4. He portrays the happiness of the people of the West, and the salubrity of their climate, having no doubt heard of the abundance of Iberia,[1] which had attracted the arms of Hercules,[2] afterwards of the Phœnicians, who acquired there an extended rule, and finally of the Romans. There the airs of Zephyr breathe, there the poet feigned the fields of Elysium, when he tells us Menelaus was sent thither by the gods:
"Thee the gods
Have destined to the blest Elysian isles,
Earth's utmost boundaries. Rhadamanthus there
For ever reigns, and there the human kind
Enjoy the easiest life; no snow is there,
No biting winter, and no drenching shower,
But Zephyr always gently from the sea
Breathes on them, to refresh the happy race."[3]
5. The Isles of the Blest[4] are on the extreme west of Maurusia,[5] near where its shore runs parallel to the opposite coast of Spain; and it is clear he considered these regions also Blest, from their contiguity to the Islands.
6. He tells us also, that the Ethiopians are far removed, and bounded by the ocean: far removed,—
"The Ethiopians, utmost of mankind,
These eastward situate, those toward the west."[6]
- ↑ Gosselin remarks that in his opinion Strabo frequently attributes to Homer much information of which the great poet was entirely ignorant: the present is an instance, for Spain was to Homer a perfect terra incognita.
- ↑ The Phœnician Hercules, anterior to the Grecian hero by two or three centuries. The date of his expedition, supposing it to have actually occurred, was about sixteen or seventeen hundred years before the Christian era.
- ↑ But the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain, and the boundaries of the Earth, where is auburn-haired Rhadamanthus; there of a truth is the most easy life for men. There is nor snow, nor long winter, nor even a shower, but every day the ocean sends forth the gently blowing breezes of the west wind to refresh men." Odyssey iv. 563.
- ↑ The Isles of the Blest are the same as the Fortunate Isles of other geographers. It is clear from Strabo's description that he alludes to the Canary Islands; but as it is certain that Homer had never heard of these, it is probable that the passages adduced by Strabo have reference to the Elysian Fields of Baïa in Campania.
- ↑ The Maurusia of the Greeks (the Mauritania of the Latins) is now known as Algiers and Fez in Africa.
- ↑ The Ethiopians, who are divided into two divisions, the most distant of men. Odyssey i. 23.
