od, by
casting the decisive ballot in the court of Areiopagus. Here we find
another link between Homer and AEschylus.

Very hurried are these later incidents of the Book, but they are
necessary to complete the poem. The blood-feud is harmonized, the Gods
again make themselves valid in the land by introducing peace and
harmony, which had been undermined by the Suitors. Property, Family,
State, are restored, and the Divine Order of the World in the person of
the Gods is recognized. Only with this conclusion is the negative
conduct of the Suitors completely undone, and a positive institutional
life becomes possible. It is true that in the hurry of coming to an
end, the poet says nothing of the journey enjoined by Tiresias in
Hades, the journey to a distant people who would take an oar for a
winnowing fan. Still we may suppose that it was performed, and that
angry Neptune, the great enemy of Ulysses among the Gods, was also
reconciled. But, chiefly, Ulysses has above on this earth realized the
idea of a world-justice, which we found running through all Hades, in
the statements of Tiresias, in the fates of the great Greek heroes, in
the punitory portion presided over by Minos. From this point of view
the Odyssey may be truly regarded an image of the working of the Spirit
of History, and the poem holds good for all time.

_SUMMARY._

In concluding these lengthy studies of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we
shall try to grasp each of the poems as a whole, and then the two
together is one great totality sprung of one people and of one
consciousness. The central fact out of which both poems arise, to which
and from which both poems move, is the Trojan War. This War, whether
mythical or historical, is certainly the most famous, and probably the
most significant that ever took place on the earth.

As to the Odyssey, the first thing to be seized is the complete career
of its Hero Ulysses. This career has naturally two parts: the going to
Troy from Ithaca, and the coming back from Troy to Ithaca. Every Greek
hero had a similar career, wholly or in part; many, of coarse, never
returned. The two parts together constitute a total movement which
begins at a certain point and returns to the same; hence it may be
called a cycle, and its two parts may be designated in a general way as
the Separation and the Return.

The Odyssey has as its theme the second half of the cycle, though, of
course, it presupposes the first half, namely