Geography. Strabo

in the Catalogue of Ships,125 where the poet informs us of the peculiarities of each place, that one is rocky, another the furthest city, that this abounds in doves, and that is maritime. A lively interest is the end of the rhetorical, as when he points to us the combat; and of the fiction, pleasure and astonishment. A mere fabrication would neither be persuasive nor Homeric; and we know that his poem is generally considered a scientific treatise, notwithstanding what Eratosthenes may say, when he bids us not to judge poems by the standard of intellect, nor yet look to them for history.

      It is most probable that the line

      “Nine days by cruel storms thence was I borne

      Athwart the fishy deep,”126

      should be understood of merely a short distance, (for cruel storms do not blow in a right course,) and not of being carried beyond the ocean, as if impelled by favourable winds. “And,” says Polybius, “allowing the distance from Malea127 to the Pillars to be 22,500 stadia, and supposing the rate of passage was the same throughout the nine days, the voyage must have been accomplished at the speed of 2500 stadia per diem: now who has ever recorded that the passage from Lycia or Rhodes to Alexandria, a distance of 4000 stadia, has been made in two days? To those who demand how it was that Ulysses, though he journeyed thrice to Sicily, never once navigated the Strait, we reply that, long after his time, voyagers always sedulously avoided that route.”

      18. Such are the sentiments of Polybius; and in many respects they are correct enough; but when he discusses the voyage beyond the ocean, and enters on minute calculations of the proportion borne by the distance to the number of days, he is greatly mistaken. He alleges perpetually the words of the poet,

      “Nine days by cruel storms thence was I borne;”

      but at the same time he takes no notice of this expression, which is his as well,

      “And now borne sea-ward from the river stream

      Of the Oceanus;”128

      and this,

      “In the island of Ogygia, the centre of the sea,”129

       and that the daughter of Atlas130 dwells there. And the following concerning the Phæacians,

      “Remote amid the billowy deep, we hold

      Our dwelling, utmost of all human kind,

      And free from mixture with a foreign race.”131

      These passages clearly refer to the Atlantic Ocean,132 but though so plainly expressed, Polybius slily manages to overlook them. Here he is altogether wrong, though quite correct about the wandering of Ulysses having taken place round Sicily and Italy, a fact which Homer establishes himself. Otherwise, what poet or writer could have persuaded the Neapolitans to assert that they possessed the tomb of Parthenope133 the Siren, or the inhabitants of Cumæ, Dicæarchia,134 and Vesuvius [to bear their testimony] to Pyriphlegethon, the Marsh of Acherusia,135 to the oracle of the dead which was near Aornus,136 and to Baius and Misenus,137 the companions of Ulysses. The same is the case with the Sirenussae, and the Strait of Messina, and Scylla, and Charybdis, and Æolus, all which things should neither be examined into too rigorously, nor yet [despised] as groundless and without foundation, alike remote from truth and historic value.

      19. Eratosthenes seems to have had something like this view of the case himself, when he says, “Any one would believe that the poet intended the western regions as the scene of Ulysses’ wanderings, but that he has departed from fact, sometimes through want of perfect information, at other times because he wished to give to scenes a more terrific and marvellous appearance than they actually possessed.” So far this is true, but his idea of the object which the poet had in view while composing, is false; real advantage, not trifling, being his aim. We may justly reprehend his assertion on this point, as also where he says, that Homer places the scene of his marvels in distant lands that he may lie the more easily. Remote localities have not furnished him with near so many wonderful narrations as Greece, and the countries thereto adjacent; witness the labours of Hercules, and Theseus, the fables concerning Crete, Sicily, and the other islands; besides those connected with Cithærum, Helicon,138 Parnassus,139 Pelion,140 and the whole of Attica and the Peloponnesus. Let us not therefore tax the poets with ignorance on account of the myths which they employ, and since, so far from myth being the staple, they for the most part avail themselves of actual occurrences, (and Homer does this in a remarkable degree,) the inquirer who will seek how far these ancient writers have wandered into fiction, ought not to scrutinize to what extent the fiction was carried, but rather what is the truth concerning those places and persons to which the fictions have been applied; for instance, whether the wanderings of Ulysses did actually occur, and where.

      20. On the whole, however, it is not proper to place the works of Homer in the common catalogue of other poets, without challenging for him a superiority both in respect of his other [excellences] and also for the geography on which our attention is now engaged.

      If any one were to do no more than merely read through the Triptolemus of Sophocles, or the prologue to the Bacchæ of Euripides, and then compare them with the care taken by Homer in his geographical descriptions, he would at once perceive both the difference and superiority of the latter, for wherever there is necessity for arrangement in the localities he has immortalized, he is careful to preserve it as well in regard to Greece, as to foreign countries.

      “They

      On the Olympian summit thought to fix

      Huge Ossa, and on Ossa’s towering head

      Pelion with all his forests.”141

      “And Juno starting from the Olympian height

      O’erflew Pieria and the lovely plains

      Of broad Emathia;142 soaring thence she swept

      The snow-clad summit of the Thracian hills143

      Steed-famed, nor printed, as she pass’d, the soil,

       _*******

      From Athos144 o’er the foaming billows borne.”145

      In the Catalogue he does not describe his cities in regular order, because here there was no necessity, but both the people and foreign countries he arranges correctly. “Having wandered to Cyprus, and Phœnice, and the Egyptians, I came to the Ethiopians, and Sidonians, and Erembi, and Libya.”146 Hipparchus has drawn attention to this. But the two tragedians, where there was great necessity for proper arrangement, one147 where he introduces Bacchus visiting the nations, the other148 Triptolemus sowing the earth, have brought in juxta-position places far remote, and separated those which were near.

      “And having left the wealthy lands of the Lydians and Phrygians, and the sunny plains of the Persians and the Bactrian walls, and having come over the stormy land of the Medes, and the Happy Arabia.”149 And the Triptolemus is just as inaccurate.

      Further, in respect to the winds and climates, Homer shows the wide extent of his geographical knowledge, for in his topographical descriptions he not unfrequently informs us of both these matters. Thus,

      “My abode

      Is sun-burnt Ithaca.

      Flat on the deep she lies, farthest removed

      Toward the west, while situate apart,

      Her sister islands face the rising day.”150

      And,

      “It has a two-fold entrance,

      One towards the north, the other south.”151

      And again,

      “Which I alike despise, speed they their course

      With right-hand flight towards the ruddy east,

      Or leftward down into the shades of eve.”152

      Ignorance of such matters he reckons no less than confusion.

      “Alas! my friends, for neither west

      Know we, nor east; where rises or where sets