William Morris Archive

by Peter Wright

Page 126, Line 26. elders. Tr. ‘medontes’: rulers.

Page 126, Line 30. a flitting. Tr. ‘pompe’: a sending off.

Page 126, Line 35. shipmen fifty and two. Presumably fifty oarsmen and two officers; cf. line 48. The Phaeacian vessels do not need a steersman, but know whether they are meant to go, as is explained later, lines 557-61.

Page 127, Line 53. thole-bights. Tr. ‘tropoi’: straps’ which held the oar in place, instead of a rowlock.

Page 127, Line 64. of his eyesight had she reft him. A source, along with the reference in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, lines 172-3, to a ’ blind singer from Chios’, for the belief that Homer himself was blind. In the Iliad, Book II, 594-600, the Muses were said to have blinded the bard Thamyris for boasting that he could surpass them.

Page 128, Lines 75-82. the Strife of Odysseus and Achilles. This story, of which no more is known, of a quarrel between two Achaean leaders, is probably one of many such tales of disputes, of which Homer selected that between Agamemnon and Achilles to furnish the central theme of the Iliad.

Page 129, Line 80. in Pythos the very lovely. The older name for Delphi, from that of the monstrous serpent Python  lying there, which Apollo slew, thus gaining possession of the oracle there.

Page 128-9, Lines 102-3. the play of fists ...  the wrestling ... the leaping ... the swift-foot race. Four of the main contests at Hellenic games; leaping was a long, not a high, jump.

Page 129, Lines 111-19. Homer, having presented his Phaeacians as skilled sea-farers, and lovers of that skill: cf. Book vi, 268-72; has given many of them names associated with the sea, and the ship (‘naus’ or ‘neus’), its parts and equipment; e.g. Nauteus; Prymneus: ‘Stern-y’; Eretmeus: ‘Oar-y’; Anchialus: ‘Near-the-Salt’; Ponteus: ;High Sea-ish’; Proreus; ‘Prow-y’; Anabesineus: ‘Boarder’; Tecton: ‘Carpenter’; Halius:  ‘Salty’.

Page 129, Line 129. casting the stone. Not putting the weight, but casting a discus.

Page 131-33, 139-40, Lines 158-233, 398-415. The taunting of Odysseus by Euryalus, his resentment and boast in return, and Euryalus’ later apology, and gift of a sword, are curiously like the taunting in Beowulf by Unferth of Beowulf, his assertion of his prowess, and Unferth’s later regret and provision of a sword to fight Grendel’s mother. The Anglo-Saxon poet can hardly have known the Odyssey; but did Morris notice the similarity when he was translating Beowulf about 1893.

Page 131-32, Lines 188-92. the stone ... Right great and thick to handle. An outsize discus.

Page 133, Line 219. Philoctetes. See Note on Book iii, 190.

Page 133, Lines 224-8. Heracles … Eurytus the Oechalean. Eurytus was famed for skill in archery, and had indeed given teaching in it even to Heracles. It was the great bow inherited from him, that his son Iphitus had once given to Odysseus, which was to be used in the archery contest which provided the climax of Odysseus’ revenge: Book xxi, 11-41. Eurytus’ fate is diversely related: besides his slaying for daring to rival Apollo’s shooting, as told here, the more common version was that, having lost to Heracles in a shooting competition, Eurytus refused to yield the prize, his daughter Iole. Heracles eventually sacked Oechalia, killing Eurytus and carrying off Iole, which gave the occasion for his jealous wife Deianeira to send, unwittingly, the poisoned robe which killed him, as is told in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis. The position of Oechalia is uncertain: in the Iliad it is placed in Thessaly: Book II, 730; but later sometimes in Euboea, as by Sophocles.

Pages 134-38, Lines 266-367. The tale of Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus, possibly invented by Homer for entertainment, having no serious bearing on gods or men, provides an example of how the Hellenes were able to laugh, irking the philosophers, at their anthropomorphic gods.

Page 135, Lines 283, 294. Lemnos ... the Sintians. The island of Lemnos in the northern Aegean, owing to its traces of volcanic activity, was reckoned to contain one of Hephaestus’ smithies. He landed there after being thrown out of ‘Godhome’ by an angry Zeus and falling a whole day, and was relieved by its original inhabitants, the Sintians: Iliad, Book I, 586-92; cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, 741-6.

Page 135, Line 288. Cytherea the crowne. Aphrodite had Cytherea as an epithet, because in the myth telling how she was born of the foam (’aphros’) of the sea, she had first come near land beside the isle of Cythera, south of Cape Malea, at the south-east extremity of the Peloponnese: Hesiod, Theogony, 192-3.

Page 136, Lines 318-9. Till all those gifts of wooing her father pays me aback. In Books i--ii, Penelope’s father Icarius had given with her a substantial dowry. Here, however, Hephaestus has paid Zeus a ‘bride-price’ for his unfaithful daughter, to be returned to the husband when she is divorced.

Page 137, Line 332. the fine he owes. Tr. ‘moichargia’: compensation for adultery.

Page 138, Lines 362-3. unto Cyprus and the place Of Paphos. Aphrodite, whose worship probably came to Greece from the East where such goddesses of desire and fertility as Astarte were honoured, may have been brought via Cyprus, where at Paphos was one of her most important temples.

Page 139, Line 390. twelve renowned kings. Tr. ‘basilees’: meaning aristocratic leaders, Alcinous’ individual kingship is often indicated by variants of the word ‘anax’

Page 141, Lines 447-8. With a crafty knot. Achaeans of the epic period had not yet learnt the use of metal locks on chests.

Page 143, Lines 492-4. Epeius. A champion boxer, of a family from Phocis, (not related to the Epeians of Elis), see Iliad, Book XXIII, 664-99; but not recorded in battle; also the concept of the Horse is ascribed to Odysseus and his patron Athena.

Page 143, Lines 503-5. the Trojans themselves had drawn it to the topmost burg. The acropolis. This passage does not mention the breaking down of the else invulnerable, God-built walls of Troy to let in the Horse, required by its size; an opening up of the city, which would remove the need for the hidden ambush of the heroes inside it.

Page 143, Line 517. Deiphobus. See note on Book iv, lines 270-88.

Page 144, Lines 523-31. as a wife falls clinging to her mate … who … hath fallen in war. The mention of the fall of Troy may have inspired the poet with the idea of comparing Odysseus’ weeping, that of a woman dragged away into slavery after her city has been captured and her husband killed in its defence, the very fate that Odysseus himself had brought upon many women of the captured Troy. Several Athenian tragedies have choruses of such captive, enslaved women, often presented with sympathy, particularly in the three by Euripides on Trojan themes, in which those women are specifically Trojan.