18.
Such are the sentiments of Polybius; and in many respects they are correct enough; but when he discusses the voyage beyond the ocean, and enters on minute calculations of the proportion borne by the distance to the number of days, he is greatly mistaken. He alleges perpetually the words of the poet,
“Nine days by cruel storms thence was I borne;”
but at the same time he takes no notice of this expression, which is his as well,
“And now borne sea-ward from the river stream
Of the Oceanus;”128
and this,
“In the island of Ogygia, the centre of the sea,”129and that the daughter of Atlas130 dwells there. And the following concerning the Phæacians,
“Remote amid the billowy deep, we hold
Our dwelling, utmost of all human kind,
And free from mixture with a foreign race.”131
These passages clearly refer to the Atlantic Ocean,132 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 Parthenope133 the Siren, or the inhabitants of Cumæ, Dicæarchia,134 and Vesuvius [to bear their testimony] to Pyriphlegethon, the Marsh of Acherusia,135 to the oracle of the dead which was near Aornus,136 and to Baius and Misenus,137 the companions of Ulysses. The same is the case with the Sirenussae, and the Strait of Messina, and Scylla, and Charybdis, and Æolus, 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.
