because the district of Epirus (the Epirotis) extended anciently perhaps as far as this place, and was designated by the common name Epirus. The present Cephallenia he calls Samos, as when he says, “in the strait between Ithaca and the hilly Samos,”[631] he makes a distinction between places of the same name by an epithet, assigning the name not to the city, but to the island. For the island contains four cities, one of which, called Samos, or Same, for it had either appellation, bore the same name as the island. But when the poet says, “all the chiefs of the islands, Dulichium, Same, and the woody Zacynthus,”[632] he is evidently enumerating the islands, and calls that Same which he had before called Samos. But Apollodorus at one time says that the ambiguity is removed by the epithet, which the poet uses, when he says, “and hilly Samos,” meaning the island; and at another time he pretends that we ought to write “Dulichium, and Samos,” and not “Same,” and evidently supposes that the city is called by either name, Samos or Samé, but the island by that of Samos only. That the city is called Samé is evident from the enumeration of the suitors from each city, where the poet says, “there are four and twenty from Samé,”[633] and from what is said about Ctimene,[CAS. 454] “they afterwards gave her in marriage at Samé.”[634] There is reason in this. For the poet does not express himself distinctly either about Cephallenia, or Ithaca, or the other neighbouring places, so that both historians and commentators differ from one another. 11. For instance, with respect to Ithaca, when the poet says, “and they who possessed Ithaca, and Neritum with its waving woods,”[635] he denotes by the epithet, that he means Neritum the mountain. In other passages he expressly mentions the mountain; “I dwell at Ithaca, turned to the western sun; where is a mountain, Neritum, seen from afar with its waving woods;”[636] but whether he means the city, or the island, is not clear, at least from this verse; “they who possessed Ithaca, and Neritum.” Any one would understand these words in their proper sense to mean the city, as we speak of Athens, Lycabettus, Rhodes, Atabyris, Lacedæmon, and Taygetus, but in a poetical sense the contrary is implied. In the verses, “I dwell at Ithaca, turned to the western sun, in which is a mountain Neritum,” the meaning is plain, because the mountain is on the island and not in the city; and when he says, “we came from Ithaca situated under Neium,”[637] it is uncertain whether he means that Neium was the same as Neritum, or whether it is another, either mountain or place. [He, who writes Nericum for Neritum, or the reverse, is quite mistaken. For the poet describes the former as “waving with woods;” the other as a “well-built city;” one in Ithaca, the other on the sea-beach of Epirus.][638] 12. But this line seems to imply some contradiction;