Note 148 — THE THEOGONY.
George Chapman translation
This tale of oaks.] This seems to have been a proverbial expression to signify any idle tale or preamble. The Scholiasts illustrate it from Odyssey xvii. 163, where Penelope asks Ulysses, whom she does not yet recognise, “whence he is?” and observes,
Thou comest not from some ancient oak or rock:
in allusion to the fable of men born from trees: originating, possibly, in children being found exposed in hollow trees and cavities of rocks. But there is another passage in Homer more to the purpose, Il. xx. 126:
It is no time from oak or hollow rock With him to parley, as a nymph and swain, A nymph and swain soft parley mutual hold. Cowper.
Mr. Bryant explains this passage in Homer by the traditionary reverence paid to caverns: which in the first ages were deemed oracular temples: whence persons entered into compacts under rocks and oaks as places of security. But surely there is no need to go back to the first ages, or to dive into traditional superstitions for the solution of a circumstance so extremely obvious, as that of two lovers conversing in the shade. Harmer in his “Illustrations of the Classics,” vol. iii. of his “Observations on Scripture,” renders απο δρυος, on account of an oak: instead of from an oak: “when people meet each other on account of some rock or some tree which they happen upon in travelling.” But the alteration is quite unnecessary: the word from perhaps indicates that one is resting under the tree, while the other is passing by. The adage in Hesiod is expressed “around an oak:” which implies a number of persons. The rock associated with the oak marks the peculiar climate of Greece and the East. The shade cast by a rock is described by Eastern travellers as singularly cool.