HKB
“I came to the Ethiopians, the Sidonians, and the Arabians.”[2633]
Indeed we ought not to be surprised at meeting with this in Homer, for those who have lived at a more recent period than he did, have been ignorant of many things, and have told strange tales. Hesiod has talked of Hemicynes,[2634] Megalocephali, and Pygmies; Alcman of Steganopodes; Æschylus of Cynocephali, Sternophthalmi, and Monommati, (they say it is in his Prometheus,) and ten thousand other absurdities. From these he proceeds to censure the writers who talk of the Riphæan Mountains[2635] and Mount Ogyium,[2636] and the dwelling of the Gorgons[2637] and the Hesperides,[2638] the land of Meropis[2639] mentioned by Theopompus, Cimmeris,[2640] a city mentioned in Hecatæus, the land of Panchæa[2641] mentioned by Euhemerus, and the river-stones formed of sand mentioned by Aristotle,[2642] which were dissolved by rain-showers. Further, that there exists in Africa a city of Bacchus which no one can find twice. He likewise reproves those who assert that the wanderings of Ulysses mentioned in Homer were in the neighbourhood of Sicily, for again, if we should say that the wanderings did take place in those parts, we should have to confess that the poet transferred them to the ocean for the sake of making his account the more romantic. Some allowance might be made for others, but no manner of excuse can be put forward for Callimachus, who pretends to the character of a critic, and yet supposes that Gaudus was the island of Calypso, and identifies Scheria with Corcyra.[2643] Other writers he blames for misstatements as to Gerena,[2644] Acacesium,[2645] and [CAS. 299] the Demus[2646] in Ithaca, Pelethronium[2647] in Pelium, and the Glaucopium at Athens.[2648] With these and a few similar trifling observations, most of which he has drawn from Eratosthenes, whose inaccuracy we have before shown, he breaks off. However, we frankly acknowledge, both with respect to him [Apollodorus] and Eratosthenes, that the moderns are better informed on geography than the ancients: but to strain the subject beyond measure, as they do, especially when they inculpate Homer, seems to me as if it gave a fair occasion to any one to find fault, and to say by way of recrimination, that they reproach the poet for the very things of which they themselves are ignorant. As for the rest of their observations, particular mention is made of some of them in the places where they occur, and of others in the General Introduction.
“the bold Close-fighting Mysian race, and where abide, On milk sustain’d, and blest with length of days, The Hippemolgi, justest of mankind,”[2649]