bably viewed as such Olympos, the abode of the gods. In after times Delphi became the navel of the earth. The Sea divided the terrestrial disk into two portions, which we may suppose were regarded as equal. These divisions do not seem to have had any peculiar names in the time of Homer. The northern one was afterwards named Europe; the southern, at first called Asia alone, was in process of time divided into Asia and Libyad. The former comprised all the country between the Phasis and the Nile, the latter all between this river and the western oceane. In the Sea the Greeks appear to have known to the west of their own country southern Italy and Sicily, though their ideas respecting them were probably vague and uncertain; and the imagination of the poets, or the tales of voyagers, had placed in the more remote parts of it several islands, such as Ogygia the isle of Calypso, Œæa that of Circe, Æolia that of Eolos, Scheria the abode of the Phæacians,-islands in all probability as ideal and as fabulous as the isles of Panchaia, Lilliput, or Brobdingnag, though both ancients and moderns have endeavoured to assign their exact positions. Along its southern coast lay, it would appear, the countries of the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclopes, the Giants, and the Læstrigonians. These isles and coasts of the western part of the Sea were 1 "Oμpados rñs yñs, Pind. Pyth. iv. 131.; vi. 3. Paus. x. 16. 3. There may be some connexion between Delphi and deλøús, womb, which gave occasion to the notion. Welcker (Kret. Kol. 45.) makes Aéλpos equivalent to Týλepos. The habit of regarding their own country as the centre of the earth prevails at the present day among the Chinese and the Hindoos; it was also a principle in the cosmogony of the ancient Persians and Scandinavians. The term Europe first occurs in the Homeridian hymn to the Delian Apollo (v. 251 ), where it is opposed to the Peloponnese and the islands, and apparently denotes continental Greece. It would seem therefore to come from evpús, and to signify mainland. (See Völck. Hom. Geog. 103.) Bochart, Buttmann (Mythol. ii. 176.) and others derive it from the Hebrew Ereb (ay), evening, as signifying the West. See Welcker, Kret. Kol. 55. Pherecydes (Sch. Apoll. Rh. iv. 1396.) first mentions this division into Europe and Asia. We find it even in Isocrates (Panegyr. 48.) and in Varro (De L. L. iv. p. 13. Bip.). d Herod. iv. 37-41. * Asia seems to have been at first nothing more than the rich land on the banks of the Caÿster. (II. ii. 461. Heyne in loco.) Libya is in Homer merely a district west of Egypt. D the scenes of most of the wonders of early Grecian fable. There, and on the isles of the Ocean, the passage to which was supposed to be close to the island of Circe, dwelt the Sirens, the Hesperides, the Grææ, the Gorgons, and the other beings of fable. The only inhabitants of the northern portion of the earth mentioned by Homer are the Hellenes and some of the tribes of Thrace. But Hesioda sang of a happy race, named the Hyperboreans, dwelling in everlasting bliss and spring beyond the lofty mountains, whose caverns were supposed to send forth the piercing blasts of the north wind, which chilled the people of Hellas. According to Pindare the country of the Hyperboreans, from which the river Ister flowed, was inaccessible either by sea or land. Apollo was their tutelar deity, to whom they offered asses in sacrifice, while choirs of maidens danced to the sound of lyres and pipes, and the worshipers feasted having their heads wreathed with garlands of the god's favourite plant, the bay. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare, and, conscious of no evil thoughts or acts, they had not to fear the awful goddess Nemesis d. On the south coast of the Sea, eastwards of the fabulous tribes above enumerated, lay Libya and Egypt. The Sidonians, and a people named the Erembians, are also mentioned by Homer, and the Greeks appear to have been well acquainted with the people of the west coast of Lesser Asia. They do not seem to have navigated the Euxine at this time, though they were doubtless not ignorant of it, as Homer names some of the peoples on its southern coast. They must of course have regarded it as a portion of the Sea. no means of ascertaining whether they supposed it to communicate with the Ocean, like the western part of the Sea. Of Colchis and Caucasus they seem to have had no knowledge a Herod. iv. 32. b 'Pirai, blasts, whence these mountains were named Rhipæans. Pind. Ol. iii. 24 seq.; viii. 63. Pyth. x. 50 seq. Isth. vi. 33. d See Appendix (A). We have • Perhaps the Syrians (Aram) or the Arabs (Strabo, i. 2.), the μ being inserted before ẞ, as was done so frequently; ex. gr. äμßporos. whatever in these early ages. They were equally ignorant of the interior of Asia. On the eastern side of the earth, close to the stream of Ocean, dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans. They were named the Ethiopians: the gods favoured them so highly that they were wont to leave at times their Olympian abodes and go to share their sacrifices and banquets. A passage of the Odysseye divides the Ethiopians into two tribes, the one on the eastern, the other on the western margin of the earthd. In later ages, when knowledge of the earth had increased, the Æthiopians or sun-burnt men were placed in the south; but this is contrary to the views of Homer, who assigns the southern portion of the terrestrial disk to a nation of dwarfs named, from their diminutive stature, Pygmies, to whose country the cranes used to migrate every winter, and their appearance was the signal of bloody warfare to the puny inhabitants, who had to take up arms to defend their corn-fields against the rapacious strangers. On the western margin of the earth, by the stream of Ocean, lay a happy place named the Elysian Plain, whither the mortal relatives of the king of the gods were transported without tasting of death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss. Thus Proteus says to Menelaos, But thee the ever-living gods will send Unto the Elysian Plain, and distant bounds Of earth, where dwelleth fair-haired Rhadamanthys: Or wintry storm, or rain, at any time Is there; but Ocean evermore sends up aThat is, black or sun-burnt men, from ai0w, to burn. IL. i. 423; xxiii. 205. Od. i. 22; v. 282. See Appendix (B). Od. i. 23, 24. II. iii. 3-7. Heyne doubts of the genuineness of this passage. Payne Knight would be content with rejecting vv. 6 and 7. It is to be observed that it is not Homer's custom to use two particles of comparison (ws and hûre) together, and that the Pygmies seem to contradict the analogy which places races superior to ordinary men on the shores of Ocean. That is, men only as tall as the fist, from vyμn, fist, like our Tom Thumb. 8 Od. iv. 563. In the time of Hesioda the Elysian Plain was become the Isles of the Blest. Pindarb appears to reduce the number of these happy isles to one. We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew little of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean. Their imagination meantime peopled the western portion of this sea with giants, monsters, and enchantresses; while they placed around the edge of the disk of the earth, which they probably regarded as of no great width, nations enjoying the peculiar favour of the gods, and blessed with happiness and longevity, -a notion which continued to prevail even in the historic times c. We have already observed that the Ocean of Homer and Hesiod was a river or stream. It is always so called by these poets, and they describe the sun and the other heavenly bodies as rising out of and sinking into its placid currente. Its course was from south to north up the western side of the earth. It flowed calmly and equably, unvexed by tempests and unnavigated by man. It was termed bark-flowing, deepflowing, soft-flowing, from its naturef. Its waters were sweet, and it was the parent of all fountains and rivers on the earth. As it was a stream, it must have been conceived to have a further bank to confine its course, but the poet of the Odyssey b Ol. ii. 129. Works and Days, 169. e Herod. iii. 106. Пoraμòs, póos poaì, Il. iii. 5; xiv. 245; xvi. 151; xviii. 240. 402. 607; xix. 1; xx. 7. Od. xi. 21. 156. 638; xii. 1; xxii. 197; xxiv. 11. Hesiod, W. and D. 566. Th. 242. 841. Il. vii. 422; W. and D. 566. viii. 485; xviii. 239. Od. iii. 1; xix. 433; xxiii. 242. 347. Hes. Thus Milton also, P. L. v. 139. the sun, who scarce uprisen, With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim, and Tasso, Ger. Lib. i. 15. Sorgeva il novo sol dai lidi Eoi, Parte già fuor, ma'l più ne l'onde chiuso. * Αψόῤῥοος, Il. xviii. 399. Od. xx. 65. (ἄψ ἀνασειράζοντος ἐὸν ῥόον εἰς ἑὸν dup, Nonnus, xxxviii. 317.) Hes. Th. 776. Balúppoos, Il. vii. 422; xiv. 311. Od. xi. 13; xix. 434. βαθυῤῥείτης, Il. xxi. 195. Hes. Th. 265. ακαλαῤῥείτης, II. vii. 422. Od. xix. 403. An epithet of Oceanos in Hesiod (Th. 274. 288. 294.) is Kλvrbs, illustrious, or perhaps bright. See Appendix (C). alone notices the transoceanic land, and that only in the western part. He describes it as a region unvisited by the sun, and therefore shrouded in perpetual darkness, the abode of a people whom he names Kimmerians. He also places there Erebos, the realm of Aïdes and Persephoneia, the final dwelling of all the race of men, a place which the poet of the Ilias describes as lying within the bosom of the eartha. As Homerb represents the heaven as resting on pillars kept by Atlas, and which were on the earth, and Hesiode describes the extremities of heaven, earth, sea (πóνTOS), and Tartaros as meeting, it would seem to follow that the Ocean lay outside of the hollow sphere of the world, and encompassed the middle of it like a rim. The armillary sphere would thus give us an idea of the Homeric world. The portion of the hollow sphere above the earth contained Olympos, the abode of the gods; but there is great difficulty in ascertaining its exact nature and situation. As it is always represented as a mountain, it must have rested on the earth, and yet one passage of the Iliasd would seem plainly to speak of it as distinct from the earth; and the language of the Odyssey respecting it is still more dubious. Were we to follow analogy, and argue from the cosmology of other races of men, we would say that the upper surface of the superior hemisphere was the abode of the Grecian gods. The Hebrews seem, for example, to have regarded the concave heaven as being solid (hence Moses says, that Jehovah would make their heaven brass and their earth iron), and its upper surface as the abode of Jehovah and his holy angels, the place where he had formed his magazines of hail, rain, snow, and frost. According to the notions of the ancient Scandinavians the heaven was solid, and its upper surface, which they named Asgardr (God-abode), was the dwelling of their gods, and the Il. iii. 278; ix. 568; xix. 259; xx. 61; xxii. 482; xxiii. 100. b Od. i. 54. ⚫ Theog. 736. d Il. viii. 18-26. Zenodotus however rejected vv. 25, 26, in which all the difficulty lies. See Schol. in loco. * Deut. xxviii. 23. The very rational supposition of some learned and pious divines, that it did not suit the scheme of Providence to give the Israelites more correct ideas on natural subjects than other nations, relieves Scripture from many difficulties. |