The legendary Geography of the Odyssey may in one sense be compared
with that of Ariosto, and that of Bojardo. I should be the first,
indeed, to admit that a disquisition, having for its object to
establish the delimitation of the Geography of either of those poets,
and to fix its relation to the actual surface of the earth, was but
labour thrown away. For two thousand years, however, perhaps for more,
the Geography of the Odyssey has been a subject of interest and of
controversy. In entering upon that field I ask myself, why the case of
Homer is in this respect so different from that of the great Italian
romancers? It is not only that, great as they were, we are dealing with
one before whom their greatness dwindles into comparative littleness.
Nor is it only, though it seems to be in part, because the adventures
of Ulysses are, or appear to be, much more strictly bound up with
place, than those of Orlando, Rinaldo, or Ruggiero. The difference, I
think, mainly lies in this, that an intense earnestness accompanies
Homer every where, even through his wild and noble romance. Cooped up
as he was within a narrow and local circle--for such it was, though
it was for so many centuries the centre of the whole greatness of the
world--here is his effort to pass the horizon ‘by strength of thought;’
to pierce the mist; to shape the dim, confused, and conflicting
reports he could pick up, according to the best of his knowledge and
belief, into land and sea; to people its habitable spots with the
scanty material he could command, every where enlarged, made good, and
adorned out of the wealth of his vigorous imagination; and to form,
by effort of the brain, for the first time as far as we know in the
history of our race, an idea of a certain configuration for the surface
of the Earth.
Hence, perhaps, may have flowed the potency of the charm, which has
attended the subject of Homer’s Outer Geography. The subject has,
however, in my belief, its utility too. It is rarely otherwise than
well worth while to trace even the erroneous thoughts of powerful
minds. But, moreover, in the present instance, I apprehend we can
learn, through the Outer Geography of Homer, important and interesting
matter of history, which is not to be learned from any other source.
For the Poet has embedded into his imaginative scheme a multitude of
real geographical and physical traditions; and by means of these, upon
comparing them with their proper originals, we can judge with tolerable
accuracy what were the limits of human enterprise on the face of earth
in the heroic age.
The question before us is, what map of the earth did Homer shape in
his own mind, that he might adjust to it the voyages and tours of his
heroes Menelaus and Ulysses, particularly the latter? And in order to a
legitimate inquiry the first step to be taken is negative. Do not let
us engage in the vain attempt to construct the Geography of the Odyssey
upon the basis of the actual distribution of the earth’s surface. Such
a process can lead to no satisfactory result. Whatever materials Homer
may have obtained to assist him, we must consider as so many atoms;
I speak of course, as to all that lay beyond the narrow sphere of his
Greek knowledge and experience. He had no adequate means of placing
the different parts of the accounts which reached him in their true
geographical relations to one another. The outer world was for him
broken up into fragments, and these fragments were rearranged at his
pleasure, with the aid of such lights only, as his limited physical
knowledge could afford him.
~_Principal heads of the inquiry._~
Assuming for the present that the Phœnicianism of the Outer Geography
has been on the whole sufficiently proved, I proceed to a more exact
examination of the subject itself; and I propose to inquire into the
following questions.
1. Has Homer two modes of dealing with the subject of locality,
considered at large? if so, can it be shown that he applies them to two
distinct geographical regions; one the circumscribed central tract of
land and sea within which he lived, the other a wider and larger zone,
which lay beyond it in all directions; and can a line be drawn with
reasonable confidence and precision between these geographical regions
accordingly?
2. If it be established that Homer has a system of Outer Geography,
severed by a sufficiently-defined barrier from his Inner Geography,
then are there any, and if so what, keys, or leading ideas of local
arrangement for the former scheme, which, themselves derived from the
evidence of his text, should be used for the adjustment of its details?
3. Under the system thus ascertained, what was the route of Menelaus,
and more especially of Ulysses, as these presented themselves to the
mind of Homer?
I set out from the proposition, which, as I conceive, rests upon
universal consent, that within a certain sphere the poems may be
considered as a record of experimental geography; and one sometimes
carried down into detail with so much of accuracy, that it embraces
even the miniature of that branch of knowledge, to which we usually
give the name of topography.
By way of example for the former, I should say that when Homer
describes the Bœotian towns, when he measures the distance over the
Ægean, nay, when he makes Ulysses represent that he floated in ten
days from some point near Crete to the Thesprotian coast, he is a
geographer. Again, in his variously estimated account of the interior
of Ithaca, he is a topographer. He is the same on the whole, though
probably with greater license, when he is dealing with the Plain of
Troy.
~_The two spheres of Geography._~
In speaking of the experimental geography of Homer, of course I do
not intend to imply that he had, even within his narrow sphere, the
means that later science has afforded of establishing situations and
distances with absolute precision. He could only proceed by the far
ruder testimony of the senses, trained in the school of experience.
Neither do I mean that the experience was in every case his own, though
to a great extent his geographical information was probably original,
and acquired by him principally in the exercise of his profession as an
itinerating Bard. But by the experimental and real geography of Homer,
I mean these two things; first, that the Poet believed himself to be
describing _pro tanto_ points upon the earth’s surface as they actually
were; secondly, that his means of information were for practical
purposes adequate. The evidence of the passage containing the simile of
the Thought (Il. xv. 580) would suffice, were there none other, to show
that he was himself a traveller; he also lived among a people already
accustomed to travel, and familiar with the navigation of a certain
portion of the earth’s surface. In a former part of this work I have
given several instances to illustrate the disposition of the early
Greeks with respect to travel[525]. A people of habits like theirs was
well qualified to supply a practical system of geography for the whole
sphere with which it was habitually conversant.
[525] Achæis, or Ethnology; sect. vii. p. 336.
But the boldness and maturity of navigation may be measured pretty
nearly by the length of its voyages. The geographical particulars of
the Wanderings, however dislocated and distorted, show us that the
people who had supplied them had acquired a considerable acquaintance
with all the waters within, and probably also, nay, I should be
disposed to say certainly, some that were without, the Straits of
Gibraltar. But in all the poems of Homer we find the traces of Greek
knowledge and resort become fainter and fainter, as we pass beyond
certain points. On the Greek Peninsula, to the south of the Ambracian
gulf on the west and of Mount Olympus on the east, we have the signs
of a constant intercourse to and fro. The same tokens extend to the
islands immediately surrounding it, and reaching at least as far as
Crete. Indeed, apart from particular signs, we may say that, without
familiar and frequent intercourse among the members that composed it,
the empire of Agamemnon could not have subsisted.
But, at certain distances, the mode of geographical handling becomes
faint, mistrustful, and indistinct. Distances are misstated, or cease
to be stated at all. The names of countries are massed together in such
a way as to show that the Poet had no idea of a particular mode of
juxtaposition for them. Topographical or local features, of a character
such as to identify a description with some particular place or
region as its prototype in nature, are erroneously transposed to some
situation which, from general indications, we can see must be upon a
different and perhaps distant part of the surface of the globe. Again,
by ceasing to define distances and directions, he shows from time to
time that he has lost confidence in his own collocation, that he is
not willing to challenge a comparison with actual nature, and that,
from want of accurate knowledge, he feels he must seek some degree of
shelter in generalities.
It is obvious that, under the circumstances as they have thus far been
delineated, the geography of the poems, with a centre fixed for it
somewhere in Greece, say at Olympus or Mycenæ, might be first of all
divided into three zones, ranging around that centre. The first and
innermost would be that of the familiar knowledge and experience of
his countrymen. The second would be that of their rare and occasional
resort. The third would be a region wholly unknown to them, and with
respect to which they were wholly dependent on foreign, that is on
Phœnician, report; much as a Roman, five hundred years ago, would
practically depend upon the reports of Venetians and Genoese mariners
for all or nearly all his ultra-marine knowledge.
Now, though we may not be able to mark positively at every point of the
compass the particular spot at which we step from the first zone to the
second, and from the second to the third, yet there is enough of the
second zone discernible to make it serve for an effectual delimitation
between the first and the third; between the region of experience and
that of marvel; of foreign, arbitrary, unchecked, and semifabulous
report. Just as we are unable to fix the moment at which night passes
into dawn, and dawn into day; but yet the dawn of morning, and the
twilight of evening are themselves the lines which broadly separate
between the day and the night, lying respectively at the extremities of
each. So with the poems of Homer, it may be a question whether a given
place, say Phœnicia, is in the first or the second zone; or whether
some other, such as Scheria, or as the Bosphorus, is in the second or
the third; but it will never be difficult to affirm of any important
place named in the poems _either_ that it is not in the zone of common
experience, or else that it is not in the zone of foreign fable.
~_Limits of the Inner Geography._~
Let me now endeavour to draw the lines, which thus far have been laid
down only in principle.
1. And first it seems plain, that the experimental knowledge of Homer
extended over the whole of the continental territory embraced within
the Greek Catalogue, including, along with the continent, those islands
which he has classed with his mainland, and not in his separate insular
group[526].
[526] Il. ii. 645-80.
2. It may be slightly doubtful whether he had a similar knowledge of
the islands forming the base of the Ægean. There is a peculiarity in
the Cretan description (Il. ii. 645-52), namely, that after enumerating
certain cities he closes with general words (649),
ἄλλοι θ’, οἳ Κρήτην ἑκατόμπολιν ἀμφενέμοντο.
Still he uses characteristic epithets: and in another place (Od. xiv.
257), he defines (of course by time) the distance from Crete to Egypt.
So again in Rhodes (656), Camirus has the characteristic epithet of
ἀργινόεις. On the whole we may place this division within the first
zone of Homeric geography.
3. Homer would appear to have had an accurate knowledge of the
positions of the islands of Lemnos, Samothrace, Imbros, Lesbos, Samos,
and Chios[527]. These we may consider, without further detail, as
answering practically for the whole Ægean sea.
[527] Il. xiv. 225-30. xiii. 10-16, 33. xiv. 281. xxiv. 78, 753, 434.
Od. iii. 169-72.
4. Homer knew the positions of Emathia and Pieria, relatively to one
another and to Greece; and the general course of the southern ranges of
the Thracian mountains[528]. The Trojan Catalogue appears to show that
he also knew the coast-line westward from the Dardanelles, as far as
to the river Axius. There we may consider that his Pieria begins, with
Greece upon its southern and western border.
[528] Il. xiv. 225-30. Od. v. 50.
5. It would appear that Homer had a pretty full knowledge of the
southern coast-line of the Propontis. He seems to place the Thracians
of the Trojan Catalogue on the northern side of that sea, but his
language is quite general with respect to this part of it. On the south
side, however, and in the whole north-western corner of Asia Minor,
we appear to find him at home[529]. Thus much we may safely conclude
from the detail of the Trojan Catalogue; from the particular account
of the Idæan rivers in the Twelfth Iliad[530]; from the latter part
of the journey of Juno in the Fourteenth[531]; and from the speech of
Achilles in the Twenty-fourth[532], which fixes the position of Phrygia
relatively to Troy.
[529] Forbiger thinks he knew the southern coast of the Black sea to a
certain extent. Handbuch der Alten Geographie, sect. 4. p. 10.
[530] Il. xii. 17-24.
[531] Il. xiv. 280-4.
[532] Il. xxiv. 543-6.
6. From the point of Lectum to the southward, Homer shows a knowledge
of the coast-line as far as Lycia in the south-western quarter of Asia
Minor. But here we must close his inner sphere. The Solyman mountains
supply the only local notice in the poems which can be said to belong
to the interior country, and of these his conceptions are evidently as
far as possible from geographical. In the Sixth Iliad[533] he appears
to conceive of the Solyman people as bordering upon Lycia. Although
the name has suggested to some a connection with Jerusalem, we ought
to consider it as representing that for which it stands in geography,
a part of the grand inland mass of Asiatic mountains. But from the
proximity of the Solymi to Lycia, Homer would appear to have moved them
greatly westward. Again, when Neptune in the Fifth Odyssey sees Ulysses
from the Solyman mountains on his way from Ogygia, we must suppose
that Homer conceived them to command some point of a neighbouring and
continuous line of sea, which would allow of such a prospect. He would
hardly have made Neptune see Ulysses from Lycia, or from a point across
the mountains of Thrace, or from one on the other side of the actual
Mount Taurus.
[533] Il. vi. 184.
We have now, I think, made the circuit of the whole zone, and it is a
small one, of the real or experimental geography of Homer.
~_The intermediate or doubtful Zone._~
Let us take next the intermediate zone, which marks the extreme and
infrequent points of Greek resort.
Beginning in the west and north-west, we have found Sicania (now Upper
Calabria), Epirus, and the country of the Thesprotians[534], marking
the points of this intermediate region. To the northward, we may
fix it at Emathia. In the north-east, it seems to be bounded by the
northern shore of the Sea of Marmora. The Thracians of Homer inhabit a
country which he calls ἐριβώλαξ, Il. xx. 485, and which the Hellespont
enclosed (ἐέργει), that is to say, washes on two sides at least. The
Hellespont, as in this place it is termed ἀγάῤῥοος, signifies to the
Eastern part of its waters in particular; and the name probably
includes the Propontis (which he might well suppose to have a strong
current throughout, like the Straits of Gallipoli), together with the
northern Ægean between Chalcidice and the Thracian Chersonese. He has
described these Thracians in very vague terms[535], and without any
local circumstance, in the Catalogue: but the form of the coast-line
apparently implied in the word ἐέργει, and the epithet of fertility,
appear to indicate the plain of Adrianople and the Maritz. But this
inclosure on two sides terminates when the northern shore begins to
trend directly to the eastward: and the Πλαγκταὶ, or Bosphorus, which
no man but Jason ever succeeded in passing, are to be considered as in
the zone of a semifabulous or exterior chorography.
[534] Achæis, or Ethnology, sect. iv. p. 235.
[535] Il. ii. 844, 5.
When we pass into the south-east, we find that Cyprus, Phœnicia, and
Egypt may perhaps most properly be placed in the doubtful zone. We have
seen that Cyprus was known as a stage on the passage to the East, and
as within the possible military reach of Agamemnon. But its lord did
not join in the war: and Homer has no details about the island, beyond
the specification of Paphos as the seat of the residence, and of the
principal worship, of Venus.
We have no instance of any visit paid by Greeks to Phœnicia under
ordinary circumstances. The tour of Menelaus is, like that of Ulysses,
outside the sphere of ordinary life. He describes himself in it to
Telemachus as πολλὰ παθὼν καὶ πόλλ’ ἐπαληθεὶς[536], which may be
compared with Od. i. 4. respecting Ulysses. We hear of the Taphians
there; for it was at Sidon that they kidnapped the nurse of Eumæus.
Piracy in those times probably reached somewhat further than trade.
These same Taphians appear to be of doubtful Hellenism. On the one
hand, Mentes their leader was a ξεῖνος to Ulysses[537]. But (1) we thus
find them in Phœnicia[538], which is not a place of usual Greek resort.
(2) They sail to Temese in foreign parts, ἐπ’ ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους (Od.
i. 183), which we do not find elsewhere said of Greeks. The case of
the pseudo-Ulysses cannot stand as a precedent for the rest of Greece,
nor even for the rest of Crete[539]. (3) The father of Mentes had
given Ulysses poison for his arrows, which Ilus, the Hellene, had from
motives of religion refused him. This at once supplies a particular
reason for the xenial bond between them, and suggests that this Taphian
prince may have been, though a ξεῖνος, yet of a different religion and
race. (4) The absence of the Taphians from the war, especially as a
tribe so much given to navigation, further strengthens the presumption
that they were not properly Greeks.
[536] Od. iv. 83.
[537] Od. i. 105.
[538] Sup. Ethnology, sect. iv.
[539] Ibid.
Phœnicia, then, hangs doubtfully on the outer verge of the Greek
world, and belongs to the intermediate zone. Yet more decidedly is
this the case with Egypt. For Ulysses means something unusual, when
he describes the voyage as one lasting for five days across the open
sea, even with the very best wind all the way, from Crete; and it is
elsewhere described as at a distance formidably great. Such is the idea
apparently intended by the statement, that the very birds do but make
the journey once a year over so vast a sea[540]. No ordinary Greek ever
goes to Egypt: and when the pseudo-Ulysses planned his voyage thither,
it was under a sinister impulse from Jupiter, who meant him ill[541]:
[540] Od. iii. 320-2.
[541] Od. xiv. 243.
αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ δειλῷ κακὰ μήδετο μητίετα Ζεύς.
Again, the Poet appears to have entirely misconceived the distance
of Pharos from the coast. He places it at a day’s sail from Αἴγυπτος,
meaning probably by that name the Nile. Vain attempts have been made to
get rid by explanation of this geographical error. Nitzsch[542] says
truly, that for the geography of this passage Homer was dependent on
the gossip of sailors, and compares it with that of Ogygia, Scheria,
and the rest. When Menelaus went to Egypt, it was involuntarily, as we
are assured by Nestor[543];
[542] On Od. iv. 354.
[543] Od. iii. 299.
ἀτὰρ τὰς πέντε νέας κυανοπρῳρείους
Αἰγύπτῳ ἐπέλασσε φέρων ἄνεμός τε καὶ ὕδωρ.
Beyond the circumscriptions which have thus been drawn, lie the
countries of the Outer Geography. Outwards their limit in the mind of
Homer was either the great River Ocean, or else the land immediately
bordering upon it. Their inner line, that is, the line nearest to the
known Greek or Homeric world, may be defined by a number of points
specified in the poems. We have, for example, the Lotophagi and Libya
in the south; the land of the Cyclops on the west; (I pass by Sicily,
because it can, I think, be shown, that Homer transplanted it into
another quarter;) Scheria to the north-west, the Abii, Glactophagi,
and Hippemolgi, to the north. Then come the Strait of the Πλαγκταὶ, or
Bosphorus, pretty accurately conceived as to its site; next towards
the east, the Amazons and the Solymi with their mountains; in the
south-east the Ἐρεμβοὶ, and then the widely spread Αἰθίοπες. All the
places and people visited by Ulysses after the Lotophagi, that have not
been named, must be conceived to lie yet further outwards.
I have now explained the grounds on which I assume the existence
of two great zones, the one of a real, the other of an imaginative,
fluctuating, and semi-fabulous Geography in Homer; and of a third zone,
drawn as a somewhat indeterminate border-ground between them.
~_Sphere of the Outer Geography._~
I come now to consider what are the keys or leading ideas of local
arrangement which we can first obtain from the particulars of the Outer
Geography of Homer, and which we may then apply to the solution of such
questions of detail as it presents.
It is plain that we have real need of some such keys. To ascertain the
general direction of the movements of the Wanderings of Ulysses, and
the general idea entertained by the Poet of the distribution of land
and sea, is an essential preliminary to the solution of such questions
as, Where were the Sirens? or, Where were the Læstrygones? According to
the statement I have recently given, many of the points, that Ulysses
in the Wanderings visited by sea, would appear to have been so fixed by
Homer, as to imply his belief that the chieftain sailed over what we
know to be the European continent.
The two propositions, which I have already ventured to state as being
the keys to the Outer Geography of the Odyssey, are in the following
terms[544]:
[544] See Ethnology, sect. iv. p. 304.
1. That Homer placed to the northward of Thrace, Epirus, and the
Italian peninsula, an expanse, not of land, but of sea, communicating
with the Euxine; or, to express myself in other words, that he greatly
extended the Euxine westwards, perhaps also shortening it towards
the East; and that he made it communicate, by the gulfs of Genoa and
Venice, with the southern Mediterranean.
2. That he compounded into one two sets of Phœnician traditions
respecting the Ocean-mouth, and fixed the site of it in the North-East.
In the first place, I assume that it would be a waste of time to enter
upon an elaborate confutation of the traditional identifications, which
the pardonable ambition of after-times has devised for the various
points of the wanderings. According to those expository figments,
we must believe that the land of the Cyclops is an island, that it
is the same island which reappears at a later date as Thrinacie,
that Æolia is Stromboli in sight of that island of the Cyclops,
(though it took Ulysses nine days of fair wind to sail from it to
within sight of Ithaca,) and that Ulysses could sail straight across
the sea from Æolia to Ithaca. We must look for the Læstrygones and
their perpetual day in the latitudes of the Mediterranean. We must
either place the ocean northward, (but wholly without any prototype
in nature,) and the under-world on the west coast of Italy, where
there is no stream whatever, and seek, too, for fogs and darkness in
the choicest atmospheres of the world; or else we must remove the
Ocean-mouth to a distance about four times as far from the island
of Circe, as that island is from Greece, whereas the poem evidently
presumes their comparative proximity. But in truth, it is useless to go
on accumulating single objections, for it is not upon these that the
confutation principally depends. The confutation of these pardonable
but idle traditions rests on broader grounds. The grounds are such as
really these, that in no one particular do these Italian fables--for
such I must call them, notwithstanding the partial countenance they
receive from the chaotic and seemingly adulterated parts of the
Theogony of Hesiod[545]--satisfy the letter of the text of Homer; that
in the attempt to give it a geographical character, they misconceive
its spirit; and that they oblige us to override and nullify not only
the facts of actual geography, for that we might do without violating
any law of reason and likelihood under the conditions of the case, but
also the positive indications which Homer has given us from phenomena
that lay within his knowledge and experience. In fact, they would
oblige us to condemn Homer as geographically unworthy of trust, within
the sphere of the every day life and resort of the Greeks, as well as
in regions, which he and his countrymen never visited.
[545] Hes. Theog. 1011-15.
And the result of all the violence thus done to Homer would be, that we
should have sacrificed at once his language and his imagination, in the
attempt to struggle with contradictions to the actual geography which
defy every attempt at reconciliation.
At the outset, according to my view, both admissions must be made, and
principles must be laid down, as cardinal and essential to the conduct
of the inquiry we have now in hand.
~_Dislocation of actual nature._~
It must, I think, be admitted,
1. That Homer has dislocated or transplanted the traditions he
had received. For example, he has either carried the Bosphorus
westwards[546], or else the Straits of Messina eastwards.
[546] Müller’s Orchomenos, p. 274.
2. That therefore as we are on this occasion inquiring not into the
geographical information Homer can give us, but into the errors he
had embraced, we must not be surprised if we fail to arrive at any
conclusions, either wholly self-consistent or demonstratively clear. We
must exact from his text, with something less than geographical rigour,
even the conditions of inward harmony.
It may then reasonably be asked, if this be so, how are we to find any
clue to his meaning.
My answer is, by laying down rules which will enable us to
discriminate between his primary and his secondary statements; between
the results of his knowledge, and the fruits of his fancy.
By his knowledge I mean, what he had seen, what he had travelled over,
what was familiarly and habitually known to his countrymen, so as to
give him ample opportunities of refreshing recollection, of enlarging
knowledge, and of correcting error.
By the fruits of his fancy I mean, the forms he has thought fit to
give to statements of geography lying outside the world of his own
experience, and that of the Greeks in general. These statements,
gathered here and there as time and opportunity might serve, he could
hardly have moulded into a correct and consistent scheme. Emancipating
himself wholly from obligations which it was impossible for him to
fulfil, he has treated them simply as the creatures of his poetic
purpose, and has analysed, shifted, and recombined them into a world of
his own, in the creation and adjustment of which, the principal factor
has of necessity been his own will.
~_Postulates for the inquiry._~