第 95 节

196. The two Sirens doubtless were, as their name suggests, the whistling gusts, or avalanches of air that at times descend without a moment’s warning from the two lofty mountains of Salinas—as also from all high points in the neighbourhood.]

[103] [ See Admiral Smyth on the currents in the Straits of Messina, quoted in “The Authoress of the Odyssey,” p. 197.]

[104] [ In the islands of Favognana and Marettimo off Trapani I have seen men fish exactly as here described. They chew bread into a paste and throw it into the sea to attract the fish, which they then spear. No line is used.]

[105] [ The writer evidently regards Ulysses as on a coast that looked East at no great distance south of the Straits of Messina somewhere, say, near Tauromenium, now Taormina.]

[106] [ Surely there must be a line missing here to tell us that the keel and mast were carried down into Charybdis. Besides, the aorist {Greek} in its present surrounding is perplexing. I have translated it as though it were an imperfect; I see Messrs. Butcher and Lang translate it as a pluperfect, but surely Charybdis was in the act of sucking down the water when Ulysses arrived.]

[107] [ I suppose the passage within brackets to have been an afterthought but to have been written by the same hand as the rest of the poem. I suppose xii. 103 to have been also added by the writer when she decided on sending Ulysses back to Charybdis. The simile suggests the hand of the wife or daughter of a magistrate who had often seen her father come in cross and tired.]

[108] [ Gr. πολυδαίδαλος. This puts coined money out of the question, but nevertheless implies that the gold had been worked into ornaments of some kind.]

[109] [ I suppose Teiresias’ prophecy of bk. xi. 114-120 had made no impression on Ulysses. More probably the prophecy was an afterthought, intercalated, as I have already said, by the authoress when she changed her scheme.]

[110] [ A male writer would have made Ulysses say, not “may you give satisfaction to your wives,” but “may your wives give satisfaction to you.”]

[111] [ See note [64].]

[112] [ The land was in reality the shallow inlet, now the salt works of S. Cusumano—the neighbourhood of Trapani and Mt. Eryx being made to do double duty, both as Scheria and Ithaca. Hence the necessity for making Ulysses set out after dark, fall instantly into a profound sleep, and wake up on a morning so foggy that he could not see anything till the interviews between Neptune and Jove and between Ulysses and Minerva should have given the audience time to accept the situation. See illustrations and map near the end of bks. v. and vi. respectively.]

[113] [ This cave, which is identifiable with singular completeness, is now called the “grotta del toro,” probably a corruption of “tesoro,” for it is held to contain a treasure. See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 167-170.]

[114] [ Probably they would.]

[115] [ Then it had a shallow shelving bottom.]

[116] [ Doubtless the road would pass the harbour in Odyssean times as it passes the salt works now; indeed, if there is to be a road at all there is no other level ground which it could take. See map above referred to.]

[117] [ The rock at the end of the Northern harbour of Trapani, to which I suppose the writer of the “Odyssey” to be here referring, still bears the name Malconsiglio—“the rock of evil counsel.” There is a legend that it was a ship of Turkish pirates who were intending to attack Trapani, but the “Madonna di Trapani” crushed them under this rock just as they were coming into port. My friend Cavaliere Giannitrapani of Trapani told me that his father used to tell him when he was a boy that if he would drop exactly three drops of oil on to the water near the rock, he would see the ship still at the bottom. The legend is evidently a Christianised version of the Odyssean story, while the name supplies the additional detail that the disaster happened in consequence of an evil counsel.]

[118] [ It would seem then that the ship had got all the way back from Ithaca in about a quarter of an hour.]

[119] [ And may we not add “and also to prevent his recognising that he was only in the place where he had met Nausicaa two days earlier.”]

[120] [ All this is to excuse the entire absence of Minerva from books ix.-xii., which I suppose had been written already, before the authoress had determined on making Minerva so prominent a character.]

[121] [ We have met with this somewhat lame attempt to cover the writer’s change of scheme at the end of bk. vi.]

[122] [ I take the following from The Authoress of the Odyssey, p. 167. “It is clear from the text that there were two [caves] not one, but some one has enclosed in brackets the two lines in which the second cave is mentioned, I presume because he found himself puzzled by having a second cave sprung upon him when up to this point he had only been told of one.

“I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have been puzzled, for there are two caves, distant about 80 or 100 yards from one another.” The cave in which Ulysses hid his treasure is, as I have already said, identifiable with singular completeness. The other cave presents no special features, neither in the poem nor in nature.]

[123] [ There is no attempt to disguise the fact that Penelope had long given encouragement to the suitors. The only defence set up is that she did not really mean to encourage them. Would it not have been wiser to have tried a little discouragement?]

[124] [ See map near the end of bk. vi. _Ruccazzù dei corvi_ of course means “the rock of the ravens.” Both name and ravens still exist.]

[125] [ See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 140, 141. The real reason for sending Telemachus to Pylos and Lacedaemon was that the authoress might get Helen of Troy into her poem. He was sent at the only point in the story at which he could be sent, so he must have gone then or not at all.]

[126] [ The site I assign to Eumaeus’s hut, close to the _Ruccazzù dei corvi_, is about 2,000 feet above the sea, and commands an extensive view.]

[127] [ Sandals such as Eumaeus was making are still worn in the Abruzzi and elsewhere. An oblong piece of leather forms the sole: holes are cut at the four corners, and through these holes leathern straps are passed, which are bound round the foot and cross-gartered up the calf.]

[128] [ See note [75] : ]

[129] [ Telemachus like many another good young man seems to expect every one to fetch and carry for him.]

[130] [ “Il.” vi. 288. The store room was fragrant because it was made of cedar wood. See “Il.” xxiv. 192.]

[131] [ cf. “Il.” vi. 289 and 293-296. The dress was kept at the bottom of the chest as one that would only be wanted on the greatest occasions; but surely the marriage of Hermione and of Megapenthes (bk, iv. _ad init_.) might have induced Helen to wear it on the preceding evening, in which case it could hardly have got back. We find no hint here of Megapenthes’ recent marriag