I 252 HISTORY OF GREECE. fancy of the eastern Greek navigators : his sister Circe, origi- nally his fellow -resident, was localized by the western. The Hesiodic and other poems, giving expression to the imaginative impulses of the inhabitants of Cumse and other early Grecian settlers in Italy and Sicily, 1 had referred the wanderings of Odysseus to the western or Tyrrhenian sea, and had planted the Cyclopes, the Lsestrygones, the floating island of JEolus, the Lotophagi, the Phseacians, etc., about the coast of Sicily, Italy, Libya, and Korkyra. In this way the JEaean island, the resi dence of Circe, and the extreme point of the wanderings of Odysseus, from whence he passes only to the ocean and into Hades came to be placed in the far west, while the JEa, of -ZEetes was in the far east, not unlike our East and West In- dies. The Homeric brother and sister were separated and sent to opposite extremities of the Grecian terrestrial horizon. 2 The track from lolkos to Kolchis, however, though plausible as far as it went, did not realize all the conditions of the genuine fabulous voyage : it did not explain the evidences of the visit of these maritime heroes which were to be found in Libya, in Krete 1 Strabo, i. p. 23. Volcker (Ueber Homerische Geographic, v. 66) is in structive upon this point, as upon the geography of the Greek poets gene- rally. He recognizes the purely mythical character of -5a in Homer and Hesiod, but he tries to prove unsuccessfully, in my judgment that Homer places jEetes in the east, while Circe is in the west, and that Homer refers the Argonautic voyage to the Euxine Sea. 2 Strabo (or Polybius, whom he has just been citing) contends that Homer knew the existence of -<Eetes in Kolchis, and of Circe at Circeium, as histor- ical persons, as well as the voyage of Jason to JEa as an historical fact. Upon this he (Homer) built a superstructure of fiction (irpoafjLv-&EVpM) : ho invented the brotherhood between them, and he placed both the one and the other in the exterior ocean (avyyeveiaf re etr'kaae TUV OVTU diuKicrfievuv, a? c^uKtavLafj.bv u/j.<j>oiv, i. p. 20) ; perhaps also Jason might have wandered as far as Italy, as evidences (ffTjjuelu Tiva) are shown that he did (ib.). But the idea that Homer conceived JEetes in the extreme east and Circe in the extreme west, is not reconcilable with the Odyssey. The supposition of Strabo is alike violent and unsatisfactory. Circe was worshipped as a goddess at Circeii (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 19). Hesiod, in the Theogony, represents the two sons of Circe by Odysseus as reigning over all the warlike Tyrrhenians (Theog. 1012), an undefined western sovereignty. The great Mamilian gens at Tusculum traced thkii descent to Odysseus and Circe (Dionys. Hal. iv. 45).
