The Geography of Strabo, Volume 1 (of 3)

hanging suspended to the branches, so anxiously desired to rise, accords much better with the ebb and flow taking place but twice during the night and day instead of thrice.

“Therefore hard I clench’d the boughs, till she disgorged again Both keel and mast. Not undesired by me They came, though late; for at what hour the judge, After decision made of numerous strifes Between young candidates for honour, leaves The forum, for refreshment’s sake at home, Then was it that the mast and keel emerged.”[276]

Every word of this indicates a considerable length of time, especially when he prolongs it to the evening, not merely saying at that time when the judge has risen, but having adjudicated on a vast number of cases, and therefore detained longer than usual. Otherwise his account of the return of the wreck would not have appeared likely, if he had brought it back again with the return of the wave, before it had been first carried a long way off.

37. Apollodorus, who agrees with Eratosthenes, throws much blame upon Callimachus for asserting, in spite of his character as a grammarian, that Gaudus[277] and Corcyra[278] were among the scenes of Ulysses’ wandering, such an opinion being altogether in defiance of Homer’s statement, and his description of the places as situated in the exterior ocean.[279]

This criticism is just if we suppose the wandering to have never actually occurred, and to be merely the result of Homer’s imagination; but if it did take place, although in other regions, Apollodorus ought plainly to have stated which they were, and thus set right the mistake of Callimachus. Since, however, after such evidence as we have produced, we cannot believe the whole account to be a fiction, and since no other more likely places have as yet been named, we hold that the grammarian is absolved from blame.

38. Demetrius of Skepsis is also wrong, and, in fact, the cause of some of the mistakes of Apollodorus. He eagerly objects to the statement of Neanthes of Cyzicus, that the Argonauts, when they sailed to the Phasis,[280] founded at Cyzicus the temples of the Idæan Mother.[281] Though their voyage is attested both by Homer and other writers, he denies that Homer had any knowledge whatever of the departure of Jason to the Phasis. In so doing, he not only contradicts the very words of Homer, but even his own assertions. The poet informs us that Achilles, having ravaged Lesbos[282] and other districts, spared Lemnos[283] and the adjoining islands, on account of his relationship with Jason and his son Euneos,[284] who then had possession of the island. How should he know of a relationship, identity of race, or other connexion existing between Achilles and Jason, which, after all, was nothing else than that they were both Thessalians, one being of Iolcos,[285] the other of the Achæan Pthiotis,[286] and yet was not aware how it happened that Jason, who was a Thessalian of Iolcos, should leave no descendants in the land of his nativity, but establish his son as ruler of Lemnos? Homer then was familiar with the history of Pelias and the daughters of Pelias, of Alcestis, who was the most charming of them all, and of her son

“Eumelus, whom Alcestis, praised For beauty above all her sisters fair, In Thessaly to king Admetus bore,”[287]

and was yet ignorant of all that befell Jason, and Argo, and the Argonauts, matters on the actual occurrence of which all the world is agreed. The tale then of their voyage in the ocean from Æeta, was a mere fiction, for which he had no authority in history.