“(Each day she thrice disgorges, and each day
Thrice swallows it,”)[270]
we must suppose that he said this not through any ignorance of the fact, but for tragic effect, and to excite the fear which Circe endeavours to infuse into her arguments to deter Ulysses from departing, even at a little expense of truth. The following is the language Circe makes use of in her speech to him:
“Each day she thrice disgorges, and each day
Thrice swallows it. Ah! well-forewarn’d beware
What time she swallows, that thou come not nigh,
For not himself, Neptune, could snatch thee thence.”[271]
And yet when Ulysses was ingulfed in the eddy he was not lost. He tells us himself,
“It was the time when she absorb’d profound
The briny flood, but by a wave upborne,