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These double and recurring epithets of Homer are a softer wr

form of the quaint Northern periphrases, which make the sea

the 'swan's bath,' gold, the 'dragon's hoard,' men, the 'ring-
givers,' and so on. We do not know whether it is necessary
to defend our choice of a somewhat antiquated prose.
Homer has no ideas which cannot be expressed in words
that are 'old and plain,' and to words that are old and plain,
and, as a rule, to such terms as, being used by the Trans-
lators of the Bible, are still not unfamiliar, we have tried to
restrict ourselves. It may be objected, that the employment
of language which does not come spontaneously to the lips, is
an affectation out of place in a version of the Odyssey. To
this we may answer that the Greek Epic dialect, like the
English of our Bible, was a thing of slow growth and com-
posite nature, that it was never a spoken language, nor,
except for certain poetical purposes, a written language.
Thus the Biblical English seems as nearly analogous to
the Epic Greek, as anything that our tongue has to offer.

The few foot-notes in this book are chiefly intended to
make clear some passages where there is a choice of
reading. The notes at the end, which we would like to
have written in the form of essays, and in company with
more complete philological and archaeological studies, are
chiefly meant to elucidate the life of Homer's men.

We have received much help from many friends, and especially from Mr. R. W. Raper, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and Mr. Gerald Balfour, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who have aided us with many suggestions while the book was passing through the press.

In the interpretation of B. i. 411, ii. 191, v. 90, and 471, we have departed from the received view, and followed Mr

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Raper, who, however, has not been able to read through the proof-sheets further than Book xii.

We have adopted La Roche's text (Homeri Odyssea, J. La Roche, Leipzig, 1867), except in a few cases where we mention our reading in a foot-note.

The Arguments prefixed to the Books are taken, with very slight alterations, from Hobbes' Translation of the Odyssey.

It is hoped that the Introduction added to the second edition may illustrate the growth of those national legends on which Homer worked, and may elucidate the plot of the Odyssey.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

We owe our thanks to the Rev. E. Warre, of Eton College, for certain corrections on nautical points. In particular, he has convinced us that the raft of Odysseus in B. v. is a raft strictly so called, and that it is not, under the poet's description, elaborated into a ship, as has been commonly supposed. The translation of the passage (B. v. 246–261) is accordingly altered.

INTRODUCTION.

COMPOSITION AND PLOT OF THE ODYSSEY.

The Odyssey is generally supposed to be somewhat the later in date of the two most ancient Greek poems which are concerned with the events and consequences of the Trojan war. As to the actual history of that war, it may be said that nothing is known. We may conjecture that some contest between peoples of more or less kindred stocks, who occupied the isles and the eastern and western shores of the Aegean, left a strong impression on the popular fancy. Round the memories of this contest would gather many older legends, myths, and stories, not peculiarly Greek or even ‘Aryan,' which previously floated unattached, or were connected with heroes whose fame was swallowed up by that of a newer generation. It would be the work of minstrels, priests, and poets, as the national spirit grew conscious of itself, to shape all these materials into a definite body of tradition. This is the rule of development-first scattered stories, then the union of these into a national legend. The growth of later national legends, which we are able to trace, historically, has generally come about in this fashion. To take the best known example, we are able to compare the real history of Charlemagne with the old epic poems on his life and exploits. In these poems we find that facts are strangely exaggerated, and distorted; that purely fanciful additions are made to the true records, that the more striking

events of earlier history are crowded into the legend of Charles, that mere fairy tales, current among African as well as European peoples, are transmuted into false history, and that the anonymous characters of fairy tales are converted into historical personages. We can also watch the process by which feigned genealogies were constructed, which connected the princely houses of France with the imaginary heroes of the epics. The conclusion is that the poetical history of Charlemagne has only the faintest relations to the true. history. And we are justified in supposing that quite as little of the real history of events can be extracted from the tale of Troy, as from the Chansons de Geste.

By the time the Odyssey was composed, it is certain that a poet had before him a well-arranged mass of legends and traditions from which he might select his materials. The author of the Iliad has an extremely full and curiously consistent knowledge of the local traditions of Greece, the memories which were cherished by Thebans, Pylians, people of Mycenae, of Argos, and so on. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey assume this knowledge in the hearers of the poems, and take for granted some acquaintance with other legends, as with the story of the Argonautic Expedition. Now that story itself is a tissue of popular tales,—still current in many distant lands,—but all woven by the Greek genius into the history of Iason.

The history of the return of Odysseus as told in the Odyssey, is in the same way, a tissue of old märchen. These must have existed for an unknown length of time before they gravitated into the cycle of the tale of Troy.

The extraordinary artistic skill with which legends and myths, originally unconnected with each other, are woven into the plot of the Odyssey, so that the marvels of savage and barbaric fancy become indispensable parts of an artistic

whole, is one of the chief proofs of the unity of authorship We now go on to sketch the plot, which is

of that poem.

a marvel of construction.

Odysseus was the King of Ithaca, a small and rugged island on the western coast of Greece. When he was but lately married to Penelope, and while his only son Telemachus was still an infant, the Trojan war began. It is scarcely necessary to say that the object of this war, as conceived of by the poets, was to win back Helen, the wife of Menelaus, from Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy. As Menelaus was the brother of Agamemnon, the Emperor, so to speak, or recognised chief of the petty kingdoms of Greece, the whole force of these kingdoms was at his disposal. No prince came to the leaguer of Troy from a home more remote than that of Odysseus. When Troy was taken, in the tenth year of the war, his homeward voyage was the longest and most perilous.

The action of the Odyssey occupies but the last six weeks) of the ten years during which Odysseus was wandering. Two nights in these six weeks are taken up, however, by his own narrative of his adventures (to the Phaeacians, p. xx) in the previous ten years. With this explanatory narrative we must begin, before coming to the regular action of the poem.

After the fall of Troy, Odysseus touched at Ismarus, the city of a Thracian people, whom he attacked and plundered, but by whom he was at last repulsed. The north wind then carried his ships to Malea, the extreme southern point of Greece. Had he doubled Malea safely, he would probably have reached Ithaca in a few days, would have found Penelope unvexed by wooers, and Telemachus a boy of ten years old. But this was not to be.

The 'ruinous winds' drove Odysseus and his ships for ten days, and on the tenth they touched the land of the Lotus