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BOOK III.
Telemachus visits Nestor at Pylos.
but as the sun was rising from the fair sea[1] into the firmament of heaven to shed light on mortals and immortals, they reached Pylos the city of Neleus. Now the people of Pylos were gathered on the sea shore to offer sacrifice of black bulls to Neptune lord of the Earthquake. There were nine guilds with five hundred men in each, and there were nine bulls to each guild. As they were eating the inward meats[2] and burning the thigh bones [on the embers] in the name of Neptune, Telemachus and his crew arrived, furled their sails, brought their ship to anchor, and went ashore.
12Minerva led the way and Telemachus followed her. Presently she said, "Telemachus, you must not be in the least shy or nervous; you have taken this voyage to try and find out where your father is buried and how he came by his end; so go straight up to Nestor that we may see
- ↑ cf. Il. V. 20. Ἰδαῖος δ᾽ ἀπόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα δίφρον, the Odyssean line is ἠέλιος δ᾽ ἀνόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα λίμνην. There can be no doubt that the Odyssean line was suggested by the Iliadic, but nothing can explain why Idæus jumping from his chariot should suggest to the writer of the Odyssey the sun rising from the sea. The probability is that she never gave the matter a thought, but took the line in question as an effect of saturation with the Iliad, and of unconscious cerebration. The Odyssey contains many such examples.
- ↑ The heart, liver, lights, kidneys, &c. were taken out from the inside and eaten first as being more readily cooked; the κρέα ὑπέρτερα, or bone meat, was cooking while the σπλάγχνα or inward meats were being eaten. I imagine that the thigh bones made a kind of gridiron, while at the same time the marrow inside them got cooked.
