The Odyssey · Samuel Butler translation

Note 102
BOOK XII

[ 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.]

ITS PLACE IN THE BOOK

“I had hardly finished telling everything to the men before we reached the island of the two Sirens,[102] for the wind had been very favourable. Then all of a sudden it fell dead calm; there was not a breath of wind nor a ripple upon the water, so the men furled the sails and stowed them; then taking to their oars they whitened the water with the foam they raised in rowing. Meanwhile I look a large wheel of wax and cut it up s…

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