Part 37

II. With the line just quoted (296 of the original) the Alexandrian grammarians, Aristarchus and Aristophanes, concluded the Odyssey, and declared the rest to be a post-Homeric addition. Still, this part of the poem must have been in existence and accepted as Homer's long before their time. Both Aristotle and Plato cite portions of it without any declared suspicion of its genuineness. What reason the old grammarians had for this huge excision is not definitely known; we can see, however, that they wished to end the poem with complete restoration, outer and inner, of the domestic bond between husband and wife. Certainly a very noble thought in the poem, but by no means a sufficient end; beside the domestic, the political bond also must be restored, and the ethical harmony be made complete both in Family and in State. Ulysses, moreover, has spoken of the duty laid upon him by Tiresias in Hades: he must carry an oar till he comes to a land whose people take it for a winnowing fan; there he is to plant it upright and make an offering to Neptune. So there is a good deal yet to be done, which the poem has already called for.

But just now she tells him her story, quite briefly; then he tells her his story, more at length. This has the nature of a confession, with its Circe and epecially Calypso, which she has to hear and he to make. Through it all runs his yearning to reach home and wife.

But with the sun risen, new duties press upon him. First he will seek some compensation for his property taken by the Suitors; secondly, he will have to meet the vengeance of their relatives and friends. So the army of four, himself, Telemachus, swineherd and cowherd, march forth in arms from the palace gate, through the city to the country.

Book Twenty-fourth. This is another Book over which there has been much critical discussion. Its thought, whatever may be said about its execution, is absolutely necessary to bring the Odyssey to an organic conclusion, and make the poem a well-rounded totality. There is the political trouble generally, and specially the blood feud caused by the slaying of the Suitors, which has to be harmonized. Repeatedly hitherto we have had hints of this coming difficulty; Ulysses thought of it, and made his plan concerning it before the slaughter took place. (XX. 41.)

In fact the complete restoration of Ulysses is both to Family and State, the two great institutions which form the substructure of the Odyssey. His country was quite as deeply distracted and perverted as his household; both had to undergo the process of purification. In Book Twenty-third we had the restoration of Ulysses to Family, in Book Twenty-fourth we are to have essentially his restoration to State; then he will truly have returned to prudent Penelope and to sunny Ithaca, and the poem can end. Moreover his restoration to Family and State involves the restoration of Family and State; the rightful husband and the rightful ruler heals the shattered institutions.

But it is undeniable that this Book is the most poorly constructed of any Book in the Odyssey. There is undue repetition of previous matters, yet certainly with important additions; there is unnecessary expansion in the earlier parts of the Book, and too great compression and hurry at the end. In general, the subject-matter of the Book is completely valid and necessary to the poem, but the execution falls below the Homeric level, specially in its constructive feature. Still we see ino reason why it may not be Homer's; he too has his best and worst Books.

Of the present Book there are two parts: the Underworld and the Upperworld.

I. The Suitors have been sent down to the realm where Ulysses in the Eleventh Book found the souls of the Trojan Heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax. These three again are introduced with some others. The death of Achilles is described quite fully, when the souls of the Suitors arrive, and one of them, Amphimedon, recapitulates the story of the Odyssey. It tells of the craft and fidelity of Penelope, and of the return of Ulysses and his destruction of the Suitors. The words of Agamemnon recognize the pair, Ulysses and Penelope, as the supreme Greek man and woman, as those who have mastered the greatest difficulties of their epoch. The Trojan cycle is now complete, the separation caused by the war is bridged over, both Family and State are restored after the long disruption. In striking contrast was the case of Agamemnon and Clytæmnestra, both of whom perished without restoration. Thus by means of the ghosts of the Suitors, the famous careers of Ulysses and Penelope are taken up into the realm of the Supersensible, of ideal forms, whose fame is to last forever.

This part of the Book (the so-called second Nekyia) in which Hades appears the second time, has been sharply questioned both by ancient and modern critics on a number of grounds. These we shall not discuss, only stating that they are by no means conclusive against the genuineness of the whole passage. The general idea of it belongs here; the dead Suitors represent the grand end of the Trojan movement, and its reception into the Hades of famous deeds done and past, and very significantly Agamemnon voices the praise of Ulysses and Penelope, the great winners in the long struggle. Still the repetitions of previous portions of the Odyssey are to our mind unnecessary and prolix, though the literary skill manifested just herein has been highly lauded by Saint Beuve and Lang.

II. Coming back to the Upperworld we find a series of incidents following one another both slowly and hurriedly. These we shall throw in groups for the sake of a rapid survey.

1. Ulysses with his three companions comes to the country seat of his father Laertes. With him, too, he plays the same disguise as heretofore with Penelope, Eumæus and others, though its necessity is not now so plain. "I shall test my father, to see if he will know me;" how fond Ulysses is of this! So we have more fictions, masquerading, and final recognition by the scar and other proofs. Also an old servant here, Dolius, is recognized.

2. Now the scene passes to the city. The friends of the Suitors have called an assembly; a strong party rises in opposition to Ulysses, though two men, Medon and Halitherses, speak on his side. The result is, a band under Eupeithes, father of Antinous, marches forth to wreak vengeance upon Ulysses.

3. Hereupon a divine interference. Zeus decrees that there must be no blood-feud between the relatives of the slain and the House of Ulysses, but a league of friendship. Revenge must no longer beget revenge.

4. Still a fight occurs in which Laertes and Dolius with his six sons, take part. Old Laertes is now to have his warlike meed, be kills old Eupeithes, so that the male members of the House of Ulysses for three generations--son, grandson, grandfather--have each killed his man.

5. Pallas hereupon stops the conflict, and the last lines of the poem announce the peace which she makes under the form and voice of Mentor. Surely the work of wisdom (Pallas) as well as of supreme law (Zeus)--to stop the self-repeating blood-feud. Thus is the deep rent in the State healed by aid of Zeus and Pallas. It should be observed that Pallas at the end of the Eumenides of the poet Æschylus released Orestes, who is pursued by the Furies, from the guilt of his mother's blood, by casting the decisive ballot in the court of Areiopagus. Here we find another link between Homer and Æschylus.

Very hurried are these later incidents of the Book, but they are necessary to complete the poem. The blood-feud is harmonized, the Gods again make themselves valid in the land by introducing peace and harmony, which had been undermined by the Suitors. Property, Family, State, are restored, and the Divine Order of the World in the person of the Gods is recognized. Only with this conclusion is the negative conduct of the Suitors completely undone, and a positive institutional life becomes possible. It is true that in the hurry of coming to an end, the poet says nothing of the journey enjoined by Tiresias in Hades, the journey to a distant people who would take an oar for a winnowing fan. Still we may suppose that it was performed, and that angry Neptune, the great enemy of Ulysses among the Gods, was also reconciled. But, chiefly, Ulysses has above on this earth realized the idea of a world-justice, which we found running through all Hades, in the statements of Tiresias, in the fates of the great Greek heroes, in the punitory portion presided over by Minos. From this point of view the Odyssey may be truly regarded an image of the working of the Spirit of History, and the poem holds good for all time.

SUMMARY.

In concluding these lengthy studies of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we shall try to grasp each of the poems as a whole, and then the two together is one great totality sprung of one people and of one consciousness. The central fact out of which both poems arise, to which and from which both poems move, is the Trojan War. This War, whether mythical or historical, is certainly the most famous, and probably the most significant that ever took place on the earth.

As to the Odyssey, the first thing to be seized is the complete career of its Hero Ulysses. This career has naturally two parts: the going to Troy from Ithaca, and the coming back from Troy to Ithaca. Every Greek hero had a similar career, wholly or in part; many, of coarse, never returned. The two parts together constitute a total movement which begins at a certain point and returns to the same; hence it may be called a cycle, and its two parts may be designated in a general way as the Separation and the Return.

The Odyssey has as its theme the second half of the cycle, though, of course, it presupposes the first half, namely the going to Troy and the stay there. The poem, accordingly, does not give the entire life of Ulysses; what may be called the Trojan half must be looked for elsewhere, mainly in the Iliad. Of course there are in the Odyssey many allusions to incidents which belong to the first half of this career.

The Ulysses of the Iliad is one of the great leaders and one of the great heroes, but he is neither the chief leader nor the chief hero. Already he appears in Book First as a member of the Council, and an epithet is applied to him which suggests his wisdom. Thus at the start of the Iliad he is designated as the man of thought, of intelligence, of many resources. But in the Second Book he shines with full glory, he is indeed the pivot of the whole Book. On account of a speech made by Agamemnon, their leader, the Greeks start at once for home, they are ready to give up the great enterprise of the restoration of Helen, they act as if they would abandon their cause. It is Ulysses who calls them back to themselves and restores order; he shows himself to be the only man in the whole army who knows what to do in a critical emergency. He suppresses Thersites, he exhorts the chieftains, he uses force on the common people. He finally makes a speech to the entire body of Greeks in the Assembly, which recalls the great national purpose of the War, and is the true word for the time. Nestor follows him in a similar vein, and the Greek host again takes its place in line of battle and prepares for the onset upon Troy. Here we have a typical action of Ulysses, showing his essential character, and revealing the germ out of which the Odyssey may well have sprouted.

Other matters may also be noticed. Pallas, the Goddess of Wisdom, appears to him in the midst of the tumult, and gives him her suggestion. She will remain with him ever afterwards, manifesting herself to him in like emergencies till the end of the Odyssey. Telemachus is mentioned in this Book of the Iliad. The distinction between Ulysses and the aged Nestor is drawn: the latter has appreciative wisdom, that of experience, while Ulysses has creative wisdom, that of immediate divine insight, coming directly from Pallas. This distinction also will show itself in the Odyssey. Ulysses is the real hero of the Second Book of the Iliad; he appears in other Books with the same general character, but never so prominently again.

In the Post-Iliad, or that portion of the Trojan war which lies between the Iliad and Odyssey, Ulysses will become the chief hero. After the death of Achilles, there will be a contest for the latter's arms between him and Ajax; Ulysses wins. That is, Brain not Brawn is to control henceforth. Under the lead of Intelligence, which is that of Ulysses, Troy falls.

The Odyssey, then, deals with the return of Ulysses from the Trojan War, and lasts ten years, as the account runs. But the poet is not writing a history, not even a biography, in the ordinary sense; he does not follow step by step the hero's wanderings, or state the events in chronological order; we shall see how the poem turns back upon itself and begins only some forty days before its close. Still the Odyssey will give not merely the entire return from Troy, but will suggest the whole cycle of its hero's development.

The first half of the cycle, the going to Troy and the stay there, lasted ten years, though some accounts have made it longer. The Iliad, though its action is compressed to a few days, treats generally of the first half of the cycle and hence it is the grand presupposition of the Odyssey, which takes it for granted everywhere. The Iliad, however, is a unity and has its own center of action, which is the wrath of Achilles and his reconciliation also; it is in itself a complete cycle of individual experience in the Trojan War.

We now begin to get an outline of the Unity of Homer. In the first place the Iliad is a unity from the stand-point of its hero Achilles, who has a completely rounded period of his life portrayed therein, which portrayal, however, gives also a vivid picture of the Trojan War up to date. As an individual experience it is a whole, and this is what makes it a poem and gives to it special unity. But it is only a fragment of the Trojan cycle--a half or less than a half; it leaves important problems unsolved: Troy is not taken, Achilles is still alive, the new order under the new hero Ulysses has not yet set in, and chiefly there is no return to Greece, which is even more difficult than the taking of Troy. Hence the field of the second poem, the Odyssey, which is also an individual experience--has to be so in order to be a poem--embraces the rest of the Trojan cycle after the Iliad.

Thus we may well hold to these unities in Homer: the unity of the Iliad, the unity of the Odyssey, and the unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Both together make one grand cycle of human history and of human consciousness; they portray a complete world in its deed and in its thought, as well as in manners and institutions.

Here is, then, the highest point of view from which to look at these poems: they are really one in two parts, written by one epoch, by one consciousness, and probably by one man. The Iliad as a poem is a complete cycle of individual experience, but as an epoch is only half a cycle. In like manner the Odyssey as a poem is a complete cycle of individual experience, but as an epoch is the second half of the cycle of which the Iliad is essentially the first. Both together constitute the one great movement usually called the Trojan War.