We may also see the lines, though they be faint, of the movement of the world's culture in this story. Crete, on the borderland between East and West, is the home of the daring Greek adventurer who attacks Troy on the one hand and AEgypt on the other. From Crete we pass backwards to Phoenicia, as well as to the land of the Nile, and we catch a glimpse of the current of Oriental influence flowing upon Greece. Already we have seen the spiritual gift of Egypt to the Greek mind shadowed forth in the story of Menelaus in the Fourth Book. In these latter Books of the Odyssey the Phoenician intercourse with Hellas is more strongly emphasized, with glances into their art, their trade, their navigation. All this Phoenician development the Greek looks at in a wondering way as if miraculous; he is reaching out for it also. To be sure the Phoenician has a bad name, as a shrewd, even dishonest trader. Still he is the middleman between nations, and a necessity. Thus it appears that the Greeks have lost their Aryan connection, and have become the heirs of a Semitic civilization. Homer does not seem to know his Indo-European kinship, but he does connect Hellas with Phoenicia and Egypt in many a spiritual tie. These ties take, for the most part, a mythical form, still they must have been a great fact, else they could not have influenced the mythology of the Greek race. So the present tale through the fiction of the myth-maker, hints the chief social fact of the time. The fiction in the previous Book, which Ulysses began to tell to Pallas, also started in Crete, looked back at the Trojan war, and connected with Idomeneus, the great hero of Cretan legend in the affair of Troy. The Phoenican trader in his ship comes in there too. But that tale is cut short by the Goddess, who knows the disguise. In the present case, however, the swineherd makes no such discovery. The next Book will also have its corresponding tale. Ulysses has thus told all about himself to the swineherd, has even hinted in one place his disguise. He speaks of Ulysses having gone to Dodona to consult the sacred oracle "whether he should return to Ithaca openly or secretly, after so long an absence." He runs along the very edge of discovering himself. But the swineherd will not believe; "the Gods all hate my master" is still his view. Already a lying AEtolian had deceived him with a similar tale, which also introduced Idomeneus and the Cretans. Ulysses has before himself a new picture of doubt, and its blindness; quite a lesson it must have been to the skeptical man.