Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/129

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When they retire to rest, each has a long tale to tell. The personal adventures of Ulysses alone (however careful he might have been to abridge them in some particulars for his present auditor) would have made up many an Arabian Night's entertainment. There would surely have been little time left for Penelope's story, but that Minerva's agency lengthens the ordinary night—

Here, according to our modern notions of completeness, the Odyssey should surely end. Accordingly some critics have surmised that the twenty-fourth and last book is not Homer's, but a later addition. But we may very well suppose that the primitive taste for narrative in the poet's day was more simple and child-like; that an ancient Greek audience would inquire, as our own children would, into all the details of the sequel, and not be satisfied even with the comprehensive assertion that "they lived happy ever afterwards." We have therefore, in the text as it has come down to us, a kind of supplement to the tale, which, as is the case