The Introduction being concluded, the story of Telemachus begins, and
continues till the Fifth Book. Two main points stand forth in the
narrative. The first is the grand conflict with the suitors, the men of
guilt, the disturbers of the divine order; this conflict runs through
to the end of the poem, where they are swept out of the world which
they have thrown into discord. The second point of the Telemachiad is
the education of Telemachus, which is indeed the chief fact of these
Books; the youth is to be trained to meet the conflict which is looming
up before him in the distance. Thus we have one of the first
educational books of the race, the very first possibly; it still has
many valuable hints for the educator of the present age. Its method is
that of oral tradition, which has by no means lost its place in a true
discipline of the human spirit. Living wisdom has its advantage to-day
over the dead lore of the text-books.
Very delightful is the school to which we see Telemachus going in these
four Books. Heroes are his instructors, men of the deed as well as of
the word, and the source from which all instruction is derived is the
greatest event of the age, the Trojan War. The young man is to learn
what that event was, what sacrifices it required, what characters it
developed among his people. He is to see and converse with Nestor,
famous at Troy for eloquence and wisdom. Then he will go to Menelaus,
who has had an experience wider than the Trojan experience, for the
latter has been in Egypt. Young Telemachus is also to behold Helen,
beautiful Helen, the central figure of the great struggle. Finally, he
is to learn much about his father, and thus be prepared for the
approaching conflict with the suitors in Ithaca.
_Book First specially._ After the total Odyssey has been organized on
Olympus, it begins at once to descend to earth and to realize itself
there. For the great poem springs from the Divine Idea, and must show
its origin in the course of its own unfolding. Hence the Gods are the
starting-point of the Odyssey, and their will goes before the
terrestrial deed; moreover, the one decree of theirs overarches the
poem from beginning to end, as the heavens bend over man wherever he
may take his stand. Still there will be many special interventions and
reminders from the Gods during this poetical journey.
In accordance with the Olympian plan, Pallas takes her flight down to
Ithaca, after binding on her winged sandals and seizing her mighty
spear; thus she humanizes herself to the Greek plastic sense, and
assumes finite form, adopting the shape of a stranger, Mentes, King of
the Taphians. She finds a world full of wrong; violence and disorder
rule in the house of the absent Ulysses; it is indeed high time for the
Gods to come down from lofty Olympus and bring peace and right into the
course of things. Let the divine image now be stamped upon terrestrial
affairs, and bring harmony out of strife. Still, it must not be
forgotten that the work has to be done through man's own activity.
The conflict which unfolds before our eyes in a series of clear-drawn
classic pictures, lies between the House of Ulysses on the one hand and
the Suitors of Penelope on the other. He who is the head of the Family
and the ruler of State, Ulysses, has been absent for twenty years;
godless men have taken advantage of the youth of his son, and are
consuming his substance wantonly; they also are wooing his wife who has
only her cunning wherewith to help herself. The son and wife are now to
be brought before us in their struggle with their bitter lot. Thus we
note the two main divisions in the structure of the present Book: The
House of Ulysses and the Suitors.