t he himself may
possibly do so with the aid of the same Goddess, Telemachus replies:
"Never will that come to pass, I think, though I hope for it; no, not
even if the Gods should so will." Assuredly a young skeptic he shows
himself, probably in a fit of despondency; sharp is the reproof of the
Goddess: "O Telemachus, what kind of talk is that? Easily can a God, if
he wills it, save a man even at a distance." Thus she, a Goddess,
asserts the supremacy of the Gods, even though they cannot avert death.
But the youth persists at present: "let us talk no more of this; my
father never will return." But when Nestor has told the story of
AEgisthus punished by the son Orestes, the impression is strong that
there is a divine justice which overtakes the guilty man at last; such
is the old man's lesson to the juvenile doubter. The lesson is imparted
in the form of a tale, but it has its meaning, and Telemachus cannot
help putting himself into the place of Orestes.

Such is, then, the training which the young man, shaken by misfortune,
obtains at the court of Nestor; the training to a belief in the rule of
the Gods in a Divine Order of the World--which is the fundamental
belief of the present poem. It is no wonder that Telemachus sees Pallas
at last, sees that she has been with him, recognizing her presence. To
be sure, she now disappears as a personal presence, having been found
out; still she sends Telemachus on his journey to Sparta. Thus the
Third Book has a distinctive character of its own, differing decidedly
from the Book which goes before and from that which follows. Here is a
religious world, idyllic, paradisaical in its immediate relation to the
Gods, and in the primitive innocence of its people, who seem to be
without a jar or inner scission. No doubt or dissonance has yet entered
apparently; Pylos stands between Ithaca, the land of absolute discord,
and Sparta, the land recently restored out of discord. The Book hears a
relation to the whole Odyssey in its special theme, which is the
Return, of which it represents in the ruler Nestor a particular phase.
It prepares the way for the grand Return, which is that of Ulysses; it
is a link connecting the whole poem into unity. Moreover it shadows
forth one of the movements of Greek spirit, which seized upon this idea
of a Return from Troy to express the soul's restoration from its
warring, alienated, dualistic condition. It is well known that there
were many poems on this subj