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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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