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, Phoenicia, 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 AEthiopia 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 (Maerchen aller Maerchen).

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 OEdipus, 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 Védas 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, I-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 Öd. XVI, 245. Iliad I. 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 Eumaeus; 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 Phaeacia; 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) Phaeacia, 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, Arête 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 Phaeacia; 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 Phaeacian 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, Phaeacia, 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 Phaeacia. 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. Phaeacia.
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. Phaeacia 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 Arête the wife and Nausicaa the maid become possible. Upon such a foundation a social system can be developed, with commerce, navigation, etc. Still further, Phaeacia 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. Phaeacia 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 Phaeacia.

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. Phaeacia.

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 Phaeacia, 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 Phaeacia, an institutional land with social, domestic, and political life. From the grot of Calypso he passes to the home of Arête; 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 Phaeacia 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 Phaeacians, 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 Phaeacians 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 Phaeacia, 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 Phaeacia, 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.