should be understood of merely a short distance, (for cruel storms do not blow in a right course,) and not of being carried beyond the ocean, as if impelled by favourable winds. “And,” says Polybius, “allowing the distance from Malea[127] to the Pillars to be 22,500 stadia, and supposing the rate of passage was the same throughout the nine days, the voyage must have been accomplished at the speed of 2500 stadia per diem: now who has ever recorded that the passage from Lycia or Rhodes to Alexandria, a distance of 4000 stadia, has been made in two days? To those who demand how it was that Ulysses, though he journeyed thrice to Sicily, never once navigated the Strait, we reply that, long after his time, voyagers always sedulously avoided that route.” 18. Such are the sentiments of Polybius; and in many respects they are correct enough; but when he discusses the voyage beyond the ocean, and enters on minute calculations of the proportion borne by the distance to the number of days, he is greatly mistaken. He alleges perpetually the words of the poet, “Nine days by cruel storms thence was I borne;” but at the same time he takes no notice of this expression, which is his as well, “And now borne sea-ward from the river stream Of the Oceanus;”[128] and this, “In the island of Ogygia, the centre of the sea,”[129] and that the daughter of Atlas[130] dwells there. And the following concerning the Phæacians, “Remote amid the billowy deep, we hold Our dwelling, utmost of all human kind, And free from mixture with a foreign race.”[131] These passages clearly refer to the Atlantic Ocean,[132] but though so plainly expressed, Polybius slily manages to overlook them. Here he is altogether wrong, though quite correct about the wandering of Ulysses having taken place round Sicily and Italy, a fact which Homer establishes himself. Otherwise, what poet or writer could have persuaded the Neapolitans to assert that they possessed the tomb of Parthenope[133] the Siren, or the inhabitants of Cumæ, Dicæarchia,[134] and Vesuvius [to bear their testimony] to Pyriphlegethon, the Marsh of Acherusia,[135] to the oracle of the dead which was near Aornus,[136] and to Baïus and Misenus,[137] the companions of Ulysses. The same is the case with the Sirenussæ, and the Strait of Messina, and Scylla, and Charybdis, and Æolus, all which things should neither be examined into too rigorously, nor yet [despised] as groundless and without foundation, alike remote from truth and historic value.