It is a curious fact that Homer, in this short description, makes two mistakes in reference to the topography of Ithaca. The island can hardly be called low as here stated, nor does it lie westward of Cephallenia, but northeastward. A reasonable inference is that Homer was not an Ithacan, and did not know the island very well, though he may have seen it in a passing visit. Anaximander with his first map comes after Homer several hundred years. The present Book has three plainly marked portions. First comes the wanton attack on the Ciconians, which connects immediately with the Trojan experience of Ulysses. Second is the country of the Lotus-eaters, to which he and his companions are driven by wind and storm. Third is the Land of the Cyclops, especially of Polyphemus, with whom he has his chief adventures. The first two portions are quite brief, are in fact introductory to the third, which takes up more than four-fifths of the Book, and is the Fairy Tale proper. We may observe the gradual transition: the Ciconians are a real people in geography and history; the Lotus-eaters are getting mythical, are but half-way historical; the Cyclops belong wholly to Fableland. Thus there is a movement out of the Trojan background of reality into the Fairy World. Having marked the dividing lines, the next thing will be to find the connecting links between these three portions. They are not thrown together haphazard or externally joined into one Book; they have an internal thought which unifies them and which must be brought to light. The poet sees in images which are separate, but the thinker must unite these images by their inner necessity, and thus justify anew the poet. I. The first sentence strikes the leading thought: "The wind, bearing me from Troy, brought me to the Ciconians." Troy is the starting-point, the background out of which everything moves. After the fall of the city Nestor gives an account of the disputes of the Greek leaders and their separation (Book III. l. 134 et seq.); Ulysses is driven alone with his contingent across the sea toward Thrace, where he finds a city in peace, though it had been an ally of Troy. "I sacked the city, I destroyed its people;" he treated them as he did the Trojans, "taking as booty their wives and property." Such is the spirit begotten of that ten years' war in the character of Ulysses, a spirit of violence and rapine, totally unfitted for a civilized life, at bottom negative to Family and State. This is the spiritual starting-point from which he is to return to home and country through a long, long, but very needful discipline.