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[346] 346-348. These three lines were rejected by ancient critics on the ground that Ulysses could not choose to be washed by one who would recognize the scar. But (1) the poet makes the very natural supposition that he has not yet remembered about the scar (cp. l. 390); and (2) in the praise which Penelope gives him in her answer she is evidently moved by his preference for the aged nurse.

Some recent writers have been led to another solution of the difficulty. They see in the incident a trace of a different version of the story. Ulysses, they say, must have asked for the services of Eurycleia in order to be recognized by her,—desiring in this way to bring about his recognition by Penelope, which in our Odyssey follows the slaying of the Suitors. There was therefore an Odyssey in which Penelope recognized Ulysses at this point, and acted in concert with him in the “τόξου θέσις” and other events of the 20th and 21st books. And this version is supported by Od.24. 167-169 “αὐτὰρ ὁ ἣν ἄλοχον πολυκερδείῃσιν ἄνωγε τόξον κτλ.” (Niese, Hom. Poesie, p. 164: Wilamowitz, Hom. Unters. p. 55: Seeck, Quellen, p. 4).

It will be admitted, in the first place, that the recognition of Ulysses as told in the Odyssey is an admirable specimen of a common type of incident. In almost every tale or romance there is a point at which the author allows the fortunes of his hero to be brought to the verge of ruin by the intervention of some unforeseen agency. In the highly wrought story of the Odyssey the recognition by the nurse is just such a critical moment, and has probably heightened the interest of every hearer or reader of the poem. It is, in short, an incident which any poet who knew of it, or was capable of inventing it, would desire to weave into his narrative.

The only difficulty, then, is the way in which it is introduced. Why make Ulysses ask to be washed by Eurycleia? Why does not Penelope simply tell Eurycleia to wash ‘the compeer of her master’? The answer is probably to be sought in the code of manners which governed the Homeric age. We may gather from the words of Ulysses in 344 ff. (“οὐδὲ γυνὴ ποδὸς ἅψεται κτλ.”), and of Eurycleia in 373 ff. (“τάων . . . ἀλεείνων οὐκ ἐάᾳς νίζειν”), that in the ordinary course the washing would have been done by one of the younger maidservants. Cp. the washing of Telemachus at Pylos (3. 464) by a daughter of the house.

If this is so, the poet had to contrive some reason why Ulysses was to be washed by the old nurse. And he has done so in a way that serves also to bring out the modesty and wisdom of his hero. It is the invariable discretion (“πεπνυμένα πάντα”) of Ulysses that leads him to refuse the services of the maids. In the same spirit soon afterwards (20. 140 ff.) he declared himself to be too miserable an outcast to sleep in the couch offered to him by the order of Penelope.

As to 24. 167 it is probably enough to point out that it does not directly contradict 19. 570-587. The difference is accounted for by the later date of the 24th book.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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