Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/669

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Ogyges. 659 Homer, all parts of the world of waters were intimately con- nected together. From his inexhaustible fountain father Ocean fed the salt seas, and the fresh rivers : his streams trickled through subterraneous veins, and gushed out from the side of distant hills. Perhaps too his floods spread under the foundations of the earth, and made it quake with their surges. (II. XXI. 196.) Hence both Calypso and Praxidice, though not Proserpine, are Ogygian nymphs, and we may add that when Eleusis was called by some the son of Ogyges, while others made him to be the son of Daira, this was only a difference of one step in the same genealogy, since Daira, as Pausanias informs us (i. 38. 7.)? was herself the daughter of Oceanus. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the transition from this notion of the epithet Ogygian with which it is applied to the island and the mountain, to that of ancient^ is at least as simple and natural as that which J. K. suggests. Ogygian means that which is as old as the flood, the beginning of things. Still there may be some doubt about the precise reference of the epithet in the passages cited by J. K. and in some others. But it seems to be applied by Pindar to the mountains of Phlius in a sense very similar to that which must be given to it in the line of Dionysius 523, coyvyirj re 0acro9, /SrnmrjTepo^ aKTtj : where it is to be hoped the mention of Ceres will not seduce any one to think of the Eleusinian mysteries^. It denotes a seat of ancient wealth and renown, as in the line of the Philoctetes (142), where it is applied to the hereditary dominion of Neoptolemus (koclto^ wyvyiov). It may seem less clear why the poet gives the same epithet to the river Ladon (415). This might appear to be an application immediately derived from the primitive meaning of the word, rather than from the myth by which Eustathius explains it : that Daphne, the first mortal, sprang from Ladon and Earth. But until we have ascertained that Dionysius never used the word as an unmeaning ornament, it will not be safe to speculate on this point. 2 Notwithstanding the remark in Eudocia : eg apxri"^ r«V ^^^ A^ifxinpav iieydXiZ's eTLfjiwv, Eustathius is more rational : n-iiv Oda-ov wyvyn]v iyei Kai ArM^po^ Se QKTijvf Ota TO cvdaL/iXOV TYJ's vijfTov Kal evKapirov, Vol. II. No. 6. 4 P