the Odyssey follows the _Telegonia_ written by Eugammon of
Cyrene in two Books. It continues the life of Ulysses; he now goes to
that people who take an oar for winnowing fan, and there he makes the
offering to Neptune, enjoined by Tiresias in Hades. Other incidents are
narrated; the final winding-up is that Ulysses is unwittingly slain by
Telegonus, his and Circe's son, who appears in Ithaca and takes
Telemachus and Penelope to Circe, who makes them immortal. The grand
Epic Cycle concludes with the strangest set of marriages on record:
Telegonus marries Penelope, his step-mother, and Telemachus marries
Circe who is also a kind of step-mother.

III. After such a literary bankruptcy, it is no wonder that we find the
later Greek and Roman writers using the words _cyclic_ and _cyclic
poet_ as terms of disparagement. The great Mythus of Troy had run its
course and exhausted itself; the age of imitation, formalism, erudition
had come, while that of creation had passed away. Still it has
preserved for us the idea of the cycle, which is necessary for the
adequate comprehension of Homer, and which the Greeks themselves
conceived and employed.

_Structure of the Odyssey._ A brief summary of the structural elements
of the poem may now be set forth. It falls into two grand divisions,
both of which are planned by Pallas in Book I and XIII respectively. In
the main these divisions are the following:--

I. The first takes up about one-half of the Odyssey--twelve Books,
which have as their chief object instruction and discipline--the
training for the deed. This training has two very distinct
portions, as it pertains to a young man and a middle-aged
man--Telemachiad and Ulyssiad.

1. The Telemachiad, or the education of Telemachus, who has been
left without the influence of his father, when the latter went
to Troy. But he has his father's spirit, hence he must know;
from Ithaca he goes to Nestor and Menelaus for instruction. Four
Books.

2. The Ulyssiad, or the discipline of Ulysses, who must have
been a man over 40 years old. He is to be trained out of the
negative spirit which he imbibed from the Trojan war. Herein
lies his analogy to Faust, who is also a middle-aged man, and
negative, but from study and thought.

Both the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad are essentially one great
movement in two phases, showing the bud and the flower, the yo