o’er;
  A father one, and one a son deplore: 
  But great Achilles different passions rend,
  And now his sire he mourns, and now his friend. 
  The infectious softness through the heroes ran
  One universal solemn shower began;
  They bore as heroes, but they felt as man.

Still guided by Iris, Priam conveys the body of his son back to Troy, where his mother, wife, and the other Trojan women utter a touching lament.  Then a funeral pyre is built, and the Iliad of Homer closes with brave Hector’s obsequies.

  All Troy then moves to Priam’s court again,
  A solemn, silent, melancholy train: 
  Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,
  And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast. 
  Such honors Ilion to her hero paid,
  And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 2:  All the quotations from the Iliad are taken from Pope’s translation.]

THE ODYSSEY

Book I. Homer’s second great epic covers a period of forty-two days.  After the opening invocation he proceeds to relate the adventures of Ulysses.  Nearly ten years have elapsed since the taking of Troy, when the gods looking down from Olympus behold him—­sole survivor of his troop—­stranded on the Island of Calypso.  After some mention of the fate of the other Greeks, Jupiter decrees that Ulysses shall return to Ithaca, where many suitors are besieging his wife Penelope.  In obedience with this decree, Pallas (Minerva) dons golden sandals—­which permit her to flit with equal ease over land and sea—­and visits Ithaca, where Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, mournfully views the squandering of his father’s wealth.  Here she is hospitably received, and, after some conversation, urges Telemachus to visit the courts of Nestor and Menelaus to inquire of these kings whether his father is dead.

Telemachus has just promised to carry out this suggestion, when the suitors’ bard begins the recital of the woes which have befallen the various Greek chiefs on their return from Troy.  These sad strains attract Penelope, who passionately beseeches the bard not to enhance her sorrows by his songs!

Assuming a tone of authority for the first time, Telemachus bids his mother retire and pray, then, addressing the suitors, vows that unless they depart he will call down upon them the vengeance of the gods.  These words are resented by these men, who continue their revelry until the night, when Telemachus retires, to dream of his projected journey.

Book II. With dawn, Telemachus rises and betakes himself to the market-place, where in public council he complains of the suitors’ depredations, and announces he is about to depart in quest of his sire.  In reply to his denunciations the suitors accuse Penelope of deluding them, instancing how she promised to choose a husband as soon as she had finished weaving a winding sheet for her father-in-law Laertes.  But, instead of completing this task as soon as possible, she ravelled by night the work done during the day, until the suitors discovered the trick.