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The Odyssey | Homer, Butler Tr. | |
FOOTNOTES |
Page 9 of 17 |
{84} Literally "for the ways of the night and of the day are near." I have seen what Mr. Andrew Lang says ("Homer and the Epic," p.236, and "Longman's Magazine" for January, 1898, p.277) about the "amber route" and the "Sacred Way" in this connection; but until he gives his grounds for holding that the Mediterranean peoples in the Odyssean age used to go far North for their amber instead of getting it in Sicily, where it is still found in considerable quantities, I do not know what weight I ought to attach to his opinion. I have been unable to find grounds for asserting that B.C. 1000 there was any commerce between the Mediterranean and the "Far North," but I shall be very ready to learn if Mr. Lang will enlighten me. See "The Authoress of the Odyssey" pp. 185-186. {85} One would have thought that when the sun was driving the stag down to the water, Ulysses might have observed its whereabouts. {86} See Hobbes of Malmesbury's translation. {87} "Il." vxiii. 349. Again the writer draws from the washing the body of Patroclus--which offends. {88} This visit is wholly without topographical significance. {89} Brides presented themselves instinctively to the imagination of the writer, as the phase of humanity which she found most interesting. {90} Ulysses was, in fact, to become a missionary and preach Neptune to people who knew not his name. I was fortunate enough to meet in Sicily a woman carrying one of these winnowing shovels; it was not much shorter than an oar, and I was able at once to see what the writer of the "Odyssey" intended. |
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The Odyssey Homer, Butler Tr. |
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