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
Consequently, the natural construction to put upon the passage is, that
it was a south wind, whether a little east or west of south matters
not much, which continued to blow, and which drifted Ulysses away
from Ithaca to the island of Calypso. This is in entire accordance
with the passage which describes him as windbound by Eurus and Notus
at Thrinacie; since the way from home is presumably the exact reverse
of the way towards it. But it will be said, this implies that he
made westing on his way to Ogygia from Ææa. I answer, that this is
probably so: for Circe is described as immediately connected with the
east, while Calypso is far, as Mercury complains, from all land and
habitation: so that apparently her island is, in the intention of
Homer, materially to the westward, as well as greatly to the northward,
of Ææa. But the main direction taken from Scylla is northward; and,
since Scylla is near the Πλαγκταὶ, and the Πλαγκταὶ are the Bosphorus
of actual nature, it must be taken from a point near the Bosphorus,
along the imaginary expanse of an enlarged and westward-reaching Euxine.
According to this argument, then, Ogygia might lie upon a line drawn
from Mount Olympus in a direction not very wide either way of St.
Petersburgh.
Nor are we wholly without means of measuring the distance. He floats
(from Scylla) for nine days, and arrives on the tenth. Now this is just
what happened to the pseudo-Ulysses[617], who in the same space of time
drifted from a point near Crete to the country of the Thesprotians. We
may therefore fix Ogygia as (in the intention of the Poet), at about
the same distance from Scylla, which we measure from the south of
Epirus to a point near, yet not in sight of, Crete. But this in passing.
[617] Od. xiv. 310-15. 301-4.
The corresponding argument is derived from the homeward passage of
Ulysses, and stands as follows:
For seventeen days Ulysses pursues his raft-voyage from Ogygia to
Scheria; and the raft threatens to founder on the eighteenth. He then
floats, by the aid of the girdle he had received from Ino. Up to this
point there is no positive indication of the wind; the argument from
the relation between his course and the stars I will consider shortly.
But after he has put on the girdle, and when Neptune withdraws his
persecution, since he is now approaching the horizon of the Inner
world again, Minerva’s agency revives, and she sends a north wind or a
north-north-east wind, Boreas, to bring him to Scheria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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