Page:Proofs of the Enquiry into Homer's Life and Writings.pdf/85

Rh It was long before the Western Boundary of Europe, and the Eastern Boundary of Asia were generally known. The Geographers spoke of them with great Uncertainty, and for the most part by meer Conjecture. Yet it is thought that Homer must have heard that these two vast Continents were bounded on the East and West by the Ocean, by his making the Sun begin and finish his diurnal Course in the wat'ry Element: and that he must have received this Knowledge from the sea-faring Phenician; at the same time that he was unacquainted with the in-land Parts of both Continents. Thus says he, in the poetical Style:

The Sun a-new wide-gilded all the Fields, From the deep-stowing rising bright.

And again,

Down in the dipt the blazing Sun, Involving all in Night.—

HOMER, says Strabo, had no Knowledge of the Syrian, nor of the Median Empire. For he who names the Egyptian Thebes, and celebrates the Wealth of it and of Phenicia, would never have passed over in silence the Grandeur of Babylon, nor of Ninus and Ecbatana, had he known any thing of these Kingdoms.' Rh