plays of
Shakespeare. There are heavy difficulties every way; and we shall best
conclude our own subject by noting down briefly the most striking points
of variation of which as yet no explanation has been attempted. We have
already noticed several: the non-appearance of male slavery in the Iliad
which is common in the Odyssey; the notion of a future state; and
perhaps a fuller cultivation in the female character. Andromache is as
delicate as Nausicaa, but she is not as grand as Penelope; and in marked
contrast to the feeling expressed by Briseis, is the passage where the
grief of Ulysses over the song of Demodocus is compared to the grief of
a young wife flinging herself on the yet warm body of her husband, and
looking forward to her impending slavery with feelings of horror and
repulsion. But these are among the slightest points in which the two
poems are dissimilar. Not only are there slaves in the Odyssey, but
there are [Greek: Thetes], or serfs, an order with which we are familiar
in later times, but which again are not in the Iliad. In the Odyssey the
Trojans are called [Greek: epibetores hippon], which must mean _riders_.
In the Iliad, horses are never ridden; they are always in harness.

Wherever in the Odyssey the Trojan war is alluded to (and it is very
often), in no one case is the allusion to anything which is mentioned in
the Iliad. We hear of the wooden horse, the taking of Troy, the death of
Achilles, the contention of Ulysses with Ajax for his arms. It might be
said that the poet wished to supply afterwards indirectly what he had
left in the Iliad untold; but again, this is impossible, for a very
curious reason. The Iliad opens with the wrath of Achilles, which caused
such bitter woe to the Achaians. In the Odyssey it is still the wrath of
Achilles; but singularly _not with Agamemnon, but with Ulysses_. Ulysses
to the author of the Odyssey was a far grander person at _Troy_ than he
appears in the Iliad. In the latter poem he is great, but far from one
of the greatest; in the other, he is evidently the next to Achilles; and
it seems almost certain that whoever wrote the Odyssey was working from
some other legend of the war. There were a thousand versions of it. The
tale of Ilium was set to every lyre in Greece, and the relative position
of the heroes was doubtless changed according to the sympathies or the
patriotism of the singer. The character of Ulysses is much stronger in
the Odyssey; and even when the