from Sparta, whither he had
gone for the completion of his education. Thus the present Book goes
back and connects with the Fourth Book in which we left Telemachus.
Still further, the Ithakeiad is linked into and continues the
Telemachiad (the first four Books), inasmuch as we now see the purpose
of that famous journey of the son to the courts of Nestor and Menelaus.
It was the training for a deed, a great deed which required knowledge,
skill, and resolution, and which was to show the youth to be the son of
his father.

Such is another organic link which binds the whole Odyssey together.
The two threads, separately developed hitherto, are now united and
interwoven with a third, that of Eumaeus. Telemachus has seen two Trojan
heroes and heard their varied history, he has learned about his father
whom he is prepared in spirit to support. So the son has his Return
also, a small one, yet important, be returns to Ithaca after the
experience at Pylos and Sparta and is joined to the great Return of his
father.

But just here with these evident marks of unity in the poem, occurs a
slip in chronology which has given the most solid comfort to those who
wish to break up the Odyssey and assign its parts to different authors.
In the Fourth Book (l. 594) Telemachus proposes to set out at once for
home, he will not be detained even by the charm of Menelaus and Helen.
That was the 6th day of the poem, whereas we find him here leaving
Sparta on 36th day of the poem, according to the usual reckoning. Two
inferences have been drawn from this discrepancy, if it be a
discrepancy. The Wolfian School cries out in chorus: two different
poets for the two different passages; it would have been impossible for
old Homer singing without any written copy thus to forget himself,
whatever a modern author might do with the manuscript or printed page
before him. The other set of opinions will run just in the opposite
direction: the connection between the Fourth and the Fifteenth Books is
perfect, as far as thought, narrative, and incident are concerned; the
ancient listener and even the modern reader could pay no attention to
the intricate points of chronology in the poem, especially when these
points lay more than ten Books or 5,000 lines apart from each other.
There is no real sign of discrepant authorship, therefore, but rather a
new indication of unity.

The general theme of the Book is, accordingly, the Return of
Telemachus, and his uniting wit