There (5) are two references to local oracles in the _Odyssey,_ that of Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in _Iliad,_ IX. 404, as a very rich temple of Apollo--the oracle is not named, but the oracle brought in the treasures. Achilles (XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona, whose priests were thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of Dodona. Neither when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy lands forlorn, had the Achaeans or Odysseus much to do with the local oracles of Greece; perhaps not, in Homer's time, so important as they were later, and little indeed is said about them in either Epic.
(6) "The geographical knowledge shown in the Odyssey goes beyond that of the _Iliad_ ... especially in regard to Egypt and Sicily." But a poet of a widely wandering hero of Western Greece has naturally more occasion than the poet of a fixed army in Asia to show geographical knowledge. Egyptian Thebes is named, in _ILIAD_, IX., as a city very rich, especially in chariots; while in the _ODYSSEY_ the poet has occasion to show more knowledge of the way to Egypt and of Viking descents from Crete on the coast (Odyssey, III. 300; IV. 351; XIV. 257; XVII. 426). Archaeology shows that the Mycenaean age was in close commercial relation with Egypt, and that the Mycenaean civilisation extended to most Mediterranean lands and islands, and to Italy and Sicily. [Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, i. 69.] There is nothing suspicious, as "late," in the mention of Sicily by Odysseus in Ithaca (Odyssey, XX. 383; XXIV. 307). In the same way, if the poet of a western poem does not dilate on the Troad and the people of Asia Minor as the poet of the _ILIAD_ does, that is simply because the scene of the _ILIAD_ is in Asia and the scene of the Odyssey is in the west, when it is not in No Man's land. From the same cause the poet of sea-faring has more occasion to speak of the Phoenicians, great sea-farers, than the poet of the Trojan leaguer.
(7) We know so little about land tenure in Homeric times--and, indeed, early land tenure is a subject so complex and obscure that it is not easy to prove advance towards separate property in the _Odyssey_--beyond what was the rule in the time of the _ILIAD_. In the Making of the Arms (XVIII. 541-549) we find many men ploughing a field, and this may have been a common field. But in what sense? Many ploughs were at work at once on a Scottish runrig field, and each farmer had his own strip on several common fields, but each farmer held by rent, or by rent and services, from the laird. These common fields were not common property. In XII. 422 we have "a common field," and men measuring a strip and quarrelling about the marking-stones, across the "baulk," but it does not follow that they are owners; they may be tenants. Such quarrels were common in Scotland when the runrig system of common fields, each man with his strip, prevailed. [Footnote: Grey Graham, _Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century_, i. 157.]