Thus then it appears, that Homer knew something of that part of the Italian continent, which we may term the sole of the foot. Again, if we look onward to the heel, Iapygia or Apulia, and observe its proximity to Corcyra or Scheria, we shall perceive that mariners in the time of Homer might take the route, which was afterwards pursued by the Athenian fleet under Nicias and his colleagues. But this is conjectural; and as Scheria was so faintly known, we must suppose Apulia to have been still more faintly conceived. Beyond Apulia Homer gives no sign of any acquaintance whatever with Italy. It therefore at once appears possible that he had no idea of the junction by land between the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and that he had imaged to the northward only an expanse of sea. I postpone, however, the further discussion of this subject. _Epirus and the Thesproti._ _Epirus in Homer._ The Ithacan Suitors threaten to send Irus (Od. xviii. 84, 115), and again Ulysses (Od. xxi. 307), to a certain lawless and cruel king named Echetus; and in the two first passages we have the additional indication ἤπειρόνδε. This expression used in Ithaca can refer to no other mainland than that of the Greek Peninsula: of which even the nearer parts[464] pass by that name. As on the one hand Echetus is savage, and evidently foreign (for we never find a Greek sold by Greeks as a slave to a Greek), he must be beyond the Greek limit: doubtless beyond the Thesproti, who were allies (ἄρθμιοι, Od. xvi. 427) of Ithaca. On the other hand, he could not be remote, or the Suitors would not have spoken so glibly of sending persons there. Hence we can hardly doubt, that this Echetus was a sovereign in the region of Epirus, between Scheria and the Thesproti: and the territorial name Ἤπειρος may thus be at least as ancient as the Poet. In like manner we find in the Sixth Odyssey a female slave named Eurymedusa, in the household of Alcinous, the old nurse of Nausicaa. She was brought by sea Ἀπείρηθεν, and is described as γρηῢς Ἀπειραίη[465]. This is probably meant to indicate some part of the same region. Thus Epirus would appear to form, along with Scheria and Sicania, Homer’s line of vanishing points, or extreme limits of actual geography, towards the north-west and west of Greece. To trace these vanishing points all round the circuit of his horizon, whenever it can be done, is most useful towards establishing the fundamental distinction between his Inner and Outer, his practical and poetical geography. In order to mark that distinction more forcibly, I would, if I might venture it, even call the former of these alone Geography, and the latter his territorial Skiagraphy. More nearly within the circle of every day intercourse with Greece than the barbarous Echetus and his Epirus, and yet hovering near the verge of it, are the Thesprotians of the Odyssey.