Obsessing over minor details, or; Arguing with Dead People

Samuel Butler appears to have translated The Odyssey expressly for the purpose of “suggesting” Homer was female in the footnotes throughout, by way of building on (and substantiating) his earlier work, The Authoress of the Odyssey. Heh. What a shame his friend Lord Grimthorpe utterly mis-read the nature of the execution of the twelve maids, and Butler blindly accepted this mis-interpretation as more ‘evidence’ for his (possibly true) claim.

According to my reading of it, at least, the maids were hung with individual ropes suspended from a ship’s cable, hauled into place prior to any weight resting upon it. There is no impracticality to using a pillar as a pulley, for the ship’s cable’s weight would not be prohibitive before further burdens were placed upon it. Lord Grimthorpe, consider your understanding easily imposed upon. (Nevermind that both he and Butler have been dead for the better part of a century.)