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]. 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.
[593] Od. xii. 127.
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], 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]. The site
of Ææa will, however, together with that of Ogygia, receive presently
a fuller consideration.
[594] Quart. Rev. vol. 102. p. 324.
[595] Od. x. 135-9, and xii. 1-4.
~_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] 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.
[596] Danby Seymour’s Black Sea and Sea of Azof, ch. xvii.
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].
[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.