Note 13 — THE EIGHTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS

This τερατολογία or affirmation of miracles, how impossible soever in these times assured, yet in those ages they were neither absurd nor strange. Those inanimate things having (it seemed) certain Genii, in whose powers they supposed their ships’ faculties. As others have affirmed oaks to have sense of hearing; and so the ship of Argos was said to have a mast made of Dodonean oak, that was vocal, and could speak.