Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/45

 CHAP. ii. 10- INTRODUCTION. 31 this manner he undertook the narration of the Trojan war, gilding it with the beauties of fancy and the wanderings of Ulysses ; but we shall never find Homer inventing an empty fable apart from the inculcation of truth. It is ever the case that a person lies most successfully, when he intermingles [into the falsehood] a sprinkling of truth. Such is the re- mark of Polybius in treating of the wanderings of Ulysses ; such is alsoTlTe' meaning of the verse, " He fabricated many falsehoods, relating them like truths :" l not all, but many falsehoods, otherwise it would not have looked like the truth. Homer's narrative is founded on history. He tells us that king ^olus governed the Lipari Islands, that around Mount JEtna and Leontini dwelt the Cyclopae, and cer- tain Loestrygonians inhospitable to strangers. That at that time the districts surrounding the strait were unapproachable ; and Scylla and Charybdis were infested by banditti. In like manner in the writings of Homer we are informed of other freebooters, who dwelt in divers regions. Being aware that the Cimmerians dwelt on the Cimmerian Bosphorus, a dark northern country, he felicitously locates them in a gloomy re- gion close by Hades, a fit theatre for the scene in the wander- ings of Ulysses. That he was acquainted with these people we may satisfy ourselves from the chroniclers, who report an incursion made by the Cimmerians either during his life-time or just before. 10. Being acquainted with Colchis, and the voyage of Ja- scp to JEa, and also with the historical and fabulous relations concerning Circe and Medea, their enchantments and their various other points of e *re1Temblance, he feigns there was a relationship between them, notwithstanding the vast distance by which they were separated, the one dwelling in an inland creek of the Euxine, and the other in Italy, and both of them beyond the ocean. It is possible that Jason -himself wandered as far as Italy, for traces of the Argonautic expedition are pointed out near the Ceraunian 2 mountains, by the Adriatic, 3 at the Pos- sidonian 4 Gulf, and the isles adjacent to Tyrrhenia. 5 The 1 Odyssey xix. 203. 2 The mountains of Chimera in Albania. 3 The Gulf of Venice. 4 The Gulf of Salerno. 5 The Grecian name for Tuscany.