{49} See note on line 3 of this book.  The reader will observe that the writer has been unable to keep the women out of an interpolation consisting only of four lines.

{50} Scheria means a piece of land jutting out into the sea.  In my “Authoress of the Odyssey” I thought “Jutland” would be a suitable translation, but it has been pointed out to me that “Jutland” only means the land of the Jutes.

{51} Irrigation as here described is common in gardens near Trapani.  The water that supplies the ducts is drawn from wells by a mule who turns a wheel with buckets on it.

{52} There is not a word here about the cattle of the sun-god.

{53} The writer evidently thought that green, growing wood might also be well seasoned.

{54} The reader will note that the river was flowing with salt water i.e. that it was tidal.

{55} Then the Ogygian island was not so far off, but that Nausicaa might be assumed to know where it was.

{56} Greek [Greek]

{57} I suspect a family joke, or sly allusion to some thing of which we know nothing, in this story of Eurymedusa’s having been brought from Apeira.  The Greek word “apeiros” means “inexperienced,” “ignorant.”  Is it possible that Eurymedusa was notoriously incompetent?

{58} Polyphemus was also son to Neptune, see “Od.” ix. 412,529. he was therefore half brother to Nausithous, half uncle to King Alcinous, and half great uncle to Nausicaa.

{59} It would seem as though the writer thought that Marathon was close to Athens.

{60} Here the writer, knowing that she is drawing (with embellishments) from things actually existing, becomes impatient of past tenses and slides into the present.

{61} This is hidden malice, implying that the Phaeacian magnates were no better than they should be.  The final drink-offering should have been made to Jove or Neptune, not to the god of thievishness and rascality of all kinds.  In line 164 we do indeed find Echeneus proposing that a drink-offering should be made to Jove, but Mercury is evidently, according to our authoress, the god who was most likely to be of use to them.

{62} The fact of Alcinous knowing anything about the Cyclopes suggests that in the writer’s mind Scheria and the country of the Cyclopes were not very far from one another.  I take the Cyclopes and the giants to be one and the same people.

{63} “My property, etc.”  The authoress is here adopting an Iliadic line (xix. 333), and this must account for the absence of all reference to Penelope.  If she had happened to remember “Il.” v.213, she would doubtless have appropriated it by preference, for that line reads “my country, my wife, and all the greatness of my house.”

{64} The at first inexplicable sleep of Ulysses (bk. xiii. 79, etc.) is here, as also in viii. 445, being obviously prepared.  The writer evidently attached the utmost importance to it.  Those who know that the harbour which did duty with the writer of the “Odyssey” for the one in which Ulysses landed in Ithaca, was only about 2 miles from the place in which Ulysses is now talking with Alcinous, will understand why the sleep was so necessary.