its complete cycle.

2. We should not fail to cast a separate glance at the three typical
women of the Trojan epoch--Helen, Clytemnestra, Penelope--in contrast
with the three heroes already described. They are all mentioned and
compared in the speech of Agamemnon, but do not form an organic part of
the Book by themselves, as do the Pre-Trojan women. They are wives, and
wifehood not motherhood, as in the previous case, is the phase of the
domestic relation which is the theme of song and struggle in their
lives. Possible its present importance is the reason why wifehood was
dismissed with so brief mention in the portion concerning the famous
mothers.

Note, then, the gradation of the three: Clytemnestra is the fallen
unrestored; Helen is the fallen restored; Penelope is the unfallen, who
keeps a home for her absent husband during twenty years. The tragic,
the mediated, the pure; or, to take a later analogy, the infernal, the
purgatorial, the paradisaical; such are the three typical female
characters of Homer, ranging from guilt, through repentance, to
innocence. In this framework lies quite all possible characterization.
Naturally Agamemnon shows a bitter vein of misogyny, with only his wife
in view; but he takes it all back when he thinks of Penelope.

Two of these women, Helen and Penelope, are still alive and do not
belong to the realm of Hades; the ghost of the third, Clytemnestra,
does not appear. Still all three are mentioned here in the text, and
stand in relation to the three Greco-Trojan heroes, none of whom were
restored through the Return. Ulysses, however, is the real solution of
them all; he spans all their inadequacies, masters their fates, and
reaches home. The three Greek heroes above mentioned fell by the way in
the course of the grand problem, and are seen in Hades, complaining,
unhappy, showing their full limitation. To a degree they are suffering
the penalty of their own shortcomings: which fact prepares us for the
third and last phase of the Underworld.

III.

We now come to a new division of the Book, which forms in itself a
complete little poem, yet is derived directly from the preceding
divisions, and is harmonious with them in thought, development and
structure. Undoubtedly there is a difference here, but the difference
means not absolute separation but a connected unfolding of parts. The
present division has been assailed more violently by the critics and
torn out of its place with great