No More Learning

Bk. xix. l. 712 (Hom. xix. l. 573). --The word ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
, for which Cowper
gives as a paraphrase "spikes, crested with a ring," elsewhere means
_axes_, and ought so to be translated here. For since Cowper's day an
axe-head of the Mycenaean period has been discovered _with the blade
pierced_ so as to form a hole through which an arrow could pass. (See
Tsountas and Manatt, _The Mycenaean Age_. ) Axes of this type were not
known to Cowper, and hence the hypothesis in his text. He realised
correctly the essential conditions of the feat proposed: the axes must
have been set up, one behind the other, in the way he suggested for his
ringed stakes.


NOTE IV.

Bk. xxii. l. 139-162 (Hom. xxii. l. 126-143). --How Melanthius got out of
the hall remains a puzzle. Cowper assumes a second postern, but there is
no evidence for this, and l. 139 ff.