The flash of arms, the slayers and the slain.[77]
The doubt was raised by the fact there are in Greece the islands of the Ægean and in Asia Minor nearly a score of peaks and mountain ranges that bear the name of Olympus, and the further fact that Olympus is almost a generic name in this part of the world for a lofty mountain or chain of mountains. On the confines of Mysia and Bithynia and visible from the summit of Ida, which overlooks the Trojan plain, there is a high mountain which is called Olympus, which many writers have declared to be the one on whose summit mythology placed the home of the gods,
Where Jove convened the senate of the skies.[78]
But a single quotation produced by the Hellenist of our party sufficed to prove that the Olympus which Homer had in view was that located in northern Thessaly—the Olympus on which Hesiod placed the battle of the gods and Titans and on which mythology from the earliest time located “the residence of the dynasty of the gods of which Zeus was the head.” The quotation in question refers to the visit of Here to Zeus, who was then on Mt. Ida observing the belligerents on the Trojan plain, and reads:
But Juno down from high Olympus sped;
O’er sweet Emathia and Pieria’s range,
O’er snowy mountains of horse-breeding Thrace,
Their topmost heights she soared, nor touch’d the earth.
From Athos then she cross’d the swelling sea,
Until to Lemnos, God-like Thoas’ seat