Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/39

 CHAP. ii. 3. INTRODUCTION. tainly not alone for the purpose of amusing their mine for their instruction. Nay, even the professors of music, who give lessons on the harp, lyre, and pipe, lay claim to our con- sideration on the same account, since they say that [the ac- complishments which they teach] are calculated to form and improve the character. It is not only among the Pythagoreans that one hears this claim supported, for Aristoxenus is of that opinion, and Homer too regarded the bards as amongst the wjgest of mankind. Of this number was the guardian of Clytemnestra, " to whom the s_on of Atreus, when he set out forTroy, gave earnest charge to preserve his ,wife," 1 whom ^Egisthus was unabje to seduce, until " leading the bard to a desert island, heleft him," 2 and then " The queen he led, not willing less than he, To his own mansion." 3 But apart from all such considerations, Eratosthenes con- tradicts himself; for a little previously to the sentence which we have quoted, at the commencement of his Essay on Geo- graphy, he says, that " all the ancient poets took delight in showing their knowledge of such matters. Homer inserted into his poetry all that he knew about the Ethiopians, Egypt, and Libya. Of all that related to Greece and the neighbour- ing places he entered even too minutely into the details, de- scribing Thisbe as " abounding in doves," Haliartus, " grassy," Anthedon, the " far distant," Litaea, " situated on the sources of the Cephissus," 4 and none of his epithets are without their meaning." But in pursuing this method, what object has he in view, to amuse [merely], or to instruct ? The latter, doubt- less. Well, perhaps he has told the truth in these instances, but in what was beyond his observation both he and the other writers have indulged in all the marvels of fable. If such be the case the statement should have been, that the poets relate some things for mere amusement, others for instruction ; but he affirms that they do it altogether for amusement, without any view to information ; and by way of climax, inquires, What can it add to Homer's worth to be familiar with many 1 Odyssey iii. 267. 2 Ib. iii. 270. 3 Ib. iii. 272. 4 Thisbe, Haliartus, Anthedon, cities of Boeotia; Litaea, a city of Phocis. The Cephissus, a large river, rising in the west of Phocis.