In dealing with the Homeric poems we can never escape the difficulties as to chronology and genuineness which at present envelop the whole Homeric question, on its literary side, like a thick mist. Dr. Rohde thinks that this passage is of later date than that which describes the voyage to Hades of Odysseus. The last line has a curious ring. Menelaus is to be rescued from the common fate, not for any virtue or merit of his own, but because he is the son-in-law of Zeus. We are reminded of the still more aristocratic belief of certain existing races of barbarians, who think that a happy state in the future life is reserved for the chiefs and those of high lineage. According to the Cyclic Poets, the Islands of the Blessed were destined not for Menelaus only, but for others of the heroes who fought at Troy. In the _Aethiopis_, Eos (the Dawn) is allowed not merely to bear away her dead son Memnon, as Sarpedon had been borne away by Sleep and Death, but to awake him again to an immortal life. In the same poem, Thetis is represented as carrying off the body of Achilles from the funeral pyre, and transporting it over the sea to a new life in the island of Leuce, the white island, which popular fancy placed in the Euxine sea. In the _Works and Days_ of Hesiod all the godlike heroes who fought at Troy are said to dwell still in the Islands of the Blessed. Odysseus after his death was said to have been translated to the island of Aeaea. And an Athenian drinking-song of about B.C. 500 tells how Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who slew the Tyrant and restored liberty to the Athenians, are not dead but dwell in the Happy Isles with Diomedes and swift-footed Achilles. It may be doubted how far the Islands of the Blessed, the Elysian Fields, and the Realm of Hades are really distinct in Homeric geography. All seem to be reached by a voyage across the sea in the direction of the setting sun. Subsequent poets, however, gradually determine and map out the land of the dead. It is a conjecture, the truth of which is more than probable, that the great teacher of the lore of the future world was Orphism.