Kitap 1
2.31
As his description of the wanderings of Menelaus may seem to authenticate the charge of ignorance made against him in respect to those regions, it will perhaps be best to point out the difficulties of the narrative, and their explanation, and at the same time enter into a fuller defence of our poet. Menelaus thus addresses Telemachus, who is admiring the splendour of his palace: After numerous toils And perilous wanderings o’er the stormy deep, In the eighth year at last I brought them home. Cyprus, Phoenicia, Sidon, and the shores Of Egypt, roaming without hope, I reach’d, In distant Ethiopia thence arrived, And Libya.Certainly having suffered many things, and having wandered much, I was brought in my ships, and I returned in the eighth year; having wandered to Cyprus, and Phoenice, and the Egyptians, I came to the Ethiopians and Sidonians, and Erembians, and Libya. Odyssey iv. 81.Odyssey iv. 81.
