HKB
“and they who possessed Ithaca, and Neritum with its waving woods,”[635]
he denotes by the epithet, that he means Neritum the mountain. In other passages he expressly mentions the mountain;
“I dwell at Ithaca, turned to the western sun; where is a mountain, Neritum, seen from afar with its waving woods;”[636]
but whether he means the city, or the island, is not clear, at least from this verse;
“they who possessed Ithaca, and Neritum.”
Any one would understand these words in their proper sense to mean the city, as we speak of Athens, Lycabettus, Rhodes, Atabyris, Lacedæmon, and Taygetus, but in a poetical sense the contrary is implied.
In the verses,
“I dwell at Ithaca, turned to the western sun, in which is a mountain Neritum,”
the meaning is plain, because the mountain is on the island and not in the city; and when he says,
“we came from Ithaca situated under Neium,”[637]
it is uncertain whether he means that Neium was the same as Neritum, or whether it is another, either mountain or place. [He, who writes Nericum for Neritum, or the reverse, is quite mistaken. For the poet describes the former as “waving with woods;” the other as a “well-built city;” one in Ithaca, the other on the sea-beach of Epirus.][638]
“it lies in the sea both low, and very high,”[639]
for χθαμαλὴ is low, and depressed, but πανυπερτάτη expresses great height, as he describes it in other passages, calling it Cranae, (or rugged,) and the road leading from the harbour, as,
“a rocky way through a woody spot,”[640]
and again,
“for there is not any island in the sea exposed to the western sun,[641] and with good pastures, least of all Ithaca.”[642]
The expression does imply contradictions, which admit however of some explanation. They do not understand χθαμαλὴ to signify in that place “low,” but its contiguity to the continent, to which it approaches very close; nor by πανυπερτάτη great elevation, but the farthest advance towards darkness, (πρὸς ζόφον,) that is, placed towards the north more than all the other islands, for this is what the poet means by “towards darkness,” the contrary to which is towards the south, (πρὸς νότον,)
“the rest far off (ἄνευθε) towards the morning, and the sun.”[643]
For the word ἄνευθε denotes “at a distance,” and “apart,” as if the other islands lay to the south, and more distant from the continent, but Ithaca near the continent and towards the north. That the poet designates the southern part (of the heavens) in this manner appears from these words,
“whether they go to the right hand, towards the morning and the sun, or to the left, towards cloudy darkness;”[644]
and still more evidently in these lines,
“my friends, we know not where darkness nor where morning lie, nor where sets nor where rises the sun which brings light to man.”[645]