Three maritime routes to Ocean-mouth.
There were therefore three maritime routes by which Homer conceived that mouth of Ocean, which Ulysses entered, to be approachable:
1. The route by which the hero actually arrived there:
2. The route of Scylla and Charybdis, by which he returned from it:
3. The route of the Bosphorus, by which Jason had passed, and which Ulysses might, according to the description of Circe, have attempted.
But now, what in the view of Homer was this mouth of Ocean? that is, on what geographical basis rested the reports or descriptions which he adopted for the groundwork of his picture? We cannot but admire, as we pass along, the manner in which the Phœnicians guarded the treasures of their distant markets: no way lay to them except through a choice of terrors; terror in the boundless expanse of devouring waters; terror in shipwreck by the Πλαγκταὶ, which none but Jason (so says Circe, the Phœnician witness) had escaped; terror in certain loss of men by the voracious maw of Scylla. What, however, was this Ocean-mouth that lay beyond them?
My answer is, that there are two mouths of Ocean, either of which might tolerably correspond with the Homeric picture, if tried only by its relation to the intermediate points that are represented by these dangerous passages.
Firstly, the Straits of Gibraltar, leading to the Atlantic.
Secondly, the Straits of Kertch or Yenikalè, leading to the Sea of Azof.
Straits of Gibraltar as Ocean-mouth.