Page 440 - the-odyssey

through the hole into which the handle was fitted when the
axe was in use. Twelve axes were placed in a row all at the
same height, all exactly in front of one another, all edgeways
to Ulysses whose arrow passed through all the holes from
the first onward. I cannot see how the Greek can bear any
other interpretation, the words being, [Greek]
‘He did not miss a single hole from the first onwards.’
[Greek] according to Liddell and Scott being ‘the hole for
the handle of an axe, etc.,’ while [Greek] (“Od.’ v. 236) is,
according to the same authorities, the handle itself. The feat
is absurdly impossible, but our authoress sometimes has a
soul above impossibilities.
{166} The reader will note how the spoiling of good food
distresses the writer even in such a supreme moment as
this.
{167} Here we have it again. Waste of substance comes
first.
{168} cf. ‘Il.’ iii. 337 and three other places. It is strange
that the author of the ‘Iliad’ should find a little horse-hair
so alarming. Possibly enough she was merely borrowing a
common form line from some earlier poet—or poetess—for
this is a woman’s line rather than a man’s.
{169} Or perhaps simply ‘window.’ See plan in the ap-
pendix.
{170} i.e. the pavement on which Ulysses was standing.
{171} The interpretation of lines 126-143 is most dubious,
and at best we are in a region of melodrama: cf., however,
i.425, etc. from which it appears that there was a tower in
the outer court, and that Telemachus used to sleep in it. The