The atmosphere of the younger of the two Homeric epics already differs widely from that of its older companion, the Iliad, with its heroic delight in the untiring manifestation of vital energy. It is likely that the feelings of the **conquerors of a new home upon the Asiatic coast may have differed considerably from those of the same people confirmed in undisturbed possession and enjoyment of their conquests. It seems as if the Odyssey reflected the temper and aspiration of these Ionian city-dwellers of a later time. A spirit of contentment and leisure seems to flow like an undercurrent through the whole poem, and has made for itself a haven of rest in the midst of the busy action of the story. When the poet's own feelings find their true expression they show us idyllic scenes of quiet enjoyment of daily life; magnificent in the country of the Phæacians, gay and more homely at the farm of Eumaios; pictures of quiet repose after the fights of the heroic past, that have now faded into a mere pleasant memory, such as we get in the house of Nestor, or in the Palace of Menelaos and the regained Helen. Or, again, we have a description of nature in a mood of liberality and gentleness, as upon the island of Syriê, the home of Eumaios' childhood, upon which in ample possession of cattle, wine and corn, a people live free from necessity and pain, till they arrive at a good old age when Apollo and Artemis with their gentlest shafts bring swift death to them (_Od._ xv, 403 ff.). If you ask the poet where this fortunate island lies he will tell you that it lies over there beyond Ortygiê where the sun turns back. But where is Ortygiê,[25\2] and who can point out the place where the sun begins his return journey far in the West? The country of idyllic happiness lies indeed almost beyond {63} the limit of this world. Phoenician merchant-men who go everywhere may perhaps reach that land as well (415 ff.), and Ionian seamen in this earliest period of Greek colonization into which the composition of the Odyssey reaches may well have hoped to find far out over the sea such propitious habitations of a new life.