heard certain wood-worms overhead talking among themselves, and telling how 'the roof-beam was now well nigh eaten through.' Thereon he called them that waited on him, and bade them carry him out and they took up his bed and walked forth, the woman at the foot, and the man at the head going out foremost. In that moment the beam fell on the woman and killed her; but the man told Phylacus, and Phylacus told Iphiclus what had come to pass, who thereupon, as knowing Melampus to be a soothsayer, offered to set him free, if he would expound the reason wherefore Iphiclus was childless. And this was confirmed by oath. So Melampus sacrificed to Zeus, and set out a portion for all the fowls of the air. And they all came, save one vulture only, and he questioned them all, and none knew of the cause; and so they inquired of the vulture, who expounded the matter, which was strange, but here I say no more of it. So thereafter Iphiclus begat Podarcé; but Melampus, who got the cattle for the bride-price of Pero, gave her to his brother Bias. The story is told by Pherecydes, in his Seventh Book. NOTE 12, PAGE 310; BOOK xix. 7. The House of Odysseus. It is a most difficult thing to understand the arrangements of the hall of Odysseus in which the wooers were slaughtered. Let us leave on one side the questions which do not immediately concern us, and follow the movements of Odysseus himself. In Book xvii. 297, he stands by Argos, the dog, which lies #ро¬áрoile Ovρáwv, before the doors;' either the doors which open from the outer court into the public way, or from the house into the outer court. The swineherd then enters the house, and Odysseus soon follows, humbly enough, ie d'étì μexívov ovdoû ěvтоσle Ovρáwv, he sat down on the ashen threshold within the doors.' There Telemachus spied him, and sent him a mess. My impression is, that he was sitting just within the doors of the hall. Probably he looked, from his lowly seat, all the way up to the high table at the upper end, where Telemachus would sit. Now behind Telemachus, behind the high table, were the doors opening on the passages which led to the women's rooms, and to the eaλáμos, or store-chamber where Telemachus had hidden the weapons. We can easily conceive such doors in the wall behind a high table in the hall of a college. The same arrangement of high table, of women's rooms, and of storechamber may be seen in the plans of the skali, or chief's hall, in Sir G. W. Dasent's Story of Burnt Njal (vol. i. p. c.). Whether in the house of Odysseus a passage ran outside the wall of the hall to the storechambers, so that a man might go thither from the chief door, without walking through the hall, is not quite certain. We left Odysseus just within his own door, on the ashen threshold. There he did not remain. On the morning of the day when the wooers were slain, Telemachus purposely (répdea væμwv, xx. 257) called him to another place. Telemachus would sit at the high table, at the upper end of the room. He would face the entrance, and just behind him would be the doors leading to the women's chambers. Here he placed Odysseus, ἐντὸς ἐυσταθέος μεγάρου, παρὰ λαίνον οὐδόν, But was and there Odysseus remained, and thence he shot the wooers. this λaívos ovdós really at the upper end of the room, where the dais of a college hall is raised? Many things may be taken to point the other way. Let it be observed, however, that Aaivos oùdós was, not improbably, a pretty high dais, faced with stone, above the level of the hall, and on a level with the doors leading to the women's rooms. That it was near the women's rooms, not at the other extremity of the hall, may perhaps be inferred from xxi. 234:— ἀλλὰ σύ, δι Εὔμαιε, φέρων ἀνὰ δώματα τόξον ἐν χείρεσσιν ἐμοὶ θέμεναι, εἰπεῖν τε γυναιξὶν that is, Odysseus tells Eumaeus to bring the bow to him up to his end of the hall, by the threshold of stone, and then to tell the women (who are close by, inside the door) to make their doors fast. Again, (xxi. 380,) when Odysseus gets the bow, Eumaeus call Eurycleia out, and bids her shut the door, and to take no heed if she hears a noise of groaning in halls. Now to tell Eurycleia as much as this, he must have been near her quarters; he could not have shouted from the further end of the hall. The strongest proof, however, that the stone threshold was between the inner chamber and the hall is to be found in xxiii. 88. Penelope comes into the hall, from the inner chambers, ἡ δ ̓ ἐπεὶ εἰσῆλθεν καὶ ὑπέρβη λαίνον οὐδόν. The λaívos oudós is also known as that which Agamemnon crossed, when he inquired of the oracle at Pytho, or Delphi; and again, is spoken of in the Iliad as having behind it the countless treasures of Delphi. In both places it may mean the threshold between the nave of the God's house, or hall, and the aλáμos, or inner chamber of the Pythoness, where she prophesied, and where the treasures were kept, just as in a man's house the women and treasures lay behind the hall. It is certain, at all events, that Odysseus shot from near the stone threshold. His settle was placed near it (xx. 258), from this settle he shot through the rings of iron, and then (xxii. 2), đλto d' ènì péyav ovdóv, 'he leaped on to the great threshold,' and began to slay the wooers. I conceive that the height of the threshold made it a place of strength, that he had the command of the store-chamber where the weapons lay, because the door of it was close behind him. He showered his arrows from above the high table towards the entrance of the hall. If this is a mistaken view, there must have been more than one 'threshold of stone,' and Telemachus must have reached the armoury by means of a passage running the whole length of the house, from the outer door. In Book xxii. line 76 certainly reads as if Odysseus were guarding the outer door. If he really stood above the high table, then in line 123, åkρóTATOV dè map' ovdóv, ovdós (unless, as in the text, we take it to be the threshold of the ỏpoolupη itself) would be the broad raised place where I have supposed Odysseus to stand. At the edge of it, next the wall, is a postern, guarded by the swineherd, who would indeed have been an unenviable swineherd,' as Mr. Buckley calls him, if he had been obliged to guard the postern as it is placed in some plans, that is, at the upper end of the hall among the enemies, while Odysseus is supposed to be at the lower end. There was a shut door behind Odysseus, for (xxii. 258, 275) the spears thrown at him struck it. On the whole, the balance seems somewhat to lean to the theory that Odysseus shot from the oudós above the high table, with his back to the store-chamber (with which he could communicate) and to the women's rooms (of which the door was locked), and with his face to the entrance of the hall. On the other hand, the speech of Melanthius (xxii. 136) ἄγχι γὰρ αἰνῶς αὐλῆς καλὰ θύρετρα, is unintelligible on this theory. NOTE 13, PAGE 341; Book xx. 354. The Second-sighted Man. Omens and Portents. αἵματι δ ̓ ἐρράδαται τοῖχοι καλαί τε μεσόδμαι, κ. τ. λ. A. L. The omens seen by the second-sighted Theoclymenus, a man who inherits with the blood of Melampus the gift of soothsaying, are those which everywhere bode death and doom. The shroud of mist covering not only the feet and knees, the sign of approaching but distant death, but reaching to the head so as to foreshow that death is even at the doors, are familiar to readers of Martin's book on the Western Isles of Scotland. The dripping of blood from the walls is illustrated by the visions of Bergthora, and Njal, on the night of the slaughter of their family. Story of Burnt Njal, ii. 167 :— That same evening Bergthora spake to her household and said, "Now shall ye choose your meat to-night, so that each may have what he likes best, for this evening is the last that I shall set meat before my household." 'After that she set meat on the board, and Njal said, “Wondrously now it seems to me. Methinks I see all round the room, and it seems as though the gable wall were thrown down, but the whole board and the meat on it is one gore of blood."' αἱμοφόρυκτα δὲ δὴ κρέα ἤσθιον. In the same way the comb of Leminkaïnein, in the Finnish epic, which he has left at home with his mother, bursts out bleeding, when the hero's life is endangered. Another Greek example of the omen of the bleeding walls is to be found in the oracle given at Delphi to the Athenians, at the beginning of the invasion of Xerxes (Herod. vii. 140), κατὰ δ ̓ ἀκροτάτοις ὀρόφοισι αἷμα μέλαν κέχυται. Mr. Morris has made use of the superstition in The Story of Sigurd the Volsung: 'Woe's me for the fireless hearth-stones, and the hangings of delight, That the women dare not look on lest they see them sweat with blood!' 1354 |