This description is in conformity with the proportionate heights of the mountains, among which Olympus is the highest, Ossa the next, Pelion the least. But Virgil makes Pelion the base, and Olympus the apex:
Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam
Scilicet, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum[937].
It is not simply that Homer is here geographically accurate, and Virgil the reverse. Homer has adopted the pyramidal structure, which satisfies the eye, and lays a firm and obvious road, so to speak, to the skies. Virgil does not. He subjoins to his description the verse,
Ter pater extructos disjecit fulmine montes.
But Jupiter might have spared himself the trouble: the mountains would have tumbled of themselves.
Confusion of natural Phenomena.
Before parting from the subject, it may be well to give another example of the indifference of Virgil to the association between poetry, and the order of external nature as such. In the Fourth Æneid, he speaks of Mercury as passing over Mount Atlas on his way to Carthage; from what point I do not now inquire. The lines are these[938];
Atlantis, cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris