II.

We now come to the great physical obstacle standing in the way of the Return of Ulysses, the sea, which, however, has always its divine side to the Greek mind. A series of water-deities will rise before us out of this mighty element, assuming various attitudes toward the solitary voyager. Three of them, showing themselves as hostile (Neptune), as helpful (Ino Leucothea), as saving (the River-God); all three too seem in a kind of gradation, from the vast total sea, through one of its phases, to the small stream pouring into the sea from the land. Thus the Greek imagination, playing with water, deified the various appearances thereof, specially in their relation to man. The introduction of these three marine divinities naturally organizes this second part of the Fifth Book into three phases or stages. Such is the divine side now to be witnessed.

Parallel to this runs the human side, represented by the lone hero Ulysses, who is passing through a fearful ordeal of danger with its attendant emotions of anxiety, terror, hope, despair. A very hard test is surely here applied to weak mortal flesh. We shall observe that he passes through a series of mental perturbations at each divine appearance; he runs up and down a scale of doubt, complaint, resolution. His weakness he will show, yet also his strength; dubitation yet faith; he will hesitate, yet finally act. Thus he saves himself at last through his own will, yet certainly with the help of the Gods; for both sides have to co-operate to bring about the heroic act of his deliverance.

Pallas also comes to the aid of her favorite, but in an indirect manner. The sea does not seem to be her element. She stops the winds and "informs his mind with forecast," but she does not personally appear and speak, nor is she addressed, as is the case with the water-gods. She plays in by the way in this marine emergency; her appearances now do not organize the action. But the three appearances of the water-gods are the organic principle, their element being at present the scene of the adventure. On these lines we shall note the course of the poem in some detail.

1. Neptune returning from the Ethiopians to Hellas, sees the lone sailor with his little craft from the heights of the mountain called Solyma; at once the God's wrath is roused and he talks to himself, "shaking his head." The clouds, the winds, the ocean obeyed his behest, and fell upon the voyager in a furious tempest. A huge billow whirled the raft around and threw Ulysses off into the deep; with difficulty be regained his place, and escaped death.

A vivid picture of the grand obstacle to early navigation, of which Neptune is the embodiment. Why should he not be angry at the man who seeks to tame him? The raft means his ultimate subjection. Nature resists the hand which subdues her at first, and then gracefully yields. To be sure there had to be a mythical ground for Neptune's anger at Ulysses: the latter had put out the eye of his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, which was another phase of the subjection of wild nature to intelligence. For seventeen days Ulysses had easy sailing, guided by the stars; but the sea has its destructive side which must also be experienced by the much-enduring man.

Corresponding to this outer tempest, we observe an inner tempest in the soul of Ulysses. "O me wretched! what is now to happen to me!" Terror unmans him for the time being; regret weakens him: "Thrice happy, four times happy the Greeks who fell on Troy's broad plain!" Thus he goes back in memory to his heroic epoch and wishes for death then. Too late it is, for while he is lamenting, a wave strikes him and tosses him out into the deep; now he has to act, and this need of action saves him from his internal trituration, as well as from external death.

With this renewed energy of the will, a new help appears, a divine aid from the sea. For without his own strong effort, no God can rescue him, however powerful. That toss out into the waves was not without its blessing.

2. Ino Leucothea, Ino the white Goddess, beholds him with pity in his extremity—she was once mortal herself but now is divine. Her function seems to be to help the shipwrecked mariner; her name reminds the reader of the white calm of the sea, elsewhere celebrated by Homer (Book X, 94; Nitzsch's observation). Thus she appears to represent the peaceful placid mood of the marine element, which rises in the midst of the storm and imparts hope and courage, nay predicts safety. She gives her veil to Ulysses, in which commentators trace a suggestion of the fillet or sacred cloth which was given out from a temple in Samothrace, and had the power of saving the endangered mariner, if he had tied it round his body. As it is here employed, it strangely suggests a life-preserver. At any rate Ino is the calming power opposed to angry Neptune, and she works upon both the waters and the man.

"Ill-fated man," she cries, "why hast thou so angered Neptune?" Then she changes her note: "Still he shall not destroy thee, however much he desires." She bids him give up his raft to the anger of Neptune, throw away his clinging wet garments of Calypso, and swim to the land of the Phæacians. Then she hands him the veil which he is to "bind beneath his breast," and, when he has reached land, he is to throw it back into the sea. A ritual of some kind, symbolic acts we feel these to be, though their exact meaning may be doubtful. Ino, "the daughter of Cadmus," is supposed to have been a Phœnician Goddess originally, and to have been transferred to the Greek sailor, just as his navigation came to him, partly at least, from the Phœnicians. If he girded himself with the consecrated veil of Leucothea, the Goddess of the calm, Neptune himself in wrath could not sink him.

Such was the faith required of Ulysses, but now comes the internal counterstroke: his skepticism. "Ah me! what if some God is planning another fraud against me, bidding me quit my raft!" The doubter refuses to obey and clings to his raft. But the waves make short work of it now, and Ulysses by sheer necessity has to do as the Goddess bade him; "with hands outspread he plunged into the sea," the veil being underneath him. When he quits his raft, and is seen in the water, Neptune dismisses him from view with a parting execration, and Pallas begins to help him, not openly, but indirectly.

In such manner the great doubter is getting toward shore, but even here his doubts cease not. Steep jutting cliffs may not permit him to land, the billows may dash him to death on the sharp shoaly rocks, or carry him out again to sea, or some huge monster of the deep may snap him up in its jaws; thus he is dashed about internally, on the billows of doubt. But this grinding within is stopped by the grinding he gets without; a mighty surge overwhelms him, he clutches a rock and saves himself, but leaves flakes of flesh from his hands behind on the rock. "He swam along the coast and eyed it well," he even reaches the mouth of a soft-flowing river, where was a smooth beach and a shelter from the wind. Here is the spot so long desired, here then he passes to an act of faith, he prays to the river which becomes at once to the Greek imagination a God.

3. This brings us to the third water deity, and we observe a kind of scale from the universal one, Neptune, down to a local one, that of the river. The middle one, Ino, is the humane kindly phase of the great deep, showing her kinship with man; Neptune was the ruder god of the physical sea, and, to the Homeric Greek, the most powerful and natural. No wonder that he was angry at that little raft and its builder; it meant his ultimate subjection.

The prayer of Ulysses to the River-God is, on the whole, the finest passage in the present Book. It shows him now a man of faith, humbled though he be to the last degree of misery: "Hear me, ruler, whoever thou art, I approach thee much-besought. The deathless Gods revere the prayer of him who comes to them and asks for mercy, as I now come to thy stream. Pity, ruler, me thy suppliant." Certainly a lofty recognition of the true nature of deity; no wonder that the River stayed his current, smoothed the waves and made a calm before him. Such a view of the Gods reveals to us the inner depths of the Hero's character; it calls to mind that speech of Phœnix in the Iliad (Book Ninth) where he says that the Gods are placable. As soon as Ulysses makes this utterance from his heart, he is saved, the Divine Order is adjusted to his prayer, he having of course put himself into harmony with the same. He has no longer any need of the protecting veil of the sea-goddess Ino, having escaped from the angry element, and obtained the help of the new deity belonging to the place. He restores the veil to the Goddess according to her request, in which symbolic act we may possibly read a consecration of the object which had saved him, as well as a recognition of the deity: "This veil of salvation belongs not to me, but to the Goddess." Not of his strength alone was he saved from the waves.

Such is one side of Ulysses, that of faith, of the manifestation of the godlike in man, especially when he is in the very pinch of destruction. But Ulysses would not be Ulysses, unless he showed the other side too, that of unfaith, weak complaint, and temporary irresolution. So, when he is safe on the bank of the stream, he begins to cry out: "What now am I to suffer more! If I try to sleep on this river's brink for the night, the frost and dew and wind will kill me; and if I climb this hill to yonder thicket, I fear a savage beast will eat me while I slumber." It is well to be careful, O Ulysses, in these wild solitudes; now let the petulant outburst just given, be preparatory to an act of will which will settle the problem. "He rose and went to the wood near by; he crept under two bushes that grew from the same place, one the wild and the other the tame olive." There in a heap of leaves—man's first bed—he slept under the intertwined branches of the two olives—nature's shelter against wind, rain, sun. He, with all his cultivation is quite reduced to the condition of the primitive man.

One cannot help feeling a symbolic intention in these two olive trees, one wild and one cultivated. They represent in a degree the two phases of the man sleeping under them; they hint also the transition which he is making from the untamed nature of Calypso's island to the more civilized land of Phæacia. The whole Book is indeed the movement to a new life and a new country. We might carry out the symbolic hint much further on these lines, and see a meaning in their interwoven branches and the protection they are giving at present; but the poetic suggestion flashing afar over poem backwards and forwards is the true effect, and may be dimmed by too much explanation.

Such is this marvelous storm with its ship-wreck, probably the first in literature, but often made use of since. The outer surges of the tempest are indeed terrific; but the main interest is, that along with this external description of the storm, we witness the corresponding internal heaving and tossing of a human soul. Everywhere we notice that Ulysses doubts at first, doubts Calypso, doubts Ino, doubts even his final safety when on land. He is the skeptical man, he never fails to call up the possibilities on the other side. Though a God give the promise, he knows that there are other Gods who do not promise, or may give a different promise to somebody else. It is the experience of life, this touch of doubt at first; it always accompanies the thinking man, who, like Ulysses, must be aware of a negative counterpart even to truth. Not pleasant, but painful is this doubt shooting through the soul, and keeping it in distress and often in lamentation. So even the Hero breaks out into unmanly complaint, and reveals to the full his finite nature.

Yet if Ulysses doubts, he always overcomes his doubt in the end; he sees the positive element in the world to be deeper than the negative one, after a little access of weakness. Under his doubt is the deeper layer of faith, so he never gives up, but valiantly holds on and conquers. The Gods come to his aid when he believes and acts. His intellect is doubt, his will is faith: wherein we may trace important lines which unite him with Faust, the chief character in our last world-poem. Ulysses will complain, and having freed his mind, will go to work and conquer the obstacle. He struggles with the billow, clinging to the mast, though he had just said: "Now I shall die a miserable death."

Parallel to this human side runs the divine side, which we need not further describe here, with its three water-deities. A little attention we may give to the part of Pallas. At one time she seems to control the outer world for her favorite, sending the wind or stopping it; then she is said to inform his mind with forecast, that he may do the thing in spite of wind or other obstacle; finally he often does the deed without any divine suggestion, acting through himself. In these stages we can see a transition of the Mythus. The first stage is truly mythical, in which the deity is the mover, the second is less so, the Goddess having become almost wholly internal; in the third stage the mythical is lost. All these stages are in Homer and in this Book, though the first is still paramount.

Taking into view the general character of the mythical movement of this Fifth Book, we observe that there is a rise in it from a lower to a higher form; Calypso and Neptune are intimately blended with their physical environments, the island and the sea. Though elevated into persons, they are still sunk in Nature; it is the function of the Hero, especially the wise man, to subordinate both or to transcend both: which is just what Ulysses has done. His Mythus is, therefore, a higher one, telling the story of the subjection of nature and of her Gods. This story marks one phase of his career.

The reader will probably be impressed with the fact that in the present Book the stress is upon the discipline of the will. The inner reactions of complaint, doubt, or despair turn against the deed, to which Ulysses has to nerve himself by a supreme act of volition. The world of Calypso is that of self-indulgence, inactivity, will-lessness, to which Ulysses has sunk after his sin against the source of light, after his negation of all intelligence. It is not simply sensuous gratification with the mind still whole and capable of resolution, as was the case with Ulysses in the realm of Circe, in which he shows his will-power, though coupled with indulgence. Such is the difference between Calypso and Circe, which is always a problem with the reader. In this way, too, we see how the Fifth Book before us is a direct continuation and unfolding out of the Twelfth Book. Indeed the very movement of the poem is significant, which is a going backwards; so Ulysses drops far to the rear out of that light-loving Island of the Sun, against which is his violation, when he comes to Ogygia.

But Ulysses has now, after long discipline, transcended this sphere, and has reached a new land, of which the account is to follow next.

BOOK SIXTH.

We are now to make one of the chief transitions of the poem, we are going to pass from the Dark Island and the stormy sea to Phæacia, a bright, sunlit land, where reign peace and harmony. Moreover, we move out of the realm of nature to that of institutions. Still more significant are the central figures of the two localities, both women; one of these we have seen, Calypso, who is now to give way to Nausicaa.

This Book may, therefore, be called Nausicaa's Book, as she is the leading character in it, imparting to it a marvelous mood of idyllic beauty and womanly purity. She is the person chosen by the poet to introduce the Hero into the new realm, Phæacia, being in sharp contrast to Calypso, who detained Ulysses in dark Ogygia away from his family, and whose character was adverse to the domestic relation. But Nausicaa shows from the start the primal instinct of the true woman for the home. She is still young, but she has arrived at that age in which she longs with every throb of her heart to surrender her own separate existence, and to unite it with another. She manifests in all its attractiveness the primordial love of the woman for the Family, basis of all institutional life, as well as fountain of the deepest joys of our terrestrial sojourn.

On this account she represents the place of Phæacia in the Greek world as well as in the present poem; perhaps we ought to add, in the whole movement of civilization. That land may be called the idyllic one, a land of peace and of freedom from all struggle; the borderland between the natural and the civilized spheres. Man has risen out of the grossness of mere sensuous individualism, such as we see in Polyphemus and in other shapes of Fairyland; but he has not yet reached the conflicts of higher forms of society resulting from a pursuit of wealth, from ambition, from war. Here is a quiet half-way house on the road from nature to civilization; a sweet reposeful realm, almost without any development of the negative forces of society; a temporary stopping-place for Ulysses in his all-embracing career, also for individuals and nations in their rush forward to reach the great end. The deep collisions of social life belong not to Phæacia, nor to Nausicaa, its ideal image.

It is the virgin land, the virgin world, which now has a young virgin as its central character and representative, to mediate Ulysses with itself, the universal man who must also have the new experience. Still she is not all of Phæacia, but its prelude, its introductory form; moreover, she is just the person to conduct Ulysses out of his present forlorn condition of mind and body into a young fresh hope, into a new world. The Calypso life is to be obliterated by the vision of the true woman and her instinctive devotion to the Family. We are aware that Ulysses has not been contented with the Dark Island and its nymph, he has had the longing to get away and has at last gotten away; but to what has he come? Lost the one and not attained the other, till he beholds Nausicaa, who grasps him by the hand, as it were, and delivers him wholly from Calypso, leading him forth to her home, where he is to witness the central phase of domestic life, the mother.

The organism of the Book easily falls into two parts, one of which portrays Nausicaa at home, the other gives the meeting between her and Ulysses. Yet over this human movement hovers always the divine, Pallas is the active supernal power which brings these events to pass, introducing both the parts mentioned. She is the providence which the poet never permits to drop out. Most deeply does the old singer's sincerity herein move the reader, who must rise to the same elevation; Homer's loyalty is to faith, faith in the Divine Order of the World, for this is not suffered to go its way without a master spirit; the individual, especially in his pivotal action, is never left alone, but he fits in somewhere; the Whole takes him up and directs him, and adjusts him into the providential plan; not simply from without but through himself. Such is this poet's loyalty to his Idea; he has faith, deep, genuine faith, yet unostentatious, quite unconventional at times; a most refreshing, yes, edifying appearance to-day, even for religious people, though he be "an old heathen."

Such continual recurrence of the God's interference with the course of events—what does it mean? This is unquestionably the fundamental problem with the earnest student of Homer. Let us observe, then, first, that the poet's principle is not to allow a divine intervention to degenerate into a merely external mechanical act; himself full of the spirit of the God, he puts the divine influence inside the individual as well as outside, and thus preserves the latter's freedom in the providential order. The faithful reader will never let these movements of the deity drop into mere machinery; when he does, he has lost the essence of Homer. Doubtless it requires an alert activity of mind to hold the Gods always before the vision in their truth; they must be re-thought, or indeed re-created every time they appear. The somnolescent reader is only too ready to spare himself the poetic exaltation in which the old bard must be read, if we would really see the divinities, and grasp the spirit of their dealings with man. Speak not, then, of epical machinery in Homer, the word is misleading to the last degree, is indeed libellous, belieing the poet in the very soul of his art.

In the present Book there is not by any means as much divine intervention as in the preceding one; we pass from the lower realm of the water-gods to that of Pallas, the goddess of intelligence, who is the sole active divinity in this Book. She appears to Nausicaa at the beginning in the form of a dream, and bids the maiden look after some washing. Our first question is, why call in a goddess for such a purpose? The procedure seems trivial and unnecessary, and so it would be under ordinary circumstances. But through this humble and common-place duty Nausicaa is made a link in the grand chain of the Return of Ulysses, which is the divine plan underlying the whole poem, and is specially the work of Pallas. To be sure this had no place in Nausicaa's intention, but it does have a place in the providential scheme, which has, therefore, to be voiced by the Goddess. Yet that scheme does not conflict with the free-will of the maiden, which finds its fullest scope just in this household duty, and brings out her character. She reveals to Ulysses her nature, this is the occasion; she had to be free to represent what she truly was to the much-experienced man. An ordinary wash-day has little divinity in it, but this one is filled with the divine plan. Thus small events, otherwise immediately forgotten, may by a mighty co-incidence he elevated into the sphere of the World's History, and become ever memorable. That French soldier who threw a camp-kettle over the head of Mirabeau's ancestor and thus saved him from being trampled to death by a passing troop of cavalry, made himself a factor in the French Revolution, and was inspired by whom, demon or angel?

As already hinted, the structure of the Book is determined by the two interventions of Pallas, which divide it into two portions; these are shown in the following outline:—

In both parts we observe the same general method; the divine influence, beginning above, moves below and weaves the mortal into its scheme through his own action.

I.

First is a short introduction giving a bit of the history of the Phæacians, in which we catch a glimpse of their development. They once dwelt near the Cyclops, the wild men of nature, from whom they moved away on account of injuries received; they could live no longer in such a neighborhood. Here we note an important separation, probably a change of life which leaves the ruder stage behind. The colony is led forth to a new land by its hero, who lays the foundation of a social order by building houses, temples to the Gods, and a wall round the city, and who divides the territory. Thus a civil polity begins by getting away from "the insolent Cyclops" or savages. On the other hand, civilized enemies who might bring war, seem not to dwell near the Phæacians, beloved of the Gods. Beyond all conflict, inner and outer, lies the fortunate realm; it touches the happy mean between barbarism and civilization, though perchance on the road from former to latter; at present, however, it is without the evils which go before it and come after it. As already stated, it is an idyllic world, life appears to be one continued festival, with song and dance of youth. It is not real Greece, not Ithaca, which just now is a land of discord and conflict. What the poet says of Olympus in a famous passage a little further on in this book, seems applicable, in spirit at least, to Phæacia:

1. Now comes the appearance of Pallas, who "like a breath of wind" approaches the couch of the maiden in slumber, and admonishes her about the washing. Some such care the Goddess does impose upon the housekeeper to this day, and if report be true, at times troubles her dreams. It is indeed an important duty, this necessity of keeping the household and its members clean, specially the men, too often indifferent. Young Nausicaa, just entering upon womanhood, is ready for the divine suggestion; plainly she has come to that age at which the Goddess must speak to her on such matters. So much for Pallas at present.

2. Therewith we touch another fact; the maiden has reached the time when she must think, of marriage, which she instinctively regards as her true destiny in life. Still it does not appear that she is betrothed though "the noblest Phæacians are wooing thee." In simple innocence there hovers in her mind the thought of Family, yet she shows a shy reserve even before her father. With that sweet thought is joined the primary household care, which naturally enough comes to her in a dream. Cleanliness is next to godliness is our modern saying; it is certainly the outward visible token of purity, which Nausicaa is going to bring into her domestic surroundings. We may reasonably think that in the present scene the external deed and the internal character mirror each other.

It must be confessed, however, that to the modern woman wash-day, "blue Monday," is usually a day bringing an unpleasant mood, if not positive terror. She will often declare that she cannot enjoy this Phæacian idyl on account of its associations; she refuses to accept in image what in real life is so disagreeable. As a symbol of purification the thing may pass, but no human being wishes to be purified too often. Nausicaa's occupation is not popular with her sex, and she herself has not altogether escaped from a tinge of disrelish.

It is curious to note how customs endure. What Homer saw, the traveler in Greece will see to-day wherever a stream runs near a village. The Nausicaas of the place, daughters and mothers too, will be found at the water's side, going through this same Phæacian process, themselves in white garments even at their labor, pounding, rubbing, rinsing the white garments of their husbands, brothers, sons. Not without sympathy will the by-stander look on, thinking that those efforts are to make clean themselves and their household, life being in truth a continual cleansing for every human soul. So Hellas has still the appearance of an eternal wash-day. (See author's Walk in Hellas, passim.)

Nausicaa obtains without difficulty wagon and mules and help of servants. After all, the affair is something of a frolic or outing; when the task is done, there is the bath, the song, and a game of ball. It is worthy of notice that the word (amaxa) here used by old Homer for wagon, may still be heard throughout Greece for the same or a similar thing. In the harbor of Piræus the hackman will ask the traveler: "Do you want my amaxa?" The dance (choros), is still the chief amusement of the Greek villagers, and, as in Nausicaa's time, the young man wishes to enter the dance with new-washed garments, white as snow, whose folds ripple around his body in harmony with his graceful movements. Many an echo of Phæacia, in language, custom and costume, can be found in Greece at present, indicating, like the Cyclopean masonry, the solid and permanent substructure of Homer's poetry, still in place after more than 2500 years of wear and tear.

II.

The washing is done now, the sport is over, and the party is getting ready to go home; but the main object is not yet accomplished. Ulysses and Nausicaa are here to be brought together—the much-experienced man and the innocent maiden with her pure ethical instinct of Family. In many ways the two stand far asunder, yet in one thing they are alike: each is seeking the domestic relation, each will consummate the bond of love which has two phases, the one being after marriage and the other before marriage. Both are moving in their deepest nature toward the unity of the Family, though on different lines; Ulysses and Nausicaa have a common trait of character, which will be sympathetically found by each and will bring them together.

I. At this fresh turn of affairs there is an intervention of Pallas, not prolonged, but sufficient: "Thereupon Athena (Pallas) planned other things, that Ulysses should wake, and see the fair-faced maiden who would conduct him to the city of the Phæacians." The Goddess does not appear in person, as the deities so often do in the Iliad, nor does she take a mortal shape, or move Ulysses through a dream; she simply brings about an incident, natural enough, to wake the sleeping hero. Why then introduce the Goddess at all? Because the poet wishes to emphasize the fact that this simple incident is a link in the providential chain; otherwise it would have no mention. The ball is thrown at one of the servants, it falls into the stream, whereat there is an outcry—and Ulysses wakes.

Of course, the latter had at first his usual fit of doubt and complaint, just when the Gods are helping him: "Ah me! to what land have I come! What men are here—wild, insolent, unjust, or are they hospitable, reverencing the Gods? I shall go forth and test the matter"—and so by an act of will he rescues himself from inner brooding and finds out the truth.

2. Now we are to witness the gradual outer approach between Ulysses and Nausicaa, till it becomes internal, and ends in a strong feeling of friendship if not in a warmer emotion. The wanderer, almost naked, with only "a branch of thick leaves bound about his loins," comes forth from his hiding place, a frightful object to anybody, a wild man apparently.

All the servants run, but Nausicaa stands her ground before the nude monster; being a Princess she shows her noble blood, and, being innocent herself, what can she he afraid of? Thus does the poet distinguish her spiritually among her attendants, as a few lines before in the famous comparison with Diana he distinguished her physically: "Over all the rest are seen her head and brow, easily is she known among them, though all are fair: such was the spotless virgin mid her maids." Thus is hinted the outer and also the inner superiority which has now revealed itself in the Phæacian Princess.

Henceforth a subtle interplay takes place between her and Ulysses, in which we observe three main stages: First, the wild man in appearance he steps forth, yet he succeeds in touching her sympathy, wherein her charity is shown; Second, the transformed man, now a God in appearance he becomes, at whose view the maiden begins to show deep admiration, if not love; Third, the passing of Ulysses to the city to which he is conducted by the maiden, who also tells him how to reach the heart of the family, namely, the mother Arete. Thus she seeks to mediate him with her country and her hearth.

(1) Ulysses, issuing from his lair, addresses her in a speech which shows superb skill on account of its gradual penetration to the soul of the fair hearer. He praises first her external beauty with many a happy touch, yet with an excess which seems to border on adulation. This reaches her outer ear and bespeaks his good-will and gentleness at least. Then he strikes a deeper chord: he mentions his sufferings, those which are past, and forebodes those which are yet to be, perchance upon this shore. "Therefore, O Princess, have compassion, since I have come to thee first; none besides thee do I know in this land. Give me some old rag to throw around me, some useless wrappage which you may have brought hither." Pathetic indeed is the appeal; therewith comes sympathy, the man is no wild Cyclops, whom all Phæacians still remembered with terror, but a victim of misfortune.

Now comes the culmination of his speech, which shows his keen insight into human nature, as well as his own deepest longing: "May the Gods grant thy heart's desire—-husband, home, and wedded harmony." With this praise of domestic life upon his lips he has touched the profoundest chord of her heart; he has divined her secretest yet strongest instinct, and has appealed to it in deep emotion. Yet mark! in the same general direction lies his own dearest hope: he also will return home, to wife and family. Thus he has found the common meeting-place of their souls; the two strike the absolutely concordant note and are one in feeling—he the husband, she the maiden.

In her answer she expresses her strong sympathy, her words indeed rise into the realm of charity. It is no mark of baseness to be unfortunate; "but these must endure," what Zeus lays upon them. Such is the exhortation of the young maiden to the much-enduring man; she has divined too the ground-work of his character. "But now, since thou hast come to our land, thou shalt not want for garment or anything else proper for the needy suppliant." Then she recalls her attendants, reproving them for their flight, and orders them to give to Ulysses food and drink, oil to be used after bathing, and ample raiment. Nor should we pass by that other expression of hers: "all strangers and the poor are Jove's own," under the special protection of the Supreme God, who will avenge their disregard. Such is this ideal world of Phæacia, still ideal to-day; for where is it realized? The old poet has cast the imago of a society which we are still trying to embody. Well can she say that the Phæacians dwell far apart from the rest of the nations, "nor does any mortal hold intercourse with us." Thus, too, she marks unconsciously the limit of her people.

(2) The reader, along with Nausicaa, is to see the transformation of the beggarly wanderer, who, having taken his bath and put on his raiment, comes forth like a God. This is said to be the work of Pallas, "who caused him to appear taller and more powerful, with flowing locks, like the hyacinth." He becomes plastic in form, beautiful as a statue, into which the divine soul has been transfused by the artist. Such a transforming power lies within him, yet is granted also by a deity; the godlike in the man now takes on a bodily, or rather a sculpturesque appearance, and prophesies Greek plastic art.

The echo of this change is heard in the words of the maiden: "Hear me attendants; not without the will of the Olympians does this man come to us; lately I thought him unseemly, now he is like the Gods who hold the broad Heavens." Such is her lively admiration now, but what means this? "Would that such a man might be called my husband, dwelling here in Phæacia!" That note is indeed deeper than admiration.

(3) The third phase of this little play is the bringing of Ulysses to the city and home of Nausicaa. He, having satisfied his hunger, and being ready to start, receives some advice from the maiden, who seeks to conduct him at once to the center of the home. They will pass first through the outlying country, which shows cultivation; then they will go up into the city, with its lofty tower and double harbor; the seafaring character of the people is especially set forth by Nausicaa, whose name is derived from the Greek word for a ship. Particularly we must notice her fear of gossip, which also existed in Phæacia, ideal though the land was. She must not be seen with Ulysses; men with evil tongues would say: "What stranger is this following Nausicaa? Now she will have a husband." The sharp eye of Goethe detected in this passage the true motive; it is love, always having the tendency to deny itself, which dictates so carefully this avoidance of public report; the thing must not be said just because there is good reason for saying it. Her solicitude betrays her feeling. In pure simplicity of heart she pays the supreme compliment to Ulysses, likening him indirectly to "a God called down from Heaven by her prayers, to live with her all her days." Still further she intimates in the same passage, that "many noble suitors woo her, but she treats them with disdain, they are Phæacians." To be sure she puts these words into the mouth of a gossipy and somewhat disgruntled countryman, but they come round to their mark like a boomerang. Does she not thus announce to the much-enduring man that she is free, though under a good deal of pressure? All this is done in such an artless way, that it becomes the highest art—something which she does not intend but cannot help. Surely such a speech from such a source ought to repay him for suffering shipwreck and for ten years' wandering.

We cannot, therefore, think of calling this passage spurious, with some critics both ancient and modern. The complaint against it is that the young Phæacian lady shows here too much reflection, in conjunction with a tendency to sarcasm foreign to her life. But we find it eminently unreflective and naive; the very point of the passage is that she unconsciously reveals the deepest hidden thought and purpose of her heart to Ulysses. With all her being she must move toward the Family, she would not be herself unless she did; yet how completely she preserves modesty and simple-heartedness! Nor is the sarcastic tinge foreign to young girls. So we shall have to set aside the objections of Aristarchus the old Greek, and Faesi the modern German, commentator.

But the final instruction of Nausicaa is the most interesting; the suppliant is not to go to the father but to the mother. Nay, he is to "pass by my father's throne and clasp my mother's knees," in token of supplication; then he may see the day of return. Herein we may behold in general, the honored place of the mother as the center of the Family, its heart, as it were, full of the tender feelings of compassion and mercy. In the father and king, on the other hand, is the man of the State with its inflexible justice, often putting aside sympathy and commiseration with misfortune. The woman's heart may indeed be called the heart of the world, recognized here by the old poet and his Phæacians.

This mother, however, is in herself a great character; she is next to have a Book of her own, which will more fully set forth her position.

The character of Nausicaa, as here unfolded in the ancient poet, has captivated many generations of readers since Homer began to be read. The story has lived and renewed itself in manifold forms; it has that highest power of a genuine mythus, it produces itself through all ages, taking on a fresh vesture in Time. In old Hellas the tale of Nausicaa was wrought over into various shapes after Homer; it was transformed into a drama, love-story, as well as idyl. The myth-making spirit did not let it drop, but kept unfolding it; later legend, for instance, brought about a marriage between Telemachus and Nausicaa. Our recent greatest poet, Goethe, also responded mightily to the story of Nausicaa; he planned a drama on the subject, of which the outline is to be found in his published works. He did not find time to finish his poem, but there is evidence that he thought much about it and carried it around with him, for a long period. One regrets that the German poet was not able to give this new transformation of his ancient Greek brother, with whom he has manifested on so many lines an intimate connection and poetical kinship. In portions of the Italian Journey specially we see how deeply the Odyssey was moving him and how he was almost on the point of reproducing the whole poem with its marine scenery. But Nausicaa in particular fascinated him, and it would have been the best commentary on the present Book to have seen her in a now grand poetic epiphany in the modern drama of Goethe.

BOOK SEVENTH.

If the last Book was Nausicaa's, this one is Arete's; there is the transition from the daughter to the mother, from the maiden to the wife. Still it is not quite so emphatically a woman's Book, since the wife has to include the husband in her world. Ulysses now goes to the center of the Family, to its heart, that he may meet with compassion. Still she withholds her sympathy at first for a good reason; Arete is not wholly impulse and feeling, she has thought, reflection. So, after all, it is left to the men to take up the suppliant.

Very surprising to us moderns is the picture drawn by the old Greek poet of this woman, and of her position: "the people look upon her as a God when she goes through the city;" her mind is especially praised; she has a judicial character, supposed usually to be alien to women: "she decides controversies among men," or perchance harmonizes them. To be sure her position is stated as exceptional: "her husband honors her, as no other woman on earth is honored;" she is evidently his counselor as well as wife. Thus the poet would have us regard Arete not merely as a person of kind feelings and of sweet womanly instincts, but she has also the highest order of intelligence; she is united with her husband in head as well as in heart, perchance overtopping him in ability. Not domestic simply is the picture, it rises into the political sphere, even into the administration of justice.

Is the character of the woman, as thus set forth, possibly a thousand years before Christ, by a heathen poet in an uncivilized age comparatively, to be a prophecy unto us still at this late date? Certainly the most advanced woman of to-day in the most advanced part of the world as regards her opportunities, has hardly reached the height of Arete. Unquestionably a glorious ideal is set up before the Sisterhood of all time for emulation; or is it unattainable? At any rate the woman in Homer stands far in advance of her later historical position in Greece.

We may now turn to the husband for a moment, Alcinous the King, the man of civil authority who represents the State, whose function is to be the protector of the Family and of whomever the family receives into its bosom rightfully. He is the element surrounding and guarding the warm domestic center; still he seems to have stronger impulses, or probably less governed, than his wife. Distinctly is the superiority accorded to the woman in this discourse of Pallas to Ulysses; possibly the Goddess may have overdrawn the picture a little in favor of her sex, as really Alcinous becomes the more prominent figure later one.

So we catch a very fascinating glimpse of the Phæacian world. Two prominent characters representing the two great institutions of man, Family and State, we witness; thus is the spirit of the whole poem ethical. Here is no longer the realm of Calypso, the nymph of wild untrained nature, but the clear sunlit prospect of home and country, the anticipation of sunny Ithaca and prudent Penelope to the hapless sufferer. Ulysses sees his own land in the image of Phæacia, sees what he is to make out of his own island. Verily it is a great and epoch-making experience for him just before his return; he finds the ideal here which he is to realize.

Accordingly we have in line three women, Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete, through whose spheres Ulysses has passed on his way to his own female counterpart, Penelope. We may see in them phases of man's development out of a sensuous into an institutional life. Nor is the suggestion too remote that we may trace in this movement certain outlines in the progress of mankind toward civilization.

In the mythical history of Phæacia which is also here given, we can observe the same development suggested with greater distinctness. Already in the previous Book it was stated that the Phæacians at first "dwelt near the insolent Cyclops," from whom they had to make the removal to their present island on account of violence done them by their neighbors. But now we hear that both Alcinous and Arete are descended on one side from the daughter of King Eurymedon, "who ruled over the arrogant race of Giants," all of whom, both king and "wicked people," had perished. On the other side the royal pair had the sea-god Neptune as their progenitor who was also the father of the Cyclops Polyphemus. It is impossible to mistake the meaning of this genealogy and the reason of its introduction at the present conjuncture. The Phæacians likewise were sprung of the wild men of nature, and had been at one time savages; but they had changed, had separated from their primitive kindred and begun the march of civilization. The poet has manifestly before his mind this question: why does one branch of the same people develop, and another branch lag behind; why, of two brothers, does one become civilized and the other remain savage? Of this dualism Greece would furnish many striking illustrations, whereof the difference between Athena and Sparta is the best known. Here the change from the locality of the Cyclops, implying also the change in spirit, is made by a hero-king, "the large-souled Nausithous," evidently a very important man to the Phæacians. Then this respect given to the woman has often been noted as both the sign and the cause of a higher development of a people. At any rate the Phæacians have made the great transition from savagery to civilization, and thus reveal the inherent possibilities of the race.

We now begin to catch a hint of the sweep of the poem in these portions. Ulysses who has lapsed or at least has become separated from his institutional life, must travel back to the same through the whole rise of society; he has to see its becoming in his own experience, and to a degree create it over again in his own soul, having lost it. Hence the evolution of the social organism passes before his eyes, embodied in a series of persons and places.

In this Seventh Book, therefore, Ulysses is to make the transition to Family and State as shown in Phæacia, and as represented by Arete and Alcinous. We shall mark three leading divisions:—

I. Ulysses enters the city in the dark, when he is met by Pallas and receives her instructions. The divine principle again comes down and directs.

II. The external side of this Phæacian world is shown in the city, garden, and palace of the king; nature is transformed and made beautiful for man. All this Ulysses now beholds.

III. The internal side of this Phæacian world, its spiritual essence, is shown in the domestic and civil life of the rulers and nobles; of this also Ulysses is the spectator, recognizing and appropriating.

Thus we see in the Book the movement from the divine to the human, which we have so often before noticed in Homer. The three parts we may well put together into a whole: the Goddess of Intelligence informs the mind of man, which then transforms nature and builds institutions. Here Pallas simply directs Ulysses, who, however, is now to witness the works of mind done in Phæacia, to recognize them and to take them up into his spirit.