Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3 / I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.

by W. E. Gladstone

Homer’s geographical misgivings.

This expression of ignorance, put into the mouth of Ulysses, probably conveys the true sense of the Poet; who, more or less puzzled with even his own method of harmonizing the Phœnician reports, and suspecting that it might not bear the test of application to actual nature, shielded himself by anticipation, through giving us to understand that he did not mean to submit Circe’s isle to the strict rules of geographical measurement.

And indeed it was no wonder that he felt some diffidence, when we recollect that he had to concentrate in a single point facts or traditions that embraced east, north, and west. Eastern his site must be to allow of the rising of the sun, and the accompanying legends: he may have had misgivings, lest his Thrinacie, and also other traditions of which he had to work up the materials, should in reality lie westward from Greece: lastly, an appreciable northern element was involved in the general direction of the navigation through the Bosphorus, which in fact supplies a kind of meeting-point for the two former. The remedy is, thus to hang the island of Circe in a vague and shadowy distance, which gives the nearest practicable approach to an exemption from the laws imposed by any determinate configuration of the earth.

Nor are these the only cases, in which Homer has afforded us tokens of his own want of clear knowledge and confidence in regard to the scenes through which he has carried his hero. On the contrary, he has indicated the haziness of his views, and the insecurity of the ground he trod, by forbearing in several other instances to fix with precision the particular winds which favoured or opposed the voyage of Ulysses, or to particularize the distances he travelled.

Homeward route of Ulysses.

We are now at liberty to approach the last portion of our subject. We have, I trust, fixed the distinction of the Inner and Outer Geography; ascertained the keys of the outer system, and fixed its governing points. It remains to inquire what, according to the data ascertained, did the Poet intend to be the route of Ulysses over the face of his ideal map; and then, finally, to show its relation to that of Menelaus, and to Homer’s general conception of the configuration and distribution of the surface of the earth.

I. His first halting-place, after quitting Troy, is with the Cicones, in Thrace. This visit was paid with scarcely a deviation from his homeward route: and therefore it does not belong to the Outer Geography. The Cicones of the Odyssey were probably placed near the northernmost point of the Ægæan sea (Od. ix. 39).

II. From the country of the Cicones, he sails southward, under a heavy north-north-east gale (Od. ix. 67), which lasts for three days. He has then fair weather, till he gets to Cape Malea. But, as he is rounding Cape Malea, the north-north-easter returns, and drives him down the west coast of Cythera (now Cerigo), and so out to sea (79-81). After nine days’ sail, with ὀλοοὶ ἄνεμοι, he reaches the land of the Lotophagi (82-4). Now, as it took five days of the best possible wind to sail from Crete to Egypt (Od. xiv. 253), we may perhaps assume that, in the ten days of veering gales, about an equal distance was made in the general direction of south-south-east indicated for us by the Boreas of v. 82. This will place the Lotophagi on the Syrtis Major, now the Gulf of Sidra. Here the region of the marvel-world begins: and the mention of the ὀλοοὶ ἄνεμοι, in lieu of the pure Boreas, may be taken as fair notice from the Poet, that he had no precise knowledge on what portion of the coast of Africa Ulysses was to set his foot.

The Lotophagi are full of Egyptian resemblances: and it appears that, as Egypt and Phœnicia were for Homer the two greatest border-lands between the real and the imagined worlds, therefore Ulysses makes his first step into the Outer world through a quasi-Egyptian people, and his last step out of it among a quasi-Phœnician people.

III. The voyage from the land of the Lotophagi to the next stage, the country of the Cyclopes, is without the smallest indication either of distance or direction (103-5). But as, within the Outer sphere, northern winds are always homeward, and southern ones carry Ulysses outward, we may assume that Homer here intended some southern wind; though, as he breaks at this juncture the last link with the known world, he could not venture to state any thing like the precise point of the compass.