Note 39 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.
George Chapman translation
His herald from above.] The first edition had “winged herald;” but the wings of Mercury are the additions of later mythologists. Homer, in the Odyssey, speaks only of
The sandals fair, Golden, and undecay’d, that waft him o’er The sea, and o’er th’ immeasurable earth With the swift-breathing wind:
there is no mention of the sandals being winged. They seem to have possessed a supernatural power of velocity, like the seven-leagued boots, or the shoes of swiftness, in the Tales of the Giants.