Note 84
BOOK X
[ 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.]
… a man who could do without sleep might earn double wages, one as a herdsman of cattle, and another as a shepherd, for they work much the same by night as they do by day.[84]
Return to passage