We soon see that the king needs a counterpart in such a wife, he being impulsively generous; he blames his daughter for her backwardness in not coming to town with Ulysses, whereat the latter frames one of his smallest fibs in excuse of the maiden. Still further, the king in a surprising burst of admiration, wishes that Ulysses, or "such an one as thou art," might stay and be called his son-in-law. Altogether too sudden; Arete would not have said that, though the woman be the natural match-maker. Still Alcinous, in a counter-outpouring of his generosity, promises to send Ulysses to his own land, though "this should be further off than Euboea, the most distant country." Thus overflows the noble heart of the king, but he clearly needs his other half, in the thorny journey of life. Thus has Ulysses reached the heart of Phaeacia and found its secret beat; he has felt its saving power, not simply externally but also internally; it rescues him from dangers of the sea and of himself too. The truly positive side of life begins to dawn upon him again, after his long career of struggle with dark fabulous shapes. Well may he pray Zeus for Alcinous: "May his fame be immortal over the fertile earth"--a prayer which has been fulfilled, and is still in the process of fulfillment. Arete gives the order to the servants to spread his couch for the night's repose, she has received him. In the sweep of the present Book, many origins are suggested. The genealogy of the king and queen and people is significant, it might be called the genealogy of civilization. The woman is placed at the center; out of her springs the family, and with it come society, state, the institutional world. Of such a world the external environment is seen in the garden, palace, and city of the Phaeacians, which are built by the spirit for its dwelling-place and reflect the spirit. The Greek world of Beauty is born, and its course is foreshadowed; this ideal Homeric realm is prophetic of what Greece is to become. The plastic arts and the industrial arts are suggested, and to a degree are realized. The artistic soul of Hellas is fully felt in Homer's Phaeacia. The formative impulse is everywhere alive and at work; the instinctive need of shaping and transforming nature and life is here in its first budding, and will bloom into the greatest art-people of all time. Those two supreme Fine Arts of mature Greece, Architecture and Sculpture, are present in examples which foretell plainly Phidias and the Parthenon.