ry
much like the attack upon the Ciconians in the Ninth Book. From these
attacks in both cases the grand calamity results, which causes the long
wandering. The Phoenician episode, however, has no counterpart in the
career of Ulysses. Fourth is the storm at sea, with the clinging to the
mast, and the landing upon the coast of the Thesprotians, all of which
is a transcript of the experience of Ulysses in getting to Phaeacia from
Calypso's isle. Fifth is the arrival at Ithaca, which shows the actual
fact, with changed circumstances. Thus we may say that the true Ulysses
in disguise tells the true story of his life in disguise. This gift is
what makes him the poet.

Indeed we are compelled to think that Homer here suggests his own
poetic procedure. What he narrates is his own experience, in the form
of art. His poetry is and must be his own life, though in disguise.
Goethe has said something similar: All that I have written is what I
have experienced, but not quite as I experienced it. In this story we
may hear in an undertone the old Greek poet telling one of his secrets
of composition.

Moreover, it is a tale of providential escapes; thrice has the
so-called Cretan been saved specially, in AEgypt, from the
Phoenicians, from the Thesprotians. Thus the story aims to encourage
Eumaeus, and to answer his doubt; it affirms the return of Ulysses, and
tells even the manner thereof; it is a story of Providence appealing to
the swineherd's faith. On this line, too, it touches the ethical
content of the Odyssey, as the latter was sung to the whole Greek
world.

Looking at the external circumstances of the story we note that it
takes them from the social life of the time. There is universal
slavery, with its accompaniment, man-stealing; the pirate and the
free-booter are still on the seas and furnish incidents of adventure,
yet commerce has also begun; the perils of navigation turn the voyage
into a series of miraculous escapes. It is a time of dawn in which many
distinctions, now clear, have not yet been made.

We may also see the lines, though they be faint, of the movement of the
world's culture in this story. Crete, on the borderland between East
and West, is the home of the daring Greek adventurer who attacks Troy
on the one hand and AEgypt on the other. From Crete we pass backwards to
Phoenicia, as well as to the land of the Nile, and we catch a glimpse
of the current of Oriental influence flowing upon Greece. Already we