Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6: With His Letters and JournalsMoore, Thomas
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Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6: With His Letters and Journals
Moore, Thomas
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
In another passage, he continues this account as follows:--"In the
evening of the festival, the inhabitants danced before their houses;
and at one we saw the figure which is said to have been first used by
the youths and virgins of Delos, at the happy return of Theseus from
the expedition of the Cretan Labyrinth. It has now lost much of that
intricacy which was supposed to allude to the windings of the
habitation of the Minotaur," &c. &c. This is rather too much for even
the inflexible gravity of our censorial muscles. When the author
talks, with all the _reality_ (if we may use the expression) of a
Lempriere, on the stories of the fabulous ages, we cannot refrain
from indulging a momentary smile; nor can we seriously accompany him
in the learned architectural detail by which he endeavours to give
us, from the Odyssey, the ground-plot of the house of Ulysses.--of
which he actually offers a plan in drawing! "showing how the
description of the house of Ulysses in the Odyssey may be supposed to
correspond with the foundations yet visible on the hill of
Aito!"--Oh, Foote! Foote! why are you lost to such inviting subjects
for your ludicrous pencil!--In his account of this celebrated
mansion, Mr. Gell says, one side of the court seems to have been
occupied by the Thalamos, or sleeping apartments of the men, &c. &c.;
and, in confirmation of this hypothesis, he refers to the 10th
Odyssey, line 340. On examining his reference, we read,
[Greek: Es thalamon t ienai, kai ses epibemenai eunes.]
where Ulysses records an invitation which he received from Circe to
take a part of her bed. How this illustrates the above conjecture, we
are at a loss to divine: but we suppose that some numerical error has
occurred in the reference, as we have detected a trifling mistake or
two of the same nature.
Mr. G. labours hard to identify the cave of Dexia near Bathi (the
capital of the island), with the grotto of the Nymphs described in
the 13th Odyssey. We are disposed to grant that he has succeeded: but
we cannot here enter into the proofs by which he supports his
opinion; and we can only extract one of the concluding sentences of
the chapter, which appears to us candid and judicious:--
"Whatever opinion may be formed as to the identity of the cave
of Dexia with the grotto of the Nymphs, it is fair to state,
that Strabo positively asserts that no such cave as that
described by Homer existed in his time, and that geographer
thought it better to assign a physical change, rather than
ignorance in Homer, to account for a difference which he
imagined to exist between the Ithaca of his time and that of
the poet. But Strabo, who was an uncommonly accurate observer
with respect to countries surveyed by himself, appears to have
been wretchedly misled by his informers on many occasions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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