In a state of society such as that which we have been describing, Grecian commerce was necessarily trifling and restricted. The Homeric poems mark either total ignorance or great vagueness of apprehension respecting all that lies beyond the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor, and the islands between or adjoining them. Libya and Egypt are supposed so distant as to be known only by name and hearsay: indeed, when the city of Kyrene was founded, a century and a half after the first Olympiad, it was difficult to find anywhere a Greek navigator who had ever visited the coast of Libya, or was fit to serve as guide to the colonists.[178] The mention of the Sikels in the Odyssey,[179] leads us to conclude that Korkyra, Italy, and Sicily were not wholly unknown to the poet: among seafaring Greeks, the knowledge of the latter implied the knowledge of the two former,—since the habitual track, even of a well-equipped Athenian trireme during the Peloponnesian war, from Peloponnêsus to Sicily, was by Korkyra and the Gulf of Tarentum. The Phokæans, long afterwards, were the first Greeks who explored either the Adriatic or Tyrrhenian sea.[180] Of the Euxine sea no knowledge is manifested in Homer, who, as a general rule, presents to us the names of distant regions only in connection with romantic or monstrous accompaniments. The Kretans, and still more the Taphians (who are supposed to have occupied the western islands off the coast of Acarnania), are mentioned as skilful mariners, and the Taphian Mentês professes to be conveying iron to Temesa to be there exchanged for copper;[181] but both Taphians and Kretans are more corsairs than traders.[182] The strong sense of the dangers of the sea, expressed by the poet Hesiod, and the imperfect structure of the early Grecian ship, attested by Thucydidês (who points out the more recent date of that improved ship-building which prevailed in his time), concur to demonstrate the then narrow range of nautical enterprise.[183] [178] Herodot. iv. 151. Compare Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer, part i. pp. 16-19. [179] Odyss. xx. 383; xxiv. 210. The identity of the Homeric Scheria with Korkyra, and that of the Homeric Thrinakia with Sicily, appear to me not at all made out. Both Welcker and Klausen treat the Phæakians as purely mythical persons (see W. C. Müller, De Corcyræorum Republicâ, Götting. 1835, p. 9). [180] Herodot. i. 163. [181] Nitzsch. ad Odyss. i. 181; Strabo, i. p. 6. The situation of Temesa, whether it is to be placed in Italy or in Cyprus, has been a disputed point among critics, both ancient and modern. [182] Odyss. xv. 426. Τάφιοι, ληΐστορες ἄνδρες; and xvi. 426. Hymn to Dêmêtêr, v. 123. [183] Hesiod. Opp. Di. 615-684; Thucyd. i. 13.