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[128] 128-146, = 2. 93-110. The passage is also put into the mouth of Penelope in 19. 139-156.

ἄλλον has no clear meaning here, as no “δόλος” has been spoken of. In 2. 93 it refers to the preceding sentence, viz. 2. 91-92 “ὑπίσχεται ἀνδρὶ ἑκάστῳ ἀγγελίας προϊεῖσα”, so that it means ‘other than false promises.’ Hence the present passage is shown to have been borrowed from the other: which again is probably an interpolation from the 19th book: see Sittl, p. 86.

147-149. The incident referred to in these lines is one for which it is hard to find a place in the preceding story. Penelope, we are told, showed the finished “φᾶρος” to the Suitors, and we gather from the context that she at the same time confessed that she could no longer delay her marriage with one of them. Thereupon Ulysses came, and she was saved. This is not exactly the course of events in the Odyssey as we have it. Was there then a version in which the incident here referred to had a place—perhaps as the opening scene? The conjecture is as plausible as many that have been put forward. But the sounder conclusion surely is that discrepancies of this kind between the 24th book and the rest of the Odyssey do not call for special explanation.

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

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