by Peter Wright

Page 17, Line 1. Mother of Dawning. Morris is translating for the Dawn 'erigeneia'. usually rendered ‘early born’. 

Page 17, Lines 6-7. to the meeting-place …  the people. The assembly (‘agora‘) which Telemachus has ordered the heralds, such as Pisenor (line 38), to summon is in archaic Greek practice to hear announcements from the rulers, or debates between them, but not to make decisions on its own authority, as that of a democratic city such as Athens later did. Rulers could, however, learn from its reaction to their speeches the set of communal opinion, as did Agamemnon in Iliad, Book II, when after he has suggested withdrawing from the siege of Troy, the assembled army makes in haste for its ships, and can only with difficulty be called back. Here (lines 81-3, 239-41) Telemachus is only offered ineffective sympathy.

Page 17, Line 14. his father’s high seat    ‘thokos’. Telemachus, having reached manhood, is assuming, probably for the first time, Odysseus’ central) position.

Page 18, Lines 19-22. Antiphus the war-fain; the wild Cyclops slew him outright. The poet assumes that his audience is already acquainted with some of Odysseus’ adventures, as related in Book ix, I (where Antiphus is not named).

Page 18, Line 37. the staff. It was the practice in such meetings for speakers to hold a staff (’skeptron’) while they were addressing them, and resign it at the end of such a speech: cf. line 80.

Page 18, Lines 51-55. Cf, Book i, lines 277-80.

Page 18, Line 68. by Themis’ head. Themis was the goddess who oversaw orderly public behavior.

Page 18, Lines 75-79. But more would be my gain. Telemachus presumably means that if the whole people had been thus wasting his property, he would be entitled to claim compensation from all of them for his losses, like that which Eurymachus vainly offers to Odysseus near the start of Book xxii.

Page 18, Line 75. my fee. Tr. for ‘probasin; cattle. In Old English ‘feoh‘ signified beasts that a man owned. 

Line 20, Line 89. Three years have worn away. It was not until six or seven years after the Trojan war had ended, with her husband still not returned, that the Wooers had begun to put pressure on Penelope to remarry, when her new spouse would probably, her son still being underage, assume for a time control of the royal possessions. In effect (lines 105-6) the Wooers have only in the last, fourth, year, begun their feasting in Odysseus; house for that purpose.

Page 20, Line 94. a warp of worth. Tr. for ‘megan iston’, the loom with upright beams, which has weighted warp-threads (suspended from a cross-beam), across which the transverse threads of the weft or woof of the ‘web’ (line 97) are drawn horizontally. See the picture, from a 5^th-century Attic vase, of an ancient Greek loom, with Penelope grieving beside it, in M. R. Scherer, The Legends of Troy in Art and Literature (Phaidon, 1963), p. 168; fig. 142.

Page 20, Line 120. Tyro. See Note on Book xi, lines 235-259.

Alcmene. See Note on Book xi, lines 266-70.

Mycene of the crown. The eponym of the chief city of the leading kingdom of the Eastern Peloponnese. No tales about her are extant. Crown’ means a wreath.

Page 22, Line 135. the Hateful, the Wreakers. The Furies (‘Eriniues‘), who punished wrongs between kindred, as avengers of his mother’s injuries.

Page 22, Line 146. ernes. eagles

Page 23, Line 159. the lore of fowl.  Divination by the flight of birds.

Page 23, Line 166. Ithaca shining out clear. tr. ‘eudeieleos’: easy to see from far off

Page 23, Line 185. Expecting a gift from thine household. For ‘from’ read ‘for’.

Page 25, Line 222. howe. burial mound

Page 25, Line 224. Mentor. The use of the name of Mentor for a young man’s sententious older companion and counselor derives less from Homer’s character as portrayed in Books ii and iii, than from the ‘Mentor’ (Athene/Minerva in human disguise), who in the didactic romance, Telemaque, by Bishop Fenelon, written to instruct his pupil, the duke of Burgundy, grandson and prospective heir to Louis XIV of France, shows that Mentor accompanying Telemachus in a prolonged journey round many Mediterranean realms, learning, often by contraries, the skills and duties of kingship.

Page 27, Line 290. enow. enough

Page 27, Line 300. singeing the swine. Burning off their bristles.

Page 27, Line 319. As a merchant. tr.  ‘emporos’. Presumably as a passenger. 

Page 27, Line 328. unto Ephyra. Recalling Odysseus’ quest for poison there: Book i, 261-6.

Page 29, Line 337. down he wended to his father’s treasury. The storehouse (often called a ‘thalamos’) where kings kept their treasures was apparently often on a lower level; cf. Book xv, line 99. It is not clear, however, that either the locked storehouse from which Penelope brings Odysseus’ great bow, in Book xxi, lines 7-12, 42-60; or the one where Odysseus and his son hide the arms from the hall (Book xix, lines 29-40) and from which some are brought out in Book xxii, are identical with that described here.

Page 29, Line 341. Unblended. i.e. with water.

Page 29, Line 349. pitchers. Tr. ’amphiphoreusin’. Better ’jars’; larger than the pitchers used for pouring.