There is no improbability (for other instances will occur to the reader so readily that I need not quote them) in the supposition that the writer of the Odyssey might choose to recast a story which she deemed insulting to her sex, as well as disgusting in itself; the question is, has she done so or not? Do traces of an earlier picture show up through the one she has painted over it, so distinctly as to make it obvious what the original picture represented? If they do not, I will give up my case, but if they do, I shall hold it highly improbable that a man in the Homeric age would undertake the impossible task of making Penelope at the same time plausible and virtuous. I am afraid I think he would be likely to make her out blacker than the last poet who had treated the subject, rather than be at any pains to whiten her.
Least of all would Homer himself have been prompted to make Penelope out better than report says she was. He would not have cared whether she was better or worse. He is fond of women, but he is also fond of teasing them, and he shows not the slightest signs of any jealousy for female honour, or of a desire to exalt women generally. He shows no more sign of this than he does of the ferocity with which punishment is inflicted on the women of Ulysses' household—a ferocity which is in itself sufficient to make it inconceivable that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be by the same person.
[1] The part about the bard is omitted in my abridgement.
[2] Studies on Homer and the Homeric age.—Oxford University Press 1858, p. 28.
[3] Od. xxii. 473, cf. Il. XIII. 573.
[4] I should explain to the non-musical writer that it is forbidden in music to have consecutive fifths or octaves between the same parts.
[5] Od. i. 356-359, cf. Il. VI. 490-493. The word "war" in the Iliad becomes "speech" in the Odyssey. There is no other change.
[6] Od. ii. 15-23.
[7] Od. iv. 186-188. Neither of these passages is given in my abridgement.