Unquestionably a punitive element enters now, there is guilt and punishment in Hades. But who has not felt that in the preceding division the three Greek heroes were under the inevitable penalty of their own deeds? Very natural is the transition. Indeed the three divisions of the Book show a gradual movement toward a penal view of Hades: the first (Tiresias and the Famous Mothers) has a slight suggestion of the penalty; the second (the three Greek heroes) has the idea of punishment implicit everywhere; the third makes the idea explicit and organizes itself upon the same.
Again, there is a change of style, which now is strongly tinged with the Orphic, initiatory, symbolical manner, in marked contrast with the clear-flowing narrative which has just preceded. But we noticed the same characteristic before, in the first division of the Book, where the sacrificial rites and the part of Tiresias were given. Homer has many styles, not each style has many Homers, nor is there a new Homer needed for each change of style. Note the great varieties of style in the two Parts of Faust by way of illustration. Moreover we here pass into the dim Pre-Trojan epoch, as was the case in the first division, but guilt is now flung into that time and with it the penalty. Hoary, gigantic shapes of eld do wrong to the Gods, and are put into the punitory Hades. Thus this third division returns to the first with its own new principle. In truth one may say that Homer herein shows features akin to Hesiod; well, Homer is Hesiod and many more.
We hold, therefore, that this third division is an organic part of the Book both in idea and structure; it carries to completion the thought of a world-justice, which Tiresias has already declared in his speech to Ulysses, and which is exemplified in the three Greek heroes. Thus it unfolds what lies in the first two divisions, and links them together in a new and deeper thought. For this realm of Hades, hitherto a distracted spot without any apparent order, now gets organized with its own Justiciary and its own Law. Yet here too we shall find a solution and a parallel; just as Ulysses was the true hero at Troy, standing above all the others and solving their problems, so Hercules is the great Pre-Trojan hero, saving himself at last and rising to Olympus. Finally the two careers of Ulysses and Hercules are affirmed to be identical. This division, therefore, falls of itself into three portions: (1) the Judge, (2) the condemned, (3) the redeemed. Thus the whole forms a complete little cycle within itself.