Only two persons besides Minos receive in Homer the epithet ὀλοόφρων[439]. One of them is Atlas, the father of Calypso: the other is Æetes, the brother of Circe. Again, the phrase ὀλοφώïα εἰδὼς is applied to Proteus[440]; and it is used nowhere else except by Melanthius, where he means to describe Eumæus as a person dangerous and to be suspected[441]. Again, the ὀλοφώïα of Proteus are his tricks[442]: and moreover we have the ὀλοφώïα δήνεα of Circe[443]. Thus it would appear that Homer virtually confines these epithets within one particular circle of traditions; for Proteus, Æetes, Circe, Atlas, all belong to the Outer Geography of the Odyssey[444]: and the use of one of them for Minos, with his already presumable Phœnician extraction[445], leads us, in concurrence with many other signs, to conclude that the epithet is strictly characteristic, and the circle of traditions Phœnician. One of the slightest, is also perhaps one of the most curious and satisfactory signs of the Phœnicianism of the whole scheme. Tiresias is employed in the Eleventh Odyssey to predict to Ulysses his coming fortunes: and in doing it he uses many of the very lines, which are afterwards prophetically spoken by Circe. Now why is Tiresias made the informant of Ulysses? He is nowhere else mentioned in the poems; yet he is introduced here, in possession of the only gift of prophecy permitted in the nether world. Why have we not rather Amphiaraus, or Polupheides, those Seers at the top of all mortal renown[446]? Surely there can be but one reason; namely, that Tiresias was a Theban, a native of the only Greek State, except Crete, where he could have been the subject of a Phœnician dynasty[447]. It was doubtless this Phœnician connection, which qualified him to speak of regions, of which a Greek Seer would, in right of his nation, have possessed no knowledge. Nor is it only upon the epithets that we may rely; but upon the characters, too, of those to whom they are appropriated. They are full of the elements of cunning and deception. Proteus, Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, the Læstrygones, the Cyclopes, all partake of this element, while in some it is joined with violence, and in others with refinement or sensuality. In all of these we recognise so many variations of the one Phœnician type. It has been observed, that Virgil seems to recognise Proteus as an eastern counterpart of Atlas, in the lines Atrides Protei Menelaus ad usque columnas, &c. This is a recognition by Virgil of the Phœnician character of the tradition: but I see no evidence that Homer meant to place Proteus and Atlas in relations to one another as representing the East and West of the Mediterranean, though this theory is adopted by Nägelsbach[448] and others. The office of the god Mercury, and his relationship to Calypso, will be found to confirm these conclusions[449]. _Commercial aptitude of modern Greeks._