Note 6 — THE FIRST BOOK OF HOMER’S ODYSSEYS

This is thus translated, the rather to express and approve the allegory driven through the whole Odysseys. Deciphering the intangling of the wisest in his affections; and the torments that breed in every pious mind; to be thereby hindered to arrive so directly as he desires, at the proper and only true natural country of every worthy man, whose haven is heaven and the next life, to which, this life is but a sea in continual æsture and vexation. The words occasioning all this are μαλακοἳς λὀλοις: μαλακὀς signifying, qui languide, et animo remisso rem aliquam gerit; which being the effect of Calypso’s sweet words in Ulysses, is here applied passively to his own sufferance of their operation.