{156} Lower down (line 143) Euryclea says it was herself that had thrown the cloak over Ulysses—­for the plural should not be taken as implying more than one person.  The writer is evidently still fluctuating between Euryclea and Eurynome as the name for the old nurse.  She probably originally meant to call her Euryclea, but finding it not immediately easy to make Euryclea scan in xvii. 495, she hastily called her Eurynome, intending either to alter this name later or to change the earlier Euryclea’s into Eurynome.  She then drifted in to Eurynome as convenience further directed, still nevertheless hankering after Euryclea, till at last she found that the path of least resistance would lie in the direction of making Eurynome and Euryclea two persons.  Therefore in xxiii. 289-292 both Eurynome and “the nurse” (who can be none other than Euryclea) come on together.  I do not say that this is feminine, but it is not unfeminine.

{157} See note {156}

{158} This, I take it, was immediately in front of the main entrance of the inner courtyard into the body of the house.

{159} This is the only allusion to Sardinia in either “Iliad” or “Odyssey.”

{160} The normal translation of the Greek word would be “holding back,” “curbing,” “restraining,” but I cannot think that the writer meant this—­she must have been using the word in its other sense of “having,” “holding,” “keeping,” “maintaining.”

{161} I have vainly tried to realise the construction of the fastening here described.

{162} See plan of Ulysses’ house in the appendix.  It is evident that the open part of the court had no flooring but the natural soil.

{163} See plan of Ulysses’ house, and note {175}.

{164} i.e. the door that led into the body of the house.

{165} This was, no doubt, the little table that was set for Ulysses, “Od.” xx. 259.

Surely the difficulty of this passage has been overrated.  I suppose the iron part of the axe to have been wedged into the handle, or bound securely to it—­the handle being half buried in the ground.  The axe would be placed edgeways towards the archer, and he would have to shoot his arrow through the hole into which the handle was fitted when the axe was in use.  Twelve axes were placed in a row all at the same height, all exactly in front of one another, all edgeways to Ulysses whose arrow passed through all the holes from the first onward.  I cannot see how the Greek can bear any other interpretation, the words being, [Greek]

“He did not miss a single hole from the first onwards.” [Greek] according to Liddell and Scott being “the hole for the handle of an axe, etc.,” while [Greek] ("Od.” v. 236) is, according to the same authorities, the handle itself.  The feat is absurdly impossible, but our authoress sometimes has a soul above impossibilities.

{166} The reader will note how the spoiling of good food distresses the writer even in such a supreme moment as this.