t us be reminded that these hints of pure universal thought
are borne to us in images, in particular shapes, whereby ambiguity
rises, and meaning runs double. Nevertheless the true-hearted reader
will go down with the old poet into Hades, and there behold in these
images things which lie beyond the senses; he will behold the very
spirit of ancient Tiresias.

2. Having seen the Man, Ulysses is next to behold the Famous Women of
the Past, which is still Pre-Trojan with one exception. Examples from
all the relations of the woman in the Family are given: the mother, the
maiden, the wife. Tragic and happy instances are brought before
us--ideal forms taken from the ancient Mythus of Hellas, and begetting
in later times a prodigious number of works of art, in poetry,
sculpture and painting. Here they are put into Hades, the place of the
spirit unbodied, which will hereafter take on body in the drama, in the
statue, and in the picture. Ulysses witnesses these shapes in advance,
and gives their idea, which is to be realized in the coming ages of
Hellas. Truly is Homer the primordial Hellenic seer, he who sees and
sets forth the archetypal forms of the future of his race. Undoubtedly
he drew from mythical stores already existent, but he ordered them,
shaped them anew, and breathed into them the breath of eternal life. No
wonder the universal Greek hero must go to Hades to see these forms of
the Past which are, however, to live afresh in the Future.

We must also consider the audience of the singer. Who are present?
First of all, Arete, mother and wife, together with Nausicaa, the
maiden, to these he is specially singing. Their importance in the
Phaeacian world has been already indicated; naturally they wish to hear
of woman in the Family. Accordingly this portion of the Eleventh Book,
the catalogue of Famous Women, or Homer's "Legende of Good Women," is
organized after the relations of domestic life. Three classes are
suggested: the mothers; the maidens and the wives, of the grey
aforetime.

But by all means the glory and the stress of the song are given to the
mothers; the other two classes are very briefly dismissed, as being
essentially described in the first. Arete is indeed the grand center
and end of womanhood; Nausicaa as maid is but a transitory phase, and
as wife she is to become mother, and then take her supreme place in the
chain which upholds and perpetuates humanity. So the old Greek poet
must have thought; was he