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the Odyssey begins, and occupies about six weeks.

  DAY 1 (Book i).

The ordained time has now arrived, when by the counsels of
the Gods, Odysseus is to be brought home to free his house,
to avenge himself on the wooers, and recover his kingdom.
The chief agent in his restoration is Pallas Athene; the
first book opens with her prayer to Zeus that Odysseus may
be delivered. For this purpose Hermes is to be sent to
Calypso to bid her release Odysseus, while Pallas Athene in
the shape of Mentor, a friend of Odysseus, visits 
Telemachus in Ithaca. She bids him call an assembly of the
people, dismiss the wooers to their homes, and his mother
to her father's house, and go in quest of his own father,
in Pylos, the city of Nestor, and Sparta, the home of
Menelaus. Telemachus recognises the Goddess, and the first
day closes.

  DAY 2 (Book ii).

Telemachus assembles the people, but he has not the heart
to carry out Athene's advice. He cannot send the wooers
away, nor turn his mother out of her house. He rather
weakly appeals to the wooers' consciences, and announces
his intention of going to seek his father. They answer with
scorn, but are warned of their fate, which is even at the
doors, by Halitherses. His prophecy (first made when
Odysseus set out for Troy) tallies with the prophecy of
Teiresias, and the prayer of the Cyclops. The reader will
observe a series of portents, prophecies, and omens, which
grow more numerous and admonishing as their doom draws
nearer to the wooers. Their hearts, however, are hardened,
and they mock at Telemachus, who, after an interview with
Athene, borrows a ship and secretly sets out for Pylos.
Athene accompanies him, and his friends man his galley.

  DAY 3 (Book iii).

They reach Pylos, and are kindly received by the aged
Nestor, who has no news about Odysseus. After sacrifice,
Athene disappears.

  DAY 4 (Book iii).

The fourth day is occupied with sacrifice, and the talk of
Nestor. In the evening Telemachus (leaving his ship and
friends at Pylos) drives his chariot into Pherae, half way
to Sparta; Peisistratus, the soil of Nestor, accompanies
him.

  DAY 5 (Book iv).

Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive at Sparta, where
Menelaus and Helen receive them kindly.

  DAY 6 (Book iv).

Menelaus tells how he himself came home in the eighth year
after the fall of Troy. He had heard from Proteus, the Old
Man of the Sea, that Odysseus was alive, and a captive on
an island of the deep. Menelaus invites Telemachus to Stay
with him for eleven days or twelve, which Telemachus
declines to do. it will later appear that he made an even
longer stay at Sparta, though whether he changed his mind,
or whether we have here an inadvertence of the poet's it is
hard to determine. This blemish has been used as an
argument against the unity of authorship, but writers of
all ages have made graver mistakes.

On this same day (the sixth) the wooers in Ithaca learned
that Telemachus had really set out to I cruise after his
father.' They sent some of their number to lie in ambush
for him, in a certain strait which he was likely to pass on
his return to Ithaca. Penelope also heard of her son's
departure, but was consoled by a dream.

  DAY 7 (Book v).

The seventh day finds us again in Olympus. Athene again
urges the release of Odysseus; and Hermes is sent to bid
Calypso let the hero go. Zeus prophecies that after twenty
days sailing, Odysseus will reach Scheria, and the
hospitable Phaeacians, a people akin to the Gods, who will
convey him to Ithaca. Hermes accomplishes the message to
Calypso.

  DAYS 8-12-32 (Book v).

These days are occupied by Odysseus in making and launching
a raft; on the twelfth day from the beginning of the action
he leaves Calypso's isle. He sails for eighteen days, and
on the eighteenth day of his voyage (the twenty- ninth from
the beginning of the action), he sees Scheria. Poseidon
raises a storm against him, and it is not till the
thirty-second day from that in which Athene visited 
Telemachus, that he lands in Scheria, the country of the
Phaeacians. Here be is again in fairy land. A rough, but
perfectly recognisable form of the Phaeacian myth, is found
in an Indian collection of marchen (already referred to) of
the twelfth century A.D. Here the Phaeacians are the
Vidyidhiris, and their old enemies the Cyclopes, are the
Rakshashas, a sort of giants. The Indian Odysseus, who
seeks the city of gold, passes by the home of an Indian
Aeolus, Satyavrata. His later adventures are confused, and
the Greek version retains only the more graceful fancies of
the marchen.

  DAY 33 (Book vi).

Odysseus meets Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, the
Phaeacian King, and by her aid, and that of Athene, is
favourably received at the palace, and tells how he came
from Calypso's island. His name is still unknown to his
hosts.

  DAY 34 (Books vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii).

The Phaeacians and Odysseus display their skill in sports.
Nausicaa bids Odysseus farewell. Odysseus recounts to
Alcinous, and Arete, the Queen, those adventures in the two