[194] ἀλλοειδἔ ἐφαίνετο. The MSS. are divided pretty equally between “φαίνετο” and “φαινέσκετο”. The latter involves scanning “ἀλλοειδέα” in three long syllables—which Buttmann ( “ λεχ.θεουδής”) rightly rejected—or else writing “ἀλλοϊδέα”, a form which is against analogy. On the other hand, a metrical lengthening of the “ο” in “ἀλλοειδέα” is not a greater licence than the poet admits when it is necessary (cp. “δυσαήων” in l. 99, and instances given in H. G. § 386: see Knös, Dig. p. 121 note; Schulze, Quaest. Ep. p. 288). Again, the frequentative “φαινέσκετο” is out of place here, as Buttmann observed. The history of the matter probably is that “ἀλλοειδέα” came to be scanned - - -, as would be the case in Attic, and then “φαινέσκετο” was adopted for the metre. The slight change of “φαίνετο” to “ἐφαίνετο” does not need MS. support: it is called for by the need of a caesura.
201-202. ἤ … ἦε, a double question —‘are they savage or hospitable?’ So l. 234. The strangeness of Ithaca as Ulysses sees it after his long absence may be only the exaggeration of a natural effect. There is a parallel (as a friend has pointed out to me) in Wordsworth's poem The Brothers: “ But, as he gazed, there grewSuch a confusion in his memory
That he began to doubt. …
… He had lost his path,
As up the vale, that afternoon, he walked
Through fields which once had been well known to him.
… He lifted up his eyes
And, looking round, imagined that he saw
Strange alteration wrought on every side
Among the woods and fields, and that the rocks
And everlasting hills themselves were changed.
”
