Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

18

18 (p. 63) “pukinon domon elthein” [transliterated from the Greek]: The phrase, which means “to enter the thick (compact) house,” is adapted from a passage about the theft of a helmet by Autolycus (son of the messenger god Mercury, in Greek mythology) in book 10 of the Iliad, the epic poem about the siege of Troy attributed to the Greek poet Homer. Gilbert Murray (see note 17, above) furnished Shaw with this gag in a letter of October 7, 1905, by suggesting that the line could also mean that it was a bit thick of Autolycus to break into the house.