sorrows for his friend Patroclus, by an elaborate exhibition of games, which are set forth in Book Twenty-Third of the Iliad. Contests of strength and skill they are, showing the body under control of mind and manifesting the same up to a certain point. They have an artistic side and train the man physically, requiring also no little mental alertness.

When the Phæacian contestants had finished, there was an attempt to bring Ulysses into the game and have him show what he was, but he declined the courteous invitation; "cares are in my mind more than games." Then Euryalus taunts him with being a merchant, or robber, and no athlete. Ulysses makes a caustic reply, picks up the quoit, and hurls it far beyond the marks of the others; then with some display of temper he challenges any of the Phæacians present to any kind of contest. He even becomes boastful, and tells what he is ready to do in the way of games; still further, he can shoot the bow and throw the javelin in heroic fashion—which accomplishments he will employ with telling effect against the suitors hereafter.

Alcinous pacifies him with gentle words, and proceeds to withdraw all his previous claims extolling Phæacian athletic skill. The soft arts of peace are theirs; "in boxing and in wrestling we have small fame;" but on the other hand "we delight in feasts, we love the harp and dance;" new clothes are in favor, and "we like the warm bath and bed." Very different is now the call of King Alcinous from that last one: let the stranger see "how much we excel others in the dance and song," to which is strangely added seamanship. Such is the preparation for the lay of the loves of Mars and Venus.

Through these games the heroic strand in the stranger has been brought to light, somewhat in contrast with the Phæacians. As he had a contest of mind with Achilles at Troy, so he has now a contest which shows his physical might; he is no weakling in spite of his intellect. Pallas too does not fail him, she marks his superiority in the throw of his quoit, and thus inspires him with courage.

II.

We have now reached the second song of the bard, for the way has been smoothed by the preceding description of the luxurious delights of the Phæacians. It is often called the Loves of Venus and Mars, or the Adulterers caught on Olympus. From time immemorial much doubt of various sorts, poetical, moral, philological, has been cast upon this song. Some ancient commentators have regarded it an interpolation, not a genuine part of Homer; modern expositors have not hesitated to follow the same opinion.

And indeed there are strong grounds for suspicion. Almost every reader feels at the first perusal its jar with the general character of this idyllic Phæacian world; it is decidedly adverse to the spirit of Arete and Nausicaa, as previously unfolded; the fact would almost seem impossible that, in an atmosphere created chiefly by these two women, there could be such a kind of artistic enjoyment. The most conservative reader is inclined here to agree with those who perform an act of excision upon the text of Homer. The whole passage grates too harshly upon nerves which have been attuned to the sweet innocent life depicted in the two preceding Books.

The objections to the song may be summed up in the following heads. (1) It is inconsistent and deeply discordant with the ethical tone of Phæacia already given. (2) It does not further Ulysses in any way, it shows no trait in his character, unless his faint approval signifies his liking for such songs. Nor does it seem on the surface to connect him with Troy, as do the other two songs of Demodocus. (3) It gives an unworthy view of the Gods, degrading them far below Homer's general level, reducing them to ordinary burlesque figures which violate all decency, not to speak of morality. (4) Philologists have picked out certain words and expressions peculiar to this passage, which, not being employed by Homer elsewhere, tend to indicate some other author.

Still, if the passage be an interpolation, this must have taken place early in the history of the poems. Pausanias the traveler declares that he saw the dancing scene of the Phæacians depicted upon the throne of Apollo at Amyclæ, the artist of which probably flourished about 600 B. C. The old philosopher Heraclitus, who would scourge Homer from the festivals of the Gods, doubtless had this passage in mind. Plato censures its indecency specially, and, as is well known, would exclude all Homer from his ideal Republic. The ancients thus accepted the passage as Homeric, with the exception of some of the later grammarians.

Next come the many attempts, old and new, to allegorize the Olympian scene, or to explain it away. From the fact that the sun keeps watch and is mentioned twice in this part, the latest school of mythologists, the comparative so-called, have taken much comfort, and have at once found in the whole a sun-myth. Some ancient expositors, according to Athenæus, interpreted it as a story written for the purpose of deterring the listeners from doing similar bad deeds, pointing to the punishment even of Gods herein designated; thus they sought to save the credit of Homer, treating him quite as some commentators have treated certain morally questionable stories in the Bible. Thus along down the ages to the present the loves of Venus and Mars have created trouble.

Undoubtedly the song has meaning and deserves a rational exposition. Has it any connection with the other songs of this Book, or with Homer in general? It is certainly a product of early Greek poesy; can it be organically jointed into anything before it and after it? The burlesque tone which it assumes towards certain Olympians has caused it to be connected with the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and with the war of the Gods in the Iliad (Book Twenty-First). Let us extend our horizon, and take a new look in various directions.

In the first place this song connects with Troy and the Iliad like the other two songs of Demodocus. The cause of the Trojan War and of its poem was the deed of Paris. The seducer, the wife, the husband—Paris, Helen, Manelaus—are the three central figures of the legend. Here this legend is thrown up among the Gods themselves, who furnish three corresponding characters—Mars, Venus, Vulcan. Then there is the wrong and the punishment of the wrong in both cases. Such is the theme of the Trojan War as it appears in the Iliad. Thus the three songs of Demodocus indicate a Pre-Iliad, an Iliad, and a Post-Iliad in due order.

In the second place one asks very emphatically: Why this present treatment of the Gods on Homer's part? But here we must make an important distinction. The Supreme God, Zeus, does not appear, nor does Juno nor does Pallas, indeed none of the Goddesses except the guilty one. The disgrace falls upon two mainly: Mars and Venus. In the Iliad they are Trojan deities hostile to the Greeks, and here the Greek poet serves them up together in an intermezzo, which makes them comic. Indeed the Greek Hero Diomed fights and puts down just these two Trojan deities in the Fifth Book of the Iliad. So must every Greek Hero at Troy conquer Mars and Venus (Violence and Lust, to give a suggestion of their purport) before Helen can be restored to home and country; he must put down the hostile city and its Gods. Note too, whither the Greek poet sends each of these deities after their release: Mars flies off to Thrace, a distant, barbarous country, beyond the borders of Hellas, where he can find his own; Venus on the contrary slips away southeastward to Cyprus inhabited by peoples Oriental or Orientalizing, and therein like Troy and herself. Both rush out of Greece with all speed; they belong somewhere in the outskirts of the Greek world.

We may now see why the Phæacians, without being so very wicked, could find an element in the song which they enjoyed. To them, with the Trojan War always in mind, this was the theme: the adulterous Trojan deities caught and laughed out of Olympus—those being the two deities who first misled by desire and then tried to keep by war the beautiful Helen, the Greek woman. Throwing ourselves back into his spirit, we may also see why Ulysses, the old war-horse from Troy, "was rejoiced in his heart, hearing the song" which degraded and burlesqued the Gods whom he had fought ten years, and who were, in part at least, the occasion of his wandering ten more. Venus and Mars did not find much sympathy in the Phæacian company, we may be sure. Why then regard them as Gods? The Greek deified everything; even the tendencies which he felt himself obliged to suppress had something of the divine in them. Calypso, whom Ulysses subordinated at last to the higher principle, was a Goddess; Troy, the hostile city, had its deities, whom the Greek recognised. Now its two chief deities are involved in a common shame, and flee from Olympus, flee almost outside of the Greek world. Certainly the audience could take some ethical satisfaction in that.

Then there is a third consideration different from the two preceding, both of which seek to look at the song from the ancient Greek standpoint. But from our modern standpoint it is also to be regarded. There is no doubt that we see here the beginning of the end of polytheism; the many Gods collide with one another, some are now put out and all will be finally put out; they are showing their finitude and transitoriness. Still further, we catch a glimpse of the sensuous side of Greek life, the excess of which at last brought death. Homer is the prophet of his people, when read with insight; he tells not only what they are, but hints what they are to become.

In general, we pass in this second part of the present Book as we have divided it, to the sensuous element of the Phæacian world, the inactive, quiet, self-indulgent phase, in decided contrast to the preceding part which shows a love of manly action in games and in war. Let us still further develop the twofold way in which this fact is brought out.

1. The second song of Demodocus has the general theme of the Trojan War and suggests the grand event of the aforetime. It manifestly carries the Trojan scission into Olympus and drives out in disgrace the Trojan deities. Vulcan, the wronged husband, is the divine artificer; he makes a network of chains which could not be broken, "like a spider's web, so fine that no one could see it, not even a God;" in this snare the guilty deities are caught, exposed, punished. These invisible, yet unbreakable chains have an ethical suggestion, and hint the law which is also to be executed on Olympus, as it was below in Troy. As Vulcan is the artist among the Gods, we are prompted to find also an artistic bearing in the scene; the artist catches the wrong-doers by his art and holds them fast in a marvelous net where they still lie, and shall lie for all time; even the intercession of Neptune cannot get them free. The scene is indeed caught out of the reality and holds to-day; the dashing, finely-uniformed son of Mars (so called at present) is most apt to win the heart of the gay, fashionable, beautiful daughter of Venus, have an escapade, and cause a scandal. Oft too they are caught in our modern, most adroitly woven spider's web, which goes under the name of newspaper, and held up, if not before a seeing Olympus, at least before a reading public, which not seldom indulges in conversation very much in the style of the Gods as here set forth. We moderns do not go to the market-place to hear such a strain, but have it brought to us in the Morning Journal. One advantage the Phæacian had: Arete and Nausicaa did not go to the market-place, where this song was sung, only men were there, but the print will enter the household where are wife and daughter. At any rate, we have to pronounce the song of Demodocus typical, universal, nay, ethical in spite of its light-hearted raillery, inasmuch as the deed is regarded as a breach of divine law, is exposed and punished, and the recompense for the release of the guilty pair, the penalty, is duly stated in accordance with law. Not every modern story-teller is so scrupulous, in meting out justice to ethical violation.

2. So much for the song; we turn again to the Phæacians, who are not now engaged in athletic, but in a milder sport, the dance. Youths moved their bodies in tune to the strain; still in Greece the dance and the song often go together. Then two danced alone without the song, but employed a ball, tossing it from one to the other, for the amusement of the spectators. A rhythmical movement of the body in the dance shows more internality than the athletic game, but it is less hardy, is more indicative of luxury and effeminacy.

On account of these enjoyments, which have been unrolled before us in so many striking pictures, the Phæacians have been regarded by some writers both in ancient and modern times as the mythical Sybarites devoted simply to a life of pleasure. The love of the warm bath and clean clothes, the dance and the song, above all the second lay of Demodocus have given them a bad name. Heraclides Ponticus derived their whole polity of non-intercourse, of concealment, of sending away the stranger as soon as possible out of their island, from their desire to resign themselves more completely to their luxurious habits, without foreign disturbance. Horace expresses a similar view of this people. Nitzsch in Commentary (ad loc.) defends the Phæacians warmly against the charge, and the view that Arete and Nausicaa cannot be products of a corrupt society holds good. An idyllic people, not by any means enervated, though pleasure-loving—so we must regard them. That lay of the bard, rightly looked into, does not tell against them as strongly as is sometimes supposed. Still Heraclides touched upon a limitation of Phæacia in his criticism, it refused to join the family of nations, it sought to be a kind of little China and keep all to itself. It had solved, however, the problem of external war and of internal dissension; no dispute with neighboring nations about commercial privileges, no local strife which cannot be settled by Arete. The poet has as nearly as possible succeeded in eliminating the negative element out of this society. An unwarlike folk, but not effeminate, happy in peace, with a childlike delight in play, which is the starting-point of art, and remains its substrate, according to Schiller; truly idyllic it must be regarded, a land on the way between nature and civilization, where life is a perpetual holiday, and even labor takes on a festal appearance.

Ulysses gives the palm of excellence in the dance to the Phæacians, and with this recognition the king proposes a large number of presents—hospitable gifts, such as the host gives to his honored guest. Moreover an apology and a gift are required of that Euryalus who recently offended Ulysses. Thus reconciliation is the word and the deed. Then all are ready to return to the palace into the presence of Arete, who is the orderer, and she makes arrangements for packing up the gifts. Note the warm bath again, supposed sign of effeminacy; here it is taken by Ulysses with decided approbation. Nausicaa, too, appears in a passing glance, and simply asks to be remembered for her deed; the response of Ulysses is emphatic: when he gets home he "will pray to her as to a God day by day, for thou, O maiden, hast saved my life."

In this round of recognition, the bard must not be forgotten; he is again led in, a banquet is served, and Ulysses takes special pains to honor him "with a part of the fat back of a white-tusked boar," and to speak a strong word of commendation: "Demodocus, I praise thee above all mortals; either the Muse or Apollo has taught thee, so well dost thou sing the fate of the Greeks."

III.

The praise of the bard naturally leads to the third portion of the Book, introduced by another song, which has its intimate connection with the preceding ones. Then its effect is noted upon Ulysses, who weeps as before, being stirred by many memories of companions lost. Verily Troy is a tearful subject. What motive for weeping? Who is this stranger anyhow? Alcinous now starts his interrogations which Ulysses answers in the following Book. Still, though nameless, he has unfolded himself quite fully through his actions in this Book. Again we hear the deeds of the aforetime sung by the poet, and see their influence in the present.

1. Ulysses himself now asks the poet to sing of the Wooden Horse which "was made by Epeius with the aid of Pallas," the Goddess here standing for skill, as it is now skill which takes Troy, not mere courage. Then mark further: Ulysses was the man who introduced it within the Trojan walls by stratagem—clearly another case of brain-work rather than brawn-work. This famous Wooden Horse was "filled with men who took Troy." Such is the song which Ulysses now calls for, mentioning himself by name—a fact which makes the announcement of his name soon after more impressive and dramatic. The Phæacians had just heard the culminating act in the taking of Troy, whereof Ulysses was the hero; behold! he stands before them, in all the prestige of song. Some critics have wondered why the name of Ulysses was withheld so long, and have imagined all sorts of interpolations; surely they have not seen the plan of the poet.

The Wooden Horse is not employed in the Iliad, but is one of the striking details of the later epics, which recounted the destruction of Troy. The song of Demodocus carries the incident back to the time of Homer, and before Homer, for it suggests antecedent ballads or rhapsodies which Homer knew, but did not use, and which poets after him developed. The Odyssey takes for granted that its hearers knew the Lay of the Wooden Horse, and also the Lay of the Strife between Ulysses and Achilles, "the fame of which had reached the broad Heavens." Thus we get a peep into the workshop of Homer and catch a glimpse of his materials, which he did not invent, but found at hand. Homer is the builder, the architectonic genius; he organizes the floating, disparate songs of his age into a great totality, into a Greek Temple of which they are the stones. Note what he does with this lay of Demodocus; he puts it into its place in the total structure of the Odyssey, and thus preserves it forever. So he has done with all his materials doubtless.

We may now see that those who cut up the Homeric poems into so many different songs or ballads simply destroy the distinctive work of Homer. They pry asunder the beautiful Greek Temple, lay its stones alongside of one another, and say: behold the poet. But this is just what he is not, and in the present Book we may see him unfolding his own process. Homer is not Demodocus, but the latter's lay he takes up and then weaves what he wants of it into the texture of the total poem. He is thus a contrast to the bard, whom, however, he fully recognizes and makes a part of his own work. Thus Homer himself really answers the Wolfian theory, which seeks to reduce him to a Demodocus, singing fragmentary lays about the Trojan War.

From the Greek poets the Wooden Horse passed to Virgil, who has made it the best-known incident of the Trojan War. It is probably the most famous stratagem of all time, due to the skill of Ulysses. Herein lies the answer to the first lay of Demodocus; in the dispute Ulysses is right, indeed he is a greater hero than Achilles, who could never have captured the hostile city. The incident took place after the action of the Iliad, and after the death of Achilles, who, heroic in courage, stood in the way of intelligence. When he is gone, the city falls, overthrown by the brain of Ulysses.

Homer does not pretend to give the song of Demodocus in full, but a brief summary of what he sang before the Phæacians. A later poet, Arctinus, took up the legend here alluded to, and developed it in a separate epic, called the Iliou-persis or Sack of Troy. Indeed a vast number of legends and lays about the Trojan War bloomed into epics, which were in later times joined together and called the Epic Cycle. Thus we distinguish two very different stages of consciousness in early Greek poetry: the ballad-making and the epical, Homer being the supreme example of the latter, and Demodocus an instance of the former.

Looking back at the three lays of the bard in the present Book we find that they all are connected together in a common theme of which they show different phases, beginning, middle and end—the conflict before the Iliad, the conflict of the Iliad, and the conflict after the Iliad, all hovering around the great national enterprise of the Greeks, namely the Trojan War, in which the deepest principle of the Hellenic world, indeed of the entire Occident, was at stake.

But Homer, in distinction from Demodocus, weaves into his poem not only the past but the present, not only Troy but Phæacia, not only the movement against the East but also the movement toward the West, of which Phæacia is simply one stage. The Hero who unites these two great movements of Greek spirit is now brought before us again.

2. Ulysses weeps at the song of the bard which recalls so many memories of friends departed and of dire calamities. These tears connect him deeply with Troy and its conflict; the Phæacians listen intently, but are outside of the great struggle, they shed no tears. Thus does Ulysses in his strongest emotions unite himself with the Trojan enterprise of aforetime. He is not simply a wanderer over the sea seeking to get home, but a returner from Troy; he has revealed himself through his feelings. He personally shares in the woes sung by the bard, because he has experienced them. Indeed the very image which the poet here employs to express sorrow, taken from the woman whose husband has been slain fighting for his city, and for his wife and his children, recalls Hector, Andromache and Astyanax as they appear in the Sixth Book of the Iliad. Ulysses is like such a woman, without home or family, alone among strangers, shedding tears. Thus he connects himself with the fateful story of Ilium.

Previously Ulysses wept at the first lay of Demodocus, now he emphasizes his sorrow by repetition. Whenever the theme of Troy is touched, he has to respond with tears; the second time of weeping at the Trojan tale is necessary in order to fix his character and identify him as a returner. Yet this repetition so vitally organic is questioned by many critics, some of whom resort to excision. It is hardly worth the while to notice them in their various attempts at destruction and construction; when we once catch the underlying motive all becomes plain. The first and last scenes of weeping unifies the Book, the bond of tears holds its parts indissolubly together in the emotions.

Alcinous has observed the stranger both times, sitting near him, while we may suppose that the other Phæacians, not noticing him, to be further off. The king sees his distress and even hears his sobs; in the first case the royal host refrained from inquiry, that being the duty of hospitality; but now the time for interrogation has arrived. The speech of Alcinous is characteristic; full of humanity, full of sympathy is the tone: "a guest, a suppliant stands for a brother even to the man of little feeling." A touch of prophetic boastfulness he shows here and elsewhere; the ships of the Phæacians he endows with supernatural powers, which fact, however, is not without meaning: "We have no pilots, no rudders even, our boats obey our thoughts, and know the cities and lands to which they come; very quickly do they shoot across the wave, hid in fog and cloud." Truly an ideal ship, which time has not yet realized, though recent navigation, with its present steam and its future electricity, is on the way thereto. Still angry Neptune threatens danger and may work damage, "smiting the ship on the dark deep." This speech of Alcinous with its miraculous, prophetic tinge, with its far-seeing hints of coming realities, almost foretelling our modern humanity and our modern mastery of the sea through science, and putting the two side by side, has given much trouble to the critics, whom we again shall have to pass by, as they simply darken the poet.

Finally comes the demand: who art thou and why didst thou weep? What is thy relation to Troy? Such is the culminating question; Ulysses has been unfolding himself more and more throughout the present Book before the king and people. The games showed his heroic strength; the dances brought out his recognizing and harmonious spirit; the lays of Demodocus have developed his connection with Troy. He clearly belongs to the past and to the present, possibly he is a bridge spanning them, which bridge he may be induced to build in wondrous rainbow colors before the eyes of the Phæacians.

Appendix. It seems never to have been noticed what an important relation the present Book sustains toward the Wolfian theory concerning the Homeric poems. The picture of Demodocus here given doubtless suggested to Wolf the first outline of his view, and has influenced other commentators who lean toward similar opinions. It is well known that Wolf in his famous Prolegomena maintains that the Iliad and Odyssey were originally a string of ballads more or less disconnected, and that Homer was only one of the many balladists, probably the best; furthermore he holds that these ballads were brought together, edited and put into their present shape by certain literary men called diaskeuastœ—revisers, redactors, professors of poetry and philology at the court of Peisistratus, about 500 B.C.

That is, Wolf regards Homer as a Demodocus, a singer and also a maker of disjointed ballads and war-songs, the latter pertaining mostly to the heroes of the Trojan War. These were sung at the festivals of the people, at the houses of the nobility, and at the courts of kings, quite as we see the bard singing here in Phæacia. This fact we may accept; but the question comes up: Is Homer such a balladist and nothing more?

Now it is clear that Homer is not a Demodocus, since the latter is not an epical builder, but a simple singer of separate lays for the occasion. Mark well that Homer in this book does not unfold the themes, "Strife between Ulysses and Achilles," and "The Wooden Horse," but simply alludes to them as well-known; he barely gives the title and a little of the argument, then drops the matter, leaving us to suppose that the Bard sang a somewhat lengthy lay, of which the effect upon the hearers and specially upon Ulysses is duly noted.

Homer, therefore, in this Book as well as in the First Book where Phemius is introduced, makes the Bard or Balladist merely one of his figures, and the song one of his incidents, while he, the veritable Homer, portrays the total environment, showing the court, the games, the household, the complete Phæacian world. Here we come upon the main distinction: Homer's eye is upon the totality of which the ballad-singer is but a small fragment; Demodocus appears in but one Phæacian Book, and is by no means all of that, though for once the leading figure.

A step further we may carry the thought. Homer is not only not a Demodocus, but he very distinctly contrasts himself with Demodocus by his poetic procedure. If he is at such pains to show himself a world-builder, and then puts into his world a ballad-singer as a passing character, he certainly emphasizes the difference between himself and the latter. It is also to be noticed that Demodocus does not sing an Iliad, though he chants lays of Troy; the Iliad is an organized work, not a collection of ballads strung together. Everything about Demodocus indicates separate songs; everything about Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey) indicates unity of song. Hence with the separatists, dissectors, anatomizers, Demodocus is a greater favorite than Homer, indeed he has taken the place of Homer.

Moreover the poet has plainly marked another stage, a stage between himself and Demodocus. In the next Book Ulysses will begin singing and continue through four Books, giving his adventures in Fableland, which by itself possesses a certain completeness. Still it is but an organic part of the total Odyssey, whose poetical architect is Homer. Ulysses as singer is clearly higher than Demodocus; but Homer is above both, for he takes both of them up into his unity, which is the all-embracing poem.

Most emphatically, therefore, Homer shows himself not to be a Demodocus, not to be a ballad-singer, which is an essential point in the Wolfian argument. Homer himself refutes Wolf some 2,500 years beforehand, and his is still the best refutation. A careful study of this Eighth Book settles the relation between balladist and poet by a simple presentation of the facts in their proper co-ordination, and also puts the alert reader on the track of the genesis of the Wolfian Prolegomena. For there can hardly be a doubt that Wolf, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, derived his main conception of Homer from the present Book and from the part that Demodocus, the bard, plays in it. To be sure, the idea that Demodocus, in a general way, is Homer, is old, coming down from antiquity and suggesting itself to the modern reader, who very naturally thinks that Homer is giving some traits of himself in his picture of the blind singer. So much we may grant: some traits of himself, but not all by any means; Homer doubtless upon occasion could sing a short lay of Troy for the amusement of his audience, like Demodocus; but in such a part he is only a wee fragment of the author of those magnificent works, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The total Homer builds totalities, by the very necessity of his genius.

Who, then, according to the theory, put these ballads together? Wolf, fully possessed of the notion that Demodocus is Homer, starts to account for the present form of the poems, which he assigns to the shaping hand of Peisistratus and his college of editors, critics, and poetasters. That is, the grand marvel of Homeric poetry, the mighty constructive act thereof, he ascribes to a set of men essentially barren and uncreative, for all of which he cites some very dubious and inadequate ancient authority.

Here again we may be permitted to trace the Wolfian consciousness to its origin, for origin it has in time and circumstance. Wolf was a professor in a University, and his department was philology; his ideas on Homer are really drawn from his vocation and his surroundings. Why should he not make a philologer and a professor the author of the Homeric poems? So he came to imagine that the tyrant Peisistratus 500 B.C. had under his patronage a kind of German University, or at least a philological seminary, whose professors really constructed Homer as we now have him, having put him together out of antecedent ballads which the actual Homer and many others may have made ages before. Wolf, therefore, is the founder of two philological seminaries; one at the University of Berlin, and the other at the court of Peisistratus. Great is the professor in smelling out the professor anywhere; still we cannot help thinking that what Wolf ascribed to the old Greek seminary, was done only at his German seminary, namely, the patching together of Homer out of ballads.

FABLELAND.

The movement of the second grand division of the poem, the Ulyssiad, has passed through two of its stages, which have been already considered; the third is now reached which we have called Fableland, though it may be said that the two previous lands are also fabulous. Let it then be named the Fairy World, though this term also does not state or suggest the fact with precision. Without troubling ourselves further about names, we shall proceed to seize the meaning by an exposition given in some detail.

No careful reader can doubt that the poem changes decidedly at the present juncture in color, style, environment and purpose. What reason for it? And what is the connection with the preceding portion of the poem? Four Books (IX-XII) of the same character essentially, unfold themselves before us and demand a new kind of appreciation; they are not idyllic, not epical; they form a class of a peculiar sort, which class, however, we have before noticed in the Odyssey, showing itself in short but suggestive interludes.

We shall, accordingly, first grapple with the leading facts of this new poetic order and seek to interpret them, or rather let them interpret themselves. Phæacia, which we have just seen, lies before Fableland, though the story of the latter is now told in Phæacia.