By Peter Wright

Page 397, Lines 15-19. amidmost of the throat … through his tender neck. Here and in lines 82-7, 92-4, though not later, Homer has given anatomical details of wounding such as are standard in the Iliad when warriors are killed in battle.

Page 399, Lines 55-58. we will make atonement for all. The usual practice in early societies, rather than crimes being punished by a public authority, was for compensation equivalent to the wrongs a man had suffered, to be offered by those who had done an injury; cf. Book xxiii, lines 357-8.

Page 399, Line 73. the happy tide of war. Tr. ‘charmes’: the joy of battle.

Page 400, Line 95. the long-shaft spear. Tr. ‘dolikhoskion’: long-shadowed; cf. line 149.

Page 401, Line 122. the sevenfold shield. Actually fourfold in Greek: the number of layers (of wood, leather, and metal) of which the shield was composed;  cf. Iliad, Books VII, lines 245-8; XVIII, line 481; XX, lines 269-72.

Page 402, Line 143. the windows of the hall. Tr. ‘rogas’: openings or gaps in the wall.

Page 402, Line 148. they donned the hauberks. Such body armour is not actually mentioned in the Greek, which says that they cast harness (‘teuchea’) around them.

Page 409, Line 330. the son of Terpes. son of ‘Delight‘.

Page 409, Line 336. Zeus of the Garths. Zeus whose shrine as household god stood in the courtyard.

Page 410, Line 347. myself have learned it. Tr. ‘autodidaktos .. eimi’: I am self-taught.

Page 410, Line 349. the smiting off my head. Tr. ‘deirotomesai’: cutting my throat.

Page 410, Line 363. a high-seat. Here and elsewhere in the book, tr. ’thronos’.

Page 412, Lines 402-4. As a lion stalketh amain. The comparison of a hero to the violent lion, frequent in the battle scenes of the Iliad, but much less common in the Odyssey, reappears here to celebrate Odysseus’ overcoming his enemies.

Page 413, Line 442. the kitchen. Tr. ‘tholos’: a round building. In Butcher & Lang, Odyssey tr. as a ‘vaulted room’. Morris was possibly thinking of centralized medieval kitchens, such as the Abbot’s at Glastonbury, which was copied in the 1850s for the laboratory attached to the then-new University Museum at Oxford.

Page 413, Line 444. the love that hath been. Tr. ‘Aphrodite’: the love goddess considered as a power in the world.

Page 414, Line 462. By a clean death. Tr. literally, ‘katharoi thanatoi’.