The Odyssey · Samuel Butler translation

Note 160
BOOK XX

[ The normal translation of the Greek word would be “holding back,” “curbing,” “restraining,” but I cannot think that the writer meant this—she must have been using the word in its other sense of “having,” “holding,” “keeping,” “maintaining.”]

ITS PLACE IN THE BOOK

…ay commend itself to both. ‘As long,’ I would say, ‘as you had ground for hoping that Ulysses would one day come home, no one could complain of your waiting and suffering[160] the suitors to be in your house. It would have been better that he should have returned, but it is now sufficiently clear that he will never do so; therefore talk all this quietly over with your mother, and tell her to marry the best man, and the one who…

Return to passage
MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE

Reading settings

Appearance
Typeface

There is always another world waiting between the pages.

Your preferences stay in this browser. No account needed.