The Odyssey
[68] [ It was very fortunate that such a disc happened to be there,
seeing that none like it were in common use.]
[69] [ “Il.” xiii. 37. Here, as so often elsewhere in the “Odyssey,”
the appropriation of an Iliadic line which is not quite appropriate
puzzles the reader. The “they” is not the chains, nor yet Mars and
Venus. It is an overflow from the Iliadic passage in which Neptune
hobbles his horses in bonds “which none could either unloose or break
so that they might stay there in that place.” If the line would have
scanned without the addition of the words “so that they might stay
there in that place,” they would have been omitted in the “Odyssey.”]
[70] [ The reader will note that Alcinous never goes beyond saying that
he is going to give the goblet; he never gives it. Elsewhere in both
“Iliad” and “Odyssey” the offer of a present is immediately followed by
the statement that it was given and received gladly—Alcinous actually
does give a chest and a cloak and shirt—probably also some of the corn
and wine for the long two-mile voyage was provided by him—but it is
quite plain that he gave no talent and no cup.]
[71] [ “Il.” xviii. 344-349. These lines in the “Iliad” tell of the
preparation for washing the body of Patroclus, and I am not pleased
that the writer of the “Odyssey” should have adopted them here.]
[72] [ see note [64] : ]
[73] [ see note [43] : ]
[74] [ The reader will find this threat fulfilled in bk. xiii]
[75] [ If the other islands lay some distance away from Ithaca (which
the word {Greek} suggests), what becomes of the πόρθμος or gut between
Ithaca and Samos which we hear of in Bks. iv. and xv.? I suspect that
the authoress in her mind makes Telemachus come back from Pylos to the
Lilybaean promontory and thence to Trapani through the strait between
the _Isola Grande_ and the mainland—the island of Asteria being the one
on which Motya afterwards stood.]
[76] [ “Il.” xviii. 533-534. The sudden lapse into the third person
here for a couple of lines is due to the fact that the two Iliadic
lines taken are in the third person.]
[77] [ cf. “Il.” ii. 776. The words in both “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are
[Footnote Greek]. In the “Iliad” they are used of the horses of
Achilles’ followers as they stood idle, “champing lotus.”]
[78] [ I take all this passage about the Cyclopes having no ships to be
sarcastic—meaning, “You people of Drepanum have no excuse for not
colonising the island of Favognana, which you could easily do, for you
have plenty of ships, and the island is a very good one.” For that the
island so fully described here is the Aegadean or “goat” island of
Favognana, and that the Cyclopes are the old Sican inhabitants of Mt.
Eryx should not be doubted.]
[79] [ For the reasons why it was necessary that the night should be so
exceptionally dark see “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp. 188-189.]
[80] [ None but such lambs as would suck if they were with their
mothers would be left in the yard. The older lambs should have been out
feeding. The authoress has got it all wrong, but it does not matter.
See “The Authoress of the Odyssey” p. 148.]
[81] [ This line is enclosed in brackets in the received text, and is
omitted (with note) by Messrs. Butcher & Lang. But lines enclosed in
brackets are almost always genuine; all that brackets mean is that the
bracketed passage puzzled some early editor, who nevertheless found it
too well established in the text to venture on omitting it. In the
present case the line bracketed is the very last which a full-grown
male editor would be likely to interpolate. It is safer to infer that
the writer, a young woman, not knowing or caring at which end of the
ship the rudder should be, determined to make sure by placing it at
both ends, which we shall find she presently does by repeating it (line
340) at the stern of the ship. As for the two rocks thrown, the first I
take to be the Asinelli, see map facing p. 80. The second I see as the
two contiguous islands of the Formiche, which are treated as one, see
map facing p. 108. The Asinelli is an island shaped like a boat, and
pointing to the island of Favognana. I think the authoress’s
compatriots, who probably did not like her much better that she did
them, jeered at the absurdity of Ulysses’ conduct, and saw the Asinelli
or “donkeys,” not as the rock thrown by Polyphemus, but as the boat
itself containing Ulysses and his men.]
[82] [ This line exists in the text here but not in the corresponding
passage xii. 141. I am inclined to think it is interpolated (probably
by the poetess herself) from the first of lines xi. 115-137, which I
can hardly doubt were added by the writer when the scheme of the work
was enlarged and altered. See “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp.
254-255.]
[83] [ “Floating” (πλωτῇ) is not to be taken literally. The island
itself, as apart from its inhabitants, was quite normal. There is no
indication of its moving during the month that Ulysses stayed with
Aeolus, and on his return from his unfortunate voyage, he seems to have
found it in the same place. The πλωτῇ in fact should no more be pressed
than θοῇσι as applied to islands, “Odyssey” xv. 299—where they are
called “flying” because the ship would fly past them. So also the
“Wanderers,” as explained by Buttmann; see note on “Odyssey” xii. 57.]
[84] [ Literally “for the ways of the night and of the day are near.” I
have seen what Mr. Andrew Lang says (“Homer and the Epic,” p. 236, and
“Longman’s Magazine” for January, 1898, p. 277) about the “amber route”
and the “Sacred Way” in this connection; but until he gives his grounds
for holding that the Mediterranean peoples in the Odyssean age used to
go far North for their amber instead of getting it in Sicily, where it
is still found in considerable quantities, I do not know what weight I
ought to attach to his opinion. I have been unable to find grounds for
asserting that B.C. 1000 there was any commerce between the
Mediterranean and the “Far North,” but I shall be very ready to learn
if Mr. Lang will enlighten me. See “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp.
185-186.]
[85] [ One would have thought that when the sun was driving the stag
down to the water, Ulysses might have observed its whereabouts.]
[86] [ See Hobbes of Malmesbury’s translation.]
[87] [ “Il.” vxiii. 349. Again the writer draws from the washing the
body of Patroclus—which offends.]
[88] [ This visit is wholly without topographical significance.]
[89] [ Brides presented themselves instinctively to the imagination of
the writer, as the phase of humanity which she found most interesting.]
[90] [ Ulysses was, in fact, to become a missionary and preach Neptune
to people who knew not his name. I was fortunate enough to meet in
Sicily a woman carrying one of these winnowing shovels; it was not much
shorter than an oar, and I was able at once to see what the writer of
the “Odyssey” intended.]
[91] [ I suppose the lines I have enclosed in brackets to have been
added by the author when she enlarged her original scheme by the
addition of books i.-iv. and xiii. (from line 187)-xxiv. The reader
will observe that in the corresponding passage (xii. 137-141) the
prophecy ends with “after losing all your comrades,” and that there is
no allusion to the suitors. For fuller explanation see “The Authoress
of the Odyssey” pp. 254-255.]
[92] [ The reader will remember that we are in the first year of
Ulysses’ wanderings, Telemachus therefore was only eleven years old.
The same anachronism is made later on in this book. See “The Authoress
of the Odyssey” pp. 132-133.]
[93] [ Tradition says that she had hanged herself. Cf. “Odyssey” xv.
355, etc.]
[94] [ Not to be confounded with Aeolus king of the winds.]
[95] [ Melampus, vide book xv. 223, etc.]
[96] [ I have already said in a note on bk. xi. 186 that at this point
of Ulysses’ voyage Telemachus could only be between eleven and twelve
years old.]
[97] [ Is the writer a man or a woman?]
[98] [ Cf. “Il.” iv. 521, {Greek}. The Odyssean line reads, {Greek}.
The famous dactylism, therefore, of the Odyssean line was probably
suggested by that of the Ileadic rather than by a desire to accommodate
sound to sense. At any rate the double coincidence of a dactylic line,
and an ending {Greek}, seems conclusive as to the familiarity of the
writer of the “Odyssey” with the Iliadic line.]
[99] [ Off the coast of Sicily and South Italy, in the month of May, I
have seen men fastened half way up a boat’s mast with their feet
resting on a crosspiece, just large enough to support them. From this
point of vantage they spear sword-fish. When I saw men thus employed I
could hardly doubt that the writer of the “Odyssey” had seen others
like them, and had them in her mind when describing the binding of
Ulysses. I have therefore with some diffidence ventured to depart from
the received translation of ἰστοπέδη (cf. Alcaeus frag. 18, where,
however, it is very hard to say what ἰστοπέδαν means). In Sophocles’
Lexicon I find a reference to Chrysostom (l, 242, A. Ed. Benedictine
Paris 1834-1839) for the word ἰστοπόδη, which is probably the same as
ἰστοπέδη, but I have looked for the passage in vain.]
[100] [ The writer is at fault here and tries to put it off on Circe.
When Ulysses comes to take the route prescribed by Circe, he ought to
pass either the Wanderers or some other difficulty of which we are not
told, but he does not do so. The Planctae, or Wanderers, merge into
Scylla and Charybdis, and the alternative between them and something
untold merges into the alternative whether Ulysses had better choose
Scylla or Charybdis. Yet from line 260, it seems we are to consider the
Wanderers as having been passed by Ulysses; this appears even more
plainly from xxiii. 327, in which Ulysses expressly mentions the
Wandering rocks as having been between the Sirens and Scylla and
Charybdis. The writer, however, is evidently unaware that she does not
quite understand her own story; her difficulty was perhaps due to the
fact that though Trapanese sailors had given her a fair idea as to
where all her other localities really were, no one in those days more
than in our own could localise the Planctae, which in fact, as Buttmann
has argued, were derived not from any particular spot, but from
sailors’ tales about the difficulties of navigating the group of the
Aeolian islands as a whole (see note on “Od.” x. 3). Still the matter
of the poor doves caught her fancy, so she would not forgo them. The
whirlwinds of fire and the smoke that hangs on Scylla suggests allusion
to Stromboli and perhaps even Etna. Scylla is on the Italian side, and
therefore may be said to look West. It is about 8 miles thence to the
Sicilian coast, so Ulysses may be perfectly well told that after
passing Scylla he will come to the Thrinacian island or Sicily.
Charybdis is transposed to a site some few miles to the north of its
actual position.]
[101] [ I suppose this line to have been intercalated by the author
when lines 426-446 were added.]
[102] [ For the reasons which enable us to identify the island of the
two Sirens with the Lipari island now Salinas—the ancient Didyme, or
“twin” island—see The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 195, 196. The two
Sirens doubtless were, as their name suggests, the whistling gusts, or
avalanches of air that at times descend without a moment’s warning from
the two lofty mountains of Salinas—as also from all high points in the
neighbourhood.]
[103] [ See Admiral Smyth on the currents in the Straits of Messina,
quoted in “The Authoress of the Odyssey,” p. 197.]
[104] [ In the islands of Favognana and Marettimo off Trapani I have
seen men fish exactly as here described. They chew bread into a paste
and throw it into the sea to attract the fish, which they then spear.