Thus the giant Polyphemus drives in his ewes home from
their pasture, and milks them. The lambs of course have not been
running with them; they have been left in the yards, so they have
had nothing to eat. When he has milked the ewes, the giant lets
each one of them have her lamb--to get, I suppose, what strippings
it can, and beyond this what milk the ewe may yield during the
night. In the morning, however, Polyphemus milks the ewes again.
Hence it is plain either that he expected his lambs to thrive on one
pull per diem at a milked ewe, and to be kind enough not to suck
their mothers, though left with them all night through, or else that
the writer of the Odyssey had very hazy notions about the relations
between lambs and ewes, and of the ordinary methods of procedure on
an upland dairy-farm.
In nautical matters the same inexperience is betrayed. The writer
knows all about the corn and wine that must be put on board; the
store-room in which these are kept and the getting of them are
described inimitably, but there the knowledge ends; the other things
put on board are "the things that are generally taken on board
ships.
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