by Peter Wright

Pages 82-3, Lines 1-27. This second, shorter, Council of Gods has been suspected of being the result of interpolation or re-composition, given that Athena repeats her account of Odysseus’ misery in exile, though adding a reference to his son’s journey and peril, moreover using lines mainly taken from earlier books of the Odyssey (Books ii, 230-5; iv, 554-8, 699-700, which Morris’s translation largely rewords here). It has been supposed that some earlier version of the epic used the longer Council in the first Book to introduce immediately Odysseus‘ own adventures and deeds, before the role of his son was expanded. In the text as we know it, however, Telemachus’ return from abroad and meeting with his father away from his home, and his later assistance in his father’s revenge (which require his preceding departure), cannot be easily extracted from the plot of the concluding books. Probably this brief repetition may be explained by epic narrative method not permitting the use of short ‘flashbacks’. Also rhapsodes who wanted to concentrate in performance on Odysseus might wish to have a suitable brief transition.

Page 82, Lines 1-2. Tithonus. Son of Laomedon, king of Troy, and elder brother of King Priam. This beautiful youth was desired and carried off by the Dawn Goddess. She obtained from the Gods immortality for him, but forgot to ask also for perpetual youth, so that he inevitably grew old: of which Homer does not certainly seem aware here. The abduction and ageing are first definitively reported in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218--257. (Tennyson’s "Tithonus" imagines his fate and feelings.) These two lines are identical with the first two of Iliad, Book XI.

Page 83, Line 22. the Cloud-packs’ Herder. i.e. Driver

Page 83, Line 29. our tidings to speed. In the Odyssey Hermes is Zeus’ chief messenger, not Iris the rainbow, as in the Iliad.

Page 83, Lines 34-5. Scheria ... the  Phaaecians. A legendary land and people.

Page 83, Line 38. weed. garments

Page 83, Lines 44-5. his shoon … over the wave hey him bear. Homer does not specify as Virgil does in the imitated passage in Aeneid, Book 4, 239-46, that Hermes’  footwear for flying have wings.

Page 83, Lines 47-8. his wand wherewithal he lulleth the eyelids of men. (cf. line 87) Hermes, guide of spirits to the Land of the Dead, has also mastery of mortals’ sleep.

Page 83, Line 50. over Pieria. The narrow strip of coastland north-east of Thessaly, beyond Mount Olympus. Hermes apparently starts his flight to Calypso’s island by going eastward; perhaps to get to sea level sooner.

Page 83, Line 51. a sea-mew. Tr. ‘laros: a cormorant.

Page 83, Line 56. dark-blue. Tr. 'ioeideos': violet-coloured.

Page 83, Line 60. sandal, that is ’sandal wood’. The Greek ‘thuos’ means some scented wood.

Page 83, Line 93. meat of the Deathless  Ambrosia. (apparently sweet-tasting, and smelling; cf. Book iv, 443: possibly imagined as a distillation of honey) The food of the Gods and nectar, their drink; cf. lines 196-200; Iliad, Books I, 598; IV, 2-3. Homer‘s gods (unlike his heroes) are never reported as eating meat, but must be contented with the savour of bones burnt, enclosed in fat: for the tale how Prometheus tricked Zeus into accepting this division of the sacrifice, see Hesiod, Theogony, 533-57.

Page 86, Lines 108-10. against Athena they sinned. Here the goddess’s anger (mentioned in Book iii, 135, 145, is strangely said, contradicting Book iv, 494-5, to have harmed the whole Achaean fleet.

Page 86, Lines 121-4. Orion ... the Rosy-fingered Day … Artemis ... Ortygia. Orion, in other myths presented as a gigantic hunter (cf. Book xi, 572-50), who engaged in punishable sexual violence against maidens and even goddesses, appears here as a handsome youth, arousing desire in such goddesses, including the Dawn goddess, and perhaps even Artemis, who let him join her company of huntresses, but was tricked by her brother Apollo into shooting Orion, fatally, in the head while he was swimming near Delos, whose original name was Ortygia.

Page 86, Lines 125-8. Demeter … Iasion. Demeter’s lying with the luckless Iasion (hardly known otherwise) in the ploughed fallow may be related to her function as the protectress of the cornfields and their harvest.

Page 86, Lines 130-4. For the final wreck of Odysseus’ ship, see Book xii, 399-419.

Page 87, Line 163. the deck beams. Tr. 'ikria': a platform of beams.

Page 88, Line 185. Styx the downlong water. The river Styx over which ghosts were carried into Hades (cf. Iliad, Book VIII, 369); by which gods swore their most binding oaths: Iliad, Books II, 755; XIV, 271; XV, 37.

Page 90, Line 229. his kirtle. Tr. ‘chiton’: tunic.

Page 90, Line 246. wimbles. gimlets for boring.

Page 91, Line 255. a rudder. Tr. ‘pedalion’: really a steering oar, over the side.

Page 91, Line 261. handspikes. Tr.  ‘mcchloi’: levers or crowbars.

Page 91, Lines 272-7. the Pleiads … Bootes ... the Bear … the Wain … Orion. These were among the earliest constellations that the Hellenes recognised. Their risings and settings indicated seasons both for farming and for sailing: Hesiod, Works and Days, 564-677. The Pleiads’ rising marked the start of the sailing season. The [Great] Bear or Wain, which Bootes drove, includes the Pole Star, which never ‘bathes’ in the sea: Odysseus must observe it, as Calypso advised, on his left to the north to ensure that his course is directed eastward. The sinking of the Pleiads and rising of Orion after the end of summer foretold storms, so that wise men laid up their ships: Hesiod, Works and Days, 618-25.

Page 91, Lines 277-8. for seventeen days and ten. This figure, if not conventional: cf. Book vii, 233, suggests that the poet imagined the distance from Calypso’s island  to the Phaeacians to be double that from the southern end of Greece, at Cape Malea, to the coast of Libya, which Odysseus’ ships traversed, under a high wind, in nine days: cf. Book ix, 79-84.

Page 92, Line 279. on the eighteenth day    Calypso’s isle was very far to the west.

Page 92, Line 282. from the Aethiopians’ abode. cf. Book i, lines 23-30.

Page 92, Line 283. from the hills of the Solymi. The Solymi were a people living within mountains north and north-east of  Lycia, which projects southward near the west end of Asia Minor‘s southern coast. Herodotus suggests (History, Book 1, ch. 173) that this mountain folk had been driven up thither by the historic Lycians or Termilae, supposedly immigrants from Crete.

The Solymi were defeated by Bellerophon in the second of the battles to which the Lycian king exposed him to procure his death, at the request of his son-in-law Proetus, king of Argos, who suspected that hero, wrongly, of seducing his wife: Iliad,  Book VI, 171-90, esp. 184-5. Morris, in ‘Bellerophon in Lycia’ (the last of the classical tales of his Earthly Paradise), lines 331-640,  has made them the first and least formidable of the hero’s adversaries, portrayed (by the king) as rude, impious, and rebellious barbarians.

Homer presumably imagines Poseidon seeing his enemy as he passes above those mountains on his way north-west back from the Aethiopians towards Olympus. Gods can see far over an earth which is a flat disc.

Page 92, Line 292. the tri-spear. The trident, Poseidon’s usual weapon, derived  from one used to spear tunnies.

Page 92, Line 294. the lift. The upper air; Tr. ‘ouranothen’: from the sky.

Page 93, Line 310. about the son of Peleus. The Aiithiopis reported a great battle to deliver the corpse of Achilles, after he had been shot, presumably resembling that over Patroclus’ body described in Iliad, Books XVII and XVIII: cf. Greek Epic Fragments, ed. West, 113.

Page 93, Lines 332-3. Cadmus’ daughter Ino ... Leucothea hight. Athamas, a prince in Boeotia, took as his second wife Ino, daughter of Cadmus founder of Thebes. Out of jealousy, she procured a crop failure, and a falsified oracle which ordered, to propitiate the gods, the sacrifice of Phrixus and Helle, his children by his first marriage to the cloud-nymph Nephele; who, however, sent a winged, golden-fleeced ram to rescue them. It bore Phrixus, Helle falling off during the flight, to Colchis, where he (unkindly) sacrificed the ram, thus producing the Fleece which became the object of the Argonauts’ quest. Morris gave in Book 1 of his Jason a full account of this story, and its sequel, with much elaboration and some variations, told by King Pelias of Iolchus, to justify his sending Jason to seek the Fleece, instead of yielding up the kingship which he had usurped from Jason’s father Aeson. (They were all Aeolids, descended from Athamas’ niece Tyro: see Odyssey, Book xi, 235-52.)

Later, not because of  Ino’s misdeeds, but in another display of stepmotherliness, Hera, because Ino had nursed Dionysus, her sister Semele’s child by Zeus, drove Athamas mad: he shot one of his sons by her, and chased her until she leapt with the other son into the sea: where some gods made them divine, Ino becoming the sea-goddess Leucothea, ‘White Goddess’ or ‘Runner on White [Foam]’.  No explanation is offered for her change of character into one compassionate towards endangered sea-farers.

Page 95, Lines 380-1. his fair-maned horses … to Aegae. In Iliad, Book XIII, 17-31, Poseidon’s underwater palace is at Aegae, possibly close to the Aegean’s north coast, possibly near a place in Euboea where stood a temple to him. Those lines also describe his chariot riding above the waves, escorted by creatures of the sea.

Page 95, Line 382. the Damsel, the Daughter of Zeus. Athena, who in Book xiii, 341-3, explains that, out of respect, she could not sooner oppose her wrathful uncle Poseidon; cf. Book vi, 325-31.

Page 96, Line 396. the God of wrong. Tr. ‘stugeros … daimon’: a hateful spirit.

Page 97, Line 422. the god, the Mighty. Tr. ‘mega daimon’: a great spirit.

Page 97, Line 424. Amphitrite. An Oceanid nymph, later consort to Poseidon.

Page 97, Line 432. a cuttle-fish. Tr. ‘poulupodos’: a many-armed kind of cephalopod, not necessarily the ink-spewing cuttle-fish.

Page 99, Line 488. a brand. A firebrand.