ferred the
question to the Trojan prisoners present, asking them which of the two
contestants had done them the most injury. They said Ulysses. Whereupon
Ajax went crazy and slew himself. Now he appears in Hades, still
unreconciled; it is really the most wretched lot of all. Ulysses here
speaks the reconciling word, growing tender and imploring; but the hero
"answered not, darting away with the other shades into Erebos." Wherein
we may well see how much greater in spirit Ulysses was than his big
muscular rival. He has reached in this respect the true outcome of
life's discipline: to have no revenges, and to speak the word of
reconciliation.

In fact the superiority of Ulysses over all these heroes is clearly
manifested. He brings no captive woman home to his domestic hearth, and
hence he has a right to count upon Penelope's fidelity, though
certainly he shows himself no saint in his wanderings. Moreover
Agamemnon lacked foresight in his Return, which Ulysses will exhibit in
a supreme degree when he first touches his native soil. The second
hero, Achilles, could not conquer Troy, then he could not conquer
Hades; yet both are conquered by Ulysses who is thus the greater.
Finally unreconciled Ajax--all are limited, incomplete, in contrast
with the complete, limit-removing Hero, who has just removed even the
limit of Death in the only way possible. Verily to him they have become
shadows, that whole heroic world before Troy is now put by him into
Hades.

Thus we see that, while the characters belong to the Trojan time, there
is a movement out of that period, it is transcended. The background
here is the Iliad, yet the incidents are taken from the Trojan war
after the action of the Iliad is brought to a close. The fates of the
three great heroes of that poem are not given in the poem; here they
are given with a tragic emphasis. Thus the Odyssey carries forward the
Iliad, supplements it, and forms its real conclusion, both being in
fact one poem. In the full blaze of the glory of Achilles the Iliad
ends; but he cannot take Troy; and still less, after his death, can
Ajax; the divine armor must go to Ulysses who has brain, then can the
city be taken. Even the son of Achilles will fight under Ulysses and
enter the Trojan Horse, the work of Pallas, of Intelligence. Thus we
catch here as in other places, glimpses of the unity of both the Iliad
and the Odyssey, the great work reflecting the one national
consciousness of Hellas in