The Odyssey
No line is used.]
[105] [ The writer evidently regards Ulysses as on a coast that looked
East at no great distance south of the Straits of Messina somewhere,
say, near Tauromenium, now Taormina.]
[106] [ Surely there must be a line missing here to tell us that the
keel and mast were carried down into Charybdis. Besides, the aorist
{Greek} in its present surrounding is perplexing. I have translated it
as though it were an imperfect; I see Messrs. Butcher and Lang
translate it as a pluperfect, but surely Charybdis was in the act of
sucking down the water when Ulysses arrived.]
[107] [ I suppose the passage within brackets to have been an
afterthought but to have been written by the same hand as the rest of
the poem. I suppose xii. 103 to have been also added by the writer when
she decided on sending Ulysses back to Charybdis. The simile suggests
the hand of the wife or daughter of a magistrate who had often seen her
father come in cross and tired.]
[108] [ Gr. πολυδαίδαλος. This puts coined money out of the question,
but nevertheless implies that the gold had been worked into ornaments
of some kind.]
[109] [ I suppose Teiresias’ prophecy of bk. xi. 114-120 had made no
impression on Ulysses. More probably the prophecy was an afterthought,
intercalated, as I have already said, by the authoress when she changed
her scheme.]
[110] [ A male writer would have made Ulysses say, not “may you give
satisfaction to your wives,” but “may your wives give satisfaction to
you.”]
[111] [ See note [64].]
[112] [ The land was in reality the shallow inlet, now the salt works
of S. Cusumano—the neighbourhood of Trapani and Mt. Eryx being made to
do double duty, both as Scheria and Ithaca. Hence the necessity for
making Ulysses set out after dark, fall instantly into a profound
sleep, and wake up on a morning so foggy that he could not see anything
till the interviews between Neptune and Jove and between Ulysses and
Minerva should have given the audience time to accept the situation.
See illustrations and map near the end of bks. v. and vi.
respectively.]
[113] [ This cave, which is identifiable with singular completeness, is
now called the “grotta del toro,” probably a corruption of “tesoro,”
for it is held to contain a treasure. See The Authoress of the Odyssey,
pp. 167-170.]
[114] [ Probably they would.]
[115] [ Then it had a shallow shelving bottom.]
[116] [ Doubtless the road would pass the harbour in Odyssean times as
it passes the salt works now; indeed, if there is to be a road at all
there is no other level ground which it could take. See map above
referred to.]
[117] [ The rock at the end of the Northern harbour of Trapani, to
which I suppose the writer of the “Odyssey” to be here referring, still
bears the name Malconsiglio—“the rock of evil counsel.” There is a
legend that it was a ship of Turkish pirates who were intending to
attack Trapani, but the “Madonna di Trapani” crushed them under this
rock just as they were coming into port. My friend Cavaliere
Giannitrapani of Trapani told me that his father used to tell him when
he was a boy that if he would drop exactly three drops of oil on to the
water near the rock, he would see the ship still at the bottom. The
legend is evidently a Christianised version of the Odyssean story,
while the name supplies the additional detail that the disaster
happened in consequence of an evil counsel.]
[118] [ It would seem then that the ship had got all the way back from
Ithaca in about a quarter of an hour.]
[119] [ And may we not add “and also to prevent his recognising that he
was only in the place where he had met Nausicaa two days earlier.”]
[120] [ All this is to excuse the entire absence of Minerva from books
ix.-xii., which I suppose had been written already, before the
authoress had determined on making Minerva so prominent a character.]
[121] [ We have met with this somewhat lame attempt to cover the
writer’s change of scheme at the end of bk. vi.]
[122] [ I take the following from The Authoress of the Odyssey, p. 167.
“It is clear from the text that there were two [caves] not one, but
some one has enclosed in brackets the two lines in which the second
cave is mentioned, I presume because he found himself puzzled by having
a second cave sprung upon him when up to this point he had only been
told of one.
“I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have
been puzzled, for there are two caves, distant about 80 or 100 yards
from one another.” The cave in which Ulysses hid his treasure is, as I
have already said, identifiable with singular completeness. The other
cave presents no special features, neither in the poem nor in nature.]
[123] [ There is no attempt to disguise the fact that Penelope had long
given encouragement to the suitors. The only defence set up is that she
did not really mean to encourage them. Would it not have been wiser to
have tried a little discouragement?]
[124] [ See map near the end of bk. vi. _Ruccazzù dei corvi_ of course
means “the rock of the ravens.” Both name and ravens still exist.]
[125] [ See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 140, 141. The real reason
for sending Telemachus to Pylos and Lacedaemon was that the authoress
might get Helen of Troy into her poem. He was sent at the only point in
the story at which he could be sent, so he must have gone then or not
at all.]
[126] [ The site I assign to Eumaeus’s hut, close to the _Ruccazzù dei
corvi_, is about 2,000 feet above the sea, and commands an extensive
view.]
[127] [ Sandals such as Eumaeus was making are still worn in the
Abruzzi and elsewhere. An oblong piece of leather forms the sole: holes
are cut at the four corners, and through these holes leathern straps
are passed, which are bound round the foot and cross-gartered up the
calf.]
[128] [ See note [75] : ]
[129] [ Telemachus like many another good young man seems to expect
every one to fetch and carry for him.]
[130] [ “Il.” vi. 288. The store room was fragrant because it was made
of cedar wood. See “Il.” xxiv. 192.]
[131] [ cf. “Il.” vi. 289 and 293-296. The dress was kept at the bottom
of the chest as one that would only be wanted on the greatest
occasions; but surely the marriage of Hermione and of Megapenthes (bk,
iv. _ad init_.) might have induced Helen to wear it on the preceding
evening, in which case it could hardly have got back. We find no hint
here of Megapenthes’ recent marriage.]
[132] [ See note [83].]
[133] [ cf. “Od.” xi. 196, etc.]
[134] [ The names Syra and Ortygia, on which island a great part of the
Doric Syracuse was originally built, suggest that even in Odyssean
times there was a prehistoric Syracuse, the existence of which was
known to the writer of the poem.]
[135] [ Literally “where are the turnings of the sun.” Assuming, as we
may safely do, that the Syra and Ortygia of the “Odyssey” refer to
Syracuse, it is the fact that not far to the South of these places the
land turns sharply round, so that mariners following the coast would
find the sun upon the other side of their ship to that on which they’d
had it hitherto.
Mr. A. S. Griffith has kindly called my attention to Herod iv. 42,
where, speaking of the circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician
mariners under Necos, he writes:
“On their return they declared—I for my part do not believe them, but
perhaps others may—that in sailing round Libya [i.e. Africa] they had
the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya
first discovered.
“I take it that Eumaeus was made to have come from Syracuse because the
writer thought she rather ought to have made something happen at
Syracuse during her account of the voyages of Ulysses. She could not,
however, break his long drift from Charybdis to the island of
Pantellaria; she therefore resolved to make it up to Syracuse in
another way.”
Modern excavations establish the existence of two and only two
pre-Dorian communities at Syracuse; they were, so Dr. Orsi informed me,
at Plemmirio and Cozzo Pantano. See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp.
211-213.]
[136] [ This harbour is again evidently the harbour in which Ulysses
had landed, i.e. the harbour that is now the salt works of S.
Cusumano.]
[137] [ This never can have been anything but very niggardly pay for
some eight or nine days’ service. I suppose the crew were to consider
the pleasure of having had a trip to Pylos as a set off. There is no
trace of the dinner as having been actually given, either on the
following or any other morning.]
[138] [ No hawk can tear its prey while it is on the wing.]
[139] [ The text is here apparently corrupt, and will not make sense as
it stands. I follow Messrs. Butcher & Lang in omitting line 101.]
[140] [ i.e. to be milked, as in South Italian and Sicilian towns at
the present day.]
[141] [ The butchering and making ready the carcases took place partly
in the outer yard and partly in the open part of the inner court.]
[142] [ These words cannot mean that it would be afternoon soon after
they were spoken. Ulysses and Eumaeus reached the town which was “some
way off” (xvii. 25) in time for the suitor’s early meal (xvii. 170 and
176) say at ten or eleven o’ clock. The context of the rest of the book
shows this. Eumaeus and Ulysses, therefore, cannot have started later
than eight or nine, and Eumaeus’s words must be taken as an
exaggeration for the purpose of making Ulysses bestir himself.]
[143] [ I imagine the fountain to have been somewhere about where the
church of the _Madonna di Trapani_ now stands, and to have been fed
with water from what is now called the Fontana Diffali on Mt. Eryx.]
[144] [ From this and other passages in the “Odyssey” it appears that
we are in an age anterior to the use of coined money—an age when
cauldrons, tripods, swords, cattle, chattels of all kinds, measures of
corn, wine, or oil, etc. etc., not to say pieces of gold, silver,
bronze, or even iron, wrought more or less, but unstamped, were the
nearest approach to a currency that had as yet been reached.]
[145] [ Gr. ἐς μέσσον.]
[146] [ I correct these proofs abroad and am not within reach of
Hesiod, but surely this passage suggests acquaintance with the Works
and Ways, though it by no means compels it.]
[147] [ It would seem as though Eurynome and Euryclea were the same
person. See note 156]
[148] [ It is plain, therefore, that Iris was commonly accepted as the
messenger of the gods, though our authoress will never permit her to
fetch or carry for any one.]
[149] [ i.e. the doorway leading from the inner to the outer court.]
[150] [See note 156]
[151] [ These, I imagine, must have been in the open part of the inner
courtyard, where the maids also stood, and threw the light of their
torches into the covered cloister that ran all round it. The smoke
would otherwise have been intolerable.]
[152] [ Translation very uncertain; vide Liddell and Scott, under
{Greek}]
[153] [ See photo on opposite page.]
[154] [ cf. “Il.” ii. 184, and 217, 218. An additional and well-marked
feature being wanted to convince Penelope, the writer has taken the
hunched shoulders of Thersites (who is mentioned immediately after
Eurybates in the “Iliad”) and put them on to Eurybates’ back.]
[155] [ This is how geese are now fed in Sicily, at any rate in summer,
when the grass is all burnt up. I have never seen them grazing.]
[156] [ Lower down (line 143) Euryclea says it was herself that had
thrown the cloak over Ulysses—for the plural should not be taken as
implying more than one person. The writer is evidently still
fluctuating between Euryclea and Eurynome as the name for the old
nurse. She probably originally meant to call her Euryclea, but finding