racters, are the victims of fate, that is, of their own fatal
limitations. Such is the world-judgment here, it is really pronounced
by themselves upon themselves in each case. Agamemnon states his own
guilt, Achilles shows his limit by his complaint, Ajax does not need to
speak. Ulysses simply listens and sees; now he tells the story of Troy
and its heroes anew to the Present, indicating how they have put
themselves into Hades.

The intimate connection between this part and the preceding part of
Tiresias is plain. The prophet has forecast the law which rules these
heroes also; they are truly illustrations of his prophecy, or of its
underlying principle. They expose the heroic insufficiency of that
Trojan time; they are the negative, tragic phases of greatness, which
have also to submit at last to the law of compensation. Thus is the
illustrious Trojan epoch judged and sent down below; but mark! Ulysses,
of that same epoch, survives, is present, and is singing the judgment.

III. The world-justice which ideally underlies the prophecies of
Tiresias in the first part of the present Book, and which is the secret
moving principle in the fates of the three Greco-Trojan heroes in the
second part, becomes explicit, recognized and ordered in the third
part, which is now to be given. There is first the world-judge, Minos,
famous for his justice during life, distributing both penalties and
rewards in the Netherworld. Secondly we see the condemned ones, Orion,
Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus (mark the significant reduplication of the
root in the names of each one of them). All four are represented as
having wronged the Gods in some way; they have violated the Divine
Order, according to the Greek conception; hence the tribunal of
world-justice, now organized and at work in Hades, takes them in hand.
To be sure, the text of Homer does not say that they were sentenced by
the decree of Minos, but such is certainly the implication. These four
had a common sin, to the Greek mind: they sought to transcend the limit
which the Gods have placed upon finite man, hence the image of their
penalty lies in the endless repetition of their acts, which is also
suggested in their names. Orion has always to pursue and slay the wild
beast, never getting the work done; the liver of Tityus grows and
swells afresh (root from _tu_, meaning to swell, Latin _tumor_) though
being consumed by the vultures; in like manner Tantalus and Sisyphus
have ever-repeated la