Page 422 - the-odyssey

{58} Polyphemus was also son to Neptune, see ‘Od.’ ix.
412,529. he was therefore half brother to Nausithous, half
uncle to King Alcinous, and half great uncle to Nausicaa.
{59} It would seem as though the writer thought that
Marathon was close to Athens.
{60} Here the writer, knowing that she is drawing (with
embellishments) from things actually existing, becomes
impatient of past tenses and slides into the present.
{61} This is hidden malice, implying that the Phaeacian
magnates were no better than they should be. The final
drink-offering should have been made to Jove or Neptune,
not to the god of thievishness and rascality of all kinds. In
line 164 we do indeed find Echeneus proposing that a drink-
offering should be made to Jove, but Mercury is evidently,
according to our authoress, the god who was most likely to
be of use to them.
{62} The fact of Alcinous knowing anything about the
Cyclopes suggests that in the writer’s mind Scheria and the
country of the Cyclopes were not very far from one another.
I take the Cyclopes and the giants to be one and the same
people.
{63} ‘My property, etc.’ The authoress is here adopting an
Iliadic line (xix. 333), and this must account for the absence
of all reference to Penelope. If she had happened to remem-
ber ‘Il.’ v.213, she would doubtless have appropriated it by
preference, for that line reads ‘my country, my wife, and all
the greatness of my house.’
{64} The at first inexplicable sleep of Ulysses (bk. xiii. 79,
etc.) is here, as also in viii. 445, being obviously prepared.

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