Nor are we wholly without means of measuring the distance. He floats (from Scylla) for nine days, and arrives on the tenth. Now this is just what happened to the pseudo-Ulysses[617], who in the same space of time drifted from a point near Crete to the country of the Thesprotians. We may therefore fix Ogygia as (in the intention of the Poet), at about the same distance from Scylla, which we measure from the south of Epirus to a point near, yet not in sight of, Crete. But this in passing.
The corresponding argument is derived from the homeward passage of Ulysses, and stands as follows:
For seventeen days Ulysses pursues his raft-voyage from Ogygia to Scheria; and the raft threatens to founder on the eighteenth. He then floats, by the aid of the girdle he had received from Ino. Up to this point there is no positive indication of the wind; the argument from the relation between his course and the stars I will consider shortly. But after he has put on the girdle, and when Neptune withdraws his persecution, since he is now approaching the horizon of the Inner world again, Minerva’s agency revives, and she sends a north wind or a north-north-east wind, Boreas, to bring him to Scheria.
Now there is no reason for our supposing that Homer meant to represent Ulysses as changing his general direction at this particular point. The orders of Circe with respect to the stars all indicate a single right line from Ogygia to Scheria, and neither the wind nor his course alter, until he has seen the island on the far horizon. The natural inference therefore is, that Boreas, the N. or N. N. E. wind, which at last drifted him in, was the wind which had brought him all the way from the island of Calypso, over an unbroken and unincumbered expanse of sea.
We appear to have seen, thus far, that Ogygia is greatly to the northward, and probably somewhat to the westward, of the Strait of Scylla. We shall obtain further light upon the site of that island, if we can more precisely define the position of Scylla with regard to what lay southward, as well as with respect to what lay northward, from it.
Our data are as follows:
1. Thrinacie appears to be close to Scylla, for it is reached αὐτίκα (xii. 261).
2. The comrades of Ulysses, when they arrive at the island, and when he attempts to dissuade them from landing, reply by asking what is to become of them if they set sail at night, and are then caught by a squall of Eurus or of Zephyr (284-93).
3. The ship is windbound in Thrinacie for a month by Eurus and Notus; which may be taken in Homer as the winds that cover the whole horizon from a point north of east to the western quarter[618].
4. When they finally set sail, we are not told with what wind it was: but, after they have got out of sight of the island, the sky darkens, and mischief follows[619];