But the characteristic force of the epithet applied to Minos becomes most clear, and its effect in stamping a Phœnician character upon certain traditions undeniable, when we examine the remaining instances of its use; and likewise that of the cognate, indeed nearly synonymous, phrase ὀλοφώïα εἰδώς.
Only two persons besides Minos receive in Homer the epithet ὀλοόφρων[439]. One of them is Atlas, the father of Calypso: the other is Æetes, the brother of Circe. Again, the phrase ὀλοφώïα εἰδὼς is applied to Proteus[440]; and it is used nowhere else except by Melanthius, where he means to describe Eumæus as a person dangerous and to be suspected[441]. Again, the ὀλοφώïα of Proteus are his tricks[442]: and moreover we have the ὀλοφώïα δήνεα of Circe[443]. Thus it would appear that Homer virtually confines these epithets within one particular circle of traditions; for Proteus, Æetes, Circe, Atlas, all belong to the Outer Geography of the Odyssey[444]: and the use of one of them for Minos, with his already presumable Phœnician extraction[445], leads us, in concurrence with many other signs, to conclude that the epithet is strictly characteristic, and the circle of traditions Phœnician. One of the slightest, is also perhaps one of the most curious and satisfactory signs of the Phœnicianism of the whole scheme. Tiresias is employed in the Eleventh Odyssey to predict to Ulysses his coming fortunes: and in doing it he uses many of the very lines, which are afterwards prophetically spoken by Circe. Now why is Tiresias made the informant of Ulysses? He is nowhere else mentioned in the poems; yet he is introduced here, in possession of the only gift of prophecy permitted in the nether world. Why have we not rather Amphiaraus, or Polupheides, those Seers at the top of all mortal renown[446]? Surely there can be but one reason; namely, that Tiresias was a Theban, a native of the only Greek State, except Crete, where he could have been the subject of a Phœnician dynasty[447]. It was doubtless this Phœnician connection, which qualified him to speak of regions, of which a Greek Seer would, in right of his nation, have possessed no knowledge.
Nor is it only upon the epithets that we may rely; but upon the characters, too, of those to whom they are appropriated. They are full of the elements of cunning and deception. Proteus, Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, the Læstrygones, the Cyclopes, all partake of this element, while in some it is joined with violence, and in others with refinement or sensuality. In all of these we recognise so many variations of the one Phœnician type.
It has been observed, that Virgil seems to recognise Proteus as an eastern counterpart of Atlas, in the lines
Atrides Protei Menelaus ad usque columnas, &c.
This is a recognition by Virgil of the Phœnician character of the tradition: but I see no evidence that Homer meant to place Proteus and Atlas in relations to one another as representing the East and West of the Mediterranean, though this theory is adopted by Nägelsbach[448] and others.
The office of the god Mercury, and his relationship to Calypso, will be found to confirm these conclusions[449].
Commercial aptitude of modern Greeks.
The moral signs of the Greek character, though not identical with those of the Phœnician, yet establish a resemblance between them; in so far that both possessed vigour, hardihood, and daring, and that the intelligence, which directed and sustained these great qualities, was susceptible of alliance with craft. In the censure upon the πρηκτῆρες, which Homer has conveyed through the mouth of Euryalus, we may read a genuine effusion of his own nature: but the gifts of Mercury to Autolycus appear to show, that the Phœnician character easily amalgamated with the Greek by its cunning, as well as by its strength. And certainly we may well marvel at the tenacity of tissue, with which these characters were formed, when we find that still, after the lapse of three thousand years, one race is distinguished beyond all others for aptitude and energy in prosecuting the pursuits of honourable commerce; that in England, now the centre of the trade of the whole world, the Greeks of the present day alike excel all other foreigners who frequent her great emporia, and the children of her own energetic and persevering people; themselves perhaps the offspring of the Thesprotians, who went for corn to Dulichium; of the Taphians, who carried swarthy iron to Temese; of the Cretans, who made much money in Egypt; and of the Lemnians, who obtained metals, hides, captives, and even oxen, in return for their wine, from the jovial Greeks of the army before Troy.
The more we attempt an examination of the geography of the Odyssey, the more we find that, impossible as it is to reconcile with the actual distribution of earth and sea, it has marks of being derived from the nation, who navigated in the remote waters where its scenes are laid. The fundamental article of the whole is the circumscription of the known seas by the great river Ocean, which, alike in the Iliad and the Odyssey, flows round and round the earth, returning upon itself, ἀψόρροος[450], like what is called an endless rope. And the two keys, as I believe, to the comprehension of it are to be found in the double hypothesis,