Man upon the sea : or, a history of maritime adventure, exploration, and discovery, from the earliest ages to the present time ... . as Polyphemus, who watchedfor the destruction of the mariner and even roasted and de-voured his quivering limbs; of treacherous enchantresses, such 54 MAN UPON THE SEA. as Circe, who lured but to ensnare; of amiable goddesses, likeCalypso, who offered immortality in exchange for love,—wasdoubtless believed by Homer, though we must make someallowance for poetical license. At any rate, the invention ofthese fables is not to be attributed to Homer, who, at the most,
Man upon the sea : or, a history of maritime adventure, exploration, and discovery, from the earliest ages to the present time ... . as Polyphemus, who watchedfor the destruction of the mariner and even roasted and de-voured his quivering limbs; of treacherous enchantresses, such 54 MAN UPON THE SEA. as Circe, who lured but to ensnare; of amiable goddesses, likeCalypso, who offered immortality in exchange for love,—wasdoubtless believed by Homer, though we must make someallowance for poetical license. At any rate, the invention ofthese fables is not to be attributed to Homer, who, at the most,trave a highly-colored repetition of the terrific reports broughtback from those formidable coasts by the few who had beenfortunate enough to return. It was thus that an ideal andpoetic character was communicated to the science of geographyby the fables with which Homer tinged his narrative. In theearly ages of the world, science and poetry were twin sisters :every poet was a savant, and every savant was a poet. As far as his ideas can be reduced to a system, the earthwas a flat disk, around which flowed the river Ocean. The. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HOMER. accompanying plan will enable the reader to form an adequateconception of the Homeric geography. The radius of theterritories described by Homer with any degree of precisionwas hardly three hundred miles in length. MAN UPON THE SEA. 55 Hesiod, who lived a century after Homer, thus states thescientific attainments of his time:—The space between theheavens and the earth is exactly the same as that between theearth and Tartarus beneath it. A brazen anvil, if tossed fromheaven, would fall during nine days and nine nights, and wouldreach the earth upon the tenth day. Were it to continue itscourse towards the abode of darkness, it would be nine daysand nine nights more in accomplishing the distance. It isworth while remarking that this statement is at variance withthat of Homer, who make$ Vulcan, when precipitated fromheaven by
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