ed for them a sad Return," which,
however, was their own fault, "for all were neither wise nor just." It
is clear that the Greek unity is utterly broken, a spiritual disruption
sets in after the capture of the city. It is, indeed, the new problem,
this Return to peace and institutional order after ten years' training
to violence. Such is the penalty of all war, however just and
necessary; after it is over, the fighting cannot stop at once, and so
the victors divide into two camps and continue the fight. Nestor gives
the picture of these repeated divisions; once, twice, thrice the breach
occurs; first he separates from Agamemnon, the second time from
Ulysses, the third time from Menelaus. He will go directly home, and
thus he has to leave the others behind; the scission is not in him as
in them; he can be restored, in fact he restores himself. He has the
instinctive pre-Trojan character still, being an old man; but Ulysses
has lost that, and so separates from Nestor, though never before had
they differed "in the Council of the Chiefs or in the Assembly of the
People." But Ulysses has to return by a far different road, and now
each of the two wise men takes his own way, though both have to return.

Aged Nestor manifestly does not belong to the new epoch, he seems to
have no sense of the deep spiritual struggle involved. He instinctively
went home, shunning the conflict; the others could not. In the Iliad
the relation between the two wise men, Nestor and Ulysses, is subtly
yet clearly drawn; the one--the younger man--has creative intelligence,
the other--the older man--has appreciative intelligence. In the
Odyssey, the relation is plainly evolved out of that described in the
Iliad; the one is the boundless striver, the other rests in the
established order of things.

Nestor, therefore, cannot tell much about Ulysses, who lies quite out
of his horizon, at least in the Odyssey. He can only give hope that the
man of wisdom will yet return. This Telemachus doubts, dropping into
one of his low human moods, even in the presence of Pallas, who rebukes
him sharply. It is, indeed, the great lesson; he must have faith in the
reality of the Gods, this is the basis of all his future progress, the
chief attainment of wisdom. The young man must not fall away into
denial, he must be taught that there is a divine order in the world.
Old Homer, too, had his notions about religion in education, and the
Goddess herself is here introduced gi