On Mr. Myres's showing, the women in the house of Odysseus had distinct and separate quarters into which no man goes uninvited. Odysseus when at home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; and in his absence Penelope sleeps upstairs, where there are several chambers for various purposes.

Granting that all this is so, how do the pictures of the house given in the final part of the Odysseycompare with those in the {Blank space} and with the accounts of the dwellings of Menelaus and Alcinous in the Odyssey? Noack argues that the house of Odysseus is unlike the other Homeric houses, because in these, he reasons, the women have no separate quarters, and the lord and lady of the house sleep in the great hall, and have no other bedroom, while there are no upper chambers in the houses of the Iliad, except in two passages dismissed as "late."

If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and domestic life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and still less later Hellenic.

It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a composite and in parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have said what I think in Homer and the Epic). According to this theory (Kirchhoff is the exponent of a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey belongs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas, and do suit Kirchhoff's—this is the regular method of Homeric criticism. The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded as a late addition: on this point English scholars hitherto have been of the opposite opinion. {Footnote: Cf. Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 313-317.}

The method of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as examples of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the earliest poet from whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of prae-Homeric surviving epic formulae. Critics then dispute as to which recurrent passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit their own general theory. In our opinion these passages are traditional formulae, as in our own old ballads and in the Chansons de Geste, and Noack also takes this view every now and then. They may well be older, in many cases, than Iliadand Odyssey; or the poet, having found his own formula, economically used it wherever similar circumstances occurred. Such passages, so considered, are no tests of earlier composition in one place, of later composition in another.

We now look into Noack's theory of the Homeric house. Where do the lord and lady sleep? Not, he says, as Odysseus and Penelope do (when Odysseus is at home), in a separate chamber ( thalamos) on the ground floor, nor, like Gunnar and Halgerda (Njal's Saga), in an upper chamber. They sleep mucho domou; that is, not in a separate recess in the house, but in a recess of the great hall or megaron. Thus, in the hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to the muchos, the innermost part ( Odyssey, VII. 87-96). In the hall of Odysseus, the Wooers retreat to the muchos, "the innermost part of the hall" ( Odyssey, XXII. 270). "The muchos, in Homer, never denotes a separate chamber." {Footnote: Noack, p. 45. Cf. Monro, Note to Odyssey, XXII. 270.}

In Odyssey, XI. 373, Alcinous says it is not yet time to sleep ev megaro, "in the hall." Alcinous and Arete, his wife, sleep "in the recess of the lofty domos," that is, in the recess of the hall, not of "the house" (Odyssey, VII. 346). The same words are used of Helen and Menelaus (Odyssey, IV. 304). But when Menelaus goes forth next morning, he goes ek thalamoio, "out of his chamber" ( Odyssey, IV. 310). But this, says Noack, is a mere borrowing of Odyssey, II 2-5, where the same words are used of Telemachus, leaving his chamber, which undeniably was a separate chamber in the court: Eurycleia lighted him thither at night (Odyssey, I. 428). In Odyssey, IV. 121, Helen enters the hall "from her fragrant, lofty chamber," so she hada chamber, not in the hall. But, says Noack, this verse "is not original." The late poet of Odyssey, IV. has cribbed it from the early poet who composed Odyssey, XIX. 53.In that passage Penelope "comes from her chamber, like Artemis or golden Aphrodite." Penelope hada chamber—being "a lone lorn woman," who could not sleep in a hall where the Wooers sat up late drinking—and the latest poet transfers this chamber to Helen. But however late and larcenous he may have been, the poet of IV. 121 certainly did not crib the words of the poet of XIX. 53, for he says, "Helen came out of her fragrant, high-roofedchamber." The hallwas not precisely "fragrant"! However, Noack supposes that the late poet of Book IV. let Helen have a chamber apart, to lead up to the striking scene of her entry to the hall where her guests are sitting. May Helen not even have a boudoir? In Odyssey, IV. 263, Helen speaks remorsefully of having abandoned her "chamber," and husband, and child, with Paris; but the late poet says this, according to Noack, because he finds that he is in for a chamber, so to speak, at all events, as a result of his having previously cribbed the word "chamber" from Odyssey, XIX. 53. Otherwise, we presume Helen would have said that she regretted having left "the recess of the lofty hall" where she really did sleep. {Footnote: Noack, pp. 47-48}

The merit of this method of arguing may be left to the judgment of the reader, who will remark that wedded pairs are not described as leaving the hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of the lofty house," the innermost part. Is this the same as the "recess of the hall" or is it an innermost part of the house?Who can be certain?

The bridal chamber, built so cunningly, with the trunk of a tree for the support of the bed, by Odysseus (odyssey, XXIII. 177-204), is, according to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of Odysseus. But we may reply that the thalamos, the separate chamber, is no freak; the freak, by knowledge of which Odysseus proves his identity, is the use of the tree in the construction of the bed. {blank space} was highly original.

That separate chambers are needed for grown-up children, BECAUSEthe parents sleep in the hall, is no strong argument. If the parents had a separate chamber, the young people, unless they slept in the hall, would still need their own. The girls, of course, could not sleep in the hall; and, in the absence of both Penelope and Odysseus from the hall, ever since Telemachus was a baby, Telemachus could have slept there. But it will be replied that the Wooers did not beset the hall, and Penelope did not retire to a separate chamber, till Telemachus was a big boy of sixteen. Noack argues that he had a separate chamber, though the hall was free, tradition. {Footnote: Noack, p. 49.}

Where does Noack think that, in a normal Homeric house, the girls of the family slept? Theycould not sleep in the hall, and on the two occasions when the Iliadhas to mention the chambers of the young ladies they are "upper chambers," as is natural. But as Noack wants to prove the house of Odysseus, with its upper chambers, to be a late peculiar house, he, of course, expunges the two mentions of girls' upper chambers in the Odyssey. The process is simple and easy.

We find ( Iliad, XVII. 36) that a son, wedding in his father's and mother's life-time, has a thalamosbuilt for him, and a muchosin the THALAMOS, where he leaves his wife when he goes to war. This dwelling of grown-up married children, as in the case of the sons of Priam, has a thalamos, or doma, and a courtyard—is a house, in fact ( Iliad, VI. 3 16). Here we seem to distinguish the bed-chamber from the doma, which is the hall. Noack objects that when Odysseus fumigates his house, after slaying the Wooers, he thus treats the megaron, ANDthe doma, ANDthe courtyard. Therefore, Noack argues, the megaron, or hall, is one thing; the domais another. Mr. Monro writes, " domausually means megaron," and he supposes a slip from another reading, thalamonfor megaron, which is not satisfactory. But if domahere be not equivalent to megaron, what room can it possibly be? Who was killed in another place? what place therefore needed purification except the hall and courtyard? No other places needed purifying; there is therefore clearly a defect in the lines which cannot be used in the argument.