Eurynome and Eurycleia in the Odyssey

Extract

Bergk in his Griechische Litertur geschichte, Vol. I., pp. 708, 709, 710, 715, and elsewhere, rejected all verses in the Odyssey where reference is made to Eurynome, a servant or attendant in the palace of Odysseus. His comments on p. 715 concerning the first verses of the twentieth book are typical: ‘Right at the beginning of this book the appearance of Eurynome shows the activity of the imitator. This very passage proves beyond a doubt that Eurynome had no part in the original poem, and that a later bard arbitrarily used her name instead of the name of Eurycleia, who was the true female attendant in the old form of the Odyssey.’