Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

Ulysses and his companions, when they enter the great River Ocean, enter it at a point far north, by the city and country of the Cimmerians, who are enveloped in cloud and vapour[585 - Od. xi. 13, 21.]: and they are carried up or against the stream (παρὰ ῥόον), by the breath of Boreas[586 - Od. X. 507.], to the mouth of the Inferno. Returning from thence, they come down the stream (κατὰ ῥόον Od. xi. 639) back to the sea (θάλασσα); and they there find themselves at the isle of Circe, where is the dwelling of Ἠὼς, and where is also the couch, from which the sun rises in the morning.

In this account it is not difficult to trace certain outlines of truth. The ideas of Homer respecting the gates of Ocean would be drawn from reports which may have related primâ facie to any one of several geographical points; to the Straits of Gibraltar, to the Bosphorus, to the Straits of Yenikalè leading into the Sea of Azof, or to all the three. At one and all of these there appears to be a continual stream flowing inwards in the direction of the Mediterranean or θάλασσα. One and all, as sea-straits, present the character of a vast marine river. In exact accordance with these physical facts, Homer makes the ship of Ulysses, entering the great River Ocean, sail up the stream. We may observe in passing, that he describes his θάλασσα as εὐρύπορος, in evident contrast with the Ocean, which is marked, therefore, by a contraction of shores.

Further, Homer had conceived the existence of what we may call ultra-terrene parts, both westwards and eastwards. On the one hand, Menelaus, after death, is to be carried to the Elysian plain, where Zephyrs continually blow, springing fresh from the bed of western Ocean. On the other hand, the groves of Persephone are on the beach of Ocean, but in the furthest East.

Still it does not at all follow from this, that he had in his mind the idea of a double egress from the Mediterranean, or, the θάλασσα at large, to the Ocean. On the contrary, we never hear of any mode of access to it except one; and his placing the point where Ulysses enters it amidst mist and cloud, and his calling in the aid of Boreas to carry the ship to the groves of Persephone and mouth of the Shades (which he probably intended to be the exact counterpart in position of the Elysian plain), lead to the belief that his egress from sea to Ocean was in the north, and that the further route to the Shades lay, for the most part, in a southerly direction.

Open-sea Passage to Ocean-mouth.

The reader of the Odyssey will observe, that Ulysses encounters on his passage tempests indeed, but yet nothing in the nature of a dangerous maritime passage, before he has entered the Ocean-river, and then, completing his excursion to the nether world, has returned to the island of Circe[587 - Od. xii. 3.]. Therefore we may say with certainty, that the mouth of Oceanus is, according to the ideas of Homer, accessible by the broad and open sea. Thus we have attained a first condition for the determination of its site.

But, before he sets out a second time from Ææa, Circe, now his friend, directs him as to his onward and homeward course. First, he was to reach the island of the Sirens[588 - Ibid. 39, 167.]. After passing beyond this, the deity no longer lays before him a single and continuous route[589 - Ibid. 56.]: but indicates to him two alternatives, each involving a most dangerous passage. The first is described in the lines Od. xii. 59-72, beginning ἔνθεν μὲν γάρ. The second, which she recommends in vv. 73-110, begins with οἱ δὲ δύω σκόπελοι: where the δὲ is the apodosis to the μὲν of v. 59. Now, it must be remembered, that physically there was nothing to prevent his returning by the way he came, and thus avoiding both of these passages. Why then does Homer expose him to such extraordinary danger, leaving him no option but either total destruction, or the certain loss, at the least, of six men of his crew[590 - Ibid. 109, 10.]?

The voyage of Ulysses might have been given us by the Poet as the execution of a divine plan, comprehensively premeditated as a whole: but it is not so: it is shown us as simply prolonged from time to time by some error of his own or of his companions, or by the spite of Neptune, or by the vengeance which the Sun demanded and obtained[591 - Od. i. 75. xii. 373 et seqq.]. At Ææa he has nothing to do, but to take the best way home. Tiresias had indeed prophesied that he would come to Thrinacie[592 - Od. xi. 104-7.], but nowhere intimates that he was to be divinely compelled to do this, or that he would take that route for any other reason than according to his own best judgment. Why then does he not return, as he had come, by the open sea, instead of tempting either of the two passages of peril?

The answer I believe to be this. He was subject to the resentment of Neptune, who operates by storm in the open sea. Otium divos rogat in patenti prensus Ægæo. As in the heroic age, every wound, generally speaking, is death, so storm either invariably or commonly means foundering or shipwreck. Thus then Ulysses might prudently keep to landlocked waters and narrow seas, even with a crisis of great danger before him, rather than face the angry Sea-god on the long passages over the open main, by which he had come to the land of the Cyclops, and so onwards to Ææa.

Rationalized, and reduced to its simplest form, this seems to imply that the routes pointed out to him by Circe, and perhaps especially that which he was to prefer, were short cuts either to his home, or at least back into the Inner or Greek world. And in conformity with this supposition, the whole prediction of Circe appears to presume that a passage of moderate length would bring him back within the known world; for it never speaks of the breadth of any unknown sea to be crossed, which to the navigators of that day was always its most formidable feature.

In the mental view of Homer, then, the passage of Scylla could not lie much beyond the horizon of his own Greek world and of geography proper. This was the more eligible of the two routes. The other was that of the Πλαγκταὶ, or Bosphorus. It was rejected as involving certain destruction: for only Jason had safely passed it by the aid of Juno, and Pallas was not now at hand to succour Ulysses; since he was outside that Greek world, to which her action has been restricted, generally speaking, and in all likelihood for poetical reasons, in the Odyssey. Now, since both these passages are spoken of as apparently lying near the island of the Sirens, which is itself separated, as far as we can judge, by no long interval from Ææa and Circe, the next inferences we have to draw are two of very great importance. The first is, that although the one strait of Homer physically corresponds with the Straits of Messina, while by the other he plainly means the Bosphorus, yet he conceived of these as within no great distance of one another. The second inference is that, according to the belief of Homer, the waters beyond the Bosphorus were accessible by some channel other than that of the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmora: for otherwise Ulysses could not have placed himself on the farther side of those terrible narrows, except by navigating one of them.

Three maritime routes to Ocean-mouth.

There were therefore three maritime routes by which Homer conceived that mouth of Ocean, which Ulysses entered, to be approachable:

1. The route by which the hero actually arrived there:

2. The route of Scylla and Charybdis, by which he returned from it:

3. The route of the Bosphorus, by which Jason had passed, and which Ulysses might, according to the description of Circe, have attempted.

But now, what in the view of Homer was this mouth of Ocean? that is, on what geographical basis rested the reports or descriptions which he adopted for the groundwork of his picture? We cannot but admire, as we pass along, the manner in which the Phœnicians guarded the treasures of their distant markets: no way lay to them except through a choice of terrors; terror in the boundless expanse of devouring waters; terror in shipwreck by the Πλαγκταὶ, which none but Jason (so says Circe, the Phœnician witness) had escaped; terror in certain loss of men by the voracious maw of Scylla. What, however, was this Ocean-mouth that lay beyond them?

My answer is, that there are two mouths of Ocean, either of which might tolerably correspond with the Homeric picture, if tried only by its relation to the intermediate points that are represented by these dangerous passages.

Firstly, the Straits of Gibraltar, leading to the Atlantic.

Secondly, the Straits of Kertch or Yenikalè, leading to the Sea of Azof.

Straits of Gibraltar as Ocean-mouth.

1. As regards the Straits of Gibraltar, they correspond with the Homeric description in respect of their great distance from Ithaca: of their current ever setting inwards to the Mediterranean: of their being accessible, without previously leaving the wide or open sea for any narrow passage: of their being, we may confidently believe, within the maritime experience of the Phœnicians. Further, on the route to them there lies an island triangular in form, which was already described by the name Thrinacie[593 - Od. xii. 127.]. Again, it would appear that there were other islands between Thrinacie and this Ocean-mouth. For both Circe and the Sirens inhabit islands. Even the nearest of the Balearic isles, namely, Ibiza, is from the Straits of Gibraltar about as far as Crete from Egypt, which we know to have been estimated by the Poet at five days’ sail. It seems, however, not unlikely that Homer, having received a notice of the Balearic isles in the Phœnician reports concerning the Pillars of Atlas, carried them over, together with Atlas himself, into the eastern situation, where he blends two sets of traditions into one. He may therefore have been supplied from this source with materials for his island of Circe and island of the Sirens.

Lastly, although the misty Cimmerians are close by the Ocean-mouth, while the atmosphere of Gibraltar is warm and sunny, yet even the fogs may find their prototype in St. George’s Channel[594 - Quart. Rev. vol. 102. p. 324.], or in the Straits of Dover, and it may also be said that, in the hazy distance of a Phœnician captain’s tale, they might from Homer’s point of view seem to stand nearly together. But still this is a difficulty. There are other more serious impediments, which make it absolutely impossible for us to say that the Homeric mouth of Ocean corresponds with the Straits of Gibraltar. This one especially: that he has, by a multitude of ties, fastened down his mouth of Ocean to an eastern rather than a western site; for there, at least hard by, is the dwelling of Aurora; there is the morning couch of the Sun; there is Circe, sister of Æetes, to whose country Jason sailed through the Bosphorus; and these both have had the Sun for their father, and Perse, daughter of Ocean, without doubt an eastern and not a western personage, for their mother[595 - Od. x. 135-9, and xii. 1-4.]. The site of Ææa will, however, together with that of Ogygia, receive presently a fuller consideration.

Straits of Yenikalè as Ocean-mouth.

Let us turn then to the other alternative in the inquiry.

2. As the Straits of Gibraltar offer a resemblance to the Homeric picture, by their lying beyond the Straits of Messina, so do the Straits of Yenikalè, by their lying beyond the Bosphorus. The perpetual current inwards[596 - Danby Seymour’s Black Sea and Sea of Azof, ch. xvii.] is another feature of correspondence, such as may apply to both the cases, and such as probably assisted the process at which I shall presently glance. The whole group of Oriental conditions, attaching to Homer’s Ocean-mouth, appear to be exactly realized in the straits of Yenikalè.

The Cimmerian country of Homer is represented down to the present day by the Crimea, one of the most ancient passages from Asia into Europe, and probably known to the Phœnicians, who could well enough pass the Bosphorus themselves, while making it a bugbear to others. The cloud, in which these Cimmerians are wrapped, finds its counterpart in the notoriously frequent winter fogs of the Euxine. The peninsula, lying on the very Straits themselves, is in exact correspondence with the passage (Od. xi. 13),

ἡ δ’ εἰς πείραθ’ ἵκανε βαθυρρόου Ὠκεανοῖο·
ἔνθα δὲ Κιμμερίων ἀνδρῶν δῆμός τε πόλις τε.

The only point of the description which is less faithfully represented at this point than at the other, is the epithet βαθύρροος. This agrees better with the deep water of Gibraltar, than with the (now at least) shallow current of Yenikalè[597 - Ibid. The minimum appears to be fourteen feet: but it seems to have been much deeper in old times.].

Nor is it unnatural, that near the Cimmerian darkness he should place the home of Aurora and the Eastern Sun: for it is out of darkness that dawn and day must ever rise; and we have occasion to notice, in various forms, the association in Homer’s mind of ideas belonging to darkness with the East. Again, there is a combination of a northerly with an easterly direction in the conditions of the Homeric description, which is exactly met by the position of these Straits relatively to Greece.

But if we say, that these Straits form the single prototype of the Homeric description, we are again met by hopeless contradictions. For there does not lie any triangular island close by the Bosphorus, which might answer to Thrinacie: and there is no free maritime passage whatever, other than the Bosphorus, by which the Ocean-mouth, that is, the mouth of the Palus Mæotis, can be attained by a person who has Troy for his point of departure.

These facts appear to direct us plainly towards one satisfactory, and as it seems inevitable, conclusion. It is exhibited in the sentences that immediately follow.

First, it seems at once clear that Homer either knew, or else dimly figured to himself by Phœnician report, certain geographical facts, including those which follow: —

1. That there was an island, whose figure was defined by a word signifying three promontories, and which was accessible by a passage on the western side of Greece.

2. That near this island, there lay on one side the jaw of a dangerous narrow.

3. That either on the other side of it or in some other neighbouring quarter lay the open sea, and a route along it, by which the further side of the island might be reached, without traversing the narrow.

4. That at a point beyond both these openings (I say nothing for the present of the points of the compass) there lay a great stream such as he called Ὠκεανὸς, flowing always inwards to the θάλασσα, which he supposed to be fed by it (Il. xxi. 196).

5. That there was likewise a passage, which Homer called the Πλαγκταὶ, accessible from the eastern side of Greece; and through which Jason, and as he believed Jason alone, had sailed.

6. That at a point beyond this passage too, there lay an expanse of sea, θάλασσα, and again a great stream, such as he called Ὠκεανὸς, flowing always inwards to the θάλασσα.

Now we have seen that he gives us in the poem one mouth, and one mouth only, of Ὠκεανὸς, which corresponds with every one of these propositions taken singly: it is, according to him, beyond Thrinacie, beyond the Straits of Scylla and Charybdis, attainable by an open sea passage, and beyond the Πλαγκταὶ or Bosphorus.

It seems to follow almost mathematically, that he believed in an open sea route, which must have lain to the north, and which established a communication, independent of the Bosphorus, between the Mediterranean and the Euxine.

He blends two sets of reports into one.

It also hereby appears that he had received from the Phœnicians two sets of reports, one relating to western, and the other to north-eastern navigation, but both involving a description of a great inward flowing stream as an ultimate point, agreeably to his idea of the River Ocean. These two ulterior points, obtained respectively from each set of reports, Homer, led by the similarity of features, has blended into one. We can even now take his untrue representation to pieces, and can see where and how it separates into two, each of them geographically true. In his one mouth of Ocean he has combined the conditions, that in nature belong to two separate geographical points. Both the north-eastern report and the western report he has amalgamated, by carrying the remote point of the former round, so to speak, in order to meet the latter: and having thus made his Ocean-mouth northern, as well as eastern, he consistently calls in Boreas to take the ship of Ulysses to the mouth of the Shades below, so as to fix that point in the east, because it was the counterpart to his Elysian fields which lay in the west. The two sets of Phœnician reports are in this way oddly brought to integrate one another. The Ocean mouth in the Euxine gets the benefit of the open sea route; and the Ocean mouth at Gibraltar has credit for being placed in a northern latitude and eastern longitude; each report thus throwing its own separate attributes into the common stock.

The effect of thus forcing Yenikalè and Gibraltar to meet, naturally enough brings the Faro of Messina and the Bosphorus near to one another: and hence Circe, in the Twelfth Book, names them to Ulysses as alternative routes, both apparently lying in the same region.

But again I say, that in order to comprehend the Outer or imaginary geography of the Odyssey, we must entirely dismiss from our minds the map of Europe as it is. We must treat as having been a real map to Homer only the little sphere which was embraced within the resort of ordinary Greek navigation. Beyond that narrow range, we must consider him as distributing land and sea in the manner he best could, by the aid of reports, necessarily in that age most indistinct, and in all likelihood exaggerated, and even wilfully darkened to boot, by trading craft. Sometimes therefore he puts a people upon poetical terra firma at points, where it fortunately but accidentally turns out that nature has provided an antitype for the imagery of the Poem. Sometimes he lodges them where there is none; ubi nîl nisi pontus et aer. But though details are to be thus disposed of, still the one master variation from actual nature is this; the sea extended from the Mediterranean to the Euxine, behind, i. e. to the north of, the Bosphorus and of Thrace. This gives us that open passage into the Euxine, by which Homer supposed Ulysses to have reached the maritime region, that Jason had sought and found through the Bosphorus.

In sum; it is too plain to require much of the detailed proof which I have tried to give, that Homer believed in a great expanse of waters lying somewhere to the north. The probability is, that from some Phœnician source he had heard rumours of the great German Ocean. It need not to us appear strange that his mind did not readily conceive an extent of land like that of the continent of Europe, when we notice that his experience made him conversant partly with islands, partly with countries in minute subdivisions, and of small breadth from sea to sea. This great imaginary mass of waters he included within the θάλασσα, to which everything belonged as far as the point where the great River Oceanus was reached.

I think then that we have now found the two keys to the Outer Geography,

1. In the sea-route north of Thrace;

2. In the amalgamation of the western with the north-eastern report of the Ocean-mouth.

From the site of the Ocean-mouth of Homer, we may most naturally proceed to examine the site of Ææa; which, as being within one day’s sail, is a kind of porter’s lodge to it[598 - Od. xii. 10-13.], and is a point of the utmost importance in the system. Hitherto I have proceeded only by assertion, so far as the site of the Homeric Ææa is conceived. But to defend the second main proposition or key to the system, in the face of counter-theories, it will be necessary to examine, with as much care as may be, all the Homeric evidence that bears either upon this question, or upon the kindred one of the site of Ogygia.