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, AEgyptius, 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.