But it is also termed by him ἐρατεινὴ (Il. iii. 239), and this, it may be observed, in a speech of Helen’s; to whom, while she was at Troy, the image of it in memory could hardly, perhaps, be agreeable from any moral association. We are, therefore, led to refer it to the physical conformation or beauty of the district.
Next, we have pretty clear proof that in Homer’s mind the epithet ἐρατεινὴ was one proper to describe beauty in the strictest sense. For he says of Helen, with regard to her daughter Hermione[774]:
ἐγείνατο παῖδ’ ἐρατεινὴν,
Ἑρμιόνην, ἣ εἶδος ἔχε χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης.
‘She had a lovely (ἐρατεινὴν) daughter, endowed with the beauty of golden Aphrodite.’ And I observe but few passages in Homer, perhaps only one (Od. xxiii. 300), when ἐρατεινὸς does not naturally and properly bear this sense. A sense etymologically analogous to our own use of the word lovely, which we employ to indicate not only beauty, but a high degree of it.
It therefore appears to be clear that Homer called Lacedæmon ἐρατεινὴ, because it was shaped in mountain and valley, and because countries so formed present a beautiful appearance to the eye, as compared with countries of other forms less marked. It is applied to Emathia (Il. xiv. 225) and to Scheria (Od. vii. 79), both mountainous; to the city Ilios, (Il. v. 210), which stood on ground high and partially abrupt near the roots of Ida; and I do not find it in any place of the poems associated with flat lands.
The other instance which I shall cite seems to present the argument in a complete form, within the compass of a single line.
When describing Ithaca in the Odyssey, Telemachus says it is[775],
αἰγίβοτος, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱπποβότοιο.