be employed loosely in this passage in summing up what had been told in detail in the previous book, this is no warrant for attributing the same meaning to it in ordinary occurrences where no expansion of the subject is made or explanation furnished. And there is one very strong case against Mr. Gladstone’s notion. In the ‘Odyssey’[205] Helen says: “I myself was washing him and anointing him with oil.” Emphasis here is evidently laid on the ἐγώ. Ulysses had penetrated into the city of the Trojans as a beggar, and no one recognized him but Helen; but he eluded every test that she employed to make herself sure. She therefore washed him herself, and she did this probably because she knew that she could find absolute proof of his identity if she could but see the scar above the knee, by which afterwards, on his return home from Troy, Eurycleia recognized him. In all likelihood, therefore, the natural interpretation is right, and the remark of Schneidewin on the subject[206] is true: “Die Entblössung scheint für den Zweck des Badens so sehr ihre Unstatthaftigkeit zu verlieren wie etwa in der modernen Gesellschaft die Umfassung einer Dame zum Tanz.” And he might have added that modern nurses and doctors in our own times have no hesitation in doing what the Homeric maidens did when there is any necessity, and no one imagines that there is any impropriety in so doing. Certainly, whatever was the mode, there is no taint of immodesty in the action. The Homeric maidens, princess and slave, acted with perfect and unconscious innocence.