Geography

​On the whole, it is not well to class Homer’s poetry together with that of the other poets in other respects and in these very geographical matters now before us, and to award him no preeminence. For, if nothing else, for anyone who has gone over Sophocles’ *Triptolemus* or the prologue in Euripides’ *Bacchae* and compared Homer’s care about such things, it was easier to perceive the superiority, or at least the difference. For where there is need of order among the places he mentions, he preserves the order, equally in the case of Greek places, and equally in the case of those far away: ‘They were eager to heap Ossa on Olympus, and on Ossa, leaf-quivering Pelion.’ ‘And Hera darting down left the peak of Olympus, and having stepped upon Pieria and lovely Emathia, she sped to the snowy mountains of the horse-breeding Thracians; and from Athos onto the sea.’ And in the Catalogue, he does not mention the cities in order (for that is not necessary), but he does so for the nations. And likewise also concerning those far away: ‘Having wandered over Cyprus and Phoenicia and the Egyptians, I came to the Ethiopians and Sidonians and Erembi and Libya.’ Which is what Hipparchus also points out. But those other poets, in cases where there is need of order, the one describing Dionysus traversing the nations, the other Triptolemus traversing the earth which was being sown, join closely together things that are far apart, and tear apart things that are continuous: ‘And leaving the gold-rich fields of the Lydians, and the sun-struck plains of the Phrygians and Persians, and the Bactrian walls, and having gone through the stormy land of the Medes, and happy Arabia.’ And Triptolemus does similar things. And in the matter of climates and winds, Homer displays his great learning regarding geography, mentioning these also in his descriptions of localities in many places: ‘And it lies low, furthest out in the sea toward the dusk; but the others lie apart toward the dawn and the sun.’ ‘And it has two gates, the one toward the North wind, and the other toward the South wind.’ ‘Whether they go to the right toward the dawn and the sun, or to the left toward the dusk.’ Indeed, he considers ignorance of such things to be a complete confusion of all things: ‘O friends, for we do not know where the dusk is, nor where the dawn, nor where the sun.’ And here too, although the poet spoke well: ‘The North wind and the West wind, which both blow from Thrace,’ the same writer, not understanding it well, slanders him as if he were speaking universally, saying that the West wind blows from Thrace, whereas the poet was speaking not universally, but of the case when they fall together upon the Thracian Sea around the Melas Gulf, which is a part of the Aegean itself. For Thrace, making a bend toward the south where it joins Macedonia, and projecting into the sea, causes the west winds blowing from there to appear to those in Thasos, Lemnos, Imbros, and Samothrace, and the sea around them, just as also to Attica from the Scironian Rocks, from which also the west winds, and especially the north-west winds, are called Scirones. Eratosthenes did not perceive this, yet he had some inkling of it. At any rate, he himself explains the bend of the land which I am mentioning; nevertheless, he takes it as a universal statement, and then accuses the poet of ignorance, on the ground that the west wind blows from the west and Iberia, while Thrace does not extend thither. Does he then not know that the west wind blows from the west? Nay, when he speaks thus, he preserves its proper order: ‘And East Wind and South Wind clashed together, and the harsh-blowing West Wind and the North Wind;’ Or does he not know that Thrace does not project beyond the Paeonian and Thessalian mountains? Nay, knowing also this land which is next to the Thracians, and naming both the coast and the interior, he lists certain Magnetes and Malians and the successive Greeks as far as the Thesprotians, and likewise also the Dolopes bordering on the Paeonians and the Selli around Dodona as far as the Achelous; but he makes no mention of Thracians further on. And he is easily inclined to refer to the sea nearest and most familiar to himself, as also when he says: ‘And the assembly was stirred like the long waves of the sea, of the Icarian sea.’