Kitap 1
2.36
Homer has described to us the phenomena of the ocean under the form of a myth; this [art] is very desirable in a poet; the idea of his Charybdis was taken from the ebb and flow of the tide, and was by no means a pure invention of his own, but derived from what he knew concerning the Strait of Sicily.The Strait of Messina. And although he states that the ebb and flow occurred thrice during the four and twenty hours, instead of twice, (Each day she thrice disgorges, and each day Thrice swallows it,”)For thrice in a day she sends it out, and thrice she sucks it in. Odyssey xii. 105.Odyssey xii. 105. we must suppose that he said this not through any ignorance of the fact, but for tragic effect, and to excite the fear which Circe endeavours to infuse into her arguments to deter Ulysses from departing, even at a little expense of truth. The following is the language Circe makes use of in her speech to him: Each day she thrice disgorges, and each day Thrice swallows it. Ah! well-forewarn’d beware What time she swallows, that thou come not nigh, For not himself, Neptune, could snatch thee thence.For thrice in a day she sends it out, and thrice she sucks it in terribly. Mayest thou not come hither when she is gulping it; for not even Neptune could free thee from ill. Odyssey xii. 105.Odyssey xii. 105. And yet when Ulysses was ingulfed in the eddy he was not lost. He tells us himself, ‘It was the time when she absorb’d profound The briny flood, but by a wave upborne, I seized the branches fast of the wild fig, To which bat-like I clung.She gulped up the briny water of the sea; but I, raised on high to the lofty fig-tree, held clinging to it, as a bat. Odyssey xii. 431.Odyssey xii. 431. And then having waited for the timbers of the wreck he seized hold of them, and thus saved himself. Circe, therefore, had exaggerated both the peril, and also the fact of its vomiting forth thrice a day instead of twice. However, this latter is a hyperbole which every one makes use of; thus we say thrice-happy and thrice-miserable.
