The This is no trivial and unimportant ques- | clamours of the whole assembly; he would tion to those who feel, like ourselves, unex- have been rejected as an impudent liar, rahausted interest in all which throws light ther than as a bad poet So, if he described on the history of the two great poems of scenes and places well known to his audiantiquity, or rather on that of poetry itself. ence, any important deviation from truth It is intimately connected with the person would have been resented as an attempt to ality of Homer, with the unity of the poetry, abuse their faith, to impose upon them by that is, its composition by one master-mind, an idle deception,; and it would have been the native place of the poet, and the parts equally dangerous to have departed from of Greece in which the Odyssey, at least, if the received historic traditions. These, innot the Iliad, was recited in the courts of deed, might receive some poetic elevation ; the heroic kings. It involves the extent of the heroes might be raised to a higher emthe Greece of the heroic ages, the limits to inence of power, valour, or dignity, and which their early federation reached, the their honoured descendants would not be boundaries of their acquaintance with too nice in their reception of this more or the circumjacent regions. Was Ithaca less delicate or ingenious flattery. within or without these boundaries? If the founder of a lineage might be brought down descriptions in the Odyssey are altogether from the gods, or carried up to them, withloose and inaccurate; if the relative situa- out any remonstrance on their part against tion of Ithaca with regard to the other isl the poetic apotheosis. But still they would ands, not according to strict geographical require adherence to the well-known outrule, but the ordinary observation of the lines of his deeds, strict accuracy in the common voyager, is entirely wrong, if the genealogical tree, and fidelity to all the localities in the island itself, as they appear more memorable transactions of their ascerin the poem, are irreconcilable with the tained ancestors' lives. In religious matpermanent form, structure, and character ters the poet would be allowed a wider of the land; if there are no indenting bays; range. From the infinite richness of myif the whole shore is a flat, level sand, where thological legend he might adopt what sea-nymphs could have found no rocks in would suit his purpose; and, however wonwhich to form their grottoes; if there be no derful the fable, religious awe would forsite for the city which would answer to the bid the hearer from supposing but that it vivid description of the poet,-then Ithaca might be true. Gods mingling in the af must be altogether excluded from the fairs of men, gods with human passions, Greece with which his hearers were fami- and not impassive to wounds from human liar: it was, if not an imaginary island, one hands, were within the range of popular bethe fame of whose existence had dimly lief, and no man would venture to take of reached the popular ear, and which was the fence at the improbability of such stories. lawful domain, we say not of poetic inven- Such an unnatural and untimely sceptic tion, but of any vague conception which the would have been in danger, like Socrates poet might form from common rumour, or at a later period, of a charge of infidelity the floating intelligence derived from ad- and atheism. Provided the true mythic venturous voyagers. For, it must be borne character of each deity was preserved-the in mind that Homeric poetry offers itself to attributes assigned according to the general the hearer as truth; truth, that is within traditionary faith-provided no foreign gods the limited sphere of the hearer's knowl were introduced into the legitimate hosts edge. The Muses are the daughters of of Olympus-the field of wonder and of memory, not of invention; the poet of those preternatural power lay open to the poet; days is the sole historian, and, in a great de- and in one sense, therefore, Homer might gree, amenable to the laws of history. The indeed be, as he is said to have been, the poetic privilege of unreality, of avowed fic- inventor of the Grecian mythology, not as tion, is altogether of a later period, when having created a single deity, or, unless as poetry has begun to be an artificial and bearing on the direct action of his poems, conventional amusement. In everything, attributed a single act, unauthorised by tratherefore, regarding common life, the work ditionary acceptance, to any one of the acwould be subjected to the most rigid, though knowledged deities; but as having popularIntuitive, criticism. If the poet of the Iliad, ised and made common to the whole of among his warrior hearers, had represented Greece the tutelar deities of the separate a man slain outright by a blow, which they states and races, as having moulded up the had often given and received in battle with countless local traditions and national leout being much the worse for it, he would gends into something like a general system; have been silenced by the contemptuous as having collected all the scattered divini ties of the whole region into one Olympus. So likewise, all beyond the geographical boundaries of Grecian knowledge would be the realm, we say not of acknowledged fiction, but of imagination, which might mythicise any report of a wandering voyager, or greedily catch at any monstrous yet stirring tale of 'Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.' In estimating the amount or value of this correspondence, he will also bear in mind how unreasonable it were to exact from the poet of any familiarity with the district selected for his scene age, although possessed of the closest personal of action, the rigid accuracy of the land-surveyor, or to deny him the privilege of his profession, even in his description of real objects, to depart a little from the truth, where a slight variation of site or appearance was necessary to their full effect. To pronounce, therefore, as some have done, in the face of so great a mass of general evidence to the contrary, that Homer had no It is curious that the few circumstances personal knowledge of Ithaca, because the more which had reached Homer relating to the fastidious commentator may find difficulty in Eastern and civilized part of the ultra-existing appearances, the hut of Eumæus, the arranging on his classical atlas, consistently with Grecian world are mainly correct-the fountain of Arethusa, or the port of Phorcys, hundred gates of Thebes, the manufactures were almost as unreasonable as to deny the of Sidon; but the western coast of Africa, "Author of Waverley" any personal knowledge and the yet scarcely discovered Sicily,of Scotland, because of an equal difficulty of everything indeed west of Ithaca,-is peo- identifying the bay of Ellangowan or the castle of Tillietudlem. pled with lotus-eaters, Cyclopes, with halfdivine nymphs, and dim swarms of departed spirits. In which world then does Ithaca lie-in the realm of Greek familiar knowledge, or in the wide and undiscovered ocean? When the poet of the Odyssey described the bays, the havens, the landing-places, the city of this island, did he draw directly from nature, or remotely from imagination? Were his hearers as ignorant, generally, of the situation of these islands, and of their outline and character, as of the coasts of Sicily or Italy? If either the one or the other had ever visited this region, the general features will be found consistent with truth. If they are utterly and inexplicably wrong both as to its situation and its permanent outline, the author of the Odyssey may have been a Peloponnesian, or at least have repeated his poems at the courts of the Peloponnesian kings; but the commerce with these islands must have been precarious and unfrequent-they must have Îain beyond the usual coasting adventure of the young navigators of the mainland. But there can be no reasonable doubt that the modern Theaki is the Ithaca of Homer. Let us hear the opinion of Mr. Mure, the latest, and certainly not the least intelligent and impartial, writer who has brought his personal observation to bear upon this question :-- The impression which a personal visit to this island can hardly fail to leave on the mind of the impartial student of Homer is, that, so great is the general resemblance between its natural features and those of the one described in the Odyssey, the difficulty is, not so much to discover in each case a bay, rock, cavern, or mountain answering to his description, as to decide, among the many that present themselves, on the precise one which he may happen to have had in view. VOL. LXX. 10 'Equally unwarrantable, on the other side, are the attempts of the more orthodox school of Homeric interpreters to force on existing objects or localities a closeness of harmony with his description, such as was, doubtless, as little congenial to his own taste as conducive to the interest of his poem; and this over-subtilty, as work of Gell, the patriarch of modern Ithacan displayed in the elegant but not very critical topographers, is among the chief causes that have led some of his successors into the opposite extreme. For my own part, I confess that, while nothing can be more delightful than to recognize a strong general resemblance between the descriptions of scenery contained in any poetical which they refer, it would tend but little to enwork of deep interest, and the real localities to hance this pleasure could I be convinced of the accuracy of all their minutest details, even to the back-door, kitchen-offices, and draw-well of the hero's dwelling.'-Vol. i., pp. 60, 61. We are, perhaps, inclined to allow less latitude to the actual fiction of which a poet, like Homer, might claim the privilege; but we think that, especially in the more distant and, as it were, outlying parts of his picture, he might content himself with appearances, and these appearances as surveyed by a poetic vision, disposed to find what might suit the exigencies of the story. So with regard to the main difficulty, the island of Asteris, where the suitors concealed their galley as they lay in ambush for Telemachus in the strait between Cefalonia and Ithaca. There is, it seems, a rock called Dyscallio, but it is small and low; and, instead of having a port on each side, has no harbour whatever. Now we can perfectly understand that Homer, however familiar with Ithaca, may never actually have sailed round Dyscallio; and, even if his songs were recited in Ithaca, may have surmised that the Ithacans in general, though constantly in sight of the island, might have known no more of its actual conformation. It is perhaps no violent liberty-(less so we think than to make Asteris, from A and TEP=unsteady a floating island, created by Homer for the occasion, as Mr. Mure proposes)-to conjecture that Dyscallio in the bard's days may have been somewhat larger and better suited to his description This is Strabo's opinion, who would rather have recourse to this kind of natural change than to the ignorance or the licence of poetic fiction, Katáþevσiv Twv TómWv KaTù Tó prowdεs. But if this be inadmissible, the hollowing out, as it were, of a port with two entrances, or a kind of open roadstead, the λιμένες ναύλοχοι, αμφίδυμοι under the lee of that small rocky island, as it is described by the poet, -ov peyan -would be no unpardonable deception of the poetic eyesight, a stretch of the fancy which would hardly be detected by the hearer best experienced in the navigation of these straits. We admit that Dyscallio actually lies rather too far to the north; but even this, if we consider the manner in which these small rocky islands loom upon the sight, when seer. from different points; and perhaps allowing for the clearness of the atmosphere, which would enable the ambushed suitors to descry the bark of Telemachus immediately that it put forth from the shore,-this, with but a little voluntary or involuntary ignorance in the poet, a little intentional or unintentional self-deception by the fancy, would account fully for the slight inexactitude, without seriously impeaching either the general knowledge or the fidelity of the historical poet. With regard to the mountains of Ithaca -the Neritos and the Neios-there is little difficulty in their identification. Even Mr. Mure's more sober judgment was struck with the singular coincidence of the spot assigned by Sir W. Gell for the residence of the swineherd Eumæus. On the summit of the cliff is a small rocky plain, interspersed with olive-groves and straggling "kalyvia," or farm-cottages. As a site for the dwelling of Eumæus, the spot corresponds well with the Belvedere, or "place of open prospect," which Homer assigns to that establishment. The face of the cliff is also hollowed out at its summit in various places, partly by nature, partly perhaps by art, into open cavities or sheltered terraces, where we might figure the swineherd reposing as the poet describes him: "Encircled by his cloven-footed flock, From Boreas safe beneath the hollow rock." The proposal to place the residence of Eumæus on the little plain above the precipice also realizes in a very lively manner to the apprehension the spirit of Ulysses' protestation to the old man, that, if his tale turned out to be false, he might punish him by throwing him from the top of the neighbouring cliff. Gell's account of the exact dwellings to the poet's description of that of the correspondence of the present generation of rustic swineherd is probably itself a little poetical. Yet even those I saw presented, it must be allowed, some curious points of resemblance. They consist of one, or at the most two, oblong cottages, sometimes with a "circular court" contiguous, surrounded by a fence, which, although neither "lofty," "large," nor "beautiful," corresponds closely in other respects to that described by Homer; being a rude wall, “built with loose stones," and "crowned" with a chevaux de frise of "dead thorns," or other prickly plants. The same style of fence is still very generally used both in Greece and Italy: in the latter country, for example, it is common round of Rome.'-Vol. i., pp.68-70. the vineyards in the retired parts of the interior We are indebted to Mr. Mure for the more distinct and satisfactory solution of the most important of the Homeric geographical problems as relates to Ithaca-the situation of the city of Ulysses. On which side of the island was it to be placed? There are strong arguments for the east and for the west. It was, in fact, quietly observes Mr. Mure, on both : The ruins of the city of Ulysses are spread over the face of a precipitous conical hill, called Aetó, or the "eagle's cliff," occupying the whole breadth of the narrow isthmus which connects which is here not more than half a mile across. the two main sub-divisions of the island, and The walls stretch from N. W. to S. E.; their form is that of an irregular triangle the apex of which is the acropolis, or castle of Ulysses, by pre-eminence, crowning the extreme summit or peak of the mountain, and about as bleak and dreary a spot as can well be imagined for a princely residence. There can, therefore, be little doubt that this is the place to which Cicero so emphatically alludes as the city of Ithaca, in eulogising the patriotism of the hero:-"Ut Ithacam illam, in asperrimis saxis tanquam nidulum affixam, sapientissimus vir immortalitati anteponeret," "That wisest of men, who preferred his own Ithaca, perched like a bird's-nest among the most rugged of precipices, even to immortality." of Opiso Aetó, towards Cefalonia, is the best On each side of the isthmus is a port. That which the channel shore of the island supplies. The hill of Aetó is separated by two their upper extremities, from the ridge of Stesmall valleys, connected by a narrow neck at southern division of the island, and identified by fano, already noticed as the highest of the Gell with the ancient Neius. Admitting the accuracy of this view, nothing can be more appropriate than the epithet "Under-Neius" (Tovnior,) applied by Telemachus to his residence; for the mountain, in fact, covers Aetó to the south and east, which consequently may be said to "lie under it," both as regards shade and shelter. 'In this way, too, a singular degree of reality | ers. The following extract contains one attaches to a fine scene of the Odyssey, where, of these, which we select the more willingly during the debate in the agora, a pair of eagles because it relates to a passage in the Iliad. suddenly descend from the mountain, and, after It is well known that all the scepticism hovering with ominous cries and gestures above the assembly, rush screaming through the air, over the habitations of the city to the right. The right hand, in the primitive language of Hellenic divination, is synonymous with the east or south-east. Supposing, therefore, the agora to have been situated in the centre of the city, the course of the eagles over the houses to the right would have lain directly towards their native mountain, whither, after executing their divine commission, they might naturally be expected to return. The walls are in many places well preserved, especially those of the citadel, which remain to a considerable height in almost their whole circumference. They are chiefly of polygonal masonry, with a tendency here and there to the ruder Tirynthian or Cyclopian style. In several portions of the area both of the city and acropolis, the line of the streets, and the form of the buildings, are also distinctly traceable, in rows of contiguous square compartments, chiefly of the lastmentioned ruder style of structure. "The peculiarities of this situation seem to mark it out by nature as the spot which the lord of the Cefalonian isles, if he preferred Ithaca as his place of residence, would have selected as, in a military point of view at least, the most appropriate for his seat of government. On a narrow isthmus, connecting, or rather separating, the two subdivisions of the island, it commands the channel, together with a prospect of the whole east coast of Cefalonia, and possesses a tolerable port on each side, giving ready and speedy communication with both the eastern and western portions of his little empire.'-pp. 71–74. We must not, however, linger upon Ithaca, though we have not yet exhausted Mr. Mure's Homeric illustrations. It was certainly a happy adventure for a genuine worshipper of the old bard to find himself, in these days of steam-boat rapidity, or at least of bold British seamanship, navigating, as Mr. Mure did at a later period of his travels, a part of the Grecian seas, with all the delay, the timidity, of old Ulysses himself, vainly struggling with baffling or adverse winds, making some way, then driven back, coming to an anchor every night, and disembarking on every shore. We trust that our traveller at the time derived as much amusement and consolation from his poetic reminiscences as he imparts to hisreader, and that his parallel of Homeric and modern Greek navigation compensated for the severe trial of his patience. The whole passage (vol. ii., p. 33) is full of interest to the classical student. There are, however, one or two minute illustrations of the Homeric poetry which we are unwilling to withhold from our read with regard to the unity and the authorship of these two great poems rests on the subtile observation of minute points, betraying either that discrepancy of design, of opinions, of manners, and of age, which separates each poem into discordant fragments of different bards and different times; or, according to the views of more modest doubters, assigns different though individual authors to each poem, and considers one, perhaps, an Ionian or an Eolo-Thessalian, the other a Peloponnesian, at least an inhabitant of European Greece. It is fair, therefore, that all the slight incidental touches which seem to indicate similarity as to mode of life, habits and feelings, in the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey, and so to reassert the one Homer, should be collected with the same industry, and exhibited with the same fulness. Now, if there were one author of the Odyssey, it is quite clear that he was well-skilled, and, it should seem, personally versed in the navigation of his day; he could not possibly have ventured constantly, before an audience many of them no doubt mariners, and probably honourable pirates,' to be so minute on nautical matters, on everything relating to the ship, its rigging, its management, its perils and its escapes, if he had not been perfectly confident in his own acquaintance with seamanship. Of course of these matters there is much less in the Iliad; but any observation which indicates familiarity with the sea will, as far as it goes-and we admit that the present illustration does not go far-tend to show that the poet of the Iliad was no idle, luxurious landsman, but that he too had occasionally at least, ploughed the dark blue waters of the Egean or the Ionian sea : 'We sailed about eight on the morning of the 27th, and for the first few hours were becalmed, being indebted for what little progress was made to the oars of three men and a boy, who composed the crew of the caïque. The water at vancing a mile or two into the open sea, although first was level and smooth as glass; but on adthere was still not a breath of wind, the tranquillity gave place to a heavy rolling swell. While considering what could be the cause of this sudden agitation of the water amid the perfect stillness of the atmosphere, I observed towards the south, at some miles distance, a dark line on the surface of the sea, gradually spreading in the direction of our vessel, and in a quarter of an hour a fresh breeze filled the sails. This phenomenon was new to me, and I was the more struck with it, from its bringing home to my mind at once the full power of a fine simile of Homer, which | guised as a beggar, in approaching the farm of hitherto I had never properly understood or ap- the swineherd, is fiercely assaulted by the dogs, preciated. The veteran hero Nestor while engaged but delivered by the master of the establishwith a wounded comrade in his tent, hearing the ment, who pelts them off with stones. Pope's tumult of battle thickening around the Greek en- translation, with the exception of one or two trenchment, goes forth to reconnoitre; and the expressions, here conveys with tolerable fidelity effect produced on his mind by the dismal spec- the spirit of the original :tacle of national discomfiture that presents itself is thus figuratively illustrated: - "So doth the darkly-rolling sea presage, en, Till Jove send down the threatened gale from heaven." "Soon as Ulysses near the enclosure drew, With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew; This whole scene, together with many others that follow, both as regards the character of the establishment and the habits of its inmates, corresponds very closely to many a one which I The effect here described is precisely what myself have witnessed in the course of my jourI now witnessed. It is one of familiar occurrence ney. But there is one curious point in the dein narrow seas and archipelagos. The wind scription which more especially demands atwhich freshens in one portion of a maritime re- tention; where Ulysses, alarmed at the fury of gion of this nature-often, perhaps, behind a the assault, is said to have "sat down, cunningcape or island, and at such à distance as to be ly dropping the stick from his hand." I am unobserved by the navigator in another-sends probably not the only reader of the poem who across the otherwise smooth surface of the wa- has been puzzled to understand the object of ter the sort of undulation so aptly described by this manœuvre on the part of the hero. I was the phrase rendered hollow swell, literally mute first led to appreciate its full value in the folwave, in the above passage. The whole phenom-lowing manner. At Argos, one evening, at the enon has been dramatised, as it were, by Homer, under the admirable figure of the sea itself darkly foreboding, by the heaving of its bosom, the coming disturbance of its waters, while yet uncertain as to the direction in which they are to be impelled; as the old hero gloomily presages the approach of the adverse tide of war, though as yet doubtful as to the mode in which he may be affected by it, or the measures to be adopted for stemming its course. It was the more gratifying to have the full value of this fine image realized to the senses on the very spot, perhaps, where it may have been first presented to the poet.'-pp. 82-84. table of General Gordon, then commanding-inchief in the Morea, the conversation happened to turn, as it frequently does where tourists are in company, on this very subject of the number and fierceness of the Greek dogs; when one of the company remarked that he knew of a very simple expedient for appeasing their fury. Happening, on a journey, to miss his road, and being overtaken by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed out upon him, and the consequences might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old shepherd (the Eumæus of the fold,) who sallied Our second illustration is more homely, benighted traveller, after pelting off his assailforth, and, finding that the intruder was but a but curious in its minute truth, and may be ants, gave him a hospitable reception in his inserted for the benefit of future travellers hut. His guest made some remark on the in Greece, who, like Ulysses and Mr. watchfulness and zeal of his dogs, and on the Mure, may run the danger of being wor- danger to which he had been exposed from their ried by the inhospitable dogs of the coun-attack. The old man replied that it was his try: Among the numerous points of resemblance with which the classical traveller cannot fail to be struck, between the habits of pastoral and agricultural life as still exemplified in Greece, and those which formerly prevailed in the same country, there is none more calculated to arrest his attention than the correspondence of the shepherd's encampments scattered here and there over the face of the less-cultivated districts, with the settlements of the same kind whose concerns are so frequently brought for ward in the illustrative imagery of the Iliad and Odyssey. Accordingly, the passage of Homer, to which the existing peculiarity above described affords the most appropriate commentary, is the scene of the latter poem where the hero, dis own fault for not taking the customary precaution in such an emergency; that he ought to have stopped and sat down until some person whom the animals knew came to protect him. As this expedient was new to the traveller, he made some further inquiries, and was assured that if any person in such a predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapon of defence, the dogs will also squat in a circle round him; that as long as he remains quiet they will follow his example; but that as soon as he rises and moves forward they will renew their assault. This story, though told without the least reference to the Odyssey, with which it had not connected itself in the mind of the narrator, at once brought home to my own the whole scene at the fold of Eumæus with the most vivid reality. The existence of |