of his mother, Tyro, and drive them out of Phylace, where Iphiclus held them. Now, all men failing, Bias Talaus' son alone offered to do as much, and persuaded his brother Melampus to achieve this adventure, who, though he knew by his skill in prophecy that he should be kept prisoner for a year, yet went to Othrys after the kine. There the watchmen and the shepherds took him in the theft, and gave him up to Iphiclus. There was he bound and put in duresse, with two servants to watch him, a man and a woman, the man gentle, but the woman ungentle and unkind. Now when the year was almost run out, Melampus 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 16, PAGE 328; Book xix. 578.

The Axes.

It is not easy to understand the exact nature of the feat here described. As to the meaning of the words Spvóxous ws, the explanation of A. Goebel (Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, 1876, p. 171) may be accepted as correct. So Merry, Od. xix. 572 'The axes were set upright in the ground, in a long trench dug for their reception; in this position they resembled a row of dpúoxo, which seem to be the trestles or blocks with a central notch, on which the keel of a ship was laid, when her building first began.' There is a greater difficulty as to the form of the axes, and the meaning of wpwτns oteideĥs (xxi. 422). Goebel's translation comes to this,' he did not miss the handle-tip of all the

axes.' Here σTeiλein is taken, and we believe rightly, to mean axe. handle,' the σTEλelov of Od. v. 236, while #pwrns outermost,' (as Iliad xx. 275)—

Καὶ βάλεν Αἰνείας κατ ̓ ἀσπίδα πάντοσ ̓ εἴσην,

̓Αντυγ ̓ ὕπο πρώτην.

Goebel explains his idea by a drawing of the double-headed axe, in which the two blades almost meet and form a ring at the top of the

handle (fig. 1). But it must be observed (a) that pwrŋs, in juxtaposition with Távτwv, would naturally mean the first of the row, (not 'the outermost tip of the handle,') and in this sense we prefer to take it.

The genitive will then be an ablative genitive, not uncommon in Homer. (B) That we are not acquainted with any examples of ancient Greek axes like that drawn by Goebel. The double-headed axe which is represented in miniature on some ornaments from the Mycenaean graves (Schliemann's Mycenae und Tiryns, pp. 218, 253, 362) and in a heraldic design on a ring, found near Mycenae, is hammer-headed, as in figure 2. There would be no difficulty in merely shooting over the tops of the handles of axes like these.

Many commentators have supposed that the axe-heads were stuck in the ground by their edges, without the handles, and that Odysseus shot through the handle-hole. But even if axes, in Homer's time, were attached to the handle by the method familiar to us, and to later Greece, the holes could not have been raised more than a few inches above the earth. Thus an arrow could scarcely have been sent through them, whether by a standing (xix. 575), or by a seated archer (xxi. 420). The difficulty is to find an ancient axe through a hole in the metal of which it was possible to shoot. Probably if we could see the weapon with which Homer was familiar the puzzle would instantly disappear. We engrave (figures 3 and 4) two Egyptian axes (now in the British Museum) merely to show that axes with open-work blades were not unknown in antiquity, that they are not, as Mr. Merry says, ‘a pure invention.' If the grotesque figure were removed from within the blade of figure 3, it would be easy to shoot through the opening, and the same would be the case if the openings in figure 4 were enlarged, as they might be in another example. Despite the intercourse between Egypt and pre-historic Greece, it would be the height of rashness to allege that the Achæans were familiar with axes shaped like these. Probably the axes of Odysseus were like that which we engrave (fig. 5). This weapon is used by an Amazon in a conflict with Heracles on a metope of a temple in Selinus. The probable date is about 500 B.C. It is easy to see how the feat of Odysseus might have been performed with axes of this pattern. For this illustration we are indebted to Mr. A. S. Murray. (Benndorf's Metopen von Selinunt, pl. 7.)

If we would combine this view as to the shape of the axes with the explanation of Spúoxo given above, we must suppose that the comparison with Spúoxo is not intended to be carried out into every detail. The general point of resemblance consists in the arrangement in a straight line, at regular intervals; - oraox' éteins dpvóxovs us (xix. 574). The word geins here strikes the key-note of the comparison. Possibly, too.

there is some correspondence suggested between the openings in the axeblades and the notches in the spúoxo; but it would be rash to conclude that the shape of the axe-blades conforms exactly to that of the spúoxo.

NOTE 17, PAGE 341; Book xx. 354.

The Second-sighted Man. Omens and Portents.

αἵματι δ ̓ ἐρράδαται τοῖχοι καλαί τε μεσόδαι, κ. τ. λ.

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, is 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 Leminkainen, 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 !'

NOTE 18, PAGE 359; Book xxii. 2.

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 πpowápоide Ovpáwv, ‹ 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, ίζε δ ̓ ἐπὶ μελίνου οὐδοῦ Evтоσle Ovρáov, '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 aλáμos, 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 store chamber 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.). These plans should not be neglected by students interested in the architecture of the Homeric age, as the correspondence between the skali and the heroic house is singularly close. Whether in the house of Odysseus a passage ran outside the wall of the hall to the store-chambers, 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 (képdea vœμâv, 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 διάϊνον οὐδόν,

and there Odysseus remained, and thence he shot the wooers. But was this λáïvos oudós really at the upper end of the room, where the dais of a