Note 121
[ We have met with this somewhat lame attempt to cover the writer’s change of scheme at the end of bk. vi.]
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Notes to The Odyssey — Page 6
187 notes in Samuel Butler translation. Follow a thought back to its place in the book.
187 notes
Note 122
[ I take the following from The Authoress of the Odyssey, p. 167. “It is clear from the text that there were two [caves] not one, but some one has enclosed in brackets the two line…
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[ There is no attempt to disguise the fact that Penelope had long given encouragement to the suitors. The only defence set up is that she did not really mean to encourage them. Wou…
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[ See map near the end of bk. vi. Ruccazzù dei corvi of course means “the rock of the ravens.” Both name and ravens still exist.]
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[ See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 140, 141. The real reason for sending Telemachus to Pylos and Lacedaemon was that the authoress might get Helen of Troy into her poem. He wa…
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[ The site I assign to Eumaeus’s hut, close to the Ruccazzù dei corvi, is about 2,000 feet above the sea, and commands an extensive view.]
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[ Sandals such as Eumaeus was making are still worn in the Abruzzi and elsewhere. An oblong piece of leather forms the sole: holes are cut at the four corners, and through these ho…
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[ See note [75] : ]
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[ Telemachus like many another good young man seems to expect every one to fetch and carry for him.]
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[ “Il.” vi. 288. The store room was fragrant because it was made of cedar wood. See “Il.” xxiv. 192.]
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[ cf. “Il.” vi. 289 and 293-296. The dress was kept at the bottom of the chest as one that would only be wanted on the greatest occasions; but surely the marriage of Hermione and o…
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[ See note [83].]
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[ cf. “Od.” xi. 196, etc.]
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[ The names Syra and Ortygia, on which island a great part of the Doric Syracuse was originally built, suggest that even in Odyssean times there was a prehistoric Syracuse, the exi…
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[ Literally “where are the turnings of the sun.” Assuming, as we may safely do, that the Syra and Ortygia of the “Odyssey” refer to Syracuse, it is the fact that not far to the Sou…
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[ This harbour is again evidently the harbour in which Ulysses had landed, i.e. the harbour that is now the salt works of S. Cusumano.]
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[ This never can have been anything but very niggardly pay for some eight or nine days’ service. I suppose the crew were to consider the pleasure of having had a trip to Pylos as a…
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[ No hawk can tear its prey while it is on the wing.]
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[ The text is here apparently corrupt, and will not make sense as it stands. I follow Messrs. Butcher & Lang in omitting line 101.]
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[ i.e. to be milked, as in South Italian and Sicilian towns at the present day.]
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[ The butchering and making ready the carcases took place partly in the outer yard and partly in the open part of the inner court.]
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[ These words cannot mean that it would be afternoon soon after they were spoken. Ulysses and Eumaeus reached the town which was “some way off” (xvii. 25) in time for the suitor’s …
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[ I imagine the fountain to have been somewhere about where the church of the Madonna di Trapani now stands, and to have been fed with water from what is now called the Fontana Dif…
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[ From this and other passages in the “Odyssey” it appears that we are in an age anterior to the use of coined money—an age when cauldrons, tripods, swords, cattle, chattels of all…
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