The Phœnicians.
The text of Homer appears to afford presumptions, if not of close affinity between the Phœnician and Hellenic races, yet of close congeniality, and of great capacity for amalgamation; although the former were of Semitic origin.
The Phœnician name, as may be seen from Strabo, was widely spread through Greece: even in Homer we find the wordΦοίνιξalready used, (1) for a Phœnician, (2) for a Greek proper name, (3) for purple, and (4) for the palm tree (Od. v. 163).
We find the ancient family of Cadmus established as a dynasty in Bœotia, about the same time, according to the common opinion, with the earliest appearances of the Hellenic race in the Greek peninsula. We have no reason to suppose that they were themselves of Hellic extraction: but we find them invested with the same marks of political superiority as the Hellenic families, and figuring among the Greek sovereigns in successive generations. They must have ejected previous occupants: for Amphion and Zethus first settled and fortified Thebes, and they were the sons of Jupiter and Antiope[415].
Ino Leucothee, the daughter of Cadmus, was already a deity in the time of Homer. She appears in that capacity to Ulysses, when he is tossed upon the waters between Ogygia and Phæacia; that is to say, when he was still beyond the limits of the Greek or Homeric world,and within the circle of those traditions, lying in the unknown distance, which the Greeks could only derive from the most experienced and daring navigators of the time; namely, the Phœnicians. This appears to mark Ino herself, and therefore her father Cadmus, as of Phœnician birth. And accordingly we may set down the position of this family in Greece, as the earliest token of relations between Phœnicia and Greece.
It is followed by one more significant still, and more clearly attested in Homer. Minos, a Phœnician, appears in Crete and founds an empire: he marries his daughter Ariadne to the Athenian hero Theseus; and so quickly does this empire assume the national character, that in the time of theTroica, Hellenic races are established in the island, the Cretan troops are numbered without distinction among the followers of Agamemnon; and Idomeneus, only the grandson of Minos, appears to be as Grecian as any of the other chiefs of the army. The grandfather himself is appointed to act as judge over the shades of Greeks in the nether world[416]: and his brother Rhadamanthus has a post of great dignity, if of inferior responsibility, in being intrusted with the police of Elysium[417].
Nowhere is Homer’s precision more remarkable, than in the numerous passages where he appears before us as a real geographer or topographer. Indeed, by virtue of this accuracy, he enables us to define with considerable confidence the sphere of his knowledge and experience; by which I mean not only the countries and places he had visited, but those with respect to which he had habitual information from his countrymen, and unrestricted opportunities of correcting error.In the direction of the west, it seems plain that he knew nothing except the coast of Greece and the coastward islands. Phæacia hangs doubtfully upon his horizon, and it is probable that he had only a very general and vague idea of its position. Towards the north, there is nothing to imply, that his experimental knowledge reached beyond the Thracian coast and, at the farthest, the Sea of Marmora. He speaks of Ida, as if its roots and spurs comprised the whole district, of which in that quarter he could speak with confidence[418]. To the east, he probably knew no region beyond Lycia on the coast of Asia Minor, and to the south Crete was probably his boundary: though he was aware, by name at least, of the leading geographical points of a maritime passage, not wholly unfrequented, to the almost unknown regions of Cyprus, Phœnicia, and Egypt. The apparent inconsistency however of his statements[419]respecting the voyage to Egypt, affords proof that it lay beyond the geographical circle, within which we are to consider that his familiar knowledge and that of his nation lay.
While he is within that circle, he is studious alike of the distances between places, the forms of country, and the physical character of different districts: but, when he passes beyond it, he emancipates himself from the laws of space. The points touched in the voyage of Ulysses are wholly irreconcilable with actual geography, though national partialities have endeavoured to identify them with a view to particular appropriation. Some of them, indeed, we may conceive that he mentally associated with places that had been described to him: nay, he may have intended it inall: but the dislocated knowledge, which alone even the navigators of the age would possess, has suffered, by intent or accident, such further derangement in its transfer to the mind of Homer, that it is hopeless to adjust his geography otherwise than by a free and large infusion of fictitious drawing. This outer sphere is, however, peopled with imagery of deep interest. For the purposes of the poem, the whole wanderings both of Menelaus and Ulysses lie within it, and beyond the limits of ordinary Greek experience. And throughout these wanderings the language of Homer is that of a poet who, as to facts, was at the mercy of unsifted information; of information which he must either receive from a source not liable to check or scrutiny, or else not receive at all: and who wisely availed himself of that character of the marvellous with which the whole was overspread, to work it up into pictures of the imagination, which were to fill both his contemporaries and all succeeding generations with emotions of interest and wonder.
Limits of Greek navigation.
In Homer we find that Greek navigation already extends, yet it is very slightly, beyond the limits of Greek settlement. The Pseudo-Ulysses of the Fourteenth Odyssey made nine voyages[420],ἀνδρὰς ἐς ἀλλοδάπους; and at length, inspired as he says by a wild impulse from on high, he planned and executed a voyage to Egypt. But he is represented as a Cretan, and the early fame of Crete in navigation is probably due to its connection through Minos with Phœnicia. Here too the representation is, that he is a Cretan of the highest class, the colleague of Idomeneus in his command[421], and thus, according to the law of poetical likelihood, to be understood as probably of a familybelonging to the Phœnician train of Minos. The Thesprotian ship of the Fourteenth Odyssey trades for corn to Dulichium only. The Taphians, indeed, who from the xenial relation of their lord, Mentes[422], to Ulysses, must in all likelihood have lived in the neighbourhood of Ithaca, are represented as making voyages not only to an unknown Temese, which was in foreign parts (ἐπ’ ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους[423]), but likewise to Phœnicia; the latter voyage, however, is only mentioned in connection with the purpose of piracy[424]. But these Taphians appear to have formed an insignificant exception to the general rule: we do not hear any thing of them in the great armament of the Iliad. Speaking generally, we may say that the Achæans had no foreign navigation: it was in the hands of the Phœnicians.
The Outer Geography Phœnician.
It is to that people that we must look as the established merchants, hardiest navigators, and furthest explorers, of those days. To them alone as a body, in the whole Homeric world of flesh and blood, does Homer give the distinctive epithet ofναυσικλυτοὶ ἄνδρες[425]. He accords it indeed to the airy Phæacians, but in all probability that element of their character is borrowed from the Phœnicians[426], and if so, the reason of the derivation can only be, that the Phœnicians were for that age the type of a nautical people. To them only does he assign the epithets, which belong to the knavery of trade, namely,πολυπαίπαλοιandτρωκταί. When we hear of their ships in Egypt or in Greece, the circumstance is mentioned as if their coming was in the usual course of their commercial operations. Some force also, in respect to national history, may be assigned to the general tradition, which almost makes the Mediterranean of the heroic age ‘a Phœnician lake:’ to their settlements in Spain, and the strong hold they took upon that country; and to the indirect Homeric testimony, as well as the judgment of Thucydides, respecting the maritime character of the Minoan empire.
Again, Homer knew of a class of merchants whom he callsπρηκτῆρεςin the Eighth Odyssey (v. 152). But where Eumæus enumerates theδημιόεργοι, or ‘trades and professions’ of a Greek community, there are noπρηκτῆρεςamong them[427]. Again, as the poet knew of the existence of this class on earth, so he introduced them into his Olympian heaven, where gain and increase had their representative in Mercury. From whence could the prototype have been derived, except from intercourse with the Phœnicians?
But the imaginative geography of the Odyssey goes far beyond the points, with which Homer has so much at least of substantive acquaintance, as to associate them historically with the commerce or politics of the age. The habitations of the Cyclops, the Læstrygones, the Lotophagi, of Æolus, the Sirens, Calypso, and Circe, may have had no ‘whereabout,’ no actual site, outside the fancy of Homer; still they must have been imagined as repositories in which to lodge traditions which had reached him, and which, however fabulously given, purported to be local. Again, with respect to the tradition of Atlas, it is scarcely possible to refuse to it a local character. He knows the depths of every sea, and he holds or keeps the pillars that hold heaven and earth apart. This must not be confounded with the later representations of Atlas carrying the globe, or with his more purely geographical character, as representing the mountain ranges of Northern Africa. Herehe appears[428]as the keeper of the great gate of the outer waters, namely, of the Straits of Gibraltar: that great gate being probably the point of connection with the ocean, and that outer sea being frequented exclusively by the Phœnicians, who in all likelihood obtained from Cornwall the tin used in making the Shield of Agamemnon, or in any of the metal manufactures of the period. Rocks rising on each side of a channel at the extreme point of the world, as it was known to Greek experience, or painted in maritime narrative, could not be represented more naturally than as the pillars which hold up the sky. This figure follows the analogy of the pillars and walls of a house, supporting the roof, and placed at the extremities of the interior of its great apartment[429]. With equal propriety, those who are believed alone to have reached this remote quarter, and to frequent it, would be said to hold those pillars[430].
Even in a less imaginative age than that of Homer, the love of the marvellous, both by the givers and by the receivers of information, would act powerfully in colouring all narratives, of which the scene was laid in tracts unknown except to the narrator. But a more powerful motive might be found in that spirit of monopoly, which is so highly characteristic of the earlier stages, in particular, of the development of commerce[431]. To clothe their relations in mystery and awe, by the aid both of natural and supernatural wonders, would be, for a people possessed of an exclusive navigation,a powerful means of deterring competitors, and of maintaining secure hold upon profits either legitimate or piratical.
We have before us these facts in evidence: on the one hand, a people who in maritime enterprise had far surpassed all others, and had a virtual monopoly of the knowledge of the waters and countries lying beyond a certain narrow circle. Then, on the other hand, we have a multitude of adventures laid by Homer in this outer sphere, and associated wholly with the persons and places that belong to it. Upon these grounds it seems hardly possible to avoid the conclusion, that the Phœnicians must have been the people from whom Homer drew, whether directly or mediately, his information respecting the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey. Such is the judgment of Strabo. He saysτοὺς δὲ Φοίνικας λέγω μηνυτάς; he considers that even before the time of Homer they were masters of the choice parts of Spain and Africa: and it appears that the traces of their colonization remained until his day[432].
Traditions of the Outer Geography.
But further; the traditions themselves bear other unequivocal marks, besides their lying in parts known to Phœnicians only, of a Phœnician character; and whether these marks were attached by Homer, or came ready made into his hands, has no bearing upon the present argument.
I have spoken of the tradition of Atlas; and of the likelihood that the Phœnicians would cast a veil over the regions of which they knew the profitable secrets. In conformity with these ideas, the island of Ogygia is the island of Calypso, the Concealer: and this Calypso is the daughter of Atlas.
Phæacia is, in the Odyssey, the geographical middleterm between the discovered and the undiscovered world; Ogygia is the stage beyond it, and the stage on this side of it is Ithaca. I do not understand the Phæacians to be a portrait of the Phœnicians[433]: but the very resemblance of name is enough to show that Homer had this people in his eye when he endowed his ethereal islanders with the double gift, first, of unrivalled nautical excellence, and, secondly, of forming the medium of communication between the interior space bounded by the Greek horizon, and the parts which lay beyond it.
Minos theὀλοόφρων.
But in many instances we find Homer’s peculiar and characteristic use of epithets the surest guide to his meaning. Now in Minos we have, according to Homer, a firmly grounded point of contact with Phœnicia. Of Minos, as the friend of Jupiter, and the Judge of the defunct, we must from the poems form a favourable impression. Yet is AriadneΜίνωος θυγάτηρ ὀλοόφρονος. What is the meaning of the wordὀλοόφρων? I think an examination of the use of kindred words will show, that in the mind of Homer it does not mean anything actually wicked or criminal, but hard, rigid, inexorable; or astute, formidable to cope with, one who takes merciless advantage, who holds those with whom he deals to the letter of the bond; and, in consequence, often entails on them heavy detriment.
In this view, it would be an epithet natural and appropriate for a people, who represented commerce at a time when it so frequently partook of the characters of unscrupulous adventure, war, and plunder; and an epithet which might pass to Minos as one of the great figures in their history, or as a conqueror. Again, it is worth while to review Homer’s use of the adjectiveὀλοός. This epithet is applied by him to the lion, the boar,and the water-snake[434]. Achilles, when complaining of Apollo for having drawn him away from the Trojan wall, calls himθεῶν ὀλοώτατε πάντων[435]. Menelaus, combating with Paris, when his sword breaks in his hand, complains of Jupiter that no god isὀλοώτερος[436]. Philætius, in the Twentieth Odyssey, astonished that Jupiter does not take better care of good men, uses the same words[437]. And Menelaus applies the same epithet to Antilochus, who has stolen an advantage over him in the chariot-race[438]. In the positive degree, it is applied to old age, fire, fate, night, battle, to Charybdis (Od. xii. 113), and even to the hostile intentions of a god, such as theὀλοὰ φρονέωνof Apollo (Il. xvi. 701), and inθεῶν ὀλοὰς διὰ βουλὰς(Od. xi. 275).
But the characteristic force of the epithet applied to Minos becomes most clear, and its effect in stamping a Phœnician character upon certain traditions undeniable, when we examine the remaining instances of its use; and likewise that of the cognate, indeed nearly synonymous, phraseὀλοφώïα εἰδώς.
Only two persons besides Minos receive in Homer the epithetὀλοόφρων[439]. One of them is Atlas, the father of Calypso: the other is Æetes, the brother of Circe. Again, the phraseὀλοφώïα εἰδὼςis applied to Proteus[440]; and it is used nowhere else except by Melanthius, where he means to describe Eumæus as a person dangerous and to be suspected[441]. Again, theὀλοφώïαof Proteus are his tricks[442]: and moreover we have theὀλοφώïα δήνεαof Circe[443]. Thus it would appear that Homer virtually confines these epithets within one particular circle of traditions; for Proteus, Æetes, Circe,Atlas, all belong to the Outer Geography of the Odyssey[444]: and the use of one of them for Minos, with his already presumable Phœnician extraction[445], leads us, in concurrence with many other signs, to conclude that the epithet is strictly characteristic, and the circle of traditions Phœnician. One of the slightest, is also perhaps one of the most curious and satisfactory signs of the Phœnicianism of the whole scheme. Tiresias is employed in the Eleventh Odyssey to predict to Ulysses his coming fortunes: and in doing it he uses many of the very lines, which are afterwards prophetically spoken by Circe. Now why is Tiresias made the informant of Ulysses? He is nowhere else mentioned in the poems; yet he is introduced here, in possession of the only gift of prophecy permitted in the nether world. Why have we not rather Amphiaraus, or Polupheides, those Seers at the top of all mortal renown[446]? Surely there can be but one reason; namely, that Tiresias was a Theban, a native of the only Greek State, except Crete, where he could have been the subject of a Phœnician dynasty[447]. It was doubtless this Phœnician connection, which qualified him to speak of regions, of which a Greek Seer would, in right of his nation, have possessed no knowledge.
Nor is it only upon the epithets that we may rely; but upon the characters, too, of those to whom they are appropriated. They are full of the elements of cunning and deception. Proteus, Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, the Læstrygones, the Cyclopes, all partake of this element, while in some it is joined with violence, and in otherswith refinement or sensuality. In all of these we recognise so many variations of the one Phœnician type.
It has been observed, that Virgil seems to recognise Proteus as an eastern counterpart of Atlas, in the lines
Atrides Protei Menelaus ad usque columnas, &c.
Atrides Protei Menelaus ad usque columnas, &c.
This is a recognition by Virgil of the Phœnician character of the tradition: but I see no evidence that Homer meant to place Proteus and Atlas in relations to one another as representing the East and West of the Mediterranean, though this theory is adopted by Nägelsbach[448]and others.
The office of the god Mercury, and his relationship to Calypso, will be found to confirm these conclusions[449].
Commercial aptitude of modern Greeks.
The moral signs of the Greek character, though not identical with those of the Phœnician, yet establish a resemblance between them; in so far that both possessed vigour, hardihood, and daring, and that the intelligence, which directed and sustained these great qualities, was susceptible of alliance with craft. In the censure upon theπρηκτῆρες, which Homer has conveyed through the mouth of Euryalus, we may read a genuine effusion of his own nature: but the gifts of Mercury to Autolycus appear to show, that the Phœnician character easily amalgamated with the Greek by its cunning, as well as by its strength. And certainly we may well marvel at the tenacity of tissue, with which these characters were formed, when we find that still, after the lapse of three thousand years, one race is distinguished beyond all others for aptitude and energy in prosecuting the pursuits of honourable commerce; that in England, now the centre of the trade of the whole world, the Greeks of the present day alike excel all other foreigners who frequent her great emporia, and the children ofher own energetic and persevering people; themselves perhaps the offspring of the Thesprotians, who went for corn to Dulichium; of the Taphians, who carried swarthy iron to Temese; of the Cretans, who made much money in Egypt; and of the Lemnians, who obtained metals, hides, captives, and even oxen, in return for their wine, from the jovial Greeks of the army before Troy.
The more we attempt an examination of the geography of the Odyssey, the more we find that, impossible as it is to reconcile with the actual distribution of earth and sea, it has marks of being derived from the nation, who navigated in the remote waters where its scenes are laid. The fundamental article of the whole is the circumscription of the known seas by the great river Ocean, which, alike in the Iliad and the Odyssey, flows round and round the earth, returning upon itself,ἀψόρροος[450], like what is called an endless rope. And the two keys, as I believe, to the comprehension of it are to be found in the double hypothesis,
(1) That Homer placed to the northward of Thrace, Epirus, and the Italian peninsula, an expanse, not of land, but of sea, communicating with the Euxine. Or, to express myself in other words, that he greatly extended the Euxine westwards, perhaps also shortening it towards the east; and that he made it communicate, by the Gulfs of Genoa and Venice, with the southern Mediterranean.
(2) That he compounded into one two sets of Phœnician traditions respecting the Ocean-mouth, and fixed the site of them in the North East.
It would carry us too far from the line of ethnological inquiry, were I now to examine the extensive question with which these propositions are connected. I will only observe in this place, that all the features of this outer geography, when viewed at large, are of such a nature as to favour, or perhaps rather to compel, the supposition, that it was founded on foreign, that is to say, on Phœnician information. Its extended range, its reach, by the routes of Menelaus on the one side, and of Ulysses on the other, over all the points of the compass, its vague, indeterminate, and ungeographical character as to distances and directions, and yet its frequent, though inconsistent and confused, resemblances at almost every point to some actual prototype, of which the poet may have had possibly or probably a vision in his eye;—all this agrees with the belief, that it represents a highly manufactured work, made up from Phœnician materials, and can scarcely agree with any thing else.
Reserving this much agitated subject for a fuller separate discussion, I will here only proceed to consider that limited portion of it which bears upon ethnology; I mean the evidence afforded us by Homer in the Odyssey, and particularly in connection with the Wanderings, as to the site and character (1) of the Siceli and of Sicania: (2) of the Thesprotians and Epirus: and (3) with respect to the family of Cadmus, which general tradition connects immediately with Phœnicia in the person of its founder, and which Homer, by indirect testimony, I think, justifies us in considering as derived from that source.
The Siceli and Sicania.
Notwithstanding his use of the name Thrinacie, thepoet appears to have had no geographical knowledge of Sicily, at least beyond its shape; for I think it may be shown that he places the site of the island in the immediate neighbourhood of the Bosphorus. But he might still have heard of the eastern coast of Italy immediately adjoining, afterwards the country of the Bruttii, which forms the sole of the foot rudely described by the configuration of southern Italy. For this coast is much nearer to Greece; it probably would be taken by mariners on their way from Greece to Sicily, and might be visited by them before they had pushed their explorations to the more distant point. The Athenian fleet in the Peloponnesian war touched first at the Iapygian promontory, and then coasted all the way[451]. This possibility grows nearly into a certainty, when we find that Homer speaks of a race, evidently as transmarine, which from history would appear probably to have inhabited that region at some early period.
I venture to argue that this Bruttian coast, the sole of the Italian foot, reaching from the gulf of Tarentum down to Rhegium, is the country which appears to us in the Odyssey under the name of Sicania.
In the fabulous account which Ulysses gives of himself to his father Laertes before the Recognition, he speaks as follows:
εἶμι μὲν ἐξ Ἀλύβαντος, ὅθι κλυτὰ δώματα ναίω,υἷος Ἀφείδαντος Πολυπημονίδαο ἄνακτος·αὐτὰρ ἐμοί γ’ ὄνομ’ ἐστὶν Ἐπήριτος· ἀλλά με δαίμωνπλάγξ’ ἀπὸ Σικανίης δεῦρ’ ἐλθέμεν οὐκ ἐθέλοντα·νηὺς δέ μοι ἥδ’ ἕστηκεν ἐπ’ ἀγροῦ νόσφι πόληος[452].
εἶμι μὲν ἐξ Ἀλύβαντος, ὅθι κλυτὰ δώματα ναίω,υἷος Ἀφείδαντος Πολυπημονίδαο ἄνακτος·αὐτὰρ ἐμοί γ’ ὄνομ’ ἐστὶν Ἐπήριτος· ἀλλά με δαίμωνπλάγξ’ ἀπὸ Σικανίης δεῦρ’ ἐλθέμεν οὐκ ἐθέλοντα·νηὺς δέ μοι ἥδ’ ἕστηκεν ἐπ’ ἀγροῦ νόσφι πόληος[452].
In this passage Ulysses represents himself as a mariner, driven by some cross wind out of his course into Ithaca. Now this implies that his point of departureshould be one from which by a single change of wind he could easily be driven upon Ithaca. Again, Sicania must have been a region known to the Ithacans, or else, instead of merely naming it, he would have described it to Laertes, as he describes Crete to Penelope[453].
Now, to fulfil these conditions, no other country than the one I have named is available. It has only an open sea between it and Greece, and a passage of some two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles, so that a wind driving him from his course might readily carry him across. And there is no other tract on the western side of the Adriatic, which is so likely to have been intended by Homer. Iapygia, beyond the Tarentine gulf, lies northward even of Scheria; and, like Scheria, so Iapygia was, we may be assured, in the Outer or unknown sphere of geography for Homer.
On the other hand, the Bruttian coast might well be known in Greece, though by dim rumour, yet better than Sicily: first, because it was nearer; and secondly, inasmuch as it did not in the same manner present the appearance of an island, its bearings would be more easily determined, and therefore its site was less likely to be mistaken. Lastly, history assures us that the Sicanian name prevailed in Italy, before it passed over into Sicily. Therefore the country of the Bruttii is in all likelihood the Homeric Sicania.
But again, we hear in Homer ofΣικελοὶ, though not of aΣικελία. The Suitors advise Telemachus to send his guests to theΣικελοὶ[454]for sale: adding that a good price, a renumerating price (ἄξιον), would thus be obtained for them. On the other hand, a Sicelian female slave is the wife of Dolios, and looks after Laertes in his old age[455].
From these passages we may infer,
1. That the country of theΣικελοὶwas within the remoter knowledge of Ithacan seamen.
2. That they were a rich people; since they were able to pay a good price for slaves.
The first point, as we have seen, would make theΣικελοὶsuitable inhabitants of Sicania.
But likewise as to the second, Homer has given us some indications of their wealth: (a) in the nameἈφείδας(the open-handed) ascribed by Ulysses to his father; (b) in that ofἘπήριτος(object of contention) assumed for himself; (c) perhaps also in the nameἈλύβας, akin to that ofἈλύβη[456], where there was silver, and to that ofἈρύβαςa rich Sidonian[457]. This name probably indicates the possession of metallic mines, which for that period we may consider as a special sign of advancement and opulence.
Then if we turn for a moment to the historic period, it is in this very country that we find planted the great and luxurious cities of Sybaris and Crotona[458].
Now as the people called Siceli, and the country called Sicania, are thus placed in relations of proximity by Homer, so they continue throughout all antiquity. The reports collected by Thucydides represent the Sicanians as giving their name to Sicily, and displacing the former name Trinacria, which is identical with the Homeric Thrinacie. At a later time, the Sicilians passed from Italy into Sicily, and, as was said, upon rafts; that is to say, across the strait, and consequently from the country which, as I contend, is the Homeric Sicania. These Siceli were rumoured to have overcome the Sicani, and to have again changed the name of theisland to Sicily. It is yet more material to note, that Thucydides says there were still Siceli in Italy when he himself lived: and he adds the tradition that Italus, a king of theirs, gave his name to the Peninsula[459].
To these reports, which form a part of the account given by Thucydides, we may add the statement of Dionysius, that theΣικελοὶwere the oldest inhabitants of Latium, and were displaced by the Pelasgi[460]. This implies their movement southward, and makes it probable that we should meet them in Bruttium, on their way to Sicily, perhaps pressing, in that region, upon the Sicani.
Such an hypothesis would be in entire agreement with Homer, who evidently represents the Sicanian as older than the Sicelian name: for the first had become territorial, when the latter was only tribal or national. And all this is in agreement with Thucydides in the essential point, that he makes the Sicanians precede the Siceli: while, though the tradition he reports brings the Sicani from Spain under pressure from the Ligures[461], he need not mean to exclude the supposition, that they may have come by land down the Italian peninsula. Though it is probably wrong to confound the Siceli with the Sicani[462], it would thus on all hands appear, that they were but successive waves of the tide of immigration advancing southward.
There is a further evidence that Homer meant to place Sicania within the Greek maritime world, and not beyond it. It is this. In his fabulous narrative to Laertes, Ulysses apprises the old man, that he had seen his son five years before in Sicania, hopeful of reaching his home[463]. Now this is a proof that the place wasin the Inner or known sphere of geography: for in the outer circle, as for instance at Æolia, he never has any knowledge or reckoning of his own as to the power of reaching home: it was Æolus who gave him the Zephyr to take him home, not he who knew that if he got a Zephyr he would reach home. And in like manner he is supplied with express directions by Calypso: while Menelaus, not being absolutely beyond the known world, has no instructions for his voyage from Proteus, who plays for him the part of divine informant.
Thus then it appears, that Homer knew something of that part of the Italian continent, which we may term the sole of the foot. Again, if we look onward to the heel, Iapygia or Apulia, and observe its proximity to Corcyra or Scheria, we shall perceive that mariners in the time of Homer might take the route, which was afterwards pursued by the Athenian fleet under Nicias and his colleagues. But this is conjectural; and as Scheria was so faintly known, we must suppose Apulia to have been still more faintly conceived. Beyond Apulia Homer gives no sign of any acquaintance whatever with Italy. It therefore at once appears possible that he had no idea of the junction by land between the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and that he had imaged to the northward only an expanse of sea. I postpone, however, the further discussion of this subject.
Epirus in Homer.
The Ithacan Suitors threaten to send Irus (Od. xviii. 84, 115), and again Ulysses (Od. xxi. 307), to a certain lawless and cruel king named Echetus; and in the two first passages we have the additional indicationἤπειρόνδε. This expression used in Ithaca can refer to no othermainland than that of the Greek Peninsula: of which even the nearer parts[464]pass by that name.
As on the one hand Echetus is savage, and evidently foreign (for we never find a Greek sold by Greeks as a slave to a Greek), he must be beyond the Greek limit: doubtless beyond the Thesproti, who were allies (ἄρθμιοι, Od. xvi. 427) of Ithaca. On the other hand, he could not be remote, or the Suitors would not have spoken so glibly of sending persons there. Hence we can hardly doubt, that this Echetus was a sovereign in the region of Epirus, between Scheria and the Thesproti: and the territorial nameἬπειροςmay thus be at least as ancient as the Poet.
In like manner we find in the Sixth Odyssey a female slave named Eurymedusa, in the household of Alcinous, the old nurse of Nausicaa. She was brought by seaἈπείρηθεν, and is described asγρηῢς Ἀπειραίη[465]. This is probably meant to indicate some part of the same region.
Thus Epirus would appear to form, along with Scheria and Sicania, Homer’s line of vanishing points, or extreme limits of actual geography, towards the north-west and west of Greece. To trace these vanishing points all round the circuit of his horizon, whenever it can be done, is most useful towards establishing the fundamental distinction between his Inner and Outer, his practical and poetical geography. In order to mark that distinction more forcibly, I would, if I might venture it, even call the former of these alone Geography, and the latter his territorial Skiagraphy.
More nearly within the circle of every day intercourse with Greece than the barbarous Echetus and his Epirus, and yet hovering near the verge of it, are the Thesprotians of the Odyssey.
Ulysses, in the Fourteenth Book, in the course of his fabulous narrative to Eumæus, relates that, when he was on his way from Crete to Libya, the ship in which he was sailing foundered, but that, by the favour of Jupiter, he floated on the mast for nine days, and, on the tenth, reached the land of the Thesprotians.
Thesproti in Homer.
This statement suffices to fix that people to the north of the gulf of Ambracia (Arta). For had they lain to the south of that gulf, this would not have been the first land for him to make, as it would have been covered by the islands.
The narrative which follows is very curious. The Thesprotian king Pheidon, according to the tale of Ulysses, took good care of him without making him a slave (ἐκομίσσατο ἀπριάτην); which, as he was cast helpless on the shore, common usage would apparently have justified, and even suggested. The king’s son, who found him in his destitute condition, had his share in this great kindness; for he took him home, like Nausicaa, and clothed him. Here, says the tale, he heard news of Ulysses, who had proceeded from thence to Dodona to inquire about his fate, and had left much valuable property in trust with these hospitable and worthy people. But he goes on to relate, still in the assumed character, that, instead of keeping him to wait for Ulysses, the Thesprotian king took advantage of the opportunity afforded by a Thesprotian ship about to sail to Dulichium for corn, and dispatched him by it as a passenger to his home. The crew, however, infected with the kidnapping propensities of navigators, maltreated and bound him, with the intention of selling him for a slave: but, when they landed on the Ithacan beach to make a meal, he took advantage of the opportunity, and made his escape[466].
This ingenious fable is referred to, and in part repeated in subsequent passages of the poem[467], with no material addition, except that the country is called (πίων δῆμοςxix. 271) a rich one.
But another passage[468], quite independent of all the former, adds a highly characteristic incident. Antinous, the insolent leader of the Suitors, is sharply rebuked by Penelope, and is reminded that his father Eupeithes had come to the palace as a fugitive from the Ithacan people, dependent on Ulysses for deliverance from their wrath. The reason of their exasperation was, that Eupeithes had joined the buccaneering Taphians in a piratical expedition against the Thesprotians, who were allies of Ithaca.
We have here a very remarkable assemblage of characteristics, which all tend to prove, and I think very sufficiently prove, the Pelasgianism of the Thesprotians. The humane and genial reception of the stranded sea-farer is in exact accordance with the behaviour of the Egyptian king[469], and his people to him on a previous occasion. The fact that he was not enslaved, suggests it as most probable, that there were no slaves in the Thesprotian country: which would entirely accord with the position of the Pelasgians, as themselves not the conquerors of a race that had preceded them, but the first inhabitants of the spots they occupied in the Greek peninsula. The richness of their country is further in harmony with the account of Egypt, and with their addiction to agricultural pursuits. The feigned deposit by Ulysses of his metallic stores with them proves, that they were not a predatory, and therefore proves, for that period, that they were not a poor people. The name Pheidon,or thrifty, given to the king, agrees with the character which, as we shall elsewhere find, attaches in a marked manner to Pelasgian proper names. And lastly, they were the subject of attack by Taphian buccaneers; which tends to show their unoffending and unaggressive character.
On the other side, we find them trading by sea to Dulichium: and we find the crew of the trader attempting to kidnap Ulysses. But as the Pelasgians were not in general navigators, it may very well have happened that the trade of the country had fallen into the hands of some distinct, possibly some Lelegian, or even some Hellenic race, which may have settled there for the purpose of carrying on a congenial employment, and which, like other traders of the time, would be ready upon occasion to do a turn in the way of piracy. It is to be remembered that there was a Thesprotian[470]Ephyre; which proves, as I believe, an early infusion of some race connected with the Hellenic stem.
I conclude, therefore, from Homer, that the Thesprotians were Pelasgian. And this conclusion is strongly sustained by the extra-Homeric tradition. Herodotus states, that they were the parent stock from whence descended the Thessalians[471], a report which I only follow to the extent of its signifying an affinity between the early settlers on the two sides of Mount Pindus. And Dionysius[472]appears to imply the opinion, that they were Thesprotian Pelasgians who settled in Italy.
I have already stated, that I can hardly think Homer points out to us more than one Dodona in the Iliad and Odyssey respectively. At the same time, if the supposition of two Dodonas be admissible, the circumstances suggested by him would help to account for it. For the Dodona of the Iliad is described as Pelasgic and also Hellic: that is, as we must I think suppose, having been Pelasgic, it had become Hellic. The Dodona of the Odyssey (on this supposition) is Thesprotian, that is to say Pelasgic, only. The solution would then be, that the Pelasgians of the original Dodona, when displaced, claimed to have carried their oracle along with them, while the Hellic intruders in like manner set up a counter-claim to have retained it in its original seat. The history of Christendom supplies us with cases bearing no remote analogy to this, in connection with the removal of a great seat of ecclesiastical power.