As anigh came Telemachus’ feet, the king and the swineherd wight
Made ready the morning meat, and by this was the fire alight;—
They had sent the herdmen away with the pasturing swine at the dawning;—
Lo, the dogs have forgotten to bay, and around the prince are they fawning!
And Odysseus the godlike marked the leap and the whine of the hounds
That ever at strangers barked; and his ear caught footfall-sounds.
Straightway he spake, for beside him was sitting the master of swine:
“Of a surety, Eumaeus, hitherward cometh a comrade of thine,
Or some one the bandogs know, and not with barking greet,
But they fawn upon him; moreover I hear the treading of feet.”
Not yet were the words well done, when the porchway darkened: a face
Was there in the door,—his son! and Eumaeus sprang up in amaze.
1 ἔργω F || δεικνῦναι F || ἐνμέτρων F 4 εἰκᾶσαι F 5 ὁμήρ(ω) P || τῳ om. P || σϊβώτηι P: corr. in margine P2 || ὀδυσεὺς P 8 πραγμάτια λιτὰ καὶ PV: πραγμάτια ἅττα F: πραγματιάττα λιτὰ καὶ M 9 δ’ ἔστιν F: δέ (ἐστιν) P 11 κλισίησ’ EFV: κλισίῃ Hom. || ὀδυσσεὺς FP2M1V 12 ἐντύνοντ(ες) P,V 13 ἐκπέμψαντε EFPM || ἀγρομένοισ(ιν) P 14 περίσαινον FEV 15 ὀδυσεὺς P 16 περί τε κτύπος Hom. 17 ἂρ sic FP || ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα Hom. 18 ἐῦμαι’ P: εὔμαιε V 20 περισαίνουσι FV 22 ἐπὶ F || προθύροισ(ιν) P
5. The extract from the Odyssey well illustrates that Homeric nobleness which pervades even the homeliest scenes; and Dionysius is right in pointing out that this nobleness does not depend on any striking choice of phrase, since Homer’s language is usually quite plain and straightforward.
6. On Odyss. xvi. 2 (ἄριστον) there is the following scholium, ὅτι καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰλιάδι ἅμα τῇ ἀνατολῇ ἐσθίουσιν: and similarly on Theocr. i. 50, πρωΐας ἔτι οὔσης ὀλίγον τινὰ ἐσθίομεν ἄρτον καὶ ἄκρατον οἶνον πίνομεν.
9. The charm of a simple scene, simply but beautifully described, is seen in Virg. Ecl. vii. 1-15; Georg. ii. 385-9; Aen. v. 328-30, 357-60. (The Latin illustrations, here and elsewhere, are for the most part the exempla Latina suggested by Simon Bircov (Bircovius), a Polish scholar who lived early in the seventeenth century.)
11. By “Hom.” in the critical notes is meant the best attested reading in the text of Homer. κλισίῃς, however, has some support among the manuscripts of Homer; and so has the form ἂρ in [76] 17, and πέσεν in [78] 1.
14. Monro (Odyss. xiv. 29) regards ὑλακόμωρος as a kind of parody of the heroic epithets ἐγχεσίμωρος and ἰόμωρος, and thinks that we cannot tell what precise meaning (if any) was conveyed by the latter part of the compound. See, further, his note on Iliad ii. 692.
20. The construction must be ὑπὸ ποδῶν: cp. Il. ii. 465 ὑπὸ χθὼν σμερδαλέον κονάβιζε ποδῶν. The force of ὑπό is half-way between the literal sense of ‘under’ and the derived sense of ‘caused by’ (Monro).