The Odyssey - Notes to Book XIV
by Peter Wright.Page 247, Line 17. the god-great. Tr. ‘antitheoi’: equal to gods’, or ‘god-like’, as in line 40.
Page 248, Line 28. Might hallow the beast. Even outside formal sacrifices, beasts killed to be eaten were reckoned as offered to the gods: cf. below, lines 74, 94, 414, 420-37. Page 249, Line 49. leaved teigs. Tr. 'ropas': brushwood.
Page 249, Line 63. an acre. Tr. ‘kleron’: an allotment.
Page 250, Line 102. his own house-carles. Tr. ‘botores andres’: herdsmen; not to be confused with the house-carles who were the household troops of 11th century rulers of England.
Page 251, Line 158. Zeus the Arch-god. Tr. 'prots theon': the first of gods.
Page 253, Lines 244-284. Unto the land of Egypt to sail across the sea. This raid on Egypt has sometimes been thought to derive from traditions about the attacks on Egypt by the ‘Peoples of the Sea’, repelled with difficulty by Pharaohs of the late 19th and early 20th dynasties, about 1220-1180, close to the traditional date of the Trojan War.
Page 254, Line 265. And bore off the women and children, and slew the men. The same practice that Odysseus’ disobedient crews had inflicted on the Cicones in Book ix.
Page 254, Line 268. Zeus the Thunder-fain. Tr. ‘terpikeraunos’: delighting in lightning.
Page 255, Line 288. a man Phoenician, well-learned in lying guile. The poet reckons the Phoenicians as the chief sea-farers and traders in the Middle Sea, but usually regards them as greedy and unscrupulous, both here and in the tale of Eumaeus’ kidnapping in Book xv, though not in Odysseus’ first tale in Book xiii.
Pages 255-256, Lines 302-09. Odysseus (or the poet) has borrowed for this wreck a shortened account of his actual shipwreck from Book xii, lines 404-19. Page 256, Line 315. the Thesprotian strand. The Thesprotians inhabited the mainland north-east of the islands ruled by Odysseus. Page 256, Lines 336-7. to Dodona, the counsel of Zeus to hear From the oak-tree of the Godhead. At the oracle at Dodona, in central Epirus, prophecies were given in a grove of oaks sacred to Zeus, originally by the quivering of their leaves.
Page 266, Line 371. the Snatchers, the Harpies. see Note on Book I, line 245.
Page 266, Line 379. Aetolia. The mainland east of Ithaca.
Page 266, Line 386. the God. Tr. ‘daimon’.
Page 261, Line 400. gangrel men. Tr. ‘ptochos’: a beggar. Gangrel, often later used to describe Odysseus, and to tr. ’aletes’ (a wanderer), means a vagabond beggar
Page 262, Line 435. Hermes, Maia’s son. The god of messages and trickery, born to Zeus by the nymph Maia in Arcadia, as described in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.
Pages 262-263, Lines 449-52. whom the swineherd had bought alone. Though legally a slave, Eumaeus manages his herd with some independence and is able to buy slaves of his own, without consulting his master.
Page 263, Line 452. the Taphians. See Note on Book i, line 481.
Page 264, Line 482. my war-coat. Tr. ‘zoma’: probably a kind of loin-cloth.
Page 264, Line 499. Thoas son of Andraemon. Here seemingly, save for his purple cloak, apparently an ordinary soldier; but in the Iliad (Book II, lines 68638-44) leader of the Aetolians, since their traditional royal house based at Calydon has expired locally with Meleager son of King Oeneus. Thoas was later connected to it by making a daughter of Oeneus his mother: Apollodorus, Library [of Mythology], Book 2, ch. 8. |