For, though he has given us no geographical means for directly determining the site, he has supplied us with other means that belong, not to Phœnician rumour or fireside tale, but to his own knowledge and experience. Since nothing can be more certain, than that the leading local association of the Sun, for Homer as for all mankind, is with the east. It is true that he is in the west just as often as in the east; but we certainly hold Napoleon to belong more to Corsica than to Saint Helena; and so the mind connects the Sun with the place of his daily birth, and not with that of his daily death. Now, without entering upon any other question for the present, I only observe, that in Thrinacie are the oxen with which the Sun disports himself when not engaged in his daily labours; that is, as he himself supplies the explanation, both before they begin, and after they are ended[603]. In deference, then, to those associations, founded on actual nature, which for the present purpose are strictly facts, I cannot hesitate to maintain, that the island of Thrinacie is upon the whole, relatively to Greece, an eastern island.
A like inference may be drawn from the names Lampetie (λάμπειν) and Phaethusa (φάος), which he has given to the Nymphs of the Sun. Had the island been in his intention western, he would have called them by names of a different etymology.
And as the Scylla passage, which is on its coast, is near the Πλαγκταὶ, I think we shall pretty closely conform to the views of Homer, if we make Thrinacie form the western side of the Bosphorus, and if we separate it by an imaginary or poetical Scylla from the main land of Turkey in Europe.
Again, it is admitted that Αἰήτης has his name from Αἰαίη. From the personal relations of Æetes, as well as from those of his daughter Circe, we may therefore argue respecting the site of Ææa, provided we can attach them to any known and fixed point of the system of Homeric ideas.
Now their parentage furnishes a point of this kind, on both the father’s and the mother’s side. Their father is the Sun: a divinity not, like the Apollo or Minerva[604], de-localized, but one having his daily sojourn (out of work-hours) in the east. The mother is Perse: and enough, I think, has been shown with respect to the import of this name for the Achæan mind[605], to make it pretty certain that, when Homer gives a residence to the children of Perse, he intends it to be in the east.
It is now time to bring more directly into the discussion a point much contested—the situation of the island of Calypso. The usual modes of solution, which place the original of this picture on the Bruttian coast or in Malta[606], are inadmissible in spirit as well as in the letter. For very great remoteness is the most essential point in the description, and to bring it near would wholly change its character. It requires eighteen days of favourable wind[607] to come by raft within sight of Scheria from Ogygia: while even the distance from Crete to Egypt, a greater one than from the Bruttian coast to Greece, might be performed, as Homer thinks, in five[608]. It is the midpoint, or ὄμφαλος[609], of a vast expanse of sea: and Mercury, passing thither from Olympus, mentions the route as one which traverses a mighty space of water, without habitations of men between[610]. Again, the name of Calypso (καλύπτειν) places it wholly beyond the circle of Greek maritime experience: as does her relation to Atlas, who holds the pillars, that is, stands at the extremity, of earth and sea. The first and cardinal point to be fixed therefore is its decided, if not extreme remoteness.
Next, if it is thus remote, we find by a process of exhaustion that it must be in the north. As far as we know, Homer recognised the African coast by placing the Lotophagi upon it, and the Ethiopians inland from the East all the way to the extreme West. In that direction there is no more θάλασσα, or sea. And again, as Nitzsch truly remarks, Scheria is on the proper homeward line of the voyage of Ulysses[611]. Consequently he cannot pass, nor can he even approach, Ithaca while on his way to Scheria: I add, he must come to it down the Adriatic on his way to Ithaca.
Site of Ogygia to the East of North.
Now we are provided with an important argument, drawn, like some preceding ones, from what we may fairly call Homer’s experience, and tending to fix the site of Ogygia in the north or north-east. It is derived from the route taken by Mercury, when he carries the message of the Immortals to Calypso, which in another point of view we have already had to examine[612]: