Note 45
BOOK IV
[ The Greek is {Greek}. I believe this to be a hit at the writer’s own countrymen who were of Phocaean descent, and the next following line to be a rejoinder to complaints made against her in bk. vi. 273-288, to the effect that she gave herself airs and would marry none of her own people. For that the writer of the “Odyssey” was the person who has been introduced into the poem under the name of Nausicaa, I cannot bring myself to question. I may remind English readers that {Greek} (i.e. phoca) means “seal.” Seals almost always appear on Phocaean coins.]
… in the pits one after the other, and threw a seal skin over each of us. Our ambuscade would have been intolerable, for the stench of the fishy seals was most distressing[45]—who would go to bed with a sea monster if he could help it?—but here, too, the goddess helped us, and thought of something that gave us great relief, for she put some ambrosia under each man’s nostrils, which was so fragrant that it killed the smell of th…
Return to passage