[2] The announcement of the fate of Menelaos is quite superfluous; it is not necessitated (and not even justified) by his first request (468 ff.), or by his further questions (486 ff.; 551 ff.). Nitzsch already regarded the lines 561–8 as a later addition: Anm. z. Od. iii, p. 352—though indeed on grounds that I cannot regard as conclusive. Others have done the same since.
[3] The following are made invisible (by envelopment in a cloud) and carried away—this, though not always stated, is most probably to be understood in most cases: Paris, by Aphrodite, Γ 380 ff.; Aeneas, by Apollo, Ε 344 f.; Idaios, son of Dares, the priest of Hephaistos, by Heph., Ε 23; Hektor, by Apollo, Υ 443 f.; Aeneas, by Poseidon, Υ 325 ff.; Agenor, by Apollo, Φ 596 ff.—this last appears to be the original copied twice over in the story of this one day of fighting by later poets (in the above-mentioned cases of the use of the motif, Υ 325 ff.; 443 f.). It is remarkable (for no special reason for it suggests itself) that all these cases of translation are found on the Trojan side. Otherwise we only have one instance (and that only in the narrative of a long past adventure), the translation of the Anaktoriones by their father Poseidon, Λ 750 ff. Lastly, a case that hardly goes beyond those already mentioned: Zeus could have translated alive his son Sarpedon out of the fray and placed him in his Lykian home (Π 436), but refrains owing to the warning of Hera (440 ff.).
[4] The wish to die quickly is expressly contrasted with the wish to be carried off by the Harpies, 63 ἢ ἔπειτα—“or if not,” i.e. if quick death is denied to me. (v. Rh. Mus. 50, 2, 2.) Again 79–80: ὡς ἔμ’ ἀϊστώσειαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες ἠέ μ’ ἐϋπλόκαμος βάλοι Ἄρτεμις. Thus the Harpies (= θύελλα 63) in this case do not bring death but carry away men alive (ἀναρπάξασα οἴχοιτο 63 f., ἅρπυιαι ἀνηρείψαντο 77 = ἀνέλοντο θύελλαι 66, and they carry them off κατ’ ἠερόεντα κέλευθα 64 to the προχοαὶ ἀψορρόου Ὠκεανοῖο 65 ἔδοσαν στυγερῇσιν Ἐρινύσιν ἀμφιπολεύειν 78). At the “mouths of Okeanos” (where it goes into the sea) is the entrance to the world of the dead; κ 508 ff., λ 13 ff. To be carried off by the storm-spirits used proverbially as a wish: Ζ 345 ff. ὧς μ’ ὄφελ’ ἤματι τῷ ὅτε με πρῶτον τέκε μήτηρ οἴχεσθαι προφέρουσα κακὴ ἀνέμοιο θύελλα εἰς ὄρος ἢ εἰς κῦμα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης (i.e. to some solitary place, Orph., H. 19, 19; 36, 16; 71, 11). Such transportation through the air is elsewhere contrasted with death and dwelling in Hades, as in Penelope’s prayer. (Roscher, Kynanthropie [Abh. d. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. xvii], p. 67, gives a strange but hardly the correct explanation of this.) Cf. Soph., Tr., 953 ff.; Ai., 1193 ff.; (Phil., 1092 ff.?); cf. also Eur., Hipp., 1279 ff.; Ion, 805 f.; Supp., 833–6. A deeply rooted popular mode of thought, and one of primeval antiquity, lies at the root of all [81] these instances.—ὑπὸ πνευμάτων συναρπαγέντα ἄφαντον γενέσθαι is a reason for τιμαὶ ἀθάνατοι, in the only half-rationalized story of Hesperos in D.S. 3, 60, 3.
[5] One would like to know more of this strange story, but what we learn elsewhere of Pandareos and his daughters (Sch. υ 66–7; τ 518; Ant. Lib. 36) contributes nothing to the understanding of the Homeric narrative and probably belongs in part to another connexion. Pandareos, father of Aëdon (τ 518 ff.), seems to be another person. Even the strange representation of the two daughters of Pandareos in Polygnotos’ picture of the underworld (Paus. 10, 30, 2) casts no light on the Homeric fable. (Cf. Roscher, Kynan., 4 ff., 65 f.)
[6] The Erinyes live normally in Erebos, as is shown esp. by I 571 f.; Τ 259. But when they punish during the lifetime of the criminal acts done in contravention of the laws of family life, it must be supposed that they were sometimes thought of as going about the earth, e.g. I 454: λ 278—for “working at a distance” seems impossible—as in Hes., Op., 803 f.—Ἐρινύσιν ἀμφιπολεύειν (78) cannot be anything but “serve the Erinyes”, “become their ἀμφίπολοι”. To understand it as Roscher does (Kynan., 65, n. 183) following Eustathius, in the sense “fly about in the train of the E.” is forbidden by the use of the simple dative Ἐρινύσι joined closely with ἀμφ. (θεαῖς ἀμφιπολῶν Soph., O.C., 680, is different.)
[7] “When the Bride of the Wind comes by you must throw yourself on the ground as though it were the Muodisheere (on which see Grimm (E.T.), p. 931) otherwise they will carry you off.” Birlinger, Volksthüml. a. Schwaben, i, 192, “She is the Devil’s Bride,” ib. (On the “Bride of the Wind”, etc., see Grimm, pp. 632, 1009.) Such wind-spirits are in unholy alliance with the “Furious Host”, i.e. the unquiet “souls” of the dead that travel through the air by night.
[8] On the Harpies, see Rh. Mus., 50, 1–5.
[9] See Nägelsb., H.T., pp. 42–3, and Roscher, Nektar u. Ambrosia, p. 51 ff., answering Bergk’s objections, Opusc. ii, 669. (Arist. Meta., 1000a, 9–14, is very definite.)
[10] It is not improbable that this Ino Leukothea was originally a goddess who was later turned into a “Heroine” (identified with the daughter of Kadmos for reasons no longer recoverable) and only afterwards turned back again into a goddess. But for the Homeric age she was essentially a mortal who had become a goddess: for this reason, just because she was an example of such deification of mortals, she remained an interesting character to later writers; cf. in addition to the well-known passages in Pindar, etc., Cic., T.D. i, 28. Only what the actual conception of the people and their poets was—not what may possibly be suggested as the doubtful background of such conceptions—concerns me in this as in many other cases.
[11] Only temporary translation (ἀνήρπασε) of Marpessa by Apollo I 564.