nctive, and far less explicit than in the Odyssey. It is
reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the poet has reached a
profounder consciousness of his art in his later poem; he has come to a
knowledge of his constructive principle, and he takes the trouble to
unfold the same at the beginning. To be sure, certain critics have
assailed just this structural fact as not Homeric; without good
grounds, in our judgment.

The First Book, accordingly, opens with an Introduction which belongs
to the entire poem, and which embraces 95 lines of the original text.
This portion we shall look at separately in some detail, as it throws a
number of gleams forward over the whole action, and, as before said,
suggests the poetic organism. It has three divisions, the Invocation,
the Statement of the Obstacles to the return of the Hero, and the
Assembly of the Gods, who are represented as organizing the poem from
Olympus. The Divine thus hovers over the poem from the first, starting
with one grand, all-embracing providential act, which, however, is
supplemented by many special interventions of deities, great and small.

_The Invocation._ The first line speaks of the man, Ulysses, and
designates his main attribute by a word, which may be translated
_versatile_ or _resourceful_, though some grammarians construe it
otherwise. Thus we are told at the start of the chief intellectual
trait of the Hero, who "wandered much," and who, therefore, had many
opportunities to exercise his gift. In the second line our attention is
called to the real starting point of the poem, the taking of Troy,
which is the background of the action of the Odyssey, and the great
opening event of the Greek world, as here revealed. For this event was
the mighty shake which roused the Hellenic people to a consciousness of
their destiny; they show in it all the germs of their coming greatness.
Often such a concussion is required to waken a nation to its full
energy and send it on its future career.

Note that Ulysses is here stated to be the taker of Troy, and this view
is implied throughout the Odyssey. Note Achilles is the final Greek
hero; he perished without capturing the city, and in his hands alone
the Greek cause would have been lost. The intellectual hero had to come
forward ere the hostile town could be taken and Helen restored. Herein
the Odyssey does not contradict the Iliad, but is clearly an advance
beyond it.

But Troy is destroyed and now the second grand q