But Thessaly, and Lemnos too, are places of the inner world: with Lemnos the Poet appears to have been accurately acquainted; and the line between that island and the home of Jason determines absolutely so much as this; that the general direction of his voyage was known by Homer, at least up to this point, to have lain to the north-eastward through the Straits of Gallipoli. I hold therefore that the passage of the Πλαγκταὶ is fixed immovably, by known-world evidence, as to its general direction: that to transplant it to the west, is to break up the foundations of Homer’s experimental knowledge, which is always to be trusted: whereas to move his Thrinacie eastward is merely to suppose that he gave the site which was poetically most convenient to a tradition which, as it came to him, had no site at all, no positive local or geographical determination. ~_Character and site of Thrinacie._~ Again, I take the island Thrinacie by itself; and I contend that, although the report on which this delineation was founded may probably have had its origin in Sicily, yet the Thrinacie of Homer is associated rather with the East than with the West. For, though he has given us no geographical means for directly determining the site, he has supplied us with other means that belong, not to Phœnician rumour or fireside tale, but to his own knowledge and experience. Since nothing can be more certain, than that the leading local association of the Sun, for Homer as for all mankind, is with the east. It is true that he is in the west just as often as in the east; but we certainly hold Napoleon to belong more to Corsica than to Saint Helena; and so the mind connects the Sun with the place of his daily birth, and not with that of his daily death. Now, without entering upon any other question for the present, I only observe, that in Thrinacie are the oxen with which the Sun disports himself when not engaged in his daily labours; that is, as he himself supplies the explanation, both before they begin, and after they are ended[603]. In deference, then, to those associations, founded on actual nature, which for the present purpose are strictly facts, I cannot hesitate to maintain, that the island of Thrinacie is upon the whole, relatively to Greece, an eastern island. [603] Od. xii. 380. A like inference may be drawn from the names Lampetie (λάμπειν) and Phaethusa (φάος), which he has given to the Nymphs of the Sun. Had the island been in his intention western, he would have called them by names of a different etymology. And as the Scylla passage, which is on its coast, is near the Πλαγκταὶ, I think we shall pretty closely conform to the views of Homer, if we make Thrinacie form the western side of the Bosphorus, and if we separate it by an imaginary or poetical Scylla from the main land of Turkey in Europe.