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

We have then to inquire, subject to the rules which have been laid down, first, whether Ææa, the island of Circe, is to be placed, its northward direction being generally admitted, in the north-west or in the north-east?

Secondly, as dependent very much upon the prior question, and as entering at the same time largely into the proof of it, what is the site of Ogygia, the island of Calypso?

North-western hypothesis for the site of Ææa.

Now I think that the arguments, which have been used for the north-western theory, have been principally founded,

1. Upon precipitate inferences, drawn from some one or more of Homer’s outer-world statements, and then illegitimately used in order to govern the rest of them;

2. Upon the course of the later tradition, which was led, probably by the course of colonization, to identify and appropriate the particulars of the Outer Geography rather in the West than in the East. For Sicily and Italy became at an early period familiar to the Greeks; but it was long before they grew to be well acquainted with the more dangerous, remote, and isolated navigation of the Black Sea[599 - Müller’s Orchomenos, p. 269.]. Perhaps, indeed, the main reason for placing the tour of Ulysses all along in the West has been no better than this; that Homer has given us an account of an island apparently corresponding in form with Sicily; which it may very well do, and yet the conception of the site may be totally erroneous. Again, with respect to traditional authority, I apprehend it may be asserted, that the Fragment of Mimnermus[600 - Mimn. Fragm. x. quoted in Strabo, i. p. 67.], which carries Jason to the East, to the chamber of the Sun, and to the city of Æetes, as to one and the same point, expresses an universal tradition, so far as the voyage of the Argonauts is concerned. And I would also observe, that the current local appropriations about the coast of Italy seem to be given up on all hands as geographically worthless: the only question is, not so much that of removal, as into which of two quarters they shall be transplanted. On the other hand, the principal arguments for the north-eastern hypothesis are, as I conceive, founded upon legitimate inferences, drawn from the inner-world or experimental statements of Homer, and then applied, by a law essentially sound, to determine the cardinal problems of his Outer Geography.

North-eastern hypothesis.

For example, much will depend upon the answer to the question, whether we are to carry the Straits of Messina, or rather the fable of Scylla and Charybdis, taken to represent them, eastwards, or whether we are in preference to move the Bosphorus westwards.

I answer without hesitation, that it is much more reasonable to construe Homer as shifting essentially the site of Scylla and Charybdis, than the site of the Bosphorus; and for the following reasons.

We have not the slightest reason to suppose that either Sicily or the Scylla passage came within the experimental knowledge of Homer and the Greeks of his time, either as to the island and the Strait themselves, or as to the direction in which they lay.

We find indeed that a continuance of winds, which ranged between E. and S. W. detained Ulysses in Thrinacie or Trinacria. It has from this been, as I think by much too hastily, inferred that Thrinacie lay to the north-west of Ithaca[601 - Müller’s Orchomenos, p. 272. Nitzsch, Od. xii. 361.]. Even if it did so, we should still miss the true bearing of Sicily, which is west, with all inclination to the south, and not north-west, from Ithaca. But the assumption is in fact unwarranted. The wind, which principally held Ulysses fast in Thrinacie, was, as is evident from the passage, Notus, a southerly wind. Eurus plays a secondary part there[602 - Od. xii. 325, 6.]. Besides this, the wind, which Ulysses needed, may have been needed to bring him not to Ithaca, but to some point on his way to Ithaca, from whence his bearings would be known; to some point at which, from the Outer, it would have been practicable for him to re-enter the Inner or Greek world. The needful conditions would be satisfied if, for instance, Thrinacie lay either north-west or north-east from the Dardanelles; and then Ulysses would want either Zephyr or else Boreas to get there. And the opposite theory proceeds upon the entirely arbitrary, nay, untrue, assumption, that the way back through the Narrows was, like the way by which Ulysses had come to Ææa, an open-sea route, and not one in which the course would have to be governed by fixed points of land lying along the course.

There is then no middle term between Thrinacie and any fixed point of the Inner Homeric world, from which we can by direct inference argue as to its site. And the winds, which detain Ulysses in Thrinacie, go far of themselves to show that this island is not on the site of Sicily.

The case is far otherwise in regard to the Bosphorus, or Πλαγκταὶ, of the Odyssey. For here we know,

1. That Homer was familiar with the Dardanelles, a stage on the way to it, and not very far from it:

2. That he makes Jason pass the Bosphorus:

3. That he also makes Jason settle at Lemnos, and become sovereign of the island, evidently in connection with his route from Thessaly to the East.

But Thessaly, and Lemnos too, are places of the inner world: with Lemnos the Poet appears to have been accurately acquainted; and the line between that island and the home of Jason determines absolutely so much as this; that the general direction of his voyage was known by Homer, at least up to this point, to have lain to the north-eastward through the Straits of Gallipoli.

I hold therefore that the passage of the Πλαγκταὶ is fixed immovably, by known-world evidence, as to its general direction: that to transplant it to the west, is to break up the foundations of Homer’s experimental knowledge, which is always to be trusted: whereas to move his Thrinacie eastward is merely to suppose that he gave the site which was poetically most convenient to a tradition which, as it came to him, had no site at all, no positive local or geographical determination.

Character and site of Thrinacie.

Again, I take the island Thrinacie by itself; and I contend that, although the report on which this delineation was founded may probably have had its origin in Sicily, yet the Thrinacie of Homer is associated rather with the East than with the West.

For, though he has given us no geographical means for directly determining the site, he has supplied us with other means that belong, not to Phœnician rumour or fireside tale, but to his own knowledge and experience. Since nothing can be more certain, than that the leading local association of the Sun, for Homer as for all mankind, is with the east. It is true that he is in the west just as often as in the east; but we certainly hold Napoleon to belong more to Corsica than to Saint Helena; and so the mind connects the Sun with the place of his daily birth, and not with that of his daily death. Now, without entering upon any other question for the present, I only observe, that in Thrinacie are the oxen with which the Sun disports himself when not engaged in his daily labours; that is, as he himself supplies the explanation, both before they begin, and after they are ended[603 - Od. xii. 380.]. In deference, then, to those associations, founded on actual nature, which for the present purpose are strictly facts, I cannot hesitate to maintain, that the island of Thrinacie is upon the whole, relatively to Greece, an eastern island.

A like inference may be drawn from the names Lampetie (λάμπειν) and Phaethusa (φάος), which he has given to the Nymphs of the Sun. Had the island been in his intention western, he would have called them by names of a different etymology.

And as the Scylla passage, which is on its coast, is near the Πλαγκταὶ, I think we shall pretty closely conform to the views of Homer, if we make Thrinacie form the western side of the Bosphorus, and if we separate it by an imaginary or poetical Scylla from the main land of Turkey in Europe.

Again, it is admitted that Αἰήτης has his name from Αἰαίη. From the personal relations of Æetes, as well as from those of his daughter Circe, we may therefore argue respecting the site of Ææa, provided we can attach them to any known and fixed point of the system of Homeric ideas.

Now their parentage furnishes a point of this kind, on both the father’s and the mother’s side. Their father is the Sun: a divinity not, like the Apollo or Minerva[604 - See Olympus, sect. iii. p. 82.], de-localized, but one having his daily sojourn (out of work-hours) in the east. The mother is Perse: and enough, I think, has been shown with respect to the import of this name for the Achæan mind[605 - See Achæis, or Ethnology, sect. x; and Olympus, sect. iv. p. 220, on Persephone.], to make it pretty certain that, when Homer gives a residence to the children of Perse, he intends it to be in the east.

It is now time to bring more directly into the discussion a point much contested – the situation of the island of Calypso. The usual modes of solution, which place the original of this picture on the Bruttian coast or in Malta[606 - Schönemann de Geogr. Hom. p. 20. Nitzsch on Od. v. 50, n.], are inadmissible in spirit as well as in the letter. For very great remoteness is the most essential point in the description, and to bring it near would wholly change its character. It requires eighteen days of favourable wind[607 - Od. v. 268-75.] to come by raft within sight of Scheria from Ogygia: while even the distance from Crete to Egypt, a greater one than from the Bruttian coast to Greece, might be performed, as Homer thinks, in five[608 - Od. xiv. 257.]. It is the midpoint, or ὄμφαλος[609 - Od. i. 50.], of a vast expanse of sea: and Mercury, passing thither from Olympus, mentions the route as one which traverses a mighty space of water, without habitations of men between[610 - Od. v. 100-2.]. Again, the name of Calypso (καλύπτειν) places it wholly beyond the circle of Greek maritime experience: as does her relation to Atlas, who holds the pillars, that is, stands at the extremity, of earth and sea. The first and cardinal point to be fixed therefore is its decided, if not extreme remoteness.

Next, if it is thus remote, we find by a process of exhaustion that it must be in the north. As far as we know, Homer recognised the African coast by placing the Lotophagi upon it, and the Ethiopians inland from the East all the way to the extreme West. In that direction there is no more θάλασσα, or sea. And again, as Nitzsch truly remarks, Scheria is on the proper homeward line of the voyage of Ulysses[611 - Nitzsch on Od. v. 276-8.]. Consequently he cannot pass, nor can he even approach, Ithaca while on his way to Scheria: I add, he must come to it down the Adriatic on his way to Ithaca.

Site of Ogygia to the East of North.

Now we are provided with an important argument, drawn, like some preceding ones, from what we may fairly call Homer’s experience, and tending to fix the site of Ogygia in the north or north-east. It is derived from the route taken by Mercury, when he carries the message of the Immortals to Calypso, which in another point of view we have already had to examine[612 - Od. v. 50.]:

Πιερίην δ’ ἐπιβὰς, ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ.

We are obliged to suppose, as has been observed, that Mercury, who does not march, but flies like a bird wont to hunt for fish[613 - Ibid. 51-3.], must move in a direct line towards his object. But Pieria is a district stretching along the shore of Macedonia; it begins in the south, to the eastward of Olympus, and then extends due north of it. Its limits are variously defined[614 - Cramer’s Greece, i. 204.]; but the only question about it could be, whether it verges, not to the westward, but to the eastward of North. Again, from the route of Juno in the Fourteenth Iliad[615 - Il. xiv. 226.], no question can arise, except what would tend to give Pieria an eastward turn.

A line drawn from Olympus over the centre of Pieria would carry Mercury to the North. It might, consistently with the condition of crossing Pieria, diverge a little either to the east or the west of due North, but only a little. Consequently the island of Calypso may be affirmed to be, according to the intention of Homer, in the North, and not very far from due North.

This conclusion is confirmed by two other arguments; which are both of the class which I have described as legitimate, because they are founded on Homer’s physical knowledge of the direction of the winds.

After the storm has destroyed the ship of Ulysses to the south of Thrinacie, Notus, a wind of decidedly southerly character, carries him back again to Scylla, Od. xii. 426: and again, when he has passed it, he proceeds thus[616 - Od. xii. 447.]:

ἔνθεν δ’ ἐννῆμαρ φερόμην, δεκάτῃ δέ με νυκτὶ
νῆσον ἐς Ὠγυγίην πέλασαν θεοί.

Now there is no mention between these two passages either of any change of wind, or of any particular wind. Consequently it seems rational to assume that Homer meant us to understand a continuance of the wind just named, namely Notus. Even independently of this collocation, we should be thrown back upon the general rule of the Wanderings, which is that southerly winds blow Ulysses away from home, while northerly ones bring him back again.

Consequently, the natural construction to put upon the passage is, that it was a south wind, whether a little east or west of south matters not much, which continued to blow, and which drifted Ulysses away from Ithaca to the island of Calypso. This is in entire accordance with the passage which describes him as windbound by Eurus and Notus at Thrinacie; since the way from home is presumably the exact reverse of the way towards it. But it will be said, this implies that he made westing on his way to Ogygia from Ææa. I answer, that this is probably so: for Circe is described as immediately connected with the east, while Calypso is far, as Mercury complains, from all land and habitation: so that apparently her island is, in the intention of Homer, materially to the westward, as well as greatly to the northward, of Ææa. But the main direction taken from Scylla is northward; and, since Scylla is near the Πλαγκταὶ, and the Πλαγκταὶ are the Bosphorus of actual nature, it must be taken from a point near the Bosphorus, along the imaginary expanse of an enlarged and westward-reaching Euxine.

According to this argument, then, Ogygia might lie upon a line drawn from Mount Olympus in a direction not very wide either way of St. Petersburgh.

Nor are we wholly without means of measuring the distance. He floats (from Scylla) for nine days, and arrives on the tenth. Now this is just what happened to the pseudo-Ulysses[617 - Od. xiv. 310-15. 301-4.], who in the same space of time drifted from a point near Crete to the country of the Thesprotians. We may therefore fix Ogygia as (in the intention of the Poet), at about the same distance from Scylla, which we measure from the south of Epirus to a point near, yet not in sight of, Crete. But this in passing.

The corresponding argument is derived from the homeward passage of Ulysses, and stands as follows:

For seventeen days Ulysses pursues his raft-voyage from Ogygia to Scheria; and the raft threatens to founder on the eighteenth. He then floats, by the aid of the girdle he had received from Ino. Up to this point there is no positive indication of the wind; the argument from the relation between his course and the stars I will consider shortly. But after he has put on the girdle, and when Neptune withdraws his persecution, since he is now approaching the horizon of the Inner world again, Minerva’s agency revives, and she sends a north wind or a north-north-east wind, Boreas, to bring him to Scheria.

Now there is no reason for our supposing that Homer meant to represent Ulysses as changing his general direction at this particular point. The orders of Circe with respect to the stars all indicate a single right line from Ogygia to Scheria, and neither the wind nor his course alter, until he has seen the island on the far horizon. The natural inference therefore is, that Boreas, the N. or N. N. E. wind, which at last drifted him in, was the wind which had brought him all the way from the island of Calypso, over an unbroken and unincumbered expanse of sea.

We appear to have seen, thus far, that Ogygia is greatly to the northward, and probably somewhat to the westward, of the Strait of Scylla. We shall obtain further light upon the site of that island, if we can more precisely define the position of Scylla with regard to what lay southward, as well as with respect to what lay northward, from it.

Our data are as follows:

1. Thrinacie appears to be close to Scylla, for it is reached αὐτίκα (xii. 261).

2. The comrades of Ulysses, when they arrive at the island, and when he attempts to dissuade them from landing, reply by asking what is to become of them if they set sail at night, and are then caught by a squall of Eurus or of Zephyr (284-93).

3. The ship is windbound in Thrinacie for a month by Eurus and Notus; which may be taken in Homer as the winds that cover the whole horizon from a point north of east to the western quarter[618 - See sup. p. 274.].

4. When they finally set sail, we are not told with what wind it was: but, after they have got out of sight of the island, the sky darkens, and mischief follows[619 - Od. xii. 403-8.];

αἶψα γὰρ ἦλθεν
κεκληγὼς Ζέφυρος, μεγάλῃ σὺν λαίλαπι θύων·