Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/33

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THE LIFE OF HOMER.

xxix

subsistence during his visits, he was usually surrounded by the children of the most noble men of the island.

"We directed our steps towards the mansion of a wealthy man, full of precious things. Gates fly open!^[1] Plutos presents himself, accompanied by joyous Mirth and gentle Peace. May the goblets overflow, may the flame ascend from the hearth, may the table groan under its plenteous burden! May the wife of the son of the house come to you drawn by mules, and in a chariot! may she, seated in an amber chair,^[2] joyfully spin her wool! I shall return, yea, I shall return, like unto the swallow every year!^[3] I am at your gate! Whether you present me with any thing or no, I remain not; I purpose not to live with you!"

These verses are sung every time tribute is levied in the honour of Apollo Pythos.^[4]

XXXIV. The spring having arrived, Homer desired to leave Samos for Athens. He sailed for that place, in company with some Samians, and arrived at the island of Ios.^[5] They

bunches of grapes, grains of wheat, oil, and artistically worked veins of honey and wax made by the bees." See also Œdip. Colon. 475, and Mure, ii. 362.

↑ " Lift up your heads, O ye gates." Psalm xxiv. 7.
↑ The Eridanus, whence the electron (amber) was brought, was not then sufficiently known, and perhaps these are wrongly ascribed to Homer. See Plin. Hist. Nat. xxvii. 2; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 493, n. (Bohn's edition); Gesner de Electro veterum in Commentar. Societatis Regiæ Gottingensis (tom. iii. p. 85); Smith, Grecian Antiquities, Herod. iii. 115; Sophocles (Antig. v. 1033); and Buttmann, Mythologus (vol. ii. p. 337).
↑ Conf. Aristoph. Equit. v. 416.
↑ In the Greek religious calendar, the first days of the months were always sacred to Apollo; and that festival (The Neomenia) was one of the most popular in every age of classical antiquity. Hesiod, Works and Days, 770; Herod. iv. 35, and vi. 57; Philok. ap. Scholl. min. et Scholl. Buttm. ad Odyss. xx. 155; xxi. 258; Mure, vol. i. p. 381, and Larcher's note on Herod. iv. 35.
↑ The present Nio.

[1] " Lift up your heads, O ye gates." Psalm xxiv. 7.

[2] The Eridanus, whence the electron (amber) was brought, was not then sufficiently known, and perhaps these are wrongly ascribed to Homer. See Plin. Hist. Nat. xxvii. 2; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 493, n. (Bohn's edition); Gesner de Electro veterum in Commentar. Societatis Regiæ Gottingensis (tom. iii. p. 85); Smith, Grecian Antiquities, Herod. iii. 115; Sophocles (Antig. v. 1033); and Buttmann, Mythologus (vol. ii. p. 337).

[3] Conf. Aristoph. Equit. v. 416.

[4] In the Greek religious calendar, the first days of the months were always sacred to Apollo; and that festival (The Neomenia) was one of the most popular in every age of classical antiquity. Hesiod, Works and Days, 770; Herod. iv. 35, and vi. 57; Philok. ap. Scholl. min. et Scholl. Buttm. ad Odyss. xx. 155; xxi. 258; Mure, vol. i. p. 381, and Larcher's note on Herod. iv. 35.

[5] The present Nio.

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