Odyssean Essays

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 4

Odyssean Essays

[Reviewed by J.TH.J Odvssean Essays. By L. G. Pocock. VIII, plus 133 pp. Blackwell. Two years after his retirement from the chair of classics at Canterbury MrL. G. Pocock published ‘ The Sicilian Origin of the Odyssey” (19571. in which he brought topographical evidence to show that the places described in the “Odyssey under fictitious names can be traced on the map of the Western Mediterranean. The author took as his startingpoint Samuel Butler’s identification of Scheria. the land of the Phaeacians to which Odvs-seus comes on his return to Ithaca, with Trapani in the west of Sicily, Ithaca itself and most of the landfalls ot Odvsseus are likewise to be found in Cieily or in Sicilian waters. In 1959 Mr Pocock’s “Reality and Allegory in the Odyssey" carried the argument farther. The suggestion, onlv foreshadowed in “Sicilian Origin',” was then put forward and elaborated in some detail that the poem is an allegory reflecting struggles for power in the Sicily of the seventh century B.C. The writer is a sailor, one of the Elymi: a people of mixed stock who had settled in Sicily after the Trojan war. By the wanderings of Odysseus we are to understand the wanderings of an Elymian exile from Trapani; while the seargod Poseidon, who is represented in the poem as Odysseus's inveterate enemy, stands for the seapower of the Phoenicians. Since 1959 Mr Pocock has been working along the lines laid down in “Reality and Allegory,” and the results of his researches during the last six years now appear in “Odyssean Essays.” This elegant volume, embellished with maps and other drawings by Mr F. B. Chennels, contains twelve papers; . most of them have been published previously in classical journals, but four appear in I print for the first time. No. VIII deals directly with the I question of the Elymi, throw- ' ing light on the name of the : Phaeacign princess, Nausicaa, and on the Sicilian scenes in j Virgil’s “Aeneid.” I. V, VII, and X examine some of the results which flow from the author’s contention that the River Of Ocean (not only in the “Odyssey” but also in the “Iliad" and in Hesiod’s “Theogony”) is to be equated

with the Straits of Gibraltar. In this neighbourhood must be placed also the houses of Hades and of Styx (the latter never being regarded as a river by the composers of the epic), with the abyss of Tartarus below. Papers 111 and IV present a detailed reconstruction of the action of books xxi and xxii of the ‘“Odyssey,” involving the contest of the arrow and the axe-heads which Penelope sets before the suitors and the slaughter of the suitors them selves by Odysseus; for these episodes the poet has provided us with “stage direc tions.” and if we follow these a coherent account of the action can be arrived at No. VI maintains that, despite the opinion of many commentators both ancient and modern, an eclipse of the sun is referred to at the end of the twentieth book of the “Odyssey,” and this eclipse is probably to be identified with one known to have occurred on January 11, 888 B.C. This extremely brief sum mary of the contents of “Odyssean Essays" may give some idea of the far-reaching and deeply interesting nature of Mr Pocock’s work, which, it must be admitted, is not yet regarded with favour by the majority of classical scholars. The reader must make up his own mind after reading the present book (he will find some knowledge of Greek useful, but not absolutely necessary). Whatever his conclusions may be. he will find here new and exciting insights into the probI lems presented by the i “Odyssey,” which remains ! after so many centuries a unique and splendid achieve- ! ment. It is rightly emphasised ; in “Odyssean Essays” that the poet of the “Odyssey” was not only a dazzling story-teller but also a man of wit and charm; only in a few passages, such as the episode of Odysseus’s terrible revenge on the suitors, does a darker side appear. Altogether, it is this profound sympathy with his subject and a refusal to be overawed by scholarly opinion, no matter how well entrenched, that most commend Mr Pocock's book to the general reader.