[20] Thrice indeed each day it lets loose its waves, and thrice it ebbs them back. Odyss. xii. 105.
Gosselin remarks, “I do not find any thing in these different passages of Homer to warrant the conclusion that he was aware of the ebb and flow of the tide; every one knows that the movement is hardly perceptible in the Mediterranean. In the Euripus, which divides the Isle of Negropont from Bœotia, the waters are observed to flow in opposite directions several times a day. It was from this that Homer probably drew his ideas; and the regular current of the Hellespont, which carries the waters of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, led him to think that the whole ocean, or Mediterranean, had one continued flow like the current of a river.”
[21] Iliad vii. 422.
[22] But when the ship left the stream of the river-ocean, and entered on the wave of the wide-wayed sea. Odyssey xii. 1.
[23] This direction would indicate a gulf, the sea-ward side of which should be opposite the Libo-notus of the ancients. Now the mutilated passage of Crates has reference to the opening of the twelfth book of the Odyssey, descriptive of Ulysses’ departure from Cimmeria, after his visit to the infernal regions. Those Cimmerians were the people who inhabited Campania, and the land round Baia, near to lake Avernus, and the entrance into Hades. As these places are situated close to the bay of Naples, which occupies the exact position described by Crates, it is probable this was the bay he intended.
[24] What Strabo calls the eastern side of the continent, comprises that portion of India between Cape Comorin and Tana-serim, to the west of the kingdom of Siam: further than which he was not acquainted.
[25] Strabo’s acquaintance with Western Africa did not go further than Cape Nun, 214 leagues distant from the Strait of Gibraltar.
[26] By the south is intended the whole land from the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea to Cape Comorin.
[27] From Cape Finisterre to the mouth of the Elbe.
[28] The rocks of Gibraltar and Ceuta.