Book 1
1.6
He tells us also, that the Ethiopians are far removed, and bounded by the ocean: far removed,— The Ethiopians, utmost of mankind, These eastward situate, those toward the west.The Ethiopians, who are divided into two divisions, the most distant of men.Odyssey i. 23.Odyssey i. 23 Nor was he mistaken in calling them separated into two divisions, as we shall presently show: and next to the ocean,— For to the banks of the Oceanus, Where Ethiopia holds a feast to Jove, He journey’d yesterday.For yesterday Jove went to Oceanus, to the blameless Ethiopians, to a banquet.Iliad i. 423.The ancients gave the name of Ethiopians, generally, to the inhabitants of Interior Africa, the people who occupied the sea-coast of the Atlantic, and the shores of the Arabian Gulf. It is with this view of the name that Strabo explains the passage of Homer; but the Mediterranean was the boundary of the poet’s geographical knowledge; and the people he speaks of were doubtless the inhabitants of the southern parts of Phoenicia, who at one time were called Ethiopians. We may here remark too, that Homer’s ocean frequently means the Mediterranean, sometimes probably the Nile. See also p. 48, n. 2.Iliad i. 423 Speaking of the Bear, he implies that the most northern part of the earth is bounded by the ocean: Only star of these denied To slake his beams in Ocean’s briny baths.But it alone is free from the baths of the ocean.Iliad xviii. 489; Odyssey v. 275.Iliad xviii. 489; Odyssey v. 275. Now, by the Bear and the Wain, he means the Arctic Circle; otherwise he would never have said, It alone is deprived of the baths of the ocean, when such an infinity of stars is to be seen continually revolving in that part of the hemisphere. Let no one any longer blame his ignorance for being merely acquainted with one Bear, when there are two. It is probable that the second was not considered a constellation until, on the Phoenicians specially designating it, and employing it in navigation, it became known as one to the Greeks.We are informed by Diogenes Laertius, that Thales was the first to make known to the Greeks the constellation of the Lesser Bear. Now this philosopher flourished 600 years before the Christian era, and consequently some centuries after Homer’s death. The name of φοινίκη which it received from the Greeks, is proof that Thales owed his knowledge of it to the Phoenicians. Conf. Humboldt’s Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 160, Bohn’s edition. Such is the case with the Hair of Berenice, and Canopus, whose names are but of yesterday; and, as Aratus remarks, there are numbers which have not yet received any designation. Crates, therefore, is mistaken when, endeavouring to amend what is correct, he reads the verse thus: οἷος δ’ ἄμμορός ἐστι λοετρῶν, replacing οἴη by οἶς, with a view to make the adjective agree with the Arctic Circle, which is masculine; instead of the Arctic Constellation, which is feminine. The expression of Heraclitus is far more preferable and Homeric, who thus figuratively describes the Arctic Circle as the Bear,—The Bear is the limit of the dawn and of the evening, and from the region of the Bear we have fine weather. Now it is not the constellation of the Bear, but the Arctic Circle, which is the limit of the rising and the setting stars.
