the universe, to which he gave the name of odyl. Persons sensitive to odyl saw luminous phenomena near the poles of magnets, or even around the hands or heads of certain persons in whose bodies the force was supposed to be concentrated. In Britain an impetus was given to this view of the subject by the translation in 1850 of Reichenbach’s Researches on Magnetism, &c., in relation to Vital Force, by Dr Gregory, professor of chemistry in the university of Edinburgh. These Researches show many of the phenomena to be of the same nature as those described previously by F. A. Mesmer, and even long before Mesmer’s time by Swedenborg.
ODYSSEUS (in Latin Ulixes, incorrectly written Ulysses),
in Greek legend, son of Laërtes and Anticleia, king of Ithaca, a
famous hero and typical representative of the Greek race. In
Homer he is one of the best and bravest of the heroes, and the
favourite of Athena, whereas in later legend he is cowardly and
deceitful. Soon after his marriage to Penelope he was summoned
to the Trojan war. Unwilling to go, he feigned madness,
ploughing a field sown with salt with an ox and an ass yoked
together; but Palamedes discovered his deceit by placing his
infant child Telemachus in front of the plough; Odysseus
afterwards revenged himself by compassing the death of Palamedes.
During the war, he distinguished himself as the wisest
adviser of the Greeks, and finally, the capture of Troy, which
the bravery of Achilles could not accomplish, was attained by
Odysseus’ stratagem of the wooden horse. After the death of
Achilles the Greeks adjudged his armour to Odysseus as the man
who had done most to end the war successfully. When Troy
was captured he set sail for Ithaca, but was carried by unfavourable
winds to the coast of Africa. After encountering many
adventures in all parts of the unknown seas, among the lotus-eaters
and the Cyclopes, in the isles of Aeolus and Circe and the
perils of Scylla and Charybdis, among the Laestrygones, and even
in the world of the dead, having lost all his ships and companions,
he barely escaped with his life to the island of Calypso, where he
was detained eight years, an unwilling lover of the beautiful
nymph. Then at the command of Zeus he was sent homewards,
but was again wrecked on the island of Phaeacia, whence he
was conveyed to Ithaca in one of the wondrous Phaeacian ships.
Here he found that a host of suitors, taking advantage of the
youth of his son Telemachus, were wasting his property and
trying to force Penelope to marry one of them. The stratagems
and disguises by which with the help of a few faithful friends
he slew the suitors are described at length in the Odyssey. The
only allusion to his death is contained in the prophecy of Teiresias,
who promised him a happy old age and a peaceful death from
the sea. According to a later legend, Telegonus, the son of
Odysseus by Circe, was sent in search of his father. Cast
ashore on Ithaca by a storm, he plundered the island to get provisions,
and was attacked by Odysseus, whom he slew. The
prophecy was thus fulfilled. Telegonus, accompanied by
Penelope and Telemachus, returned to his home with the body
of his father, whose identity he had discovered.
According to E. Meyer (Hermes, xxx. p. 267), Odysseus is an old Arcadian nature god identical with Poseidon, who dies at the approach of winter (retires to the western sea or is carried away to the underworld) to revive in spring (but see E. Rohde, Rhein. Mus. l. p. 631). A more suitable identification would be Hermes. Mannhardt and others regard Odysseus as a solar or summer divinity, who withdraws to the underworld during the winter, and returns in spring to free his wife from the suitors (the powers of winter). A. Gercke (Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, xv. p. 331) takes him to be an agricultural divinity akin to the sun god, whose wife is the moon-goddess Penelope, from whom he is separated and reunited to her on the day of the new moon. His cult early disappeared; in Arcadia his place was taken by Poseidon. But although the personality of Odysseus may have had its origin in some primitive religious myth, chief interest attaches to him as the typical representative of the old sailor-race whose adventurous voyages educated and moulded the Hellenic race. The period when the character of Odysseus took shape among the Ionian bards was when the Ionian ships were beginning to penetrate to the farthest shores of the Black Sea and the western side of Italy, but when Egypt had not yet been freely opened to foreign intercourse. The adventures of Odysseus were a favourite subject in ancient art, in which he may usually be recognized by his conical sailor’s cap.
See article by J. Schmidt in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie (where the different forms of the name and its etymology are fully discussed); O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, ii. pp. 624, 705-718; J. E. Harrison, Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature (1881), with appendix on authorities. W. Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte (1905), ii. p. 106; O. Seeck, Gesch. Des Untergangs der antiken Welt, ii. p. 576; G. Fougères, Mantinée et l’Arcadie orientale (1898), according to whom Odysseus is an Arcadian chthonian divinity and Penelope a goddess of flocks and herds, akin to the Arcadian Artemis; S. Eitrem, Die göttlichen Zwillinge bei den Griechen (1902), who identifies Odysseus with one of the Dioscuri (Ὀλυκγες＝Πολυδεύκης); V. Bérard, Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée (1902–1903), who regards the Odyssey as “the integration in a Greek νόστος (home-coming) of a Semitic periplus,” in the form of a poem written 900–850 B.C. by an Ionic poet at the court of one of the Neleid kings of Miletus. For an estimate of this work, the interest of which is mainly geographical, see Classical Review (April 1904) and Quarterly Review (April 1905). It consists of two large volumes, with 240 illustrations and maps.
OEBEN, JEAN FRANÇOIS, French 18th-century cabinetmaker, is believed to have been of German or Flemish origin; the date of his birth is unknown, but he was dead before 1767. In 1752, twenty years after Boulle’s death, we find him occupying an apartment in the Louvre sublet to him by Charles Joseph Boulle, whose pupil he may have been. He has sometimes been confused with Simon Oeben, presumably a relative, who signed a fine bureau in the Jones collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. J. F. Oeben is also represented in that collection by a pair of inlaid corner-cupboards. These with a bureau and a chiffonier in the Garde Meuble in which bouquets of flowers are delicately inlaid in choice woods are his best-known and most admirable achievements. He appears to have worked extensively for the marquise de Pompadour by whose influence he was granted lodgings at the Gobelins and the title of “Ébéniste du Roi” in 1754. There he remained until 1760, when he obtained an apartment and workshops at the Arsenal. His work in marquetry is of very great distinction, but he would probably never have enjoyed so great a reputation had it not been for his connexion with the famous Bureau du Roi, made for Louis XV., which appears to have owed its inception to him, notwithstanding that it was not completed until some considerable time after his death and is signed by J. H. Riesener (q.v.) only. Documentary evidence under the hand of the king shows that it was ordered from Oeben in 1760, the year in which he moved to the Arsenal. The known work of Oeben possesses genuine grace and beauty; as craftsmanship it is of the first rank, and it is remarkable that, despite his Teutonic or Flemish origin, it is typically French in character.
OECOLAMPADIUS, JOHN (1482–1531), German Reformer, whose real name was Hussgen or Heussgen,[1] was born at Weinsberg, a small town in the north of the modern kingdom of Württemberg, but then belonging to the Palatinate. He went to school at Weinsberg and Heilbronn, and then, intending to study law, he went to Bologna, but soon returned to Heidelberg and betook himself to theology. He became a zealous student of the new learning and passed from the study of Greek to that of Hebrew, taking his bachelor’s degree in 1503. He became cathedral preacher at Basel in 1515, serving under Christopher von Uttenheim, the evangelical bishop of Basel. From the beginning the sermons of Oecolampadius centred in the Atonement, and his first reformatory zeal showed itself in a protest (De risu paschali, 1518) against the introduction of humorous stories into Easter sermons. In 1520 he published his Greek Grammar. The same year he was asked to become preacher in the high church in Augsburg. Germany was then ablaze with the questions raised by Luther’s theses, and his introduction into this new world, when at first he championed Luther’s position especially in his anonymous Canonici indocti (1519), seems to have compelled Oecolampadius to severe self-examina-
- ↑ Changed to Hausschein and then into the Greek equivalent.
