Page 423 - the-odyssey

The writer evidently attached the utmost importance to it.
Those who know that the harbour which did duty with the
writer of the ‘Odyssey’ for the one in which Ulysses landed
in Ithaca, was only about 2 miles from the place in which
Ulysses is now talking with Alcinous, will understand why
the sleep was so necessary.
{65} There were two classes—the lower who were found
in provisions which they had to cook for themselves in the
yards and outer precincts, where they would also eat—and
the upper who would eat in the cloisters of the inner court,
and have their cooking done for them.
{66} Translation very dubious. I suppose the [Greek] here
to be the covered sheds that ran round the outer courtyard.
See illustrations at the end of bk. iii.
{67} The writer apparently deems that the words ‘as
compared with what oxen can plough in the same time’ go
without saying. Not so the writer of the ‘Iliad’ from which
the Odyssean passage is probably taken. He explains that
mules can plough quicker than oxen (“Il.’ x.351-353)
{68} It was very fortunate that such a disc happened to be
there, seeing that none like it were in common use.
{69} ‘Il.’ xiii. 37. Here, as so often elsewhere in the ‘Odys-
sey,’ the appropriation of an Iliadic line which is not quite
appropriate puzzles the reader. The ‘they’ is not the chains,
nor yet Mars and Venus. It is an overflow from the Iliadic
passage in which Neptune hobbles his horses in bonds ‘which
none could either unloose or break so that they might stay
there in that place.’ If the line would have scanned without
the addition of the words ‘so that they might stay there in

The Odyssey