Page 415 - the-odyssey

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 Od-
yssean 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 Aegean 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,
etc. A glance at the map will show that heaven advised its
supplicants quite correctly.
{30} The writer—ever jealous for the honour of wom-
en—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 Or-
estes. 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 uninvit-
ed, 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.

1 The Odyssey