the poetical parts of the Scriptures, the voice of melody, feasting, and dancing, are used to express the happiness of a nation. V. 19. Behold Ulysses! ......] The poet begins with declaring the name of Ulysses: the Phæacians had already been acquainted with it by the song of Demodocus, and therefore it could not fail of raising the utmost attention and curiosity (as Eustathius observes) of the whole assembly, to hear the story of so great a hero. Perhaps it may be thought that Ulysses is ostentatious, and speaks of himself too favourably; but the necessity of it will appear, if we consider that Ulysses had nothing but his personal qualifications to engage the Phæacians in his favour. It was therefore requisite to make those qualifications known, and this was not possible to be done but by his own relation, he being a stranger among strangers. Besides, he speaks before a vainglorious people, who thought even boasting no fault. Eustathius gives various interpretations of this position of Ithaca; some understand it to signify that it lies low; others explain it to signify that it is of low position, but high with respect to the neighbouring islands; others take πανυπερlan (excellentissima) in another sense, to imply the excellence of the country, which, though it lies low, is productive of brave inhabitants, for Homer immediately adds αγαθη κεροτροφο. Strabo gives a different exposition; Ithaca is χθαμαλη, as it lies near to the continent, and πανυπερτατη, as it is the utmost of all the islands towards the north, προς αρκλον, for thus προς ζοφιν is to be understood. So that Ithaca, adds he, is not of a low situation, but as it lies opposed to the continent, nor the most lofty (υψηλολατη) but the most extreme of the northern islands; for so πανυπερλατη signifies. Dacier differs from Strabo in the explication of προς ηω τ' ηελιον τε, which he believes to mean the south; she applies the words to the east, or south-east, and appeals to the maps which so describe it. It is the most northern of the islands, and joins to the continent of Epirus; it has Dulichium on the east, and on the south Samos and Zacynthus. ...... V. 41. to the Cicons' shore.] Here is the natural and true beginning of the Odyssey, which comprehends all the sufferings of Ulysses, and these sufferings take their date immediately after his leaving the shores of Troy; from that moment he endeavours to return to his own country, and all the difficulties he meets with in returning, enter into the subject of the poem. But it may then be asked, if the Odyssey does not take up the space of ten years, since Ulysses wastes so many in his return: and is not this contrary to the nature of epic poetry, which is agreed must not at the longest exceed the duration of one year, or rather campaign? The answer is, the poet lets all the time pass which exceeds the bounds of epic action, before he opens the poem; thus Ulysses spends some time before he arrives at the island of Circe, with her he continues one year, and seven with Calypso; he begins artificially at the conclusion of the action, and finds an opportunity to repeat the most considerable and necessary incidents which preceded the opening of the Odyssey; by this method he reduces the duration of it into less compass than the space of two months. This conduct is absolutely necessary, for from the time that the poet introduces his hero upon the stage, he ought to continue his action to the very end of it, that he may never afterwards appear idle or out of motion: this is verified in Ulysses: from the moment he leaves the island of Ogygia to the death of the suitors, he is never out of view, never idle; he is always either in action, or preparing for it, till he is re-established in his dominions. If the poet had followed the natural order of the action, he, like Lucan, would not have wrote an epic poem, but a history in verse. V. 44. And sack'd the city....) The poet assigns no reason why Ulysses destroys this city of the Ciconians, but we may learn from the Iliad that they were auxiliaries of Troy, book the second: • With great Euphemus the Ciconians move, EUSTATHIUS. And therefore Ulysses assaults them as enemies. one of the passages which fell under the censure of Zoilus; it is very improbable, says that critic, that each vessel should lose six men exactly; this seems a too equal distribution to be true, considering the chance of battle. But it has been answered, that Ulysses had twelve vessels, and that in this engagement he lost seventy-two soldiers; so that the meaning is, that taking the total of his loss, and dividing it equally through the whole fleet, he found it amounted exactly to six men in every vessel. This will appear to be a true solution, if we remember that there was a necessity to supply the loss of any one ship out of the others that had suffered less: so that though one vessel lost more than the rest, yet being recruited equally from the rest of the fleet, there would be exactly six men wanting in every vessel. EUSTATHIUS. V.74. And thrice we call'd on each unhappy shade.] This passage preserves a piece of antiquity: it was the custom of the Grecians, when their friends died upon foreign shores, to use this ceremony of recalling their souls, though they obtained not their bodies, believing by this method that they transported them to their own country: Pindar mentions the same practice, Κελείαι γαρ εαν Ψυχαν κομίζαι Φριξω, &c. That is, Phrixus commands thee to call his soul into his own country.' Thus the Athenians, when they lost any men at sea, went to the shores, and calling thrice on their manes, raised a cenotaph or empty monument to their memories; by performing which solemnity, they invited the shades of the departed to return, and performed all rites as if the bodies of the dead had really been buried by them in their sepulchres. EUSTATHIUS. The Romans, as well as the Greeks, followed the same custom: thus Virgil: ...... Et magnâ manes ter voce vocavi.' The occasion of this practice arose from the opinion, that the souls of the departed were not admitted into the state of the happy, without the performance of the sepulchral solemnities. V. 95. The tenth we touch'd........ This passage has given occasion for much controversy; for since the Lotophagi in reality are distant from the Malean Cape twenty-two thousand five hundred stades, Ulysses must sail above two thousand every day, if in nine days he sailed to the Lotophagi. This objection would be unanswerable, if we place that nation in the Atlantic ocean; but Dacier observes from Strabo, that Polybius examined this point, and thus gives us the result of it. This great historian maintains, that Homer has not placed the Lotophagi in the Atlantic ocean, as he does the islands of Circe and Calypso, because it was improbable that in the compass of ten days the most favourable winds could have carried Ulysses from the Malean Cape into that ocean; it therefore follows that the poet has given us the true situation of this nation, conformable to geography, and placed it as it really lies, in the Mediterranean; now in ten days a good wind will carry a vessel from Malea into the Mediterranean, as Homer relates. This is an instance that Homer sometimes follows truth without fiction, at other times disguises it. But I confess I think Homer's poetry would have been as beautiful if he had described all his islands in their true positions: his inconstancy in this point may seem to introduce confusion and ambiguity, when the truth would have been more clear, and as beautiful in his poetry, Nothing can better shew the great deference which former ages paid Homer, than these defences of the learned ancients; they continually ascribe his deviations from truth (as in the instance before us) to design, not to ignorance; to his art as a poet, and not to want of skill as a geographer. In a writer of less fame, such relations might be thought errors, but in Homer they are either understood to be no errors, or if errors, they are vindicated by the greatest names of antiquity. Eustathius adds, that the ancients disagree about this island: some place it about Cyrene, from Maurusia of the African Moors: it is also named Meninx, and lies upon the African coast, near the lesser Syrte. It is about three hundred and fifty stades in length, and somewhat less in breadth it is also named Lotophagitis from Lotos. V. 100. An herald one.] The reason why the poet mentions the herald in particular, is because his office was sacred; and by the common law of nations his person inviolable: Ulysses therefore joins an herald in this commission, for the greater security of those whom he sends to search the country. EUSTATHIUS. V. 106. Lotos.] Eustathius assures us, that there are various kinds of it. It has been a question whether it is an herb, a root, or a tree: he is of opinion, that Homer speaks of it as an herb; for he calls it ανθινον ειδαρ, and that the word εξεπεσθαι is in its proper sense applied to the grazing of beasts, and therefore he judges it not to be a tree or root. He adds, there is an Egyptian lotos, which, as Herodotus affirms, grows in great abundance along the Nile in the time of its inundations; it resembles (says that historian in his Euterpe) a lily; the Egyptians dry it in the sun, then take the pulp out of it, which grows like the head of a poppy, and bake it as bread; this kind of it agrees likewise with the Ανθινον ειδας of Homer. Athenæus writes of the Lybian lotos in the fourteenth book of his Deipnosophist; he quotes the words of Polybius in the twelfth book of his history, now not extant; that historian speaks of it as an eye-witness, having examined the nature of it. The lotos is a tree of no great height, rough and thorny: it bears a green leaf, somewhat thicker and broader than that of the bramble or briar; its fruit at first is like the ripe berries of the myrtle, both in size and colour, but when it ripens it turns to purple; it is then about the bigness of an olive; it is round, and contains a very small kernel; when it is ripe they gather it, and bruising it among bread-corn, they put it up into a vessel, and keep it as food for their slaves; they dress it after the same manner for their other domestics, but first take out the kernel from it: it has the taste of a fig, or dates, but is of a far better smell: they likewise make a wine of it, by steeping and bruising it in water; it has a very agreeable taste, like wine tempered with honey. They drink it without mixing it with water, but it will not keep above ten days, they therefore make it only in small quantities for immediate use.' Perhaps it was this last kind |