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
But from Ogygia to within sight of Scheria, Ulysses occupies eighteen
days in sailing by raft: which will give us for the whole distance
at sixty miles _per diem_, with an allowance of fifty miles, as the
distance from which Ithaca had become visible, about eleven hundred and
thirty miles. We have also to consider the further question, how far
Scheria is to be placed from Ithaca. We must reckon the time occupied
by the hawk-like ship at not less than sixteen hours; and we cannot
reckon the distance below one hundred and eighty or ninety miles.
Thus Ogygia ought to be reckoned at fully thirteen hundred miles from
Ithaca. Læstrygonia is, as we have found, nearly seventeen hundred from
Ithaca. And the site of Ogygia will be upon the point which is both
at the distance of five hundred miles from the Homeric or transposed
Scylla, and of eleven hundred and thirty miles from the Homeric
Scheria. This point will, I think, lie a little to the west of the real
site of Kieff.
The actual distance from Ithaca to the middle point of Corfu may be
about eighty miles. Corfu is said to resemble in its natural features
the Scheria of Homer. But if this be admitted, we must remove the site
of the island in the direction of Dalmatia to more than double its real
distance from Ithaca, so as to satisfy the conditions of the Phæacian
voyage. It will then be near the point where we may, consistently with
all the representations of Homer, cut off the Greek peninsula, and
substitute for the northward land the great spaces of his sea.
The island of Calypso, thus determined, will satisfy in a great degree
the conditions of the ὄμφαλος θαλάσσης. It may be nearly equidistant
from Ææa and the Cimmerian country in the south-east, from Scylla in
the south, and from the possible extension of the Cimmerian country
to the north. Towards Æolia and Læstrygonia on the west the distances
will indeed be greater; but as among very great distances Homer may
naturally fail to maintain the close measurements of small ones.
~_Tours of Menelaus and Ulysses compared._~
Thus, then, we have brought Ulysses home; and now let us proceed to
examine the undeveloped, but still rather curious, relation between the
tours of the two chieftains, Ulysses and Menelaus.
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