Note 73
[ see note [43] : ]
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Notes to The Odyssey — Page 4
187 notes in Samuel Butler translation. Follow a thought back to its place in the book.
187 notes
Note 74
[ The reader will find this threat fulfilled in bk. xiii]
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[ If the other islands lay some distance away from Ithaca (which the word {Greek} suggests), what becomes of the πόρθμος or gut between Ithaca and Samos which we hear of in Bks. iv…
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[ “Il.” xviii. 533-534. The sudden lapse into the third person here for a couple of lines is due to the fact that the two Iliadic lines taken are in the third person.]
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[ cf. “Il.” ii. 776. The words in both “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are [Footnote Greek]. In the “Iliad” they are used of the horses of Achilles’ followers as they stood idle, “champing l…
Read the noteNote 78
[ I take all this passage about the Cyclopes having no ships to be sarcastic—meaning, “You people of Drepanum have no excuse for not colonising the island of Favognana, which you c…
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[ For the reasons why it was necessary that the night should be so exceptionally dark see “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp. 188-189.]
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[ None but such lambs as would suck if they were with their mothers would be left in the yard. The older lambs should have been out feeding. The authoress has got it all wrong, but…
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[ This line is enclosed in brackets in the received text, and is omitted (with note) by Messrs. Butcher & Lang. But lines enclosed in brackets are almost always genuine; all that b…
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[ This line exists in the text here but not in the corresponding passage xii. 141. I am inclined to think it is interpolated (probably by the poetess herself) from the first of lin…
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[ “Floating” (πλωτῇ) is not to be taken literally. The island itself, as apart from its inhabitants, was quite normal. There is no indication of its moving during the month that Ul…
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[ 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.…
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[ One would have thought that when the sun was driving the stag down to the water, Ulysses might have observed its whereabouts.]
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[ See Hobbes of Malmesbury’s translation.]
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[ “Il.” vxiii. 349. Again the writer draws from the washing the body of Patroclus—which offends.]
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[ This visit is wholly without topographical significance.]
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[ Brides presented themselves instinctively to the imagination of the writer, as the phase of humanity which she found most interesting.]
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[ Ulysses was, in fact, to become a missionary and preach Neptune to people who knew not his name. I was fortunate enough to meet in Sicily a woman carrying one of these winnowing …
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[ I suppose the lines I have enclosed in brackets to have been added by the author when she enlarged her original scheme by the addition of books i.-iv. and xiii. (from line 187)-x…
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[ The reader will remember that we are in the first year of Ulysses’ wanderings, Telemachus therefore was only eleven years old. The same anachronism is made later on in this book.…
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[ Tradition says that she had hanged herself. Cf. “Odyssey” xv. 355, etc.]
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[ Not to be confounded with Aeolus king of the winds.]
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[ Melampus, vide book xv. 223, etc.]
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[ I have already said in a note on bk. xi. 186 that at this point of Ulysses’ voyage Telemachus could only be between eleven and twelve years old.]
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