Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1921-09-23

tnems
Homer was the Creeks CHEST selIer~
they thronged In thousands to hear him
recited; their religion, their thought
their education were an based ON him
under whose name Is told the great
story of their heroes.
Z rs the. tenth year since Troy has
fallen. Though the niad did not
go beyond the death of Hector al
Achilles hands, other stories carried
on the tale through the death OF
Achilles, the capture of Troy by the
Greeks by means of the strategem OF
the wooden horse, the sacking and
burning of the city, the death OF
Priam and his queen, the slavery of
Andromache which Hector had fore
seen, the slaughter of the little son
he loved so dearly, the escape of
Aeneas with his aged father.
After the booty had been divided,
the Greek chiefs took leisurely courses
10 their homes. The great King Aga
memnon sent his dramatic night let
ter, announcing to his queen at home
by the light of flames leaping from
hilltop to hilltop across the sea that
Troy had fallen; for his pains he met
the dramatic death at the hand of
Queen Klytaimnestra which Aeschy-
lus has made forever famous in his
great play, "Agamemnon the latter
has in 1t the beginning of the story
of Orestes, the close Greek counter
part of Hamlet. The kings brother,
Menelaus, had better fortune; he had
journeyed homeward with his erst.
while Queen Helen, as if the great
Trojan episode had never been, and was
reigning again in peace and quiet with
the Worlds Desire by his side at
Sparta, with no dread of maraud-
ing Paris sent on the quest of beauty
by Aphrodite. And so, too, the other
princes had returned with varying
fortunes.
But not so the Great Adventurer
Troy had taken ten years to capture
ten years more still found the willy
Odysseus detained in the Isle of
Ogygia by the fair Calypso. Mean
while the patient Penelope bides at
home beset by the riotous suitors who
make Liberty hall Of the absent kings
palace and would force the queen to
wed one of them. She, ever as alert
and resourceful as her wandering
lord, puts off her promise till she has
woven web-of which she each night
unravels what she has done during
the day.
This first great story of wandering
adventure has a much more perfect
unity than the HAD 1t centers close
ly about the person of Odysseus, and
divides itself into three parts, the adj
ventures of Telemachus in quest OF
Odysseus, the wanderings of the hero,
and his return home, where with the
few still faithful to him he makes
himself his own detective, lays the
scene for the destruction of the vii
lains, and finally brings about the
happy ending which has so constantly
distressed critics Of the novel and the
theater since man began to write and
ordinary folk to listen or to read.
In the first chapter, which comprises
the first four s'books" of the Odyssey,
young Telernachus, amidst the mock
ery of the suitors, starts in quest OF
his father, and makes the rounds OF
the courts of our old friend NestOr,
king of Pylos, and of Menelaus and
Helen at Sparta, where he learns the
whereabouts of his father, and then
starts homeward.
At this moment it is at last made
possible for Odysseus to start on ms
way home. But the sea, ever ms
enemy, again plays him false, and ne
Is wrecked once more, though he is