Before I leave the Ithaca scenes I ought to show that there may well have existed at Trapani a sheet of water which cattle would be likely to cross in a boat, as described in Od. XX. 186-188. The land on the East side of Trapani was artificially raised in 1860, till which time the two seas on either side the town were often joined in winter after a continuance of Northerly Winds. Several people have assured me that they remember having to be carted over the water between Trapani and the mainland. I was at first tempted to believe that Philœtius had come to the town when the narrow entrance to it was flooded; but a few lines above we find that Eumæus had also come to the town with three pigs, and Melanthius with some goats. These men had both unquestionably come from Mt. Eryx, and the text seems to forbid the idea that they too had had to cross the water. There is nothing, however, to imply that Philœtius had come from Mt. Eryx; indeed, it is more likely that his cattle would feed on the flat land south of the harbour, which he had crossed by boat to save the long détour which would have been otherwise necessary. If the water had been that of any such river as is to be found in Asia Minor, Greece, or Sicily, one man would probably have been enough, whereas there seem to have been several plying for hire, as in a port or harbour.
The fact that Scheria and Ithaca would be perfectly well-known by the audience as drawn from their own neighbourhood explains another difficulty. "How," some hypercritical listener might ask, "could so sagacious and experienced a mariner as Ulysses have failed to note that he was only travelling two miles, or even less, from Scheria to Ithaca? And how again could he fail to recognise the place at which he landed as the one where he had met Nausicaa a few days previously?"
The writer of the Odyssey admits with some naiveté that the Phæacian mariners were already acquainted with the harbour in which they left Ulysses. They probably would be. But how prevent Ulysses from remonstrating both during the voyage and on being landed? It is not easy to see what better course the writer could take than the one she actually did take, i.e., put Ulysses to sleep as soon as ever he was on board, and not wake him till after the sailors were gone. A sleep, therefore, is prepared for him (vii. 318, and viii. 445) and he falls into it apparently before even leaving the harbour; it is so profound that it is more like death than sleep (xiii. 80). Nothing, not even the men lifting him off the ship next morning, laying all his treasures hard by him and going away, can disturb him till the Phæacian sailors are beyond all reach of question. Then, of course, the sooner he wakes up the better.
As for the other difficulty of his not seeing that he was only at the spot where he had met Nausicaa two days earlier, this was got over by making it a misty morning, and muddling Ulysses generally so that he does not even recognise the place as Ithaca, much less as Scheria, till Minerva meets him and has a long talk with him, in the course of which the audience slides into the situation, and accepts the neighbourhood of Trapani for that of Ithaca without more demur.
[1] A few years ago the stone work at the entrance to the harbour of Selinunte was excavated, but it was silted over again in a single winter.
[2] Shown in the plan as the Salt Works of S. Cusumano.
[3] Of recent years an excellent carriage road has been made from Trapani to the town on the top of Mt. Eryx, but pedestrians still use the old path, which in places is very rough.