{115} Then it had a shallow shelving bottom.

{116} Doubtless the road would pass the harbour in Odyssean times as it passes the salt works now; indeed, if there is to be a road at all there is no other level ground which it could take. See map above referred to.

{117} The rock at the end of the Northern harbour of Trapani, to which I suppose the writer of the "Odyssey" to be here referring, still bears the name Malconsiglio--"the rock of evil counsel." There is a legend that it was a ship of Turkish pirates who were intending to attack Trapani, but the "Madonna di Trapani" crushed them under this rock just as they were coming into port. My friend Cavaliere Giannitrapani of Trapani told me that his father used to tell him when he was a boy that if he would drop exactly three drops of oil on to the water near the rock, he would see the ship still at the bottom. The legend is evidently a Christianised version of the Odyssean story, while the name supplies the additional detail that the disaster happened in consequence of an evil counsel.

{118} It would seem then that the ship had got all the way back from Ithaca in about a quarter of an hour.

{119} And may we not add "and also to prevent his recognising that he was only in the place where he had met Nausicaa two days earlier."

{120} All this is to excuse the entire absence of Minerva from books ix.-xii., which I suppose had been written already, before the authoress had determined on making Minerva so prominent a character.

{121} We have met with this somewhat lame attempt to cover the writer's change of scheme at the end of bk. vi.

{122} I take the following from The Authoress of the Odyssey, p. 167. "It is clear from the text that there were two [caves] not one, but some one has enclosed in brackets the two lines in which the second cave is mentioned, I presume because he found himself puzzled by having a second cave sprung upon him when up to this point he had only been told of one.

"I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have been puzzled, for there are two caves, distant about 80 or 100 yards from one another." The cave in which Ulysses hid his treasure is, as I have already said, identifiable with singular completeness. The other cave presents no special features, neither in the poem nor in nature.

{123} There is no attempt to disguise the fact that Penelope had long given encouragement to the suitors. The only defence set up is that she did not really mean to encourage them. Would it not have been wiser to have tried a little discouragement?

{124} See map near the end of bk. vi. Ruccazzu dei corvi of course means "the rock of the ravens." Both name and ravens still exist.

{125} See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 140, 141. The real reason for sending Telemachus to Pylos and Lacedaemon was that the authoress might get Helen of Troy into her poem. He was sent at the only point in the story at which he could be sent, so he must have gone then or not at all.

{126} The site I assign to Eumaeus's hut, close to the Ruccazzu dei Corvi, is about 2,000 feet above the sea, and commands an extensive view.

{127} Sandals such as Eumaeus was making are still worn in the Abruzzi and elsewhere. An oblong piece of leather forms the sole: holes are cut at the four corners, and through these holes leathern straps are passed, which are bound round the foot and cross-gartered up the calf.

{128} See note {75}

{129} Telemachus like many another good young man seems to expect every one to fetch and carry for him.

{130} "Il." vi. 288. The store room was fragrant because it was made of cedar wood. See "Il." xxiv. 192.

{131} cf. "Il." vi. 289 and 293-296. The dress was kept at the bottom of the chest as one that would only be wanted on the greatest occasions; but surely the marriage of Hermione and of Megapenthes (bk, iv. ad init.) might have induced Helen to wear it on the preceding evening, in which case it could hardly have got back. We find no hint here of Megapenthes' recent marriage.

{132} See note {83}.

{133} cf. "Od." xi. 196, etc.

{134} The names Syra and Ortygia, on which island a great part of the Doric Syracuse was originally built, suggest that even in Odyssean times there was a prehistoric Syracuse, the existence of which was known to the writer of the poem.

{135} Literally "where are the turnings of the sun." Assuming, as we may safely do, that the Syra and Ortygia of the "Odyssey" refer to Syracuse, it is the fact that not far to the South of these places the land turns sharply round, so that mariners following the coast would find the sun upon the other side of their ship to that on which they'd had it hitherto.

Mr. A. S. Griffith has kindly called my attention to Herod iv. 42, where, speaking of the circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician mariners under Necos, he writes:

"On their return they declared--I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may--that in sailing round Libya [i.e. Africa] they had the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya first discovered.

I take it that Eumaeus was made to have come from Syracuse because the writer thought she rather ought to have made something happen at Syracuse during her account of the voyages of Ulysses. She could not, however, break his long drift from Charybdis to the island of Pantellaria; she therefore resolved to make it up to Syracuse in another way.

{135} Modern excavations establish the existence of two and only two pre-Dorian communities at Syracuse; they were, so Dr. Orsi informed me, at Plemmirio and Cozzo Pantano. See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 211-213.

{136} This harbour is again evidently the harbour in which Ulysses had landed, i.e. the harbour that is now the salt works of S. Cusumano.

{137} This never can have been anything but very niggardly pay for some eight or nine days' service. I suppose the crew were to consider the pleasure of having had a trip to Pylos as a set off. There is no trace of the dinner as having been actually given, either on the following or any other morning.

{138} No hawk can tear its prey while it is on the wing.

{139} The text is here apparently corrupt, and will not make sense as it stands. I follow Messrs. Butcher and Lang in omitting line 101.

{140} i.e. to be milked, as in South Italian and Sicilian towns at the present day.

{141} The butchering and making ready the carcases took place partly in the outer yard and partly in the open part of the inner court.

{142} These words cannot mean that it would be afternoon soon after they were spoken. Ulysses and Eumaeus reached the town which was "some way off" (xvii. 25) in time for the suitor's early meal (xvii. 170 and 176) say at ten or eleven o' clock. The context of the rest of the book shows this. Eumaeus and Ulysses, therefore, cannot have started later than eight or nine, and Eumaeus's words must be taken as an exaggeration for the purpose of making Ulysses bestir himself.

{143} I imagine the fountain to have been somewhere about where the church of the Madonna di Trapani now stands, and to have been fed with water from what is now called the Fontana Diffali on Mt. Eryx.

{144} From this and other passages in the "Odyssey" it appears that we are in an age anterior to the use of coined money--an age when cauldrons, tripods, swords, cattle, chattels of all kinds, measures of corn, wine, or oil, etc. etc., not to say pieces of gold, silver, bronze, or even iron, wrought more or less, but unstamped, were the nearest approach to a currency that had as yet been reached.

{145} Gr. is [Greek]

{146} I correct these proofs abroad and am not within reach of Hesiod, but surely this passage suggests acquaintance with the Works and Ways, though it by no means compels it.

{147} It would seem as though Eurynome and Euryclea were the same person. See note {156}

{148} It is plain, therefore, that Iris was commonly accepted as the messenger of the gods, though our authoress will never permit her to fetch or carry for any one.

{149} i.e. the doorway leading from the inner to the outer court.

{150} Surely in this scene, again, Eurynome is in reality Euryclea. See note {156}

{151} These, I imagine, must have been in the open part of the inner courtyard, where the maids also stood, and threw the light of their torches into the covered cloister that ran all round it. The smoke would otherwise have been intolerable.

{152} Translation very uncertain; vide Liddell and Scott, under [Greek]

{153} See photo on opposite page.