the provisions which the poorer guests cooked for themselves and ate
outside in the court yards. The magnates ate in the covered cloister,
and were no doubt cooked for.
CHAPTER VII.
FURTHER INDICATIONS THAT THE WRITER IS A WOMAN--YOUNG--HEADSTRONG
--AND UNMARRIED.
I will now touch briefly on the principal passages, over and above
large general considerations and the details to which I have already
called attention, which seem to me to suggest a woman's hand rather
than a man's. I shall omit countless more doubtful instances, many of
which the reader will have noted, or easily discover.
At the very outset of the poem (i. 13) the writer represents Ulysses as
longing to get back to his wife. He had stayed a whole year with Circe,
and but for the remonstrances of his men would have stayed no one can
say how much longer. He had stayed seven years with Calypso, and seems
to have remained on excellent terms with her until the exigencies of
the poem made it necessary to send him back to Ithaca. Surely a man of
his sagacity might have subtracted Calypso's axe and auger, cut down
the trees at the far end of the island, and made his raft years ago
without her finding out anything about it; for she can hardly have
wanted either axe or auger very often.
As for the provisions, if Ulysses was not capable of accumulating a
private hoard, his cunning has been much overrated. If he had seriously
wanted to get back to Penelope his little cunning that is put in
evidence would have been exercised in this direction. I am convinced,
therefore, that though the authoress chooses to pretend that Ulysses
was dying to get back to Penelope, she knew perfectly well that he
was in no great hurry to do so; she was not, however, going to admit
anything so derogatory to the sanctity of married life, or at any rate
to the power which a wife has over her husband.
* * * * *
An older woman might have been at less pains to conceal the fact that
Penelope's hold on Ulysses was in reality very slight, but the writer
of the _Odyssey_ is nothing if she is not young, self-willed, and
unmarried. No matron would set herself down to write the _Odyssey_ at
all. She would have too much sense, and too little daring. She would
have gained too much--and lost too greatly in the gaining. The poem is
such a _tour de force_ as none but a high-spirited, headstrong girl
who had been accustomed to have her own way would have attempted, much
less carried to such a brilliantly successful conclusion; I cannot,
therefore, conceive the writer as older than the original of the
frontispiece at the beginning of this book--if indeed she was so old.
* * * * *
The very beautiful lines in which the old nurse Euryclea lights
Telemachus to bed, and folds up his clothes for him (i. 428-442),
suggest a woman's hand rather than a man's. So also does the
emphasising Laertes' respect for his wife's feelings (i. 430-433).
This jealousy for a wife's rights suggests a writer who was bent
on purifying her age, and upholding a higher ideal as regards the
relations between husband and wife than a man in the Homeric age would
be likely to insist on.
* * * * *
The price paid for Euryclea (i. 431) is, I do not doubt, a rejoinder
to the Iliadic insults of XXIII. 262-264, in which a woman and a
tripod are put up in one lot as a prize, and also of XXIII. 702-705,
in which a tripod is represented as worth twelve oxen, and a good
serviceable maid of all work only four oxen. A matron would have let
Homer's passage severely alone, and a man would not have resented it so
strongly as to make him write at it by declaring Euryclea to have been
bought for twenty oxen.
* * * * *
An Iliadic passage of some length is interrupted (iii. 448-455) for
the purpose of bringing in Nestor's wife and daughters, and describing
their delight at seeing a heifer killed; the Iliadic passage is then
resumed. A man, or older woman, once launched on an Iliadic passage
would have stuck to it till it failed them. They would not have cared
whether the ladies of Nestor's household liked seeing the heifer killed
or no.
* * * * *
When Helen mixes Nepenthe with the wine which was to be handed round
to Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisistratus, we learn its virtues to be
so powerful that a man could not weep during all the day on which he
had drunk it, not even though he had lost both his father and his
mother, or had seen a brother or a son cut to pieces before his eyes
(iv. 220-226). From the order in which these relationships present
themselves to the writer's mind I opine that her father and mother were
the most important persons in her world, and hence that she was still
young and unmarried.
* * * * *
A little lower we find Helen more or less penitent for having run away
with Paris. Helen was Jove's own daughter, and therefore had a right to
do pretty much as she chose; still it was held better to redeem her as
far as possible, by making her more or less contrite. The contrition,
however, is of a very curious kind. It was Venus, it seems, who ought
to be penitent for having done Helen so great a wrong. It is the wrong
that has been done to her that she laments, rather than any misdoing of
her own.
* * * * *
Is a man, or matron, likely to have conceived the idea of making Helen
walk round the wooden horse, pat it, call out the names of the heroes
who were inside, and mimick the voices of their wives (iv. 274-279)?
Ulysses must have told her that the horse was coming, and what it would
contain, when he entered Troy in disguise and talked with her. A man
might have made Helen walk round the horse, pat it, and even call out
the names of the heroes, but he would never have thought of making her
mimick their wives.
* * * * *
The writer finds the smell of fish intolerable, and thinks it necessary
to relieve Menelaus and his three men from a distressing situation,
by getting Idothea to put some scent under each man's nostrils (iv.
441-446). There is, however, an _arrière pensée_ here to which I will
call attention later (see Chapter XII. near the end). Very daughterly
also is the pleasure which Idothea evidently feels in playing a trick
upon her father. Fathers are fair game--at all events for young
goddesses.
* * * * *
The whole of iv. 625-847 is strongly suggestive of a woman's writing,
but I cannot expect any one to admit this without reading either the
original or some complete translation.
* * * * *
Calypso's jealously of Penelope (v. 203, &c.) is too prettily done for
a man. A man would be sure to overdo it.
* * * * *
Book vi. is perhaps the loveliest in the whole poem, but I can hardly
doubt that if it were given to a _Times_ critic of to-day as an
anonymous work, and he was told to determine the sex of the writer
he would ascribe it to a young unmarried woman without a moment's
hesitation. Let the reader note how Nausicaa has to keep her father up
to having a clean shirt on when he ought to have one (vi. 60), whereas
her younger brothers appear to keep her up to having one for them when
they want one. These little touches suggest drawing from life by a
female member of Alcinous' own family who knew his little ways from
behind the scenes.
Take, again, the scene in which Ulysses first meets Nausicaa. A girl,
such a girl as Nausicaa herself, young, unmarried, unattached, and
without knowledge of what men commonly feel on such points, having by a
cruel freak of fortune got her hero into such an awkward predicament,
might conceivably imagine that he would argue as the writer of the
_Odyssey_ has made Ulysses do, but no man, except such a woman's tailor
as could never have written the _Odyssey_, would have got his hero into
such an undignified position at all, much less have made him talk as
Ulysses is made to talk.
How characteristic, again, of the man-hatress is Nausicaa's attempt to
make out that in Ulysses she had found a man to whom she really might
become attached--if there were no obstacle to their union.
* * * * *
I find it hard to pass over Book vii., especially line 230, &c., where
Arete wants to know how Ulysses came by his clothes, and 294, in which
it is said that young people are apt to be thoughtless. Surely this is
a girl giving a rap on the knuckles to older people, by echoing what
she is accustomed to hear them say.
* * * * *
In Book viii. the games, which are no doubt suggested by those in _Il_.
XXIII. are merely labelled "sports," not a single detail being given
except that Ulysses' disc made a sound of some sort as it went through
the air (viii. 190), which I do not believe it would do. In the _Iliad_
details are given of every contest, and the games do not take place as
they do in the _Odyssey_ immediately after a heavy meal, from which we
can hardly suppose that the competitors would be excluded.
I say nothing about the modesty of the female goddesses in not coming
to see Mars and Venus caught in the toils of Vulcan (viii. 324), nor
yet about the lovely new dress with which the Graces consoled Venus
when she had been liberated (viii. 366), for I have omitted the whole
of this episode in my abridgement.
* * * * *
The love of her own home and parents which is so obvious throughout
the poem is never more apparent than in the speech of Ulysses (ix.
34-36). He says that however fine a house a man may have in a foreign
land, he can never be really happy away from his father and mother. How
different this from the saying which Aristophanes puts into the mouth
of Mercury (_Plut_. 1151) to the effect that a man's fatherland is any
place in which he is making money; or again from Euripides, who in a
fragment of _Phaethon_ says that a man's fatherland is any land that
will feed him. It is only a young and affectionate girl who could have
made Ulysses (who is not much given to sentiment) speak so warmly.
Middle-aged people, whether men or women, are too much spotted with the
world to be able to say such things. They think as Aristophanes and
Euripides do.
* * * * *
In lines 120, 121 of Book ix. the writer tells us that huntsmen as a
general rule will face all sorts of hardship in forest and on mountain
top. This is quite true, but it is not the way in which men speak of
chamois-hunters.
* * * * *
As for the Cyclops incident, delightful as it is, it is impossible as a
man or matron's writing. It was very kind of Polyphemus, drunk though
he was, to stay without moving a muscle, till Ulysses and his men had
quite finished boring out his eye with a burning beam that was big
enough for a ship's mast, but Baron Munchausen is the only male writer
who could offer us anything of the kind, and his is not a case in
point. Neither, after all, is Book ix. of the _Odyssey_, for the writer
is not taking Polyphemus seriously.
* * * * *
The distress which Polyphemus caused to Ulysses and his men by flinging
down a bundle of firewood is too graphic a touch not to have been
drawn from life. I have often fancied that the whole Cyclops incident
may have been suggested by one of those _merende_, or pic-nics which
Italians and Sicilians are still so fond of, and that the writer of the
_Odyssey_ went with her friends to Pizzolungo and the cave where the
scene is laid, which was then really much what an _alpe_ is now--an
abode of shepherds who made cheese in the cave itself. I like to fancy
(for I know that it is nothing more than fancy) that the writer of the
_Odyssey_ was delighted with all she saw, but that as she was looking
at the milk dishes some huge unkempt shepherd came in with a load of
firewood on his back, and gave a sudden shock to her nervous system
by flinging it down too violently. Him she transformed into the local
giant that exists on Mt. Eryx now under the name of Conturràno.[1]
* * * * *
It is very hard to say what the authoress thought that Polyphemus did
in the matter of his ewes and lambs. The lambs were in the yards all
day, for Ulysses' men saw them there and wanted to steal them (ix. 226,
227). Besides, Polyphemus could not have got any milk from the ewes if
their lambs had been with them in the day-time. Having driven the ewes
into his cave (I omit the she-goats for brevity) he milked them, and
then put their lambs with them (ix. 245). The question is, did he take
them away again after they had got what they could from a milked ewe,
or did he leave them with their mothers all night?
On the one hand we have no hint of their removal, which would be a
long and troublesome task; on the other we are told in line 309 that
he milked the ewes in the morning, and again gave each one of them her
lamb; on the evening of the same day he repeats this process (line
342), and he could hardly give the ewes their lambs unless he had first
removed them.
The difficulty is that if he removed them they would certainly die in
a very few days of such diet as Polyphemus allows them, for whatever
he did was κατὰ μοῖραν, according to his usual practice; while if he
did not remove them, he could not have got any milk. Whatever he did,
we may be sure that the writer of the _Odyssey_ had got it wrong, and
there is not much to be gained by trying to find out what she thought,
for it is obvious that she did not think.
I asked my friend, Sigr. Giuseppe Pagoto of Mt. Eryx, what was the
practise of Sicilian shepherds now, and received the following answer:--
In Sicily they do not milk ewes that have lately lambed; they keep the
lambs shut up and take the ewes to feed. In the evening they let the
lambs suck, and then shut them up again. During the night the ewes
make a great deal of milk, and this is again sucked by the lambs in
the morning, and not milked. Our shepherds do not take any of the milk
until the lamb has been killed. Perhaps in those days the pastures
were so abundant that the ewes gave milk enough to nourish the lambs,
and still have some for milking. This is the only way in which what
Polyphemus did can be explained.
I believe the true explanation to be that the shepherd from whose
_alpe_ the scene was in part drawn, drove in a number of ewes some of
which had lambs, while the lambs of others had been already killed and
eaten. The authoress saw the shepherd milk a number of ewes, and then
bring in a number of lambs, but she did not understand that the ewes
which had been milked had got no lambs, while those that had lambs
still living had not been milked. I think she knew she was hazy about
it, otherwise she would not have cut her version short with a πάντα
κατὰ μοῖραν--"all in due course."
* * * * *
It being evident that Circe is quite as capable a prophet as Tiresias,
why should poor Ulysses be sent down to Hades? Obviously because the
writer had set her heart on introducing colloquies with the dead.
Granted; but a writer who was less desirous of making out that women
know as much as men would not have made Circe know quite so much.
Why, as soon as Ulysses has returned from Hades, repeat to him the
warning about the cattle of the Sun which Tiresias had given him in
the same words, and add a great deal more of her own? Why, again,
did she not tell Ulysses to be particularly careful to ask Tiresias
about the Wandering Cliffs, in respect of which she had confessed
that her information was deficient? Ulysses does not appear to have
said anything, but he must have thought a good deal. Young people are
impatient of such small considerations. Who, indeed, can let fancy,
_naiveté_, and the charm of spontaneity have free and graceful play, if
he or she is to be troubled at every touch and turn by the suggestions
of common sense? The young disdain precision too contemptuously; while
older people are apt to think of nothing else.
* * * * *
The same desire to exalt the capabilities of woman appears in making
the Sun leave his sheep and cattle in the sole charge of the two nymphs
Lampetie and Phaëthusa (xii. 132) who, by the way, proved quite unable
to protect them. But then the Sun was a man, and capable of any folly.
* * * * *
The comparison of Ulysses to a hungry magistrate (xii. 439, 440),
which is obviously humorous, is neither a man's nor a matron's simile
for such a thrilling situation. To me it suggests the hand of a
magistrate's daughter who had often seen her father come home tired and
cross at having been detained in court.
* * * * *
The present from Helen to Telemachus of a wedding dress (xv. 125-129)
was more likely to occur to a young woman than to a man. I think also
that a male writer would have given something to poor Pisistratus, who
has been very good and amiable all through. It does not appear that
Telemachus tipped Eteoneus or any other of Menelaus' servants, though
from xx. 296, 297 it is plain that it was quite usual for visitors to
give something to the servants of a house at which they were staying.
He is very rude about not saying good-bye to Nestor (xv. 199-201), and
he never says good-bye to Pisistratus as he ought.
Ulysses, again, seems to have no sense of obligation whatever to Circe
or Calypso. He has no other idea than that of taking as much and giving
as little as he can. So, in Hades he does not begin by asking how
Penelope is, but how she is behaving, and whether she is protecting his
estate (xi. 177, &c.).
In Book xvii. 495 the old nurse and housekeeper, who has hitherto
always been Euryclea, suddenly becomes Eurynome, a name which we have
not yet had. Eurynome from this point is frequently mentioned, though
the context always suggests, and sometimes compels, the belief that
Euryclea is intended. In Book xx. 4, for example, we are told that
Eurynome threw a cloak over Ulysses after he had lain down to rest, but
in line 143 of the same Book, Euryclea says she threw the cloak over
him herself--for surely this is intended, though the plural according
to very common custom is used instead of the singular. The alternation
of the two names becomes very baffling, till finally in Book xxiii.
289-293 both Eurynome and Euryclea appear on the scene together, which
cobbles the difficulty, but does not make a good job of it--for one
woman would have been quite enough to do all that there was to do.
What happened, I take it, was this. In the first line where we meet
with Eurynome, the name Euryclea could not be made to scan very easily,
and the writer, thinking she would alter it later, wrote Eurynome.
Having done so once, she used the names Eurynome and Euryclea according
as metrical convenience inspired her. This went on for some time,
till in the end she found it would be a great deal of trouble to
re-write all the passages in which Eurynome had appeared; she therefore
determined to brazen it out, and pretend that she had all along meant
Euryclea and Eurynome to be two people. To put their separate existence
beyond question, she brings them both on together. I do not say that
this is feminine, but I can find nothing like it in the _Iliad_. I have
sometimes thought the last six or seven Books, though they contain
some of the most exquisite passages in the whole poem, were written in
greater haste than the earlier ones, while the last hundred lines or so
of Book xxiv. suggest that the writer was determined to end her work
without much caring how. I have also wondered whether the husband who
in Book vi. was yet to find may not have been found before Book xxiv.
was written; but I have nothing to urge in support of this speculation.
* * * * *
Argus (xvii. 292) is not a very good name for a dog. It is the
stock epithet for hounds in both _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and means
"fleet." The whole scene between Ulysses and Argus is perhaps the
most disappointing in the _Odyssey_. If the dog was too old or feeble
to come to Ulysses, Ulysses should have gone up to him and hugged
him--fleas or no fleas; and Argus should not have been allowed to die
till this had been put in evidence. True, Ulysses does wipe away one
tear, but he should have broken utterly down--and then to ask Eumæus
whether Argus was any use, or whether he was only a show dog--this will
not do even as acting. The scene is well conceived but badly executed;
it betrays the harder side of the writer's nature, and has little of
the pathos which Homer would have infused into it.
* * * * *
When Eumæus says what kind of man he would be likely to ask to the
house if he was free to choose, he puts a divine first, a physician
next, then a carpenter, and then a bard (xvii. 384). The only wonder
is that the writer did not put the bard before the carpenter, and
doubtless she would have done so had she not wanted to give the bard
a whole line to himself. A woman, writing at the present day would be
apt to consider the clergyman, and the doctor, as the first people
who should be invited, but a man in the Homeric age would hardly have
chosen as Eumæus is made to do.
* * * * *
I do not believe that any man living could wash Ulysses' feet and
upset the bath so delightfully as Euryclea does (xix. 386, &c.), and
at the same time make Penelope sit by and observe nothing of what was
going on. He could not rise to the audacity of saying that Minerva had
directed Penelope's attention elsewhere, notwithstanding the noise
which Ulysses' leg made, and the upsetting of a bath full of water,
which must have run over all that part of the cloister. A man would
have made Penelope desire suddenly to leave the cloister, just before
the accident happened, and lie down upon that couch which she had never
ceased to water with her tears, &c.; she could then have come back,
remembering that she had forgotten something, after the foot-bath had
been refilled and the mess cleaned up. But he could not have done it at
all.
* * * * *
It will be observed that the stronger the indications become that
Ulysses is on the point of returning, the more imperative Penelope
finds it to marry one of the suitors without a day's delay. She has
heard about the hawk tearing the dove; she has heard Telemachus sneeze;
she has been assured that Ulysses was among the Thesprotians, quite
near, and would be in Ithaca immediately; she has had a dream which
would have made any one wait, say, for at least a week longer, unless
determined to take the gloomiest possible view of the situation; but
no; on the following day she must marry and leave the house. Her words
seem to me like those of a woman gloating over the luxury of woe, as
drawn by another woman who has never known real trouble. Nothing can
better show the hollowness of Penelope's distress from first to last.
A woman who felt herself really drowning would have clutched at any one
of the straws above mentioned, and made it buoy her up for weeks or
months; and any writer who had known real sorrow would also know how
certain she would be to do this. A man could only so draw his heroine
if he was laughing at her in his sleeve; whereas the writer of the
_Odyssey_ is doing her very utmost to take herself seriously.
* * * * *
Penelope seems firmly convinced that she is keeping excellent guard
over her son's estate all the time, and that if she were to leave the
house everything would go to rack and ruin. She implies this to Ulysses
when he is disguised as a beggar (xix. 524). One wonders how Ulysses
could restrain himself from saying, "Well, Madam, if you cannot prove
more successful as a guardian than you have been doing this many years
past, the sooner you leave the house the better for Telemachus."
* * * * *
No great poet would compare his hero to a paunch full of blood and
fat, cooking before the fire (xx. 24-28). The humour, for of course
it is humorously intended, is not man's humour, unless he is writing
burlesque. This the writer of the _Odyssey_ is not doing here, though
she has intentionally approached it very nearly in a great part of the
Phæacian episode.
The only other two points which suggest a female hand in Book xx.--I
mean with especial force--are the sympathy which the writer betrays
with the poor weakly woman who could not finish her task (105, &c.),
and the speech of Telemachus about his mother being too apt to make
much of second rate people (129-133).
* * * * *
The twelve axes set up in Book xxi. remain in the court during the
whole time that the suitors are being killed. How, I wonder, is it
that not one of the suitors picked up a single axe? A dozen men with a
dozen axes should have made short work of Ulysses and his men. True, by
my own hypothesis the heads had been taken off the handles, but they
must have been wedged, or bound, either on to the handles or to some
other like pieces of wood, so as to raise them high enough for any one
to shoot through the handle-holes. It should have been an easy matter
either to fix the heads on to the handles again, or to extemporise new
ones. If the writer had not forgotten all about the axes in her desire
to begin with the shooting, she would have trumped up a difficulty of
some kind. Perhaps she thought that the audience, hearing nothing more
about them, would forget all about the axes too--and she was not far
wrong.
* * * * *
The instinctive house-wifely thrift of the writer is nowhere more
marked than near the beginning of Book xxii., where amid the
death-throes of Antinous and Eurymachus she cannot forget the good meat
and wine that were spoiled by the upsetting of the tables at which the
suitors had been sitting.
* * * * *
The killing of the suitors is aggressive in its want of plausibility.
If Melanthius could go to the store-room, no matter how, the other
suitors could have followed him and attacked Ulysses from behind; for
there is evidently a passage from the store-room to the place where
Ulysses is standing.
Again, the outer yard was open to the suitors all the time. Surely with
the axes still at command they could have cut the Byblus-fibre rope
that was the only fastening of the main gate; some of them at any rate
might have got out. The first ninety lines of the Book are as fine as
the _Iliad_, but from line (say) 100 to line 330 the writer is out
of her depth, and knows it. The most palpably feminine part is where
Minerva comes to help Ulysses disguised as Mentor (xxii. 205-240). The
suitors menace her, and in a rage she scolds not them but Ulysses,
whom she rates roundly. Having done this, she flies away and sits on a
rafter like a swallow.
* * * * *
All readers will help poets, playwrights, and novelists, by making
believe a good deal, but we like to know whether we are in the hands
of one who will flog us uphill, or who will make as little demand upon
us as possible. In this portion of Book xxii. the writer is flogging
us uphill. She does not care how much she may afflict the reader in
his efforts to believe her--the only thing she really cares for is her
revenge. She must have every one of the suitors killed stone dead, and
all the guilty women hanged, and Melanthius first horribly tortured
and then cut in pieces. Provided these objects are attained, it is not
necessary that the reader should be able to believe, or even follow,
all the ins and outs of the processes that lead up to them.
I will therefore not pursue the absurdities with which the killing of
the suitors abounds. I would, however, point out that in Book xvi. 281,
&c., where the taking away of the armour from the cloister walls was
first mooted, it was proposed that enough to arm Ulysses and Telemachus
should be left accessible, so that they might snatch it up in a moment
without having to go all the way down into the store-room after it,
at the risk of Telemachus's forgetting to shut the door--as young
people so often do. I suppose Ulysses forgot all about this sensible
precaution, when he and Telemachus were hiding the armour at the
beginning of Book xix. Or shall we suppose that the idea of catching
Melanthius in the store-room had not occurred to the poetess when she
was writing Book xvi., but had struck her before she reached Book xix.,
and that she either forgot, or did not think it worth while, or found
it inconvenient, to cancel lines 295, 296 of Book xvi.? From what I
have seen of the authoress I incline to this last opinion, and hold
that she made Ulysses omit to leave a little of the armour accessible
to himself and Telemachus, because she had by this time determined to
string Melanthius up in the store-room, and did not see how to get
him inside it unless she made Telemachus go there first and leave the
door open; and, again, did not see how to get Telemachus down to the
store-room if she left armour near at hand, for him to snatch up.
As for Telemachus bringing up four helmets, four shields, eight spears,
he was already fully armed when the fight began (xxi. 434), so three
helmets, three shields and six spears should have done. Four helmets,
four shields, and eight spears is a heavy load; but Melanthius carried
twelve shields, twelve helmets, and twelve spears apparently all at one
time.
* * * * *
We are in an atmosphere of transpontine melodrama, but the only wonder
is that the absurdities are not even grosser than they are, seeing that
the writer was a young woman with a strong will of her own. Woman she
must have been; no male writer could have resisted the temptation to
kill Eumæus. It is the faithful servant's rôle to be mortally wounded
on occasions of this sort. There are very few more suitors to be
killed, and Minerva is going to raise her ægis immediately, so that
he could be perfectly well spared; possibly the writer felt that she
should be shorthanded with the cleaning up of the blood and the removal
of the dead bodies, but more probably she hated the suitors so bitterly
that she would not let them score a single point.
* * * * *
How evidently relieved she feels when she has got the killing over,
and can return to ground on which she is strong, such as the saving of
Phemius and Medon, and the cleaning down of the house.
* * * * *
What are we to say of making Penelope, whose room looked out upon the
cloister, sleep soundly all through the killing of the suitors? What of
her remarks to Euryclea when she has been waked? What, again, of her
interview with Ulysses, and the dance which Ulysses presently advises?
what, indeed, of the whole Book? Surely it is all perfectly right as
coining from some such person as the one portrayed in my frontispiece,
but who can conceive the kind of man or matron who could write it?
The same applies to Book xxiv. What man or middle-aged woman could
have written the ineffably lovely scene between Ulysses and Laertes
in the garden? or have made Ulysses eat along with Dolius, whose son
and daughter he had killed on the preceding day? A man would have been
certain to make Ulysses tell Dolius that he was very sorry, but there
had been nothing for it but to hang his daughter and to cut his son's
nose and ears off, draw out his vitals, and then cut off his hands and
feet. Probably, however, he would have kept Dolius and his sons out of
the Book altogether.
* * * * *
When Ulysses and Penelope are in bed (xxiii. 300-343) and are telling
their stories to one another, Penelope tells hers first. I believe a
male writer would have made Ulysses' story come first and Penelope's
second.
[1] See Chapter X.
CHAPTER VIII.
THAT ITHACA AND SCHERIA ARE BOTH OF THEM DRAWN FROM TRAPANI AND ITS
IMMEDIATE NEIGHBOURHOOD.
I have now given, though far more briefly than the subject requires,
some of my reasons for believing that from the first Book of the
_Odyssey_ to the last we are in the hands of a young woman. Who,
then, was she? Where did she live and write? She was of flesh and
blood, lived in time and place, looked on sea and sky, came and went
somewhither and somewhen--but where? and when? and above all, who? It
will be my object to throw what light I can upon these subjects in the
following chapters.
I will follow the same course that I have taken earlier, and retrace
the steps whereby I was led to my conclusions.
By the time I had finished Book x. I was satisfied that the _Odyssey_
was not a man's work, but I had seen nothing to make me think that
it was written rather at one place than at another. When, however, I
reached xiii. 159-164, in which passage Neptune turns the Phæacian ship
into a rock at the entrance of the Scherian harbour, I felt sure that
an actual feature was being drawn from, and made a note that no place,
however much it might lie between two harbours, would do for Scheria,
unless at the end of one of them there was a small half sunken rock.
Presently I set myself to consider what combination of natural features
I ought to look for on the supposition that Scheria was a real place,
and made a list of them as follows:--
1. The town must be placed on a point of land jutting out as a land's
end into the sea between two harbours, or bays in which ships could
ride (vi. 263); it must be connected with the mainland by a narrow neck
of land, and as I have just said, must have a half sunken formidable
rock at the entrance of one of the harbours.
2. There must be no river running into either harbour, or Nausicaa
would not have had to go so far to wash her clothes. The river when
reached might be nothing but a lagoon with a spring or two of fresh
water running into it, for the clothes were not, so it would seem,
washed in a river; they were washed in public washing cisterns (_Od_.
vi. 40, 86, 92) which a small spring would keep full enough of water
"to wash clothes even though they were very dirty." The scene is laid
close on the sea shore, for the clothes are put out to dry on a high
bank of shingle which the sea had raised, and Nausicaa's maidens fly
from Ulysses along the beach and spits that run into the sea.
3. There must be a notable mountain at no great distance from the town
so as to give point to Neptune's threat that he would bury it under a
high mountain. Furthermore, the whole combination above described must
lie greatly further west of Eubœa than Ithaca was, and hence greatly
west of Ithaca (vii. 321). Surely, if a real place is being drawn from,
these indications are ample to ensure its being easily found.
Men of science, so far as I have observed them, are apt in their
fear of jumping to a conclusion to forget that there is such a thing
as jumping away from one, and Homeric scholars seem to have taken a
leaf out of their book in this respect. How many striking points of
correspondence, I wonder, between an actual place and one described
in a novel, would be enough to create a reasonable assurance that
the place in which they were combined was the one that was drawn
from? I should say four well marked ones would be sufficient to
make it extremely improbable that a like combination could be found
elsewhere; make it five, and unless we find something to outweigh the
considerations which so close a correspondence between the actual place
and the one described in the novel would suggest, or unless by some
strange coincidence the same combination in all its details can be
shown to occur in some other and more probable locality, we may be sure
that the novel was drawn from the place; for every fresh detail in the
combination required decreases the probability of error in geometrical
ratio if it be duly complied with.
Let us suppose that a policeman is told to look out for an elderly
gentleman of about sixty; he is a foreigner, speaks a little English
but not much, is lame in his left foot, has blue eyes, a bottle nose,
and is about 5 ft. 10 in. high. How many of these features will the
policeman require before he feels pretty sure that he has found his
man? If he sees any foreigner he will look at him. If he sees one who
is about 5 ft. 10 in. high he will note his age, if this proves to be
about sixty years, and further, if the man limps on his left foot, he
will probably feel safe in stopping him. If, as he is sure to do, he
finds he has a bottle nose, he will leave the blue eyes and broken
English alone, and will bring the man before the magistrate.
If it is then found that the man's eyes are hazel, and that he
either speaks English fluently or does not speak it at all--is the
magistrate likely to discharge the prisoner on account of these small
discrepancies between him and the description given of him, when so
many other of the required characteristics are found present? Will he
not rather require the prisoner to bring forward very convincing proof
that it is a case of mistaken identity?
Or to take another illustration, which is perhaps more strictly to the
point as involving comparison between an actual place and one described
in a novel. Here is an extract from a novel:--
Grammerton, like other fair cities, was built on a hill.
The highest point was the fine old Elizabethan School,
then, and now, of European reputation. Opposite it was
the old shattered and ruined castle, overlooking the
bubbling and boiling shallows of the broad and rapid
river Saber.... From the hill the town sloped rapidly
down on every side towards the river, which made it a
peninsula studded with habitations. (_The Beaucleres,
father and son_, by Charles Clarke, Chapman and Hall.
Vol. I. p. 28.)
Is there any man of ordinary intelligence and acquainted with
Shrewsbury who will doubt that Shrewsbury was the place that Mr. Clarke
was drawing from?
When I have urged the much more numerous and weightier points of
agreement between Scheria as described in the _Odyssey_, and Trapani
as it still exists, eminent Homeric scholars have told me, not once
nor twice--and not meekly, but with an air as though they were crushing
me--that my case rests in the main on geographical features that are
not unknown to other parts of the coast, and upon legends which also
belong to other places.
Grammerton, they argue--to return to my illustration--must not be held
as Shrewsbury, for at Harrow as well as Shrewsbury the School is on the
highest part of the town. There is a river, again, at Eton, so that
Eton may very well have been the place intended. It is highly fanciful
to suppose that the name Saber may have been a mere literary travesty
of Sabrina. At Nottingham there is a castle which was in ruins but a
few years since, and from which one can see the Trent. Nottingham,
therefore, is quite as likely to be the original of Grammerton as
Shrewsbury is.
And so on _ad infinitum_. This line of argument consists in ignoring
that the force of the one opposed to it lies in the demonstrable
existence of a highly complex combination, the component items of which
are potent when they are all found in the same place, but impotent
unless combined. It is a line which eminent Homeric scholars almost
invariably take when discussing my Odyssean theory, but it is not
one which will satisfy those before whom even the most eminent of
Homeric scholars must in the end bow--I mean, men of ordinary common
sense. These last will know that Grammerton can only be dislodged from
Shrewsbury on proof either that the features of Shrewsbury do not in
reality correspond with those of Grammerton, or else that there is
another town in England which offers the same combination, and is
otherwise more acceptable.
So with Trapani and Scheria. Eminent Homeric scholars must show that
I have exaggerated the points of correspondence between the two
places--which in the face of Admiralty charts and of the _Odyssey_
they will hardly venture; or they must bring forward some other place
in which the same points of correspondence are found combined--which
they will not attempt; or they must show reason for thinking that the
very numerous and precise correspondences between Trapani and all
Scherian and Ithacan scenes are referable to mere accident--and this
will satisfy those only who will believe that a man has held thirteen
trumps in his hand three deals running, without having tampered with
the cards. I need not discuss this last supposition, and as for the
other two, I can only assure the reader that no attempt has been made
to establish either of them during the close on six years since my
theory was first put before the public.
Neither will it ever be made. For Scheria should be looked for on some
West coast to the West of Greece, and there are no such West coasts
except those of Italy and Sicily, both of which I know well enough to
be sure that if the Scherian combination could be found elsewhere than
at Trapani I should long since have found it. Even could such a place
be found with its rock Malconsiglio, legend and all, before it could
compete with Trapani in claiming the _Odyssey_ it would have to offer
the Ithacan combination as well as the Scherian; for surely a place
which provides us with both Ithacan and Scherian topography would have
a greater right to be considered as that from which the _Odyssey_ was
drawn, than one which could only offer the details of Scheria.
Furthermore, could they find another place with all both Scherian and
Ithacan features, my opponents would be only half way through their
troubles; for Trapani could still hold its own against it, unless it
also had four islands (neither more nor fewer) lying off it, one of
them long and narrow, and all of them corresponding with the inaccurate
Odyssean description of the Ionian islands. Nor would it even then
begin to be on equal terms with Trapani, till it was shown that the
effective part of the voyages of Ulysses begins and ends with it. When
all this has been done, but not before, it will be time to weigh the
comparative claims of the two sites.
For I rest my case on the harmonious concurrence of four lines of
argument, each requiring the fulfilment of many and very rigorous
conditions, and each by itself sufficient to raise a strong presumption
that Trapani was the place which was most prominent in the mind of the
writer of the _Odyssey_. They are:--
1. That Scheria is drawn from Trapani. This I will substantiate by
bringing forward a much stronger combination of correspondences than
exists between Grammerton and Shrewsbury.
2. That Ithaca also is drawn from Trapani and its immediate
neighbourhood. My case for this will be found even stronger if possible
than that by which I established that Scheria was Trapani.
3. That the Ionian islands as described in the _Odyssey_ cannot have
been drawn from the actual Ionian islands, nor from any others but
those off Trapani; and that the writer sinned against her own knowledge
in order to force these islands into her narrative.
4. That the voyages of Ulysses practically resolve themselves into a
voyage from Troy to the neighbourhood of Sicily, and thenceforward into
a sail round Sicily, beginning with Trapani and ending with the same
place.
It will be necessary that no argument adduced in support of any of
these propositions should clash with those in support of any other,
but all the four lines of argument must corroborate each other, so
that they fit into one another as the pieces of a child's puzzle.
It is inconceivable that anything but a true theory should comply
with conditions so exacting. I will now proceed to show that Scheria
is Trapani, and will return to the steps by which I arrived at this
conclusion.
Armed with the list of points I had to find in combination, as given
at the beginning of this chapter, I went down to the map room of the
British Museum intending to search the Mediterranean from the Troad
to Gibraltar if necessary; but remembering that I ought to look (for
reasons already given) some distance West of Greece, and also that
the writer of the _Odyssey_ appeared to have lived on a coast that
looked West not East, I resolved to search the West coasts first. I
knew that Colonel Mure and a respectable weight of ancient testimony
had placed the Cyclopes on Mt. Eryx, and it seemed to me that the
island where Ulysses hunted the goats, and the whole Cyclopes incident
suggested drawing from life more vividly than any other part of the
voyages. I knew, moreover, that the writer was a young woman who
was little likely to have travelled, and hence felt sure that if one
place could be found, none of the others would be long in finding; I
asked, therefore, for the map of the Lilybæan promontory, as the West
coast West of Greece that offered the greatest prospect of success,
and hardly had I got it in my hand before I found the combination I
wanted for Scheria lying right under Mt. Eryx. The land's end jutting
into the sea--the two harbours one on either side of it--the narrow
entrance between two marshes--the high mountain hard by--the rock at
the entrance of one of the harbours--the absence of any river--will be
found in the map here given, which Messrs. Walker & Boutall have made
for me from the Italian Government survey, and from our own Admiralty
chart.
[Illustration: TRAPANI AND MT. ERYX--_Walker & Boutall sc_.]
But this was not all. Not only was the rock of the right height, and
so turned as to give the idea of a ship coming into port, but it it
bore the strange name of Malconsiglio, or "Evil counsel." I was so
much struck with this that I wrote to Trapani enquiring whether there
existed any local tradition in connection with the rock, and was told
that there were two--the one absurd, and the other to the effect that
the rock had been a ship of Turkish Pirates who were coming to attack
Trapani, but were turned into stone at the entrance of the harbour
by the Madonna di Trapani. I did not doubt that the name and the
legend between them preserved the Odyssean version, in a Christianised
form--the legend recording the fact of a ship's having been turned into
stone as it was entering harbour, and the name telling us the other
fact that this had been brought about in consequence of an evil counsel.
I believe the above sufficient for reasonable assurance that Scheria
was drawn from Trapani, and will, therefore, proceed to establish that
the Ithaca scenes are drawn also from the same place and its immediate
neighbourhood.
To this end it will be incumbent upon me to find that near Trapani,
though not actually at the town, there exists, or can be shown to have
in all reasonable probability existed, a harbour which has, or had,
a current in it, and which lies hard by the foot of a mountain. This
harbour should have a shelving bottom, for the Phæacian crew which
brought Ulysses to Ithaca ran half the ship's length on shore before
the way was off it. At no great distance there must be two caves
near together (xiii. 103-112 and 347-349). One of them must have two
entrances--one turned towards the North, by which people can go down
into the cave, and the other towards the South, by which the gods alone
can enter. It must have water in it, and also prehistoric implements
should be found there. From near it one must be able to see harbours
(in the plural), and it should be on the side of a mountain. Here
Ulysses hid the treasures that the Phæacians had given him. The other
cave need present no special features.
A man ascending the mountain from these caves, and keeping along the
top of it should come to a place on ground commanding an extensive
prospect, where there is a spring and a rock that is called Raven. This
site must be bitterly cold in winter, and must be about two hours'
walk from Trapani; the path to the town must be so rugged that a man
in ordinary vigour would not like to take it without having a stick;
and lastly, it must pass a notable mound or hill much nearer Trapani
than the high ground above alluded to, and commanding a full view of
the city and harbour. The reader who turns to the abridgement of Books
xiii., xiv., xv., xvi. and xvii. given in this work, will find that all
these points are necessary.
They all of them exist at this day, even to the calling of the
rock "Raven," except one--I mean the mouth of the harbour where
the Phæacians entered; this is now silted up, like the harbour of
Selinunte,[1] which I might almost call on the same coast. The inner
part of the harbour is still full of sea water, but has been converted
into Salt Works[2] which are slightly below the level of the sea. The
bed of the old exit is clearly seen, and there are still rushes in it
though it is quite dry: it is very narrow, is often full in winter, and
is marked with dotted lines in the Italian Ordnance Map, but not so in
our Admiralty Chart.
The existence of this bed was pointed out to me by Signor Sugameli, of
Trapani. He assured me that till 1848 when the Salt Works were made,
the whole space covered by them was an open mere where his father used
to go to shoot wild ducks. One great difficulty in making the Salt
Works was the abundance of fresh water springs, which made it necessary
to cement the salt pans in order to keep the fresh water from mixing
with the salt. It was perhaps from some of these springs that the
πλυνοί, or washing cisterns, of vi. 40 were supplied--unless indeed
Nausicaa washed the clothes in sea water as I have seen women in the
island of Pantellaria still do.
[Illustration: THE HARBOUR RHEITHRON. NOW SALT WORKS OF S. CUSUMANO.]
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE HARBOUR RHEITHRON, NOW SILTED UP.]
Given a mass of water, nearly a mile long and a quarter of a mile
broad, with a narrow exit, and the tide, which here has a rise and fall
of from two to three feet, would cause a current that at times would
be strong, and justify its being described as a river and also as
a harbour with a current in it; returning for a moment to Scheria, I
suppose this to be the river at the mouth of which Ulysses landed, and
the river's staying his flow (v. 451), I take to mean that he arrived
there just at the turn of the tide. I may also say that this harbour is
used five times in the _Odyssey_:--
1. As the "flowing harbour, in the country beyond the town, under Mt.
Neritum"--reading, as explained earlier, Νηρίτῳ for Νηίῳ--where Minerva
said she left her ship, when she was talking with Telemachus i. 185,
186. 2. As the place where Ulysses landed in Scheria and where Nausicaa
washed her clothes. 3. As the place where Ulysses landed in Ithaca. 4.
As the place where Telemachus landed in Ithaca on his return from Pylos
(xv. 495 &c.). 5. As the spot pointed to by Ulysses as the one where
his ship was lying "in the country beyond the town" (xxiv. 308).
I will now return to the two caves which ought to be found at no great
distance from the head of this harbour. It is clear from the text that
there were two not one, but some one has enclosed in brackets the two
lines in which the second cave is mentioned, I presume because he found
himself puzzled by having a second cave sprung upon him when up to this
point he has been only told of one.
I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have
been puzzled, for there are two caves, distant about 80 or 100 yards
from one another, at the place marked in the map as the _grotta del
toro_. The one is conspicuous, but without special feature; the other,
which is not very easily seen, and which is called by the peasants
the _grotta del toro_, looks due North, and is universally believed
to contain a treasure, which a bull who lives in its recesses is
continually grinding, but which can only be found by a virgin, who will
eat a whole pomegranate without spilling a single pip. I suspect the
_toro_ to be a children's corruption of _tesoro_. The bull having thus
got into the cave has never got out again, and as the treasure is also
confidently known to exist--well--what can the bull be there for but to
turn a mill and grind the treasure?
The cave runs due South into the rock by a passage so rough and narrow
that no one is likely to go more than a very few feet with it. No one,
therefore, can enter the cavern from the South--it is only the gods who
can do so.
In August, 1894, I visited the ground with some Sicilian friends,
and we discoursed with the _contadino_ who had charge of the farm on
which the caves are found. While we were talking there came up a nice
intelligent lad on a donkey, and he seemed much interested in our
conversation.
"Is there," we asked, pointing to the _grotta del toro_, "a treasure in
the cave?"
"Certainly," was the immediate answer. Here the boy broke in. He was
quite sure there was one. Everybody knew it. It could not be doubted.
"Is there a treasure in the other cave?"
"Oh, no."
"Which of the two caves is called the _grotta del toro_?"
"That one"--from both peasant and boy, who pointed at once to the cave
that corresponded with the _Odyssey_.
"You are quite sure that the other cave is not called 'la grotta del
toro'?"
"Quite."
"Where does the _grotta del toro_ go to?"
"It gets narrow and goes far into the rock."
"Has any one ever been to the end of it?"
"No, no; no one knows where it ends. There was a cattle driver who went
in once to explore it, but he never came back, and they say that after
this there was a wall built to stop any one from going further."
"Have you ever been inside the cave yourself?"
"Yes."
"Have you been as far as the wall?"
"No."
"How far did you go?"
"Not very far; I was afraid."
"Then you have no idea how far the cave goes?"
"No."
"Is there water in the cave at all times?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen it?"
"I was there in May last, and there was water then."
"Is there water there now?"
"I should think so, but cannot be certain."
"Can you take us to it?"
"No; the key of the ground is at Trapani."
"They say there is a bull in the further recesses of the cavern?"
"They say so, but we have never seen him; all we know for certain is
that there is a treasure."
Here the boy again brightened up, and said that this was certain.
When we had finished our questions the _contadino_ took one of our
party aside, and said, confidentially, "Be sure of me, for I have a
strong stomach" (_i.e_., I can keep a secret). "When you come to remove
the treasure, which I can see that you intend to do, you must take me
with you and give me my share. If you come by night the dogs will bark,
and I shall know that you are there. I will then come down and help
you, but you must give me my share."
I wrote the above conversation down, in Italian, immediately on my
return to Trapani, and my Sicilian friends signed it, at my request, as
a correct report. It occurs to me to add that there is no other cave
near Trapani to which any story of a hidden treasure attaches.
Last year (May, 1896) I visited the cave again, this time with my
friend Mr. H. Festing Jones, who has gone over the whole of the ground
described in this book, to make sure that I have not overstated my
case. We were accompanied by Signor Sugameli of Trapani, to whom I
owe the correction of my error in believing the more conspicuous of
the two caves to be called the _grotta del toro_--for so, on my first
visit to Trapani in 1892, my friends in the town had assured me, not
knowing the existence of the one which really bears the name. Jones and
Signor Sugameli scrambled into the interior of the cavern, but I, being
elderly and somewhat lame, did not venture. They found the cave end,
after about thirty feet, in a mass of solid rock; but few who have
gone above ten or twelve feet will be likely to go any further, and I
can well believe that the writer of the _Odyssey_, like the peasants
of to-day, believed that no one could get to the end of it. My friends
found water.
The cave is full of bees' nests in summer, as are all the caves
hereabouts. They are small, solitary, of red clay, and about the size
of the cup of an acorn. All the caves in the neighbourhood of Mt. Eryx
abound in remains of stone-age man, some fine examples of which may
be seen in the museum at Palermo. These remains would doubtless be
more common and more striking three thousand years or so ago than they
are at present, and I find no difficulty in thinking that the poetic
imagination of the writer of the Odyssey ascribed them to the nymphs
and naiads.
From hard by both the caves one can see, of course, the precipices
of Mt. Eryx, which I suppose to be Neritum in the mind of the writer
(xiii. 351), the straight paths on the cultivated land some couple of
hundred feet below, the harbour of the old merman Phorcys, and also the
harbours of Trapani, all which are requisite by lines xiii. 195, 196,
and 345-351.
The reader will note that while more than one Scherian detail is given
casually and perhaps unintentionally, as for example the harbour where
Ulysses landed in Scheria, and the harbours, which I do not doubt are
the two harbours of Trapani, there is no Ithacan detail given so far
which conflicts with any feature in the description of Scheria.
The number and value of the points of correspondence between the cave
in which Ulysses hid his treasure, and the _grotta del toro_ greatly
exceed those between Grammerton and Shrewsbury. Nevertheless it will be
well to see whether his movements on leaving the cave confirm my view
or make against it.
I suppose him to have ascended the steep, and then, doubtless, wooded
slopes of Mt. Eryx and to have passed along its high and nearly level
summit (δἰ ἄκριας, xiv. 2) to the other end of the mountain, where
the Norman Castle stands now 2500 feet above the sea level. Here he
descended some two or three hundred feet to the spot now called _i
runzi_, where there is a spring near a precipice which is still called
_il ruccazzù dei corvi, i.e_. "the rock of the ravens," it being on
this part of the mountain that these birds breed most freely. This walk
would take him about two hours, more or less.
The site is seen from far and wide, it is bitterly cold in winter, and
is connected with Trapani by a rough mountain path which Ulysses may
well have been afraid to travel without a stick (xvii. 195).[3] The
path passes close to the round-topped _Colle di Sta Anna_ which answers
perfectly to the Ἕρμαιος λόφος of xvi. 471. The time it takes to walk
from the _runzi_ to Trapani corresponds with all the indications
furnished us in the _Odyssey_ concerning the distance between Eumæus's
hut and the town of Ithaca--which seems roughly to have been a winter's
day walk there and back.
The reader will see, therefore, that we have the whole road taken
by Ulysses from his landing in the harbour of Phorcys to the cave
(with all its complex requirements) in which he hid his presents, up
Mt. Neritum, along its long top to the spring and the Haven Rock,
and finally the path passing the hill of Mercury down to Ithaca, as
accurately presented to us by the road from the _saline di S. Cusumano_
to the _grotta del toro_, Mt. Eryx, the fountain, the Raven Rock,
and the road to Trapani, as though the _Odyssey_ had been written
yesterday. When the reader can find me in all literature, ancient or
modern, any like chain of correspondences between an actual place and
one described in a work of fiction as an effect of mere chance, I will
accept the coincidences to which I have called attention as possibly
accidental only; but I am convinced that no such case nor anything
approaching it can be adduced.
I, therefore, claim that Ithaca, like Scheria, must be taken as drawn
from Trapani. There is, however, this important point to be remembered,
that though the writer, when she has to consider Ithaca _ab extra_,
as an island and nothing more, pictures it to herself as the high and
striking island of Marettimo some 22 miles off Trapani, when she wants
details she takes them from her own immediate neighbourhood on the
mainland.
Young people when transferring familiar stories to their own
neighbourhood, as almost all young people do, never stick at
inconsistencies. They are like eminent Homeric scholars, and when they
mean to have things in any given way they will not let the native hue
of resolution be balked by thought, and will find it equally easy to
have an Ithaca in one place and also in another, and to see the voyages
of Columbus to the tropics in their own sliding over a frozen pool. So
Lord Selborne writes:--
As we grew, the faculty of imagination increased in
power. It coloured all our childish pleasures; it
accompanied us on the ice and into the woods; it mixed
the dreams of the supernatural with the most ordinary
things. Our resting-places when sliding over a frozen
pool were the islands discovered by Columbus or Cook, in
whose voyages we delighted.
(_Memorials &c_., by Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne,
Macmillan 1896, pt. I. p. 66.)
Before I leave the Ithaca scenes I ought to show that there may well
have existed at Trapani a sheet of water which cattle would be likely
to cross in a boat, as described in _Od_. XX. 186-188. The land on the
East side of Trapani was artificially raised in 1860, till which time
the two seas on either side the town were often joined in winter after
a continuance of Northerly Winds. Several people have assured me that
they remember having to be carted over the water between Trapani and
the mainland. I was at first tempted to believe that Philœtius had
come to the town when the narrow entrance to it was flooded; but a few
lines above we find that Eumæus had also come to the town with three
pigs, and Melanthius with some goats. These men had both unquestionably
come from Mt. Eryx, and the text seems to forbid the idea that they
too had had to cross the water. There is nothing, however, to imply
that Philœtius had come from Mt. Eryx; indeed, it is more likely that
his cattle would feed on the flat land south of the harbour, which he
had crossed by boat to save the long _détour_ which would have been
otherwise necessary. If the water had been that of any such river as is
to be found in Asia Minor, Greece, or Sicily, one man would probably
have been enough, whereas there seem to have been several plying for
hire, as in a port or harbour.
* * * * *
The fact that Scheria and Ithaca would be perfectly well-known by
the audience as drawn from their own neighbourhood explains another
difficulty. "How," some hypercritical listener might ask, "could so
sagacious and experienced a mariner as Ulysses have failed to note that
he was only travelling two miles, or even less, from Scheria to Ithaca?
And how again could he fail to recognise the place at which he landed
as the one where he had met Nausicaa a few days previously?"
The writer of the _Odyssey_ admits with some _naiveté_ that the
Phæacian mariners were already acquainted with the harbour in which
they left Ulysses. They probably would be. But how prevent Ulysses from
remonstrating both during the voyage and on being landed? It is not
easy to see what better course the writer could take than the one she
actually did take, _i.e_., put Ulysses to sleep as soon as ever he was
on board, and not wake him till after the sailors were gone. A sleep,
therefore, is prepared for him (vii. 318, and viii. 445) and he falls
into it apparently before even leaving the harbour; it is so profound
that it is more like death than sleep (xiii. 80). Nothing, not even the
men lifting him off the ship next morning, laying all his treasures
hard by him and going away, can disturb him till the Phæacian sailors
are beyond all reach of question. Then, of course, the sooner he wakes
up the better.
As for the other difficulty of his not seeing that he was only at the
spot where he had met Nausicaa two days earlier, this was got over by
making it a misty morning, and muddling Ulysses generally so that he
does not even recognise the place as Ithaca, much less as Scheria, till
Minerva meets him and has a long talk with him, in the course of which
the audience slides into the situation, and accepts the neighbourhood
of Trapani for that of Ithaca without more demur.
[1] A few years ago the stone work at the entrance to the harbour of
Selinunte was excavated, but it was silted over again in a single
winter.
[2] Shown in the plan as the Salt Works of S. Cusumano.
[3] Of recent years an excellent carriage road has been made from
Trapani to the town on the top of Mt. Eryx, but pedestrians still use
the old path, which in places is very rough.
CHAPTER IX.
THE IONIAN AND THE ÆGADEAN ISLANDS--THE VOYAGES OF ULYSSES SHOWN TO
BE PRACTICALLY A SAIL ROUND SICILY FROM TRAPANI TO TRAPANI.
In a later chapter I propose to show that the writer of the _Odyssey_
had the _Iliad_ before her in the state in which we have it now,
unimportant copyists' errors alone excepted. I shall show that those
Books on which most doubt has been cast by eminent Homeric scholars
both on the Continent and in England, are just as fully and freely
quoted from as those that are admitted to have been by Homer. I have
seen no sufficient reason alleged for doubting that the Catalogues of
_Il_. II. 484-877 formed part of the poem as Homer left it, though it
is quite likely that he may have got some one with greater knowledge of
Greece to help him. I intend returning to this question, but for the
present will ask the reader to accept my assumption that the writer
of the _Odyssey_ knew the Catalogues above referred to. The group of
the Echinades and the Ionian islands are described as follows in the
Catalogue of the Achæan forces:--
And they of Dulichium, with the sacred Echinean islands,
who dwelt beyond the sea off Elis--these were led by
Meges, peer of Mars, the son of Phyleus, who had erewhile
migrated to Dulichium in consequence of a quarrel with
his father. And with him there came forty ships.
Ulysses led the brave Cephallenians, who held Ithaca,
wooded Neritum, Crocylea, rugged Ægilips, Samos,[1] and
Zacynthus, with the mainland also that is over against
the islands. These were led by Ulysses, peer of gods
in counsel, and with him came twelve ships. (_Il_. II.
625-637.)
The reader will note that Dulichium, which means "Long Island," does
not belong to the Ionian islands, but to the neighbouring group of
the Echinades. Let us now see how the islands in the neighbourhood of
Ithaca are described in the _Odyssey_. Ulysses says (ix. 21-26):
"I dwell in Ithaca, an island which contains a high
mountain called Neritum. In its neighbourhood there are
other islands near to one another, Dulichium, Same and
Zacynthus. It lies on the horizon all highest up in the
sea towards the west, while the other islands lie away
from it to the east."
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ÆONIAN ISLANDS--_Walker & Boutall_.]
In the _Odyssey_ there are never more than three islands besides
Ithaca. When mentioned all together they are always named in the
order given above--probably for reasons of scansion--but Dulichium is
the most important in the eyes of the writer, being more frequently
mentioned separately, and sending fifty-two suitors as against
twenty-four from Same, twenty from Zacynthus, and twelve from Ithaca
itself (xvi. 247-251).
A glance at the map given above will show that there is no island in
the neighbourhood of Ithaca which can with poetical propriety be held
to have sent nearly as many suitors as the other three put together.
Least of all could Dulichium be so held. It seems, then, that it was
the name, and not the island, that the writer wanted; and further that
she wanted this so badly as to lay violent hands upon it and raid it
from another group.
Why should she strain so considerable a point in order to get hold
of it? The Iliadic catalogue omits three or four but leaves us six
Ionian islands. After suppressing the small islands of Crocylea and
Ægilips, there remained four, which it seems was the exact number that
the writer of the _Odyssey_ meant to introduce; why, then, should not
Neritum have been good enough for her? It evidently did not answer her
purpose, or she would not, in the face of the catalogue, have stowed
it away inside Ithaca and gone further afield for her dominant island.
These things are never done without a reason, and in this case a reason
is particularly necessary, for it would have been more easy and also
suitable, considering the insignificance of the real Dulichium, to make
the fifty-two suitors come from the very considerable island of Neritum.
All difficulty is removed by supposing that the writer lived at
Trapani and was drawing the Ionian islands from the, to her, familiar
Ægadean group. A glance at the foregoing map will shew that she
cannot have been drawing from the real Ionian islands. Ithaca cannot
be tortured into lying "all highest up in the sea towards the West."
It is completely covered by Samos. Nor do the other islands lie away
from it to the East. It is clear, then, that the Ionian islands were
not those present to the mind of the writer, but we may infer in
passing, firstly, that her audience lived at a sufficient distance
from Greece to make the infraction of topographical accuracy a matter
of no importance, and secondly, that the islands from which she was in
reality drawing lay, like the true Ionian group, off a West coast.
I will now give a map of the islands off Trapani. I see that Professor
Freeman, in his map of the West coast of Sicily, as he supposes it
to have been in ancient times, has joined the Isola Grande to the
neighbouring main land, but he gives no authority for doing so. I
can find none in ancient writers, and having examined the ground see
nothing to indicate any change in the distribution of land and water,
as having taken place within measurable distance of our own times.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ÆGADEAN ISLANDS.]
The lofty and rugged island of Marettimo did duty in the writer's
mind for Ithaca, though, as I have said, when details are wanted they
are taken from Trapani and Mt. Eryx. The long island, now the Isola
Grande--low lying and wheat growing--was her Dulichium; this must have
been for the most important of the four as regards Trapani, being
accessible in all weathers, and probably already pregnant with the
subsequently famous city of Motya, of which hardly anything remains,
but which stood on the Southernmost of the two islands that lie between
Isola Grande and the mainland. The other two islands stood for Same
and Zacynthus, but which was which I have not been able to determine.
Marettimo can hardly be seen from Trapani, being almost entirely hidden
by Levanzo. From the heights, however, of Mt. Eryx, with which, for
other reasons, I suppose the writer to have been familiar, it is seen
"on the horizon, all highest up in the sea towards the West." I do not
doubt the poetess was describing it as she knew it from the top of
Mt. Eryx, and as the reader may still see it. The rough sketch on the
following page will explain πανυπερτάτη εἰν ἁλὶ better than words can
do; the two small islands shown just over Trapani are the Formiche,
which I take to be the second rock thrown by Polyphemus.
[Illustration: TRAPANI FROM MT. ERYX. Showing Marettimo all highest up
in the sea. _Od_. ix 25. The Isola Grande (Dulichium) could not be got
into the picture.]
If what I have said above is not enough to satisfy the reader that
the writer of the _Odyssey_ was drawing the Ionian islands from the
Ægadean, nothing that I can add is likely to convince him. I will
therefore now go on to my fourth point, namely, that the voyages
of Ulysses are, as nearly as the writer could make them, a voyage
round Sicily, from Trapani by the North coast, through the straits
of Messina, to the island of Pantellaria, and so back to Trapani,
beyond which we need not go, for Ithaca and Scheria are, both of them,
Trapani, as I have already shown.
The main episodes of the voyage occur in the following order. 1. The
Cicons. 2. The Lotus-eaters, arrived at after passing the island of
Cythera. 3. The island where Ulysses and his men hunted the goats, and
the adventure with Polyphemus. 4. The island of Æolus, and a ten days'
sail towards the East with a fair wind all the time, till Ithaca is
well in sight, followed by an immediate return to the island from which
Ulysses had started. This sail to Ithaca over the toe of Italy and the
island of Samos has no topographical significance except as showing
that the writer conceived of the island of Æolus as lying a long way
West of Ithaca. The episode is introduced merely for the purpose of
bringing the cup close to Ulysses' lips and then dashing it from them.
5. The Læstrygonians. 6. The island of Circe and the journey to Hades,
which last is again without topographical significance, being nothing
but a peg on which to hang colloquies with the dead, and bringing us
back to the island of Circe. 7. The Sirens. 8. Scylla and Charybdis.
9. The cattle of the Sun. 10. The island of Calypso. 11. Scheria and
Ithaca.
There is no difference of opinion among scholars as to the sites of the
Cicons, the island of Cythera, and the Lotus-eaters; the reader will,
therefore, see that we are taken without waste of time to a point at no
great distance from Sicily--the contrary winds off Cape Malea (ix. 81)
being apparently raised on purpose to take us away from Greece. It is
not quite easy to see why the Cicons were introduced unless it was that
Ulysses might become possessed of the wondrous wine of Ismarus with
which lie intoxicated Polyphemus. The wine of this neighbourhood was
famous many centuries after the _Odyssey_ was written, and presumably
was so in the time of the _Odyssey_ itself. A gasconading story of this
wine may well have existed among the people of Trapani which might
prompt the reader to introduce it, poke fun at it and make Polyphemus
drunk with it.
Or again, knowing as we do from Thucydides (vi. 2) that the original
Sican inhabitants of this part of Sicily received an influx of
fugitives from the neighbourhood of Troy after the fall of that city,
it is possible that traditions may have existed among the writer's
audience to the effect that some of them were of Cicon origin, and she
may have wished to flatter them by telling them that they had repulsed
Ulysses. Nothing can be said with any confidence upon this head; all we
may note is that the country is quite featureless, and hence does not
suggest drawing from personal knowledge, any more than does the land of
the Lotus-eaters.
On leaving the land of the Lotus-eaters the full consent which has
accompanied us so far fails us; nevertheless a considerable weight of
authority, ancient, medieval, and modern, carries us to the island
of Favognana, anciently called Ægusa or Goat Island, as the one on
which Ulysses and his men hunted the goats. Indeed this incident seems
introduced as though purposely to suggest the Ægadean or "goat" islands
to the audience, as also does the line iv. 606 in which Ithaca--that
is to say, in reality, the island of Marettimo--is said to be an island
fit for goats.[2]
A very considerable consent accompanies us also to Mt. Eryx as the site
of the adventure with Polyphemus. Here, and with the island on which
the goats were hunted, the local colour is stronger than anywhere else
in Ulysses' voyages, as indeed might be reasonably expected from a
writer whom I have shown to have been so intimately acquainted with the
neighbourhood of Trapani.
[Illustration: The Voyages of Ulysses, omitting...]
Even partial consent, however, now fails us. The island of Æolus and
the country of the Læstrygonians have been placed in almost as many
sites as there have been writers upon the _Odyssey_. I shall return
to these on a later page, as also to the island of Favognana and the
Cyclopes. My present object is to show how much of the voyage we may
consider as known, how much as supported by considerable authority, and
how much we have yet to find.
The partial consent which we lost at the cave of Polyphemus returns
to us with the island of Circe, the Sirens and the Wandering Cliffs,
which are generally considered to have been the Lipari islands, and
universal consent rejoins us for Scylla and Charybdis. I can hardly say
that consent is universal for placing the cattle of the Sun on the West
coast of Sicily, somewhere about Tauromenium now Taormina; but it is
very general, and is so obviously well founded that I shall claim this
point as certain; for the name of the island sufficiently indicates
Sicily, the winds that detain Ulysses show him to have been on a West
coast, and the South wind that blew him back to Charybdis in a night
shows that he was supposed to be at no great distance South of the
Straits of Messina.
The island of Calypso has been generally held to be Malta, but on no
foundation either internal or external to the _Odyssey_, I shall,
therefore, consider Calypso's island as yet to find.
I have no consent for Scheria being Trapani, but after what I have
written above shall claim this point too as certain. The map,
therefore, which I here give will show the reader how we stand as
regards assent and otherwise ascertained points. I have used strong
lines for the parts of the voyage that may be claimed as certain,
interrupted lines for the parts that are backed by considerable
authority, and dotted lines for those which I would supply. I have made
Ulysses approach Trapani from the South, on the strength of Calypso's
directions to him that he was to sail towards the Great Bear, keeping
it on his left hand (v. 276, 277).[3] This indicates certainly a
Northerly, and one would say a N.N. Easterly, course; at any rate such
a course would in no way conflict with Calypso's instructions. Perhaps
I had better give the words of the poem which run:--
He sat keeping his eyes upon the Pleiades,[4] late
setting Boötes, and on the Bear, also called the Wain,
which turns round and round facing Orion, and alone never
sinks beneath the sea--for Calypso had bidden him steer
by this, keeping it on his left hand (v. 272-277).
All the places in Ulysses' voyage have been generally referred to some
actual locality, which was present to the writer's mind either under
its own or a fictitious name; and when we have once got into Sicilian
waters, all those about which is there is any considerable amount
of consent, or which we may now, with or without consent, claim as
ascertained--I mean Circe's island, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis,
the Thrinacian island, Scheria and Ithaca are on, or hard by, the coast
of Sicily. Is not the temptation irresistible to think that the three
unknown sites--the island of Æolus, the Land of the Læstrygonians and
the island of Calypso--are also real places however fictitious the
names may be, and to hold that they should be looked for on, or near,
the coast of Sicily in the same order as that in which we find them
described?
If, on the hypothesis that Favognana and Mt. Eryx are the true sites
of the island on which Ulysses and his men hunted the goats, and of
the cave of Polyphemus, we are immediately led to others, in due
order of sequence, which commend themselves as being those of the
island of Æolus, the Land of the Læstrygonians, Circe's island, the
other established sites, and lastly Calypso's island, should we not
conclude, at any rate provisionally, that the hypothesis is a true one?
I will so conclude, and proceed to look for the island of Æolus in
some island, apparently solitary, a good way to the West of the Lipari
islands, and at no great distance from Mt. Eryx.
I should first correct a very general misapprehension. The word πλωτῇ
(x. 3) has been unduly pressed into meaning that the island floated
about, and thus changed its place. But if so singular a phenomenon were
intended more would have been made of it. It would not have been dealt
with in a single word, admitting easy explanation as mere metaphor. No
one presses the "swiftly moving" islands of xv. 299 into meaning that
the islands actually moved. All that is meant is that they "seemed to
move" as the ship flew past them, and so with the island of Æolus--"it
seemed to float on the horizon." It shows no signs of having moved
during the month that Ulysses stayed on it, and when he returns to it
after an absence of three weeks, we have no hint given of its having
changed its place.[5] I conclude, therefore, that it was as fixed as
any other island, and proceed to look for it.
This is no hard matter, for the island of Ustica offers itself at
once. In clear weather it can be faintly seen from Mt. Eryx, and would
naturally have impressed itself on the mind of a writer to whom Eryx
and its neighbourhood was all in all. It is in the quarter from which
the winds blow most fiercely on Trapani during the winter months,
and may fitly have been selected by a Trapanese writer as the home
of the winds. The distance, a long way West of the Lipari islands,
and a greatly longer distance West of Ithaca, is all as it should
be. I accept it, therefore, and go on to look for the land of the
Læstrygonians, and their city Telepylus, at some point on the North
coast of Sicily between Ustica and the Lipari islands.
The name of the Læstrygonians or Workers in Stone,[6] like all names of
places or people inside Sicily, is fictitious. If there had ever been
any people really so called in Sicily Thucydides would have been able
to find out some little, at any rate, about them; whereas he declares
(vi. 2) that he cannot do so, and subrisively refers his readers to
the poets, or whatever other source of information they can command.
Clearly he does not believe in them except as poetical fictions
concerning the most ancient inhabitants of Sicily--of whom none are
known to him as more ancient than the Sicans.
But why should not the writer of the _Odyssey_ be referring under names
of her own coinage to these same Sicans, for both the Cyclopes and
the Læstrygonians? The name of the Læstrygonian city, Telepylus, is
certainly fictitious. It means "with gates far asunder," which can only
be an _ex post facto_ name: a city receives its name long before it is
known what it will prove to be in the matter of growth. All that we can
gather from the name is that the writer of the _Odyssey_ intended her
audience to understand that the city was large.
Its inhabitants, like the Cyclopes, are giants and ogres. They being
giants, we should look for remains of megalithic buildings, and being
ogres we should suspect identity of race between them and the Cyclopes
whom they so closely resemble. The writer hates them both, and looks
down upon the Cyclopes much as the Normans looked down upon the Saxons
for some generations after the Conquest.
The Cyclopes appear to have been subdued and outlawed; not so the
Læstrygonians. These last are a flourishing and very industrious
people, who work by night as well as by day (x. 84-86). There is a poor
little prehistoric joke about them, to the effect that in their country
a man could earn double wages if he could only do without sleep.
Moreover they were so wealthy and luxurious that they used to have
relays of fresh milk (x. 82, 83), instead of being contented with a
morning supply, as Sicilian towns generally are even at the present
day. More than this I cannot collect about them from the _Odyssey_.
[Illustration: WALL AT CEFALÙ, RISING FROM THE SEA.]
[Illustration: MEGALITHIC REMAINS ON THE MOUNTAIN BEHIND CEFALÙ.]
Can we, then, find a place answering to the description of Telepylus,
on the North coast of Sicily between Ustica and the island of Lipari?
I have no hesitation in saying that Cefalù will give us all we want.
It has two fine examples of megalithic work. They must both of them be
centuries earlier than the _Odyssey_. They are about three quarters of
a mile apart, one, a wall rising from the sea, the other a building on
the hill, behind the town, in part polygonal, and very rude, and in
part of much later and singularly exquisite work--the later work being
generally held to be of the Mycenæan age.
The city, therefore, must have been for those days extensive. The
whole modern town is called among the common people Portazza, _i.e.,
portaccia_, or "wide gate," which is too like a corrupt mistranslation
of Telepylus to allow of my passing it over.
There can, I think, be no doubt that Eryx and Cefalù were built in
a very remote age by people of the same race. I have seen no other
megalithic remains in Sicily than at the two places just named; I have
seen remains of ancient buildings at Collesano about fifteen miles
S.W. of Cefalù, which are commonly called Cyclopean, but they are very
doubtful, and Dr. Orsi suspects them, I have little doubt correctly,
to be Byzantine. I have also seen a few, neither striking nor yet
certain ones, at Capo Schisò near Taormina. What little is left of
the walls of Segesta is of a greatly later age, and I find it very
difficult to think that Segesta was in existence when the _Odyssey_ was
being written.[7] I have heard of the remains of a Cyclopean acropolis
behind Termini, a monograph about which by Sigr. Luigi Mauceri will
be found in the British Museum. At Isnello two hours inland from
Collesano a very early necropolis has been discovered not long since,
and the efforts of local archæologists will, I doubt not, lead to the
finding of others at or near many of the little known mountain sites
in the North of Sicily; Dr. Orsi, indeed, has recently discovered the
remains of a megalithic house at Pantalica some forty miles inland from
Syracuse. No megalithic work, however, that has yet been found will
compare in importance with the remains at Eryx and Cefalù, nor does it
seem likely that any other such remains will be discovered.
Bearing in mind, then, the situation of Cefalù both as regards Ustica
and Lipari, the affinity between its founders and those of Eryx as
evidenced by existing remains, its great extent, and the name it still
bears among the common people, I do not hesitate to accept it as the
city of the Læstrygonians, nor does it affect me that the details of
the harbour as given in the _Odyssey_ have no correspondence with the
place itself. I may mention that when my friend, Mr. H. F. Jones, and
myself were at Cefalù in the spring of 1896, we met a flock of goats
coming into the town to be milked about five in the afternoon, and on
our return from a walk we met another flock coming out after having
been just milked. These two flocks must have met, and the shepherds
must have saluted one another as in x. 82, 83, but unfortunately we did
not happen to be at their point of meeting.
On enquiry we found that relays of fresh milk come into the town
from six till eight in the morning, and from five till seven in the
afternoon, and were told that there was no other town known to our
informant which had more than a morning supply. At Trapani, a town with
30,000 inhabitants, there is no evening supply, and though I have no
doubt that fresh milk can be had in the evening at Palermo, Catania,
and Syracuse, it is not easily procurable even in these large towns,
while in smaller ones, so far as I know them, it is not to be had at
all. At Rome I asked the landlord of my hotel whether the goats came
to be milked in the evening as in the morning, and he said it would be
only in exceptional cases that they would do so.
I have now only to find the island of Calypso, which in the _Odyssey_
is called the "navel" of the sea (i. 50), a metaphor absolutely
impossible of application to any but a solitary island, and prohibitive
of either Gozo or Malta, or of the other two small islands of the
same group. Calypso lives by herself and is cut off from every one
else--Ulysses cannot be supposed to have other islands in sight as he
sits on the sea shore weeping and looking out upon the waves. Moreover,
Scheria being fixed at Trapani, Ulysses could never get there from
either Gozo or Malta if he followed the directions of Calypso and
steered towards the Great Bear, keeping it on his left hand. We are,
therefore, compelled to look for some other island, which shall be more
solitary and more S.S.W. of Trapani.
The island of Pantellaria fulfils both these conditions; true, in clear
weather the coast of Africa can sometimes be just made out--I have seen
it from Pantellaria, but it is not sufficiently near or sufficiently
often seen to have obtruded itself on Ulysses' notice; still less so is
Mt. Eryx, which can also be seen sometimes, but very rarely. No doubt
the island is represented as being a good deal further off Scheria than
it really was, but the liberty taken in this respect is not greater
than is generally conceded in poetry.
As, therefore, the writer begins the voyage, when Ulysses is once clear
of Trapani, with an island interesting to herself and her audience as
being well within their ken, so she ends it with another island which
has like claims on her and their attention.
[1] In the _Odyssey_ more generally called Same.
[2] The name Favognana is derived from Favonius, this wind blowing on
to Trapani from off the island. It is, however, also and perhaps most
frequently called Favignana.
[3] Gr. Τὴν γὰρ δή μιν ἄνωγε Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων ποντοπορευέμεναι ἐπ᾽
ἀριστερὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντα.
[4] We may neglect the Pleiades, as introduced simply because they
are in the Iliadic passage (xviii. 486-489) which the writer of the
_Odyssey_ is adopting with no other change than taking out the Hyades
and Orion, and substituting Boötes. This she was bound to do, for she
could not make Ulysses steer towards both the Bear and Orion, when she
is just going to tell us, as the _Iliad_ does, that Orion is on the
other side of the sky. The Pleiades she has allowed to stand--which of
us knows in what quarter of the heavens (let alone the Precession of
the Equinoxes) they are to be looked for?--and it is made quite clear
that the Bear is the constellation by which Ulysses is steering.
[5] At Messina a few months since I saw a printed handbill about the
hours when the boat would start for Reggio, in which Italy was called
"Terra firma," as though a sense of instability attached itself to any
island.
[6] The name seems derived from λᾶας, τρυγάω, and αἶα, Œnotria is from
οἶνος, τρυγάω, and αἶα. I have read, but forget where, that Œnotria
is only a Greek rendering of Italia, which is derived from _vites,
alo_, and some Latin equivalent for αἶα. The modern Italian word
_lastricare_, "to pave roads with stone," is probably derived from the
same roots as _Læstrygonian_.
[7] Segesta would have been seen from the top of Mt. Eryx gleaming
in the summer sunset, and I think there would have been some kind of
allusion to it.
CHAPTER X.
FURTHER DETAILS REGARDING THE VOYAGES OF ULYSSES, TO CONFIRM THE VIEW
THAT THEY WERE MAINLY A SAIL ROUND SICILY, BEGINNING AND ENDING WITH
MT. ERYX AND TRAPANI.
What I have said in the preceding chapter should be enough to establish
that the course taken by Ulysses was the one indicated in my map, but
I have remarks to make on the Cyclopes, the wall round the island of
Æolus, the Sirens, the Wandering Cliffs, and other matters connected
with the voyages which I have reserved in order to keep the general
view more broad and simple.
The habitat of the Cyclopes on Mt. Eryx is the point which it is most
incumbent on me to establish, for if this be conceded, and both Scylla
and Charybdis, and Scheria be taken as found, all the other places fall
so spontaneously on to the sites I have marked for them, that I fear no
dispute concerning them. Let us turn, then, to Favognana and accept it
for the moment as the island on which Ulysses hunted the goats.
Why, I wonder, was the author so careful to invoke a thick darkness, so
pompous and circumstantial, and to pilot Ulysses into the harbour of
this island by divine assistance, rather than permit him to look about
him and see the land, which was "not very far" off.
The answer is "not very far" to seek. If Ulysses had seen the main land
of Sicily as he approached it from that of the Lotus-eaters, he would
have been sure to have followed it up, and in this case he would have
been taken straight into Trapani harbour. Now, though the writer, as
all the audience would know, had already dealt with Trapani, as the
last point in all Ulysses' voyages, Ulysses himself ought not to know
anything about it till he comes to it in due course.