Tradition has answered this question by commonly placing them in Sicily. But a vague tradition, as we have seen, is of little authority in regard to Homeric questions; and in this instance, I think, it may be shown to be in error, for the following reasons: 1. The country of the Cyclopes is not an island: it is mainland (γαίη Κυκλώπων, 106), with an island near to it, 105. By the expression γαίη, Homer sometimes means a great island such as Crete: but we have no authority for supposing he would apply it to Sicily. 2. It can hardly be doubted that the little which Homer probably did know of Sicily is represented to us by his Thrinacie. And all this consists in two points: the first, that it was an island (Od. xii. 127): the second, that it was triangular, and derived its name from its form. But his Thrinacie he has given to the oxen of the Sun: and therefore he certainly does not mean it to be the land of the Cyclopes, or he would have given it the same name on both occasions. Indeed, on the contrary, he has actually given another name to the land of the Cyclopes: it is the εὐρύχορος Ὑπέρεια of Od. vi. 4. I may add, that the epithet εὐρύχορος is not generally applicable to Sicily, which is channelled all through with hill and dale, and which nowhere, unless perhaps between Syracuse and Catania, seems to present any great breadth of plain. 3. Besides this, Ulysses traverses very long distances[626], in order to reach Ææa from Hypereia: but Thrinacie, on the other hand, is very near Ææa, so that he has not retraced his distance, and therefore cannot be in Sicily. [626] See Od. x. 28 and 80. Where then were situated these Cyclopes, to whose country Ulysses came after quitting the Lotophagi? It is plain that they were not within the Greek maritime world, or Homer would, we may be sure, have indicated their position by the time of the voyage, or by the quarter from which the wind blew to take him there. I submit that Homer meant to place the Cyclopes in Iapygia, the heel of Italy; a region nearly corresponding, on the west of the Ionian sea, with the position of Scheria on the east. This hypothesis is consistent with the whole evidence in the case, and might well stand on that ground only. But it is, I think, also sustained by a separate argument from the migration of the Phæacians[627]. [627] Od. vi. 4. The Phæacians, descended like the Cyclopes from Neptune, were recent inhabitants of Scheria; they formerly dwelt near the Cyclopes in Hypereia, and were dislodged from thence by the violence of their brutal neighbours. They removed under Nausithous, and settled in Scheria.