Page 412 - the-odyssey

do this, and from bk. ii. it is clear that she kept on delib-
erately 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, how-
ever, 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 be-
fore 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 fare-
well to Andromache here, as elsewhere in the poem, for a
scene of such inferior pathos.
{11} [Greek] The whole open court with the covered clois-
ter running round it was called [Greek], or [Greek], 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 ar-
rangement 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

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