[43] [ In the Italian insurrection of 1848, eight young men who were being hotly pursued by the Austrian police hid themselves inside Donatello’s colossal wooden horse in the Salone at Padua, and remained there for a week being fed by their confederates. In 1898 the last survivor was carried round Padua in triumph.] [44] [ The Greek is {Greek}. Is it unfair to argue that the writer is a person of somewhat delicate sensibility, to whom a strong smell of fish is distasteful?] [45] [ The Greek is {Greek}. I believe this to be a hit at the writer’s own countrymen who were of Phocaean descent, and the next following line to be a rejoinder to complaints made against her in bk. vi. 273-288, to the effect that she gave herself airs and would marry none of her own people. For that the writer of the “Odyssey” was the person who has been introduced into the poem under the name of Nausicaa, I cannot bring myself to question. I may remind English readers that {Greek} (i.e. phoca) means “seal.” Seals almost always appear on Phocaean coins.] [46] [ Surely here again we are in the hands of a writer of delicate sensibility. It is not as though the seals were stale; they had only just been killed. The writer, however is obviously laughing at her own countrymen, and insulting them as openly as she dares.] [47] [ We were told above (lines 356, 357) that it was only one day’s sail.] [48] [ I give the usual translation, but I do not believe the Greek will warrant it. The Greek reads {Greek}. This is usually held to mean that Ithaca is an island fit for breeding goats, and on that account more delectable to the speaker than it would have been if it were fit for breeding horses. I find little authority for such a translation; the most equitable translation of the text as it stands is, “Ithaca is an island fit for breeding goats, and delectable rather than fit for breeding horses; for not one of the islands is good driving ground, nor well meadowed.” Surely the writer does not mean that a pleasant or delectable island would not be fit for breeding horses? The most equitable translation, therefore, of the present text being thus halt and impotent, we may suspect corruption, and I hazard the following emendation, though I have not adopted it in my translation, as fearing that it would be deemed too fanciful. I would read:—{Greek}. As far as scanning goes the {Greek} is not necessary; {Greek} iv. 72, (Footnote Greek) iv. 233, to go no further afield than earlier lines of the same book, give sufficient authority for {Greek}, but the {Greek} would not be redundant; it would emphasise the surprise of the contrast, and I should prefer to have it, though it is not very important either way. This reading of course should be translated “Ithaca is an island fit for breeding goats, and (by your leave) itself a horseman rather than fit for breeding horses—for not one of the islands is good and well meadowed ground.”