The name Eurus is further attached to the point of sunrise by the root ἔως, to which it is traced[567]. The tracts of Aides are with Homer σμερδάλεα εὐρώεντα (Il. xx. 65). May not this εὐρωεὶς come from the same source? The Cimmerian darkness of Homer is close to the mouth of Ocean, and _near_ that chamber of the Sun, which is at Ææa[568]. Viewing dawn as the middle point between night and day, Homer possibly connected it with each. It seems further possible, that he connected the Eastern with the Western darkness: both because this would bring his two regions of the future world into relations with each other, and because he makes the Sun disport himself with his oxen on the same spot in Thrinacie after his setting in the evening, and before his rising in the morning: a passage, which for its full explanation might require the supposition, that Homer believed the earth to be cylindrical in form, and thus the extremes of East and West to meet[569]. There will shortly be occasion to revert to this subject, in further considering what were the constituent parts of Homer’s East. [567] Liddell and Scott _in voc._ [568] Od. xi. 13-16. xii. 1-4. [569] See Friedreich, Realien, §. 9. p. 19. _Homeric distances and rates of speed._ I shall trust mainly then to winds, thus ascertained from Homer’s Inner world, as the means of indicating the directions of the movements described in his Outer one. But besides directions, we have distances to consider. And here too we have some evidence, supplied by his experimental knowledge, to guide us. By combining the inner-world _data_ of distance with those of direction, we shall obtain the essential conditions of decision for the outer-world problems. Conditions both essential and sufficient, when we can lay hold upon them; but we shall still have to contend with this difficulty, that in one or two remarkable cases the Poet takes refuge in language wholly vague, and leaves us no guide for our conjectures, except the rule of making the unascertained conform in spirit to what has been made reasonably certain. The distances of which I now speak are sea-distances. It is a somewhat remarkable fact, that Homer scarcely gives us land-distances at all. Telemachus and Pisistratus drive in two days from Pylus to Sparta: but it is not the wont of the Poet to describe places, which communicate over land, by the number of days occupied in travelling between them. This circumstance is illustrative of a trait, which assumes great importance in Homer’s Outer Geography, namely, the miniature scale of his conceptions as to all land-spaces; a trait, I may add, to which we shall have occasion to revert. The sea-distances of Homer are performed in no less than six different modes. 1. By ordinary sailing. 2. By ordinary rowing. 3. By rafts, Od. v. 251. 4. By drifting on a timber, Od. xiv. 310-15. 5. By floating and swimming, Od. v. 374, 5, 388, 399.