It is well worthy of remark, that he has associated the body of the Greek deities, as a body, with one, and one only, point, exterior to the Greek nation. That point is the country of the Ethiopians.
Homer has shown a peculiar interest in these Ethiopians. They are ἀμύμονες: an epithet which he appears to connect especially with purity of blood. In the First Iliad, the whole body of the gods are absent from Olympus for eleven days, to enjoy the sacrifices offered by that people. In the Twenty-second Iliad, the statement is less express as to time; but again they are apparently enjoying themselves in the same quarter, during the funeral rites of Patroclus, and Iris is in haste to go thither, that she may not lose her share. In the First Odyssey, Neptune is among the same people for the same purpose, while the other deities are in Olympus. In the Fifth Odyssey, he is coming from among them, when he espies Ulysses on his raft. The time intervening is so considerable, that we must presume the two last-mentioned passages to refer to two separate visits.
The following points may be considered as established:
1. The Ethiopians, visited as above, must be supposed by Homer in the main to worship the same body of deities as the Greeks.
2. The Ethiopians extend from the rising to the setting sun; but those Ethiopians of whom Homer speaks particularly, are in connection with sacrifices in the East; for the Solyman mountains[767], as conceived by him, probably border upon Lycia, and they are on Neptune’s route[768], from the Ethiopian country back to the sea, which, as I hope to show elsewhere, runs along the double line of the Mediterranean and the Euxine.
3. They are further fixed in a southern country by their name, which indicates darkness or swarthiness of countenance, and by the visit of Menelaus to them in the course of his adventures, which lay exclusively to the southward.
4. They are evidently distinguished by great liberality or high favour in the sacrificial service of the gods.
5. They are defined to be by the Ocean, and thus in the farthest situation to the South-east that was conceived of by Homer and the Greeks.
6. At the same time, although they are the farthest men in that direction[769], they are nowhere described as lying at a very great absolute distance. They are simply τηλόθ’ ἐόντες.
Now it is not only possible, but on every ground likely, that in his conception of the South-eastern Ethiopians, Homer mixed up together various traditions, belonging to different places and nations. Even as, in his conception of the Mouth of Ocean, which is with him always one single mouth, he seems to have blended and amalgamated geographical reports founded upon more than one original, or prototype, in nature.