The world as known to Homer is a mere fragment of territory, including a good part of the mainland of Greece, with the islands and coast districts of the Ægæan. Outside of these limits his knowledge of geography is narrow indeed. He has heard of Sicily, which he speaks of under the name of Thrinacia; and he speaks once of Libya, or the north coast of Africa, as a district famous for its breed of sheep. There is one vague reference to the vast Scythian or Tartar race (called by Homer Thracians), who live on the milk of mares; and he mentions a copper-coloured people, the "Red-faces," who dwell far remote in the east and west. The Nile is mentioned, under the name of Ægyptus; and the Egyptians are celebrated by the poet as a people skilled in medicine, a statement which is repeated by Herodotus. The Phoenicians appear several times in the _Odyssey_, and we hear once or twice of the Sidonians, as skilled workers in metal. As soon as we pass these boundaries, we enter at once into the region of fairyland. II In speaking of the religion of the Homeric Greeks we have to draw a distinction between the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. In the _Iliad_ the gods play a much livelier and more human part than in the latter poem, and it is highly remarkable that the only comic scenes in the first and greatest of epics are those in which the gods are the chief actors--as when the lame Hephæstus takes upon him the office of cupbearer at the Olympian banquet, or when Artemis gets her ears boxed by the angry Hera. It would almost seem as if there were a vein of deliberate satire running through these descriptions, so daring is the treatment of the divine personages. In the _Odyssey_, on the other hand, religion has become more spiritual. Olympus is no longer the mountain of that name, but a vague term, like our "heaven," denoting a place remote from all earthly cares and passions, a far-off abode in the stainless ether, where the gods dwell in everlasting peace, and from which they occasionally descend, to give an eye to the righteous and unrighteous deeds of men.