Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Philosophy
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer
Beyond the circumscriptions which have thus been drawn, lie the
countries of the Outer Geography. Outwards their limit in the mind of
Homer was either the great River Ocean, or else the land immediately
bordering upon it. Their inner line, that is, the line nearest to the
known Greek or Homeric world, may be defined by a number of points
specified in the poems. We have, for example, the Lotophagi and Libya
in the south; the land of the Cyclops on the west; (I pass by Sicily,
because it can, I think, be shown, that Homer transplanted it into
another quarter;) Scheria to the north-west, the Abii, Glactophagi,
and Hippemolgi, to the north. Then come the Strait of the Πλαγκταὶ, or
Bosphorus, pretty accurately conceived as to its site; next towards
the east, the Amazons and the Solymi with their mountains; in the
south-east the Ἐρεμβοὶ, and then the widely spread Αἰθίοπες. All the
places and people visited by Ulysses after the Lotophagi, that have not
been named, must be conceived to lie yet further outwards.
I have now explained the grounds on which I assume the existence
of two great zones, the one of a real, the other of an imaginative,
fluctuating, and semi-fabulous Geography in Homer; and of a third zone,
drawn as a somewhat indeterminate border-ground between them.
~_Sphere of the Outer Geography._~
I come now to consider what are the keys or leading ideas of local
arrangement which we can first obtain from the particulars of the Outer
Geography of Homer, and which we may then apply to the solution of such
questions of detail as it presents.
It is plain that we have real need of some such keys. To ascertain the
general direction of the movements of the Wanderings of Ulysses, and
the general idea entertained by the Poet of the distribution of land
and sea, is an essential preliminary to the solution of such questions
as, Where were the Sirens? or, Where were the Læstrygones? According to
the statement I have recently given, many of the points, that Ulysses
in the Wanderings visited by sea, would appear to have been so fixed by
Homer, as to imply his belief that the chieftain sailed over what we
know to be the European continent.
The two propositions, which I have already ventured to state as being
the keys to the Outer Geography of the Odyssey, are in the following
terms[544]:
[544] See Ethnology, sect. iv. p. 304.
1. That Homer placed to the northward of Thrace, Epirus, and the
Italian peninsula, an expanse, not of land, but of sea, communicating
with the Euxine; or, to express myself in other words, that he greatly
extended the Euxine westwards, perhaps also shortening it towards
the East; and that he made it communicate, by the gulfs of Genoa and
Venice, with the southern Mediterranean.
2. That he compounded into one two sets of Phœnician traditions
respecting the Ocean-mouth, and fixed the site of it in the North-East.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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