It is the beautiful instinct of the mother, that she flits in the ghost-world to her son at once, when the chance is afforded. She has already appeared, even before Tiresias came; now she is the first after that prophet, who gives directions to Ulysses supplicating: "Tell me, O Prophet, how shall my mother recognize me as her son." Ulysses learns much from her about Ithaca, especially about his father Laertes, who now never goes to the town but stays in the fields, "with a great sorrow in his heart, desiring thy return, while old age weighs hard upon him." Such is the father, still living, whom Ulysses may yet see. The mother died from longing for her son and "the memory of his gentleness;" still her longing brings her to him in the life beyond. The great revelation is concerning the future state: the soul is immortal, this fact Ulysses is to tell in Phaeacia. The strong desire to behold the loved ones who have passed away is indeed the impulse; but they too return, though insubstantial. It is the primary groundwork of faith in immortality--this feeling of the domestic relation affirming that it is eternal and cannot be broken by death. Still the mother is but a ghost and cannot be embraced; this the son has to accept, though he would have her in flesh and blood. _b._ At once there is the transition to the famous mothers of legend--"wives and daughters of Heroes" says the poet, with, an eye to his audience, which has men in it also, so he does not mention mothers, though they are the burden of his strain. Here follows a Catalogue of Women, giving them their due place in the genealogy and destiny of distinguished houses. Three groups of these mothers we may distinguish. First is the group of mortal women who were embraced by some god, and gave birth to heroic offspring. Tyro met Neptune and brought forth Pelias and Neleus; from the latter sprang Nestor who connects the Pre-Trojan and Trojan ages, since he appears both in the Iliad and Odyssey. In the Third Book of the latter epos we have already seen Nestor sacrificing to his divine ancestor; so the present passage has its pertinence to the total poem. In the same group are Antiope and Alemena, the latter of whom was the mother of Hercules, whose father was Zeus. At the end of the present Book, Hercules himself will appear as the supreme example of the Greek Hero.