s been
laid upon his mind and cunning, now his athletic side is brought to the
front. But it required all his intelligence to reach the point at which
his will is to act.

We have now gone through what may be called the first stage of this
final part of the Odyssey. The Suitors have fully shown their
destructive spirit, disregarding property, family, state, the Gods.
Ulysses has seen and felt in person their wrongs; their negative career
has reached its last deed, he has the bow in his hands and is ready for
the work of retribution. Such is the general sweep of the last five
Books; but now the destructive deeds of the Suitors are to meet with a
still mightier destruction.

_Book Twenty-second._ The final act of justice, the Day of Judgment,
perchance the Crack of Doom; such conceptions have long been familiar
to man and still are; in the present Book they find one of their most
striking embodiments. That for which so long preparation has been made,
is now realized: the vindication of the Ethical Order of the World.
There is, however, little feeling for that charity and humanity before
noticed; stern, inflexible, merciless justice is the mood and meaning
of this piece of writing.

The Book has essentially two parts: the punishment of the guilty men
(Suitors and Servants) with the sparing of the innocent, and the
punishment of the guilty women (servants) with the sparing of the
innocent. Thus in both parts there is the penalty, yet also the
discrimination, according to the deed.

I. The first part is mainly a battle, an Homeric battle, and reminds
the reader of many a combat in the Iliad. Of the conflict with the
Suitors here described we can discern three stages, which are marked
also by the use of different weapons, the bow, the spear, and the
sword.

(1) The first stage of the battle opens with the slaying of Antinous,
the ringleader of the band, who is pierced by an arrow from the bow of
Ulysses. The crowd threatens Ulysses, who now utters to them what may
be called their last judgment, announcing who he is, and his purpose to
punish their crimes: "Dogs! you thought I would not come back from
Troy, and therefore you devoured my substance, debauched my
maid-servants; and wooed my wife while I was still alive. You feared
not the Gods, nor the vengeance of man afterwards; now destruction
hangs over you all." This may be taken as a statement of the ethical
content of the poem from the mouth of Ulysses himself at th