[Greek] The authoress has bungled by borrowing these words verbatim from the "Iliad", without prefixing the necessary "do not," which I have supplied.
The probability is that she never gave the matter a thought, but took the line in question as an effect of saturation with the "Iliad," and of unconscious cerebration.
[Greek] of the Odyssean passage was due to the [Greek] of the "Iliad." No other reason suggests itself for the making Menelaus return on the very day of the feast given by Orestes.
A male writer, if he was borrowing from the "Iliad," would have stuck to his borrowing.
The catalogue in the "Iliad," which the writer is here presumably following, makes the same mistake ("Il." ii.
{40} Amber is never mentioned in the "Iliad." Sicily, where I suppose the "Odyssey" to have been written, has always been, and still is, one of the principal amber producing countries.
Not so the writer of the "Iliad" from which the Odyssean passage is probably taken.
Elsewhere in both "Iliad" and "Odyssey" the offer of a present is immediately followed by the statement that it was given and received gladly--Alcinous actually does give a chest and a cloak and shirt--probably also some of the corn and wine for the long two-mile voyage was provided by him--but it is quite plain that he gave no talent and no cup.
These lines in the "Iliad" tell of the preparation for washing the body of Patroclus, and I am not pleased that the writer of the "Odyssey" should have adopted them here.
The words in both "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are [Greek].
He translated not only the Iliad, but with the help of two lesser poets the Odyssey also.
But, taken as a whole, the Odyssey is not so good as the Iliad. Scholars tell us that in neither the one nor the other is the feeling of the original poetry kept.