BOOK XXIV.

FOOTNOTES:

AL PROFESSORE

CAV. BIAGIO INGROIA,

PREZIOSO ALLEATO

L’AUTORE RICONOSCENTE.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

This translation is intended to supplement a work entitled “The

Authoress of the Odyssey”, which I published in 1897. I could not give

the whole “Odyssey” in that book without making it unwieldy, I

therefore epitomised my translation, which was already completed and

which I now publish in full.

I shall not here argue the two main points dealt with in the work just

mentioned; I have nothing either to add to, or to withdraw from, what I

have there written. The points in question are:

(1) that the “Odyssey” was written entirely at, and drawn entirely

from, the place now called Trapani on the West Coast of Sicily, alike

as regards the Phaeacian and the Ithaca scenes; while the voyages of

Ulysses, when once he is within easy reach of Sicily, solve themselves

into a periplus of the island, practically from Trapani back to

Trapani, via the Lipari islands, the Straits of Messina, and the island

of Pantellaria.

(2) That the poem was entirely written by a very young woman, who lived

at the place now called Trapani, and introduced herself into her work

under the name of Nausicaa.

The main arguments on which I base the first of these somewhat

startling contentions, have been prominently and repeatedly before the

English and Italian public ever since they appeared (without rejoinder)

in the “Athenaeum” for January 30 and February 20, 1892. Both

contentions were urged (also without rejoinder) in the Johnian “Eagle”

for the Lent and October terms of the same year. Nothing to which I

should reply has reached me from any quarter, and knowing how anxiously

I have endeavoured to learn the existence of any flaws in my argument,

I begin to feel some confidence that, did such flaws exist, I should

have heard, at any rate about some of them, before now. Without,

therefore, for a moment pretending to think that scholars generally

acquiesce in my conclusions, I shall act as thinking them little likely

so to gainsay me as that it will be incumbent upon me to reply, and

shall confine myself to translating the “Odyssey” for English readers,

with such notes as I think will be found useful. Among these I would

especially call attention to one on xxii. 465-473 which Lord Grimthorpe

has kindly allowed me to make public.

I have repeated several of the illustrations used in “The Authoress of

the Odyssey”, and have added two which I hope may bring the outer court

of Ulysses’ house more vividly before the reader. I should like to

explain that the presence of a man and a dog in one illustration is

accidental, and was not observed by me till I developed the negative.

In an appendix I have also reprinted the paragraphs explanatory of the

plan of Ulysses’ house, together with the plan itself. The reader is

recommended to study this plan with some attention.

In the preface to my translation of the “Iliad” I have given my views

as to the main principles by which a translator should be guided, and

need not repeat them here, beyond pointing out that the initial liberty

of translating poetry into prose involves the continual taking of more

or less liberty throughout the translation; for much that is right in

poetry is wrong in prose, and the exigencies of readable prose are the

first things to be considered in a prose translation. That the reader,

however, may see how far I have departed from strict construe, I will

print here Messrs. Butcher and Lang’s translation of the sixty lines or

so of the “Odyssey.” Their translation runs:

Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered far and

wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy, and many were the

men whose towns he saw and whose mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes

he suffered in his heart on the deep, striving to win his own life and

the return of his company. Nay, but even so he saved not his company,

though he desired it sore. For through the blindness of their own

hearts they perished, fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion:

but the god took from them their day of returning. Of these things,

goddess, daughter of Zeus, whencesoever thou hast heard thereof,

declare thou even unto us.

Now all the rest, as many as fled from sheer destruction, were at

home, and had escaped both war and sea, but Odysseus only, craving

for his wife and for his homeward path, the lady nymph Calypso

held, that fair goddess, in her hollow caves, longing to have him

for her lord. But when now the year had come in the courses of the

seasons, wherein the gods had ordained that he should return home

to Ithaca, not even there was he quit of labours, not even among

his own; but all the gods had pity on him save Poseidon, who raged

continually against godlike Odysseus, till he came to his own

country. Howbeit Poseidon had now departed for the distant

Ethiopians, the Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the

uttermost of men, abiding some where Hyperion sinks and some where

he rises. There he looked to receive his hecatomb of bulls and

rams, there he made merry sitting at the feast, but the other gods

were gathered in the halls of Olympian Zeus. Then among them the

father of men and gods began to speak, for he bethought him in his

heart of noble Aegisthus, whom the son of Agamemnon, far-famed

Orestes, slew. Thinking upon him he spake out among the Immortals:

‘Lo you now, how vainly mortal men do blame the gods! For of us

they say comes evil, whereas they even of themselves, through the

blindness of their own hearts, have sorrows beyond that which is

ordained. Even as of late Aegisthus, beyond that which was

ordained, took to him the wedded wife of the son of Atreus, and

killed her lord on his return, and that with sheer doom before his

eyes, since we had warned him by the embassy of Hermes the

keen-sighted, the slayer of Argos, that he should neither kill the

man, nor woo his wife. For the son of Atreus shall be avenged at

the hand of Orestes, so soon as he shall come to man’s estate and

long for his own country. So spake Hermes, yet he prevailed not on

the heart of Aegisthus, for all his good will; but now hath he paid

one price for all.’

And the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, answered him, saying: ‘O father,

our father Cronides, throned in the highest; that man assuredly

lies in a death that is his due; so perish likewise all who work

such deeds! But my heart is rent for wise Odysseus, the hapless

one, who far from his friends this long while suffereth affliction

in a sea-girt isle, where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle,

and therein a goddess hath her habitation, the daughter of the

wizard Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and himself

upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky asunder. His

daughter it is that holds the hapless man in sorrow: and ever with

soft and guileful tales she is wooing him to forgetfulness of

Ithaca. But Odysseus yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap

upwards from his own land, hath a desire to die. As for thee, thine

heart regardeth it not at all, Olympian! What! Did not Odysseus by

the ships of the Argives make thee free offering of sacrifice in

the wide Trojan land? Wherefore wast thou then so wroth with him, O

Zeus?’

The “Odyssey” (as every one knows) abounds in passages borrowed from

the “Iliad”; I had wished to print these in a slightly different type,

with marginal references to the “Iliad,” and had marked them to this

end in my MS. I found, however, that the translation would be thus

hopelessly scholasticised, and abandoned my intention. I would

nevertheless urge on those who have the management of our University

presses, that they would render a great service to students if they

would publish a Greek text of the “Odyssey” with the Iliadic passages

printed in a different type, and with marginal references. I have given

the British Museum a copy of the “Odyssey” with the Iliadic passages

underlined and referred to in MS.; I have also given an “Iliad” marked

with all the Odyssean passages, and their references; but copies of

both the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” so marked ought to be within easy reach

of all students.

Any one who at the present day discusses the questions that have arisen

round the “Iliad” since Wolf’s time, without keeping it well before his

reader’s mind that the “Odyssey” was demonstrably written from one

single neighbourhood, and hence (even though nothing else pointed to

this conclusion) presumably by one person only—that it was written

certainly before 750, and in all probability before 1000 B.C.—that the

writer of this very early poem was demonstrably familiar with the

“Iliad” as we now have it, borrowing as freely from those books whose

genuineness has been most impugned, as from those which are admitted to

be by Homer—any one who fails to keep these points before his readers,

is hardly dealing equitably by them. Any one on the other hand, who

will mark his “Iliad” and his “Odyssey” from the copies in the British

Museum above referred to, and who will draw the only inference that

common sense can draw from the presence of so many identical passages

in both poems, will, I believe, find no difficulty in assigning their

proper value to a large number of books here and on the Continent that

at present enjoy considerable reputations. Furthermore, and this

perhaps is an advantage better worth securing, he will find that many

puzzles of the “Odyssey” cease to puzzle him on the discovery that they

arise from over-saturation with the “Iliad.”

Other difficulties will also disappear as soon as the development of

the poem in the writer’s mind is understood. I have dealt with this at

some length in pp. 251-261 of “The Authoress of the Odyssey”. Briefly,

the “Odyssey” consists of two distinct poems: (1) The Return of

Ulysses, which alone the Muse is asked to sing in the opening lines of

the poem. This poem includes the Phaeacian episode, and the account of

Ulysses’ adventures as told by himself in Books ix.-xii. It consists of

lines 1-79 (roughly) of Book i., of line 28 of Book v., and thence

without intermission to the middle of line 187 of Book xiii., at which

point the original scheme was abandoned.

(2) The story of Penelope and the suitors, with the episode of

Telemachus’ voyage to Pylos. This poem begins with line 80 (roughly) of