try was quite as deeply distracted and perverted as
his household; both had to undergo the process of purification. In Book
Twenty-third we had the restoration of Ulysses to Family, in Book
Twenty-fourth we are to have essentially his restoration to State; then
he will truly have returned to prudent Penelope and to sunny Ithaca,
and the poem can end. Moreover his restoration _to_ Family and State
involves the restoration of Family and State; the rightful husband and
the rightful ruler heals the shattered institutions.

But it is undeniable that this Book is the most poorly constructed of
any Book in the Odyssey. There is undue repetition of previous matters,
yet certainly with important additions; there is unnecessary expansion
in the earlier parts of the Book, and too great compression and hurry
at the end. In general, the subject-matter of the Book is completely
valid and necessary to the poem, but the execution falls below the
Homeric level, specially in its constructive feature. Still we see ino
reason why it may not be Homer's; he too has his best and worst Books.

Of the present Book there are two parts: the Underworld and the
Upperworld.

I. The Suitors have been sent down to the realm where Ulysses in the
Eleventh Book found the souls of the Trojan Heroes, Agamemnon,
Achilles, Ajax. These three again are introduced with some others. The
death of Achilles is described quite fully, when the souls of the
Suitors arrive, and one of them, Amphimedon, recapitulates the story of
the Odyssey. It tells of the craft and fidelity of Penelope, and of the
return of Ulysses and his destruction of the Suitors. The words of
Agamemnon recognize the pair, Ulysses and Penelope, as the supreme
Greek man and woman, as those who have mastered the greatest
difficulties of their epoch. The Trojan cycle is now complete, the
separation caused by the war is bridged over, both Family and State are
restored after the long disruption. In striking contrast was the case
of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, both of whom perished without
restoration. Thus by means of the ghosts of the Suitors, the famous
careers of Ulysses and Penelope are taken up into the realm of the
Supersensible, of ideal forms, whose fame is to last forever.

This part of the Book (the so-called second Nekyia) in which Hades
appears the second time, has been sharply questioned both by ancient
and modern critics on a number of grounds. These we shall not discuss,
only statin