We have then to inquire, subject to the rules which have been laid down, first, whether Ææa, the island of Circe, is to be placed, its northward direction being generally admitted, in the north-west or in the north-east?
Secondly, as dependent very much upon the prior question, and as entering at the same time largely into the proof of it, what is the site of Ogygia, the island of Calypso?
North-western hypothesis for the site of Ææa.
Now I think that the arguments, which have been used for the north-western theory, have been principally founded,
1. Upon precipitate inferences, drawn from some one or more of Homer’s outer-world statements, and then illegitimately used in order to govern the rest of them;
2. Upon the course of the later tradition, which was led, probably by the course of colonization, to identify and appropriate the particulars of the Outer Geography rather in the West than in the East. For Sicily and Italy became at an early period familiar to the Greeks; but it was long before they grew to be well acquainted with the more dangerous, remote, and isolated navigation of the Black Sea[599]. Perhaps, indeed, the main reason for placing the tour of Ulysses all along in the West has been no better than this; that Homer has given us an account of an island apparently corresponding in form with Sicily; which it may very well do, and yet the conception of the site may be totally erroneous. Again, with respect to traditional authority, I apprehend it may be asserted, that the Fragment of Mimnermus[600], which carries Jason to the East, to the chamber of the Sun, and to the city of Æetes, as to one and the same point, expresses an universal tradition, so far as the voyage of the Argonauts is concerned. And I would also observe, that the current local appropriations about the coast of Italy seem to be given up on all hands as geographically worthless: the only question is, not so much that of removal, as into which of two quarters they shall be transplanted. On the other hand, the principal arguments for the north-eastern hypothesis are, as I conceive, founded upon legitimate inferences, drawn from the inner-world or experimental statements of Homer, and then applied, by a law essentially sound, to determine the cardinal problems of his Outer Geography.
North-eastern hypothesis.
For example, much will depend upon the answer to the question, whether we are to carry the Straits of Messina, or rather the fable of Scylla and Charybdis, taken to represent them, eastwards, or whether we are in preference to move the Bosphorus westwards.
I answer without hesitation, that it is much more reasonable to construe Homer as shifting essentially the site of Scylla and Charybdis, than the site of the Bosphorus; and for the following reasons.
We have not the slightest reason to suppose that either Sicily or the Scylla passage came within the experimental knowledge of Homer and the Greeks of his time, either as to the island and the Strait themselves, or as to the direction in which they lay.