42 STRABO. BOOK i. topographical descriptions he not unfrequently informs us of both these matters. Thus, " My abode Is sun-burnt Ithaca. Flat on the deep she lies, farthest removed Toward the west, while situate apart, Her sister islands face the rising day." l And, " It has a two-fold entrance, One towards the north, the other south." - And again, " Which I alike despise, speed they their course With right-hand flight towards the ruddy east, Or leftward down into the shades of eve." 3 Ignorance of such matters he reckons no less than confusion. " Alas ! my friends, for neither west Know we, nor east ; where rises or where sets The all-enlightening sun."* Where the poet has said properly enough, " As when two adverse winds, blowing from Thrace, Boreas and Zephyrus," 5 Eratosthenes ill-naturedly misrepresents him as saying in an absolute sense, that the west wind blows from Thrace ; where- as he is not speaking in an absolute sense at all, but merely of the meeting of contrary winds near the bay of Melas, 6 on the Thracian sea, itself a part of the ^Egrean. For where Thrace forms a kind of promontory, where it borders on Macedonia, 7 1 But it lies low, the highest in the sea towards the west, but those that are separated from it [lie] towards the east and the sun. Odyssey ix. 25. 2 Vide Odyssey xiii. 109, 111. 3 Which I very little regard, nor do I care for them whether they fly to the right, towards the morn and the sun, or to the left, towards the darkening west. Iliad xii. 239. 4 O my friends, since we know not where is the west, nor where the morning, nor where the sun. Odyssey x. 190. 5 The north and west winds, which both blow from Thrace. Iliad ix. 5. 6 Now the Bay of Saros. 7 These two provinces are comprised in the modern division of Rou- melia. A portion of Macedonia still maintains its ancient name Maki- dunia.
