Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/130

 114 HISTORY OP GREECE. by a comparison of the Homeric with the Hesiodic poems ; in respect to knowledge of places and countries, the latter being probably referable to dates between B. c. 740 and B. c. 640. In Homer, acquaintance is shown (the accuracy of such acquaint- ance, however, being exaggerated by Strabo and other friendly critics) with continental Greece and its neighboring islands, with Krete and the principal islands of the ^Egean, and with Thrace, the Troad, the Hellespont, and Asia Minor between Paphlagonia northward and Lykia southward. The Sikels are mentioned in the Odyssey, and Sikania in the last book of that poem, but no- thing is said to evince a knowlege of Italy or the realities of the western world. Libya, Egypt, and Phoenike, are known by name and by vague hearsay, but the Nile is only mentioned as " the river Egypt :" while the Euxine sea is not mentioned at all. 1 In the Hesiodic poems, on the other hand, the Nile, the Ister, the Phasis, and the Eridanus, are all specified by name ; a Mount ^iEtna, and the island of Ortygia near to Syracuse, the Tyrrhenians and Ligurians in the west, and the Scythians in the north, were also noticed. 3 Indeed, within forty years after the first Olympiad, the cities of Korkyra and Syracuse were founded from Corinth, the first of a numerous and powerful series of colonies, destined to impart a new character both to the south of Italy and to Sicily. In reference to the astronomy and physics of the Homeric Greek, it has already been remarked that he connected together the sensible phenomena Avhich form the subject matter of these sciences by threads of religious and personifying fancy, to which the real analogies among them were made subordinate ; and that these analogies did not begin to be studied by themselves, apart 1 See Voelcker, Homerische Geographic, ch. iii. sect. 55-63. He has brought to bear much learning and ingenuity to identify the places visited by Odysseus with real lands, but the attempt is not successful. Compare also Ukert, Horn. Geog. vol. i. p. 14, and the valuable treatises of J. H Voss, Alte Weltkunde, annexed to the second volume of his Kritische Blat- ter (Stuttgart, 1828), pp. 245-413. Voss is the father of just viers respect- ing Homeric geography. i. p. 16; vii. p. 300. Compare Ukert, Geographic der Griechcn und Homer, 1 t>. 37.
 * Hesiod. Theog. 338-340.
 * Hesiod. Theogon. 1016; Hesiod. Fragm. 190-194, ed. Gottling; Strabo,