Young women know that a horse goes before a cart, and being told that the rudder guides the ship, are apt—and I have more than once found them do so—to believe that it goes in front of the ship. Probably the writer of theOdysseyforgot for the moment at which end the rudder should be. She thought it all over yesterday, and was not going to think it all over again to-day, so she put the rudder at both ends, intending to remove it from the one that should prove to be the wrong one; later on she forgot, or did not think it worth while to trouble about so small a detail.
So with Calypso's axe (v. 234-36). No one who was used to handling an axe would describe it so fully and tell us that it "suited Ulysses' hands," and was furnished with a handle. I have heard say that a celebrated female authoress was discovered to be a woman by her having spoken of a two-footrulerinstead of a two-footrule, but over minuteness of description is deeper and stronger evidence of unfamiliarity than mistaken nomenclature is.
Such mistakes and self-betrayals as those above pointed out enhance rather than impair the charm of theOdyssey. Granted that theOdysseyis inferior to theIliadin strength, robustness, and wealth of poetic imagery, I cannot think that it is inferior in its power of fascinating the reader. Indeed, if I had to sacrifice one or the other, I can hardly doubt that I should let theIliadgo rather than theOdyssey—just as if I had to sacrifice either Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa, I should sacrifice Mont Blanc, though I know it to be in many respects the grander mountain of the two.[5]
It should go, however, without saying that much which is charming in a woman's work would be ridiculous in a man's, and this is eminently exemplified in theOdyssey. If a woman wrote it, it is as lovely as the frontispiece of this volume, and becomes, if less vigorous, yet assuredly more wonderful than theIliad; if, on the other hand, it is by a man, the half Bayeux tapestry, half Botticelli's Venus rising from the sea, or Primavera, feeling with which it impresses us gives place to astonishment how any man could have written it. What is a right manner for a woman is a wrong one for a man, andvice versa. Jane Austen's young men, for example, are seldom very interesting, but it is only those who are blind to the exquisite truth and delicacy of Jane Austen's work who will feel any wish to complain of her for not understanding young men as well as she did young women.
The writer of aTimesleading article (Feb. 4th, 1897) says:
The sex difference is the profoundest and most far-reaching that exists among human beings.... Women may or may not be the equals of men in intelligence;... but women in the mass will act after the manner of women, which is not and never can be the manner of men.
And as they will act, so will they write. This, however, does not make their work any the less charming when it is good of its kind; on the contrary, it makes it more so.
Dismissing, therefore, the difficulty of supposing that any woman could write so wonderful a poem as theOdyssey, is there anyà prioriobstacle to our thinking that such a woman may have existed, say, B.C. 1000? I know of none. Greek literature does not begin to dawn upon us till about 600 B.C. Earlier than this date we have hardly anything except theIliad,Odyssey, and that charming writer Hesiod. When, however, we come to the earliest historic literature we find that famous poetesses abounded.
Those who turn to the article "Sappho" in Smith'sDictionary of Classical Biographywill find Gorgo and Andromeda mentioned as her rivals. Among her fellows were Anactoria of Miletus, Gongyle of Colophon, Eunica of Salamis, Gyrinna, Atthis, and Mnasidica, "Those," says the writer, "whoattained the highest celebrity for their works were Damophylia the Pamphylian, and Erinna of Telos." This last-named poetess wrote a long poem upon the distaff, which was considered equal to Homer himself—theOdysseybeing probably intended.
Again, there was Baucis, who wrote Erinna's Epitaph. Turning to Müller's work upon the Dorians, I find reference made to the amatory poetesses of Lesbos. He tells us also of Corinna, who is said to have competed successfully with Pindar, and Myrto, who certainly competed with him, but with what success we know not. Again, there was Diotima the Arcadian; and looking through Bergk'sPoetœ Lyrici GrœciI find other names of women, fragments of whose works have readied us through quotation by extant writers. Among the Hebrews there were Miriam, Deborah, and Hannah, all of them believed to be centuries older than theOdyssey.
If, then, poetesses were as abundant as we know them to have been in the earliest known ages of Greek literature over a wide area in Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands of the Ægæan, there is no ground for refusing to admit the possibility that a Greek poetess lived in Sicily B.C. 1000, especially when we know from Thucydides that the particular part of Sicily where I suppose her to have lived was colonised from the North West corner of Asia Minor centuries before the close of the Homeric age. The civilisation depicted in theOdysseyis as advanced as any that is likely to have existed in Mitylene or Melos 600—500 B.C., while in both theIliadand theOdysseythe status of women is represented as being much what it is at the present, and as incomparably higher than it was in the Athenian civilisation with which we are best acquainted. To imagine a great Greek poetess at Athens in the age of Pericles would be to violate probability, but I might almost say in an age when women were as free as they are represented to us in theOdysseyit is a violation of probability to suppose that there were no poetesses.
We have no reason to think that men found the use of their tongue sooner than women did; why then should we suppose that women lagged behind men when the use of the pen hadbecome familiar? If a woman could work pictures with her needle as Helen did,[6]and as the wife of William the Conqueror did in a very similiar civilisation, she could write stories with her pen if she had a mind to do so.
The fact that the recognised heads of literature in the Homeric age were the nine Muses—for it is always these or "The Muse" that is involved, and never Apollo or Minerva—throws back the suggestion of female authorship to a very remote period, when, to be an author at all, was to be a poet, for prose writing is a comparatively late development. BothIliadandOdysseybegin with an invocation addressed to a woman, who, as the head of literature, must be supposed to have been an authoress, though none of her works have come down to us. In an age, moreover, when men were chiefly occupied either with fighting or hunting, the arts of peace, and among them all kinds of literary accomplishment, would be more naturally left to women. If the truth were known, we might very likely find that it was man rather than woman who has been the interloper in the domain of literature. Nausicaa was more probably a survival than an interloper, but most probably of all she was in the height of the fashion.
[1]See Introduction to theIliadand theOdyssey, by R. C. Jebb, 1888, p. 106.
[1]See Introduction to theIliadand theOdyssey, by R. C. Jebb, 1888, p. 106.
[2]Bentley, Macmillan, 1892, p. 148.
[2]Bentley, Macmillan, 1892, p. 148.
[3]Homer, Macmillan, 1878, p. 2.
[3]Homer, Macmillan, 1878, p. 2.
[4]Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, Longman, 1850, Vol. I, p. 404.
[4]Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, Longman, 1850, Vol. I, p. 404.
[5]Shakespeare, of course, is the whole chain of the Alps, comprising both Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.
[5]Shakespeare, of course, is the whole chain of the Alps, comprising both Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.
[6]Iliad, III. 126.
[6]Iliad, III. 126.
It will help the reader to follow the arguments by which I shall sustain the female authorship of theOdyssey, the fact of its being written at Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, and its development in the hands of the writer, if I lay before him an abridgement of the complete translation that I have made, but not yet published. If space permitted I should print my translation in full, but this is obviously impossible, for what I give here is only about a fourth of the whole poem. I have, therefore, selected those parts that throw most light upon the subjects above referred to, with just so much connecting matter as may serve to make the whole readable and intelligible. I am aware that the beauty of the poem is thus fatally marred, for it is often the loveliest passages that serve my purpose least. The abridgement, therefore, that I here give is not to be regarded otherwise than as the key-sketch which we so often see under an engraving of a picture that contains many portraits. It is intended not as a work of art, but as an elucidatory diagram.
As regards its closeness to the text, the references to the poem which will be found at the beginning of each paragraph will show where the abridgement has been greatest, and will also enable the reader to verify the fidelity of the rendering either with the Greek or with Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation. I affirm with confidence that if the reader is good enough to thus verify any passages that may strike him as impossibly modern, he will find that I have adhered as severely to the intention of the original as it was possible for me to do while telling the story in my own words and abridging it.
One of my critics, a very friendly one, has told me that I have "distorted the simplicity of theOdysseyin order to putit in a ludicrous light." I do not think this. I have revealed, but I have not distorted. I should be shocked to believe for one moment that I had done so. True, I have nothing extenuated, but neither have I set down aught in malice. Where the writer is trying to make us believe impossibilities, I have shown that she is doing so, and have also shown why she wanted us to believe them; but until a single passage is pointed out to me in which I have altered the intention of the original, I shall continue to hold that the conception of the poem which I lay before the reader in the following pages is a juster one than any that, so far as I know, has been made public hitherto; and, moreover, that it makes both the work and the writer a hundred times more interesting than any other conception can do.
I preface my abridgement with a plan of Ulysses' house, so far as I have been able to make it out from the poem. The reader will find that he understands the story much better if he will study the plan of the house here given with some attention.
I have read what Prof. Jebb has written on this subject,[1]as also Mr. Andrew Lang's Note 18 at the end of Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation of theOdyssey. I have also read Mr. Arthur Platt's article on the slaying of the suitors,[2]and find myself in far closer agreement with Mr. Lang than with either of the other writers whom I have named. The only points on which I differ from Mr. Lang are in respect of the inner court, which he sees as a roofed hall, but which I hold to have been open to the sky, except the covered cloister or μέγαρα σκιόεντα, an arrangement which is still very common in Sicilian houses, especially at Trapani and Palermo. I also differ from him in so far as I see no reason to think that the "stone pavement" was raised, and as believing the ὀρσοθύρα to have been at the top of Telemachus's tower, and called "in the wall" because the tower abutted on the wall.These are details: substantially my view of the action and scene during the killing of the suitors agrees with Mr. Lang's. I will not give the reasons which compel me to differ from Prof. Jebb and Mr. Platt, but will leave my plan of the house and the abridged translation to the judgement of the reader.
Awas the body of the house, containing the women's apartments and other rooms. It had an upper story, in which was Penelope's room overlooking the court where the suitors passed the greater part of their time.
It also contained the store-room, which seems to have been placed at the far end of the house, perhaps in a basement. The store-room could be reached by a passage from a doorwayA', and also by back-passages from a side-entranceA", which I suppose to have been the back door of the house. The women's apartments opened on to the passage leading fromA'to the store-room.
BandB'were the Megaron or Megara, that is to say inner court, of whichB'was a covered cloister with a roof supported by bearing-posts with cross-beams and rafters. The open part of the court had no flooring but the natural soil. Animals seem to have been flayed and dressed here, for Medon, who was certainly in the inner court while the suitors were being killed, concealed himself under a freshly-flayed ox (or heifer's) hide (xxii. 363).
B'was called the μέγαρα σκιόεντα or "shaded" part of the court, to distinguish it from that which was open to the sun. The end nearest the house was paved with stone, while that nearest the outer court (and probably the other two sides) were floored with ash. The part of the cloister that was paved with stone does not appear to have been raised above the level of the rest; at one end of the stone pavement there was a doora, opening on to a narrow passage; this door, though mentioned immediately after the ὀρσοθύρα or trap door (xxii. 126), which we shall come to presently, has no connection with it. About the middle of the pavement, during the trial of the axes, there was a seatb, from which Ulysses shot through the axes, and from which he sprang when he began to shoot the suitors;against one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the cloister, there wasc, a spear-stand.
The House of Ulysses.
The House of Ulysses.
All the four sides of the cloisters were filled with small tables at which the suitors dined. A man could hold one of these tables before him as a shield (xxii. 74, 75).
In the cloisters there were also
d, an open hearth or fire-place in the wall at right angles to the one which abutted on the house. So, at least, I read τοίχου τοῦ ἑτέρου (xxiii. 90).
e, the table at which the wine was mixed in the mixing-bowl—as well, of course, as the other tables above mentioned.
f, a door leading intog, the tower in which Telemachus used to sleep [translating ἄγχι παρ' ὀρσοθύρην (xxii. 333) not "near the ὀρσοθύρα," but "near towards the ὀρσοθύρα"].
At the top of this tower there was a trap-doorg'(ὀρσοθύρα), through which it was possible to get out on to the roof of the tower and raise an alarm, but which afforded neither ingress nor egress.
Cwas the outer court or αὐλή, approached byC', the main entrance, or πρῶται θύραι, a covered gateway with a room over it. This covered gateway was the αἰθούση ἐρίδουπος, or reverberating portico which we meet with in other Odyssean houses, and are so familiar with in Italian and Sicilian houses at the present day. It was surrounded byC", covered sheds or barns in which carts, farm implements, and probably some farm produce would be stored. It contained
h, the prodomus, or vestibule in front of the inner court, into which the visitor would pass through
i, the πρόθυρον or inner gateway (the word, πρόθυρον, however, is used also for the outer gateway), and
k, the tholus or vaulted room, about the exact position of which all we know is that it is described in xxii. 459, 460, as close up against the wall of the outer court. I suspect, but cannot prove it, that this was the room in which Ulysses built his bed (xxiii. 181-204).
Dwas the τυκτὸν δάπεδον or level ground in front of Ulysses' house, on which the suitors amused themselves playing at quoits and aiming a spear at a mark (iv. 625, 627).
The only part of the foregoing plan and explanatory notes that forces the text is in respect of the main gateway, which I place too far from the mouth of the λαύρα for one man to be able to keep out all who would bring help to the suitors; but considering how much other impossibility we have to accept, I think this may be allowed to go with the rest. A young woman, such as I suppose the writer of theOdysseyto have been, would not stick at such a trifle as shifting the gates a little nearer the λαύρα if it suited her purpose.
In passing, I may say that Agamemnon appears to have been killed (Od. iv. 530, 531) in much such a cloistered court as above supposed for the house of Ulysses. A banquet seems to have been prepared in the cloister on one side the court, while men were ambuscaded in the one on the opposite side.
Lastly, for what it may be worth. I would remind the reader that there is not a hint of windows in the part of Ulysses' house frequented by the suitors.