college hall is raised? Many things may be taken to point the other way. Let it be observed, however, that λáïvos 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 calls Eurycleia out, and bids her shut the door, and to take no heed if she hears a noise of groaning in the 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 λάϊνον οὐδόν. The λáïvos 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 faλáμos, 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 treasu es 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 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, and that he had the command of the armoury where the weapons lay, because the door of it was close behind him. Plainly the wooers had not the command of the door giving on the passage to the store chamber or armoury, otherwise they would not have sent Melanthius through the clerestory openings. Now we are never told that this door had been fastened by Eurycleia from within, as the doors leading to the women's chambers had been. Odysseus then 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, åkpóтatov dè nap' ovdóv, ovdós (unless, as in the text, we take it to be the threshold of the ¿poolúpη itself) would be the broad raised place where I have supposed Odysseus to stand. At the edge of it, next the wall, was 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. The theory of Mr. Watkiss Lloyd (Architect Aug. 4 and 11, 1877) is the same as mine up to the moment when Odysseus âλto ènì péyav ovdóv, where Mr. Watkiss Lloyd supposes that the hero has traversed the whole length of the hall. But it is not in the Homeric manner to leave this important movement unmentioned. NOTE 19, PAGE 390; Book xxiv. 80. Burial. A. L. passage, Burial in the Homeric age is described most minutely in this and in Iliad vii. 420, xxiii. 135, xxiv. 785, also in Odyssey xii. 8-15. After the friends of the dead have bewailed him and shorn their hair in token of sorrow, they build a vast funeral pyre of wood. On this the corpse is laid, covered with the fat of victims slain in sacrifice. Unguents and honey are added to the pyre, and probably, as is now the custom in Burmah, the dead was embalmed in honey, if it was desirable to keep the body for some days before the funeral. Victims of various sorts were slain, as the horses and hounds of Patroclus, and the captive Trojan youths. This last act seems to have been reprobated by the general feeling of Homeric Greece. When the flame had consumed the corpse, the ashes were stored in a golden vase, and that was deposited in a receptacle dug in the floor of the barrow. Last a rounded barrow of stones and earth was built above the dust of the dead, and finally ‘a pillar was dragged up thereupon.' (Od. xii. 14.) The orhan is particularly mentioned in Iliad xvii. 434, ‘as a pillar firmly abides that is set on the barrow of woman or man,' and again (Iliad xvi. 457, 675) it is called 'the due of the dead.' These facts suggest two conclusions. First, the famous tombs of the Mycenaean acropolis cannot be of the Homeric age, for they do not conform to Homer's repeated descriptions. Secondly, no antiquarian discovery could be more valuable than that of a real Homeric OTHŋ. It is most probable that they were not plain stones, but that, as in later Greece, they were engraved with some hieratic and conventional design. The earliest known Greek stelae (leaving those of Mycenae out of the question) were excavated at Sparta. On these are represented two crowned figures, male and female, seated on the same throne, and approached by a much smaller figure of the living, who bears in his hands a cock, the victim commonly sacrificed after a death by all races from Siberia to Ceylon,—the cock that Socrates 'owed to Asclepius.' The seated figures are doubtless intended for the ancestral Dead, receiving gifts from descendants. See Percy Gardner, Journ. Hell. Stud., v. 104-142. Precisely similar stelae, with explanatory inscriptions, occur under the eleventh and eighteenth Egyptian dynasties. (Maspero, Musée de Boulaq, PP. 34, 35). Interesting as these stelae are, they cannot, from the character of the art, be much earlier than the sixth century. If the Mycenaean graves are preHomeric, we may suppose that the rude design on the stela, the king fighting from his chariot, is a faint memory of Egyptian art. discovery of a genuine Homeric tumulus will clear up many archæological problems. The absence of writing on an ancient memorial pillar would be far from proving that writing was unknown. Uninscribed monoliths have been raised in memory of great events by Scotch Highlanders in the present century. On the subject of the stelae, see Mittheilungen der deutschen Archäologischen Institutes in Athen, vol. ii, PP. 20-24. The APPENDIX. A. THE RAFT. Book v. 245-277, p. 84. A complete and highly interesting description of the Building of the Raft will be found in the Journal of the Hellenic Society, vol. v. pp. 202-219. The paper is by the Rev. E. Warre, Head Master of Eton, RAFT OF ODYSSEUS. whose suggestions we have already acknowledged in our Preface. By the courtesy of the Hellenic Society we are allowed to print an illustration from Dr. Warre's paper. |