Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/787

Rh D Y &amp;lt;E C O 729 provinces, with four chief ministers, are all peculiar to him among the travellers of that age ; Marco Polo omits them all. The narrative was first printed at Pesaro in 1513, in what Apostolo Zeno calls lingua inculta c rozza, probably, therefore, in a Venetian dialect. Ramusio s collection first contains it in the 2d vol. of the 2d edition (1574), in which are given two versions, differing curiously from one another, but without any prefatory matter or explanation. Another (Latin) version is given in the Ada Sanctorum (Bollandist) under 14th January. The curious discussion before the papal court respecting the beatification of Odoric forms a kind of blue-book issued ex typographic rev. camera apostoliciK, Rome, 1755. Pro fessor Kunstinann of Munich devoted one of his valuable papers to Odoric s narrative (Histor. -Polit. Slattern von Phillips und Gorres, vol. xxxviii.). The collection called Cathay and the Way Thither, by Colonel Yule (Hak. Soc., 1866), contains a careful translation and commentary, &c. A new edition in Italian has been recently issued in Italy, but it is not of value. (H. Y. ) ODYSSEUS is of all the Greek heroes the most typical representative of the Greek race. The quality on which he prides himself (Od., ix. 19) is his cunning and ready wit ; his inventive genius never fails in the greatest danger. But his cunning is not of the narrow kind that is incom patible with real wisdom ; he is not troubled by scruples, but he uses nobly and liberally a power that he has acquired by craft ; he is fond of adventure and yet full of prudence, very cautious and yet in case of need brave. It is a character that in the hands of Homer is very fine, but which in those of almost all other writers becomes repulsive. He was son of Laertes and Anticleia, and king of Ithaca, a small rocky island on the western side of Greece. He married Penelope, but very soon after his marriage he was summoned to the Trojan war. Unwill ing to go, he feigned madness, yoked an ox and a horse together, but Palamedes discovered his deceit by means of his care for his infant child Telemachus ; afterwards Odysseus revenged himself by compassing the death of Palamedes. Obliged to go to the war, he distinguished himself as the wisest councillor of the Greeks, and finally, the capture of Troy, which the bravery of Achilles could not accomplish, was attained by Odysseus s stratagem of the Avooden horse. After the death of Achilles the Greeks adjudged his armour to Odysseus as the man who had done most to make the war successful. When Troy was captured he set sail for Ithaca, but was carried by un favourable winds to the coast of Africa. After encountering many adventures in all parts of the unknown seas, among the lotus-eaters and the Cyclopes, in the isles of J^olus and Circe and the perils of Scylla and Charybdis, among the Ltestrygons, and even in the world of the dead, having lost all his ships and companions, he barely escaped with his own life to the island of Calypso, where he was detained eight years, an unwilling lover of the beautiful nymph. Then at the command of Zeus he was sent homewards, but was again wrecked on the island of Phseacia, whence he was conveyed to Ithaca in one of the wondrous Phaeacian ships. Here he found that a host of suitors, taking ad vantage of the youth of his son Telemachus, were wasting his property and trying to force Penelope to marry one of them. The stratagems and disguises by which he with a few faithful friends slew the suitors are described at length in the Odyssey. There is no doubt that the personality of Odysseus developed out of some germ in primitive religious myth ; but it is almost hopeless to seek for the early form, so completely has it been transformed. In many heroes of poetry and mythology the chief interest lies in tracing the growth of the conception from the divine form of early religion to the Greek hero of poetry ; but in the case of Odysseus the supreme interest attaches to the perfect form as it appears in Homer, the typical representative of the old sailor -race whose adventurous voyages educated and moulded the Hellenic race. The period when the char acter of Odysseus grew among the Ionian bards was when the Ionian ships were beginning to penetrate to the farthest shores of the Black Sea, and to the western side of Italy, but when Egypt had not yet been freely opened to foreign intercourse by Psammetichus and his successors. The tale of Odysseus gives us the form in which the voyages, the perils, the strange races of foreign lands, and the rich spoils of the sailors were mirrored in the minds of the nation and sung by its poets. OECOLAMPADIUS, 1 JOHN (1482-1531), was born at Weinsberg, a small town in the north of the modern king dom of Wiirtemberg, but then belonging to the Palatinate. He went to school at Weinsberg and Heilbronn, and when twelve years old entered the university of Heidelberg, where he took his bachelor s degree in 1501. He seems at first to have intended to study for the profession of law, and Avent to Bologna, but soon returned to Heidelberg and betook himself to theology. He became a zealous student of the new learning and passed from the study of Greek to that of HebreAv. He went from Heidelberg to Tubin gen, and thence to Stuttgart, making the acquaintance of Erasmus, Hedio, and Reuchlin, and after some earlier essays in preaching became pastor at Basel in 1515, serving under Christopher von Uttenheim, the evangelical bishop of Basel. From the beginning the sermons of (Ecolampadius had &quot; Christ the crucified &quot; as their theme, and his first reformatory zeal shoAved itself in a protest against the introduction of legends of the saints into Easter sermons. While in Basel, preaching did not absorb all his energies ; he was in daily intercourse Avith learned friends at the university, and pursued his literary researches and humanist studies. In 1518 he published his Greek Grammar. The same year he Avas asked to become pastor in the high church in Augsburg. Germany Avas then ablaze Avith the questions raised by Luther s theses, and his introduction into this new world seems to have compelled (Ecolampa dius to severe self-examination, Avhich ended in his enter ing a convent and becoming a monk. A short experience sufficed to convince him that the monkish Avas not the ideal Christian life (amisi monackum, inveni Christianuni), for in the beginning of 1522 he became private chaplain to the famous Franz von Sickingen. He left his service in the end of the same year and returned to Basel. ZAvingli s famous disputation at Zurich (in 1523) fired the minds of many in Switzerland, and among others stirred (Ecolam padius to make a more decided stand for reformation. He began to imitate ZAvingli and preach Reformed doctrine. To his surprise he found that the humanists of the university did not countenance him in his zeal for evangelical truth. When &quot;disputations&quot; AA-ere held, they prohibited the students and teachers from attending. After more than a year of earnest preaching, after four public disputations had been held, in Avhich the popular verdict had been given in favour of (Ecolampadius and his friends, the authorities of Basel began to see the necessity of some reformation. They began with the convents, and (Ecolampadius AA-as able to refrain in public AA-orship on certain festival days from some practices he believed to be superstitious. Basel Avas sloAV to accept the Reformation; the neAvs of the Peasants War and the inroads of Anabaptists prevented progress; but at last, in 1525, it seemed as if the authorities Avere resolved to listen to schemes for restoring the purity of worship and teaching. In the midst of these hopes and difficulties (Ecolampadius married, in the beginning of 1528, Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Lndwig Keller, who proved to be non rixosa vel garrula vel vaga, he says, and made him a good wife. After his death she married Capito, and, Avhen Capito died, Bucer. She died in 1564. In 1528 the mass and image worship Avere at 1 Hussgeu or Heussgeii, c Greek equivalent. to Hausschein, and then into tke XVII. 92