THE VOYAGES OF ULYSSES, omitting...
Even partial consent, however, now fails us. The island of Æolus and the country of the Læstrygonians have been placed in almost as many sites as there have been writers upon the Odyssey. I shall return to these on a later page, as also to the island of Favognana and the Cyclopes. My present object is to show how much of the voyage we may consider as known, how much as supported by considerable authority, and how much we have yet to find.
The partial consent which we lost at the cave of Polyphemus returns to us with the island of Circe, the Sirens and the Wandering Cliffs, which are generally considered to have been the Lipari islands, and universal consent rejoins us for Scylla and Charybdis. I can hardly say that consent is universal for placing the cattle of the Sun on the West coast of Sicily, somewhere about Tauromenium now Taormina; but it is very general, and is so obviously well founded that I shall claim this point as certain; for the name of the island sufficiently indicates Sicily, the winds that detain Ulysses show him to have been on a West coast, and the South wind that blew him back to Charybdis in a night shows that he was supposed to be at no great distance South of the Straits of Messina.
The island of Calypso has been generally held to be Malta, but on no foundation either internal or external to the Odyssey, I shall, therefore, consider Calypso's island as yet to find.
I have no consent for Scheria being Trapani, but after what I have written above shall claim this point too as certain. The map, therefore, which I here give will show the reader how we stand as regards assent and otherwise ascertained points. I have used strong lines for the parts of the voyage that may be claimed as certain, interrupted lines for the parts that are backed by considerable authority, and dotted lines for those which I would supply. I have made Ulysses approach Trapani from the South, on the strength of Calypso's directions to him that he was to sail towards the Great Bear, keeping it on his left hand (v. 276, 277).[3] This indicates certainly a Northerly, and one would say a N.N. Easterly, course; at any rate such a course would in no way conflict with Calypso's instructions. Perhaps I had better give the words of the poem which run:—
He sat keeping his eyes upon the Pleiades,[4] late setting Boötes, and on the Bear, also called the Wain, which turns round and round facing Orion, and alone never sinks beneath the sea—for Calypso had bidden him steer by this, keeping it on his left hand (v. 272-277).
All the places in Ulysses' voyage have been generally referred to some actual locality, which was present to the writer's mind either under its own or a fictitious name; and when we have once got into Sicilian waters, all those about which is there is any considerable amount of consent, or which we may now, with or without consent, claim as ascertained—I mean Circe's island, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the Thrinacian island, Scheria and Ithaca are on, or hard by, the coast of Sicily. Is not the temptation irresistible to think that the three unknown sites—the island of Æolus, the Land of the Læstrygonians and the island of Calypso—are also real places however fictitious the names may be, and to hold that they should be looked for on, or near, the coast of Sicily in the same order as that in which we find them described?