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[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,
but at the same time he takes no notice of this expression, which is his as well,
Odyss. xii. l.
and this,
Odyssey i. 50.
and that the daughter of Atlas
3
dwells there. And the following concerning the Phaeacians,
Odyssey vi. 204.
Nine days by cruel storms thence was I borne;
And now borne sea-ward from the river stream
Of the Oceanus;
1
In the island of Ogygia, the centre of the sea,
2
Remote amid the billowy deep, we hold
Our dwelling, utmost of all human kind,
And free from mixture with a foreign race.
4
These passages clearly refer to the Atlantic Ocean,
5
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
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the Siren, or the inhabitants of Cumae, Dicaearchia,
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and Vesuvius [to bear their testimony] to Pyriphlegethon, the Marsh of Acherusia,
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to the oracle of the dead which was near Aornus,
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and to Baius and Misenus,
10
the companions of Ulysses. The same is the case with the Sirenussae, and the Strait of Messina, and Scylla, and Charybdis, and Aeolus, 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.
Geography. Strabo. Hans Claude Hamilton (Translator), William Falconer (Translator). London. 1854-1857.
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