homer's geographical knowledge. 63 



Besides the facts contained in this passage, it is worth re- 

 marking that Homer seems to regard ship-builders with no 

 little consideration, inasmuch as he calls them " artists." 



The Greeks, like the Hebrews, were ignorant of the real 

 figure of the earth. It is in Homer that we find the first 

 written trace of the widely prevalent idea that the earth is a 

 flat surface begirt on every side by the ocean. This was a 

 natural belief in a region almost insular, like Greece, where the 

 visible horizon and an enveloping sea suggested the idea of a flat 

 circle. Homer took the lead among the poetic geographers of 

 Greece, and his authority gave to the subject a fanciful cast, 

 the traces of which are not yet obliterated. Beneath the earth 

 he placed the fabled regions of Elysium and Tartarus : above 

 the whole rose the grand arch of the heavens, which were sup- 

 posed to rest on the summits of the highest mountains. The 

 sun, moon, and stars were believed to rise from the waves of 

 the sea, and to sink again beneath them on their return from 

 the skies. 



Homer's distribution of the land was even more fantastic. 

 Beyond the limits of Greece and the western coasts of Asia 

 Minor his knowledge was uncertain and obscure. He had 

 heard vaguely of Thebes, the mighty capital of Egypt, and in 

 his verse sang of its hundred gates and of the countless hosts 

 it sent forth to battle. The Ethiopians, who lived beyond, were 

 deemed to be the. most remote dwellers upon the habitable earth. 

 Towards the centre of Africa were the stupendous ridges of the 

 Atlas Mountains : Homer deified the highest peak, and made it 

 a giant supporting upon his shoulders the outspreading canopy 

 of the heavens. The narrow passage leading from the Mediter- 

 ranean to the Atlantic, and now known as the Straits of Gibral- 

 tar, was believed to have been discovered by Hercules, and the 

 mountains on either side — Gibraltar and Ceuta — were, from 

 him, called the Pillars of Hercules. 



Colchos, upon the Black Sea, was believed to be an ocean- 



