The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of...

[1] [ Black races are evidently known to the writer as stretching all across Africa, one half looking West on to the Atlantic, and the other East on to the Indian Ocean.]

[2] [ The original use of the footstool was probably less to rest the feet than to keep them (especially when bare) from a floor which was often wet and dirty.]

[3] [ The θρόνος or seat, is occasionally called “high,” as being higher than the θρῆνυς or low footstool. It was probably no higher than an ordinary chair is now, and seems to have had no back.]

[4] [ Temesa was on the West Coast of the toe of Italy, in what is now the gulf of Sta Eufemia. It was famous in remote times for its copper mines, which, however, were worked out when Strabo wrote.]

[5] [ i.e. “with a current in it”—see illustrations and map near the end of bks. v. and vi. respectively.]

[6] [ Reading Νηρίτῳ for Νηίῳ, cf. “Od.” iii. 81 where the same mistake is made, and xiii. 351 where the mountain is called Neritum, the same place being intended both here and in book xiii.]

[7] [ It is never plausibly explained why Penelope cannot do this, and from bk. ii. it is clear that she kept on deliberately encouraging the suitors, though we are asked to believe that she was only fooling them.]

[8] [ See note on “Od.” i. 365.]

[9] [ Middle Argos means the Peleponnese which, however, is never so called in the “Iliad”. I presume “middle” means “middle between the two Greek-speaking countries of Asia Minor and Sicily, with South Italy”; for that parts of Sicily and also large parts, though not the whole of South Italy, were inhabited by Greek-speaking races centuries before the Dorian colonisations can hardly be doubted. The Sicians, and also the Sicels, both of them probably spoke Greek.]

[10] [ cf. “Il.” vi. 490-495. In the “Iliad” it is “war,” not “speech,” that is a man’s matter. It argues a certain hardness, or at any rate dislike of the “Iliad” on the part of the writer of the “Odyssey,” that she should have adopted Hector’s farewell to Andromache here, as elsewhere in the poem, for a scene of such inferior pathos.]

[11] [ μέγαρα σκιοέντα The whole open court with the covered cloister running round it was called μέγαρον, or μέγαρα, but the covered part was distinguished by being called “shady” or “shadow-giving”. It was in this part that the tables for the suitors were laid. The Fountain Court at Hampton Court may serve as an illustration (save as regards the use of arches instead of wooden supports and rafters) and the arrangement is still common in Sicily. The usual translation “shadowy” or “dusky” halls, gives a false idea of the scene.]

[12] [ The reader will note the extreme care which the writer takes to make it clear that none of the suitors were allowed to sleep in Ulysses’ house.]

[13] [ See Appendix; g, in plan of Ulysses’ house.]

[14] [ I imagine this passage to be a rejoinder to “Il.” xxiii. 702-705 in which a tripod is valued at twelve oxen, and a good useful maid of all work at only four. The scrupulous regard of Laertes for his wife’s feelings is of a piece with the extreme jealousy for the honour of woman, which is manifest throughout the “Odyssey”.]

[15] [ χιτῶνα “The χιτών, or tunica, was a shirt or shift, and served as the chief under garment of the Greeks and Romans, whether men or women.” Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, under “Tunica”.]

[16] [ Doors fastened to all intents and purposes as here described may be seen in the older houses at Trapani. There is a slot on the outer side of the door by means of which a person who has left the room can shoot the bolt. My bedroom at the Albergo Centrale was fastened in this way.]

[17] [ πύματον δ’ ὡπλίσσατο δόρπον. So we vulgarly say “had cooked his goose,” or “had settled his hash.” Ægyptius cannot of course know of the fate Antiphus had met with, for there had as yet been no news of or from Ulysses.]

[18] [ “Il.” xxii. 416. σχέσθε φίλοι, καὶ μ’ οἷον ἐάσατε...... The authoress has bungled by borrowing these words verbatim from the “Iliad”, without prefixing the necessary “do not,” which I have supplied.]

[19] [ i.e. you have money, and could pay when I got judgment, whereas the suitors are men of straw.]

[20] [ cf. “Il.” ii. 76. ἦ τοι ὄ γ’ ὦς εὶπὼν κατ’ ἄρ’ ἔζετο τοῖσι δ’ ἀνέστη Νέστωρ, ὄς ῥα....................................... ὄ σφιν ἐὺ φρονέων ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπεν. The Odyssean passage runs— “ἦ τοι ὄ γ’ ὦς εὶπὼν κατ’ ἄρ’ ἔζετο τοῖσι δ’ ἀνέστη Μεντορ ὄς ῥ’....................................... ὄ σφιν ἐὺ φρονέων ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπεν. Is it possible not to suspect that the name Mentor was coined upon that of Nestor?]

[21] [ i.e. in the outer court, and in the uncovered part of the inner house.]

[22] [ This would be fair from Sicily, which was doing duty for Ithaca in the mind of the writer, but a North wind would have been preferable for a voyage from the real Ithaca to Pylos.]

[23] [ κελάδοντ’ ἐπὶ οὶνοπα πόντον The wind does not whistle over waves. It only whistles through rigging or some other obstacle that cuts it.]

[24] [ cf. “Il.” v.20. Ἰδαῖος δ’ ἀπόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα δίφρον, the Odyssean line is ἠέλιος δ’ ἀνόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα λίμνην. There can be no doubt that the Odyssean line was suggested by the Iliadic, but nothing can explain why Idæus jumping from his chariot should suggest to the writer of the “Odyssey” the sun jumping from the sea. The probability is that she never gave the matter a thought, but took the line in question as an effect of saturation with the “Iliad,” and of unconscious cerebration. The “Odyssey” contains many such examples.]

[25] [ The heart, liver, lights, kidneys, etc. were taken out from the inside and eaten first as being more readily cooked; the {Greek}, or bone meat, was cooking while the {Greek} or inward parts were being eaten. I imagine that the thigh bones made a kind of gridiron, while at the same time the marrow inside them got cooked.]

[26] [ i.e. skewers, either single, double, or even five pronged. The meat would be pierced with the skewer, and laid over the ashes to grill—the two ends of the skewer being supported in whatever way convenient. Meat so cooking may be seen in any eating house in Smyrna, or any Eastern town. When I rode across the Troad from the Dardanelles to Hissarlik and Mount Ida, I noticed that my dragoman and his men did all our outdoor cooking exactly in the Odyssean and Iliadic fashion.]

[27] [ cf. “Il.” xvii. 567. {Greek} The Odyssean lines are—{Greek}]

[28] [ Reading {Greek} for {Greek}, cf. “Od.” i. 186.]

29[] [ The geography of the Ægean as above described is correct, but is probably taken from the lost poem, the Nosti, the existence of which is referred to “Od.” i. 326, 327 and 350, &c. A glance at the map will show that heaven advised its supplicants quite correctly.]

[30] [ The writer—ever jealous for the honour of women—extenuates Clytemnestra’s guilt as far as possible, and explains it as due to her having been left unprotected, and fallen into the hands of a wicked man.]

[31] [ The Greek is {Greek} cf. “Iliad” ii. 408 {Greek} Surely the {Greek} of the Odyssean passage was due to the {Greek} of the “Iliad.” No other reason suggests itself for the making Menelaus return on the very day of the feast given by Orestes. The fact that in the “Iliad” Menelaus came to a banquet without waiting for an invitation, determines the writer of the “Odyssey” to make him come to a banquet, also uninvited, but as circumstances did not permit of his having been invited, his coming uninvited is shown to have been due to chance. I do not think the authoress thought all this out, but attribute the strangeness of the coincidence to unconscious cerebration and saturation.]

[32] [ cf. “Il.” I. 458, II. 421. The writer here interrupts an Iliadic passage (to which she returns immediately) for the double purpose of dwelling upon the slaughter of the heifer, and of letting Nestor’s wife and daughter enjoy it also. A male writer, if he was borrowing from the “Iliad,” would have stuck to his borrowing.]

[33] [ cf. “Il.” xxiv. 587, 588 where the lines refer to the washing the dead body of Hector.]

[34] [ See illustration on opposite page. The yard is typical of many that may be seen in Sicily. The existing ground-plan is probably unmodified from Odyssean, and indeed long pre-Odyssean times, but the earlier buildings would have no arches, and would, one would suppose, be mainly timber. The Odyssean {Greek} were the sheds that ran round the yard as the arches do now. The {Greek} was the one through which the main entrance passed, and which was hence “noisy,” or reverberating. It had an upper story in which visitors were often lodged.]

[35] [ This journey is an impossible one. Telemachus and Pisistratus would have been obliged to drive over the Taygetus range, over which there has never yet been a road for wheeled vehicles. It is plain therefore that the audience for whom the “Odyssey” was written was one that would be unlikely to know anything about the topography of the Peloponnese, so that the writer might take what liberties she chose.]

[36] [ The lines which I have enclosed in brackets are evidently an afterthought—added probably by the writer herself—for they evince the same instinctively greater interest in anything that may concern a woman, which is so noticeable throughout the poem. There is no further sign of any special festivities nor of any other guests than Telemachus and Pisistratus, until lines 621-624 (ordinarily enclosed in brackets) are abruptly introduced, probably with a view of trying to carry off the introduction of the lines now in question.

The addition was, I imagine, suggested by a desire to excuse and explain the non-appearance of Hermione in bk. xv., as also of both Hermione and Megapenthes in the rest of bk. iv. Megapenthes in bk. xv. seems to be still a bachelor: the presumption therefore is that bk. xv. was written before the story of his marriage here given. I take it he is only married here because his sister is being married. She having been properly attended to, Megapenthes might as well be married at the same time. Hermione could not now be less than thirty.

I have dealt with this passage somewhat more fully in my “Authoress of the Odyssey”, p. 136-138. See also p. 256 of the same book.]

[37] [ Sparta and Lacedaemon are here treated as two different places, though in other parts of the poem it is clear that the writer understands them as one. The catalogue in the “Iliad,” which the writer is here presumably following, makes the same mistake (“Il.” ii. 581, 582)]

[38] [ These last three lines are identical with “Il.” vxiii. 604-606.]