The religious setting of Nestor's world has been noticed already. Into
it Telemachus comes, out of a realm of violence; it must indicate some
cure for the ills of Ithaca. But he is now to show himself a man.
Pallas orders him to put aside his youthful modesty, and boldly make
the inquiry concerning his father. And here the Goddess utters a remark
which the student may well ponder: "Some things thou wilt think of in
thine own mind, but a God will suggest others." Again the Homeric
dualism--the human and the divine--and also their harmony; the two
elements must come together in every high thought or action. The double
relation of the individual--to himself and to the God--is necessary for
all worthy speech; his own activity and that of the deity run together
in true discourse as well as in true action. So the whole poem is made
up of man's self-determined energy and the interference of the Gods;
yet both are to be seen as ultimately one in the deed.
The new-comers are asked to pray, and we hear the famous utterance,
which is characteristic of Nestor's world, "All men have need of the
Gods." This is said by one of his sons. Pallas makes the prayer, a
happy one, which brings forth a feeling of harmony between the
strangers and all the People. The sympathy is complete, and Telemachus
can proceed to ask concerning his father, after he has told who he
himself is, and whence he has come. In response, Nestor begins to tell
the fateful story of the Returns after the fall of Troy. In his
narrative we behold the starting-point of the calamities, the
difference between Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed by a series of
separations in succession. "Zeus planned 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 giving a lesson.
Nestor, though unable himself to give much information about the
Return, can point to the second grand Returner, Menelaus, who has
lately come from a distant land, and may have something to say. In fact
Menelaus was the last to separate from Nestor, Ulysses had separated
long before.
One other story Nestor tells with great sympathy, that of Agamemnon,
who represents a still different form of the Return. The great leader
of the Greeks can master the Trojan difficulty, can even get back to
home and country, but these are ultimately lost to him by his faithless
spouse. Still, after the father's death, the son Orestes restores
Family and State. Therein Telemachus sees an image of himself, the son,
who is to slay his mother's suitors; he sees, too, the possible fate of
his father. Ulysses has essentially the same problem as Agamemnon,
though he has not the faithless wife in addition; Telemachus beholds
his duty in the deed of Orestes, according to Greek consciousness. We
shall see hereafter how Ulysses takes due precaution not to be slain in
his own land, as Agamemnon was. In disguise he will go to his own
palace and carefully note the situation in advance, and then strike the
blow of deliverance.
Several times Homer repeats in the Odyssey the tragic story of
Agamemnon, the great Leader of the Greeks at Troy. An awe-inspiring
tale of destiny; out of it AEschylus will develop his great tragedy, the
Oresteia. Indeed the epos develops into tragedy with the full mythical
unfolding of this story. AEschylus will deepen the motives into internal
collisions; he will show the right and the wrong in Agamemnon, and even
in Clytemnestra. Orestes, however beneficent his deed in avenging his
father, will not escape the counterstroke; AEschylus will send after him
the Furies for the guilt of having murdered his mother. Thus the double
nature of the deed, its reward and its penalty, unfolds out of Homer
into AEschylus, and creates the Greek drama as we know it at present.
Nestor has now told what lay in the immediate circle of his experience:
the Return direct through Hellas. Again he mentions the last
separation; it was that of himself from Menelaus, when the latter was
swept beyond the limit of Hellas into Egypt, from which he has now
returned. What next? Evidently the young man must be sent to him at
Sparta in order to share in this larger circle of experience, extending
to the Orient. So Greece points to the East in many ways; Nestor, the
purely Hellenic soul, knows of that wider knowledge, though it be not
his, and he knows that it should be possessed.
In this Book as elsewhere in the Odyssey the grand background is the
Trojan war. The incidents of the Iliad are hardly alluded to, but are
certainly taken for granted; the Post-Iliad is the field of interest,
for in it the Returns take place. Thus the two great poems of Homer
join together and show themselves as complements of each other.