Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/185

 fXTTY OF THE ODYSSEY. 169 tion of measures against the suitors, was to be accomplished by Odysseus and Telemachus jointly, yet the march and adventures of the two, until the moment of their meeting in the dwelling of Eumreus, were essentially distinct. But, according to the reli- gious ideas of the old epic, the presiding direction of Athene was necessary for the safety and success of both of them. Her first interference arouses and inspires the son, her second produces the liberation of the father, constituting a point of union and common origination for two lines of adventures, in both of which she takes earnest interest, but which aie necessarily for a time kept apart in order to coincide at the proper moment. It will thus appear that the twice-repeated agora of the gods in Ihe Odyssey, bringing home, as it does to one and the same divine agent, that double start which is essential to the scheme of the poem, consists better with the supposition of premeditated unity than with that of distinct self-existent parts. And, assuredly, the manner in which Telemachus and Odysseus, both by different roads, are brought into meeting and conjunction at the dwelling of Eunueus, is something not only contrived, but very skilfully contrived. It is needless to advert to the highly interesting character of Eumaeus, rendered available as a rally ing-point, though in different ways, both to the father and the son, over and above the sympathy which he himself inspires. If the Odyssey be not an original unity, of what self-existent parts can we imagine it to have consisted ? To this question it is difficult to imagine a satisfactory reply : for the supposition that Telemachus and his adventures may once have formed the subject of a separate epos, apart from Odysseus, appears inconsistent with the whole character of that youth as it stands in the poem, and with the events in which he is made to take part. We could better imagine the distribution of the adventures of Odysseus himself into two parts, one containing his wanderings and return, the other handling his ill-treatment by the suitors, and his to send Hermes as messenger to Kalypso, in the first book, though Athene urges him to do so. Zeus, indeed, requires to be urged twice before he dic- tates to Kalypso the release of Odysseus, but he had already intimated, in the first book, that he felt great difficulty in protecting the hero, because of the wrath manifested against him by Poseidon. VOL. II. 8