Echinades. But however untenble this opinion of Strabo, and however clear that he was very ill-informed about Cefalonia (to which he gives a circuit of 300 stades, instead of near 800 1), his arguments against a particular supposition ought none the less to be considered. Let us see what they are. He says that Doulichion cannot, according to Homer, be found in Cefalonia, because the subjects of Odysseus were Kephallenes, whereas Doulichion, with the other Echinades, was under Meges, and was inhabited by Epeians from Elis. This he thinks proved by the line respecting 'Otos the Kullenian,' who is called 'the companion of Meges, and a leader of the Epeians' (Il. xv.518).2 Now Homer nowhere says anything of Epeians as inhabiting Doulichion, or any other place but Elis. He says Meges had emigrated to Doulichion on account of a personal quarrel with his father Phuleus, an Epeian (Il. xxiii. 637); and calls Otos his comrade, and a leader of the Epeians. But as Meges was an Epeian, Otos might very well be called his friend or military comrade, without having left his country. Strabo does not weigh the fact that Otos is declared to be a Kullenian; and there is no Kullenè in Doulichion. The name Kullenè was afterwards given only to the chief summit in the mountain chain which divides Achaia and Elis on one side from Arcadia on the other. But as Homer calls Otos a Kullenian and also an Epeian, and places Arcadia generally (I. ii. 603) under Mount Kullenè, we must in reason suppose him to have meant the chain and not merely the particular hill, even as Pelion meant both a hill and a chain. The name Kullenios, therefore, fastens Otos to Elis. And in truth, unless I am much mistaken, the text of Homer totally severs Doulichion from the Echinai, instead of uniting them; it runs as follows (Il. ii. 625): Οἱ δ' ἐκ Δουλιχίοιο, Εχινάων θ' ἱεράων 'Leake, vol. iii. p. 60. 2 Strabo, p. 456. 66 the men The troops of Meges are from Doulichion, and from the Echinian Islands, on the other side of the water, over against Elis.' On the other side as from whence? Not as from Elis, for their position relatively to Elis is described in the words which follow; but manifestly on the other side of the water as from Doulichion, which lies about twenty-five miles off. And here it should be borne in mind that Homer a few lines further on uses the kindred phrase antiperaia' for the continent in relation to the group of islands in which I place Doulichion. So that he text of the Iliad almost compels us to regard Doulichion as facing the Echinai from a distance; and very well agrees with the supposition that it is to be found in Cefalonia. Nor is there any force in Strabo's observation that the Doulichians are not called Kephallenes. There is indeed an obvious reason for it; inasmuch as Meges led, not Doulichians only, but also the people of the Echinian isles, whom no one supposes to have been Kephallenes. The contingent, therefore, could not be brought within a common tribal name; and Homer gives it no tribal name whatever: though, just before, he calls the people of Elis by the name of Epeians, and, just after, the subjects of Odysseus by the name of Kephallenes. II. The supposition here advanced is, in truth, as far as appears, the opinion of all the ancients except Strabo. Strabo. He acquaints us that Hellanikos considered the two names to be co-extensive: a declaration which, after what we have seen from the poems respecting Samos, seems to require some limitation. But he adds that Andron supposed Doulichion to be part of Cefalonia, and that Pherekudes considered it to be represented by Palè, the western district, lying between the harbour (of Argostoli) and the sea. This was also the judgment of Pausanias, who states as a fact that in the olden times the Paleans were called Doulichians.* 3 Paus. El. xv. 3, p. 490. Doulichion may however have included the whole, or nearly the whole, island except the south-eastern quarter. I III. This weight of testimony, agreeable to the voice of both the poems, may now be summarily compared with the actual geography. think we shall find that Homer personally knew Ithaca; but there is no sign of his having been acquainted with Cefalonia, farther than as a view from the neighbouring island would show him the strait, the Bay of Samos, and the towering mass of the Black Mountain. As he believed Doulichion and Samos to be in different political combinations, he may naturally have regarded that bay itself as the mouth of a channel, severing them into two islands. He may have heard of the very remarkable if not unique harbour of Argostoli. He may have heard that, as Strabo himself reports, near the Palean district the sea often overflowed the neck which united it to the rest of the island,' thus actually dividing it into two. The long and rather narrow tract on the west, marked of partly by the hills and partly by the harbour, agrees in form with the etymology of the name Doulichion, from dolichos, long. Thus we seem to have, in the actual geography, all the separate elements that might account for the error into which Homer fell. We cannot expect him, as I have said, to be in positive agreement with the facts; but we may expect him to use, and he always does use, partial knowledge and the reports of informants in a manner not irrational, though not infallible; and these reports of informants, again, which we gather from the indications of his text, we gather under the limitation of being bound to suppose them related to, though not accurate transcripts of, the actual surfaces. We have now therefore got a view of the dominions of Odysseus: insular, · Ταπεινόν ἰσθμὸν ποιει, ὥστ ̓ ὑπερκλύζεσθαι πολλάκις ἐκ θαλάττης εἰς θάλατταν. — Strabo, ibid. but with a continental appendage of uncertain site. And we have also the group of islands, without any continental appendage, which sent forth the persecutors of Penelope, the pattern 'Of perfect wifehood and pure womanhood." But I have still to deal with the lines (Od. ix. 25, 26) cited above; which describe the position of Ithaca relatively to the other islands in a manner that has terribly bewildered commentators. The difficulties are these : 1. What is the sense of chthamalè ? Commonly corresponding with the Latin humilis, and meaning low, how can it be applied to Ithaca, which is rough, sharp, and high in its outline? 2. What is the sense of panupertatè? Does it refer to vertical altitude? or does it mean the farthest in a particular direction along the sea-surface ? as in Od. iii. 170, 172, we have the expressions below (κа0úmeр0) Chios, and above (EvEp0e) Chios, for two sea-routes. 3. What is the meaning of pos (ópov (zophon), with the correlated phrase πρὸς Κω τ' Ηέλιόν τε I cannot think the opinion worth discussion which holds that airý means anything but Ithaca; and it also seems to me a waste of time to argue on Strabo's interpretation of chthamalè as meaning close to the mainland. So I limit myself to the three questions above-named : 1. With respect to the adjective chthamale, the word appears to me hopeless if we are bound to construe it low. But I do not admit the obligation. As humilis means, like humus, the ground, so chthamalos without doubt is related to whatever is chamai. I venture, however, to ask why chthamalos should not mean sloping groundwards, or aslant? I think we have a good example of this use where the coast over Charybdis is compared with the rock of Scylla (in very fair conformity, as I have seen, to the local features of the straits of Messina), 2 Tennyson. 3 P. 454. and described as ground on which the wild fig-tree could grow, in contrast with the side of Scylla, actually precipitous. It is accordingly called xtapaλwτepor, more aslant (Od. xii. 101-3). Why not give the same sense here, and say that Ithaca lies in the sea, slanting downwards,' namely, from Mount Neritos, which has just before been described as its conspicuous mark and chief elevation? 2. Next, as regards TаνUTEρтárn, it is impossible, I think, to assign to it the sense of vertical altitude. Neither the eye of the poet nor the reports of witnesses could well give him an account which would lead him to say the Ithacan hills of two thousand feet were the highest in the group of islands, when at so short a distance they are towered over by the Black Mountain, with its elevation of five thousand feet, in the neighbour island. It is so conspicuous an object, so isolated by greatly superior height, as to make the idea quite inadmissible. We must, then, take the phrase 'highest of all' to mean farthest in a given direction, like the 'higher than Chios,' 'lower than Chios,' which I have already cited: and the question thus remains, in what direction was Ithaca the highest or farthest? 3. It is freely held that zophos in Homer, as connected with a point of the compass, simply means the west. This is an opinion which I think requires both relaxation and limitation. În Od. xii. 81, we have zophos apparently indicating the same quarter as Erebos; the cave of Scylla was Πρὸς ζόφον, εἰς Ερεβος τετραμμένον· and the Erebos of Homer was certain ly in the east. The word appears to have been imported, like so much else, especially of what concerns the Underworld, from Egypt; and to be the base of the Homeric word Eremboi (Od. iv. 84) and of our word Arabia. In truth, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show,1 neither east nor west was in the mind of Homer wholly dissociated from the idea of darkness1 Homeric Synchronism, p. 227. that darkness which precedes the sunrise, as well as follows the sunset. This we may perceive from the relationship on the one hand between zophos and Zephuros, on the other between euroeis and Euros. In the present case, however, the express opposition to Eos distinctly proves that zophos indicates a region in the western segment of the horizon. But what is material to remark is this: first, Homer's indications are not usually of particular points of the compass, of wide arcs on the horizon; secondly, the zophos of Homer means an arc reaching from due west northwards, just as his Eōs means an arc reaching from due east southwards. Indeed Zephuros is much more a north-west than a west wind, for it blows from Thrace (Il. ix. 5) upon the Egean; and Euros, its opposite, with Notos, the opposite of Boreas, includes a strong element of southing. And some ground for these ideas would be naturally found in observing the points of the heavens at which the sun set and rose respectively. I do not say broadly that zophos means north-westwards, or Eos south-eastwards; but these renderings would perhaps be quite as near the mark as those of due west and due east. Any rendering, to be Homeric, must be in this case elastic. geography five-sixths of Cefalonia lie south of the southernmost point of Ithaca, while the northernmost point of Ithaca lies farther north than any part of Cefalonia. If we suppose the poet to have mis-measured the bearings of these axes by the not extravagant amount of (say) thirty degrees, he would suppose them to point a little to the southward of N.W. and the northward of S.E. And with his ideas of zophos and Eōs, he might then be entirely consistent with himself in saying "that Ithaca, slanting groundwards from the heights of Neritos, lay on the sea-surface farthest to the north and west while the other islands were variously situated to the southward and eastward." This, then, is the amount of error under which I suppose the poet to have laboured. It is not an arbitrary It is not an arbitrary imputation. On this basis the text is coherent and accurate. It seems more reasonable to ascribe to him a small misapprehension, than to adopt the other alternative, which is his total ignorance of the geographical position of these islands. Such ignorance would have been strange even if he had seen nothing of them from personal experience, stranger still if, as I think will appear, he had certainly been a visitor at least of Ithaca. And there is another local condition which this hypothesis (I admit it to be no more) will entirely satisfy. A ship, on its voyage from the Thesprotian land to Doulichion, arrives on its way thither at Ithaca, and moreover at an agricultural part of Ithaca: Ιθάκης εὐδειέλου ἔργ ̓ ἀφίκοντο (xiν. 344). 1 This agricultural district must have been in the northern part of the island; and it could only be the plain described by Colonel Leake as a triangle between the three harbours of Polis, Trikes, and Aphalès. In this passage the Thesprotians reach Ithaca at the close of the day (anéрio): So that the poet had a just idea of the distance from the Thesprotian land. If, however, we take the actual geo1 Leake, Northern Greece, vol. iii. p. 38. graphy, the Thesprotians could not touch at Ithaca at all on the way to Cefalonia. But with the changes of the axes, which is here imputed to Homer's conception, the northern extremity of Ithaca would have lain on their route. We may now, therefore, suppose ourselves to have got both the component parts of the group with which the Odyssey is concerned, and the positions of the islands relatively to one another and to actual geography. It remains to consider the inland topography of Ithaca, an island in which civilised mankind has an undying interest. There appears to be no ground for reasonable doubt, first that the descriptions of the poet are founded upon the real Ithaca; secondly, that he founded these descriptions, in the most important points, upon his personal experience. The first of these propositions is made good by his conformity to the truth upon the generaoutline and hilly character of the island, its two principal eminences, its very remarkable land-locked harbour, and lastly, the strait which divides it from Cefalonia. I should rest the second upon a certain particularity in the topical notices, which he could not well have acquired at secondhand. Apart from these minor features, the poet has given us at least two groups of independent phenomena, by which he may be tested. In the first group, we have a harbour so completely land-locked that vessels may ride without moorings (xiii. 97— 101). Now the great harbour of Molo has three openings on the south. On the middle and principal one lies the town of Vathi; and it is as completely shut in (I speak in the capacity of an eye-witness) as a small lake, say the lake of Nemi. It has also the rocky projections at the entrance which are mentioned by the poet. Of the other two, Dexia is chosen by Sir William Gell 2 to represent the port of Phorcūs, 2 Gell's Ithaca, chap. v. and he believes that he has found the cave there while he very fairly states that Strabo declared there was no cave in his time. Leake prefers the inlet of Schino, to the eastward of Vathi, as exactly corresponding to the poet's data. But this harbour of Phorcūs is localised by its proximity to Mount Neritos (xiii. 345), which Athenè points out to the bewildered Odysseus in order to assure him that he is in his own country. It answers that purpose; and must therefore have been a marked feature of the island. Now an inspection of the map of Ithaca shows at once that three inlets, particularly Dexia and Vathi, are directly under Mount Marovugli, also called Mount Stefano, one of the two greatly elevated points of the island, and probably corresponding with the Neritos of the poet. Thus we have the harbour and the mountain over it in accordance with the topography of the Poem. More important, because more searching as a topographical test, is the more complex grouping connected with the capital. In regard to it, the poem supplies us with the following particulars : 1. Though, as we have seen, the island is not without local names, the capital has usually no name, except that of Polis, "the town." 2. It is situated upon a harbour (Od. ii. 391). 3. The maritime access to it from the Peloponnesos was by the strait which divides Ithaca from Cefalonia. 4. It was under Mount Neïon (Od. iii. 81). 5. There was a harbour called Reithron, at a considerable distance from the town, in the rural district ( aypov, i. 186), which was also under Mount Neion. 6. Live-stock arrive at the capital by the ferry from the neighbouring island without any sign of their traversing any distance after landing, and thus to all appearance they merely 1 Northern Greece, vol. iii. p. 32. mounted through the town to the palace from the harbour. 7. In going from the city to the residence of Laertes, Odysseus and his party descend (karéẞav, xxiv. 205). Now if we find that all these indications converge, and fall upon some one point of the island for its capital, we can hardly be wrong in placing it there; and so complex a concurrence will surely make good the proposition that the poet had himself visited the spot. Let us proceed to try them. We have in the name Troiè an instance where the same word designates the chief town and the territory. In the case of Ithaca, nearly all the epithets, which are numerous and appropriate, refer to the territory. It is sea-girt, goat-feeding, ox-feeding, picturesque, conspicuous, craggy, rough: not to quote other phrases. In Od. iii. 31, Ithaca is ὑπονήιος—under Mount Neion. Here the expression is equivocal; but it probably relates to the city, since the poet treats Neritos as the conspicuous mountain, so that the island could not properly be huponeïos. But also in Od. xxii. 52, Ithaca is küKTIμévη, well-built. In this the single instance where the epithet attaches it grammatically to the city, the word is joined with demos (as in Od. i. 183). ὄφρ ̓ Ἰθάκης κατὰ δῆμον ἐϋκτιμένης βασι λεύοι· the rich demos, as it is called in xiv. 29, meaning apparently the town with the adjoining district. But as a general rule, I believe the simple word Polis is used to signify the chief town. When, therefore, we find the name of Polis still attached locally to a harbour in Ithaca, one of the only two harbours on the western side of the island, our two first marks agree well with the facts as they are. The proof of the third mark is, that the suitors placed their ambush midway in the Samian strait, to intercept Telemachos when on his way back from Pulos in the south east. If the capital had been on the eastern side of |