A0GUST 31, 1929. 
 
 NOTES AND QUERIES, 
 
 Samuel Butler and the Odyssey. By B. Far- j| 
 rington (Jonathan Cape). ; 
 
 SAMUEL Butler entertained, and amid the 
 scorn of professed classical scholars set | 
 fort h, th e opinion that the Od yssey was not 
 
 written by the author of the Iliad, but by a 
 woman-and a young, unmarried woman. 
 Mr. Farriugton is sure with an abso- 
 lute sureness that this theory is the good one, 
 and gives his reasons with a lively clearness 
 and a fiery scorn of the old tradition and those 
 who have held it. He has a great deal to say 
 for himself and Butler. He begins by pressing 
 home the location of Scheria m Sicily. And 
 then the problem of the queer geography of 
 Ithaca is solved by transferring the whole 
 scene of the poem-apart only from names- 
 from the Ionian Islands to the Aegadean 
 Islands west of Sicily. The author of the 
 Odyssey, we are to take it, lived m Scheria, 
 which is Trapani, and so throughout was des- 
 cribing the sea and coast and islands ot the 
 near lud familiar neighbourhood. Where do 
 we detect the woman? In a certain silliness 
 wl.ich besets the writer when handling a mans 
 
 sts; in 
 ;ion of 
 
 JOHN O' LONDON'S WEEKLY, I'^J^^^ 
 
 1^' ^y^' 
 
 ^'■■4 .u 
 
 December 14, i935- 
 
 A Note on Butler. 
 
 Sir, — I was glad to read the appreciation of 
 Samuel Butler and his works so admirably set forth 
 
 „f XT«.T<»,,,K<»r 
 
 NOTES 
 AND QUERIES. 
 
 September 21, 1929. 
 
 OAMUEL BUTLER AND THE ODYSSEY 
 ^ (See ante p. 161). — I welcome Mr. Far- 
 rington's lx)ok. Samuel Butler discussed his 
 
 I " theory " at length with my wife and my- 
 self in 1882, and at his request we went care- 
 fully through his MS., which was in its 
 original form of somewhat wearisome length. 
 I have a letter of his dated 20 Oct., 1892, in 
 which he says: — " Thank you very much for 
 taking so much trouble with my MS. I have 
 not the smallest doubt that you and Mrs. 
 
 , Heron- Allen are perfectly right, and if I put 
 the MS. by for a fortnight or so, shall, I am 
 confident, see my way to compressing it. It 
 is always hard to do this til] one comes to a 
 thing fresh." 
 
 Bdwabd Hebon-Allen. 
 
^ /i^^^ Jb <^^c^ ^i^=7u.yt^ C^^v^ 
 
 .Z^ >^^^^ ^-- ^ -^ 
 
 ^^ ^-►wr- 
 
A^a 00^ ^PpLty^Lje^ ^ \y 
 
 /?Uc^ -^^^ ^^^ ;^?^^t^ /^^ 
 
 ^ ^^ A^^>^ /^^^ ^^^^<^ 
 
y^,,,,^ ^......^ £c7^ ^ ^^- ^^^ ^ ^^^f . , 
 
 y^ 7^ ^o^:^ /U^ yo^ ^^^^ ^^"^^ ^^^ .r^^^^^^i^ 
 
 ^>*- 
 
 ^/^^^>j^ -^i^^«^ "^^^c^ 
 
\ 
 
ON THE 
 
 TRAPANESE ORIGIN 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ODYSSEY. 
 
 By SAMUEL BUTLER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "EREWHON," "EX VOTO," "HUMOUR OF HOMER," &C. 
 
 METCALEa^AND CO. LIMITED, TRINITY STREET. 
 
 1893. 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
 [Entered at Stationers' Hall— All RightB Reserved], 
 
ON THE 
 
 TRAPANESE ORIGIN 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ODYSSEY. 
 
 By SAMUEL BUTLER, 
 
 AUxaoR OF "erewhon," "ex voto," "hUxMgur of homer," &c. 
 
 METCALFE AND CO. LIMITED, TRINITY STEEET. 
 
 1893. 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
 [Sntered at Stationers' Hall— All Eights Reserved]. 
 
CORRIGENDUM. 
 
 In the inset map in the lower right hand corner of the map 
 of the Voyages of Ulysses, the route should not be made to 
 touch the island of Farognana on the South Side, and the 
 place where Minerva changes the wind should, of course, be 
 further North. 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 In the article herewith reprinted from the Eagle I have 
 corrected the serious mistake that I there made in speaking 
 of Phaeacia. No doubt I caught the word from imprudently 
 reading Sir Edward Bunbury's History of Ancient Geography 
 where the same mistake occurs more than once (Vol. i., pp. 
 63 — 66). It is a gross one, for the word Phaeacia is not used 
 by any ancient author, and in the Odyssey the land of the 
 Phaeacians, is only named as Scheria. No name is given for 
 the town where King Alcinous lived, and the writer probably 
 thought of it by its actual name, which no doubt was then, 
 as later, Drepanum or Drepane, now Trapani. Names appear 
 to have been always a trouble to the writer of the Odyssey, 
 as indeed to young authors they generally are. Not only does 
 she (for I cannot doubt that the poem is written by a woman) 
 shirk finding a name for the chief town of Scheria, but she 
 is apt to use the same name, or part of a name too frequently. 
 There are four people with the name Polybus in the Odyssey, 
 two Pisenors very close together, two Antiphates, about ten 
 whose names begin with Poly, and no less than sixteen whose 
 names begin with Eury. 
 
 Returning to Sir Edward Bunbury ; as I have been led to 
 note his mistake in using the word Phseacia, I had better 
 perhaps point out another in connection with his topography 
 of Scheria. In a note in Vol. i., p. 63, he says that " Homer 
 always uses the expression 'the land of the Phaeacians.' He 
 never calls it an island like those of ^olus, or Circe, or 
 Calypso, which shows that he considered it as a tract of 
 considerable extent. This does not, however, exclude the idea 
 of its being a large island like Sicily or Crete." And yet in 
 his map to illustrate the wanderings of Ulysses (Vol. i., p. 84),, 
 he makes Scheria a small island. 
 
Men of science, so far as I have observed them, are apt in 
 their fear of jumping to a conclusion, to forget that there is 
 such alhing as jumping away from one — and Homeric students 
 have taken a leaf out of their book in this respect. How many 
 striking points of correspondence, I wonder, between an actual 
 place and one described in a novel, should be enough for 
 reasonable surmise that the one was drawn from the other ? 
 I should myself say that four would be ample, provided, of 
 course, that no feature in the novel was contradicted by the 
 place itself, and that no serious argument could be brought 
 to show that the coincidences must be merely accidental. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that a policeman is told to look out 
 for an elderly gentleman of about sixty; he is a foreigner,, 
 speaks a little English, but not much, is lame in his left foot, 
 has blue eyes, a bottle nose, and is about 5 ft. 10 in. high» 
 How many of these features will the policeman require 
 before he feels pretty sure that he has found his man ? If he 
 sees any foreigner he will look at him. If he finds one who 
 is about 5 ft. 10 in. in height, he will note his age. If he 
 finds this tally with the description and sees also that the 
 man limps, he will probably arrest him on suspicion, and if on 
 doing so he also finds, as he is pretty certain to do, that the 
 man has blue eyes and a bottle-nose, and speaks broken 
 English, he will take him before the magistrate. The prisoner 
 may perhaps be able to show that in spite of so many points 
 of correspondence he is not the person wanted, but what 
 sensible magistrate would be satisfied with less than the most 
 convincing proof that the case was one of mistaken identity ? 
 
 Mutatis mutajidis. Trapani is now arrested and placed on 
 trial as being the home and habitat of the Odyssey. It was 
 accused of being the chief town of Scheria, for reasons that will 
 follow in the body of this pamphlet, and since its arrest a 
 number of additional and most suspicious circumstances have 
 been found in connection with it. Strawberry mark after straw- 
 berry mark has been exhibited, but with the production of each 
 one Homeric critics only cry out the more loudly that it cannot, 
 cannot, be the long lost Scheria. Nevertheless, when asked for 
 their objection they have none that they will themselves be 
 prepared to stand by. 
 
 I have said in a postscript the little that need be said to 
 meet the only objection which the Classical Revieiv has been 
 
able to bring against my conjecture ; but I would point out that, 
 as Stolberg has said, we have strong reason for thinking 
 Drepanum to be a town of remote antiquity. Virgil, writing of 
 an age much prior to that of the Odyssey, introduces Drepanum ; 
 the presumption, therefore, is irresistible that in his day it was 
 believed to have existed long before the well-known later Greek 
 colonies of Syracuse, Agrigentum, and Selinus. I can find no 
 reason for thinking, as Mr. Warr perhaps a little oflf-handedly 
 implies, that there was a Greek colony established at Drepanum 
 of the same date and character as those just mentioned ; but, 
 on the other hand, the megalithic remains still visible hard by 
 on Mount Eryx show that they were built at a very remote age 
 by a people of the same race, and, hence, presumably of the 
 same language, with those who made the walls of Hissarlik, 
 IMycenae, Cefalu, and the many cities of Greece and Italy, 
 where other like remains are to be found. 
 
 From the Odyssey itself we gather — assuming for the moment 
 that it was inspired topographically by Trapanese environments 
 ■ — that Eryx was already in ruins. For the Giants of vii. 5q can 
 hardly be other than the people who built the oldest walls of 
 Eryx, and their city, according to the passage just referred to, 
 was destroyed in the time of the great grandfather of King 
 Alcinous. I shall presently show why I have no hesitation in 
 placing the hut of Eumseus immediately underneath the pre- 
 cipice on the top of which the temple of Venus afterwards 
 stood. This spot could not well have been owned and occupied 
 by the chief man in Trapani if Eryx was still inhabited, nor 
 can we believe that a writer who gives us so much local colour 
 would have foregone all reference to the Temple and cult of 
 Venus, on a spot with which she herself was certainly acquainted, 
 if these had already been in existence. It is probable, there- 
 fore, that the Phoenicians when they rebuilt the walls of 
 Eryx, leaving here and there some lower courses of the 
 older work, introduced the worship of Venus, and built the 
 Temple. They also probably introduced the name Eryx, 
 derived, as Prof. Salinas has »hewn reasons for believing, from 
 Erech, which name has been found on Phoenician coins 
 discovered at Trapani and on Mount Eryx. *The original name 
 
 *See "II Monte Erice," by Domenico Giannitrapani. Bologna, i' 
 P- 34. &c. 
 
6 
 
 of the city is believed to have been Elyma, and in Dion, Hal. i, 
 53 we find the mountain still called Mount Elymos. 
 
 Phoenician characters, evidently quarrymen's or builders' 
 marks, may still be seen on some of the later walls. They are 
 figured in Professor Salinas' work on the walls of Eryx, which, 
 however, he ascribes wholly to the Phoenicians. I examined 
 these walls in company with some very capable local students, 
 and we had no hesitation in concluding that though the fine 
 Phoenician work in some places rises from the ground, in not a 
 few others it was superimposed on the vastly more massive and 
 ruder work of an earlier age. In the time of the Odyssey, there- 
 fore, I conclude that the megalithic Eryx, the stones of whose 
 walls gave rise to the gigantic stature of the Cyclopes, or 
 *' round faces " (for there is no sufficient warrant in the Odyssey 
 for thinking that they had only one eye, and they are never so 
 represented in the earlier periods of Greek art), was a heap of 
 ruins, tenanted at the most by a few scattered, half outlaws, half 
 shepherds, who had no longer any kind of municipal institutions. 
 The Cyclopes, in fact, are the scattered remnant of the old 
 Pelasgic colonists, who are described as Giants because their 
 descendants failed to realise the change which the introduction 
 of iron had effected. Perhaps they would after one or two 
 hundred years be even ignorant that there had been a change at 
 all. They thought that those who built with such large stones 
 must have been large men, whereas, in fact, they were only 
 economical men. If this is right, the Pelasgic remains at Cefalu 
 ought to be older than those of Eryx, for they are in part poly- 
 gonal, which those of Eryx are not. But letting this pass, the 
 descent of the Cyclopes from the reputed giants is indicated in 
 VII. 206, where Alcinous says that the Phaeacians are as near of 
 kin to the gods " as the Cyclopes are to the Giants." This 
 would be perfectly understood by the local audience, for Alcinous 
 claimed to be Neptune's grandson. He appears, however, to 
 have forgotten that he was himself in great part Cyclops in 
 virtue of his descent from Periboea, and that if he was Neptune's 
 grandson, he was also own nephew to Polyphemus, and ought 
 to have been angry with Ulysses for having blinded his uncle. 
 
 Furthermore, we find the inhabitants of Drepanum described 
 in the Odyssey as having no neighbours, and this could not be if 
 Eryx was still an inhabited city. Proceeding to the mere out- 
 line of my conjecture, which I can alone here lay before the 
 
7 
 
 reader, I suppose that a Pelasgic city existed from a very remote 
 antiquity at the top of Mount Eryx. This came to an end, as 
 above explained, with the ruin of the personage called in the 
 Odyssey Eurymedon. The destroyers, whoever they might have 
 been, did not stay there and occupy the city, but passed on, 
 leaving a remnant of outlawed survivors to inhabit the ruins, 
 while at the same time, either the Phocian settlers, mentioned 
 Thuc. vi. 2, or the more law-abiding survivors of the ruined 
 town, or both together, established themselves in a provisional 
 unwalled, scattered settlement, either on the Colle di Sta. Anna 
 or near the Torre della Martogna. This is the Hypereia of the 
 Odyssey ; and here seems to have resided the daughter of the 
 last chief ruler of Eryx, who gave birth to an illegitimate son, 
 called in the Odyssey by the fictitious name Nausithous. 
 
 He, proving himself a capable man, was chosen as d'va^ or 
 ficuTiXevc- Finding himself and his people harassed by the out- 
 laws of Eryx, he removed the town — which suggests that it was 
 not an old one — to the site now occupied by Trapani, and 
 walled it. Finally, I suppose that either in virtue of his reputed 
 descent from Eurymedon, or through matrimonial alliance, or 
 by main force, Nausithous reduced the Eryx outlaws to subjec- 
 tion, and either killed them or moved them down to the more 
 attractive site of Trapani, so that in the days of his son they 
 were no longer formidable and a few swineherds could protect 
 their herd against all the enemies they were likely to encounter. 
 A few nomad half shepherds, half outlaws seem, however, to 
 have been still remaining in the days of the Odyssey. 
 
 Here let me remark how closely the description of the 
 Cyclopes in the Odyssey tallies with that of the modern Sicilian 
 brigands published in the Times of September 24th, 1892. 
 
 Mr. Stigand says: " S. Mauro, the head -quarters of the 
 brigands, is a town on the top of a mountain 3,000ft. high, and 
 in sight of Geraci Siculo, another town of about the same height* 
 and of Pollina, also on the summit of another mountain. The 
 roads among the mountains connecting these towns are mere 
 mule paths. The mountains abound in caves known only to the 
 brigands and shepherds." Is it possible not to remember the 
 lines about the Cyclopes ? — 
 
 To~i(Tiv 2* oiiT ayopai (iovXtjcpopoi ovre denitTTEs, 
 AW oiy' vxpriXoiv opiwv vaiovai Kaprjva 
 *Ev airiaaL yXafvpotai' QeynaTtvEL ce tKaaroQ 
 Xiailwv 77^' aXo^wv ov'S' dXKi^Xuy uXtyovai, ix, 112 — 115. 
 
Caves abound in all the non-volcanic mountains of Sicityi 
 There are some specially remarkable ones on a mountain called 
 Cofino, some 15 miles north of Trapani, famous within the last 
 few months as a scene of desperate brigandage. They are called 
 " Le Grotte degli Scilrati," and many families still live in them. 
 I visited them, and photographed them, but saw no signs of 
 brigandage. On the contrary, the caves were kept as clean as 
 the best class of English cottages, and the people, who were 
 most kind and hospitable, were more fair than dark. They 
 might very well many of them have passed for English. It is 
 noticeable that forms of the words aireoQ and ar-pov appear 
 forty-five times in the Odyssey as against only six in the Iliad. 
 Roughly allowing for the greater length of the Ih'ad, this is 
 about in the proportion of 10 : i. We may surmise, therefore, 
 that the Odyssey was written from a district where caves were 
 common. 
 
 I have dealt with the cave of Polyphemus in the article that 
 follows. The giant himself, as I have there said, still exists 
 under the name Conturrano, which may, perhaps, with little 
 change, have been his name in the time of the Odyssey, for 
 Polyphemus is not a real name. No actual giant was ever yet 
 named " Celebrated," and Polyphemus can only be a pseudonym 
 for the popular local giant, whoever he then was. Whether his 
 present name can be connected with kovtoq and ovpavog, and 
 whether, if so, we may suppose that it means one who could 
 reach or pierce the skies with his pole, I am not philologist 
 enough to know ; but should this be permissible we may also 
 surmise that it was with the kovtoq of his own name that Ulysses 
 blinded him. One eye was alone blinded, not because Poly- 
 phemus had not got two, but because his pole had not got two 
 prongs, and the writer did not see her way to finding a bifurcated 
 weapon in his cave. We are never told of his having had but 
 one central eye, and such a marked feature does not go without 
 saying. No doubt the writer trusted to the sympathetic inflam- 
 mation which so serious an injury would excite in the other eye, 
 and considered that she had blinded both sufficiently by roasting 
 one of them. The giant has grown greatly since the Odyssey, 
 and could certainly not get inside the Grotta di Polifemo, 
 for he now rests his feet on the plain, while he props his 
 stomach on the top of Mount Eryx, and, bending forward, 
 plunges his huge hands into the sea, between Bonagia and 
 
Cofano, to catch tunnies. When disturbed he tears great rocks 
 from the top of Mount Eryx, and dashes them right and left at 
 all who interrupt him. 
 
 Not only are Cyclops and Polyphemus fictitious names, but 
 so also is Telepylos, the city of the Laestrygonians. Cities 
 rarely have ex post facto names. The name is given before it 
 is known what the city will prove, but as a matter of fact Cefalu, 
 where the scene of the Laestrygonian episode is placed, was a 
 large city in the days of its megalithic walls, and hence its 
 gates would be far apart. The two remaining examples of so- 
 called (and probably correctly) Pelasgic work are about two- 
 thirds of a mile distant .from one another, and this involves 
 what must have been in those days a large city. Moreover, it 
 was supposed to be a place of such wealth and luxury that 
 people insisted on having fresh milk twice a day, instead of 
 being content with a morning supply only, as at Palermo and 
 most other modern Sicilian towns, where the goats are driven 
 to be milked in the morning but not in the evening.* Cefalu 
 lies exactly where Telepylos ought to be — that'is to say, between 
 the island of yEolus (Ustica) and Circe's island ; moreover, it is 
 the one seaport in Sicily where megalithic walls are known to 
 exist. There can hardly be a doubt, therefore, that the closeness 
 of the resemblances between the Cyclopes and the Lasstrygonians 
 as described in the Odyssey, is due to a known identity of race 
 and modes of building between the people of Eryx and those 
 of Cefalu. 
 
 Telepylos being a fictitious name, no doubt Laestrygonia 
 (though this actual word is not found) was so also. Whether it 
 has any connection with the modern word " lastricare," and may 
 mean that the people paved their roads, I cannot tell. But 
 we gather that whereas the civilisation of Eryx was certainly at 
 an end by the time the Odyssey was written, that of Cefalu was 
 probably still existing, though we know nothing about it, except 
 that the city was large and rich ; that it belonged to the mega- 
 lithic age, when it was cheaper to move large stones than to cut 
 smaller ones ; and that it had a poor little pre^historic joke 
 about a man being able to earn double wages if he could do 
 without sleep. In fact I believe every single name of a Sicilian 
 place or person is fictitious, whereas the moment we get out of 
 Sicily the names are invariably real. I find here strong reason 
 
 * See Od, x. 82, 84. 
 
10 
 
 for thinking that the writer was drawing real people as well as 
 real places, and was concealing them under a flimsy disguise, 
 which, however, she knew everyone would see through. For 
 example, Temesa, on the toe of Italy, a city which I learn from 
 Smith's dictionary had been famous for its copper mines, though 
 they were worked out in Strabo's time, has its real name given 
 it, whereas the moment we touch Sicily even Trinacria becomes 
 Thrinakia. We may note also that the people of Temesa are 
 described as " of foreign language" (i. 183). 
 
 The goats from which the ^gadean islands were named are 
 hinted at in a way that I can hardly doubt was meant to be per- 
 ceived by the audience in Book iv. 606, where Telemachus says 
 that Ithaca — that is to say, in reality, the Island of Marettimo — 
 was more fit for rearing goats than horses ; and, again, when 
 Ulysses and his men hunted goats in the Island of Favognana, 
 before exploiting the Cyclopes (ix. 152, &;c.) How like this 
 island is to the description of it given in Odyssty ix. 116, (Src, 
 may be gathered from the following extract from Le due Deche 
 of Fazelli, who, however, had no idea that he was dealing with 
 ground already described in the Odyssey. He wrote : — 
 
 " La Fauognana, o vero Egusa, ha il terreno grasso, ed ^ 
 copiosa di buonissime acque, ond'ella e molto atta alia Agri- 
 coltura . . . . ed ha molti seni, e ridotti, i quali sono sicuri, 
 e capaci di molti nauilii, ed h diuisa da Lilibeo, e dal paese di 
 Trapani da un braccio di mare, dove sono le Formiche ed allre 
 isolette," etc. (Due Deche. &c., Venice, 1573). 
 
 Favognana is, of course, derived from Favonius — this wind 
 blowing on to Trapani from off the island. Bearing in mind 
 the whole of the passage last referred to in the Odyssey, we can 
 hardly doubt that what the writer says about the Cyclopes being 
 unable to colonise the island because they had no ships, was 
 intended to be taken by the audience as meaning : " You have 
 no excuse for not colonising this fertile island, for you have any 
 number of ships." 
 
 Nevertheless, the .^gadean Islands are invariably called by 
 the names of the Ionian. Once, and once only, is the mask 
 dropped (xxiv, 307), but this is in a passage where Ulysses is 
 supposed to be telling a lie, so that though dropped it is main- 
 tained. Here, moreover, Sicily is mentioned under what was 
 then probably its correct name. That this should have been so 
 suggests that the Odyssey belongs to a pre-Sicelian era ; while. 
 
again, the fact that 'S.iKavlrjQ should not have got corrupted into 
 ^LKsXirjg during the many centuries that the island was called 
 St/ceAe'r/ (which would scan just as well) suggests that the poem 
 was composed as a written work. Even the island of the two 
 Sirens, which was close to Circe's, &c. (x. 165, 166), and which 
 we can identify as the modern Salina, anciently called Didyme, 
 has no name given it, nor yet has Circe's island. It is true 
 there is a part of the island of Panaria, the ancient Euonymus, 
 called La Caletta dei Zummari, but it is not safe to suppose that 
 they have anything to do with the Cymmerii, for no attempt 
 should be made to localise the journey to Hades, which is 
 evidently only an excuse for introducing colloquies with the 
 dead. The two Sirens are, I imagine, the sudden gusts of wind 
 that come down from the two high mountains of Salina (both 
 over 3,000 feet high), as from Cof^no, for which reason there is 
 a saying among Trapanese fishermen "Ware Cof^no." The 
 navigation, probably, of the Lipari islands, near the two moun- 
 tains of Salina, is treacherous for small sailing vessels, and woe 
 to him who hears the wind shriek in his rigging when off 
 Didyme, for the coast is strewn with wrecks, and his bones will 
 help to whiten the shore. In early illustrations we generally, I 
 believe, find the Sirens winged. 
 
 In the days of the Odyssey everyone would know the people 
 of Eryx to be the " round-faces," and those of Cefalu to be the 
 Laestrygonians, whatever this name may mean, and the false 
 names might well survive long after the Phoenician invasion, 
 which I suppose to have taken place between B.C. 950 and 850, 
 had caused their fictitiousness and their Odyssean origin to be 
 forgotten. Hence Thucydides believed the names to be real, 
 and though recording a well-founded popular belief when he 
 said that the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians were the earliest 
 recorded inhabitants of Sicily was wrong in thinking that he 
 was giving their true names. He was giving their nicknames 
 which had survived the real ones. It is most probable that the 
 round-faces and the Elymi are one and the same people, for 
 there is much to be said in support of the view that the people 
 who built the oldest walls of Eryx came from the part of Thrace 
 nearest to the Troad ; the Thracian Cyclopes, who are reported 
 to have been the inventors of Cyclopean walls, being a corrup- 
 tion of an accepted story that the Ericinians came from Thrace, 
 and were called Cyclopes. Hence the fact that the megalithic 
 
12 
 
 walls of Southern Europe are called, indiscriminately, C)-clopean 
 and Pelasgic. 
 
 The introduction of the Ciconian incident as the one thing 
 that -was likely to interest her readers between the Troad and 
 the immediate neighbourhood of Sicily, may, in this case, have 
 been dictated by a belief among the original Odyssean audience 
 that they were descended from these same Cicons. The Cym- 
 merians also were a Thracian people, I gather from Smith's 
 Dictionary, of very remote antiquity, and their introduction as 
 a mysterious shadow people, dwelling in darkness, may have 
 more significance in it than appears on the first view of the 
 thing. It may or it may not. It is as dangerous to see too much 
 purpose as too little, but it is well to note these things ; and, 
 on the whole, the writer of the Odyssey does not introduce 
 such matters into her work without having a reason for doing so. 
 
 This view at any rate lends much point to the wine which 
 Ulysses brought from Ismarus, the chief town of the Cicons 
 (ix. 196, &:c.) Ismarus centuries after the time of the Odyssey 
 was still famous for its wine, and a gasconading tradition 
 respecting this may well have existed among the people of Eryx, 
 which would prompt the writer to introduce it, poke fun at it, 
 and make Polyphemus drunk with it. 
 
 After all this speculation it is refreshing to turn to the more 
 demonstrable ground of the Odyssean features that may now be 
 found at Trapani and Mount Eryx. 
 
 I have said in the pamphlet that follows that I place the hut 
 of Eumaeus on the north side of the top of IMount Eryx, close 
 under the high rock, on the top of which the Temple of Venus 
 afterwards stood, but I did not give my reasons. I have 
 identified the cave in which Ulysses hid his Phseacian presents 
 with the one now called La Grotia del Toro. From this, accord- 
 ing to the Odyssey, Ulysses ascended by a rugged path till he 
 reached the top of a mountain, and found a hut commanding a 
 wide prospect near a spring of water, and close to a notable 
 rock or precipice, called Ko'pa^, or crow. The mountain on 
 which the Groiia del Toro is placed is isolated, so there was 
 only one-^that is to say IMount Eryx — that he could climb. I 
 only know of three springs near the top of Mount Eryx. Two 
 are almost immediately above La Grot/a del Toro, but they have 
 no rock or precipice near them. The third is half-an-hour's 
 valk further-on towards the east, and this is immediately under 
 
13 
 
 • 
 
 a sheer precipice of some 80 or 100 feet, part of which is still 
 called ^as I have said later) the rock of the crows. This, then, 
 is no doubt the spot intended by the Odjssey, and Ulysses pro- 
 bably pointed to this precipice when he offered to let Eumseus's 
 men throw him down from a high rock (xiv. 399). It may be 
 as well, however, to see whether it corresponds with whatever 
 other indications we can glean from the Odyssey itself. 
 
 This site is bitterly cold in winter — it is nearly 2,500 feet 
 above the sea — and it is hereabouts that the ice and snow are 
 collected that keep Mount S. Giuliano in ice all the summer. 
 The time of year when Ulysses landed, both in Ithaca and in 
 Scheria, is winter. Calypso had a large fire some three weeks 
 earlier in the island of Pantelleria. This can only mean mid- 
 winter. Three weeks later Queen Arete is spinning by firelight, 
 and Nausicaa has a fire lit for her in her own room when she 
 comes in from her washing exploit. The season, therefore, 
 cannot be later than the first few days in February, when the 
 middle- day is warm, but nights and mornings are cold. From 
 Book v., in fact, to Book xxiv., inclusive, we are consistently in 
 winter, or in very early spring. In Books i. — iv., however, we 
 are apparently in summer. The outdoor feast of Neptune 
 would never be held in winter; besides the Pylians went to bed 
 soon after sunset, which must mean summer not winter sunset. 
 I am safe, at any rate, in saying that it was mid-winter when 
 Ulysses was at the hut of Eumaeus. 
 
 He feels the cold, as he naturally wonld, and begs the loan 
 of a cloak to serve as a coverlet (xiv. 460). Later on (xvii. 22 
 — 25) he finds the cold so bitter that he will not venture out of 
 the hut till the sun has got up to a good height, and till he has 
 well warmed himself at the fire. He says his clothes are thin, 
 and he is afraid he will perish with cold if he goes out before 
 the sun is high. This applies excellently to a spot on the N.E. 
 side of a mountain of some 2,500 feet high, but it will hardly 
 do for anything much lower in a latitude so low as that of Sicily. 
 As regards distance from Trapani, which I do not doubt did 
 duty with the writer for Ithaca, we note that in Book xvi. 
 Eumaeus started in good time on the morning of a winter's day, 
 and did not return till evening — probably about four or five 
 o'clock. Roughly, it took him the best part of a winter's day 
 to go down to the city, see Penelope, and come back again. It 
 should, therefore, be a matter of between two or three hours' 
 
14 
 
 walk. This view is supported by a passage at the end of the 
 following Book, in which Telemachus tells Eumoeus to take an 
 afternoon meal and then go off back to his hut. 
 
 The path was so rugged that Ulysses was afraid to attempt it 
 without a stick (xvii. 195, 196). It was so narrow that if a man 
 was struck in the chest he would be driven out of it altogether 
 (xvii. 233, 234.). It passed a notable hill that dominated the 
 town, probably the Colle di Sta. Anna, and later on it passed the 
 fountain, which was probably the water from the Fontana Difali, 
 brought down to a site near where the Church of the Annunziata 
 now stands. All these points are found in the old path between 
 Trapani and the site marked Runzi in the plan given on page 3 
 of the pamphlet that follows this Preface. I cannot doubt, 
 therefore, that the site I have chosen is the true one. 
 
 As for the ferry, it is true that till the land on the west side 
 of Trapani was artificially raised in i860, after a strong north 
 wind the two seas often joined. This was most frequently the 
 case in winter, and many have assured me that they remember 
 having to cross from Trapani to the main land in carts. I was 
 at first, therefore, tempted to think that Philcetius (xx. 185, 
 &c,) had come to the town when the water was out, and that we 
 could thus explain the ferry, but a few lines above we find that 
 Eumseus had also come in with three pigs, and Melanthius with 
 some goats. These men had both unquestionably come from 
 Mount Eryx, and it is forcing the text to suppose that they, too, 
 had had to cross water. In fact the text almost forbids this. 
 There is nothing to imply that Philcetius had come from Mount 
 Eryx, and it is more likely that his cattle pastured on the flat 
 land south of the harbour, and that the ferry was to save the 
 long detour round the harbour, which would have been otherwise 
 necessary. 
 
 The Temple of Neptune, mentioned in the Odyssey as in the 
 middle of the town, may well have been on the site of the 
 present Church of S. Nicola, which has been long believed to 
 be on the site of an old Temple of Neptune. 
 
 The storm which this god raised soon after Ulysses caught 
 sight of the Phseacian coast was to explain how Ulysses got by 
 Trapani without seeing it. He first saw the long, low line of 
 coast between Marsala and Paceco, " rising like a shield out of 
 the sea," and, if allowed to go on undisturbed, he would have 
 sailed right up to the projecting promontory of Trapani, and 
 
15 
 
 would have entered the harbour. But the writer wanted him to 
 land north of the town at her own washing ground, and his 
 seeing Trapani would have spoiled everj-thing. When, therefore, 
 he was off the Isola Grande, Neptune is made to raise a storm, 
 make everything dark as night, and bring the clouds right down 
 to the water. This is also convenient for getting him past 
 Favognana, which he might have been in danger of recognising 
 as the place where he had hunted the goats some seven or eight 
 years earlier. No doubt these points were fully discussed with 
 Captain Dymas's daughter. Then, when he has been carried far 
 enough north, Minerva stills the winds, all except the north 
 wind, which is supposed to help Ulysses to swim south again, 
 though one does not see how it could have helped him very 
 materially. He now, after forty-eight hours in the water, tries 
 to land at Pizzolungo — fails, and swims on till he reaches the 
 Bay of S. Cusumano, which was where the writer wanted him 
 to land ; for I believe the washing-day episode to have been 
 already written. 
 
 I will now ask the reader's indulgence while I make a few 
 remarks as to the stages by which the Odjssey was constructed. 
 The original intention was to say as little as possible about the 
 sore subject of Penelope, and not a word about the suitors. In 
 her opening lines the writer makes no allusion to what is now 
 the climax of the poem ; it is most natural, therefore, to suppose 
 that she meant keeping to the subject about which she asks the 
 Muse to inspire her — the return of Ulysses. Even here she is 
 not accurate, for the eating of the cattle of the sun-god is made 
 the cause whereby Ulysses lost all his companions, whereas the 
 Laestrygonian disaster was an infinitely greater one. The 
 scheme, in fact, was not yet settled, for in v. io8, &c., that is to 
 say, close to the beginning of the original form of the poem, we 
 find that Ulysses was wrecked, not through the anger of the sun 
 god, but through that of his friend Minerva. The original form 
 of the poem, then, consisted of the present proem, which was 
 followed by the council of the gods and speeches by Jove 
 and Minerva. I had, perhaps, better quote enough to show my 
 meaning. We begin with the proem : — 
 
 " Tell me, oh IMuse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far 
 and wide, after having sacked the sacred town of Troy. He 
 saw many cities, and learned the manners and customs of many 
 nations. Moreover, he suffered much by sea while trying to 
 
i6 
 
 save his own life, and to bring his men safely home. But, do 
 what he might, he could not save his men, for they perished 
 through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the sun-god 
 Hyperion. So the god prevented them from ever getting home. 
 Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter of Jove, from 
 Avhatever source you may know them." 
 
 Then follows the statement that Ulysses is now Avith the 
 nymph Calypso, and that his enemy, Neptune, is gone to the 
 Ethiopians. The gods meet in council, and Jove begins to 
 talk about i^gisthus. INIinerva turns the subject to Ulysses, and 
 upbraids Jove for neglecting him. Jove says he cannot help it. 
 " Bear in mind," he says, " that I have to deal with Neptune, who 
 is furious with Ulysses for having blinded an eye of Polyphemus, 
 king of the Cyclopes. Polyphemus is son to Neptune by the 
 nymph Thoosa, who is daughter to the sea-king Phorcys. So 
 Neptune, instead of killing Ulysses outright, torments him by 
 preventing him from getting home. Still, let us lay our heads 
 together, and see how we can help him to do so. Neptune will 
 then be pacified, for if we are all of a mind he can hardly hold 
 out against the lot of us. 
 
 " Thus he spoke, and he said to his son ^Mercury, ' Mercury, 
 we always make you our messenger ; go, therefore, and tell the 
 nymph we have fully made up our minds that the unhappy 
 Ulysses is to return home, and that he is to come with an escort, 
 neither of gods nor men, but after a perilous voyage of twenty 
 days upon a raft he is to reach Scheria, &c. . . . ' " 
 
 The reader will note that I have thus jumped from line 79 of 
 Book i. to line 28 of Book v., and from this point I suppose 
 the poem to have continued exactly as we now have it to the 
 middle of line 187 of Book xiii., with the exception of 
 lines xi. 114— 137, in which Teiresias tells Ulysses about 
 the suitors, and about his further wanderings when he 
 shall have killed them. I suppose Teiresias' prophecy to have 
 ended originally, as Circe's does when she repeats the warning 
 about the cattle of the sun-god, with the line — 
 
 o\pe KUKWQ vliai oXeaae I'mo ttuvtuq eralpovc 
 
 (xi. 113 and xii. 140.) 
 
 and that when the writer enlarged her scheme and resolved 
 to face the stories about the suitors and put her own construc- 
 tion upon them, she added the lines above referred to at the 
 end of Teiresias' prophecy, they being there imperatively required 
 
17 
 
 in order to bring the schemes together, and unify the work. 
 The first of these added lines is also found at the end of 
 Polyphemus's imprecation ix. 534, and here, too, it may very well 
 have been added either by the writer herself or by a transcriber. 
 
 With the two exceptions above noted, there is not only 
 nothing in the original poem (i.e., Book i. i — 79, and Book v. 
 28 .... to Book xiii. 187) to indicate any intention of dealing 
 with the suitors, but there are omissions which strongly suggest 
 that there was no such intention, as for example in the proem 
 above given, in the speech of Jove about i^gisthus (where 
 surely he should have been thinking by preference about the 
 suitors), in all the remarks the gods make in getting Ulysses 
 home, and throughout Book v. where it always seems (v. 36, 
 288 — 9 and 3-15) that Ulysses' most serious troubles were to end 
 when he got to Scheria. So again Calypso (v. 206 — 208) tries 
 to deter Ulysses from leaving her by saying that he little knows 
 what he will have to go through before he gets liome again, but 
 she does not enforce her aigument by saying that even when 
 he had got to Ithaca tlie worst was yet to come. The silence of 
 Ulysses' mother in Hades (xi. i8o, &c.) is not less marked, for 
 though she is ostensibly speaking seven or eight years before 
 Ulysses' return, Telemachus appears to be of an age that shows 
 the date present to the writer's mind was that immediately 
 preceding the return of his father. Noting, therefore, that 
 omission is a more telling indication of scheme than lines 
 which, when it was modified, would be sure to be inserted in order 
 to unify the work, I have no hesitation in believing that Books 
 v. — xiii. 187. formed the original poem. 
 
 It was designed to have an ending to which the deep 
 sleep of Ulysses on his voyage from Scheria — a sleep evidently 
 pregnant with a dramatic intention — would lead up. This was 
 prepared as early as vii. 318, where Alcinous tells Ulysses that 
 he may be fast asleep during his whole voyage if he likes. 
 Possibly it was intended that Penelope and Telemachus were to 
 be taking a walk on the sea shore and were to find him asleepj 
 but however this may be, the sleep so seriously prepared 
 is now pointless and leads to nothing. I suppose, there- 
 fore, that when the writer enlarged her scheme to the 
 white-washing of Penelope, she cancelled this ending, but 
 having got her hero to sleep let him sleep on, and only altered 
 what happened on his awaking. The new scheme having been 
 
 D 
 
i8 
 
 decided on, she took her proem and the lines that follow it 
 down to i. 79, put them at the beginning of the reconstructed 
 work, and wrote a new council of the gods for the beginning of 
 Book v., so as to make the work flow on with Mercury's visit to 
 Calypso. I would especially call the reader's attention to lines 
 i. 85, 86, and V. 30, 31. There may have been a little more 
 dove-tailing here than I have above indicated, but it can be very 
 little, and I must leave it to the consideration of the reader. 
 
 The lines, therefore, now to be found i. 1-^79, followed by 
 V. 28 — xiii. 187, with the exception of lines xi. 114. — 137 and ix. 
 534 — these formed the nucleus. I suppose that originally the 
 second half of line 187 stood 6 F tvdey c'loq 'Q^^vcraevg, and that the 
 modification was effected by substituting eypsTo for elcer, and then 
 running on with new matter. But the nucleus of the nucleus is 
 to be found in the washing-day of Book vi. All seems to have 
 pullulated out of the first hundred lines or so of this last-named 
 book. I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and 
 ■would therefore say that I believe these lines to have been a 
 girlish jeu d' esprit in the heroic manner, with a little earnest 
 mixed up along with the jest. I have known people, for 
 example, who believe that there is no music in this world 
 comparable to Handel's, still write humorous music in the 
 style of Handel. In like manner I suppose the authoress of 
 the Odyssey to have been an enthusiast about the Epic Cycle, 
 but to have seen that it had also its element of unconscious 
 humour, so that when in jest she was half in earnest, and when 
 in earnest half in jest. Very likely the writer, who describes 
 herself under the name of Nausicaa, was laughing at herself as 
 much as at any one else, and made herself out so tall and good 
 looking because she knew herself to be short and plain. No 
 one can tell, but I confess I have a strong feeling that the whole 
 of the first 100 lines or so of Book vi. was written as a playful 
 essay in the heroic manner upon a very homely subject, and that 
 it was done for the amusement of the writer's family circle. 
 
 It was, as well indeed it might be, rapturously received, and 
 one of the bachelor brothers exclaims "but where's Ulysses? 
 we really must have Ulysses after this. Cannot you say that he 
 landed while you were washing your clothes, or get him in any- 
 how one way or the other } " 
 
 No sooner said than done ; but like all true artists the writer 
 must draw from life, and turns for her models most naturally to 
 
19 
 
 her own family. "Who will do, then, for Ulysses except her own 
 father at whom she proceeds to laugh in a quiet way by saying 
 that Minerva made him taller and stouter, put more hair on his 
 head and made it flow down in curls like hyacinth blossoms ? 
 Who can conceivably take this passage (vi. 229 — 235) as serious ? 
 Let me quote it in full : 
 
 'Avrdp iirei 3rj Travra Xoeffaaro ical XIt aXEixpev, 
 dfi^l Ze eifxara t(Taad\ a 01 irope TrapQevog dSfjrjQy 
 Tov fi£V 'Adrjyalri drjicev Aiog iKyeyavla 
 /XEi^ovd T eIolMeiv Kat irdaaova, koB ^e KapjjroQ 
 OvXaQ j)(C£ KOfxag, vaKivQiyu aydei ofioiaq. 
 w'c 2' ore Tie y^pvadv Trejoi^guerai upyvpo) avrjp 
 "i^piQ, ov "H^atoTOC Zi^aEV Koi JlaXXag 'Adr^yr] 
 T£y%'r]v ■KavToir}v, yapievra Ze kpya teXeIei, 
 we apa TO) KaTE-)^EVE yapiv KEfaX^ re ical wfioiQ^ 
 i^ET ETTEiT UTrdvEvdE Ki(i)y EWL d'lya daXatrarie, 
 KctXXet Koi vdpicn ariXf^wv' drjE^TO Ze novpr], 
 di] pa TOT dp,(pnr6XoL(7iy ivTrXoKdnoim juerrju'oa" 
 ,,KXvTe fiEV, dp.(^'ntoXoL Xew^wXevoi, o^pa Ti e'lTro;. 
 ov -rrdyTOjy ditcrjTi dedJy, ot "OXvpiroy ej^ouo-iv, 
 ^aii^KE(T(T o2' dyilp eVijutVyerat ayTidioitriv' 
 irpoudEy fXEV yap ^rj fxoi ueikeXloq Zeut tlvai, 
 vvv hi deolffiy eoike, toI ovpayoy Evpvy e^ouffiv. 
 ai ydp ifioi toiocjce troffic KEKXriixiyog e'ir] 
 iydahe vauTauy, kui 01 dhoi avTodi fxifxyEiv. 
 dXXd hoT^ a'/i^/vroXot, ^et'j'w jjpuJaiy re Tromv re." 
 
 Od. vi. 227 — 246.. 
 
 If this is not subrisive let us have " Bax and Cox " or " Trial 
 by Jury " as high tragedy at once. But the thing will not bear 
 talking about. 
 
 Then I suppose the rest of Book vi., and Books vii. and viii, 
 were written, the same spirit of fun and mischief still dominating 
 them, in spite of a continually growing sense of power on the 
 writer's part. Book v. (not that I for a moment suppose that 
 the poem was written in Books) was now added, and began, as 
 already explained, with the lines now standing at the beginning 
 of Book i. Here the seriousness increases and the writer lets 
 her natural love of beauty have free play, the humorous side 
 being continually less and less insisted on. Then followed the 
 "wanderings of Ulysses as detailed in books ix., x., xi., xii., and 
 
by this time it is plain she has discovered her own strength^ 
 though, no doubt, in part drawing from sources now lost. 
 
 The enlargement of the scheme to the white-washing of 
 Penelope and the revenge taken on the suitors seem to have 
 been dictated rather by hatred of the people whom the writer 
 saw daily spunging on her own father than by any interest she 
 took in Penelope. I take these to have been in the writer's; 
 mind when she was venting her obviously genuine fury against 
 the wicked waste that was going on in the house of Ulysses. 
 By this time what little humour there is is grim not playful, and 
 the seriousness continually deepens. 
 
 The reader will note that Nausicaa does not mix with the 
 visitors to her father's house. When she comes in from the 
 washing exploit she has her supper in her own room, and on 
 the following day she bids good bye to Ulysses before the 
 banquet begins, retiring probably to her own room to write the 
 Odyssey; nor does Nausicaa come down again on the third day 
 of Ulysses' stay. She seems to keep herself to herself, except 
 when she has to see the family linen properly attended to. I do. 
 not know, however, what tothinkof the Episode of Theoclymenus. 
 There is more here than meets the eye, but I am at a loss to. 
 understand why so much should have been made of him. He is. 
 sub-clerical. Is it possible that the writer had married him, and 
 has introduced him as in private duty bound .'' As things stand 
 he is much the most puzzling, and apparently unnecessary, 
 person in the whole poem. 
 
 I cannot determine whether the last eleven-and-a-half books, 
 were written before the first four, or not, for Book xv. begins 
 with a very clear knowledge of what has been going on at the 
 end of Book iv., but on the other hand the marriages of 
 Jlermione and. Megapenthes at the beginning of Book iv. look 
 very like an excuse for having said nothing about Hermione iix 
 Book XV., and Megapenthes in Book xv. does not seem to be 
 married. Moreover, the splendour of Menelaus' establishment 
 in Book iv. seems like another apology for having made it so 
 absurdly meagre in Book xv. I hope the first four books were 
 written last, for the writer is evidently far happier in her mind 
 while writing them than she was while \yriting Books, 
 xiii. — xxiv, 
 
 A few more words and I have done. I am aware that my- 
 conjectures about the Odyssey are cataclysmic as regards the 
 
21 
 
 scene, authorship, construction of the work, and a great deal 
 else besides. I cannot blame Homeric students for holding 
 aloof from them. No sensible man could expect or even desire 
 anything else for some considerable time. I should, I confess, 
 be very glad to see what any writer who has been at the pains to 
 consider them seriously can bring against them : but this will 
 come in good time, and for the present I am well content to be 
 left in possession of a field than which I can never hope to find 
 another more agreeable to myself and which I can see will last 
 me my life time. Had some god offered me to choose whatever 
 piece of literary good fortune I liked, I could never have hit on 
 anything that I would rather have had than the stroke of good 
 luck that ran up as it were against me without any seeking of 
 my own. 
 
 I will now conclude with protesting once again against the 
 slovenly uuscholarly habit of ascribing the Odyssey and the I/i'ad 
 indiscriminately to Homer. See, for example, how Professor 
 Ridgeway in his most valuable and interesting work on the 
 Origin of Metallic Currency has been led on to what is at best 
 most perilous ground by the idea that he can argue safely from 
 the Iliadic to the Odyssean talent- Granting the force of all he 
 says about the Iliadic talent-^which so far as my own poor 
 judgment goes seems perfectly sound — -how can he argue from 
 this to a talent of very possibly 400 or 500 years later in a 
 country ao distant from the Troad as Sicily .^ I considered this 
 matter as carefully as I could when I wrote my Humour of Homer. 
 I read all that Liddell and Scott had to say upon the subject 
 (for Professor Ridgeway's book was not yet out) and saw that 
 they had fallen into the common error of mixing up the Odyssey 
 and the Ilia,d. There was no source except the Odyssey itself 
 from which any indication of the value of an Qdyssean talent of 
 gold might be derived ; I turned, therefore, to Dunbar's 
 invaluable concordance of the Odyssey, a work for which I know 
 how to be sufficiently grateful, indeed, I have stirred neither 
 hand nor foot in this whole matter without its help. I looked 
 up the places in which the word was used, and found that 
 Polybus gave Menelaus two baths and ten talents of gold 
 (iv. 129, &c.) which last can hardly be intended for anything but 
 a very large sum. Novelists are always lavish with the money, 
 and even so thrifty a writer as the authoress of the Odyssey flings 
 it about as freely as Lord Beaconsfield himself when she means 
 
22 
 
 to do the thing handsomely ; I cannot, therefore, think that the 
 ten talents just referred to are intended to be no more than a 
 sum of between eleven and twelve pounds. In iv. 526, 
 -^gisthus gives a watchman who had been on the look out for a 
 whole twelvemonth, on a matter that was of supreme importance, 
 two talents of gold. The watchman's work, I should say 
 roughly, bearing in mind that I am dealing with a novel, would be 
 about a thousand pound job, but I halved it to be on the safe 
 side and so brought my talent down to much what Liddell and 
 Scott gives as the approximate value of the Attic talent. In 
 Book ix. 202, Maron gives Ulysses seven talents of gold for 
 having saved his life with that of his family. True, there was a 
 cup and some valuable wine into the bargain, but the bulk of the 
 value is in the talents, which cannot conceivably be intended to 
 represent the price of seven oxen. Two thousand pounds is a 
 very moderate payment to exact from a wealthy ecclesiastic such 
 as Maron seems to have been. In Book xxiv. 273, when 
 Ulysses is saying that he had entertained himself so magnifi- 
 cently and made himself such splendid presents, the money part 
 of what he gave himself is seven talents of gold, for which 
 £1 i6s. ^d. is no sufficient value. Lastly, each one of the 
 thirteen Phaeacian magnates was to give Ulysses one talent of 
 gold (viii. 393) as well as some metal cooking utensils and 
 some clothes. Metallurgy appears to have made great strides 
 since the days of the Ih'ad, and the value of clothes and hard- 
 ware cannot well have exceeded /"loo, or at most ^200 in all, 
 the bulk of the value was in the thirteen talents of gold, and 
 seeing that Ulysses was to return with greater wealth than he 
 would have had even though he had never lost his share of the 
 booty he received at Troy (v. 35-^40), it is ridiculous to 
 suppose that some ^15 or /^i6 was all that these thirteen talents 
 were supposed to represent. Besides, it was bad enough that 
 Alcinous should have been unable to lay his hands on /^25o 
 without wanting time to get so large a sum together, and even 
 his own daughter would not represent him as in difficulties over 
 a sum of /^i 2S. 4c/. These reasons therefore induced me to 
 think ^250 a safer sum than the small one given in Liddell and 
 Scott as the Iliadic talent. I admit that I may be perfectly 
 wrong in my conclusions, but I give my reasons as an example 
 of the danger that continually awaits those who indulge in the 
 treacherous habit of speaking of both Odjssey and Iliad as by 
 
23 
 
 the same writer. I can assure Professor Warr that if he had 
 napped as little about his article in the Classical Review as I did 
 about the value of the Odyssean talent he would have arrived at a 
 result that would have been more creditable alike to himself and 
 to the Classical Review. 
 
 See) again, how the ascription of the two poems to the same 
 writer has hindered people from suspecting the true source of 
 the Odyssey. Stolberg in the last century, and Colonel Mure in 
 this, had the key in the lock when they visited Trapani, each of 
 them with full conviction that the Cyclops incident related to 
 the island of Favognana and the Grotta di Polifemo, but they 
 did not turn it. Professor Freeman, Schliemann, and Sir Henry 
 Layard have all visited Trapani or its immediate neighbourhood, 
 as either students or excavators, and failed to see that there was 
 as interesting a prize to be unburied there, without pick, shovel, 
 outlay, or trouble of any kind, as even those of Nineveh, 
 Hissarlik, and Mycenae. And why .'' Because though they may 
 not have believed, in the case of the three last-named, that the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey were written by the same person, they 
 were still hampered by the long association of the two poems 
 with one another. Knowing that the Iliad could not have been 
 written elsewhere than in the Troad or in some part or other of 
 Greece, it never occurred to them to look for the Odyssey at a spot 
 so remote as Trapani. They probably held the poem to be the 
 Work of some great traveller, who would go on from scene to 
 scene, without staying a day longer than he could help in any 
 one place, instead of feeling sure, as I believe they should have 
 done, that it was written by one who was little likely to have 
 travelled more than a few miles from her own home, and hence 
 that the fixing of any one site would afford strong reason for 
 examining all else in its vicinity. 
 
 To repeat. No one at the present day whose opinion carries 
 any weight seriously believes that the Odyssey and Iliad belong 
 to the same age, or to the same writer. I have attempted to 
 shew, and I believe have shewn, that they also belong to 
 countries that lie at a very wide distance from one another. 
 Surely it is time that the deplorable error of the Alexandrian 
 grammarians in snuffing out the chorizontes should not be still 
 persisted in some 2,000 and more years later by our modern 
 grammarians of Oxford and Cambridge, not to say elsewhere, 
 or rather, perhaps, that admitting what they all practically now 
 
admit, they should leave off misleading both themselves and 
 other people by talking as if they did not admit it. 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLEE. 
 January 20, 1893. 
 
ON THE TRAPANESE ORIGIN OF THE 
 ODYSSEY. 
 
 ^T is an old saying that no one can do better 
 1*^ for another than he can for himself; I may 
 perhaps, therefore, best succeed in convincing 
 the reader that the Odyssey was written at, and drawn 
 from, Trapani — the ancient Drepanum or Drepane — 
 on the west coast of Sicily, if I retrace the steps 
 by which I arrived at this conclusion myself. I am 
 aware that I shall thus repeat matter already printed 
 elsewhere, but plead indulgence on the score that 
 I am bringing an outline of the whole argument 
 together for the first time. 
 
 I was led to take up the Odyssey by having written 
 the libretto and much of the music for a secular 
 oratorio, Ulysses, on which my friend, Mr H. F. Jones, 
 and I have been for some time engaged. Having got, 
 some eighteen months ago, to this point, it struck me 
 that I had better after all see what the Odyssey had 
 actually said, and finding no readable prose translation 
 was driven to the original, which I had not looked 
 at for some thirty-five years. I came to it, therefore, 
 with fresh eyes, and, the Greek being easy, had little 
 difficulty in reading it without a dictionary ; fascinated, 
 however, as I at once was, with its amazing interest 
 and beauty, I had an ever-present sense of a something 
 wrong — of a something that was eluding me, of a riddle 
 that I could not read. The more I reflected upon the 
 words, so luminous and so transparent, the more I felt 
 a darkness behind them that I must pierce before 
 I could see the heart of the writer — and this was what 
 
On the Trapanese Origin of the ^Odyssey* 
 
 I most wanted, for art is only interesting in so far 
 as it reveals an artist. 
 
 In the hope of getting to understand better, I set 
 about translating the poem into plain prose, with the 
 same benevolent leaning, say, towards Tottenham 
 Court Road that Messrs Butcher and Lang have 
 shewn towards Wardour Street. I gratefully helped 
 myself with the translation of these gentlemen when 
 in difficulty, but used no commentary, and made my 
 own notes as I went on. 
 
 When I got to the Phseacian episode, I became sure 
 that the writer here, at any rate, was drawing from life. 
 In Book IX., XXI., &c., I vainly tried to understand the 
 topography of the Ionian Islands there described, and 
 saw that the writer knew nothing about them. When 
 
 NeritosorLeucas, 
 
 now i^i?° 
 
 Sta. Maura/ ^^ 
 
 Crocylea 
 
 MAP OF THE 
 IONIAN ISLANDS 
 
 la Miles 
 o 24 6 8 ro re 
 
 ^Zacynthus / -^ 
 
 / \ (Zante) Pelop^bnese 
 
 lyalker &-JioutaUtc. 
 
 I reached the island where Ulysses left his ships, I was 
 again sure that some actual island was in the writer's 
 mind, and that a local public was being written at 
 for not colonising it. Presently I observed that 
 Polyphemus was made to milk ewes in the morning. 
 
On the Trapanese Origin of the ^Odyssey* 3 
 
 though they had had their lambs with them all night, 
 and concluded that the writer was young and town- 
 bred. When I read of the two rocks thrown by 
 Polyphemus, I suspected an allusion to some two real 
 rocks not far from the island to which Ulysses was 
 retreating. When, however, I reached Circe, it flashed 
 upon me, as it ought to have done much sooner, that I 
 was reading the work, not as I originally supposed of 
 an' old man, but of a young woman — and of one who 
 knew not much more about what men can and cannot 
 do than she did about the milking of ewes. Here then 
 was the reading of the riddle that had baffled me ; but 
 I will not waste time and space in trying to bring 
 scholars to my own opinion. They have the Odyssey^ 
 
 Walker Gr BoutaU sc. 
 
 and my present business is not with this point, but with 
 the fact that the poem was drawn from Trapani. 
 
 When I got to Book Xlii., and read about Neptune 
 
4 On the Trapanese Origi?t of the ^Odyssey! 
 
 turning the ship that had escorted Ulysses into stone, 
 I made a note that whoever would find Scheria must 
 look for a harbour with a rock at its entrance like 
 a sunken ship ; but I was too busy finishing my 
 translation to set about ferreting for rock and harbour 
 on the map. Then, by October, having translated the 
 whole and noted it throughout, I read Professor Jebb's 
 Introduction^ from which I found (p. io6) that Bentley 
 had already noted the preponderance of female interest 
 in the Odyssey. Turning thence to the same author's 
 Bentley* I found (p. 148) that this was an "ancient 
 saying," which Professor Jebb himself seemed inclined 
 to carry still further than he supposed to be intended 
 by those who first used it. 
 
 I turned next to Colonel Mure, and then read the Iliady 
 annotating and making an analysis, but not trans- 
 lating. It was January, therefore, before I was able 
 to begin my hunt for Scheria^ which I was ever more 
 and more satisfied was the eye of the Odyssey^ and 
 which I was also certain could be found. I made a list 
 of the distinctive features indicated in the poem, and 
 found I must look for a town on a promontory that 
 jutted out into the sea, and into which there must be a 
 narrow entrance from the land side {Od. vi. 264). 
 There must be a port, or quasi-port, on either side the 
 town, with a rock, as above explained, at the entrance 
 to one of them. There must be no river, or Nausicaa 
 would not have had to go so far with her wash of 
 clothes. There must be a stretch of level land between 
 the town and the nearest washing-ground, which last 
 must also be on the sea-shore. The river when found 
 must be a little one — enough to wash clothes in, but not 
 much more. Lastly, there must be a high mountain 
 near at hand to give point to Neptune's threat (recorded 
 Od. XIII. 177) that he would bury the town under such a 
 mountain. On finding these points combined I con- 
 
 * Macmillan, 1882. 
 
Oti the Trapanese Origin of the 'Odyssey.* 5 
 
 sidered I should have found the capital oi Scheria, but 
 no place would do where any one of them was absent. 
 
 I now went to the map- room of the British Museum, 
 intending to search the Alediterranean if necessary from 
 the Troad to Gibraltar : but having learned that Colonel 
 Mure and others placed the Cyclopes on Mount Eryx, 
 knowing moreover that the writer was little likely to 
 have travelled, and seeing finally that the drawing 
 from life in the voyages of Ulysses, as told by himself, 
 was confined to the Cyclopes incident, I thought it 
 likely that wherever this was found Scheria w'ould 
 not be far off, so I began wath Mount Eryx, and at once 
 found all my conditions fulfilled at Trapani — the high 
 mountain of course being j\Iount Eryx itself. 
 
 Not only was the rock in its right place, looking on 
 the map like a ship just turning into port, and marked 
 as eight feet above the sea-level, but to my delight 
 I found it bore the name of Malconsiglio — the Rock of 
 Evil Counsel — and could hardly doubt that this referred 
 to the mistake which Alcinous said the Phseacians had 
 made in giving Ulysses an escort. I therefore wrote to 
 the AthencBiim the letter of Jan. 30th, 1892, reprinted at 
 the end of my Humour of Homer.* 
 
 I then considered how all this bore on the rest of the 
 poem, and was met by the fact that the Ionian islands 
 
 ^Castle 370' 
 
 ^MlVIaritimo 
 '?^35a/j Simone 
 
 Levanzol^ 
 
 Spurs JCp 
 
 Trap?S** 
 
 
 %&i^ 
 
 gnana / 
 
 Favignana^ 
 
 MAP OF THE 
 
 -4^ 
 
 Grande J 
 
 yCGADEAN ISLANDS 
 
 8 Miles 
 
 <^larsala 
 
 
 
 ;/ 'alker (rBoutall sc. 
 
 in the Odyssey are never more than four, while there are 
 
 * Metcalfe and Co. Limited, Cambridge, 1892 : price dd. 
 
6 On the Trapanese Origin of the ^Odyssey' 
 
 four, and only four, considerable islands off Trapani. 
 One of these would lie on the horizon, and was farthest 
 out towards the west, while the others lay away from it 
 to the east exactly as the Ionian islands are described 
 (6^^. IX. 21 &c.). The nearest and most important as 
 regards Trapani was long and narrow, which at once 
 suggested Dulichiiun. No doubt the writer knew the 
 catalogue now found in Book II. of the Iliad, and put 
 Diilichiiim among the Ionian islands instead of among 
 the Echinades, because the name suited the most 
 important island near Trapani. It was now easy to 
 understand why 54 suitors should come from Dulichium 
 as against 24 from Samos, 20 from Zacynthus, and only 
 12 from Ithaca. Finding Dulichium the dominant 
 island in the Odyssey from Books I. — xix., and the 
 topography of Greece so completely disregarded that 
 the author makes Telemachus drive unconcernedly over 
 the range of Mount Taygetus (ill. 494 — 497), and then 
 appears to treat Sparta and Lacedsemon as two different 
 places (IV. 10); remembering also the indication that 
 Scheria lay west of Greece that is given in vii. 320, the 
 fact that the island of -<3iolus, now Ustica — the first 
 place reached after the Cyclopes — was represented as to 
 the west of Ithaca, inasmuch as the west wind was the 
 only one left free (X. 25); noting lastly that Ulysses 
 himself places Scheria in Sicily (xxiv. 307), I had no 
 further doubt that the whole poem hailed, as it were, 
 from Trapani. I still, however, believed the town of 
 Ithaca and castle of Ulysses to be drawn from some 
 other place, and here I have now no doubt I was 
 mistaken. 
 
 At this point I wrote a second letter to the Athe- 
 ncBum, reprinted along with that of Jan. 30th at the end 
 oi xivj Humour of Homer ; this appeared Feb. 20th, 1892. 
 Meanwhile I had written to Trapani for information 
 about the rock AIalco7zsiglio, and was told of two 
 legends in connexion with it — one palpably absurd, 
 and the other that it was a ship of Turkish pirates who 
 
On the Trapanese Origin of the * Odyssey' 7 
 
 were coming to attack Trapani, but the Virgin turned 
 it into stone just as it was entering the harbour, i.e. the 
 Odyssean version, Christianised, was still current, while 
 tho name of the rock clenched its connection with the 
 poem. 
 
 The ancients, and subsequent authorities generally, 
 placed the Phaeacians and Scheria in Corfu ; I therefore 
 turned to the history and topography of that island, and 
 found that its original name was Drepane. It seemed 
 then that the ancients knew Scheria should be connected 
 with a place of the same name as that to which I was 
 myself assigning it. From the Admiralty Chart of 
 Corfu I saw that, instead of the natural features forcing 
 us on to Scheria as at Trapani, they one and all of them 
 had to be forced before they could be driven on to 
 Scheria at all, and then they would not stay there. I 
 concluded, therefore, that sameness of name had led to 
 confusion between the Sicilian and Corfu Drepanes, and 
 that it was to the Sicilian and not the Corfu Drepane 
 that Thucydides and others should have assigned 
 Scheria. 
 
 I regarded the Trapani site as now established, and 
 began to deduce boldly. The city on the top of Mount 
 Eryx suggested Hypereia, but I had no sooner said this 
 in the Preface to my Humour of Homer than I found it 
 involve so many difficulties that I resolved to study the 
 question on the spot, with the help of local students 
 who had already written to me. On arriving there at 
 the beginning of last August, I went to see the rock 
 Malcansiglio ; as I was looking at it a fishing-smack 
 sailed behind it, and displayed the close resemblance 
 between the forms of the rock and of the boat. I traced 
 the Turkish pirate legend to an irrefragable source, and 
 then went on with my friend Signer Biaggini to 
 examine the supposed washing-ground of Nausicaa. 
 This I placed either at Paceco or at Verdirami, a little 
 further on towards Marsala, but there was much about 
 either site that wanted forcing, and finding a strong 
 
8 On the Trapanese Origin of the ^Odyssey' 
 
 consent of opinion against me, I determined to fe-open 
 the matter later on. 
 
 In the afternoon I went to stay with Signor 
 Biaggini and his sisters on the top of Mount Eryx. 
 Thence I saw the island of Marettimo stand out 
 " on the horizon all highest up in the sea " " towards 
 the west," and doubted not that the writer had so 
 seen it herself. I saw the little that remains of 
 the old Cyclopean walls, and understood how the 
 Cyclopes came to be fabled as giants. I was told of 
 the still existing stories about the huge giant Contur- 
 rano, who is only an enlarged version of Polyphemus, 
 and was also told ot a cave down below, near Pizzo- 
 lungo, called the Grotta Einiliana, or the Grotta di 
 Polifemo. I saw that the two rocks Formica and Maraone, 
 said in the last century by Stolberg to be those thrown 
 by Polyphemus, were in the straightest of lines between 
 this cave and the island where Ulysses left his fleet. I 
 also found a site, with a spring of water near the top, 
 on the north side the mountain, which for many reasons 
 I concluded to be that of Eumseus's hut, supposed to be 
 in Ithaca, but drawn in reality from the writer's own 
 neighbourhood. In the Odyssey this spring should be 
 near the rock Kopa^ ; and my most intelligent young 
 friend Signor Guiseppe Pagoto has since written to me 
 that a rock close to this spring is still called among the 
 peasants the ruccazzu dei corvi. We thus have a third 
 local reminiscence of Odyssean names and legends, 
 over and above the physical features themselves. 
 
 That same afternoon I slipped in the steep mediaeval 
 street of the town and put my left foot out of joint, but 
 after some days of most kind and hospitable treatment 
 on the mountain I was taken down to Trapani, where I 
 again met with the utmost hospitality and attention. 
 As soon as I could get downstairs I was driven by 
 Cavaliere d'Ali and Baron Sirinda to the Grotta di 
 Polifemo^ and was presented with specimens of the 
 stalactite-covered prehistoric meals, and flint chippings. 
 
On the Trapanese Origin of the '■Odyssey.' 9 
 
 with which the cave abounded. I have given the best 
 of these to the two branches of the British Museum. All 
 the caves hereabout, and they are very numerous, 
 abound also in the remains of stone-age man. 
 
 I next re-opened the question of the washing-ground, 
 and went with friends to the spot where it was agreed 
 the people of ancient Trapani would be most likely to 
 have ttXvvqX or lavagri for a large wash of clothes. This 
 was at a place now called the haia di S. Cusumano, 
 between two and three miles along the coast that 
 trends north from Trapani. The entry of Ulysses into 
 the river is pure invention. There is no river, but the 
 lines Od. VI. 94, 95, 138, and Vll. 290, suggest this by 
 showing that the women were down on the actual 
 beach of the sea, and not some way up an estuary. 
 The small torretite delta Martogna, now robbed of its 
 water by the requirements of Trapani, is all the stream 
 that there can have ever been here. Nevertheless we 
 agreed that this was the spot where Ulysses landed in 
 Scheria. 
 
 We had hardly settled this before I began to suspect 
 that it was also the spot at which he had landed in 
 Ithaca. Conspicuous, at no great distance, in the 
 nearest precipice was a cave which attracted my at- 
 ttention. It is called La grotta del Toro, and tradition 
 says that it contains a hidden treasure. 
 
 According to the Odyssey (xiii. 103 &c.), the cave 
 where Ulysses hid his Phaeacian presents had two 
 entrances, one for mortals, i.e. accessible, turned towards 
 the north, and another for the gods, i.e. mankind could 
 not get into the cave by it. This last, and surely upper 
 entrance, was turned towards the south. Prehistoric 
 remains of stone-age man abounded in it — for the stone 
 amphorae, stone cups, and stone spindles of the nymphs 
 can hardly mean anything else — it contained water, and 
 the bees built their nests there. As further help 
 towards identification, from between it and the shore 
 (for on the level of the shore itself no one can see far), 
 
lo On the Trapanese Origin of the ^Odyssey.' 
 
 Ulysses saw the long straight tracks, the precipices, the 
 harbours with their ships, and the goodly trees {Od. xill. 
 195, 196). 
 
 As soon as my foot would let me I went on a mule to 
 this cave, and found the lower entrance turning due 
 north, by compass. It was a cave in two stories, the 
 lower, and lesser, being roofed with a layer of rock 
 some ten or twelve feet thick, above which it began 
 again and was continued to the whole, or nearly the 
 whole, height of the cliff, which is about a hundred 
 feet high. The face of the upper part of the cave has 
 been walled in with masonry, said to be Saracenic ; 
 through holes in this I could see the cave behind it, 
 but not the opening, which I am told enters it above 
 from the back. If this opening enters from the back it 
 should look south, for the front looks north, but I was 
 much too lame to be able to get up to the top and see. 
 Certainly, however, there must have been a drop from 
 this entrance which would make it impossible for any 
 one but a god to get into the cave by its means. 
 Inside the lower portion of the cave I found a drip or 
 two of water, but not much ; beautiful specimens of flint 
 implements taken from it may be seen in the museum 
 at Palermo, and no doubt 3000 years ago the remains 
 of an unknown earlier race would be more striking 
 and abundant. "And what," said I, "are these curious 
 little round cups which I see here and there ? Can 
 these be the stone cups of the nymphs ? " My friend 
 Cavaliere Giannitrapani, who was with me, answered : 
 " Oh, no ; those are bees' nests. The wild bees build 
 here in great numbers." 
 
 So much for the cave itself. As for the view outside, 
 it was exactly what Ulysses is said to have seen in the 
 Odyssey : — the sea and the little bay of S. Cusu77ianOy 
 the precipices, the long straight tracks, the harbours, 
 (plural not singular), and the ships. Were confirmation 
 wanted, it would be found in the name of the cave, 
 i.e. La Grotta del Toro. A bull resides in it who is 
 
On the Trapanese Origin of the ^Odyssey.' 1 1 
 
 always grinding gold ; this, however, can only be 
 found by a virgin who can eat a whole pomegranate 
 without dropping a single pip. I think the grotto was 
 originally called not del Toro, but del Tesoro ; children 
 corrupted tesoro into toro, and as it was known there was 
 a tesoro in the story somewhere, the toro was made to 
 grind it. I can hardly doubt, however, that we have 
 here a fourth local tradition handed down from the 
 time of the Odyssey. I concluded then that the writer 
 of the Odyssey used the baia di S. Cusumano twice over, 
 as being very familiar with the spot, and was confirmed 
 in the opinion that my Sicilian friends were right in 
 fixing on this as the place where Ulysses landed in 
 Scheria. 
 
 It remained to see how far this would conflict with 
 the site I had concluded to be that of Eumseus's hut, 
 and it was obvious that nothing could agree better with 
 the Odyssey. Ulysses, on leaving the cave where he 
 had hid his presents, goes over rough ground, through 
 the forest, on to the top of the mountain, and this is 
 exactly what he would do in going to the Runzi, which 
 is the site where I would place the hut. 
 
 I have confined myself to the correspondence between 
 places and legends described in the Odyssey, and those 
 that may be seen and heard at the present day. ' Readers 
 who are not convinced by what I have adduced already 
 will not be so, no matter how much more I bring, I 
 would, however, point out that according to Thucydides 
 VI. 2, the oldest inhabitants of Sicily were the Cyclopes 
 and the Laestrygonians, and these appear as the two 
 savage cannibal races of the Odyssey. The two most 
 notable examples — at any rate in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the sea — of megalithic walls that I 
 can hear of in Sicily are those of Mount Eryx, now 
 Monte S. Giuliano, and of Cefalu. I visited both, and 
 have no hesitation in thinking that the city of Lamus 
 and the Laestrygonians should be placed at Cefalu, but 
 I think the writer introduces also a reminiscence of the 
 
12 On the Trapanese Origin of the 'Odyssey.' 
 
 six miles between Castellamare and Segesta. I have 
 already said that I suppose Ustica, which is visible from 
 Mount Eryx, to have been the island of -^olus. Circe's 
 island, the sirens, and the wandering rocks are no 
 doubt the Lipari islands ; the " hurricanes of fire," and 
 the cloud that rested always both summer and winter 
 on the top of Scylla, are perhaps allusions to Stromboli 
 or Vulcano. Scylla and Charybdis are admitted by 
 everyone as the straits of Messina, but I do not think 
 the writer was sure of thir exact position. I passed 
 through these, and on seeing the rock Scylla on the one 
 hand and the disturbed waters of Charybdis on the other, 
 I could not dispute the correctness of the general opinion. 
 The island Thrinakia, is, pace the late Prof. Freeman, 
 Sicily itself; nor can I doubt that Pantellaria is the 
 island of Calypso, from which, if Ulysses steered as 
 Calypso had told him, he would make Trapani. The 
 voyages of Ulysses then, after he has once reached the 
 Cyclopes, that is to say practically Trapani, resolve 
 themselves into a sail round Sicily, from Trapani back 
 to Trapani again. 
 
 Here, however, I must for the present leave my case. 
 I am aware that I have adduced no fresh evidence. I 
 have neither excavated to find new facts, nor appealed 
 to any that have not lain on the surface at the command 
 of Homeric students for nearly 3000 years. When I 
 reflect on the huge improbability that so many and such 
 able students should for so long have overlooked evi- 
 dence that was so easy both to find and to apply, I am 
 shocked and frightened at my own presumption ; never- 
 theless, neither my friends at Trapani nor myself see 
 any escape from the conclusions I have arrived at. I 
 appeal confidently, therefore, to all Cambridge scholars 
 whose interest in the Odyssey is more than skin-deep, 
 both for guidance and for that wholesome correction 
 which they will no doubt readily give me, should they 
 see their way to doing so. 
 
 P. S. — I have just seen the Classical Review for 
 
On the Trapanese Origin of the * Odyssey' 1 3 
 
 November, with a notice of the views above insisted on 
 by Professor Warr of King's College, who says they are 
 " open to the decisive objection that the Greek Drepane, 
 on which Mr Butler s speculations depend from first to 
 last, did not exist till long after the close of the Homeric 
 age." 
 
 I must leave it to the reader to decide how far my 
 speculations depend in any degree on the supposition 
 that "the Greek Drepane" existed during the Homeric 
 age. "A" race of Greek-speaking people probably did 
 then exist at a town on the site of what was after- 
 wards the Drepanum of later history, but this is a very 
 different thing. The question is whether anyone can 
 show a presumption against this more strong than the, 
 as it seems to me, overwhelming one I have established 
 in favour of the Odyssey having been written at Trapani. 
 Besides, no one can know better than Professor Warr 
 that Thucydides (vi. z) places a Greek-speaking Phocian 
 settlement on the very part of Sicily where I suppose 
 the Odyssey to have been written, at a date long earlier 
 than the close of the Homeric age. The Elymi, more- 
 over, in the same neighbourhood and at the same date 
 probably spoke Greek. 
 
 A professor at Palermo last summer, when told of 
 my theory, said : " It is impossible ; we should have to 
 re-consider all our views about the Greeks in Sicily." I 
 am very sorry, but I am afraid the views must be recon- 
 sidered, in spite of all the professors, whether at King's 
 College or at Palermo. 
 
 Samuel Butler. 
 
c^ 
 
X