town.[1] And now, I beseech you in your father's name, tell me the truth, for I do not believe I am really back in Ithaca. I am in some other country and you are mocking me and deceiving me in all you have been saying. Tell me then truly, have I really got back to my own country?"
329"You are always taking something of that sort in your head," replied Minerva, "and that is why I cannot desert you in your afflictions; you are so plausible, shrewd, and shifty. Any one but yourself on returning from so long a voyage would at once have gone home to see his wife and children, but you do not seem to care about asking after them or hearing any news about them till you have exploited your wife, who remains at home vainly grieving for you, and having no peace night or day for the tears she sheds on your behalf. As for my not coming near you, I was never uneasy about you, for I was certain you would get back safely though you would lose all your men, and I did not wish to quarrel with my uncle Neptune, who never forgave you for having blinded his son.[2] I will now, however, point out to you the lie of the land, and you will then perhaps believe me. This is the haven of the old merman Phorcys, and here is the olive tree that grows at the head of it; [near it is the cave sacred to the Naiads;][3] here
- ↑ All this is to excuse the entire absence of Minerva from books ix.—xii., which I suppose had been written already, before the authoress had determined on making Minerva so prominent a character.
- ↑ We have met with this somewhat lame attempt to cover the writer's change of scheme at the end of bk. vi.
- ↑ I take the following from the "Authoress of the Odyssey," p. 107. "It is clear from the text that there were two caves not one, but some one has enclosed in brackets the two lines in which the Naiad's cave is mentioned, I presume because he found himself puzzled by having a second cave sprung upon him when up to this point he had only been told of one. "I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have been puzzled, for in reality there are two caves distant some 80 or 100 yards from one another," The cave in which Ulysses hid his
