Geography

​Since the poet refers his myths to the educational form, he cared for much of the truth, but inserted falsehood also, accepting the former on his own part, and by the latter leading and commanding the multitudes. “As when a man pours gold over silver,” so he added myth to true events, sweetening and adorning his style, yet looking to the same end as the historian and the narrator of facts. Thus, taking the Trojan War as an actual event, he adorned it with myth-making, and the wanderings of Odysseus likewise; but to hang an empty monster-story upon nothing true is not Homeric. For it occurs to one, as is natural, that in this way one might lie more plausibly if one mixes in some of the true things themselves; which is indeed what Polybius says when discussing the wanderings of Odysseus. And of such a kind is also this: “He spoke many falsehoods, making them like unto truths.” For he does not say “all” but “many”, since otherwise they would not even be like unto truths. He therefore took his starting points from history. For indeed they say that Aeolus ruled over the islands around Lipara, and that around Etna and Leontini were Cyclopes and Laestrygonians, certain inhospitable peoples; wherefore also the regions around the strait were inaccessible to the people of that time, and Charybdis and Scyllaeum were held by pirates. And in this way we also record the other peoples mentioned by Homer in other places; and in this way, knowing that the Cimmerians inhabited the Cimmerian Bosporus towards the north and the gloomy region, he appropriately transferred them to a dark place near Hades, which was useful for the myth-making in the wanderings. And that he knew them is shown by the chronographers who record the invasion of the Cimmerians either slightly before his time or during it.

​In the same way, knowing both the Colchians and Jason’s voyage to Aea, and the mythical stories and historical accounts concerning Circe and Medea regarding their sorcery and other similarity of character and kinship, he created a relation between those who were thus widely separated, placing one in the innermost recess of the Pontus and the other in Italy, and transferred both to the Ocean, perhaps because Jason also wandered as far as Italy; for certain signs of the wanderings of the Argonauts are shown both around the Ceraunian mountains and around the Adriatic, and in the Poseidonian Gulf, and in the islands in front of Tyrrhenia. And the Cyanean rocks, which some call Symplegades, also contributed something, making the passage through the Byzantine mouth rough; so that on the model of Aea, Aeaea appeared plausible, and on the model of the Symplegades, the Planctae and Jason’s voyage through them, and on the model of Scylla and Charybdis, the voyage through the cliffs. In short, the people of that time regarded the Pontic sea as another Ocean, and thought that those sailing thither wandered out of the world, just like those who go far beyond the Pillars; for it was considered the largest of the seas known to us, and for this reason they called it specifically and preeminently “the Sea” (Pontus), just as they call Homer “the Poet”. Perhaps, then, for this reason also he transferred the events from the Pontus to the Ocean, as being easily acceptable because of the prevailing opinion. And I think that the Solymi also, since they occupied the highest peaks of the Taurus around Lycia as far as Pisidia, and provided the most conspicuous projections from the south for those within the Taurus, and especially those around the Pontus, were also transferred to the Ocean according to some similarity; for he says concerning the one sailing on the raft: “But the powerful Earth-shaker, returning from the Ethiopians, saw him from afar from the mountains of the Solymi.” And perhaps he also transferred the one-eyed Cyclopes from Scythian history; for they say that the Arimaspians are such, whom Aristeas of Proconnesus introduced in his Arimaspean verses.