[Vwoolf] Homer Who?

[Stuart N. Clarke]

“The waves drummed on the shore, like turbaned warriors, like turbaned men with poisoned assegais who, whirling their arms on high, advance upon the feeding flocks, the white sheep.”

The CUP edn of “The Waves” states that “The imagery is confused here”, and indeed it is, but I’m surprised that the editors don’t go on about sheep-farming in E. Africa and Imperialism.

However, perhaps there’s also a classical allusion mixed up in all this.  In Book XII of the “Odyssey”, Circe warns Odysseus:

“You will now come to the Thrinacian island, and here you will see many herds of cattle and flocks of sheep belonging to the sun-god—seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep, with fifty head in each flock. They do not breed, nor do they become fewer in number, and they are tended by the goddesses Phaethusa and Lampetie, who are children of the sun-god Hyperion by Neaera. Their mother when she had borne them and had done suckling them sent them to the Thrinacian island, which was a long way off, to live there and look after their father's flocks and herds. If you leave these flocks unharmed, and think of nothing but getting home, you may yet after much hardship reach Ithaca; but if you harm them, then I forewarn you of the destruction both of your ship and of your comrades; and even though you may yourself escape, you will return late, in bad plight, after losing all your men.” (Samuel Butler’s translation)

Guess what?  His men eventually disobey him, altho’ they seem to kill some of the cows rather than any sheep, and, of course, terrible things happen to them.

Still, there’s no end to these allusions.  What about Byron’s:

‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold’ 

And then, of course, there is a ref. to ‘purples and golds’ in “A Room of One’s Own”.

Stuart
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