[142]
[ These words cannot mean that it would be afternoon soon after they were spoken. Ulysses and Eumaeus reached the town which was “some way off” (xvii. 25) in time for the suitor’s early meal (xvii. 170 and 176) say at ten or eleven o’ clock. The context of the rest of the book shows this. Eumaeus and Ulysses, therefore, cannot have started later than eight or nine, and Eumaeus’s words must be taken as an exaggeration for the purpose of making Ulysses bestir himself.]
[143]
[ I imagine the fountain to have been somewhere about where the church of the Madonna di Trapani now stands, and to have been fed with water from what is now called the Fontana Diffali on Mt. Eryx.]
[144]
[ From this and other passages in the “Odyssey” it appears that we are in an age anterior to the use of coined money—an age when cauldrons, tripods, swords, cattle, chattels of all kinds, measures of corn, wine, or oil, etc. etc., not to say pieces of gold, silver, bronze, or even iron, wrought more or less, but unstamped, were the nearest approach to a currency that had as yet been reached.]
[145]
[ Gr. ἐς μέσσον.]
[146]
[ I correct these proofs abroad and am not within reach of Hesiod, but surely this passage suggests acquaintance with the Works and Ways, though it by no means compels it.]