Very delightful is the school to which we see Telemachus going in these four Books. Heroes are his instructors, men of the deed as well as of the word, and the source from which all instruction is derived is the greatest event of the age, the Trojan War. The young man is to learn what that event was, what sacrifices it required, what characters it developed among his people. He is to see and converse with Nestor, famous at Troy for eloquence and wisdom. Then he will go to Menelaus, who has had an experience wider than the Trojan experience, for the latter has been in Egypt. Young Telemachus is also to behold Helen, beautiful Helen, the central figure of the great struggle. Finally, he is to learn much about his father, and thus be prepared for the approaching conflict with the suitors in Ithaca. _Book First specially._ After the total Odyssey has been organized on Olympus, it begins at once to descend to earth and to realize itself there. For the great poem springs from the Divine Idea, and must show its origin in the course of its own unfolding. Hence the Gods are the starting-point of the Odyssey, and their will goes before the terrestrial deed; moreover, the one decree of theirs overarches the poem from beginning to end, as the heavens bend over man wherever he may take his stand. Still there will be many special interventions and reminders from the Gods during this poetical journey. In accordance with the Olympian plan, Pallas takes her flight down to Ithaca, after binding on her winged sandals and seizing her mighty spear; thus she humanizes herself to the Greek plastic sense, and assumes finite form, adopting the shape of a stranger, Mentes, King of the Taphians. She finds a world full of wrong; violence and disorder rule in the house of the absent Ulysses; it is indeed high time for the Gods to come down from lofty Olympus and bring peace and right into the course of things. Let the divine image now be stamped upon terrestrial affairs, and bring harmony out of strife. Still, it must not be forgotten that the work has to be done through man's own activity. The conflict which unfolds before our eyes in a series of clear-drawn classic pictures, lies between the House of Ulysses on the one hand and the Suitors of Penelope on the other. He who is the head of the Family and the ruler of State, Ulysses, has been absent for twenty years; godless men have taken advantage of the youth of his son, and are consuming his substance wantonly; they also are wooing his wife who has only her cunning wherewith to help herself. The son and wife are now to be brought before us in their struggle with their bitter lot. Thus we note the two main divisions in the structure of the present Book: The House of Ulysses and the Suitors. I.