Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/152

 138 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY tively viewed the destruction of his people. This fault of his causes the death of Patroclus, and with it the catastrophe (Book xxii.). After obtaining through his mother new weapons from Hephaestus, Achilles kills Hector, although he knows that he himself must in- evitably die shortly after laying low this enemy, and Hector himself, when mortally wounded, reminds him of the certainty that such a fate will befall him. The action comes to an end with the funerals of Patroclus and Hector and the lament of Achilles over the loss of his friend. In his lament he is preparing himself for his own death, which follows so immediately that, so far as Homer is concerned, it follows only behind the scenes. 182. It cannot at present be decided whether we may attribute to Homer some sort of an original sketch, or rough draft of the Odyssey, which served as a model for all the poets describing the return home of the Trojan heroes ; but at any rate this poem, as well as the Iliad, was laid out according to a plan exhibiting a unity that has been marred only by later interpolations. Among these in- terpolations is, together with the larger part of the last book, the whole ' Telemachy ' (Books i.-iv.), in which the journey of Telemachus to Pylus and Laconia is described. To get information concerning the whereabouts of his father, who has now been away nearly twenty years, he goes to the aged Nestor, and then to Menelaiis. Each tells him of his own return home and of that of other heroes. From Menelaiis he learns also that his father is a prisoner on the island of the nymph Calypso in the far west. But before Telemachus gets back to Ithaca, his father himself has already arrived there. His journey therefore has no influence on the course of events.