The three songs of the bard furnish the main landmarks for the organism of the Book. All of them will be found more or less intimately connected with the great event of the immediate Past, the story of Troy. Phaeacia shows an intense interest in that story and the bard approves himself its worthy singer. Indeed the three songs stand in direct relation to the Iliad; the first deals with an event antecedent to the Iliad; the second has the theme of the Iliad, though in a changed form, inasmuch as the seducer, the wife and the husband are here Gods (Mars, Venus, Vulcan) instead of mortals (Paris, Helen, Menelaus); the third deals with an event subsequent to the Iliad. Yet the singer carefully avoids repeating anything in the Iliad. It is almost impossible not to think that he had not that poem in mind; or, rather, we are forced to conclude that the present author of the Odyssey knew the Iliad, and we naturally think that both were by the same man. Demodocus is the singer of the Trojan War, yet he shuns singing what has already been sung about it. Herein we may catch another faint reflection of Homer, the organizer, the transfigurer of old legends into his two poems. Note also that he hovers around the Iliad, before and after it, yet never into it, here and elsewhere in the Odyssey; specially in the Third Book have we observed the same fact. In the present Book, however, is another strand; besides these songs of the bard belonging to the past are the doings in Phaeacia belonging to the present, which doings have a connection and a correspondence with the songs. Thus we observe three divisions in the Book, and two threads which run through these divisions. The following outline may serve to show the general structure:-- I. There is the representation of the struggle between the physical and mental in what may be called Phaeacian art; skill and strength have an encounter shown in two ways: 1. Past, heroic, ideal; the contest between Ulysses and Achilles at Troy; intelligence vs. mere courage. Sung by the bard. Pre-Iliad. 2. Present, real, not heroic; the games in which there is a contest also, and in which both skill and strength are involved, with the preponderance of the physical. II. Now we drop to the sensuous inactive side of the Phaeacian world, the luxurious, self-indulgent phase of their life, which is also imaged in their art doubly: 1. Past; an Olympian episode, a story of illicit love among the Gods, corresponding to the story of Helen on earth. Sung by the bard. 2. Present; hints concerning the sensuous life of the Phaeacians who love the feast, the song, the warm bath and bed, along with dance and music, showing their pleasure in art. Return of the men from the market-place to the palace and into the presence of Arete. III. We pass to what may be called the triumph of intelligence and the recognition thereof,--Phaeacian art is again introduced, Ulysses is revealed.