Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/64

tackle; and they hearkened to him exhorting them, and raising up the fir-mast placed it within the hollow mast-hole; and bound it with the fore-cables, and drew the white sails with well-twisted thongs. And the wind swelled the middle of the sail; and the purple wave roared loudly around the keel, as the ship made its way: and it ran through the waves passing on its way; having then bound the tackle through the swift black ship, they set crowned cups of wine; and made libations to the immortal eternal gods, but most of all to the blue-eyed daughter of Jove. Then it passed along the way through the whole night and in the morning.

 

BOOK III.

 

ARGUMENT.

On reaching Pylos with Minerva, Telemachus finds the Pylians sacrificing bulls to Neptune. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Telemachus states the object of his voyage, and Nestor in reply relates what had happened to himself, and the circumstances of their sailing from Troy; but having no tidings of Ulysses, he advises him to go to Menelaus. Minerva departs, having discovered who she is; upon which Nestor offers sacrifice to her; and then sends Telemachus with his son Pisistratus in a chariot to Sparta. They arrive at Pheræ in the evening, and are entertained by Diocles.

But the sun, having left the very beauteous sea,^[1] rose upwards into the brazen heaven,^[2] that it might shine to the immortals and to mortal men over the bounteous earth. And they came to Pylos, the well-built citadel of Neleus: now they^[3] were offering sacrifices on the shore of the sea, all-black bulls to the azure-haired Shaker of the earth.^[4] There were nine seats and five hundred sat in each, and they allotted nine

1. On λίμνη put for θάλασσα or Ὠκεανὸς, see Loewe. Cf. Hesych. s. v. λίμνη and ποταμός, with Alberti's note, t. ii. p. 481. Strabo, v. p. 225, uses the compound λίμνοθάλαττα.
2. It was the old opinion that the heaven was solid, and framed of brass. Cf. Pind. Nem. vi. 5, ὁ δὲ χάλκεος ἀσφαλὲς αἐὶ ἕδος μένει οὐρανός (hence perhaps the brazen shoulders attributed to Atlas in Eur. Ion, i.). The phrase seems merely equivalent to στερεός.
3. The Pylians.
4. i. e. Neptune. Cf. Virg. Æn. iii. 119, whose verses have been compared with the present by Gellius, xiii. 25. Macrob. Sat. iii. 4.