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stories of great English kings. His work was based on the chronicles, and is thus related to history, but he added many stories and characters so as to make his dramas lifelike, and he often altered the facts of history so that they would better fit his plan. Nevertheless, our opinion of kings like Henry V or Richard III has been influenced by Shakespeare's plays rather more than by what historians have told us are the facts about these kings. In Julius Caesar and other plays, Shakespeare dramatized Roman history. Thus we see how history may be made the basis of drama as well as of epic. In fact, some of Shakespeare's historical plays, such as Henry V, have many epic characteristics.

This little bird's-eye view of what you are about to read will show how these various types of literature, written in widely different times, have a common relationship. The same story, as we have already noticed, may be told in various ways, and each of these ways involves a certain technique, or art, dependent on the form or type used by the author. Plutarch, a great scholar, studies legends and chronicles about Caesar. His work is translated, by way of France, into English prose. A dramatist uses this as the basis for his play. This play is acted in widely different ways at various periods. The Elizabethan theater was very different from ours; in the eighteenth century still other ideals of dramatic presentation were found. At present we may see an Elizabethan revival of Julius Caesar, or a gorgeous modern presentation of it, or we may even see it in the moving picture theater. Such, then, has been the evolution of the story: first, authentic history about a man who actually lived; then, legend in verse and prose about him; then a drama in which his story is told by words and through action; finally, a series of pictures so wonderfully done that they seem to bring before our eyes the scenes in which Caesar played a part, a picturestory told without language at all.

III

Besides reading this material for the stories that it tells, and besides reading it for the sake of knowing something about the works of great writers, several other

important things for you to do will doubtless occur to you in view of this introduction.

In the first place, you have a better chance now than you have had earlier in your course to learn something about several of the great literary types. By keeping your eye of observation open, you can learn more about these types from the selections here given than through any number of lectures or books. For example, you may study plot, as handled in an epic like the Odyssey, a ballad like Otterbourne, a romance like The Lady of the Lake, and a drama like Julius Caesar. You may study characterization in the same way. You may also study the social life, the ideas of what the true man should be and do, the ideals of manners, citizenship, religion, and the like, in these same works that represent widely different periods of civilization. By such a plan of study you will find your knowledge of the history of these periods greatly clarified and increased.

Again, you have an opportunity to create something for yourself. You read a moment ago about the long history of the story of Caesar as it has been interpreted by men twenty centuries apart. What Shakespeare did with the old chronicles is what you should do for yourself as you read. The chronicles were the mere framework which he used for re-creating the life of past time. He visualized it; saw it. When you go to the picture-show, you find a story set forth in a series of pictures. This is what you should do for yourself as you read ballad, legend, history. You should re-create, for yourself, the life of the past times. Every reader, if his imagination is awake, may make his own series of moving pictures, his own pageant of history and legend.

Finally, these selections deal for the most part with men as individuals, not with men in the mass. The great social and political movements, such as the rise of modern democracy, are not represented. The man who seeks for personal distinction, or who meets some crisis bravely, or bears up under adverse fates, or, on the other hand, the man who fails in a crisis because of some flaw in his character-such are the heroes

of ballad, epic, and heroic drama. Thus these stories answer to our very human curiosity about people. They deal with men who acted as we should like to act, or who failed to meet a test that may come to us. In them we see our own real or imaginary experience. We may escape from the ordinary routine of life. For

these are not merely stories of adventure. They are, many of them, symbols of all human life. Therefore they represent, as in a moving picture, the heroism, the triumphs, the failures of men as they are confronted by the realities of living and by some of the mysteries that surround man's destiny.

HOMER'S "ODYSSEY"

AN INTRODUCTION

The poem from which this selection is taken is one of the oldest in the world. It deals with a civilization that was highly developed before the dawn of history, and some of the material in this poem was ancient even when that civilization was at its height.

The Odyssey is one of the two great epic poems ascribed to Homer. About Homer nothing is known. Many legends have grown up around his name, such as his blindness, his poverty, the fame that came to him after death so that seven cities competed for the honor of being called his birthplace. But all this is legend; we know nothing. It is even doubtful if one man composed the whole of the Odyssey or of the Iliad, the other great epic ascribed to Homer. It is doubtful if the two poems were by the same man, even if each was the complete work of one man. And it is certain that these two poems are only two out of many epics composed in ancient Greece; some of the others are known by name, but the poems themselves disappeared before men began to keep records of their thoughts and imaginations, or perished among the wrecks of Time.

All that we know is that by some miracle two long Greek poems, each of them containing twenty-four parts, or "books," each perfect in structure and composition, have come down to us. Both of them are related to the so-called Trojan War. We know where Troy once stood, in Asia Minor, and it is probable that the region was once ruled by a powerful king. But we have no records of Troy, of the king, or of its people. We do not know in what century it flourished, or the date of its fall. There are legends about Helen, the beautiful wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, who was carried off by Paris in consequence of the promise made to him by Venus, the goddess to whom Paris had awarded the golden apple. From this, it

is said, the ten years' war at Troy came about, for Menelaus enlisted the aid of the great Agamemnon and the other Greek warriors and they set sail for Troy, whither Paris and Helen had fled. The entire story carries us back to the realms of ancient myth. It is probably the most famous story in the world, for not only were the Homeric legends connected with it in one way or another, but Vergil's Aeneid, the greatest poem produced by Roman genius, is a continuation of it, while it was used as the basis of poems and histories throughout the Middle Ages, has influenced many modern poets, and has become a part of the literature of all modern peoples.

The influence of the legend of Troy and its literature has been enormous. Whole libraries have been written about the legend, about Homer, and about the poems ascribed to his name. Men have given their whole lives to the study of some of these problems. When you read this selection, therefore, you come into contact with one of the most interesting of all the manifestations of human genius.

war.

I

The Iliad and the Odyssey are quite different, and illustrate two different forms of epic poetry. The Iliad, as its name indicates, deals with Ilium, or Troy, and is concerned with the last year of the Its action covers only a few days, and it does not tell about the fall of the city. The theme of the poem is the wrath of Achilles and its effects. Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors, became angry because of an injustice that had been done him by his king, and refused to take any further part in the siege of the city. He remained in his tent, nursing his anger, deaf to the entreaties of the other leaders. The poem describes some of the battles, and finally tells how

Hector, whose rank and fame among the Trojans corresponded to the position of Achilles among the Greeks, fought Patroclus, friend of Achilles, and slew him. After a period of deep melancholy, Achilles set forth to avenge the death of his friend, fought Hector, and triumphed. The poem ends with an account of the burial of the Trojan hero.

Such is the plot, reduced to the briefest compass, of the poem. Such an abstract does not bring in the episodes that are scattered through the Iliad, or the passages that reveal the manners and customs of the time, or the figures and descriptions that add beauty and stateliness to the style. But it does show how simple and compact was the plot. The poet does not give a history of the war-its causes, the events of the ten long years, the close. He merely seizes upon a set of events, covering only a few days, that are significant of the whole; he contrives to make us aware of the entire story of the war; and he draws his picture swiftly and compactly so that it stands out with unforgetable distinctness.

The Odyssey has for its hero Odysseus, or as the Roman poets and historians named him, Ulysses. This hero was one of the Greek chieftains at Troy. After the war ended, he set forth for Ithaca, his home. But he was compelled by adverse fates to become a wanderer, so that it was many years after the fall of Troy before he was restored to his wife and son. The poem is very different from the Iliad. There are no battles in it. In place of this warlike atmosphere we have many marvelous events, so that the poem has become a treasure-house of folklore and legend, somewhat like the fairy stories and the Arabian Nights that you read years ago. But the plot is as wonderfully constructed as that of the Iliad. There are three strands, or sets, of stories. The first is concerned with the adventures of Ulysses from the time he left Troy to the time he was restored to his kingdom at Ithaca. The second tells the adventures of Telemachus, Ulysses's son, who went out in search of his father. The third tells us of Penelope, the wife of the hero, who was besieged by many suitors who wished

to secure the property of the hero and who spent years as unwelcome guests in his house. But this outline does not sufficiently show how masterly was the poet's handling of these strands of story. For one thing, the action is compressed into a short space by the device of having the hero tell to Alcinoüs, king of the Phæacians, some of his marvelous adventures. A little further analysis will make even clearer the skill with which the poet handles his complicated material.

The poem opens at Ithaca, where Penelope and Telemachus are awaiting the hero's return. The suitors, thinking that Ulysses is dead, try to persuade Penelope to choose one of their number as her husband, but she refuses. They are so numerous and so powerful that she cannot drive them away. Telemachus is told by Athena (Minerva) to go in search of his father, and the story next relates how he went from place to place to find the various heroes who had seen his father at Troy. We then meet Ulysses, who has spent seven years as a captive of Calypso, a beautiful enchantress, on a magic island. At last Calypso consents to let Ulysses go, so he builds a raft and on it reaches the land of the Phæacians. How he is received by them is told in the selection that you are to read. He tells them of his adventures and at last departs for Ithaca. When he reaches home he finds so many enemies that he does not at once reveal his identity, but puts on the disguise of a beggar. Meantime Telemachus has returned, and father and son, reunited, plan to regain control of the kingdom by stratagem. Penelope adopts the plan of promising to marry that one of the suitors who can use the bow of Ulysses. A great contest is arranged, but the weapon is so formidable that none can bend it. At length Ulysses, still disguised as a beggar, comes forward, hits the mark, slays the suitors, and is happily reunited to his queen.

II

Something has already been said, in the Introduction to this section (page 212), about the nature of epic poetry. You will now have an opportunity to make some

further observations for yourself. Before you begin the reading of the poem, however, a little further information will help

you.

The epic, as you probably have observed by this time, is not a primitive kind of poetry nor does it deal with rude and barbarous life. The author, or authors, of these two ancient Greek epics perhaps lived in the tenth or eleventh century before Christ. Very probably the material of the poems came from ballads and heroic songs that had descended through many generations. There are stories in the Iliad very like some of the ballads that you will find in this book, and some stories in the Odyssey are like certain of the folk tales you used to read in fairy books. In fact, the Odyssey is a glorious collection of such tales. But they are not told. in the language of the ballads and fairy tales, nor in the same manner, and they are woven together into a plot of the most exquisite design. A primitive or uneducated people could not produce such work. The style of the poem is stately. It deals with noble subjects treated in a noble manner. No other form of narrative poetry, except tragic drama, is so elevated and serious in treatment.

The same remark applies to the life that is depicted. It is a life of the utmost simplicity. Kings and princesses do work that many people nowadays think only servants should do. But how noble is this simplicity! No better lesson about the dignity of honest labor could be taught than you find in this poem. The occupations of the people, too, belong to a simple and uncomplicated civilization. "There are no gay knights, fashionable ladies, great barons. There are carpenters, leather-workers, smiths. The women are spinners and weavers. There is no mention of money. A man's wealth consisted in the number of oxen he owned. You should add to these observations as you read the poem, but the important thing is for you to try to feel that the life represented in the poem has attained stateliness, dignity, nobility, without losing the simplicity of pioneer times. It is not coarse or vulgar; neither is it courtly -or affected.

Epic poetry, then, commonly finds its sources in ballads and hero tales that have been handed down by tradition for many years. It is a form of story. It has many episodes, which are woven into a plot that gives a unified effect. Its basis is historical, that is, it is related to events that are felt by a people to be significant in the story of their development: some crucial war; the life-history of one of the nation's founders. It therefore portrays not only the character of a hero who is felt to be truly representative of the national character, but the ideals of life that the people feel to be their ideals. It is not merely a story. It has stateliness and dignity and is told in an elevated and serious manner, but it also has the simplicity and directness of a people not spoiled by wealth or power or an advanced civilization.

era.

III

All great peoples have ballads and epics that deal with their origins. In Rome the greatest epic was the Aeneid, written by Vergil in the century before the Christian This poem is also connected with the story of Troy, for Aeneas, the hero, was a Trojan chief who fled from his native city after its fall, wandered like Ulysses through many years, endured many hardships, and at length founded the city which later became mighty Rome. The legend of Troy was also told in epics of the Middle Ages, and some of the nations of western Europe long thought that they were descended from the ancient city. England, for example, was called Britain, and it was thought, though without reason, that this name came from Brute, or Brutus, the legendary founder of New Troy (London), who was said to have been a grandson of Aeneas. Several old English verse chronicles, imitating the style of the epics, told this story.

The only true epic which deals with the real foundation of the English race, however, is Beowulf, a poem written in AngloSaxon, the earliest form of the English language. This poem has a slight historical foundation, though the events with which it is connected took place before the tribes that founded England had left

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