Book 1
2.18
These passages clearly refer to the Atlantic Ocean,Gosselin has satisfactorily demonstrated that Strabo is wrong in supposing that these passages relate to the Atlantic Ocean, and most of our readers will come at once themselves to the same conclusion. Those, however, who wish for proofs, may refer to the French translation, vol. i. p. 51, n. but though so plainly expressed, Polybius slily manages to overlook them. Here he is altogether wrong, though quite correct about the wandering of Ulysses having taken place round Sicily and Italy, a fact which Homer establishes himself. Otherwise, what poet or writer could have persuaded the Neapolitans to assert that they possessed the tomb of ParthenopeThe ancient name of the city of Naples. the Siren, or the inhabitants of Cumae, Dicaearchia,Puteoli, now Pozzuolo, in Campania. and Vesuvius [to bear their testimony] to Pyriphlegethon, the Marsh of Acherusia,Mare Morto, south of Baïa, and near to the ruins of Mycene. to the oracle of the dead which was near Aornus,Aornus or Avernus: this lake, which lies about one mile north of Baïa, still retains its ancient appellation. and to Baius and Misenus,Vide Virgil, Aeneid vi. 162. the companions of Ulysses. The same is the case with the Sirenussae, and the Strait of Messina, and Scylla, and Charybdis, and Aeolus, all which things should neither be examined into too rigorously, nor yet [despised] as groundless and without foundation, alike remote from truth and historic value.
