Chapter 30

III. We are living to-day in that separation; our art, science, education, poetic forms, our secular life largely come from ancient Greece. Oriental art, customs, domestic life, government, we do not as a rule fraternize with; the Greek diremption is in us still; only in one way, in our religious life, do we keep a connection with an Oriental people. But is this separation never to be overcome? Is there to be no return to the East and completion of the world's cycle?

_The Cycle._ We have often used this word, and some may think that we have abused it; still our object is to restore the Greek conception of these poems, as they were looked at and spoken of by Hellas herself. The idea of the cycle was fundamental in grasping the epics which related to the Trojan War, and this War itself was regarded as a cycle of events and deeds, which the poets sang and put into their poetic cycle. Let us briefly trace this thought of the cycle as developed in old Greece.

I. In two different passages of his _Organon_, Aristotle calls the epic a cycle and the poetry of Homer a cycle. Now both passages are employed by him to illustrate a defective syllogism, hence are purely incidental. But no instance could better show the prevalence of the idea of a cycle as applied to Homer and epic poetry, for the philosopher evidently draws his illustration from something familiar to everybody. It had become a Greek common-place 350 B.C., and probably long before, that an epic poem, such as the Iliad or Odyssey, is cyclical, and that both together make a cycle.

II. But this idea develops, and expands beyond the Iliad and Odyssey, which are found to leave out many events of the Trojan Cycle. Indeed the myth-making spirit of Greece unfolds new incidents, deeds, and characters. The result is that many poets, after Homer had completed his cycle, began filling the old gaps, or really making new ones that these might be filled by a fresh poem. Hence arose the famous Epic Cycle, which has been preserved in a kind of summary supposed to have been written by Proclus, not the philosopher, but a grammarian of the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Meantime, let us carefully distinguish some of our Cycles. The Trojan Cycle is one of events and deeds, in general is the going to and the returning from Troy. The Homeric Cycle is Homer's account, in his two poems, of this Trojan Cycle. Finally the Epic Cycle is the expansion of Homer and includes a number of Epics, which fill out to ultimate completeness the Trojan Cycle. The latter, according to Proclus, is made up of six Epics beside the Iliad and Odyssey, to which they stand in the following relations.

1. The _Cypria_, which deals with events antecedent to the Iliad, such as the apple of Discord, the visit of Paris at Sparta and the taking of Helen, the mustering at Aulis, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and many incidents at Troy. Ulysses, to avoid going to the war, feigns madness (his first disguise) and ploughs the sea-sand; but he is detected by Palamedes who lays his infant Telemachus in the track of the plough. The name _Cypria_ comes from Kypris, Venus, who caused the infatuation which led to the war.

2. Four different epics fill in between the Iliad and the Odyssey. The _AEthiopis_ takes up the thread after the death of Hector, introducing Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, and Memnon, son of the Dawn, both of whom are slain by Achilles who is himself slain and is buried with funeral games. After the death of Achilles, the _Little Iliad_ continues the story, installing Ulysses as hero over Ajax in the contest for the arms of Achilles. This is the grand transition from Brawn to Brain in the conduct of the war. The Wooden Horse is made, and the Palladium is carried out of Troy--both deeds being the product of the brain, if not of the hand, of Ulysses. Next comes the _Sack of Troy_, whose name indicates its character. Laocoon and Sinon appear in it, but the main thing is the grand slaughter (like that of the Suitors) and the dragging of women and children into captivity; the city is burned. Then follows the epic called the _Nostoi_ or the Returns, really an elaboration of the Odyssey, specially of the Third Book, which tells of these antecedent Returns. Then comes the great Return, which is the Odyssey.

3. After 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 young and the mature man. Father and son reveal an overcoming of limitation; Telemachus overcomes his limit of ignorance, Ulysses overcomes his limit of negation--the one by the instruction of the wise, the other by the experience of life. Both are trained to a belief in an ethical order which rules the world; therein both are made internally ready for the great act of delivering their country. The training of both reaches forward to a supreme practical end--the destruction of the Suitors and the purification of Ithaca. (For the further structure of these two parts--the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad--see preceding commentary under these titles.)

II. The second grand division of the Odyssey is the last twelve Books. The scene is laid in Ithaca, where the great deed, to which the poem hitherto has looked forward, is to be done. The wanderings of the father have ceased, the son returns from his schooling; every movement is now directed toward action. Again Pallas (XIII. 393-415) plans two subdivisions, without the Council of the Gods however.

1. The hut of the swineherd. Here the forces hostile to the Suitors gather in secret and lay their plan. Ulysses, Telemachus, Eumaeus, the gallant army of three, get ready for the execution of the deed. Four Books.

2. The palace of the King. Ulysses in disguise beholds the Suitors in their negative acts; they are as bad as the Trojans, assailing Property, Family, State, the Gods; they are really in their way re-enacting the rape of Helen. Ulysses, as he destroyed Troy, must destroy them, yet not become merely destructive himself. Eight Books, in which we can discern the following movement: (1) Suitors as destroyers--five Books; (2) Ulysses as destroyer--one Book; (3) Ulysses as restorer--two Books. Thus the outcome is positive..

The career of Ulysses is now complete, and with it the Homeric Cycle has rounded itself out to fullness. The Epic Cycle in the _Telegonia_ will expand this conclusion, but will deeply mar its idea.

Note that the structure of the two grand divisions of the Odyssey are symmetrical, each a half of the poem; then each half subdivides into two parts, and each of those parts is symmetrical, being composed of four and eight Books each. To be sure, the joint is not so plain in the second division as in the first, which has the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad. Pallas is the orderer of both divisions, and she orders them in a symmetrical manner.

For both divisions the grand horizon is the Trojan War, yet both reach beyond it, the one toward the West, the other toward the East. The one weaves into its regular narrative the Fairy Tale, the other takes up into its text what we have called the Romantic Novelette. The former looks toward the West and the Future, the latter looks back at the East and the Past. Hence the Fairy Tale is prophetic and has supernatural beings, the Novelette is retrospective, giving the experiences of life without supernatural agencies. In scenery also the contrast is great: the one is largely a sea poem, the other is a land poem.

_Structural analogy between Iliad and Odyssey._ We have before said, and we may repeat here at the end, that the final fruit of Homeric study is to see and to fully realize that the Iliad and Odyssey are one work, showing national consciousness, and unfolding one great epoch of the World's History. Just here we may note the fundamental analogies of structure between the two poems.

I. Both poems have the dual division, separating into two symmetrical portions. The Iliad has two Wraths of Achilles, and also two Reconciliations; thus each division is subdivided:

1. His first attitude or cycle of conduct toward the Greeks.

(_a_) His wrath--both rightful and wrongful.

(_b_) His reconciliation with Agamemnon and his own people.

2. His second attitude, or cycle of conduct toward the Trojans.

(_a_) His wrath--both rightful and wrongful.

(_b_) His reconciliation with Priam and the Trojans.

Such is the general organism of the Iliad which is seen to be perfectly symmetrical within itself. (For a fuller account see author's Commentary on the Iliad, pp. 36-8.) Note that the negative attitude of Achilles is that of wrath; in his anger he will destroy his people and his cause, and finally, in the dragging of Hector's corpse, he disregards the Gods. Yet be overcomes both these negative attitudes in himself and becomes reconciled.

II. The Odyssey has two phases of Negation, both of which the heroes (father and son) must overcome.

1. The negative spirit caused by the Trojan War and its overcoming.

(_a_) The ignorance of the son and its overcoming.

(_b_) The destructive tendency of the father and its overcoming.

2. The negative spirit abroad in Ithaca (Suitors) and its overcoming.

(_a_) The hut of the swineherd (preparation).

(_b_) The palace of the King (execution).

That is, Ulysses and Telemachus have the double problem, which organizes the Odyssey: they must conquer their own internal negation, then proceed to conquer that of the Suitors. Both poems divide alike; both have the same fundamental thought: the individual as hero is to master his own negative spirit and that of the world, and then be reconciled with himself and the world. The Iliad has essentially but one thread of movement, that of Achilles; the Odyssey has two such threads, if not three--father, son, and perchance wife, making the total Family as the unit of movement.

Thus the Iliad and Odyssey are one poem fundamentally, showing unity in thought and structure, and portraying one complete cycle of national consciousness, as well as one great phase of the World's History.

* * * * *

BOOKS BY DENTON J. SNIDER

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