Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/281

 ERYTHEIA. -GERYON. 2 IS coast of Mauritania, over and above those who dwelt on th< island of Meninx. 1 On the other hand, Eratosthenes and Apol lodorus treated the places visited by Odysseus as altogether un real, for which scepticism they incurred much reproach. 2 The fabulous island of Erytheia, the residence of the three headed Geryon with his magnificent herd of oxen, under the custody of the two-headed dog Orthrus, and described by He- 8iod, like the garden of the Hesperides, as extra-terrestrial, on the farther side of the circumfluous ocean ; this island was sup- posed by the interpreters of Stesichorus the poet to be named by him off the south-western region of Spain called Tartessus, and in the immediate vicinity of Gades. But the historian Heka- treus, in his anxiety to historicize the old fable, took upon him- self to remove Erytheia from Spain nearer home to Epirus. He thought it incredible that Herakles should have traversed Europe from east to west, for the purpose of bringing the cattle of Ger- yon to Eurystheus at Mykenae, and he pronounced Geryon to have been a king of Epirus, near the Gulf of Ambrakia. The oxen reared in that neighborhood were proverbially magnificent, and to get them even from thence and bring them to Mykena; (he contended) was no inconsiderable task. Arrian, who cites this passage from Hekatosus, concurs in the same view, an il- lustration of the license with which ancient authors fitted on their fabulous geographical names to the real earth, and brought down the ethereal matter of legend to the lower atmosphere of history. 3 India: the critic Aristonikus, Strabo's contemporary, enumerated all the different opinions (Strabo, i. p. 38). 1 Strabo, iii. p. 157. * Strabo, i. p. 22-44 ; vii. p. 299 3 Stesichori Fragm. ed. Kleine ; Geryonis, Fr. 5. p. 60 ; ap. Strabo. iii. p. 148 ; Herodot. iv. 8. It seems very doubtful whether Stesichorus meant to indicate any neighboring island as Erytheia, if we compare Fragm. 10. p. 67 of the Geryonis, and the passages of Athenaeus and Eustathius there ctied. He seems to have adhered to the old fable, placing Erytheia on the opposite side of the ocean-stream, for Herakles crosses the ocean to get to it. Hekataius, ap. Arrian. Histor. Alex. ii. 16. Skylax places Erythcia, " whither Geryon is said to have come to feed his oxen," in the Kastid terri- tory near the Greek city of Apollonia on the Ionic Gulf, northward of the Keraunian mountains. There were splendid cattle consecrated to Helio* 11*