The Histories

​To fashion an empty monstrous fiction from no truth at all is not Homeric.

​For it occurs to one, as is reasonable, that in this way one might lie more plausibly, if one should mix in some of the very truths themselves;

​which is just what Polybius also says when attempting to treat of the wandering of Odysseus. —

​And Polybius correctly conjectures the matters concerning the wandering.

​For he says that Aeolus, who foretold the times of sailing out in the regions around the strait—which were subject to currents running both ways and difficult to sail out of because of the ebb and flow of the tides—was called the steward of the winds and considered a king; ​just as Danaüs, who revealed the water-reservoirs in Argos, and Atreus, who revealed the motion of the sun contrary to the heavens, and diviners and inspectors of sacrifices, were appointed kings;

​and that the priests of the Egyptians, and the Chaldaeans, and the Magi, excelling others in a certain wisdom, obtained leadership and honor among our predecessors.

​And that in this way each one of the gods also, having become the discoverer of something useful, was honored.

​Having laid these foundations, he does not allow Aeolus to be understood in the guise of a myth, nor the whole of Odysseus’s wandering, but holds that, just as in the Trojan war, some small things have been mythologically added, ​but that as a whole it was set around Sicily both by the poet and by the other writers, as many as relate the local traditions concerning Italy and Sicily.

​And he does not approve of that statement of Eratosthenes either, where he says that someone will find where Odysseus wandered only when he finds the cobbler who sewed together the bag of the winds.

​And he says that this too is spoken in accordance with the things that happen around Scyllaeum and the hunting of the galeotes—namely, that passage concerning Scylla: “and there she fishes, ​peering all around the rock for dolphins and sharks, and if anywhere she may catch a larger monster.”

​For the tunny-fish, carried in shoals along Italy, when they are driven off and prevented from reaching Sicily, fall in with the larger animals, such as dolphins, sharks, and other cetaceans; ​and from the hunting of these, the galeotes grow fat, which he says are also called swordfish and dog-fish.

​For he says that the same thing happens here as during the inundations of the Nile and other waters, just as in the case of fire and a burning forest; for the wild beasts, gathering together, flee from the fire or the water, and become prey to the stronger ones.