Homer plainly intends to describe very short passages, first to the island of the Sirens, next from that island to Scylla, and then from Scylla to the landing on the coast of Thrinacie. They are not defined: but they by no means correspond with the very considerable eastward stretch of the Euxine from the Bosphorus.
It has already been observed that Homer shortens the eastern recess of the Mediterranean, and brings Egypt nearly to the southward of Crete: and that this is part of a system of compression which abbreviates all the distances of his Outer geography eastward from Lycia. We have now come to another example of the working of this idea in his mind: placing Ææa and the Sirens so near the Bosphorus, he plainly curtails the eastward Euxine, like the eastward Mediterranean.
Ten days floatage northwards from Scylla would give us a distance of nearly five hundred miles in that direction, up to the point where we should fix the island of Calypso.
But from Ogygia to within sight of Scheria, Ulysses occupies eighteen days in sailing by raft: which will give us for the whole distance at sixty miles per diem, with an allowance of fifty miles, as the distance from which Ithaca had become visible, about eleven hundred and thirty miles. We have also to consider the further question, how far Scheria is to be placed from Ithaca. We must reckon the time occupied by the hawk-like ship at not less than sixteen hours; and we cannot reckon the distance below one hundred and eighty or ninety miles. Thus Ogygia ought to be reckoned at fully thirteen hundred miles from Ithaca. Læstrygonia is, as we have found, nearly seventeen hundred from Ithaca. And the site of Ogygia will be upon the point which is both at the distance of five hundred miles from the Homeric or transposed Scylla, and of eleven hundred and thirty miles from the Homeric Scheria. This point will, I think, lie a little to the west of the real site of Kieff.
The actual distance from Ithaca to the middle point of Corfu may be about eighty miles. Corfu is said to resemble in its natural features the Scheria of Homer. But if this be admitted, we must remove the site of the island in the direction of Dalmatia to more than double its real distance from Ithaca, so as to satisfy the conditions of the Phæacian voyage. It will then be near the point where we may, consistently with all the representations of Homer, cut off the Greek peninsula, and substitute for the northward land the great spaces of his sea.
The island of Calypso, thus determined, will satisfy in a great degree the conditions of the ὄμφαλος θαλάσσης. It may be nearly equidistant from Ææa and the Cimmerian country in the south-east, from Scylla in the south, and from the possible extension of the Cimmerian country to the north. Towards Æolia and Læstrygonia on the west the distances will indeed be greater; but as among very great distances Homer may naturally fail to maintain the close measurements of small ones.
Tours of Menelaus and Ulysses compared.
Thus, then, we have brought Ulysses home; and now let us proceed to examine the undeveloped, but still rather curious, relation between the tours of the two chieftains, Ulysses and Menelaus.