2. The second strand is that of Ulysses (to whom Telemachus and the swineherd can be added) who is to behold with his own eyes, to experience in his own person, the character and acts of the Suitors; then he is also to plan and prepare for their destruction. As he has overcome his own negative condition inwardly, in the spirit, he must be able to overcome the same condition outwardly, in the world. 3. The third strand is that of Penelope, the wife, who is seeking to thwart the attempt of the Suitors to make her marry one of themselves; thus she is heroically preserving the Family. She, with the loyal part of her household, co-operates with Ulysses, though not aware who he is. Between the second and third strands are many interweavings, both being opposed to the Suitors. Penelope, to delay her marriage, proposes the Bending of the Bow, which gives the weapon and the opportunity to Ulysses. (Book XXI.) II. The second stage of the grand movement is given in one Book (XXII). This is the single bloody Book of the poem, it makes up all deficiencies in the way of sanguinary grewsomeness. The destroying Suitors are themselves destroyed by Ulysses, who therein is destroyer. Hence the blood-letting character of the Book and of the deed; 116 men skin, 12 women hung, and one man mutilated unto death. III. But the destroyer Ulysses destroys destruction, and so becomes positive; in the last two Books he is shown as the restorer of the institutional order which the Suitors had assailed and were undermining. He restores the Family (Book XXIII), and the State (Book XXIV). This is, then, the end of the Return, indeed the end of the grand disruption caused by the Trojan War, to which Ulysses set out from Ithaca twenty years before. The absence of the husband and ruler from home and country gave the opportunity for the license of the Suitors. But the Return has harmonized the distracted condition of the land; institutions, Family and State, are freed of their conflict; even the Gods, Zeus and Pallas (authority and wisdom) enforce the new order, bringing peace and concord. Still, despite the bloody death of the Suitors, there runs through this portion of the Odyssey (the last eight Books) a vein of charity, of humanity, sometimes even of sentiment, which seems to link the poem with our own age. Yet the other side is present also; there is little pity for the unrighteous, and justice is capable of becoming cruel. The Suitors and their set of servants are represented as unfeeling and inhuman; Penelope and the whole loyal household on the other hand show sympathy with poverty and misfortune. Such, indeed, has been their discipline, that of adversity, which softens the heart toward the victims of hard luck.