Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/79

 

BOOK IV.

 

ARGUMENT.

Menelaus entertains Pisistratus and Telemachus; the latter of whom relates the state of matters in Ithaca, and makes inquiries respecting his father. Menelaus then gives him the particulars of the return of the Grecians, as far as he is acquainted with them; and informs Telemachus that he had been acquainted by Proteus, that Ulysses was being detained by Calypso. At Ithaca, in the mean time, the suitors in council determine to lay wait for Telemachus on his return, and put him to death. Minerva comforts Penelope, who was afflicted at her son's absence, by a dream, appearing to her in the form of Ipthime, the sister of Penelope.

They came to hollow Lacedæmon with its many clefts;^[1] and they drove to the house of glorious Menelaus. And they found him making a nuptial feast in his house, of his son and spotless daughter, to many friends.^[2] Her he sent to the son of the warlike Achilles; for in Troy he first promised and agreed that he would bestow her: and the gods brought their marriage to pass. He sent her to go there with horses and chariots, to the illustrious city of the Myrmidons, over whom he reigned: and to his son he brought from Sparta the daughter of Alector, who was born to him in his old age, brave Megapenthes, from a slave: but the gods no more gave an offspring to Helen, after she had first brought forth her lovely daughter Hermione, who had the form of golden Venus.

So these neighbours and friends of glorious Menelaus feasted in the lofty-roofed, large house, delighted: and amongst them a divine bard sang, playing on the harp; and two dancers amongst them turned round in the middle, the song having commenced.^[3] But they themselves and their horses,

1. Cf. Buttman Lexil. p. 379—383, where he has completely set at rest the old interpretations of this word, which he derives primarily from χάω, χάσκω. Loewe has adopted the same view. Κοίλη is applied to Lacedæmon, because it was situated in the valley between Mounts Taygetus and Parthenius.
2. His son Megapenthes wedded the daughter of Alector, and his daughter Hermione, Neoptolemus.
3. In the old prose translation, the author of which is seldom guilty of losing an opportunity for a blunder, we have an amusing oscillation between ἐξάρχοντες and ἐξάρχοντος. Had he been aware that the commentary of Eustathius on this passage is simply a quotation from Athenæus, who read ἐξάρχοντος, he would have seen that the reading, not the interpretation, was the question.