The Authoress of the Odyssey. Butler Samuel

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СКАЧАТЬ and swooped down on six of them. I could see their poor hands and feet struggling in the air as she bore them aloft, and hear them call out my name in one last despairing cry. This was the most horrid sight that I saw in all my voyages.

      "Having passed the cliffs,28 and Scylla and Charybdis, 260 we came to the Thrinacian island, and from my ship I could hear the cattle lowing, and the sheep bleating. Then, remembering the warning that Tiresias and Circe had given me, I bade my men give the island a wide berth. But Eurylochus was insolent, and sowed disaffection among them, so that I was forced to yield and let them land for the night, after making them swear most solemnly that they would do the cattle no harm. We camped, therefore, on the beach near a stream.

      "But in the third watch of the night there came up a 312 great gale, and in the morning we drew our ship ashore and left her in a large cave wherein the sea nymphs meet and hold their dances. I then called my men together, and again warned them.

      "It blew a gale from the South for a whole month, except 325 when the wind shifted to the East, and there was no other wind save only South and East. As long as the corn and wine which Circe had given us held out, my men kept their word, but after a time they began to feel the pangs of hunger, and I went apart to pray heaven to take compassion upon us. I washed my hands and prayed, and when I had done so, I fell asleep.

      "Meanwhile Eurylochus set my men on to disobey me, and 339 they drove in some of the cattle and killed them. When I woke, and had got nearly back to the ship, I began to smell roast meat and knew full well what had happened.

      "The nymph Lampetie went immediately and told the Sun 374 what my men had done. He was furious, and threatened Jove that if he was not revenged he would never shine in heaven again but would go down and give his light among the dead. 'All day long,' said he, 'whether I was going up heaven or down, there was nothing I so dearly loved to look upon as those cattle.'

      "Jove told him he would wreck our ship as soon as it was 385 well away from land, and the Sun said no more. I know all this because Calypso told me, and she had it from Mercury.

      "My men feasted six days – alarmed by the most awful 397 prodigies; for the skins of the cattle kept walking about, and the joints of meat lowed while they were being roasted. On the seventh day the wind dropped and we got away from the island, but as soon as we were out of sight of land a sudden squall sprang up, during which Jove struck our ship with his thunderbolts and broke it up. All my men were drowned, and so too should I have been, had I not made myself a raft by lashing the mast (which I found floating about) and the ship's keel together.

      ["The wind, which during the squall came from the West, 426 now changed to the South, and blew all night, so that by morning I was back between Scylla and Charybdis again. My raft got carried down the whirlpool, but I clung on to the boughs of the fig tree, for a weary weary while, during which I felt as impatient as a magistrate who is detained in court by troublesome cases when he wants to get home to dinner. But in the course of time my raft worked its way out again, and when it was underneath me I dropped on to it and was carried out of the pool. Happily for me Jove did not let Scylla see me.]29

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      1

      See Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey, by R. C. Jebb, 1888, p. 106.

      2

      Bentley, Macmillan, 1892, p. 148.

      3

      Homer, Macmillan, 1878, p. 2.

      4

      Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, Longman, 1850, Vol. I, p. 404.

      5

      Shakespeare, of course, is the whole chain of the Alps, comprising both Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

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1

See Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey, by R. C. Jebb, 1888, p. 106.

2

Bentley, Macmillan, 1892, p. 148.

3

Homer, Macmillan, 1878, p. 2.

4

Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, Longman, 1850, Vol. I, p. 404.

5

Shakespeare, of course, is the whole chain of the Alps, comprising both Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

6

Iliad, III. 126.

7

Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. VII. 170-88, and Introduction to Homer, 3rd edit. 1888, pp. 57-62, and Appendix, Note 1.

8

Journal of Philology, Vol. XXIV. p. 39, &c.

9

Temesa was on the West side of the toe of Italy and was once famous for its copper mines, which, however, were worked out in Strabo's time. See Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography.

10

Heading Νηρίτῳ instead of Νηίῳ, cf. Book xiii. 96, &c., and 351, where the same harbour is obviously intended.

11

i. e. "flowing," or with a current in it.

12

The mountain is singular, as though it were an isolated mountain rather than a range that was in the mind of the writer. It is also singular, not plural, in the parallel cases of xv. 175 and xix. 538.

13

Reading ὑπονηρίτου for ὑπονηίου, cf.i. 186 and also xiii. 351.

14

The reader will note that the fact of Orestes having also killed his mother is not expressly stated here, nor in any of the three other passages in which the revenge taken by Orestes is referred to – doubtless as being too horrible. The other passages are Od. i. 40 and 299 (not given in this summary), and xi. 408, &c.

15

For fuller translation and explanation why I have bracketed the passage, see Chapter VI.

16

It is curious that the sleeping arrangements made by Helen for Telemachus and Pisistratus, as also those made for Ulysses by Queen Arete (vii. 336, &c.), though taken almost verbatim from those made by Achilles for Priam and Idicus (Il. xxiv. 643-47 and СКАЧАТЬ