Note 99
BOOK XII
[ 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.]
…h wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross piece half way up the mast,[99] and they must lash the rope’s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster.
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