head as well as in heart, perchance overtopping him in ability. Not
domestic simply is the picture, it rises into the political sphere,
even into the administration of justice.

Is the character of the woman, as thus set forth, possibly a thousand
years before Christ, by a heathen poet in an uncivilized age
comparatively, to be a prophecy unto us still at this late date?
Certainly the most advanced woman of to-day in the most advanced part
of the world as regards her opportunities, has hardly reached the
height of Arete. Unquestionably a glorious ideal is set up before the
Sisterhood of all time for emulation; or is it unattainable? At any
rate the woman in Homer stands far in advance of her later historical
position in Greece.

We may now turn to the husband for a moment, Alcinous the King, the man
of civil authority who represents the State, whose function is to be
the protector of the Family and of whomever the family receives into
its bosom rightfully. He is the element surrounding and guarding the
warm domestic center; still he seems to have stronger impulses, or
probably less governed, than his wife. Distinctly is the superiority
accorded to the woman in this discourse of Pallas to Ulysses; possibly
the Goddess may have overdrawn the picture a little in favor of her
sex, as really Alcinous becomes the more prominent figure later one.

So we catch a very fascinating glimpse of the Phaeacian world. Two
prominent characters representing the two great institutions of man,
Family and State, we witness; thus is the spirit of the whole poem
ethical. Here is no longer the realm of Calypso, the nymph of wild
untrained nature, but the clear sunlit prospect of home and country,
the anticipation of sunny Ithaca and prudent Penelope to the hapless
sufferer. Ulysses sees his own land in the image of Phaeacia, sees what
he is to make out of his own island. Verily it is a great and
epoch-making experience for him just before his return; he finds the
ideal here which he is to realize.

Accordingly we have in line three women, Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete,
through whose spheres Ulysses has passed on his way to his own female
counterpart, Penelope. We may see in them phases of man's development
out of a sensuous into an institutional life. Nor is the suggestion too
remote that we may trace in this movement certain outlines in the
progress of mankind toward civilization.

In the mythical history of Phaeacia which is also here given,