Chapter II: Second Twelve Books (9)

It is one phase of the great Mythus of the Apocalypse, or the uncovering of the Future State, which in some form belongs to all peoples, and which springs from the very nature of human spirit. Man must know the Beyond; especially the Hero, the spiritual Hero of his race, must extend his adventures, not only over the world, but into the other world, and bring back thence the news concerning those who have already departed.

This then is the supreme Return of the Hero, the Return from beyond life, still alive; he is to conquer not only the monster Polyphemus and the enchantress Circe, but also the greatest goblin of all, Death. Common mortals have to make the passage thither without returning; the Hero must be the grand exception, else he were no Hero. Transcendent must he be, rising above all limits, even the limit of life and death.

We have, therefore, in the present Book the Greek glance into immortality. This is the essence of it, hence its prodigious hold upon human kind. That the conscious individual persists after the dissolution of the physical body is here strongly affirmed; indeed the world beyond is organized, and its connection with the world on this side is unfolded, in a series of striking pictures for the imagination. It is thus a grand chapter in the history of the soul's consciousness of its eternal portion, is in fact the middle link between the Oriental and the Christian view of immortality.

Ulysses, as the wise man, or rather as the intellectual Hero of his age, must go through the experience in question; he cannot return to home and country, and be fully reconciled with his institutional life here and now, without having seen what is eternal and abiding in the soul. The wanderer must wander thither, the absolute necessity lies upon him--and he must fetch back word about what he saw, and thus be a mediator between the sensible and supersensible, between time and eternity. In that way he means something to his people, becomes, in fact, their Great Man, helping them vicariously in this life to rise beyond life. The complete Return, then, involves the descending to Hades, the beholding the shapes there, and the coming back with the report to the living. Perhaps we ought to consider just this to be the culmination of the whole journey, the grand adventure embracing all possible adventures.

The connection with the preceding Book can not be too strongly enforced. Circe points out the way to Ulysses; her nature is to point to the Beyond, to which she cannot herself pass. In her last phase, she was spirit, but still in the sensuous form; that spirit in her, as in all true art and even in the world, points to its pure realm, where it is freed from the trammels of the senses. This gives the main characteristic of Homeric Hades; it is the supersensible world, outside of Space and Time; or, rather with its own Space and Time, since it is still an image.

Hence these mythical statements which seek to get beyond all known geographical limits. Ulysses had to cross the Ocean stream, which ran round the whole earth; to go over it was indeed to go over the border. There below is the gloomy grove of Proserpine; there too, are the four rivers of the Lower Regions, with names terribly suggestive; into Acheron the stream of pain (or lake) flow Pyriphlegethon (Fire-flames) and Cocytus (the Howler), the latter being an offshoot of Styx (Hate or Terror). Where "the two loud-sounding rivers meet" the third one (Acheron) is a rock, a firm protected spot seemingly, there with mystic rites is the invocation of the dead to take place.

Thus we see that the poet's description remains spatial in his attempt to get beyond space. He has to express himself in images taken from the sensible world, even while pushing them beyond into the supersensible. He makes us feel that the image is inadequate, though he has to use it; poetry is driven upon its very limit. At this point specially we note the kinship of the Odyssey with Romantic Art, which through the finite form suggests the Infinite. Dante comes to mind, whose great poem is one vast struggle of the limited symbol with the unlimited spirit which is symbolized. Thus the old Greek song becomes prophetic, foreshadowing the next great world-poem, or Literary Bible, written in the light of a new epoch.

Strong is the sympathy which one feels with the ancient singer in this attempt to probe the deepest mystery of our existence. He must have reflected long and profoundly upon such a theme, building in this Book a world of spirits, and laying down the lines of it for all futurity. Probably the most gigantic conception in literature: the universal Hero, ere he can round the complete cycle of experience, must pass through the Beyond and come back to the Present. It deepens the idea of the Return, till it embraces the totality of existence, by making it reach through the Underworld, which is thus a domain in the spiritual circumnavigation of the globe.

The structure of the Book is somewhat intricate and it requires quite a little search to find the lines upon which it is built. It has at the first glance a rather scattered, disorganized look; for this reason the analytic critics have fallen upon it in particular, and have sought to tear it into fragments. It is possible that some few lines may have been interpolated, but it remains an organic whole, and the final insight into it comes from viewing it in its total constructive movement.

As the Book is an effort to make a bridge between the sensible and supersensible realms, manifestly this separation into two realms will constitute the fundamental division. The diremption into soul and body, into life and death, runs through the entire narrative, also that into men and women; but the main distinction is into Past and Present. The sensible world when canceled becomes Past, the distant in Time and possibly in Space; this Past through its characters, its spirits, is made to communicate with the Present.

Moreover the Past has its distinctions. To the Greek mind of Homer's age, specially in Phaeacia, the Trojan War is the grand central fact of the aforetime; thus the Past divides into the Pre-Trojan, Trojan, and immediate Past, in the Book before us. A complete sweep down into the Now is given--the sweep of the supersensible. Also the Present has two representatives: Ulysses along with his companions, and the Phaeacians.

In the Past, therefore, is arranged a long gallery of souls speaking to the Present, which listens and also has its communication. The problem now is to get a structural form which will hold the idea. Let the following scheme be sent in advance, which scheme, however, can only be verified or understood at the close of the Book on a careful review.

I. The first great communication of the dead and past to the living and present, by voice and by vision; some speak, others are only seen.

1. The present and living element is made up of Ulysses and his companions who are invoking by their rites and prayers the souls of the Underworld. The companion Elpenor dead, but not yet buried, forms the transition between the Present and Past.

2. The past and dead element, Pre-Trojan, is called up in two general forms: the ancient seer Tiresias who is both Past and Future through his mind, and, secondly, the souls of Famous Women, who pass in review before the Present. The hint of a world-justice runs through both the prophecies of the seer and the destinies of some of these women.

II. The second grand communication of the dead and past, now Trojan--to the living and present, now Phaeacian prominently, given by voice and vision.

1. The Present is here not only Ulysses far off in Hades, but the Phaeacians in their actual sensible world. The latter demand again the grand background and presupposition of their present life--the Trojan epoch represented in its great spirits.

2. The Past, Trojan, in three typical Greek heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax. The three typical Greek women of the Trojan epoch are also mentioned. An implicit idea of punishment, or of heroic limitation brought home to the hero, is traceable in this portion.

III. The idea of a world-justice with its universal judgment, hitherto only implied, now becomes explicit in Hades and organizes itself, showing (1) the judge, Minos, (2) the culprits in four condemned ones, (3) the saved one, Hercules, who rises out of Hades through the deed. By implication so does the living Ulysses--hence the journey is at an end, Hades is conquered.

I.

Ulysses follows the direction of Circe, indeed he is propelled by the wind which she sends, to the "confines of the Ocean stream," to the limits of this terrestrial Upperworld. Here is the land of the Cimmerians, "hid in fog and in cloud," which veils the realm of the dead; here the sun sends no beam, either rising or setting. Again it is possible that the poet may have heard some dim account of the regions of the extreme North. But the significance of the Cimmerians is to shadow forth the dark border-land between life and death, which is here that between the limited and the unlimited. We see the strong attempt of the poet to get beyond limitation in its twofold appearance: first he will transcend the external boundary of the Homeric horizon, that of the sea stretching far to the westward; still more emphatic is his effort to transcend the limits of finite thinking and to reach an infinite realm, which is the goal of the spirit. He sweeps out of sensuous space, yet the poetic imagination has to remain in space after all, though it be a new space of its own creation. In like manner, he has to give the disembodied souls some finite nourishment in the shape of food and blood, in order that they become real. We feel in these dark Cimmerian limits his wrestle to pass over to the supersensible by thought.

I. The Present is represented by Ulysses and his companions, who now perform the rites consisting of a sacrifice and prayer to "the nations of the dead." We may find in the libation of "mingled honey, sweet wine, and water," a suggestion of the tissues and fluids of the body, while the blood of the sacrificed animals hints the principle of vitality. When the disembodied spirit tastes these elements, it gets a kind of body again, sufficient at least to be able to speak. That the sheep must be black is curiously symbolical, hinting the harmony expressed in the color of the animal and of Hades.

The souls "came thronging out of Erebus," eager to communicate. This aspiration must thus be their general condition; they wish to hear from us as much as we wish to hear from them. Hence there must be a selection, which involves a new rite, the flaying and the burning of the carcasses of the animals along with "prayer to Pluto and Proserpine" king and queen of the Underworld. Yet this choice requires activity from the hero, who has to draw his sword and keep off the crowd of spirits, till the right one comes, the Theban seer Tiresias.

Thus is the Past linked into the Present, which to receive the communications of the departed by means of a ritual, in whose symbolism we see the effort of the living to know the Beyond. Now occurs a curious incident: Ulysses beholds his companion Elpenor, dead, yet unburned, and hears his first message. This soul can still speak, and be seen; it hovers half way between the two worlds, having still a material phase of the body which has not yet been burnt. Elpenor tells the nature of his death: "some deity and too much wine" did the thing--a combination which is usually effective in Homer. An unhappy condition, suspended between matter and spirit; he begs that it be ended. But the poor fellow has another request which shows the longing of the humblest Greek--the longing for the immortality of fame. "Make a tomb beside the seashore for me, an unfortunate man, of whom posterity may hear." Thus he too will live in the mouths of men; wherein we catch possibly a gleam of Homer himself, who has certainly erected an imperishable monument to Elpenor, voicing the aspiration of the soul even in Hades.

It is the hint of a deep maternal instinct that Anticleia, "my mother deceased" comes at once to the blood and wishes communication. But Ulysses must first hear Tiresias, the strongest ties of Family are subordinate to the great purpose. Surely all are now ready to listen to the Past with its message; here comes its spirit, voiced with a fresh power.

II. We have just had the Present, and in the case of Elpenor, the immediate Past, which is not yet wholly gone. Next we take a leap to the Past of long ago, to the Pre-Trojan time, whose spirits will appear. Two sets of them, divided according to sex into man and woman, we behold. But the man here is the prophet, hence what he says belongs to the Future, into which Ulysses now gets a glimpse.

Thus both Future and Past are given their place in the supersensible realm, both being abstractions from the Present, which is the reality, the world of the senses. Yet that which is abiding and eternal knows not Past, Present, or Future, or knows them all equally, having that which is common to them all, being indeed the principle of them all. In a sense we may say that Tiresias is Past, Present and Future, he is the voice of the Past speaking in the Present foretelling the Future. Then the Famous Women come forth, whose fame causes them to appear now and to be recorded. Thus the poet takes the two ancient sets and suggests that which underlies them both and makes them ever present.

1. Tiresias, though he spans the three dimensions of Time, is essentially the prophet, and so his stress is upon the Future. His body has been long dead, but his mind is left in its untrammeled activity; he may be considered as the purest essence of spirit. No senses obstruct his vision, he sees the eternal and unchangeable law; yet he must throw it into images and apply it to special cases. What a conception for a primitive poet! We feel in this figure of Tiresias that Homer himself is prophetic, foreshadowing the pure ideas or archetypal forms of Plato, and that he, in his struggle for adequate expression of thought, is calling for, and in fact calling forth, Greek philosophy.

Tiresias speaks at first without drinking of the blood, yet he has to drink of it to tell his prophecy. This little contradiction is not vital, let it not trouble us. The prophetic announcement to Ulysses includes four special cases. First, the Hero must have his struggle with Neptune on his way homeward, the God will avenge the blinding of his son, though that blinding had to take place; every man who overcomes a great power, even a natural power, will get the backstroke of his own deed. The very ship of Ulysses, which defies Neptune, exposes itself to a conflict which it might avoid, did it not undertake to master the God's element; such is the penalty of all victory. Secondly, he must keep down appetite, particularly at the Trinacrian Isle, and not slay the Oxen of the Sun, else the penalty will follow there too. Not to keep down passion and appetite is clearly to eat of those oxen in some way, which will be more carefully scrutinized hereafter. Then, thirdly, "thou shalt avenge the violent deeds of the Suitors, when thou hast returned home."

The common ground in these three cases of prophetic insight is retribution for the act done there above on earth. The penalty is as certain in the future as it has been in the past; violation brings punishment. Ulysses has had that experience often; note it is told him, or, if you wish to think the matter in that way, he tells it to himself for his own future experience. So the Prophet sees the universal law, he knows what abides in all the fleeting appearances of the world. Ulysses also, were he to descend into the depths of his own soul, would find the same prophecy; indeed this descent into Hades is also the descent into himself, as well as into the outer supersensible world. The hero in his intellectual journey has gone far, we can now behold him near the eternal verities.

But the fourth statement of the Prophet is here too, it is the word of promise. When this last conflict with the Suitors is over, then be reconciled with Neptune by a fitting sacrifice (which means that Ulysses should quit the watery element) give hecatombs to the Immortals, recognize them and their rule. Then serene old age will take thee off remote from the sea and all struggle, among a happy people, whom thou hast made happy. Such is the promise, extending quite beyond the limits of the Odyssey, which ends not at the death of Ulysses, but with his last conflict. So there is hope amid all this struggle, hope of becoming the complete man, who has reached harmony with the Gods, with his people, and with himself.

In such fashion Tiresias calls into vision the course of the entire poem, and reaches even beyond it, embracing the whole life of Ulysses, till he too descends for the last time into Hades. Verily the prophet is Past, Present and Future; his true abode is in the realm of pure spirit. He foretells, but the Future is prefigured as the outcome of what is universal; it must be so and not otherwise, else is the world a chaos. Thus Tiresias is put at the beginning, he being the typical person of this Underworld, in which the deities, Pluto and Proserpine, do not appear, being held in the dark background. The prophet telling his prophecy is the very Figure of the Supersensible.

But again let us be reminded that these hints of pure universal thought are borne to us in images, in particular shapes, whereby ambiguity rises, and meaning runs double. Nevertheless the true-hearted reader will go down with the old poet into Hades, and there behold in these images things which lie beyond the senses; he will behold the very spirit of ancient Tiresias.

2. Having seen the Man, Ulysses is next to behold the Famous Women of the Past, which is still Pre-Trojan with one exception. Examples from all the relations of the woman in the Family are given: the mother, the maiden, the wife. Tragic and happy instances are brought before us--ideal forms taken from the ancient Mythus of Hellas, and begetting in later times a prodigious number of works of art, in poetry, sculpture and painting. Here they are put into Hades, the place of the spirit unbodied, which will hereafter take on body in the drama, in the statue, and in the picture. Ulysses witnesses these shapes in advance, and gives their idea, which is to be realized in the coming ages of Hellas. Truly is Homer the primordial Hellenic seer, he who sees and sets forth the archetypal forms of the future of his race. Undoubtedly he drew from mythical stores already existent, but he ordered them, shaped them anew, and breathed into them the breath of eternal life. No wonder the universal Greek hero must go to Hades to see these forms of the Past which are, however, to live afresh in the Future.

We must also consider the audience of the singer. Who are present? First of all, Arete, mother and wife, together with Nausicaa, the maiden, to these he is specially singing. Their importance in the Phaeacian world has been already indicated; naturally they wish to hear of woman in the Family. Accordingly this portion of the Eleventh Book, the catalogue of Famous Women, or Homer's "Legende of Good Women," is organized after the relations of domestic life. Three classes are suggested: the mothers; the maidens and the wives, of the grey aforetime.

But by all means the glory and the stress of the song are given to the mothers; the other two classes are very briefly dismissed, as being essentially described in the first. Arete is indeed the grand center and end of womanhood; Nausicaa as maid is but a transitory phase, and as wife she is to become mother, and then take her supreme place in the chain which upholds and perpetuates humanity. So the old Greek poet must have thought; was he very far from right?

_a._ The first of these mothers to appear is Anticleia, the mother
of the Hero Ulysses, of the Hero who has made this remarkable
voyage to the world beyond, of its kind the supreme heroic act done
by a living mortal. She, however, belongs to the immediate Past,
and thus corresponds to the man, Elpenor, in the previous section,
though she of course has been buried. Note, therefore, this mark of
symmetrical structure.

It is the beautiful instinct of the mother, that she flits in the
ghost-world to her son at once, when the chance is afforded. She
has already appeared, even before Tiresias came; now she is the
first after that prophet, who gives directions to Ulysses
supplicating: "Tell me, O Prophet, how shall my mother recognize me
as her son." Ulysses learns much from her about Ithaca, especially
about his father Laertes, who now never goes to the town but stays
in the fields, "with a great sorrow in his heart, desiring thy
return, while old age weighs hard upon him." Such is the father,
still living, whom Ulysses may yet see.

The mother died from longing for her son and "the memory of his
gentleness;" still her longing brings her to him in the life
beyond. The great revelation is concerning the future state: the
soul is immortal, this fact Ulysses is to tell in Phaeacia. The
strong desire to behold the loved ones who have passed away is
indeed the impulse; but they too return, though insubstantial. It
is the primary groundwork of faith in immortality--this feeling of
the domestic relation affirming that it is eternal and cannot be
broken by death. Still the mother is but a ghost and cannot be
embraced; this the son has to accept, though he would have her in
flesh and blood.

_b._ At once there is the transition to the famous mothers of
legend--"wives and daughters of Heroes" says the poet, with, an eye
to his audience, which has men in it also, so he does not mention
mothers, though they are the burden of his strain. Here follows a
Catalogue of Women, giving them their due place in the genealogy
and destiny of distinguished houses. Three groups of these mothers
we may distinguish.

First is the group of mortal women who were embraced by some god,
and gave birth to heroic offspring. Tyro met Neptune and brought
forth Pelias and Neleus; from the latter sprang Nestor who connects
the Pre-Trojan and Trojan ages, since he appears both in the Iliad
and Odyssey. In the Third Book of the latter epos we have already
seen Nestor sacrificing to his divine ancestor; so the present
passage has its pertinence to the total poem. In the same group are
Antiope and Alemena, the latter of whom was the mother of Hercules,
whose father was Zeus. At the end of the present Book, Hercules
himself will appear as the supreme example of the Greek Hero.

Such were three typical mothers, famed in Hellenic legend, being
the women who bore Heroes, the offspring of Gods. It was deemed the
highest function of the Greek mother to bring forth a Hero, the
child of divinity, with an immortal portion. This view, in its
purely sensuous aspect, is dubious enough to the modern ethical
mind, still its real meaning must be looked at with sympathetic
vision, which sees therein the divine descent into mortal flesh, a
mythical utterance of the faith that the great man is the son of
God. The Christian view universalizes this conception, holding that
all men, and not merely the Heroes, are God's children. Yet the
Christian world has also retained its faith in the Son of God, son
by a mortal woman, which faith the old Greek had too, and expressed
in his way. Thus we may extract out of this Homeric account
something more than divine license; it has indeed a wonderful
pre-Christian suggestiveness, and gives a glimpse of the movement
of Universal Religion.

The second group of famous mothers are mortal women with mortal
husbands. The wedded wife brings up now the domestic relation,
which is passingly introduced by the spouse of Hercules, Megara,
who is simply mentioned. The two chief women of the group are
Epicaste and Chloris, the one supremely tragic in her motherhood,
the other reasonably happy. Epicaste is mother of OEdipus, who
marries her after slaying his own father who is her husband, both
deeds being done in ignorance; thus the closest domestic ties are
whelmed into guilt and tragedy, whereof Sophocles has made a
world-famous use, in his two dramas on the subject of OEdipus.
Chloris is, on the contrary, the mother of Nestor, not a tragic
character by any means; also she is mother of Pero, the beautiful
maiden, "whom all the people around were wooing," and who was
happily won by an heroic deed. Mark the interest of those
listeners, Arete and Nausicaa, mother and daughter in this tale.
Thus the two women, Epicaste and Chloris, have opposite destinies,
and show the sharp contrasts of life.

In the third group are two mothers who have a double honor; each
has borne twins and heroic ones at that; moreover the Gods again
enter the domestic relation of mortals. Leda's sons are "Castor the
horseman, and Pollux the boxer," the first being mortal, the second
immortal, and reputed son of Zeus, who permitted the immortal
brother to share his immortality with his mortal brother; hence
"every other day they both are alive, and every other day they both
are dead." Again the divine gives itself to the human in the spirit
of true brotherhood; the son of Zeus takes on the ills of mortality
through fraternal love. The second mother of this group is
Iphidameia, who declares Neptune to be the father of Otus and
Ephialtes, of her monstrous twins, "who at the age of nine years
threatened war upon the Gods," and proposed to storm heaven by
piling Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion on top of that. Such is
the contrast: one set of sons is noble, worthy, and "receive honor
like unto Gods;" the other set is defiant, assailing the divine
order, and are slain by the arrows of Apollo "ere the down
blossomed beneath their temples, and covered their chins with
tender furze."

_c._ Such, then, is the account of the mothers, the women who have
borne children famous in legend. They have taken up nearly the
whole of the present catalogue; the wives and maidens now come in
for brief mention, forming two groups, three persons to the group.
The poet is impartial, he introduces the faithful woman, Ariadne,
and the faithless woman, Eriphyle; in the one case man is the
betrayer of woman, and in the other case woman is the betrayer of
man. Possibly in Ariadne may be a little hint for Nausicaa, saying,
Beware.

But the singer is tired and sleepy; moreover has he not told the
essence of the matter in this portion of his song? He at once
dismisses any further account of famous women, "wives and daughters
of Heroes," whom he saw in Hades. Nausicaa and Arete have had their
share, wonderful has been their interest in the struggles and
sufferings of their sex; they feel in themselves the possibility of
such conflicts. These ideal shapes of the olden time, product of
the myth-making Imagination, are types, are the ghosts of Hades
which Ulysses must see and know, ere he return to the Upperworld.

II.

We now reach the second main division of the Book, which is marked by the introduction of the audience, the Phaeacians, "who were held rapt with the charm" of the story. Observe, too, that the palace was not brilliantly illuminated, but shadowy--fit environment for fairy tales (line 334). This main division is again separated into two subordinate divisions which embrace the Present and the Past, and thus is in structure homologous with the preceding main division. Yet both the Present and the Past are not now the same as the previous Present and Past.

I. First of the hearers speaks out the mother, wife of Alcinous, Arete, in response to the compliment of Ulysses in singing of the Famous Women of Greek legend. "Phaeacians, how does this man seem to you now in form, stature, and mind?" Very different does he seem from what he once did; thus she gently apologizes for her previous treatment. She appreciates the Hero; moreover, she asks that the high guest receive hospitable gifts without stint; "for much wealth lies in your halls by the bounty of the Gods."

Having thus heard from the woman, we now are to hear from the man, the representative Phaeacian, king Alcinous. In the first portion of the Book Ulysses and his companions were the Present to which the Past appeared in Hades. Now the Phaeacians are introduced as the Present, which is to hear the voice of the Past from Hades. Moreover, the Past is not the Pre-Trojan, but the Trojan Past, which we have already (in the Eighth Book) seen to be dear to the Phaeacian heart. It is no wonder, then, that Alcinous, as soon as he can urge his request, calls for a song about the Greco-Trojan Heroes in the Underworld. "Tell us if thou didst see any of those godlike Argives who followed thee to Troy and there met their fate." Not the mother of the Hero, but the Hero himself is now to be called up; the man wishes to listen to the deeds of man. Demodocus, the Phaeacian bard, always sung of some phase of the Trojan struggle, which was the popular subject of story and song in Phaeacia. Thus we note again how the famous Past, stored away in Hades, is made to flow into the Present, and to contribute an ideal of heroism, and a warning also, to the living.

A touch of Homer as literary critic we should not pass by, as he does not often take that part. Alcinous, praising the tale of Ulysses, says: "Form of words is thine, and a noble meaning, and a mythus, as when a minstrel sings." Three important qualities of poetry are therein set forth: beauty of language, nobleness of content, and the fable in its totality--all of which belong to the preceding narrative. Moreover, Alcinous draws a sharp contrast with that other sort of storytellers, mere liars, "of whom the dark earth feeds many," who go about "fabricating lies, out of which we, looking into them, can get nothing," can draw no meaning. Such at least is our view of this passage (line 366) about which there is a difference of opinion among commentators. At any rate we catch a glimpse of Homeric literary criticism in Homer, who states the requirements of good poetry, and contrasts them with the "liar" or fabricator of yarns, which are certainly devoid of the noble spirit or worthy content.

So Ulysses is asked to begin his Trojan story, always more interesting than that catalogue of women, at which everybody began to yawn. "It is not yet time to go to sleep," cries Alcinous, "the night here is unspeakably long," and still further, "I would hold out till daylight," listening to thy story.

II. The Trojan Past, then, is the theme; we are to behold the ghosts of those who were famous during the War at Troy, and immediately afterwards, both men and women. But the women are not here given a special portion to themselves, but are woven into the general narrative. This part of the Book is sung for the men, the opposite sex is withdrawn into the background; still they will be duly mentioned, since the whole conflict is over a woman. Moreover Alcinous wishes to hear what the heroic men are doing in the future world, whither too he must go.

1. Three Greek shades will pass before us, Agamemnon the Leader, Achilles the Hero, and Ajax the man of strength. We shall find them placed in a certain contrast with Ulysses, who is shown greater than any of the three. All have been overwhelmed by fate through their own folly or weakness, while Ulysses still lives, the master of fate, and beholds them in Hades. Such is his triumph, which the shades themselves declare.

First comes the soul of Agamemnon, the great King, who has the bond of authority in common with King Alcinous. He tells the story of his own murder in considerable detail, which story has been given twice already in the poem. A most impressive event to the Greek mind of Homer's age; the greatest of the rulers is wretchedly cut off from his Return by his wife Clytaemnestra and her paramour AEgisthus. This Return is what points the contrast between him and Ulysses; moreover the contrast is also drawn between the wives of the two men, one the faithless and the other the faithful woman. Still the wrong of Agamemnon is suggested by himself: "I heard the piteous voice of Cassandra, whom Clytaemnestra slew, crying for me; I, though dying, grasped for my sword," to no purpose, however. Surely the wife had her wrongs as well as the husband, out of which double guilt AEschylus will construct his mighty tragedy.

Next after the Leader, in due order comes the Hero of the Greeks before Troy, Achilles. He recognizes this descent to Hades as the greatest deed of Ulysses: "What greater deed, rash man, wilt thou plan next?" It is verily the most wonderful part of his Return, overtopping anything that Achilles did. Still Ulysses pays him the meed of heroship: "We Argives honored thee as a God, while living, and now thou art powerful among the dead; therefore do not sorrow at thy death, O Achilles." But he answers that he would rather be the humblest day laborer to a poor man than to be King of the Shades. It is not his world, he longs for the realm of heroic action, here he has no vocation. No Troy to be taken, no Hector to be vanquished down in Hades; the heroic man must sigh for the Upper World with its activity. Some consolation he gets from the account which Ulysses gives of his son, who was in the Wooden Horse and distinguished himself at Troy for bravery. Thus the father lives in his son and "strides off delighted through the meadow of asphodel." This plant is usually regarded as the _Asphodelus ramosus_, a kind of lily with an edible tuberous root, still planted, it is said, on graves, to furnish to the dead some food which grows in the earth. This ancient custom has been supposed to be the source of the legend of its being transplanted to Hades.

The third heroic shade is that of Ajax, son of Telamon, with whom Ulysses had a rivalry, the story of which runs as follows: After the death of Achilles, Thetis his mother offered his arms, the work of Vulcan, to the worthiest of the remaining Greek heroes. The contest lay between Ajax and Ulysses. Agamemnon would not decide, but referred the question to the Trojan prisoners present, asking them which of the two contestants had done them the most injury. They said Ulysses. Whereupon Ajax went crazy and slew himself. Now he appears in Hades, still unreconciled; it is really the most wretched lot of all. Ulysses here speaks the reconciling word, growing tender and imploring; but the hero "answered not, darting away with the other shades into Erebos." Wherein we may well see how much greater in spirit Ulysses was than his big muscular rival. He has reached in this respect the true outcome of life's discipline: to have no revenges, and to speak the word of reconciliation.

In fact the superiority of Ulysses over all these heroes is clearly manifested. He brings no captive woman home to his domestic hearth, and hence he has a right to count upon Penelope's fidelity, though certainly he shows himself no saint in his wanderings. Moreover Agamemnon lacked foresight in his Return, which Ulysses will exhibit in a supreme degree when he first touches his native soil. The second hero, Achilles, could not conquer Troy, then he could not conquer Hades; yet both are conquered by Ulysses who is thus the greater. Finally unreconciled Ajax--all are limited, incomplete, in contrast with the complete, limit-removing Hero, who has just removed even the limit of Death in the only way possible. Verily to him they have become shadows, that whole heroic world before Troy is now put by him into Hades.

Thus we see that, while the characters belong to the Trojan time, there is a movement out of that period, it is transcended. The background here is the Iliad, yet the incidents are taken from the Trojan war after the action of the Iliad is brought to a close. The fates of the three great heroes of that poem are not given in the poem; here they are given with a tragic emphasis. Thus the Odyssey carries forward the Iliad, supplements it, and forms its real conclusion, both being in fact one poem. In the full blaze of the glory of Achilles the Iliad ends; but he cannot take Troy; and still less, after his death, can Ajax; the divine armor must go to Ulysses who has brain, then can the city be taken. Even the son of Achilles will fight under Ulysses and enter the Trojan Horse, the work of Pallas, of Intelligence. Thus we catch here as in other places, glimpses of the unity of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the great work reflecting the one national consciousness of Hellas in its complete cycle.

2. We should not fail to cast a separate glance at the three typical women of the Trojan epoch--Helen, Clytemnestra, Penelope--in contrast with the three heroes already described. They are all mentioned and compared in the speech of Agamemnon, but do not form an organic part of the Book by themselves, as do the Pre-Trojan women. They are wives, and wifehood not motherhood, as in the previous case, is the phase of the domestic relation which is the theme of song and struggle in their lives. Possible its present importance is the reason why wifehood was dismissed with so brief mention in the portion concerning the famous mothers.

Note, then, the gradation of the three: Clytemnestra is the fallen unrestored; Helen is the fallen restored; Penelope is the unfallen, who keeps a home for her absent husband during twenty years. The tragic, the mediated, the pure; or, to take a later analogy, the infernal, the purgatorial, the paradisaical; such are the three typical female characters of Homer, ranging from guilt, through repentance, to innocence. In this framework lies quite all possible characterization. Naturally Agamemnon shows a bitter vein of misogyny, with only his wife in view; but he takes it all back when he thinks of Penelope.

Two of these women, Helen and Penelope, are still alive and do not belong to the realm of Hades; the ghost of the third, Clytemnestra, does not appear. Still all three are mentioned here in the text, and stand in relation to the three Greco-Trojan heroes, none of whom were restored through the Return. Ulysses, however, is the real solution of them all; he spans all their inadequacies, masters their fates, and reaches home. The three Greek heroes above mentioned fell by the way in the course of the grand problem, and are seen in Hades, complaining, unhappy, showing their full limitation. To a degree they are suffering the penalty of their own shortcomings: which fact prepares us for the third and last phase of the Underworld.

III.

We now come to a new division of the Book, which forms in itself a complete little poem, yet is derived directly from the preceding divisions, and is harmonious with them in thought, development and structure. Undoubtedly there is a difference here, but the difference means not absolute separation but a connected unfolding of parts. The present division has been assailed more violently by the critics and torn out of its place with greater unanimity than any other portion of the Odyssey, with the possible exception of portions of the last two Books. Let us confess, however, that our tendency is to reconcile, if this can be done, the discords and to knit together the rent garment, by threads not always on the surface, but very real to any eye which is willing to look underneath.

Unquestionably a punitive element enters now, there is guilt and punishment in Hades. But who has not felt that in the preceding division the three Greek heroes were under the inevitable penalty of their own deeds? Very natural is the transition. Indeed the three divisions of the Book show a gradual movement toward a penal view of Hades: the first (Tiresias and the Famous Mothers) has a slight suggestion of the penalty; the second (the three Greek heroes) has the idea of punishment implicit everywhere; the third makes the idea explicit and organizes itself upon the same.

Again, there is a change of style, which now is strongly tinged with the Orphic, initiatory, symbolical manner, in marked contrast with the clear-flowing narrative which has just preceded. But we noticed the same characteristic before, in the first division of the Book, where the sacrificial rites and the part of Tiresias were given. Homer has many styles, not each style has many Homers, nor is there a new Homer needed for each change of style. Note the great varieties of style in the two Parts of Faust by way of illustration. Moreover we here pass into the dim Pre-Trojan epoch, as was the case in the first division, but guilt is now flung into that time and with it the penalty. Hoary, gigantic shapes of eld do wrong to the Gods, and are put into the punitory Hades. Thus this third division returns to the first with its own new principle. In truth one may say that Homer herein shows features akin to Hesiod; well, Homer is Hesiod and many more.

We hold, therefore, that this third division is an organic part of the Book both in idea and structure; it carries to completion the thought of a world-justice, which Tiresias has already declared in his speech to Ulysses, and which is exemplified in the three Greek heroes. Thus it unfolds what lies in the first two divisions, and links them together in a new and deeper thought. For this realm of Hades, hitherto a distracted spot without any apparent order, now gets organized with its own Justiciary and its own Law. Yet here too we shall find a solution and a parallel; just as Ulysses was the true hero at Troy, standing above all the others and solving their problems, so Hercules is the great Pre-Trojan hero, saving himself at last and rising to Olympus. Finally the two careers of Ulysses and Hercules are affirmed to be identical. This division, therefore, falls of itself into three portions: (1) the Judge, (2) the condemned, (3) the redeemed. Thus the whole forms a complete little cycle within itself.

1. Minos, the Judge, was the ancient king of Crete, where he was lawgiver and suppressed wrong-doing on sea and land. Here he continues his vocation, which demands the assigning of the just penalty to the guilty. He is manifestly the type of Justice, both punishing and rewarding; as punisher he has been transferred by Dante to the Inferno. Later Greek legend united with him two other judges, his brothers, Rhadamanthys and AEacus.

2. We have next four instances of punishment, though this is apparently of different degrees. The wrong, however, is not stated except in the case of Tityos, which probably hints the general nature of the misdeeds of the three others. The poet takes for granted that his hearer could fill out each legend for himself. In every case there was evidently some violation done to the Gods, not to men--some crime against Olympus. The period is thrown back into the Pre-Trojan time, into the age of the demigods and of the free intercourse between mortals and immortals; thus it is parallel with the first division of the Book. But now judgment has entered the Houses of Hades along with the penalty.

The guilt of Orion is that of love between a mortal and a Goddess, Aurora, which violation was punished by the "soft bolts" of Artemis, protectress of chastity. This legend has already been alluded to by Calypso. (Book V. line 121.) Jealous are the Gods of that mortal man with whom a Goddess falls in love, and with good reason. Orion's punishment is an eternal chase, the hunter is compelled to hunt forever, repeating what he did in life. Perhaps not a heavy punishment for one who is fond of hunting; yet a tremendous burden, if never interrupted with rest; indeed it becomes a labor quite like the labor of Sisyphus, ever repeated. Of Tityos both the guilt and punishment are indicated; the legend is similar to and yet in contrast with that of Orion; in the one the Goddess approaches the mortal and in the other the mortal approaches the Goddess; hence, too, the severer punishment in the latter case. The second legend ought to be completed here by a fact derived from the story of Prometheus: the liver grows as fast as the vultures rend or consume it; thus again rises the idea of infinite repetition, now of suffering, not of action, for Orion is active.

The next two forms, Tantalus and Sisyphus, have also a kinship. Both had known secrets of the Gods and had betrayed them; Tantalus is also reported to have taken away nectar and ambrosia from the Olympian table after being a guest there; Sisyphus revealed to the river-god Asopus the secret that Zeus had spirited away the latter's daughter, AEgina. The penalty is that Tantalus remains perpetually hungry and thirsty, with sight of food and drink always before his eyes; he cannot reach them when he strives. The finite, with an infinite longing, cannot compass the infinite; the man loses it just when he grasps for it--a truly Greek penalty for a sin against the Greek world, which rests upon the happy harmonious unity of the spirit with the body and with nature. The Christian or Romantic longing and grasping for the Beyond is to the Greek soul a punishment of Hades. Tantalus with his hunger and thirst seems to represent more the striving of the intellect to attain the unattainable; while Sisyphus suggests the effort of the will--practical endeavor, the eternal routine of mechanical employment, which always has to begin over again. Etymology brings also a suggestion. Both names are reduplicated; in Tantalus is the root of the word which means to suffer; in Sisyphus, lurks the signification of craft; it hints the wise or crafty planner (_sophos_) who always pushes the act to a point where it undoes itself or must be done over again. Note the effect of this reduplication of the first syllables, which means repetition; over and over again, in an infinite series must the matter be gone through, in suffering and in doing; the very words are in labor.

Indeed this indicates the common element in these four punishments: the endless repetition of the struggle of finitude. The first two, Orion and Tityos, reached out for Goddesses, being mortals; the second two, still mortals, but in communion with deities, attempted to bring down divine secrets to earth; the one set strove to make the finite infinite, the other to make the infinite finite. Both were contrary to the nature of the Greek mind, which sought to keep the happy balance between the two sides, between body and spirit, between the temporal and eternal. Now the punishment of these people is to give them their infinite, but in the form of an infinite repetition of their finite act, which is just the spirit-crushing penalty. The power of these two types, Tantalus and Sisyphus, is shown by the fact that all ages since Homer have adopted them and wrought them over into many forms of art and poetry.

Here then is the unsolved problem of the Greek world, a problem which the Christian world has met and answered. Tantalus and Sisyphus are in pain and toil simply through themselves; man, however, must have the power to reach the apples, and roll the stone up hill, he must assert himself as limit-transcending, as infinite, for once and for all, and not caught in an infinite series, which is a veritable mill of the Gods, that is, of the Greek Gods. Now this strange fact comes to light: Homer, seer that he is, has a dim consciousness of this solution, and faintly but prophetically embodies it in a new figure, namely, that of Hercules, which we shall now consider.

3. The Homeric solution is to divide the man, or to double him, into his shade (eidolon) and his self. The former belongs to Hades and appears now; it is the finite Hercules with his striving and labors; he still has his bow and arrow, is ready to slay beasts, snakes, and birds. He is in quite the same punishment as Orion or even Sisyphus, the penalty of all finitude is upon him. Yet the other side is given, that of victory. "I, though the son of the highest God, Zeus, had to endure boundless tribulation." Strangely Christian does this sound. "I was put under service to a far inferior man to myself, who laid upon me bitter labors." The higher must serve and save the lower. "Then the mightiest labor I performed, I came down hither to Hades alive and dragged thence the dog Cerberus"--conquered the great terror of the Underworld. Thus Hercules has really transcended Hades, and so we read here that "he himself is among the immortal Gods, in bliss," that is, his infinite nature is there, while the finite part is still below in Hades. Such is the old poet's far-cast glance, reaching deep into the future and beyond the Greek world.

Still another significant word is spoken. "O Ulysses, unhappy man! Thou dost experience the same hard fate which I endured upon the earth." Thus does Hercules identify the career of Ulysses with his own--the same striving and suffering, and the same final victory, the peace of Olympus. Who cannot attain the latter is a Tantalus, seeking but never reaching the fruit. Such is the outcome and culmination of Hades; after Hercules has spoken, no further word is heard by Ulysses.

Dante, whose poem on so many lines grows out of this Eleventh Book, has also the same duplication of the person in his Paradise. The soul is in its special planet, Venus, Mars, etc., and also it is in the highest Heaven, enjoying the Vision of God. But Dante universalizes the Greek view, making it truly Christian; all men are children of God and can attain the seats of the Blessed, not merely the one man, the Hero Hercules. Still even here the inference is that Ulysses must also be transferred to Olympus, though no such declaration is made.

We hope the reader feels how inadequate Hades would be, and how incomplete the experience of Ulysses would be, if this last division of the Book were cut out. The wanderer has now gone through the total cycle of the Underworld, not only outwardly, but inwardly; he is just ready to step out of it, because he is beyond it in spirit. This last step is now to be given in Homeric fashion.