TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

I am posting this very rough draft because the task of getting it edited and into print format has proven more
considerable than I anticipated. The print format of the first two chapters can be accessed at greenmac.com.
I learned of this book from a study which cited it as a source for James Joyce in writing Ulysses. I was amazed to
discover that it has apparently never been reprinted. In it I found answers to the confusion and questions which have been
with me ever since first reading Homer’s works. It has been immensely satisfying to translate it. I hope that I have made
things clear.

PREFACE

______

I give here the first volume of my work The Phoenicians and the Odyssey. Of the twelve books which should
form the complete work, this volume contains the first five; they will take the reader up to the moment when Ulysses tells
his story before a Pheacian audience:

FIRST BOOK. - Topology and Toponyny.

SECOND BOOK - The Telemachea.
THIRD BOOK - Calypso.
FOURTH BOOK - The Phoenician navigations.
FIFTH BOOK - Nausicaä.

The second volume will comprise the entire account of Ulysses to Alkinoös, then his departure from Pheacia and
his return to Eumaus; I would particularly insist on the marvelous adventures of the Nostos:

SIXTH BOOK - The Song of the Corsairs.

SEVENTH BOOK - Lotus-eaters and Cyclops.
EIGHTH BOOK - Aeolos and the Lestrygons.
NINTH BOOK - Circe and the Land of the Dead.
TENTH BOOK - The Sirens, Charybdis and Scylla, the Isle of the Sun.
ELEVENTH BOOK - Ithaca.
TWELFTH BOOK - The Composition of the Odysseia.

My study ends with the return of Ulysses to his Ithaca. I do not take the entire Odyssey, but only the Telemachea
and the Nostos, that which I term the Odysseia or the Ulyssiad, properly speaking, that which the Ancients named the

1
Return or the Wanderings of the hero. I leave aside the entire third episode of the poem in its present state and I stop at
canto XVII: the Battle against the Suitors appears to me another poem of an entirely different author and genre... I hope
that the second volume will appear toward the end of the present year or by the beginning of the year 1903.

This work is the result of a multiple collaboration. Beginning during my stay at l’École française d’Athènes (1887 -
1890), followed by a thesis at lÉcole Normale on the Origine des Cultes Arcadiens (Thorin, 1894), announced in the
Annales de Géographie (1895-1896) by a series of articles on the Méditerranée Phénicienne, this study of primitive
Greece took its present form during my teaching at l’École des Hautes Études. Since the day when the department of
Historical and Philological Sciences decided to entrust me with a chair of geographic history of antiquity (February
1896), I have devoted one of my conferences each zear to some field of the Homeric world.
By my masters and colleagues, by my listeners and students, the École des Hautes Études has for six years furnished
me the most useful assistance. I would again like to thank, as they deserve, M. H. Derenbourg for his advice, MM. H.
Hubert and R. Dussaud for their contributions and corrections. I would especially like to say how much I owe to the
missing master, A. Carrière, whose nearly universal erudition and always ready assistance noöne, myself included, has
been able to put to [more] profit: after having directed the testing of my first hypotheses, he continued his priceless advice
for seven or eight years.

When all the materials of the work were assembled, in March 1901, I undertook to make the voyage of Ulysses and,
with my own eyes, on site, verify the specifics and descriptions of the books. During the voyage (March-June), Mme
Victor Bérard, who accompanied me, was a collaborator at all times: it is to her that I owe most of the illustrations of this
work. She took the photographs of all the sites and composed the views of the coasts and sea; beyond the photographs
reproduced in the two volumes, she has furnished me with hundreds of documents which have permitted me to write a
minute and faithful description of all the Odyssian lands.

M. and Mme Édouard Hébert, who have patiently aided or directed in the puting into print the photographic
documents; the commandant of Gerlach and MM. J. Bonnier and Perez, who will make the voyage of Calypso for me; M.
Neuville, consul of France at Gibraltar, who helped procure me certain photographs of the strait; M. G. Maspero and his
editors, MM. Hachette & co., who have loaned me the plates from their fine Histoire Ancienne; M. Salomon Reinach and
the directors of the Revue Archéologique, who collected the first essays of this volume in long articles from it; MM. C.
Jullian and H. Hubert, who have taken the pains to reread all the printed pages; M. Théo van Rysselberghe, who designed
the letters and design of the cover; finally, my dear master, M. Paul Vidal de Lablanche, and my dear editors, MM. Max
Leclerc and Henri Bourrelier, who have allowed me to present to the public the result of my researches with all the
necessary illumanation of illustrations and charts; may all those who have aided and sustained me accept my most sincere
thanks.

Paris, the 1st of March 1902

THE PHOENICIANS AND THE ODYSSEY

2
 VICTOR BÉRARD

Translation by MILAN L. HOPKINS, M.D.

VOLUME I

TABLE OF CONTENTS
_____

FIRST BOOK
TOPOLOGY AND TOPONYMY

Chapter I. - THE STUDY OF GREEK ORIGINS

Homer, disciple of the Phoenicians - The topology - Tyrinth and Mycenae - Mediterranian history - The
thalassocracies - Archeological methods and discoveries - Archeologists and Paleontologists.

Chapter II - THE PLACES AND THE NAMES

The layers of the Mediterranian - The Astypales - Kos and Kalymnos - The onomasty - Systems of names -
Transcriptions, puns and doublets - The Odyssey and the Nautical Instructions.
_____

SECOND BOOK
THE TELEMACHEA

Chapter I. - SEA ROUTES AND LAND ROUTES

Three Pylos and three Pheres - Minimal navigations and maximal portages - The “law of isthmuses” - Ilium -
Peloponnesian routes - Nelean Pylos - The Door of the Sands.

Chapter II. - THE NELEIDS IN MOREA AND IN ASIA MINOR

Pylians, Eleans and Arcadians - The Phera of Dioicles - PreHellenic Arcadia - Routes and bazaars of the Alph -
Olympia and Phygalia - Neda and Zeus Lykaios - Pylos and Patras - Pointed isles - Neleid royalties.
_______

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 THIRD BOOK
CALYPSO

Chapter I. - THE PRIMITIVE NAVIES AND THEIR ESTABLISHMENTS

A sailors’ paradise - Springs - The Homeric galleys - Egyptians and Peoples of the sea - Caverns - Parasitic isles -
Strophades and Delos - Marathon - Trees and lookouts.

Chapter II. - A FOREIGN STATION

Megara - Minoa - Boeotian routes - Anthropomorphism - Scylla - Repositories - Salamina - Phoenician Boeotia
- Kithera - Megarian history.

Chapter III. - THE ISLE OF THE HIDEOUT

Atlas and the Mount of Apes - Pillars of the sky - Strait of Gibralter - Abila - The Columns - The isle of Calypso -
Peregil - Ispania - Phoenicians and periple - The raft of Ulysses.
_______

FOURTH BOOK
THE PHOENICIAN NAVIGATIONS

Chapter I. - THE ISLE SYRIA

Phoenicians and Homeric poems - Syria - Syros, Delos and Mykonos - Greco-Semitic doublets - Soloi -
Anemourion - Nagidos - Kragos, Solyma, Ethiopias - Kasos, Rheneia, Samos - Paxos, Amorgos, Siphnos, Seriphos -
Syria-the-Rock - Thouria, Naxos.

Chapter II. - SIDONIANS AND MARSEILLIANS

Foreign Artists - Seers - Io and the beautiful Maltese - Trading posts - Foodstuffs - Wine - Slaves and Metals.

Chapter III. - FABRICS AND MANUFACTURES

Nicknacks - Chiton, phare and othons - The purpura - Laconia and fisheries - Kythera - The fisheries of the gulf of
Corinth - The Boeotian Heracles - Tin and bronze - Arms and utensils - Glass and amber - The Black Sea and the
Baltic.

Chapter IV. - RHYTHMS AND NUMBERS

The week - Seven Sages, Seven Ports, Seven Isles, Seven Rocks - Halcyons, anopaia, seals - The colonization of
Thera - Mainotes and Islanders.
_______

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 FIFTH BOOK
NAUSIKAA

Chapter I. - THE ISLE OF THE CRUISER

The storm of Ulysses - Pheacia and Corfu - The Pheacian vessels - The Dragon and the Boat - Kerkyra - Sheria -
The ports of Alkinoös - Corfu and Cassopo - The Savage Sea.

Chapter II. - THE TOWN AND THE RIVER

Aphiona - Palaio-Castrizza - The town of Alkinoös - The palace and the agora - The orchard of the king - The spring
of the suburb - The sacred grove and the spring of Athena - The river and the laundries - The cove of the shipwreck.

Chapter III. - THE PHEACIANS

The ferrymen of Pheacia - Pheacians and Pargans - Foreign towns and coastal rivers - Asso - The origin of the
Pheacians - The Cyclops and Kumë - The date of the Odysseia - Ulysses and Minos.

FIRST BOOK

TOPOLOGY AND TOPONYMY

ουδε γαρ θεριστη και ακαπανει αλλα τω πεισθηναι

δυναμένω την την ο‘ύτω έκειν την ‘όλην...

STRAB., II, p. 110.

CHAPTER I

THE STUDY OF THE GREEK ORIGINS

τους δε Φοίνικας λέγω μηνυτάς

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 STRAB., III, p. 150.

The collection of studies which we are going to follow is nothing but the development of one or two phrases of
Strabo: If Homer described exactly the countries of the inner sea as well as those of the outer sea, it is because he had the
knowledge of the Phoenicians, ο‘ι γαρ Φοίνικες εδήλουν τουτο; the Phoenicians, conquerors of Libya and Iberia, had
been his teachers, τους δε Φοίνικας λέγω μηνυτάς. Many episodes and verses, fully a half perhaps of the Odyssey,
furnish, I believe, the proofs of this assertion. I would like to add most particularly ten or eleven verses of the Ulyssiad,
properly speaking, cantos V-XV of the poem in its present redaction. This episode appears to me, more than all the others,
to still retain traces of its origin. In separating it from the rest of the poem, I do not intend to prejudge, for the moment, at
least, its date, author or composition. For the rest, we must argue the fundamental unity of the poem in its entirety. From
this we accept in it, if you will, the most respectable beliefs of the tradition: we believe in the existence of a great and
venerable poet, of a Homer, composer or collector of the Odyssey. This matters little to the theme I wish to establish. This
thesis agrees similarly the most easily with the belief of unity: I imagine more easily a person who was audience and
student of Phoenician knowledge.
But if one then accepts this belief, one is obliged to recognize in the Odyssey three great episodes, which, juxtaposed,
fuse, if you will, into an admirable unity meanwhile existing discernibly like the crystals in the fabric of the most perfect
granite. The first four verses of the poem are in reality a Telemachead or, as the title of the second verse, a voyage of
Telemachus, Τηλεμάχου Αποδημία: Telemachus is the hero in it: the voyage of Telemachus to Pylos, Pheres and Sparta is
all of the subject there; Ulysses does not appear except in a very dim distance, like a character from a second or third
theme. Only in the fifth verse does the Ulyssiad begin, Οδύσσεια, Odysseia, the return of Ulysses, Οδυσσέως Νόστος, or,
as Strabo says, the Wandering of Ulysses, Οδυσσεως πλάνε. Then, during a dozen verses (V-XV) unfolds the adventure of
the Return. Ulysses occupies the entire scene. There are the ten verses which I term the Odyssey properly speaking…in
verse XV finally opens the third part, the Battle against the Suitors, which one may term Mnesteria, Μνστηρία, if one
wishes to coin a name from the patron of the Gigantia, Γιγαντία, or Mnesterophonia, Μνηστηροφονία, if one wishes to
apply the title of verse XXII to the entire ending of the poem.
The second episode, the Ulyssiad, the ten verses of the Odyssey properly speaking, should concern us especially.
We do not neglect the rest of the poem. It is with the study of the Telemachead that we begin, and from the
Mnesterophonia that we take some arguments and examples. We use the entire poem as if it were in reality the personal
and intangible work of a Homer, of whom one must respect all the words and concepts; In the whole and in the details we
follow the “Most Homerics”, of whom Strabo speaks, who apply themselves to all the verses of the epic, ο‘ι
‘Ομηρικώτεροι τοις έπεσιν ακολουθουντες. But it is especially the Ulyssiad, the Adventures or Wandering of Ulysses,
Οδυσσέως Πλάνη, which I hold in view when I recall the affirmation of geography for my account: “The prime source of
Homer has been from Phoenician accounts or documents.” The Ulyssiad appears to me a Phoenician periple
(circumnavigation) (of Sidon, Carthage or others) transposed into Greek verse and poetic legends, following a certain
number of very simple and very Greek procedures, so to speak. Anthropomorphic personification of objects,
humanization of natural forces, Hellenization of the material – by the same processes, which furnish them so much of
their myths and legends, the Hellenes embroider, over a solid but gross Semitic canvas, that work of art and truly Greek
opus which is the Odyssey.
It is, as one sees, the same affirmation of eastern influences transported in the history of Greek literature, which for the
past thirty years has renewed the history of Greek art. And it is also the entire problem of Greek origins posed in a new
fashion, over the texts and realities, and no more over the monuments or the myths. For the evidences and the proofs, I
wish to recover, in effect, two types of studies which have not yet been applied to the problem. By themselves alone, they
appear to me capable of the resolution. Up until now only the archeology and linguistics have been recovered. I will
confess right now my lack of confidence in archeology. The linguistics, on the other hand, and philology, can furnish
some good clues. The books of Otto Keller, of Muss-Arnolt and of H. Lewy give us the words borrowed by the Greeks

6
from Semitic vocabularies. We suspect the borrowing of Greek civilization from oriental civilizations. When we establish
in the Homeric poems the presence of authentically Semitic words, when we see the animals of the sea, birds and fish to
carry in the Odyssey the same names as in scripture, γύψ, ανοπαια, κήυξ, φωκαι, σκωπες, etc, and the arms ξίφος,
μαχαίρα, and the cloths όθοναι, φαρος, χιτωνες, and the fermented drinks οινος, νέκταρ, etc. in Ithaca have the same
probable names as in Tyre, we are forced to ask ourselves which of the two races lived among the clientel of the other.
But if one approaches the problem of Greek origins by linguistics, it is to be feared that the solution may be difficult and
disputable to some. The transfer of words from one language to another is difficult to entirely prove and frequently
impossible to admit accomplished. Similarly, when it is from resemblances which one cannot deny, again some prefer not
to see anything but fortuitous resemblances and the effects of the cause, so convenient to invoke, which they term chance.
Moreover, the relationships between Greeks and Semites have always been perceived according to certain prejudices
which incline the mind to contradictory conclusions. It will be found for a long time still by valiant hearts to defend the
sacred patrimony of the Indo-European ancestors and to repulse all invasions of the Greek territory, citadel and temple of
western culture, from Semitic influences. Linguistics alone, I believe, would not suffice to disarm these prejudices. I wish
to employ some less doubtful arguments from two other fields of study: toponymy and topology.
Toponymy, study of place names, is sufficiently familiar to all to have no need of other definition. But the small sway
of etymology, to which all, learned or ignorant, resort, has lessened that research in the public esteem. This influence can
easily be improved. If one is willing to consult all of the resources of vocabulary and comparative grammar, each proper
noun (name), in whichever language, is subject to numerous etymologies, apparently satisfactory and likely…one should
not, I believe, engage in toponymy other than by a prudent usage, following the strict rules which I will presently
formulate. As for the new word, topology, herewith the reasons I have coined it and for what I intend it.
In his dissertation on “The types of Greek settlements during antiquity,” G. Hirschfeld regretted the absence of a
suitable word for the type of study he undertook. He thought that the description of ancient sites and emplacements,
ancient topography, did not suffice. He wished to found a science of sites, which would give us not only the aspect of
locations, with their reciprocal situation, lines of communication and intervening obstacles, but which would further be
able to explain the particular history of different settlements, the cause for their existence and the rôle of each in the
general history. This science of sites is not topography, a simple description of places, but should be the extension and
compliment to it. Coordinating the descriptions of topography, it should derive historic laws. For it is apparent that from
natural conditions spring, always the same, certain social consequences. I have thought that that one could always
determine what sort of human society has existed or has been able to exist in the presence of a habitat, what state of
civilization the people have known, what their occupations and dreams were, what degree, what minimum and maximum
of prosperity they could achieve; in brief, what combination of material and moral conditions endured for their successive
generations to achieve, for the birth, growth, continuance or disappearance of their community in that place.
G. Hirschfeld appears to me to be totally correct. It is the general laws of the environment and domicile which preside
over the formation and persistence, as over the displacement and diversion, of human communities. The prosperity or the
ruin of a town sometimes appear the sudden work of one man: Alexander founds Alexandria; Scipio destroys Carthage.
But each apparent work is but the culmination of slow labor of a thousand obscure forces over which human will does not
have sudden control. The surrounding world, the force of things, as people say, is here the great cause. It is the changes of
the outer world which effect the changes in our towns: the explored Atlantic made the fortune of Cadiz; the Red sea
opened across the ablated isthmus reanimated all the Mediterranean ports…the nature and location of their influences, the
fauna and flora of their terrain impose inescapable conditions of habitat upon diverse populations, and the conditions are
ruled by laws as general and fixed as all other earthly phenomena. Human caprice always miscarries when it tries to revolt
against the laws: some French prefective or sub-prefecture, where the state arbitrarily wished to make the capitol of a
district, remains a miserable burg after a hundred fifty years. Human labor avails naught unless it studies and respects the
laws. In tne fifth century BC the Rhodans understood that their old ports, Lindos, Kamiros and Ialysos no longer suited
the orientation of the new commerce between Greece and the Levant; they chose at the other end of their isle, at the strait,

7
the point of passage most frequented by vessels; at the appropriate site their new capitol of Rhodes became the great
emporium of the following centuries.
There exist laws of topology: it matters to discern them; it is easy to discern them, especially by communities which
have disappeared. Throughout all the centuries, a village of fishermen will not have the same needs nor, consequently, the
same site as a village of shepherds. From one era to another, the same fishing village will be able to move. It will
emigrate from the seashore to the slopes or the summit of the coastal mountains, according to the security or insecurity of
the beach, according to the presence or absence of pirate ships, corsairs and enemies. In parallel, the same village of
shepherds will install itself at the bottom of valleys if it should live on its cattle, will encroach the mountainside if it lives
on its goats, or will redouble itself in a summer village near the summit and a winter village near the maritime pasturage if
it lives on its migratory sheep. Additionally the differences of the social state: slave shepherds, hired shepherds or
shepherd owners have entirely different huts, farms or villages. Add further the differences of the political state: the
laborer of the Roman Peace will not have to fear the roads or the plains nor to curtail his pleasures like the peasant of the
Persian wars. And one recognizes without difficulty the similar differences between the foundations of diverse navies
upon a foreign coast.
Uniquely occupied by commerce, without ambitions of conquest, without need of lands to colonize, such a navy is
long content to survey the great sea routes and establish a fortress or depot on the promontories: it held Gibraltar without
possessing Spain; it occupied Aden without penetrating Arabia. Another navy, to the contrary, intended nothing but
domination and conquest: in no way was it able to set foot without immediately dreaming of penetrating to the interior of
a continental empire; it does not occupy Algiers without gong to the desert or, from there, to the other coast of the African
continent; it is installed in Saigon and, bit by bit, counts on possessing up to China. The ancient navies present in this
point the same differences from our modern navies. On their return to Sicily, the Phoenicians, occupied solely with
commerce, says Thucydides, εμποριας ‘ένεκεν, sought only stations and warehouses: it occupied only the coastal islands
and promontories. The Greek colonies desired fields to cultivate grapes and olives: they continue to occupy the plains and
ocean coasts and little by little sought to dominate the entire island. It appears to me needless to insist on the differences
of establishments other than following the difference of concept. It suffices to regard English Gibraltar and French
Algiers, insular Syriacuse of the Phoenicians and continental Syriacuse of the Hellenes.
It is thus that certain topological laws are so general and fixed that they emerge in a bird’s-eye view. Prepare a list of
the great ports on the Atlantic ocean: all are on the estuary of a river or stream: Lisbon on the Tage, Bordeaux on the
Garrone, Nantes on the Loire, Anvers on the Escaut, London on the Thames, Hamburg on the Elbe, etc. in contrast,
prepare the list of Mediterranean ports: all are away from streams, which do not serve them, lacking tides to sweep the
estuaries of fevers and shallows. All are, however, situated in the proximity of streams which bring them the commerce of
the interior: Barcelona near the Ebre, Marseille near the Rhone, Livourne near the Arno, Salonica near the Vardar, Milet
near the Meander, Alexandria near the Nile, all the Mediterranean ports are situated at the exterior limits of deltas, at the
edge of rocky coasts, on a promontory or isle, but near a stream. Thus when an Atlantic port appears to escape the law,
one seeks the reason. The same if we entirely ignore the history of Cherbourg, we can infer, solely from the plan of its
route, that only a military port can install itself in the secluded bay without a route of access to the interior of the region.
That in the ancient Mediterranean, similarly, we might find Loryma isolated on the Rhodian peree, far from any plain,
delta or route of access: we can affirm that Loryma, of which we know nothing, was the Cherbourg, I would say the
military port, the arsenal and dockyard of the Rhodans.
G. Hirschfeld gave to the research and study of these laws the name of “typology of settlements, typologie
Griechischer ausliedlungen.” For this name, a bit long and too unclear, one advantageously substitutes that of topology, I
believe.
The new word is understood by itself. Topology, science of place, would be to topography, simple description of
place, exactly as geology is to geography. Topography, in effect, using our present or past experience, describes the state
of places, the surface of sites, such as the eye of man has seen or been able to see. Similarly, geography describes the
aspects of the earth’s surface in all the regions and all the epochs where human experience can penetrate for us. But one

8
must resort to geology if one wishes to understand the innate nature of the continents, the reasons for their depressions
and reliefs, the laws and means of their formations and deformations, in brief, the earlier or higher history to the human
experience, the explanation and no longer solely the description of our planet. Similarly to geology, topology explains to
us the descriptions and separates the sites into a certain number of categories. It shows together how each class of sites
corresponds to or opposes each other class and how such categories of habitats pertain to the same form of society as such
others. It finally explains why such states of material and social life impose on human communities the choice of this or
that refuge, etc. Inversely, in the presence of a given site, it will search for why and when the habitat was adopted; under
what conditions and how long a time it was able to maintain; how, overpopulated at one epoch, it became deserted or little
frequented some generations later; why a given route, long traveled, fell later to disuse; why such a port vainly opens its
hospitable arms today to vessels of its route, which filled with fleets of preceding ages; why a given capitol died and why
a given town took its place. In brief, in the present and in the past, topology dictated the lessons of human habitats and
reciprocally, in the face of human habitat it induced the conditions which had given it birth, the type and period of the
civilization to which it should relate. One wishes examples?
First regard, near ourselves, on the French coast, the distribution of maritime towns in the vicinity of Brittany. You
see immediately that the towns classify in two categories. The ones which were important and celebrated in the history of
ducal Brittany, Dinan, Treguier, Lannion, Morlaix, Landerneau, Quimper, Hennebont, Inray, Vannes and Nantes, are in
contact with the sea and live, in part, the maritime life. But they are only river ports, distant from the coast. Their sites
were determined by the meeting of two indispensable conditions. Living from the sea, the towns needed to port a fleet.
But fearing also incursions of the English, Spanish and other peoples from the sea, they needed to avoid the attacks and
blows of force. They have found the two conditions filled, convenience and security, at the last point where the tide raises
the rivers: they are ports but they also are bridges. After them other more recent towns have grown bit by bit, threatening
to eclipse them. Celebrated and important in the history of French Brittany, St. Malo, Paimpol, Brest, Douarnenez,
Concarneau, Lorent, Quiberon and St. Nazaire, all the new towns are near the sea, installed on the coast. On the routes or
in the estuaries, each has taken, for the new commerce, the rôle which one of the old towns had for the commerce of the
past. The prosperity of St. Malo has succeeded Dinan; today what are Landerneau or Hennebont after Brest or Lorient?
What will Nantes presently be after St. Nazaire? Thus there is a simple classing of topographical descriptions which
explains to us all the history of these habitats. Similarly if we entirely ignore the history of Hennebont we may, in
replacing the bead in the necklace of Breton towns, infer that at the time of ducal Brittany the river port partook of the
glory and importance similar to Dinan, Quimper or Vannes. Now we take another group of maritime and continental
towns in a similar territory, but far from us, in an ancient land.
In the Argolide plain – still so strangled between the gulf and the mountains, three or four emplacements have been
seen turn by turn to succeed each other as flourishing capitols, Mycenae, Tirynth, Argos and Nauplia. We know by
written history that, on its rocky coast, by a large harbor, Nauplia is the large town, since foreign navies use the waters.
The same for Argos, the written history gives us comment. A little up the outlet of the stream, at the foot of its strong
citadel, along the coasts planted with grapes, at the horn of hills covered with sheep and goats, at the edge of cultivated
fields, the Greek of French Argos has lived on its harvest and its troops. By the written evidence we see without difficulty
the reason of these two choices. But it remains to us to similarly explain the sites of Tirynthe and Mycenae. They also
correspond to a certain type of existence, to a certain state of society and traffic, which we no longer know from the
written evidence but can infer solely from the evidence of the location. Tirynthe emerges from the alluvium over its rocky
islet at the edge of the swampy beach. Today the edge of the gulf is somewhat distant. During times prior to ours the
stream has silted up and extended. Formerly, the sea probably had its narrow surf and incline for drayage nearer the walls:
Tirynth, grounded amid its roses and herbs, appears like another Aigues-Mortes. Its thick walls and steep terrace
dominate the plain and survey the gulf. But, enclosed narrowly on its entirely small rock, Tirynth is not a city of
commerce and a great place of war like Aigues-Mortes. Tirynth is just a feudal castle, a fortified palace with storehouses
bastioned or cut into the rock…it is similar in all points to the residences of the Turkish and Albanian beys or Druse and
Arabic emirs which our navies have known or met again on the coast of Turkey: it is a fortress containing the palace for a

9
lord and his ladies, and storehouses for his harvests and tributes. A French traveler from Arvieux describes for us the
Tirynths constructed in their time by the Druse emirs in Tripoli, Beirut, Caifa, on all the Syrian coast:

At Akka, on passing the mouth of the port, one sees the ruins of an ancient palace which the Druse princes built on the ruins of a
church. Some distance from these, there is a large square tower which is termed in honor “the castle.” It is the residence of an aga
who has under his command ten or twelve Janissaries, who comprise the garrison of the town, with four small cannon pieces to deal
with the pirates who would descend and pillage the stores. At Saida, the emir Pekhardin has brought from Italy a number of
engineers, architects and all sorts of workers for the fortification of his places and the decoration of his palace.

It is not other than (we return to the subject) that, following the tradition, the emirs of Tirynth brought foreign builders
for the fortification and establishment of their residence. We pass to Mycenae and make the same comparison. On the
flank of the hills, at the most remote corner of the plain, at a station near the coast, near dependable springs, (a rare thing
in this arid land, in this Argolide of thirst, polydipsion Argos) squatting behind the ridges and among the ravines, hiding
its entry and covering its rear, Mycenae is a retreat for men at arms. The archeologists ask themselves why so many
ramparts and towers.

All the precautions have been secured to close the route of invasion. Here a tower is placed at the edge of the road, at the entrance
of a defile. There a sort of garrison, which could contain three or four hundreds men. Of the fortified camps the most curious is that
of which the ramparts surround the summit of Mt. Elie (800 meters above sea level). One asks oneself what could be served by
making all this arrangement of walls and gates…it appears that the Mycenaeans, accustomed to piling their quarters of rocks, have
built this fort for the pleasure of building and have achieved here a truly useless labor…on the other hand, it was a site admirably
chosen for a lookout. From the summit the view commands all the hills of the Argolide, from the Saronic Gulf to the gulf of Argos,
and discovers the bottoms of all, the valleys through which an army might march to Mycenae.

In reality, Mycenae wholly resembles the lookouts of the armatoles or dervendjis which the caravans of the last
century encountered at all the defiles (dervend) of Pinde, the Balkans, Taurus or Libya. For Mycenae surveys a dervend
much trafficked. At its foot begins the defile which leads from the plain of Argos to the beach of Corinth. Acrocorinth and
Mycenae are the two gates of the narrow route on which Hercules encountered the Nemean lion, on which today the
locomotives conduct to the quays of Corinth the voyagers arriving at the quays of Nauplia. Mycenae is the veritable key
of land passage between the Argolide and Leponte gulfs. Now we see the consequence of what importance the land
passages might be for the primitive navies…in the dervends of modern Turkey the band might not be more often of
Albanians, Bosnians, Kurds, Tartars or Bedouins than of poor mercenaries in the pay of the great lord or his pashas. The
dervendjis rarely operate for their own gain. It is but a small part of the ransoms and tolls exacted by them from the
caravans which remains in their hands. Poorly clothed and armed, lodged in infested hovels, camped under a canvas or
camel-hair tent, these sorry fellows make a sad figure. Their desert posts are allowed but miserable ruins. Mycenae was
rich, well-built, ευκτιμενον. We admire the ruins of the “golden town”, πολυχρυσοιο Μυκηνης. The barons of Mycenae
did not have to render account of their extortions to any suzerain.
But, apart and otherwise, at Mycenae as at Tirynth, certain conditions neatly appear which were indispensable to the
founding and prosperity of the habitat. If certain of the conditions are not filled, it is impossible that it might be the past
solution to the problem which we come to constitute. What are the good of the fortifications and storehouses of Tirynth,
on the Argolide coast, if foreign ships do not come into the gulf to load the provisions which the levies of the neighboring
country accumulate with the lord? In the time of the French navy, it is through trafficking with the people of the sea that
the Syrian emirs, the Turkish agas and dere-beys and the Albanian beys and captains install the parallel Tirynths on the
shores of Europe and Asia. Similarly, what use serve the impregnable ramparts of Mycenae and where would the riches
accumulated in its vaults be sold if the route below had not been frequented by rich caravans, if at the stopping place, near
the spring, a duty had not been levied on a regular traffic between the two seas of the east and west?
Take a more precise term of comparison in Albania and see how, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the beys
of Elbassan, Berat and Tepeleni have lived. At the entrance of the dervends which lead from the Adriatic coast to the

10
interior valleys of Pinde, the beys have been able to build great castles containing sumptuous residences only at the
expense of Valachian muleteers who, from the ports of Durazzo and Avlona, vend European merchandise in Macedonia
or Thessaly. The pillaging nobles levy a fat duty on the European traffic which the insecurity of the sea forces to take a
land route. The ships from Trieste or Venice carry to the Adriatic coast, to Raguse, Durazzo or Avlona the cargo which
the muleteers load to convey through Pinde to Monastor, Larissa, Salonica and Constantinople. When the land traffic
from Valaques diminishes, when our large ships see their way to wind around the peninsula, across the sea free of pirates,
the power of the Albanian beys and the wealth of their holdings is done. Their strong walls crumble today like the
ramparts of Mycenae. The fate of the ali-pasha, the bey of beys can thus teach us of the fate of Agamemnon, the king of
kings. Mycenae cannot be understood without the transit of foreign commerce on its route, without the arrival of foreign
merchandise on the beaches of Nauplia and Corinth.
It is by similar determinations that topology will especially serve ancient studies. In the light of present or permanent
facts it will give us a better knowledge of the details and missing chapters of history. On this thin, very thin layer of
written history which we know, it will well recover the enigmas where it alone will be able to give us account, but, under
that layer or outside of it, it will retrieve still many more mysteries, and there are the deep abysses of primitive, savage or
unknown humanity which it will especially aid us to clarify. Prehistory and the history of origins become its domain. It
will give us numerous clues which it alone will be able to rediscover. It will classify and explain for us a large number of
documents which other studies can furnish (archeology, linguistics, anthropology, etc.), but which only it can sort and
date with a reasonable approximation. I believe it will resolve the problem of Greek origins.

*
* *

The written history of the Mediterranean begins for us with the Greeks. So far as we go back in our common notion of
Mediterranean navigation, it is the Greeks who therein occupy the origins. Their hero navigators seem to us lost in the
mist of myths, in the twilight of the gods. We believe, at one time more or less reasoned, but rather generally, that at the
beginning it was the Greeks, and that the Greeks made everything for the foundation of the commerce of the sea: we rank
their Argonauts at the head of the most ancient conquerors, whose daring opened the roads of all the most mysterious
oceans. Upon reflection, however, some impossibilities appear. Greek history reaches back only a dozen centuries before
our era. If one thinks of the thousands of years of Chinese, Assyrian or Egyptian chronology, the Greek history appears as
the beginning of modern times, and, truly, modern history opens with the Persian wars. Is it believable that, up to the
times so near to ours, the Mediterranean had no navigators? Let us examine, equally superficially, the sites and conditions
of the sea.
The Mediterranean is cut by peninsulas into a large number of small basins. There are a hundred hospitable coasts, a
multitude of routes and ports, chains of islands soliciting the curiosity of the landsman and creating in him the spirit of
adventure. It has a system of stable and moderate winds. The Mediterranean has its tempests and its dangers. But it has
neither the cyclones nor the reefs of the great oceans. For a period of bad weather, which occupies four or five months of
its winter, it offers in the course of its summer seven or eight months of almost certain good weather. The alternation of
determined seasons is made for inspiring the confidence of unstable ships. Further extend the list with other advantages:
the proximity of forests, abundance of resinous and easily worked wood, lack of tides, weakness of currents and, above
all, rarity of bars and tidal bores which, in the oceans, place a wall between the shipping of rivers and ocean navigation,
etc…the conclusion is nearly inevitable: the Mediterranean has not remained, for hundreds of centuries, a sea deserted by
men, abandoned to flocks of birds and sea monsters.
“The great navigations,” it is said, “did not commence until the eleventh or tenth century before our era, with the
Greeks, with the contemporaneous populations or their direct ancestors. For there are races to whom navigation and

11
colonization are antipathetic.” – On the periphery of the Mediterranean, all the peoples, IndoEuropeans or Semites,
Greeks or barbarians, French or Moors, Spanish or Arabs, Turks or Christians have become in some generations sailors
and navigators. Arabs and Druse of Syria, Lazes and Turks of Asia Minor, negroes from Cyrene, Moors and Berbers from
Africa, Latins from Spain, Italy or France, Slavs from Russia or Macedonia, across all the changes of civilizations and
races, all the Mediterranean peoples have been influenced by and turned toward the sea by the same influences of
nourishment and livelihood. The sheepherder, in Spain as in Greece, in Italy as in Asia Minor, lives, during the summer,
on the mountain or plateau. But, in winter, he needs to lead his flocks to maritime pasturage and, during the long months,
he sojourns with them along the tranquil gulf, in the face of the smiling sea, a few strokes from the nearby islands which
tempt his daydreams. Furthermore a line of emerging rocks appear to make a bridge to the isles. The shepherd embarks.
He discovers the coastal islands. He finds them having pasturage. He transports to them sheep or goats which quickly
acclimatize, reproduce and revert to a nearly wild condition: he has no need to pen or guard them; it suffices to come at
the time for cheesemaking or shearing. Bit by bit the shepherd takes up a maritime existence…the Albanians who
descended into Greece in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries became the sailors of Hydra and Spezia at the beginning
of the nineteenth..
Before the Greeks, who came late to the Levantine world, the pre-Greek populations were able to live no differently
than their successors. Imagine these indigenes as barbaric as one may, they still would appear to us similar to those
Malaysian populations whose warriors, armed with stone and equipped with wood, tracked the immensities of the Pacific
well before the ships of our conquerors discovered the way to them. Before the Argonauts the Mediterranean would have
known other sailors. Before Greek history there was a Mediterranean prehistory. The Egyptian monuments constantly
mention the “people of the sea.” The ancients, with the rest, had that opinion. Before the thalassocracies, as it is said, of
Athens, Egine, Megara, Ionia or Crete, they affirmed the existence of foreign thalassocracies, Pelasgic, Thracian, Cypriot,
Carian, Phoenician, Lydian or Phrygian, of whom they transmitted the list and the respective durations. Eusebe, following
Diodorus, enumerated thus the thallasocraties which, from the Trojan War to the Persian wars, held the seas:

I. Lydia and Maeones 92 years X. (Cares) (61) years

II. Pelasgian 85 years XI. Lesbian 68 years
III. Thracian 79 years XII. Phocian 44 years
IV. Rhodan 23 years XIII. Samian …
V. Phrygian 25 years XIV. Lakedaemonian 2 years
VI. Cypriot 33 years XV. Naxian 10 years
VII. Phynikii 45 years XVI. Eretrii 15 years
VIII. Egyptian … XVII. Eginenses 10 years
IX. Milesian (18) years

The word thalassocracy describes well a phenomenon which would be defined. Throughout written history the
Mediterranean is like an empire where one navy always reigns in almost absolute mastery. The dominant navy makes the
policy and the law, levies the tributes or benefits, imposes its habits and language, and from turn to turn makes it that the
sea is an English, French, Italian, Arabic or Greek lake. It is not to say – and it behooves us well to understand this when
we speak of a Phoenician thalassocracy – it is not to say that the reigning navy would cancel all concurrence and itself
obtain all the trade, without apprentices, without rivals, without collaborators. The local ships and boats sail constantly,
always fishing and trafficking on the coasts of their islands or on their routes and their gulfs. The English thalassocracy of
our day has not suppressed the Spanish, French, Italian or Greek fleets. In the seventeenth century – for comparison, we
make great usage of this period which is well-known to us – the French thalassocracy had Arab, Turk and barbarian
competitors, and Greek, Armenian, Syrian and other collaborators or apprentices. But in all epochs the “people of the sea”
schooled themselves, under the tutelage or by exploitation of the thalassocracies, navigated like them, charged and paid

12
like them, dressed like them, and frequently spoke like them. In brief, if the local navies existed, they became the subjects
and servants of the foreign navy.
The word thalassocracy thus corresponds to an eternal reality. But what value can the list given by the lexicographers
of thalassocracies have? It is to be feared that the catalog through antiquity might not be supported by the same proofs as
the catalog of Homeric vessels.Each author, in recounting the list, may augment the numbers of the list, extend the length,
reverse the order, according to his prejudices or patriotism. I believe it is impossible to derive from the list certain sure
information. There are ancient authors who have spoken to us of the first navies. But their concise and somewhat
numerous affirmations do not give us more certitude. The same when the authors are Herodotus and Thucydides, the
truthful and legendary parts, or, at least, the parts appearing truthful or legendary, are too inextricably mixed in their
texts.: one needs some external criterion to discern them.
In this uncertainty, one believed that, in the course of the past thirty years, archeology, provided with an ample supply
of “Mycenaean” excavations, would without difficulty reconstruct the ante Hellenic period. One would not know how to
exaggerate the usefulness of these excavations: Mycenae, Tirynth and Troy, Priam and Agamemnon, retrieved from the
legend, have been placed on historic ground. The Iliad and the Odyssey have ceased to appear to us more mythical than
the Song of Roland. For history it is a province totally reconquered…But, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, also
rediscovered for our planet was a history before man. They also made marvelous discoveries in the most ancient layers of
our earth. One also could go into ecstasies before the grandeur of exhumed skeletons when Cuvier and his disciples
reconstituted from remains the representatives of extinct species. Paleontology had its hour of incontestable usefulness.
For some time it rightfully enjoyed a nearly exclusive favor. And nevertheless, if its reign has been long-lived, today we
see well that the history of the earth had been singularly deformed, inclined to the miracle and improbability. And this
example should make us reflect on the import of methods and on the value of archeological discoveries.
The research and study, the determination and classification of fossil organisms reclaim together a scientific spirit on a
critical attention of habits of comparison. But one cannot deny either that the part of fantasy and sentiment in the research
may still be very great and above all that that part may become preponderant when it acts to put the combined and
classified material together. From these scattered members, from these cropped femurs, unstrung vertebrae, assorted teeth,
it reconstitutes a complete organism. Now the magnifying imagination of the paleontologist is ceaselessly solicited by the
same material he has before his eyes. Over the passage of thousands of centuries, through the jolts and successive
revolutions, most of the fragile and delicate organisms have, as is natural, almost entirely disappeared. The paleontologist
lives none other than in the company of gigantic beings whose bones were able in the past to escape from all the hazards
and of which the size, the force and the beauty create today, for the spirit who reconstitutes them, a world of marvels and
at times of chimeras, entirely different from our little world. Accordingly the history according to the paleontologists was
very different from the real history which we begin to discern.
It has a false conception of earthly phenomena and of their passage through the centuries. Between the marvelous
world of origins, such as they imagine, and the shabby reality of present times, as they perceive about them, the
paleontologists are unable to suppose a slow and continuous evolution. They believe that they need quick revolutions,
sudden cataclysms, deluges, eruptions and heavings to explain the bottomless abysses which separate our epoch from
primitive epochs. Ruled by laws, visited by phenomena, buffeted by forces, to which we vainly seek around ourselves
those similar or equivalent, the earth of the mammoths and ichthyosaurs was, at least to those in belief, so different from
our time that they can make mammoths of our sheep and ichthyosaurs of our lizards - as different as the archeologists
imagine the Hellade of the heroes and the Greece of the pallikares…When the geologists enter into play, when the study
of terrains replaces the study of monsters, the conception is reversed. One recognizes a profound similarity between the
epochs so apparently different. One sees that, from the origins up to our times, the same laws, the same phenomena, the
same forces continue their work of duration and patience over the same elements. The history of terrestrial origins, having
taken contact again with contemporary reality, become less miraculous, less heroic and divine: it becomes more likely,
nearer the humble, more certain truth.

13
 Besides, the conclusions of paleontology – one states it briefly – may have been corrupted in advance by the same
vices of the paleontological method. They do not furnish any historic certitude, because it is impossible to apply the more
or less certain results of one or several inquiries in particular provinces similarly to the entire planet. In wishing to date, in
effect, a given layer of terrain and the corresponding period solely by the fossil organisms, one shortly perceives gross,
indisputable errors. Here again, the view of the real world provides a lesson. The emerged regions offer us the differences
which separate the contemporary floras and faunas. The plants and animals of Australia appear of a different epoch than
our faunas and floras of Europe, America or Asia: the crucifixes, calvarias and statues of contemporary Brittany also
appear of a different period than our sculptures and castings of the rue St-Sulpice…And, very frequently, besides, the
fossil organisms do not belong to the region where they are encountered, in the layer where we find them today.
Formerly, still living or deceased, the organisms were transported far from their habitat by the chance of contemporary
currents and slides. More recently, already fossilized, they have been precipitated from their primitive burial site and
accumulated in other layers by later shocks and dislocations. The history according to the paleontologists thus may be
without possible chronology, similarly without approximative geography. What could be a similar history, if not a single
history, could be a pure fiction. After fifty years of paleontology, the roles need to reverse. The geologist studies the
layers of terrain, dates and sequences the epochs, and makes from them a chronology and geography. Then, when the
theater has been reconstructed and the play recovered, then one can reintroduce the actors, the fossils: they there find
themselves in their place and in their scenery.
Human paleontology – I wish to say: archeology – has the same insufficiencies. Its defects are perhaps further
aggravated by the religion of antiquity, by the somewhat devout respect “of the least fragment of stone, of baked earth, of
wood of glass, of amber or of metal”. The tenderness of archeologists for the smallest loss of their bric-a-brac sometimes
becomes touching:

The mode of exploration has permitted the retrieval, from the remains of the classic age, the trace of the naïve and touching effort
of the primitive artisan. As totally clumsy as he might still be, the artist interests us passionately: one spares no expense and no pains
to collect down to the smallest fragment of his work, the same as the larger: one sees and one loves in him the predecessor and the
direct ancestor of the great artists of the century of Pericles and that of Alexander. The idols formed of rock or clay, the bits of
colored glaze, the shards of pottery with a matte finish and purely geometric decoration…, is it anything but the first years of a chain
at the other end of which there are the statues of Phidias and Lysippe, the paintings of Polygnote and Zeuxis, the engravings of
Pyrgotele, the vases of Euphronios and Sosias?

Such tenderness and admiration are not favorable, it would seem, to the exercise of a very severe critique. On the
other hand, to not wish to seek the “imprints of ideas and tastes, of habits and beliefs,” one risks not perceiving the
causes, the fluctuations and the consequences, the same as the more near: the monument and the mark conceal a bit the
intention and the sense. To remain in ecstasy before “the admirable milestones of the Romans,” one forgets sometimes to
note the detours and the general direction of the route. The contemplation of works of art do not dispose to the spirit of
the study of the less esthetic operations of the ordinary life, and frequently it shuts the eyes to the necessities a bit base, a
bit unseemly, of the daily grind: nevertheless, the operations and the necessities have dominated and fashioned the entire
life of the ancients as they dominate and fashion ours.
I have always remained thoughtful before certain assertions of archeology: “Archeology,” says one, “demonstrates that
Gaul has owed nothing or nearly nothing to the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean, outside of coins and the alphabet.”
Examine the affirmation solely by the light of a good practical sense. When a people acquire the coinage of a neighbor, it
is because they have need to trade with him, and when the proximity establishes a traffic between two civilizations, the
greater always furnishes the premium materials and the most refined industrial products…Furthermore, a people does not
borrow the alphabet of its neighbor if it has no correspondence with it. And the alphabet is not transported in the form of
separate letters. The Gauls did not send an ambassador to Marseille charged with copying the Greek alphabet. The
alphabet arrived to them in the form of words and the words carried ideas. – Consider further this proposition: “M.
Undsett, whom nothing frightens,” said another archeologist, “almost believes that the Phoenicians imported into

14
Switzerland two poignards of copper with silk along the Cypriot style. Well imputed, Phoenician foreign commerce,
which transported so far these objects of little importance, without ever importing at the same time a jewel, a cylinder, a
trinket of oriental aspect!”. I do not discuss the origin of the quarrel. But the archeological reasoning appears here in its
beauty. A good archeologist cannot suppose that the Phoenicians might go anywhere without intentionally leaving a
cylinder or a trinket. But perhaps the Phoenicians thought less of today’s archeologist than of the barbarian of their own
time. Their agents might look to satisfy the needs of their clientel rather than the curiosity of our academics. For the
barbarians, who live by hunting and war, one may admit that a bronze poignard is of a different importance than an
inscribed cylinder: our rifles and bayonets, objects of little importance to our academies, are found more readily in a
march to the heart of Africa than our jewelry or trinkets in the most “modern style”.
The real, or at least rational, history of human origins calls for things other than the fossil traces of heroes and artists:
“The spade and shovel,” again says Strabo, “do not suffice: one needs also the acquaintance of the generalities of the
world.” The advice has never been more useful than today: ουδε γαρ θεριστή και σκαπάνη αλλά τω πεισθηναι δυναμένω
την γην ο‘ύτω έχειν την ‘όλην. The archeologists neglect the acquaintance of general laws. They appear to ignore the part
taken by the daily necessities which, through all the centuries, rule all human society in their migrations as in their
establishments. Their conception of history is less philosophical, their classification of diverse populations is more
infantile than the first attempts of the most ancient Greek historians. These divided humanity into different peoples,
following a character to which we give a little smile, in which we do not see the least importance, according to nutrition.
They distinguished the fish-eaters from the rice-eaters, the “eaters of bread,” Σιτοφαγοι, as the Odyssey says, from the
“eaters of man,” Ανδροφαγοι. A distinction full of philosophy , to which one reverts sooner or later. For it is founded on
perhaps the most important character, the most fertile in consequences of all types. For truly there are “people of beer,”
and “people of wine,” humanities of wheat and humanities of rice. And one need not reflect for long to deduce what
differences of life, of daily occupations, of appetites, of desires, of poetry, of politics and of morals: it surely is better to
live among bread-eaters than among man-eaters.
Neglecting the fundamental characters, the historian-archeologists attach themselves to minute exterior details, which
permit classifying under glass the products of excavation, and they achieve transporting the classifications of museums
through the human history. They invent Morgian, Hallstadt, Mycenaean, Aegean civilizations, humanities of the rivet set
and of the pointed helmet. In the forms of maxims, they issue oracles which close the mouth of non-initiates: “The rivet
set is Hallenstattian…The pointed helmet is Marnian…The iron epee is of the Tene epoch…The bronze poignard is
Hungarian…The bronze epee is Morgian.” And since a tomb of the Marne contains a pointed helmet, behold in all things
the history of an epoch forever encumbered: Marnian! And since the ruins of Mycenae were excavated before those of
Pylos, Ithaca, Knossos, or Gortyne, behold, a Mycenaean population is installed in the Hellenic prehistory!
The vulgar should accept the oracles without always understanding them, without complaining about the improbability
similarly without daring to admit his doubts. If perchance he asks for reasons, the archeologist asserts: M. Furtwaengler
has said ‘It is one of the worst errors of prehistoric archeology, etc.’ – ‘A very good judge, M. Goblet of Alviella has
said…etc.’” Nothing but the argument of authority is too frequently the sole reply of the archeologists. It is by the number
of references at the bottom of the page that the merit of an archeological work is currently judged. The worth of an
archeologist is valued by the weight of the cards he has in his drawers. In the book which I offer you, the reader will find
at the bottom of the pages the minimum of references. Nevertheless – “And I in Arcadia!” – J. Wimmer, M. Hergt, P.
Pervanoglu, P. Matranga, A. Freiherr vor Warsberg, Wolcker and K. Iarz are familiar to me, and so many other doctors
whose memoirs I have read, alas, without the least profit. But it is my theory of the Odyssey which I wish to present to
you here, and not that of any others. I would not thus criticize the authors whose opinions I expressly adopt or combat.
Besides, when I refer the reader to the repertoires, Chronicles of the East, by S. Reinac, or Dictionaries of Daremberg-
Saglio, Roscher or Pauly-Wissowa, to the works which have become classics, such as The Homeric Epoch of W. Helbig,
Ancient History by G. Maspero or Pausanius by Fraser, to the manuals which are in everyone’s hands, such as Homeric
Realities by E. Buchholz, it appears needless to recopy the bibliographic lists which can give the diverse authors.

15
 At least for the public the spectacle of strange disputes between the oracles of archeology is a well-appreciated
consolation:

“M. Undsett has attempted to show that the occidental bronze epee (Danubian type) derives from an Egyptian model by a Greek
intervention. He bases this on three or four bronze epees, of doubtful Egyptian provenance, conserved in Berlin, London and St.-
Germain. But these three epees, supposing that they might have been found in Egypt, could only have been introduced there by the
first Aegean colonists. Their analogy with the Mycenaean types demonstrates not in the least anything but the very sensible
dissimilarity which exists between them and the poignards of Egyptian fabrication. Otherwise better inspired, M. Undsett has
believed the prototype of our bronze epee recognized in Hungary. It is facetious that he has renounced that hypothesis, for it is to the
Hungarian, not Asian or African, group to which the Mycenaean specimens belong…”
M. de Mortillet refers, in support of his Indian thesis, to the bronze epees with small blades of the Morgian epoch. The blades are
remarkable for their smallness…Evidently they were made for hands smaller than ours, at least, altogether analogous to those of the
inhabitants of India. It is, thinks M. de Mortillet, one of numerous proofs that our bronze industry has been imported from Asia. It
may from the first appear singular to infer from those of modern Hindus those of the sixteenth century B.C. But this is only a detail.
Everything in the argument of the knowledgeable prehistorian appears to me tainted with error…

And what we have here are still not the fracases, but discussions full of moderation and urbanity. If the reader wishes
to be acquainted with the true tone of disputes among archeologists, I refer him to the German quarrels of M.
Furtwaengler, one of the lights of archeological history…A citation of Voltaire has made fortune the archeologists in
disagreement. When they wish to pass sentence on the arguments of an adversary: “The bulk is composed of errors,” they
say, “the rest, of insults.”
We have there, in effect, the last word of the Archeological method. Proceeding by sentimental affirmations, it results
in nothing but dogmatic quarrels, in excommunications against persons and in transitory credos which one asserts from
the first on the faith in a master, or quits, rejecting them altogether a “prejudices of another age.” “The ancients,” says
Helbig with his ironic good humor, “attribute to the Phoenicians a great influence on the primitive Greeks. And the
tradition has been long admitted by most modern scholars. I myself have followed it in my Homeric Epoch. I have there
supposed that the Phoenicians had a large part in the development of the civilization which we know principally through
the monuments of Mycenae and which have taken, for that reason, the name Mycenaean. In later years, as a character of
Moliere says, ‘We have changed all that.’ The unfortunate Phoenicians have become the object of a deep antipathy of
many scholars, antipathy which one would almost be tempted to hold in rapport with the anti-Semitic movement of our
days…”
To complete the resemblance with the theological quarrels of the past, it happens sometimes that the condemned
archeologist, battered and malcontent, makes appeal to secular arms and threatens his adversaries of commercial tribunals
with avengers of defamation…It is none other than such errors which leads to the truth. There we have, at least, that
which certain savants begin to think, and one cannot suspect them of ill wishes to the part of archeologists.
At the head of the admirable Chronicles of the East, which remains as the most complete repertoire of all the
archeological work during the past five years, M. Salomon Reinach writes with his usual impartiality:” One of the most
striking characteristics of the science of the end of the nineteenth century has been the gradual disappearance of ancient
philology before encroaching archeology. There has resulted a certain abasement. For a philologist, who is not an
archeologist, still knows and loves antiquity, whereas an archeologist, who is not a philologist, is nothing but a collector
or editor of curiosities…A new revolution is emerging. The Greek papyri, emerging from the earth, placed in honor, as in
the epoch of the renaissance, the knowledge of Greek, of true Greek, which is not that of epigraphs on trinkets, but of
literary texts.” Having arrived at the finish of his career, E. Curtis asked himself, in an entirely parallel manner, whether
the absolute reign of archeology had not lasted long enough, if there had not been today great time in which to verify the
management and perhaps correct the effects in it. In Curtis’ opinion, Greek history should leave the museums a bit and
put its foot back on solid ground, to give itself to the only study which can furnish certain unchallengeable evidence, the

16
study of places:” Only topography brings us back to the just conceptions of the rôle of the Orientals and of the Hellenes
in the Primitive Mediterranean.” The warning by Curtis is worth the effort of being thought over

“In touring the ruins of Troy,” recounts a traveler,” I had collected a great number of pottery fragments, for I had read from
several travelers that earthen vases are frequently the most ancient relics, and those which last the longest time. I chose those which
had the most antique character. I presently believed that I had found the remains of a vase which had belonged to the beautiful Helen,
presently the debris of a cup with which king Priam had made libations to the great Jupiter. My companions and I were loaded with
the fragments. But in proportion as we advanced through the region, from every quarter where we directed our steps, similar debris
offered itself to our view on all sides. Finally there was such a great quantity that our Trojan relics ended by losing their value and
we came to wish to relive ourselves of a burden which appeared to us more inconvenient in measure as our illusions vanished .”

Think what one wishes of the similar methods of archeology, the result at least appears to prove that it is incapable of
resolving our problem of Mediterranean origins. The ancients have imagined two solutions to the problem. Modern
archeology has done nothing but bring these two solutions face to face, with considerable authorities and several
arguments in favor of one or the other. According to Herodotus, Thucydides and Strabo, according to all the ancients who
were in renown of erudition or criticism, the Orientals have been the masters and initiators of the Greeks; among the
archeologists it is the opinion of Helbig, Heuzey and Potier. To the contrary, such pages of M.J.A. Evans in The Origin of
the Alphabet or of M.S. Reinach in The Oriental Mirage and Cult of the Nude Goddess might appear to be translations of
Diodorus of Sicily: “Some pretend,” he writes, “that the Syrians are the inventors of letters, and that, disciples of the
Syrians, the Phoenicians brought the letters to Greece, whence their name of Phoenician letters. But the Cretans say that
the initial discovery came not from Phoenicia but from Crete, and that the Phoenicians did nothing but transform the types
of the letters and introduce the new forms to most of the peoples.” Elsewhere Diodorus said, “ It is the first inhabitants of
Rhodes, the Telchines, who invented a part of the arts and useful things in human life; it is from Actis, the Rhodan, son of
the Sun and founder of Heliopolis in Egypt that the Egyptians acquired the theorems of astrology. Later a deluge
supervened, which destroyed in Greece the greater part of the population and all the written documents; The Egyptians
profited from the occasion by appropriating the discoveries of astrology and saying that they were the inventors. Behold
how, many generations later, the Phoenician, Cadmus, brought writing to Greece and passes for the inventor, among the
same Greeks, by grace of their common ignorance.” And Diodorus adds: “The Cretans say that the honors rendered to the
gods, the sacrifices and the initiations into the mysteries are Cretan inventions and that other peoples have borrowed
them…Demeter has passed from her home with them into Attica, then into Sicily and from there into Egypt, bringing
with her the cultivation of Wheat. Similarly, Aphrodite went to Sicily, to Cythere, Cyprus and finally to the Asiatic
province of Syria.”
Between the two opinions, the choice, if one holds to the texts of antiquity or archeological monuments, can only be
arbitrary. But the printed arguments, as that wished by E. Curtis, of topography – or moreover of topology –may give us, I
believe, a solution.

CHAPTER II
THE PLACES AND THE NAMES

παρατιθέντες τοις νυν ουσι τα ‘υπο του Ποιητου λεγόμενα.

STRAB., XIII, p. 877.

17
 Topology, the “geology of sites,” will come to classify the periods and date the fossils of archeology. The facts it will
reveal to us will have two great advantages over the memorials of archeology:
First. They are localized in space: they appertain surely to one place, to one site.
Second. They are almost always localized in time: they can give series and dates with some approximation.We thus
will have a certain geography and a verifiable chronology, the staff and framework of a rational history. Here is truly
work for a geologist. For the history of the Mediterranean can be compared to a sedimentary terrain where, layer by layer,
successive navies have left their traces. Their deposits, more or less thick, are by nature and shade different; they have
some shared traits, but each of them also have characteristic peculiarities.
There are some common conditions because of which through all the centuries and all the civilizations, the
Mediterranean has not changed: it retains its regime of winds, its general aspect of currents and coasts, its climate, its
fauna, flora, etc. By the sole fact that it is Mediterranean, a navy needs to resort to certain winterings, adopt a certain
nutrition and a certain clothing, conform its routes to the same straits and its stations to the same land and sea routes. We
have seen how and why a Mediterranean echelle, installed at the edge of a delta, will always be different from an Atlantic
port, situated on the estuary of a stream [the literal meaning of the term is ladder, and indeed stairways cut into rock are
found frequently]. Throughout history this difference has been maintained: a Mediterranean port has never been able to
establish itself at the mouth of a river. From one navy to the next, a great Mediterranean port was able to move itself to
different places on the same coast: it is because the rivers themselves move their deltas. Milet, closed by the muds of the
Meander, took the place of Ephesis, which was closed by the muds of the Caystre. Smyrna then took the place of
Ephesis; but we can foresee that before two centuries the muds of the Hermos will kill Smyrna in turn…The permanent
causes can be studied during any period of Mediterranean history. Once they are known for one thalassocracy, their
always identical effects can be applied to another thalassocracy without chance of error. One might say that our Nautical
Instructions previously ruled Greek and Roman navigation. The charts and voyagers from the French period furnish – we
shall see – the veritable commentary on Ulysses’ navigations: from Thevenot, Tournefort or Paul Lucas we shall have
rational explanations of that which we term, lacking sufficient study, the legends of the Odyssey.
But each period of Mediterranean history may also have its peculiarities, and of at least two sorts: the one of facts, the
other of words. For each of the thalassocratic powers brought with it its national needs and its preferences. And each
brought its language or dialect.
Language or dialect did not hesitate to become fixed further, as it infiltrated the language of the people of the sea.
The thalassocracies imposed a system of proper names applied to their favorite places: the Mediterranean site names are
still Phoenician (Tyre, Sidon, Carthsge, Malaga) Greek (Nauplia, Seleucia, Alexandria, Palermo, Agde, Empurias),
Roman (Valence, Port-Vendres, Cherchell, Cesaria), Arabic, Italian, etc. The thalassocracies also distributed their terms
of commerce and their names for measures, monies and merchandise: the commercial and maritime language of the
Mediterranean, Sabir, still retains the memory of the Phoenicians (sac, vin, thon, aloes, etc.), of the Greeks, and of all
their successors.
Similarly, we may see the needs and habits of each thalassocracy translate into choice of routes (the archipelago of the
eighteenth century has its English, Dutch and French routes), choice of ports (coming from the west, the French and
English did not encounter land at the same point as the Arabs, Greeks or Phoenicians coming from the east), introduction
of warehouses (the English, for their charcoal, need different quays and different docks than the French for their fabrics,
the Arabs for their spices or the Greeks for their pottery), and even in the placement of their wharves (a vessel of today,
drawing five or six meters, is not able to put in at the same beaches as the flat-bottomed boats of the ancients). Each
different navy needed totally different harbors, fortresses, lookouts, places of supply and rest, and watering places. Each
time one of the thalassocracies disappeared, replaced by some rival, its watering places (the people of Paros still
remember the visits the captain-pasha made in their port of Trio in the time of the Turkish thalassocracy), its stations and
resorts (the natives of Provençe have not forgotten the coves where the Saracen pirates debarked), and its routes (French
roads still exist in Morocco) remained in the memory of men and, retaining their foreign names, they form one of the
layers of Mediterranean history.

18
 History is nothing more than a series of piled-up layers. Even without great practice it is easy to distinguish the
different terrains. In each layer taken separately, it is no less easy to explain the diverse elements, to deduce or induce the
reason for locations chosen and routes frequented - it is that which I term topologic work - or to recover the sense of the
place names imposed - this is the rôle of toponymy. Topology and toponymy, the two studies combined succeed in
discovering effective conditions, in reassembling the distant causes, finally in reconstituting the great lines of each of our
epochs. The two studies prepare for us a chronology and a geography of the whole for the origin, extension and duration
of each thalassocracy. But they succeed above all in penetrating the detail, in reanimating before our eyes the local life of
each site deserted or abandoned today: when the evidence of the writers and monuments is absolutely mute, they summon
from the very ground the vision of the crowds which formerly thronged some forgotten route or the souqs of some
vanished bazaar.
The results of these two studies have a general value, that is to say, when well-established for a given point, their
discoveries are valuable for all the other sites of the same epoch. The English dock is everywhere the same: one who
knows the customs and mores of Gibraltar also knows Malta, Aden and Singapore. Furthermore the results will be
arguable and verifiable, since they have rationally and regularly emerged from scientific inductions. Each study reinforces
the other, in effect, by constant laws; they proceed from present or recent experience to take up again facts from the past.
The Mediterranean of today explains the Mediterranean of forty centuries past.
See how, before our eyes, one of the Mediterranean layers is in the act of testifying. During the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the English took control of the Mediterranean traffic. Their terms of sailing and commerce, their
merchandise and their styles, their measures and their habits of navigation penetrated from Gibraltar to Port Saïd. The
present Mediterranean has, like a suspension, English materials which deposit themselves every day and will pass into a
sedimentary state when another power, German, French or Italian, takes over. One will then be able to study the English
stratum around Gibraltar, Malta, Smyrna, Cyprus and the Suez Canal. The English layer will almost entirely cover the
French terrain of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Deposited beneath that of the English fleet, already half fixed,
but not yet covered and always visible, the French layer is nearly evenly spread from Algiers to the Caucasus and from
Beirut to Marseille. The French thalassocracy of two centuries is well known to us. Its layers have been well explored.
We can without difficulty recognize the deposits there, thanks to voyagers of the time, Tournefort, Lucas, etc., by grace of
the diplomatic relations and consulates, and because of local traditions…Before the French, the Italians had five or six
centuries of monopoly there: a thick Italian layer is still visible at certain points, but, most frequently covered over by the
French layer, it will be more accessible to our research if we have the documents held in the archives of Genoa and
Venice. ..In their turn, the Italians had the Arabs as predecessors. One can say that the Arab thalassocracy, which lasted
three or four centuries, is almost unknown to us, not for lack of documents, but for lack of exploration and study. Its
layers no longer appear under the new soil which has entirely covered them;however, a little attention suffices to perceive
them even when almost at the surface: in the current language of the Mediterranean navies, see how some Arabic words
are maintained, amiral, felouque, etc. It is the same for the Byzantine layer which, beneath the thin Arabic leaf, leads us to
the thick, compact and uniform banks of the Romans and Greeks: we know them very poorly and study them very little.
Beneath them, the terrains of the classical period are familiar to us. We recognize there at first sight the samples and
fossils: Alexandria and Laodicia, the Menander and the Tiber, Rhodes and Marseille, Ostia and Panorma speak to all our
memories. It is the foundation of our science of history. There, we believe, are the oldest seams of Mediterranean history.
But study the Greco-Roman layer, and immediately, in the most ancient beds, from an altogether superficial study, you
will recognize some debris which is not contemporary with the mass, which moreover has not slid there from a later layer
but which must have come from a layer still more ancient. This is where the place names of neither Greek nor Latin
suffice to explain, Ida, Samos, Korinthos, Salamis, Rheneia, Kasos, Masicus, Cumae, Oenotria, etc.; where the situations
of the towns are contrary to all the theories of the Greeks: Tirynthe, Chalcedony, Astipale, etc.; where there are political
systems, the amphictyonies of the seven ports for which the Greek politic gives neither the model nor the key; or the
routes of past commerce follow one knows not which caravans, one knows not which traffic, and abandoned, it seems,
since the day when the Greek people, master of their destiny, gained the knowledge of their own needs and the free

19
disposition of their forces: such was the Odyssian route from Pylos to Sparta or the legendary route (Theseus) from
Trezene to Marathon. If, given a warning by these accounts, you seek some light from the oldest geographical documents
of the Greeks, I wish to say, from the Odyssey, you will there promptly find the same words and the same
incomprehensible phenomena. Names, routes, habits, conceptions, theories, the Odyssey does not appear Greek. It at least
is full of recollections which appear pre-Hellenic, since they are anti-Hellenic, contradictory to all that we know of the
Greek language, thought, life and civilization. To hold fast similarly to the general tone of the Odyssey and the other
Homeric poems, Gladstone remarked again with justice how the good Homeric formulas – “I have the honor to be son to
one such,” for example – were later alien to those naifs of protocol who have always been, and still are, the Hellenes…
Below the terrains of the classic epoch, the topology, the toponymy and the study of the Odyssey force us to assume the
existence of a more ancient layer, of a thalassocracy anterior to the Greek navy.

*
* *

The “evidences” of the preHellenic layer are spread throughout all the Mediterranean, but are easier to recognize in
Greek waters. There, they abound. On all the Greek coasts and similarly in the interior of the isles, isthmuses and
peninsulas of Greece, they arrest the attentive explorer. For the diverse regions of the Hellade, twenty typical examples
may be cited. I will recount here an experience which was personal for me. Charged with the excavations at Mantine and
Tege by the French School of Athens (1888-1890), I had intended the geographic study of Arcadia through the ages.
Pausanius in hand, I explored all the cantons during eight or nine months. The final result for me was the conviction that
primitive Arcadia, the land of the Pelasgians, with its routes, towns and place names, was totally different from classical
Arcadia. Certainly that Pelasgia had less resemblance to the Arcadia of the Hellenes, that is to say an Arcadia in the
hands of conquerors or negotiators arriving from the sea, than the Moors had to the Franks or the Venetians. If one wishes
to understand, in effect, the habits and the population of that primitive Pelasgia, it is necessary to suppose that a
commercial route traversed the Parrhasian cantons, the high plain of the Alph, and that foreign caravans, debarking at the
bay of Laconia, ascended the Eurotas and descended the Alph or the Neda to arrive at the ports of the Elide. For the site
of Lykosoura, mother of all the Pelasgic villages and center of the primitive realm, is not congenial to the necessities of
the natives and furthermore was not imposed by natural conditions. During Hellenic times, a town was never located in
that plain of the high Alph. When, fighting against the guidelines of nature, Epaminondas founded Megalopolis, that
military and artificial town had nothing but an ephemeral existence and an almost empty rôle. It is that a city cannot exist
in that location except by a commerce of transit between the Eurotas and the Alph, by a traffic of caravans between the
gulf of Laconia and the gulf of Elide. For we see that only in Hellenic times was that route followed or at least much
frequented, and we can, in present Greece, discover the reasons which orient Hellenic commerce in other directions
entirely: The Greek railway today goes from Nauplia to Kalamata, from the Gulf of Argos to the gulf of Messenia, and
not from Gythion to Pyrgos, from the Laconian coast to the coast of Elide. Under the Franks and the Venetians, on the
contrary, the armies and foreign caravans pass here: they go from Elean Glarence to Mistra of Laconia; the castle and the
town of Karytena then play the same rôle of halting place and fortress for the foreigners as did old Lykosoura in the time
of the Pelasgians - “The first town which men constructed on the heights of the mountains.”
Others, having had analogous experiences, have arrived at the same result. For the Peloponnesus, M. Clermont-
Ganneau has been the veritable initiator of this research in such studies as Satrap God and the Phoenicians in the
Peloponnesus. M. E. Oberhummer has made the same discovery for Acarnania and southern Epirus. He is obliged to
admit the use of these coasts by a foreign commerce - Phoenician, he thinks – in times anterior to the Greek flowering: it
is on this coast of the Thesprotes that, embarked on a Phoenician vessel, Ulysses claimed that he was cast by the storm…

20
But it is a shorter and more decisive example which M. Kiepert has already given: that of towns supposedly Greek
bearing the apparently Greek name, Astypalaia.
Astypalaia, Αστυπάλαια, is a place name widely spread in the archipelago. Etienne de Byzance cites five Astypales:
First an isle occupied in the past by Karians and named by them “Pyrrha”, later colonized by the Dorians, who renamed it
Table of God because of its fertility; Second, a town on the isle of Kos; Third, an island between Rhodes and Crete;
Fourth a town on the isle of Samos; Fifth a promontory of Attica. – In returning to the sources, it is obvious that Etienne
has made a double use of the text by Strabo, concerning the Isle of Astipale: εισι πολλαι των Σπορωδών μεταξύ Κω
μάλιστα και ‘Ροδον και Κρήτης, ων εισιν Αστυπάλαια τε και Τήλος, says Strabo in book X (p. 488), and he adds: ‘η μεν
ουν Αστυπάλαια ‘ικανως εστιν πελάγια, πολιν έχουσα. Etienne has transcribed the first occurrence of the phrase,
Αστυπαλαια νησοσ μια των Κυκλαδων, in counting a first Astypale, then the second occurrence, νησος πόλιν έχουσα
μεταξυ ‘Ρόδου και Κρήτης, in counting another Astypale, which he catalogs after the town of Kos. In truth, the two
Asypales are but one and the same, island and town. – Leaving then only four. Strabo has made us acquainted with a fifth
on the coasts of Caria, and the literature with a sixth on the isle of Rhodes.
At first sight, the Greek etymology of the name Astypalaia appears certain: it is the Old Town, άστυ παλαιον,
synonym of Old Towns, Palai-polis or Palaio-polis, which we find in the Peloponnesus. The neuter Αστυπάλαιον, Asty-
palaion, has become the feminine Αστυπάλαια, Asty-palaia,: most names of Greek isles and towns are feminine, in
conformance with the ending of the common model, or else it is nothing but a caprice of usage; we have in France some
Villevieux. Asty-palaia thus will be the Vieille Ville. At all times the archipalago like all the regions of the earth has had a
certain number of New Towns and Old Towns. But if one admits this etymology, it is very necessary to see that very neat
and precise consequences follow for the site and emplacement of the Asypales. The ancients have already noted how
most of the old towns in Greece were built far from the sea. “The newly founded towns,” says Thucydides,” having a
greater experience of the sea, in addition to greater prosperity, establish themselves on the streams, across the isthmuses,
for the greater convenience of their commerce. But the old towns, α‘ι δε παλαιαι, because of the piracy which flourished
in the past, were for the most part built far from the sea, on the islands as well as on the mainland.”
Study and verify the statement of Thucydides. In the first place, it appears to conform with the common opinion of the
ancients. It was a common position of antique philosophy that the stopping places of human civilization were also marked
by the stations of the towns on the road which led from the summit of the mountains to the edge of the sea: “Plato,” says
Strabo, “conjectures that after a deluge or cataclysms, men should have passed through three very different forms of
societies. It made at first a simple and savage society, which the fear of water again covering the plains again drove back
to the high summits. A second society established itself on the lowest slopes of the mountains, reassured bit by bit in
seeing the plains begin to dry. A third society finally took posession of the plains themselves. If necessary, one could
suppose a further fourth or fifth form: in any event, one should consider as the most recent society that which the people,
once delivered from all terrors of that type, came to form on the seacoast and in the isles. To each of the displacements
which, from the high locations, led the populations to the plain, probably corresponded a marked change in the type of life
of the populations and their government.”
The statement of Thucydides, in the second place, is in conformance with the logic of facts and with our
contemporaneous or modern experience. In recent centuries, when the Turkish archipelago was infested with occidental
pirates, all the island villages and burgs, on Milos, Syria, Kalimno, Nio, etc., were perched on the heights of a mountain.
Sometimes very near the principal route but, on the other hand frequently far away, the village was always distinct from
its port, or echelle: “The port of Skyros,” says Choiseul-Gouffier, “which today they name the Great Beach, is of use only
to the islanders, whose ‘navy’ consists of a few boats, which find an opening between the reefs with difficulty, and
which they pull onto the beach when the seas are too high. Taking refuge at the northern point of the isle, the inhabitants
think only of security from the general piracy, traditionally by the Greeks. The village of Saint-Georges, built on an
elevated peak, offers them asylum and, even though their dwellings might be distributed on the slopes of the mountain
and down to the coast, each has, in the higher part, a second house where he retires in case of danger.” – “On Syria,” says
Tournefort,” the town is a mile from the port, all around a scarped hill…; one sees, at the port, the ruins of a large and

21
ancient town, formerly named Syros.” On Milos, “whose inhabitants are good sailors and, for their familiarity with the
lands of the archipelago, serve as pilots on most foreign vessels, the burg is five miles from the harbor of Poloni, at two
miles from the main route.” Today the towns of Nio and Milo remain on the heights since the islands have lost all
maritime importance: only war vessels still frequent their harbors. But, on other islands, the old town has been deserted to
the advantage of the harbor: below the old Syria of the French, a new town is installed right on the sea coast; commercial
Hermopolis circles the quays of the port.
Nothing will better verify the statement of Thucydides than the actual example of Kalymnos. The isle of Kalymnos
consists of three or four bands of mountains arranged in parallel walls. Between the walls pass narrow valleys which, also
parallel, end at the sea in bays or gulfs. The largest of these valleys touches the sea at both ends. On the sea of Kos, its
circular road, well sheltered, offers a large beach for hauling boats and a good harbor with thirty-six # to fifty-two meters
of water draft: it is the road of the echelle, la Skala. In the archipelago at large, its other smaller and less fine port
occupies the bay at Linaria. “The population of Kalymnos,” says the Nautical Instructions,” amounts to about 7,500
inhabitants, who live, for the most part in the echelle or else in the village of Kalymnos. The town is built in the interior,
at the summit of a steep cliff, more than two hundred forty four meters high; a good road leads there in less than an hour.”
The town, in effect, is located in the middle of a valley, at an equal distance from the two ports. There, on an impregnable
rock, it has took refuge in past centuries, in the times of the corsairs of whom Tournefort speaks: “Patmos,” he says of the
neighboring isle, “is significant for its ports: but its inhabitants are no more fortunate for that. The corsairs have forced
them to abandon the town, which was at the port of la Skala, and retire two and a half miles up the mountain, around the
convent of Saint-Jean.” Similarly at Samos the old town, near the sea, “was abandoned long ago and, to take cover from
the attacks of corsairs, moved itself onto the mountain.”
Today, the disappearance of the corsairs permit the islanders to restore their villages to the coast: they redescend to the
Echelles. On Kalymnos and Patmos the echelles have agin found themselves the great centers of population. In the
interior of the two isles the old towns on their mountains are nearly deserted. They still exist, but vacant. On certain days
their churches and cults call back the priests and the faithful who, for a few hours, come back up from la Skala. The
annual festivals repopulate the town of Kalymnos for a few moments. But, the rest of the year, the houses and streets are
deserted. In Roman Greece, on the coast of Messene, Pausanius describes for us an old town of Thouria which, perched
on the heights of a cliff, similarly held nothing within its deserted walls but a temple of the Syrian goddess: the
inhabitants had descended to the maritime plain.
From ancient texts to recent facts, here is thus a topological law which repeatedly asserts itself formally and
constantly. The old native towns of the archipelago are far from the sea, perched on the summits of mountains. But let us
review the Old Towns, the Astypales of the Hellenic archipelago: they totally escape the law; all are situated next to the
sea, at least all those where we know the exact location. Only one makes an exception to this: the Samian Astypale. On
Samos, in effect, Polyen tells us that Polycrate fortified the acropolis named Astypale, τειχίσας ακρόπολιν την
καλουμένην Αστυπάλαιαν. The Samian Astypale thus reënters into the type of the native Old Towns: resembling the
Athenian Acropolis or Acrocorinth, it is on the heights, a certain distance from the sea. But if, from the site, the Astypale
of Samos appears indigenous, we see that the name Samos itself is not Hellenic. Local tradition attributes the foundation
of the Samian Astypale to the Karians, and we can establish today that the Samian capitol of the Greeks, masters of the
Isle, was not installed on the ruins of the antique Astypale. Turning to the south, the Old Town was situated at the side of
the strait, like a transit port: our modern maps retain the name of Samos for its ruins. In the times of the French corsairs,
the natives, fleeing to the summit of the mountains, founded, in the interior, their Khora (the name generally applied to all
the island capitols of the epoch). Our present maps still show this Khora. But today the security of the seas has permitted
the town to redescend to the coast. It did not return to the south coast. The contemporary capitol of Samos is on the north
coast, at the foot of the island’s best harbor facing Asia Minor at Port-Vathy. This change in orientation is not fortuitous,
nor caused by the necessities of passage, seeing that from antiquity the same phenomenon appeared on the other isles, on
Kos and Rhodes, for example. The day when the Hellenes truly took control of the islands, they transported the capitol to
the north coasts, facing Asia Minor, after having abandoned the older establishments, which were not indigenous, it

22
appears, but which were founded, like the Samian Astypale, on the southern coasts of the isles for the convenience of a
foreign commerce. From antiquity, the people of Rhodes abandoned the primitive capitol, Lindos which, appointed on a
promontory of the southern coast, “faces the south-east and Alexandria,” as Strabo says: at the edge of the strait, facing
north to the coasts of Anatolia, they constructed from whole cloth their great town of Hellenic times, which to our day
remains the island capitol. On Kos we proceed to study the same displacement, and the Old Town on the south coast,
Kephala, abandoned for the new capitol on the north-east promontory. On Samos, if, from antiquity, the Hellenes, having
become masters of the isle, did not abandon the Old Town, it is only that a venerated sanctuary and religious traditions
fixed the capitol at the preHellenic site: the southern plain of Samos and the coast of the strait were the preferred abode of
the great goddess Hera.
Of the five other Astypales, that of Rhodes is known to us only by the name. Kiepert believed himself able to place it
completely in the south of the isle, on a rocky promontory, a veritable islet attached to the island by a tongue of sand,
which the modern Greeks call Prasonisi. But he gave no reason for his hypothesis, except perhaps the resemblance to
other Astypales.
The Astypale of Caria is a promontory, εν τη παραλία της ηπείρου Ασυπάλαια εστιν άκρα, on the coast between cape
Termerion and the port of Myndos, facing the Argee isles. It is the same placement, without doubt, as others named
Παλαια Μύνδος, Palaia Mundos, the Old Myndos, Myndus et ubi fuit Palaimyndus, says Pliny. The New Myndos dated
from the first Greeek colonization; the tradition connected it to the Trezenians and to their most ancient foundations. We
thus can ask ourselves if Old Myndos, anterior to the Trezenians, is an Hellenic town.
The Astypale of Attica is in an exactly parallel site. It is a promontory facing an islet: “Between Piraeus and Cape
Sounion,” says Strabo, “one first encounters the Zoster promontory, and next the Astypale promontory, άλλη ακρα
Ασυπαλαια, each of which face an isle, the islet Phabra and the islet Elouissa, προκειται νησος Ελεουσσα,” The
contemporary charts have identified this Astypale with the rocky butte which, not far from Sounion, closes the bay of
Hagios Nikolaos to the west, facing the isle Arsida. “It is impossible,” says Kiepert,” to imagine a town on the butte,
which measures scarcely a thousand paces in circuit and which an isthmus of sand and marl barely joins to a coast without
resources.” It is impossible, in effect, that the natives, masters of the land, might ever have installed themselves in such a
place. But, on the maritime butte, the contemporary presence of a chapel of St. Nicolas might prove, by itself, that the
navies of all times will find some advantage in possessing this promontory. St. Nicolas, in modern Greece, has replaced
the god of the seas: he is the protector of sailors, and frequently his chapels are raised over the ruins of temples of
Poseidon. It is that the bay of Astypale is, to the west of Sounion, the first nearly safe retreat for the ships and boats
coming from the open sea: “The port San-Nikolo,” say the Nautical Instructions,”is convenient for coasters in summer;
but, as it is open to the south, it is not suitable in winter.” The ancients did not navigate in winter. The summer ports did
not have the same disadvantages to their eyes as to ours. Adjoining the end of the port, a beach of sand and swampy
marsh offered a debarkation convenient for primitive vessels, which they hauled aground. The neighboring land is not
much inhabited: we see why foreign navies avoid somewhat the corners of overpopulated Barbary; the study of their ports
and habits of navigation will show us, in this summer respite, on that beach of landing, a location necessary to the navies
of the primitive Aegean.
The two last Astypales are towns: the one on the isle of Kos, the other on the isle which the ancients called by the
same name Astypalaia, which the moderns have made Stampalia. The town on Kos has disappeared entirely; but we can
rediscover the exact site. Strabo tells us that it was next to the sea: “The town of the Koians was formerly Astypale. It
was situated on another part of the isle, nevertheless next to the sea, like the present capitol, εν άλλω τόπω ‘ομοίως επι
θαλάττη.” From the opinion of all the explorers, the Astypale could not have been situated anywhere other than at the
south-east extremity of Kos, on the peninsula of Kephala, below the curved promontory of cape Krokilos. Follow the
shore of the island buffeted by all the winds: the point of Krokilos forms the only sheltered bay. Archeologists rightly
rediscover the site of Astypale behind the present hamlet of Stampalia. M. Paton, having long stayed on Kos and studied
the isle in the greatest detail, sees no other possible placement. But he still cannot understand the reasons for it, and, in
effect, the choice of that location appears at first glance altogether paradoxical.

23
 The isle of Kos, by its conformation, looks to the north. All the south coast, from Cape Fouka to Cape Krokilos, is but
a mountain falling from peak to sea. The north coast, on the contrary, borders a fertile plain, well-watered and refreshed
by the north wind: ancients and moderns there have always praised the pleasure and salubrity. The isle of Kos, on the
other hand, faces east. From its situation at the edge of the Asiatic continent, it cannot have commercial outlets other than
across from this continent: additionally, the strait which, to the east, separates it from Asia is a passage much frequented
by all the boats which descend from Smyrna to Rhodes, and the reverse. Thus, conformation of the isle and location of the
strait, the two forces, yoked in some fashion to the capitol, should have as a result the north-east direction. We see, in
effect, that from the day when these forces work freely, the day when Kos takes knowledge of itself, it installs its new
capitol at the tip of the fertile plain, and on the shore of the channel, near the north-east point, in a site exactly
symmetrical, but also exactly opposite from the emplacement of Astypale. The present capitol is still in that place, and
Paton has a hundred times the reason to say that, “to install itself otherwise is to renounce all relations with the world.”
But Paton reasons as a citizen of Kos. If the new site responds to all the needs of native workers, perhaps it does not
conform to all the desires of a foreign navy. The north and north-east coast is a dangerous region for boats, where the sea
is nothing but a seed-bed of islets and rocks, where flat calms alternate with violent gusts of wind. In the strait, one must
ceaselessly watch for shifts of wind from the north or south-east, foresee gusts and, when the skies menace, seek a harbor
and seat the anchors thirty meters deep:
Between the small isle of Palatia and a cape which I know only by the Turkish name of Karabagda, which signifies, In the black
vineyard, the calm obliged us to stay for awhile. At the time, the first day of October, we forced ourselves through the channel which
separates the mainland from the isle of Co…We had nearly passed the night when all at once a contrary wind came up which
constrained us to desist and retrace our steps and, continuing the next day, the second of the month, made us resort to going ashore to
obtain fresh provisions on the isle of Co…I proceeded a ways through the country, which I found perfectly beautiful, principally the
plain, where the village is located, at the foot of the mountains. Truly it was completely verdant with oranges, lemons and all sorts of
fruits, in a word, cultivated in all areas and full of numbers of vineyards and beautiful gardens. I presently entered the town, which is
pleasant and well-populated… I returned to our vessel. The next day, nevertheless, noöne spoke at all of lifting anchor, since we
always had an adverse wind and, as the sky and sea threatened us with a great storm, I did not even wish to leave the ship, because
the place where we had landed was not a port, nor was a place for us assured…The night which preceded the fourth of October, the
feast of St. Francis, the bad weather got worse. But, as our vessel, which three large anchors had rendered immobile against the
storm, was unusually large, we noticed practically nothing…The storm ended with rain. Nevertheless, since in the morning I saw
that noöne spoke at all of putting to sea, as it was not altogether tranquil, I descended to the isle a second time.

On most of our voyages to the Levant, we encountered similar waits in the channel of Kos or on the coasts of the isle.
For our town of Kos has a port that is nothing but inconvenient and perilous. The sandy or marshy point which forms it is
bordered by rocks and shallows. Under that point of Koum, truth to say, there is no bay. The east-northeast wind and the
sirocco blow there in squalls, and the storms fall there from the heights of the mountains of Asia. Only large sailing ships
can stay there in the anchorage. Most frequently, it is necessary to go to shelter under the Asiatic coast, in the port of
ancient Halicarnassus. On the southern coast of Kos, the bay of Astypale offers, in contrast, an excellent shelter. All the
southern coast of the isle is sheltered from winds from the north by the screen of the high island mountains. A sort of
mountainous queue further surrounds the western end, to protect the bay of Astypale from the winds from the west. The
bay, thus closed on two sides, would be open to winds from the south, if an islet did not place itself in front, to form a
good anchorage where the boats can endure all the storms. The Genoese or the knights of Rhodes formerly found the isle
a good prize. They installed themselves there, crowned it with fortifications, and their ruined walls have earned it the
name of Palaio-Kastro, or Palaio-nisi: it is the exact equivalent of our Asty-pale…Here again, it thus appears that the Old
Town might not be an native settlement, but a station for foreign navies. Before the Hellenic colonies, the Astypale of
Kos was in the hands of a “people of the sea.”
Finally, the last of our insular Astypales, situated on the narrow isthmus which attaches the two rocky masses to the
isle of Stampalia, is built on the point of a cape. The town, dominating the two bays dotted with isles, commands the two
seas from the south and from the north. It is, from all points of view, the same type as the new towns, which Thucydides
said, “were installed on the isthmuses for the facility of commerce.” Here again, an old French or Venetian castle, which

24
the Nautical Instructions points out to us, says enough about what a comfortable retreat the one or the other of the two
bays offered to the corsairs and Latin merchants.
In summary, of all the Astypales, none accords either to the idea that the Greeks made themselves a Hellenic Old
Town, or to the ageless necessities which, in the archipelago, determine every old native settlement. The Astypales of
Attica, Caria, Kos and Stampalia cannot correspond other than to the preoccupations and habits of foreign navies, when
they debark and install themselves on a barbaric coast. In Asia Minor, the Cretans , original founders of Milet, installed
their fortress in front of the sea, at the spot where today one finds Milet-la Vielle (Old Milet), κτίσμα Κρητιχον ‘υπερ της
θαλάττης τετειχισμένον ‘όπου ‘η Παλαιμίλητός εστι. In Spain, the first Greek colonies of Emporion founded their old
town on a small coastal isle; later their new town transported itself to the mainland, where it became a double town,
separated in two by a wall: a town for natives and a town for Greeks…But our Astypales resemble above all the
descriptions Thucydides gives us of the Phoenicians debarking around Sicily “on protruding promontories or parasitic
islets,” ακρας τε επι θαλασση απολαβοντες και τα επικειμενα νησιδια εμποριας ενεκεν. For, in the legend, a nymph
Astypale is daughter to Phoenix and sister to Europa: she has a son by Poseidon, Ankaios, who became king of Samos.
Another nymph, Astypale is mother of Eurypylos, king of Kos. Still another, also daughter of Phoenix and sister of
Europa, gave her name to the isle of Astypale. Do we not have in these legends the memory of a Phoenician thalassocracy
whose landing stages, left to the Greeks, became for them the “Old Towns”?

*
* *

The example of Astypale, even if one does not accept the last hypothesis, totally proves to us at least the existence of
navies anterior to the Greeks and the survival of their topological “evidences.” There is a multitude of similar facts which
all, after examination, lead to the same result. Already, in antiquity, some of these facts had scandalized or excited the
curiosity of the common good sense. The Greeks were not able to understand the blindness of their ancestors, who
foolishly installed themselves in such inconvenient or disadvantageous places when, entirely close by, an admirable site
offered itself for the foundation of an Hellenic city. In the ports of the Bosphorus the Megarians, it was said, founded
Chalcedony. The town, on the cliffs of the Asiatic coast, had but one very bad anchorage and nearly poisonous waters. On
the European coast, facing it, The Golden Horn offered the best port of the Mediterranean, with beaches, springs and
schools of tuna which would assure the wealth of a future capitol of the world: The Pythians mocked the Megarians and
sent wiser colonies to found Byzantium across from the “blind men”, απεναντιον των τυφλων. If Chalcedony so strongly
shocked the good sense of the Hellenes, it is perhaps because – we shall see – it was not founded by them or for them.
Similarly, in the primitive namings, how many names seemed strange or mysterious to the Greeks and how many fine
puns they invented to explain the riddles! Of the names, some have been transmitted to us only by their geographers. But
most are still conserved in popular usage. There are those which still serve us today to designate, for example, most of the
Greek isles: Syria, Naxos, Seriphos, Siphnos, Paros, Corcyre, the Greek isles still bear preHellenic names, names which,
at least, deliver no meaning in Greek and do not appear Greek in origin. Throughout all the thalassocracies, antique,
modern and contemporary, up to our time, the old uncomprehended names have survived. If they have been sometimes
covered up by the introductions of the more recent navies, they have rapidly emerged anew, and their being swallowed up
was only transitory: Thera of the Hellenes has become Thera of the modern Greeks, after having borne for some time an
Italian or French whitewash of Sainte-Irene or Santorin.
For the successive layers of Mediterranean naming are not always superimposed in a parallel manner nor exactly
covered, the one by the other. They do not present themselves to our study in a vertical series of horizontal and
continuous slices. There are folds, collapses or dislocations which at times interrupt the regular succession, engulf the
superior layers and cause those below to emerge. There are also points which seem since their origin to have remained

25
stable and which have emerged. In the waters of our Mediterranean we can look at the surface or reach into the dim
depths of the names, evidences of the preHellenic epoch. On our coasts of Provence, Monaco appears to take up again the
Hercules Monoecus of the Romans and the Heracles Monoikos of the Greeks, back to a Semitic original. Nearby, the
Balearics, in Ivica, newly flourish the old Phoenician name which the Greeks covered over with their Pityoussa, but
which the Romans brought back to the light of day with their Ebusus. Toponymy, also, will furnish us with abundant
material for the preHellenic period, and, with its help, complete for us the work of topology.
But we need to distrust this aid a bit. The example of Astypale itself can show the dangers of the toponymic argument
and certain precautions we need to gather before risking an etymology or holding it as a certainty. Kiepert, having
finished his study of the Astypales, concluded that since the site was not Greek, neither should the name be. He proposes
a Semitic etymology. From the Hebrew root Sapal or Saphal (to be low), he derives a verb form istapel, and he attempts
to show that all the Astypales are situated downwards, whence the name. S. Bouchart himself has found no better,
Astippela ab humilitate dictum (Astypale spoken from lowness). It is not that I would wish to slander S. Bochart; but he
has been, I think, the most illustrious victim of the toponymic furor of the seventeenth century, when it was still the rage.
S. Bouchart (1599-1677), who was one of the most erudite philologists of the Anglo-Norman School and whom Bayle
proclaimed one of the great savants of the century, today is relegated to an entirely undeserved scurity. He is frequently
quoted without being credited. Kiepert thought he had discovered some new things which Bouchart had invented two
centuries earlier. It is the common fate of all the scholars of the seventeenth century, and our archeologists, who do not
fail to read the slightest memoir of the least German professor-doctor, appear to ignore the great scholars of the French
school.
S. Bouchart reconstituted, in two volumes, the Sacred Geography. The first of these volumes, titled Phaleg, was
devoted to the Lands of Scripture and dealt, in its four sections, with the division of the Races and the three pedigrees of
Shem, Japhet and Cham. The second book, titled Chanaan, studied, in its two sections, the Phoenician colonization and
the Phoenician and Punic language. Chanaan alone interests us, Through an examination of legends and place names,
thanks to an admirable knowledge of all the authors, historians, geographers, poets and mythographers of classical
antiquity, by grace also, it should well be attested, of a less admirable faculty for finding in one of the various Semitic
languages an etymology for all the Greek or Roman place names, Bouchart managed to reconstruct a Phoenician
Mediterranean: in Cyprus, Egypt, Cilicia, Pisidia, Caria, Rhodes, Samos (one could just continue, by the enumeration of
thirty-six main chapters, the complete tour of the Inner Sea), everywhere he rediscovers evidences of Semitic
colonization. No coast escaped from his quest of possession for an account of the Phoenicians. He even hesitated to deny
that America remained outside their commerce. He knew that the language of the Gauls had more than one resemblance
to that of the Phoenicians.
In spite of all his errors, S. Bouchart is profitable in one connection over which opposing prejudice triumphs today.
Founded on the Bible and on the prejudice of biblical infallibility, Bouchart’s theory falls apart with that prejudice. The
eighteenth century, separating truth from religion, also separated “sacred history” from history and expelled Phoenicians
and Jews from philosophical antiquity. It is a good time to review certain conceptions of Bouchart. But we should profit
from his example to sometimes avoid his errors. On reading him, one quickly perceives from where the weakness of his
arguments and the fantasy of his discoveries especially come. It is that, from habit, he envisages in his toponymic
researches only one name at a time. He almost never reconstitutes the class or the series to which the name may relate. He
does not research similarities or complementarities there. He almost always proceeds with an isolated fact, and wishes to
draw from it a general law. The vice of the method leaps into view. But the correction is furnished by Bouchart himself.
In two or three places he arrived at some indisputable results; it is where he has taken pains to collect a large number of
facts before risking an hypothesis. He prepares for example the list of perfumes and aromatic plants, and shows that the
Greeks, Latins and Hebrews have given there the same names.

‫קנמין‬ kenamom κιννάμωμομ cinnamanus

‫קציעה‬ kassia κασία cassia

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 ‫מיו‬ mour μύρρα myrrha
‫לבינה‬ lebona λίβανος
‫הלבנה‬ chalbena χαλβάνη galbanum
‫אהליה‬ aalot αλόν
‫ברלה‬ bdela βδέλλιον bdellium
‫נרד‬ nard νάρδος nardus
‫קפר‬ kopher κύπρος cyprus
‫נטף‬ natap νέτωπον

For one of the names, kinnamon or kinnamom, Herodotus says that the Greeks have it from the Phoenicians, τα ‘ημεις
από Φοινίκων μαθόντες κιννάμωμον καλέομεν. Bouchart concludes here with reason that the other terms are parallel
borrowings made by the Greeks from the Semites: similarly Herodotus tells us that libanotos and kasia were furnished to
the Greeks by the Arabs.
Bouchart thus offers us the way to correct his flights of fantasy. Without wishing it, he presents the law of all
etymologic research: never study an isolated name; the first rule of toponymy should be the rule of systems.
I understand from this that it is necessary to begin by preparing lists, of systems of names, and always to study a
collection of facts and not an isolated fact. The rule imposes itself. An isolated fact matters nothing to science. An isolated
proper name matters nothing to scientific etymology. True for all studies of place names, the rule should always be
followed most scrupulously when it performs Semitic etymologies. In all the Semitic languages, in effect, the rôle of
vowels is effaced; the framework of the word is made of consonants and most frequently of a triad of consonants; said
differently, Semitic roots are most frequently of three letters. Moreover, all or almost all combinations of three letters are
found in the vocabulary of Semitic roots. It thus will be possible to find a Semitic etymology in almost all Greek, Roman
or French place names: PaRiS becomes the Town of the Knight because PaRaS would say Knight in Hebrew.
It is etymologies of this sort or still worse which have discredited the work of Bouchart in spite of all its worth:
“Lindos is a Phoenician name, Limda, which signifies the Port of the Point; - Lindus, phoenicio nominee Linda, quasi
mucro aut aculeus dicta est, quia in insulae promontorio sita,” he tells us in speaking of the Rhodian town of Lindos.
“Pelinas signifies the great serpent; - dracone immani mons phoenicio sermone vocatus est Peli-naas, id est stupendi
serpentis,” he says in speaking of the mountain of Chios Pelinas. Unfortunately, one can open his book almost at random
to fall on similar examples.
Movers, in his turn, does not sufficiently beware of discoveries which are equally fantastic. Hecate and Herodian, cited
by Etienne of Byzantium, would furnish him an Egyptian town of Liebris, a colony of the Phoenicians, Λίηβρις, πόλις
Φοινίκων, Liebris, polis phoinichon: if the name is Phoenician, says Movers, it can be explained only by Li-ebrim, that is
to say, (station) ad Hebraios; it is but an equivalent of Ιουδαίων στρατόπεδον, Vicus Judaeorum, Castra Judaeorum, of
which Josephus and the Notitia Dignitatum speak to us. Similarly, Libybe, Λιλυβαιον, Libubaion, is translated by Li-
Libye, Against Libya. Better yet, Byrsa, the citadel of Carthage, will come from Basra. #
To protect us a bit from the imaginations of Bouchart and Movers, we should thus study only systems of names. But
the systems can be of different sorts, and one can imagine at least two or three sorts of them.
From the very beginning, the Mediterranean, modern or ancient, offers us place names which present among
themselves a great similarity of structure, aspect and consonance. It suffices to cite Maratha, for example, as type of the
antique names which are encountered from Syria to Spain and from Thrace to Lybia and which for us appear to have no
sense, nor any valid etymology in Greek or in Latin. Phoenicia had its town of Marathos or Marathous, its stream
Marathias; Syria, its pirates Marato-cupreni; Arabia has its mont Mareitha; Ionia, its port of Marathesion; the Ionian sea
its isle Marathe; Laconia, its stream Marathon; Attica its port of Marathon; Spain its plain of Marathon, etc. Other
examples: from Spain to Caria, isles, towns and promontories are called Σάμος, Σάμη, Σαμικόν, Σαμία, Σαμοθράκη,

27
Samos, Samë, Samikon, Samia, Samothrake; similarly, Zakynthe, Zachunthos, is the name of twenty isles or ports…In
preparing the list of these similar names, we will produce the first form of a system, which we can name the verbal
system, since it is uniquely founded on the resemblance of names.
Lacking similarity, the names will be united by the places where they are used. In such a given region, on such a gulf,
on such an isle or in such a port, it happens that all the place names will be able to be linked one to the other. If, for
example, we prepare the list of island names in the Hellenic archipelago, we readily perceive that we should arrange them
in two columns. Each isle, in effect, has several names. Some, authentically Greek, are understood and explained without
difficulty by Greek vocabulary: such are the isles of Quail, Ορτυγία, Ortugia, Foam, Αχνη, Akhne, Beautiful Isle,
Καλλίστη, Kallisto, etc. The other names, to the contrary, appear unintelligible, Delos, Paros, Kasos, Naxos, etc.In taking
all the island names and putting them together, the Greek words on the one hand and the foreign words on the other, we
will have a double local or geographic system.
Finally, the names can have a sort of historic or legendary parentage. The Boeotian legend puts the names Kadmos,
Europa, Telephassa, Thebes, etc. in an indissoluble union. Megarian history similarly unites Megara, Nisos, Abrote,
Minoa, etc. One will find thousands of examples of parallel historic or legendary systems, such as the history of
commercial ties between Τάμασσος, Tamassos and Τεμέση, Temese, producers of copper, and Siphnos or Spania, Σίφνος
and Σπανία, producers of gold or silver; such as the colonial legend putting Megara and Chalcedony in relation. Finally
the popular cults or myths such as those of Hercules and Theseus recall to us these primitive representatives, these groups
of seven ports dispersed in the circuit of the Saronic Gulf.
In reality, the different sorts of toponymic systems are inseparable from each other. Siphnos and Hispania, Σίφνος and
Ισπανία, may well form besides – we shall see presently – a verbal system rather than an historical system. These last two
sorts of systems especially constantly intermingle: they are, to speak truly, the most fruitful and the most legitimate. For a
local system is always a bit arbitrary: where does a region end? Why pick a given gulf in a sea and a given sea in the
Mediterranean? Local systems offer too many temptations: they should serve only as verifiers. Of the two others, it is the
verbal system which should serve as the basis and the rule; the historic system will come as the crown: the verbal system
of Astypales has led us to the legend of Astypale, daughter of Phoenix. The verbal system is in the final account, the
easiest and most sure. It is that which, up to now, has furnished the most useful materials for the study of preHellenic
topology. It is the verbal system, in effect, which Olshausen, since 1853, took as the foundation for his Studies on the
Names of Phoenician Places Outside the Semitic Region. He has grouped the names of the form Adramut, Αδράμυττις,
Ατράμυττειον Adramuttis, Atramutteon, Adrumetum, Χατραμωται, ‘Ατραμωτιται, Chatramotai, Hatramotitia, or those of
the form Atabour and Jordanos, Ατάβυρις and Αταβύριον, Ιορδάνης, Ιάρδανος and Ιόρδανος, Ataburis,and Ataburion,
Iordanes, Iardanos and Iordanos, and he has shown how the names, which have no sense other than from their Semitic
etymology, are nevertheless distributed from Arabia to the Bosphorus and from Lycia to the Barbary coast. The studies of
Olshausen can always be cited as models of the genre; the results appear convincing to me.
Thus we have here a prime protection against involvement in etymologic furor: an etymologic hypothesis which
applies only to an isolated name, which does not apply itself to an entire system, should resolutely be discarded. But the
formation of systems is only the first step. Once the systems are prepared, isolated and well recognized, it is necessary to
enter and discover interpolations of them. For these can be of several sorts. From one people to another, in effect, place
names are transmitted by several means. At first encounter, it appears, one will imagine twenty sorts of acquisitions and
borrowings in these matters. Nevertheless the varieties of transport, apparently so numerous, sort themselves, in the final
account, into three principles.
The first manner: transcription. The borrowing people accept a foreign place name as it is presented to them, entirely,
in ideas and words. They transcribe it as they perceive it. They copy the words and reproduce them to the best of their
ability. They only made slight changes of the vowels and consonents and only to adapt them to the necessities or habits of
their ears or their speech. In brief, they transpose the place names into their particular accent; but they do not alter any of
the essential values in them. Consonants and vowels, the names Espania, Italia, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, Rhodes,

28
Peloponnesus, Sicily, Balearic, etc…, are transmitted exactly from thalassocracy to thalassocracy from the Hellenic
origins up to our day.
The second manner: translation. The borrowing people reject the exterior form of the foreign place name; but,
retaining the ideas, they translate the words of the neighbor into their own language. At the entrance to the straits of
Gibralter, all present-day navies recognize the Mount of Apes; but, each applies it in different words: English, French,
German, etc. One may similarly find capes called Black Rock, which the Turks call Kara Bouroun, the French and the
Italians Pietra Nera or Pierre Noir, and the Greeks Mavrolithari.
The third manner: between these two extremes, transcription and translation, the people frequently pick a intermediate
term. They do not know how to translate the name which they borrow. They do not content themselves with transcribing
it. They get ahold of it and they mold it, they shorten or lengthen it or fashion it, according to their imagination and
reason: they succeed, by some pun, to make some sense of an incomprehensible name. The French took Megara of the
Greeks and made it the port of Maigre. The English took the Livorno of the Italians and made their Leghorn. The
Romans, in antiquity, drew from Ogilos of the Greeks their Aegilia. We see the Hellenes, by the same procedure, draw
from the Phoenician Solo (Rocks), their towns of Solon, Soloi, or from Phoenician Ros (capes), their promontories of the
Rhodians, Rhodos, or from Phoenician Minoha (Stops), their colonies of Minos, Minoa. Sometimes such puns are newly
translated by each successor: the Italians, having taken Hymettos from the Hellenes, have made a pun of it in their Mount
of the Fool, Il Matto, which the Turks translate into Deli Dagh: the Modern Greeks, having translated the Turkish word,
today say Trèlo Vouno.
Transcription, translation or popular pun, all borrowed place names undergo one of these three operations. Before
opening a system, it is necessary to envisage three possible explanations, and one may, one should, hesitate between three
keys: which to choose? We cannot be too wary: to further diminish the chance of error or flights of fantasy, a strict rule
may be posed, the rule of doublets. By this I mean that an etymologic hypothesis should not be held as entirely valid
unless it is supported by a doublet. The Greeks, on the Coast of Africa, have a promontory which they name Megale Akra,
which one would call in Greek, the Great Cape: they also call it Rous Adir, which means nothing in Greek. But, in the
Semitic languages, the name Rous Adir, ‫ ריש אדיר‬similarly signifies the Great Cape, or the Big Head. Megale Akra and
Rous Adir thus form a Greco-Semitic doublet and, sure of the first term, we can, I believe, affirm the precise sense and
origin of the second, since we know from history that the Greeks succeeded the Phoenicians on the African coasts. For we
see well, by the constant history of the Mediterranean, how successive navies transmit place names by explaining them,
and how the newly arrived sometimes translate the place names of their predecessors, conserving the original words
alongside the translation. The Venetians and the Genoese took from the Byzantines the name of Holy Mountain for Athos,
peopled by monks: they accept the Greek name Hagion Oros; but they also translate it into Italian: Monte Santo. All the
Mediterranean thalassocracies have done the same. In the Hellenic layer, one finds an abundance of parallel doublets,
which will give us an absolute certainty in certain problems of Greek origins. When most of the isles of the archipelago
bear two or three names at the same time; when of the names the one, certainly Greek, Akhne, signifies Foam, and the
other, of unknown origin, Kasos, can, explained by a Semitic etymology, bring back to us the same sense of Foam, I
believe this should confirm:
1° That Akhne-Kasos forms a Greek-Semitic doublet;
2° That a Semitic thalassocracy formerly occupied the archipelago and that the phrase of Thucydides is the echo of a
tradition worthy of belief, the expression of an historic truth, in no way legendary: “The islanders were the Karians and
the Phoenicians; for the two peoples colonized most of the isles, ο‘ι νησιωται Καρές τε όντες και Φοίνικες. ουτοι γάρ δη
τας πλείστας των νήσων ωκησαν.”
May one take take protection from this double affirmation. It contains the seed of my entire thesis. It is a series of
Greco-Semitic doublets which will open for us the mystery of Greek origins. It is a series of parallel doublets which will
show us the exchange of words, of products and of ideas between the Phoenicians and the most ancient inhabitants of the
Hellenic lands. For I believe the method unassailable. If an etymology can always be disputed, put in doubt and rejected, I
believe that a doublet carries in itself its proof of authenticity. A critical spirit can reject the most probable etymology, on

29
the pretext that all coincidences are possible and that a Greek name can resemble a Phoenician word without being
derived from it or without having served as a model for it. But, faced with a doublet, the certitude imposes itself on any
man of good faith, providing that the doublet is well established, providing that the two terms apply properly to the same
single thing. And the certainty becomes absolute if one can prove further that the thing accords well to the double name.
When it is used for place names, it is necessary that the toponymic doublet be the double name of only one site, and it is
necessary that the double name be in concurrence with the topography and topology of the place.
This last condition - concordance of the toponymic doublet with the nature or appearance of the site which it denotes -
is particularly profitable to study. For frequently the study can lead to some firm conclusions on the origin and date of the
doublet itself. Take again the example of Mount Athos and suppose that we know neither the date nor the origin of the
doublet Hagion Oros – Monte Santo. We establish only that the mountain bears a double name, Greek and Italian: we
conclude from this that two navies, Greek and Italian, have turn by turn frequented its shores. But we do not know which
of the two preceded the other nor which of the two in actuality invented the name of Holy Mountain which the other
translated. If we seek why the name was invented, in what way it corresponds to the site, we find that only the Greek,
Russian or Bulgarian monasteries, Orthodox, which today people the mountain, make it veritably a holy mountain. The
source of the doublet was Greek; it is probable that the Greek name was the original and that the Italian name was only
the translation. If the Italians, being Catholics, had been the ones to find a term for the promontory, they would perhaps
have called it the Mount of Monasteries, the Mountain of the Old [Men] or Mountain of Monks; but, not having the
respect of the natives for these refuges or for the ministers of Orthodox Christianity, they certainly would not have
invented the respectful name of Holy Mountain: these good Catholics could not accept any Holy Mountain in the
Levantine sea other than Calvary or Carmel.

*
* *

Toponymically as topologically, the further explores the Mediterranean, the better one sees the enormous quantity of
still unexplored materials for the reconstruction of primitive thalassocracies. All the isles of the archipelago, all the
cantons of the Hellade, offer us some site of the Old Town anterior to the Hellenes and which the Hellenes have
abandoned. The great Greek sanctuaries, Delphi, Olympia, Eleusis, etc., all appear to belong to the same preHellenic
epoch. What are, in historic times, the great ports of the epic tale, Ithaca, Pylos, Aulis, Iolkos, etc? In the Greek waters, on
all the shores for landing, at all the straits, around all the fisheries, Greco-Semitic doublets abound. It suffices to assemble
them. They present themselves once one commences to reunite them. Sites and names, the Greek seas offer all the
materials for the study of the primitive thalassocracies, which certainly existed, which persisted perhaps dozens of
centuries, and the knowledge of which will someday come to reunite the history of the entirely modern Hellenes with the
old histories of the Egyptians and the Semites.
But, in the course of this study, one is not long in making another discovery: the poems of Homer are a description or
at the very least a faithful memory of the original Mediterranean. The Homeric Epic, thanks to W. Helbig, has further
clarified the discoveries of the preHellenic Aegean or Mycenaean archeology. And, reciprocally, this archeology has
elucidated or validated many details, many words, many of the episodes of the Epic, which the literal or literary
explications of the philologists have not accomplished. Homeric geography can lead to a similar double result. The
Ulyssiad, especially, immediately appears as mine of precise evidence. For it is not a collection of sleepwalking accounts
which frivolous authors present to us. It is a geographic document. It is the picture, poetic but not deformed, of a
particular Mediterranean with its habits of navigation, its theories of the world and of nautical life, its language, its
nautical instructions and its commerce. From the first steps we see that the Odyssian Mediterranean is also the
Mediterranean of Greco-Semitic doublets, for the Ulyssiad is nothing but a web of these doublets: its descriptions appear

30
contemporary to the times when “Phoenicians or Karians occupied the isles.” Reciprocally, the Phoenician
Mediterranean, once explored, explains to us the whole and the details of the Odyssian adventures. Ulysses no longer
navigates in the mist of legend in imaginary lands. From cape to cape, isle to isle, he cruises the Italian or Spanish coasts
which Phoenician commerce had already frequented. The frightful monsters which he meets, the horrible Scylla, which
from the depths of its cavern, screams like a young dog at the entrance of the strait,

ένθα δ’ ενι Σκύλλα ναίει δεινον λελακυια

της η τοι φωνη μεν ‘όση σκύλακος νεογιλης… ,

the Phoenicians knew in reality and pointed out to their pilots, as our navies still recognize it and point it out in the waters
of the straits of Messina: “Inside the cape rises Mount Scuderi, which is 1250 meters in height. Near the flat summit of
the mountain, there exists a cavern from where the wind issues whistling with some violence.”
We will frequently have to cite our Nautical Instructions. They are the best commentary on the Ulyssiad. The
ancients had the custom of seeking in the Homeric poems the source of all knowledge and all truth: even before venturing
on these Odyssian studies, I confess that this idea appeared most satisfying to me. It appeared to me impossible, in effect,
to see in a work of the Hellenes, such as it was, a product only of the imagination. I don’t insist on the idea at the moment.
But whoever has long lived in the company of Hellenes ancient and modern is well obliged to agree that imagination is
not their master faculty, nor the source of their works of art. The creative or evocative imagination is not what they
demand of their artists. It little matters to them that following twenty others, a tragedy repeats for them, with nothing
changed, the dolorous adventures of Hecuba or of Atigone. Without inventing the least change in the general disposition
of the work, an architect or sculptor will always be able to recommence for them the temple or statue that a hundred
others before him had made. If the work presents a regular and harmonious order, with nothing violent or exaggerated
which shocks the vision or the spirit; if the conception is always subordinate to the measure of a balanced reason; if the
execution, artful and conscientious, displays neither ignorance nor haste; if the whole conserves, in spite of
simplifications, the appearance of a faithful copy of nature; each work, even if a bit banal or without great originality,
always appears to the Hellenes truly Greek and worthy of the esteem of connoisseurs.
The Homeric poems and above all the Odyssey do not distinguish themselves in this from other Greek works. We need
not compare the Ulyssiad to the enormous teratologies of the Hindus nor to the mad reveries of the Arabs: “to build a vain
teratology without any founding of truth is not Homeric,” says Strabo, εκ μηδενος δε αληθους αναπτειν κενην
τερατολογιαν, οθχ ‘Ομηρικον. It is more valuable to compare the Odyssey with such geographic, semiscientific or
utilitarian poems as the Greeks and Romans composed or translated to codify their discoveries or those of others. There
would be some irreverence without doubt, and a gross error, to compare in pushing to the extreme the comparison of
Homer to Scymnus of Chios or Avienus. One should, however, have it present in the mind. We should never forget the
utilitarian tendencies of the Greek spirit. The Greek poets undertook from the first to instruct or moralize their listener.

κοινην παστι την ευχρηστίαν

δια σε παρέξων τοις θέλουσι ψιλομαθειν.

The Homeric poets would have adapted themselves to the same tastes. The sailors listen more readily to verses which can
serve them in their navigations. Simply in passing an agreeable hour, these practical men wish to learn the road to El
Dorado, the length of the voyage and the way back across the fish-laden sea.

‘ός κέν τοι είπησιν ‘οδον και μέτρα κελεύθου #

νοστον θ’, ‘ως επι πόντον ελεύσεια ιχθυόεντα.

31
 It thus behooves us to study and translate the Odyssey not in the tradition of the rhetoricians and mannerists of
Gradus who see in it nothing but an assemblage of beauty and poetic epithets. Since antiquity some have considered
Homer no more than a teller of fables: “Eratosthene,” says Strabo, “pretends that every poet seeks only amusement and
not truth.” But an opposing school, that of “Most Homerics who follow the epic verse by verse,” know that the Homeric
geography was not invented, that “the poet, to the contrary, is the master in geographic science,” : his accounts are exact,
“more exact, often, than those of later ages; they contain without doubt a portion of allegories, of affectations, of artifices
for popularity; but always, and especially in the Voyages of Ulysses, they have a scientific foundation.” The farther one
advances in the study of the Voyages of Ulysses, the more one verifies the justice of this phrase. Odyssian descriptions of
the most fantastic appearance are never anything but exact, very exact copies of reality. Most frequently, regarding the
Odyssey, one can copy some passage from our Nautical Instructions.
The description of Charybdis and Scylla is but one nautical instruction of perfect precision. “Pilot, here are my
instructions,” says Ulysses at the entrance to the straits, “you see the mist and the eddy; hold the ship away from them; do
not lose sight of the facing rock, for fear that the ship will not escape it and that you will throw us to our destruction.”

σοι δε, γυβερνηθ’, ‘ωδ’ επιτέλλομαι...

τούτου μεν καπνου και κύματος εκτος έεργε
νηα. σύ δε σκοπέλου επιμαίεο μή σε λάθησιν
κεισ’ εξορμήσασα και ες κακον αμμε βάλησθα.

We open our Nautical Instructions: “The navigation of the straits demands some precautions because of the rapidity
and irregularity of the currents which produce eddies and whirlpools dangerous for sailing ships. Additionally, before the
highlands, the winds play, and strong gales fall from the valleys and gorges, so that a sailor becomes unable to control his
maneuvers. The meeting of two opposeing currents produces, in diverse points of the strait, whirlpools and large eddies
called garofali (eyelets) in the area. The main ones are on the coast of Sicily, and are also called carioddi: it is the
Charybdis of the ancients.”
“The strait,” says Circe to Ulysses, “is bordered by two rocks, one very high, where Scylla lives, the other very low,
below which Charybdis swallows ships. Stay close to Scylla, who will take six of your crewmen from you. But it is worth
more to lose six men than to lose the entire crew.”
The Nautical Instructions still recommend the same maneuver. When one comes from the Tyrhenian Sea, one must
follow the Sicilian coast and approach the coast of Calabria, where one finds the sea the most favorable. Then, having
passed the region of the garofali, one holds to the center of the channel and goes without difficulty, whether to Messina or
Regio, on one side or the other of the Strait. Ulysses, who came from the north, manages it in this manner.He first skirts
Scylla on the Calabrian coast, then he returns to the center of the passage and from there he listens to the moaning of the
Sicilian crew. Then he arrives at the cape on the Sicilian coast and lands at Port-Creux, at Messina… In the reverse order,
after the slaughter of the divine herd and the shipwreck which is the punishment for this, Ulysses, on his wreck, is at first
thrown toward Charybdis, then toward Scylla. He is returning toward the north. He is once again exiled by the gods to the
terrors and enchantments of the great western sea, where captivity by Calypso awaits.
To better illustrate the exactitude of the Odyssian descriptions, we will presently see that charts and photographs of the
places are an indispensable help. These scientific documents give precise explanations for all the words of the poet.
When, around the cave of Cyclops, he describes to us the ring of pines and trees like a high head of hair, in reality, still
today, the shores of the Cyclops and the cave itself are shaded by giant oaks and parasol pines, totally different from the
green oaks and the stunted pines which border the Hellenic seas. W. Helbig already protested against people who do not
hold to a rigorous account of all the words of the text: “The Homeric epithets,” he says, “translate the essential quality of
the object which they are supposed to characterize.” These are not poetic epithets which one may interpret or neglect
according to the fantasy of the moment. It is necessary to follow the method of the Most Homerics and apply oneself to
all the words of the epic, τοις επεσιν ακολουθουντεσ: W. Helbig’s book exists to show which results one may hope for

32
from a similar method. It is nevertheless pleasant enough to find from the pen of the same Helbig, in the same work, some
phrases with this tone: “The researches of Hercher (Homeric Treatises) have demonstrated that the topographic base of
the epic is treated with a great freedom, that rivers, mountains, valleys, edifices appear and disappear turn for turn. Also
one might ask oneself if (in the description of the shield of Ajax) the poet has not cited the name of the town of Hyle
solely to give a personal cachet to his scene, but without attaching a well-determined geographic concept to the name. It
would from the first have been certain that none of his listeners would have asked him the embarrassing question of
whether there really was a locality of that name in the native land of the son of Telamon.”
I do not have to dispute the value of the theories of Hercher for the rest of the Homeric poems. But it will be easy for
me to prove - and this work has no other purpose – that they are inapplicable to the Telemachead and to the Voyages of
Ulysses. Having made the voyage myself (March-June 1901); having carefully noted the aspects of places, the disposition
and the character of the sites; having taken photographs and checked the maps of all the locations described by the poet, I
remain faithful to the ideas of the Most Homerics. Except for easily recognized interpolations, I believe it necessary to
follow the text of the epic word for word, and I believe that, to truly comprehend the text of the Ulyssiad, one needs to
place the work in the series of analogous books which, from century to century, from thalassocracy to thalassocracy, the
Mediterranean navies have faithfully transmitted - in the series of Nautical Instructions, Portulans, Pilots’ Guides, Torch
of the Sea, Mirror of the Sea,…For successive navies do not transmit only their place names, watering places and routes:
the newly arrived also borrow the habits of navigation, the charts and information of their predecessors. All present navies
copy their Nautical Instructions into the English Pilots:

This work, say our hydrographers in the Foreward of number 731 of their Instructions, contains the description of the east
coasts of Italy. One is assisted by the Mediterranean Pilot of the English Admiralty, a book in usage aboard the ships of the Italian
fleet. For the isles of Malta and Gozo, the instructions of the Mediterranean Pilot, vol. I, edit. 1885, have been translated textually,
completing them for public information since that date by the London Bureau of Hydrography.

The English thalassocracy thus distributes the Pilots from across the channel. In previous centuries, the French
thalassocracy vulgarized the Portulans of Marseille: from 1702 to 1830, all the Mediterranian navies copied the Portulan
of Henry Michelot, former pilot of the high seas in the king’s galleys. But, before Michelot, the French copied, he says
himself in his preface, the Holland charts and documents, without even correcting the most shocking faults in it:

The Holland charts are full of faults which appear especially in the different Mirrors of the Sea. Some delineation of coasts and
several plans of ports, harbors and bays are given there, which give notice that their authors have never been to the locations. One
portulan printed in Havre-de-Grace, indicates, speaking of the port of Palamos, that it is the best port of Catalonia, of which the
entry is east-southeast; the Dutch, before that, in their Mirrors of the Sea, place the mole of Palamos on the west coast, although it is
on the east coast.

The Mirrors of the Dutch were copied in their turn from the Spanish or Italian portulans, who themselves had only
the copy or calibration of the ancient travelogues of Greece and Rome. The classical navies in their turn had translated the
earlier voyages of Carthage, Tyre or others. We see in the collection how a Carthaginian tour by Himilcon, translated at
first into Greek in an unknown epoch, was put into Latin verse by a poet of the decline, R. Avienus. Another Carthaginian
excursion by Hannon comes to us through the Greek translation and, from classical sailors, it was transmitted to the
navies of the Renaissance, thanks to J.-B. Ramusio, who, in 1558, opens his anthology on Navigation and Voyages with
the navigation of Hannon Captain of the Cathaginians…But we shall review at length the transmission of Instructions,
Portulans and periples. The Ulyssiad is not at all at the top of the series: The Egyptian monuments force us to the
hypothesis that in the eighteenth century before our era, the literary genre of the periple already existed. On the walls of
Deir and Bahari, Queen Hatshepsut wished to relate and depict the noble navigations of her fleets to the Ports of Incense.
We shall study at length the accounts and pictures of the pharaonic voyage. G. Maspero supposes with reason that the

33
Phoenicians borrowed from Egypt the fashion of displaying their written or depicted periples in their temples: the periple
of Hannon, says the Greek translation, was displayed in Carthage in the temple of Cronos.

*
* *

I use the term “literary genre”, for from the outset it is not to be believed that, placed in that environment, the Odyssey
might have anything to lose of our admiration or the esteem of men of letters. Entirely to the contrary: it is never futile to
understand it well, the better to admire it. Expounded in the fashion of the Most Homerics, the Odyssey takes on a
complexion and a prominence which make it truly a work of art and a personal creation. One can here, with good reason,
admire this poetry of the first Hellenes. One can, then, recognize the conscious workmanship of one or of several great
poets. It is not the unformed secretions or mumblings of an anonymous mob: “The more one will envisage the world and
the past as they are, beyond conventions and preconceived ideas,” Rinan once said, “the more one will find there true
beauty. It is in this sense that one may say that knowledge is the first condition of serious admiration. Jerusalem has
emerged, more brilliant and beautiful, from the apparently destructive work of modern science. The pious stories, by
which we were deluded in our youth, have become, by grace of a sane interpretation, high truths, and it is to our other
critics that it might truly be appropriate to say: Our feet were standing at your threshold, Jerusalem!”
At the doorway of Greece, which is the Homeric world, the reader will decide whether I have discovered more art and
more real beauty. At least I have attempted to enter. I have put into practice the double counsel of S. Reinach and E.
Curtius: I have searched through the “true Greek,” as S. Reinach would have wished, and through geography, as E.
Curtius would have wished, for some light on the mysterious origins of the Greek people and their art; in so doing, I have
acquired more admiration and more respect for the first literary monuments of this people and of this art.

SECOND BOOK

THE TELEMACHEA

το δ’ ‘ιερον του Σαμίον Ποσειδωνας και ‘ο κατ αύτο

‘όρμος εις ‘όν κατήχθη Τηλέμαχος...

STRAB., VIII, p. 345.

CHAPTER Ι

LAND ROUTES AND SEA ROUTES

34
 αει τούς μύθους από τινων ‘ιστοριων ενάγων.

STRAB., III, p. 149.

The name of Telemachead is, if we please, just a convenient term for designating the first episode of the Odyssey, the
voyage of Telemachus to the Peloponnesus. Seeking news of his father, absent for twenty years, Telemachus departs from
Ithaca. From sea, he puts in at Pylos, the home of aged Nestor, who furnishes him horses and a chariot. To see the country
there he arrives at Sparta, at the court of Menelaus: en route, he makes a stop at the home of Diocles, king of Pheroes. He
returns by the same roads and the same means, from Sparta to Pylos, and from Pylos to Ithaca.
The account of the voyage occupies the first four verses of the Odyssey and the beginning of the fifth. It appears
difficult to localize for most of the commentators: we do not see here the order of a Roman geography. Of the four
localities mentioned by the poet, Ithaca, Pylos, Pheres and Sparta, two are well known and familiar to us. The isle of
Ithaca has retained its name since antiquity up to our days: whatever may be strongly asserted by certain innovators,
modern Ithaca is certainly the isle of Ulysses. Similarly, the name of Sparta has endured up to us. But Pylos and Pheres,
which mark the Odyssian route: how to rediscover them in the present Peloponnesus, which does not posess them, or in
the antique Peloponnesus, which offers us three Pylos and three Pheres? The ancients would already quarrel on the
subject: “There is Pylos, Pylos, and Pylos,” said the Greek proverb.

εστι Πύλος προ Πύλοιο. Πύλος γέ μέν εστι και άλλος.

Antiquity knew, in effect, three Pylos, all three on the eastern shore of the Peloponnesus, on the coast or in the vicinity
of the Ionian sea. All three facing Ithaca, all three in defiles in ocean or mainland ports. (πύλος, πύλη; cf. the place names
Σάμος, Σάμη)
The first Pylos, the most northern and the nearest to Ithaca, was in Elide, some distance from the sea. At the exit of a
passage which descends from the mountain to the maritime plain, it opened at the confluence of the double upper valley
of the two rivers, the Pene and the Ladon. It does not remain at all today, neither ruins of structures nor place name. The
foundations should be hidden under the village of Agrapidokhori. But the Elian Pylos may have in the past a rather
important rôle: the port guarded the crossroads of the two routes leading from the sea to the intereior.
One of the routes, heading from west to east, leaves the sea of Elide and climbs the valley of the Pene toward Arcadia:
it was an antique path of commerce between the Elian ports of Kyllene or Elis and the Arcadian marches of Lasion,
Psophis or Klitor. The other route leaves the Gulf of Corinth and passes from north to south, at the flank of the coastal
hills: in taking the valleys of Santameri, Ladon and ancient Kytheroes, it climbs from the maritime plains of Achaea up to
the interior plain of the Alph. It made a religious route for the Hellenes between the Achaean ports of Dyme, Olenos or
Patras and the sanctuary of Olympia. And later it made, after the French conquest of the Morea, the military route of the
French knights: debarking at the entrance of the gulf of Corinth, in their port of Kato-Akhaia, it is by Ano-Akhaia and
Saint-Omer (presently Santameri) that the French ascend toward the Alph; not far from our Elian Pylos, in the same defile
of the Ladon, they built their castle of Portes (present village of Portais); up to the end of their control, Portes remains one
of their fortresses.
The second Pylos was Triphylian. A bit to the south of the Alph, there was a maritime port between the coastal
montains and the shore. It held the defile which the mountains of Triphyle make above the bay of Kyparissia. In the gulf
of Kyparissia, Heroditus was acquainted with the Kaukones Pylians, and Strabo also knew the name of that Pylos; but
similarly he was not able to see the ruins there: before his times the town had entirely disappeared. He sought the

35
emplacement there a little to the north of Kyparissia, in the territory of the Lepreates, about thirty stades from the coast,
said the gographer, to the southeast of the Samikon promontory.
The third Pylos, finally, was Messinian. It was also a maritime port. It guarded the north entry of the bay of Navarin,
across from the isle of Sphakteria; it occupied, he said, the summit of the Koryphasian promontory.
From antiquity, the three Pylos claimed the memory of Nestor and each called itself the Nelean Port. And similarly
three Pheres competed for the glory of having lodged Telemachus in the palace of their king, Diocles. The name of Phere
or Pheres, whose signification one does not clearly perceive, is widespread in Greek lands, Φάρα, Φαραί, Φαρεις,
Φαραία, Φαρις, Φεραί, Φηρή, Φηραί, Phara, Pharai, Phareis, Pharaia, Pharis, Pherai, Phere, under the slightly different
forms, but applied turn by turn to the same town, one encounters Pheres in the entire Hellade, in Laconia, in Messinia, in
Achaeia, Thessaly, Crete, Etolia, Lapygia, etc. Let us pass in review the Pheres of the Peloponnesus.
The first is Laconian. It is called indifferently Pharis or Pharai, Φαρις, Φαραί. It is an old Achaean town, which was
not subjugated until somewhat late by the Dorians, and its inhabitants exiled themselves in preference to submitting to the
Spartan law. It is likely that it already existed in Homeric times: it is mentioned in the catalog of vassels. The site still
leaves to guess the rôle that it could have performed. At a certain distance from the coast, at a station in the vicinity of the
port of Gythion, it is situated among the olives and vines, on the hills which constrict the lower course of the Eurotas. The
hills are situated between the Laconian gulf and the interior plain, the ancient empty lake, whose sown floor surrounds
“Hollow Sparta.” Between the peasants of the plain and the sailors of the gulf, Pheres can serve as intermediary, in
offering to the ones or the others a way station. It is quite regrettable that the gulf of Laconia does not have a port by the
name of Pylos. Then everything in the voyage of Telemchus would be explained. His boat, having rounded the Matapan,
would have come along the Laconian Pylos. A trek of thirty or fourty kilometers would have conducted our people to
Pheres. Another march, less long, would lead them to Sparta, which a total of fifty or sixty kilometers separates from the
gulf. ..but the Laconian gulf has never had a Pylos.
The second Pheres is Messinian. On the east horn of the gulf of Messina, it is some small distance from the beach. One
thus can consider it as a maritime town. The explorers and archeologists have rediscovered it in the coastal plain, in the
present location of Kalamata, say the ones, on the piles of Taygete, at the village of Zianitza, say the others, with more
reason. It occupied the summit of a hill which, on one side, held to the mountains and, on the other side, almost to the
peak, dominates the valley of a coastal torrent. The ships would be able to ascend almost to the location. The Messinian
Pheres, to be seen on the chart, attracts the attention of the geographers of the cabinet. On one chart, all difficulties
disappear. We know that Messina possesses a port of Pylos on its bay of Navarin, and Messina is in the vicinity of Sparta.
If one draws a straight line from Sparta to Messinian Pylos, our town of Pheres is right in the middle of its path. Here then
is the necessary stop between the bay of Navarin and the plain of the Eurotas…
There is certainly a third Pheres in Achaeia, on a route which leads from the sea to towns of the interior. This Pheres
could have served if necessary as a resting place on the way to the Pylos of Elide: if Telemachus debarks at a port of the
gulf of Corinth, he will at first be able to traverse the Achaean Pheres, then to arrive at that Pylos. But it suffices to state
the unlikelihood of the hypothesis on viewing it: in the Odyssey Telemachus debarks at Pylos before arriving at Pheres.
Conversely, the Pylos of Elide is thirty or thirty-five kilometers from the coast, and the Odyssian Pylos should be a port
where the vessels come to land. Surely, the Pheres of Achaeia and the Elian Pylos should be eliminated from our
searches.
In resumé, Messina alone, it seems, can offer us on a continuous route the three stops of the Odyssian voyage. Pylos
on the sea coast, Pheres at the middle of the passage, Sparta at the other end. In view of the map, the problem is solved.
The Messinian Pylos is, furthermore, the only Pylos which, since Hellenic times, may have never known another name.
The wars between Sparta and Athens turned the eyes of all of Greece to the isle of Sphakteria. Across the centuries, noöne
could henceforth in any way ignore the location of the Spartan Waterloo. The Peloponnesus would have a Pylos like
Attica had a Marathon, and Boeotia a Platea. It is according to the Messinian Pylos itself that ancients and moderns
consider how the name is to be pronounced. It is there that, already at the time of Pausanius, the tourists went to visit the
cave and the stables of Nestor. It is there that Schliemann would hope to find another Mycenae. The complete failure of

36
his excavations should make us reflect. Among the ancients, it is certain that the troop of tourists in that place admired the
ruins of the Nelean port. But the knowledgable people, Strabo and the Most Homerics, had other ideas. It is to the
Triphylian Pylos that they transported the debarkation of Telemachus. It is to the south of the Alph, at the foot of
Samikon, near the sanctuary of Samian Poseidon, that they sought the beach of sand frequented by the Homeric ships, το
δ’ ‘ιερον τοθ Σαμίου Ποσειδωνος και ‘ο κατ’ αθτο ‘όρμος εις ‘ον κατήχθη Τηλέμαχος. In support of that opinion, the
geography appears to me to have given some weighty reasons. I refer the reader one time for everything to the chapter of
the eighth book of Strabo. I will not have the more knowledgable take up again and develop his thesis; I would only
correct one secondary point: Strabo sought the ruins of Triphyllian Pylos in the mainland hills thirty stades from the sea,
to the southeast of the Samikon promontory; I believe them nearer to the promontory, just some meters from the beach…
But according to the methods of the Most Homerics: we study the account of the Telemachead word for word, beginning
with the sea crossing, then the land journey.

*
* *

“Give me,” says Telemachus to the suitors, “a vessel and twenty rowers: I wish to go to Sparta and sandy Pylos, to
inform myself of my father Ulysses.” The suitors refuse. But, unknown to them, Athena organizes the voyage under the
figure of Mentor. She arms a cruiser, νηα θοην, assembles a crew of volunteers, launches the vessel and guides it to the
entrance of the port. Then she returns to the palace to seek the provisions for the voyage, which Telemachus has prepared.
The men take charge of the flour and the wine. They return to the sea. On the beach, they tour the port and go, by foot, up
to the edge of the inlet where the ship is anchored. They stow the provisions. Everyone embarks. Mentor and Telemachus
go to seat themselves on the stern castle, ίκρια πρυμνης, (we review all the terms) The crew take their place on the
benches of the galley. Telemachus commands the work and hoists the mast. Athena then raises a fresh wind from the
northwest, a Zephyr without variation: ακραη ξέφυρον, which hits the sail full on. The boat takes off “over the skin of the
sea” as the people of Marseilles say. Everything is well arranged, hoisted or laid on board; they let the pilot and the wind
guide the ship. They sit around and have a drink. All the night and the same in the morning they navigate thusly…When
the sun appears, they reach Pylos, the well-built town of Neleus.

I have insisted on the details of the maneuver. It is necessary to explain each word to achieve the material exactitude in
it: those who speak of Homeric imaginations may touch with their fingers the truth of the slightest detail there.
Telemachus embarks at night. It is at sunset that Mentor went to the far end of the town to find the cruiser and its crew.
It takes another day during which he draws the cruiser from the jumble of boats hauled on the beach or left afloat. At
night they row it to the inlet and anchor it almost on the high sea, under the last promontory. But there, they wait several
hours. It is long after sunset, in the full night, in the black night,

δύσετό τα’ ηέλιος σκιόωντο τε πασαι αγυιαί,

that Telemachus comes aboard and they hoist the sail. In the Odyssian language, the paraphrase “the sun had set and all
the streets were filled with shadow” designates an hour as precisely as, in the later language, the analogous periphrase:
“the hour when the agora filled up.” It is the hour of the black night. At sunset a portion of the streets still remain lighted
by the slanting rays. Comes the twilight and all the streets fill with with with a diffuse glow where the shadows are
drowned. Then, slowly, the shadows appear to well up and and rise from the earth; in measure as the night advances,
under the still clear sky, they invade and fill the low streets, then the high sreets; they finally cover the entire town; “when
all the streets are full of shadow,” it is the black night, two or three hours after sunset.

37
 It is the favorable hour for debarkations. It is the hour which Telemachus chose. It is the hour the suitors choose when
they will go to waylay his return in the channel of Ithaca: at sunset, they set their ship afloat and row it under the
promontory of the outlet; there, they all prepare their supper, they await the black night to leave; when the night has
come, “they embark and set out upon the wet paths.” It is again the same hour which the Pheacians will choose for the
embarkation of Ulysses. After the dawn they made the preparations to depart. From the morning the vessel, dragged into
the sea, is drawn up to the entrance of the port. The cargo, brought down from the high town, is arranged under the
benches of the rowers. All the ropes and all the rigging are put in place; the mast is put in place, the oars attached. When
the ship is completely ready to put under sail, they anchor it near the inlet; a sentry remains aboard to guard it: the rest of
the crew return to the palace of Alkinoös. All day they drink, eat, sing and dance. It is the last “broadside” before
embarkation. “But Ulysses frequently turned his head to the sun, still high; he desired to see it set more quickly, for he
had haste to depart. As the man who has followed the heavy plow all day behind his oxen desires his supper; it is to his
joy that the setting sun will bring the hour of repose…Thus for Ulysses the setting sun brought a joy.” After the exchange
of the official toasts, the Pheacians sent the hero aboard. The black night has come. Situated with care upon the aft castle,
Ulysses lies down and falls asleep. The vessel leaves the bay in full night…And it is again in the black night, the sun
having set, and all the streets full of shadow, that the Phaecian cruiser will leave the port of Syria.

δύσετο τ’ ηέλιος σκιόωντό τε πασαι αγυιαί.

This formula, which is not encountered in the Iliad, appears seven times in the Odyssey, and always to mark the station
of a voyage: ch. II, 388, embarkation of Telemachus; ch. III, 487 and 497, arrival at Pheres and at Sparta; ch.XI, 12,
arrival of Ulysses in the land of the dead; ch. XV, 185, 296 and 471, return of Telemachus to Pheres, then to cape Pheia,
and embarkation of the Phoenician cruiser. The Odyssian poet addresses an audience of sailors: he speaks their language.
Among the Ionian sailors, the formula should have been current and the hour familiar. Here is a page from our Nautical
Instructions on the system of winds in the Greek waters; it will give us the reason for the nocturnal embarkations:

WINDS. – During the summer, on the coast which borders the Ionian isles, the winds from the northwest (it is the Homeric
Zephyr) predominate, and during the winter, those from the southeast. In summer, since the temperature is stable and the barometer
high, the land breezes and sea breezes succeed each other with some regularity.
The Land Breeze blows from the mountains across the valleys and makes itself felt at a greater or lesser distance from the coast,
according to the season, sometimes, but very rarely, up to twenty miles distance; generally its influence does not extend farther than
ten miles. The breeze is weak. On the coast of Epirus, it blows from the north to northeast. It arises two or three hours after sunset
and increases in intensity after a moment. It freshens anew accordingly as the sun rises above the horizon, in shifting some points to
the east, up until nine o’clock in the morning; after which, it falls, and the sea breeze replaces it.
The Imbatto, or Sea Breeze commences to make itself felt from the west-southwest to the northwest, according to the column of
air which, entering by the strait of Gibralter, traverses the Mediterranean through its entire length up to Palestine. The wind, which is
usual in July and August, is accompanied by a clear atmosphere (dry in Greece) and varies in direction during the day; it changes its
normal direction and shifts to the south during the morning and returns, by degrees, to the north, where it stays fixed during the
night.

In all the Greek waters, it is this way: “In general, during the summer and in fair weather of winter,” repeat the
Nautical Instructions of the archipelago, “the alternating breezes of the land and the sea predominate in the different
gulfs. The sea breeze begins to enter into the gulfs around ten o’clock in the morning and fall at sunset; the land breeze
rises at eleven o’clock at night.” One understands why, traveling toward the southeast, the vessels of Ulysses and
Telemachus leave the island coast in the full night, after eleven o’clock. All day, the sea breeze has “entered the gulfs,”
blocking the ships in the port. It falls at sunset and one has three or four hours of flat calm: it is the propitious moment to
set the ship afloat and row it to the last promontory. But there, one must still wait several hours until the land breeze rises

38
which, blowing from the mountains to the open, will push the ship into the high sea. With the breeze, one leaves with the
wind astern and full sails.

έπρησεν δ’άνεμος μέσον ‘ιστίον.

With the breeze, one travels fast and straight. Its influence is made felt at ten, sometimes twenty miles distance. It loses
intensity accordingly as one distances oneself from the coast. It ends by disappearing when one reaches the high sea. But
there it is replaced by the winds of the open sea and, in those regions, during summer, it is, say the Nautical Instructions,
the winds of the north which predominate during the night. Thus, in leaving the Ionian isles at eleven o’clock in the
evening, the vessels go straight to the south to the Peloponnesus with the assurance of a steady wind, which will carry
them all night in the same direction. The land breeze at the beginning, then the winds of the open sea do the work, without
the need to pull a stroke or even change the sail. Once the mast is set and the sails trimmed, one lets the wind and the pilot
do the work. Up until the dawn, while the whole world drinks or sleeps!…But heed the sunrise, if one needs to debark!
One must enter the bay before the heat of the morning. At the bright sunrise it is easy to enter: “The land breeze then
decreases and turns to calm.” During that calm, one must then hasten to the port. For, the sun having risen, the land breeze
is going to freshen anew and, blowing toward the main, it renders approach difficult. Later, during the morning, its force
always opposing, it will carry the latecomers and the unawares out to the high sea. It will not fall altogether until nine or
ten o’clock in the morning. Thus it is at the bright dawn that one must land to debark at sunrise…Recall the the voyage of
Telemachus and say whether, from point to point, the recommendations of our Nautical instructions are not followed by
the sailors of the Odyssey.
Now note well the duration of the sea voyage. Leaving with the land breeze, two or three hours after sunset, arriving at
the already full dawn, our people have not passed but eight or nine hours on the water. Today, to go from Ithaca to
Laconia with the most rapid steamships takes us touble or triple that time. One does not have to cry out at the
improbability of of the Homeric account: it is wiser to to consider that the primitive navigations differed entirely from
ours. They did not follow the same roads. Today we go from Ithaca to Laconia by the south of the Peloponnesus in
passing Modon and the Matapan. We will make certain places on the sea. And that is not the habit of the old navigators.
For if one studies the ancient navigations and especially the primitive navigations, it appears that a general law may be
discerned, which will always and especially be different from ours.
Our large vessels, comfortable, spacious, solid, and which we arrange according to our preferences, are suited for long
passages. They render them possible and preferable. Our intercontinental commerce always takes the maximum sea
voyage for the minimum land route: I wish to say that it never hesitates to undertake a long navigation to avoide a cartage
of equal or even the least bit greater length. It is that for us the sea is the most direct and least costly way. Once embarked,
freight merchandise and passengers both stay aboard until the port of call the closest to their final destination. Only
certain passengers of note and certain deluxe merchandise debark at the first port where, at a peninsula or the edge of the
mainland, a land route comes to be offered to Lisbon, to Brandisi and, by a long terrestrial trip in rapid vehicles the
markets or the capitols are reached. The sea for us is the great highway: Marseilles and Genoa are always the great ports
of debarkation for farthest Asia: Brindisi draws only the privileges of the mail boat of the Indies.
For the navigators of the Odyssey, the sea is only a path,’υγρα κελευθα. Their small boats, by sail or oars, are slow,
quick to capsize, of little space or capacity, poorly decked, neither safe nor comfortable. They have no compass and are
usually navigated within sight of the coasts. The high sea and the long passages are terrible things for them: “Oh gods,
you curse my fate, you who see that on a raft I face the terrible gulf, the great abyss of the sea, which the vessel, pushed
by the wind of the gods, cannot pass by itself!” Of one’s own will, even with a favorable wind, one never ventures over
that fearful abyss. One stays as long as possible on the solid deck of the earth. One winds around the gulfs and bays by
land instead of traversing them. One follows the peninsulas to the end, even when they are very long. One spends several
days traveling to avoid a few hours on the high sea. If in spite of everything one is resigned to the perilous venture, still

39
one is forced to reduce it to the strict minimum: one leaves the coast at the last promontory: one hastens to reach the
nearest cape.
We have twenty examples together of the minimal navigations for one maximim land route. We see that the “wet path”
is no more than the compliment of the great solid road. All throughout antiquity it is thus: the same in Greco-Roman
times, it is impossible to understand anything of the most frequented commercial routes, if one does not wish to resort to
that law which, for the convenience of the language, we call “the law of the traversed isthmuses.” That law ruled still
more strictly the primitive navigations: if one does not take account of it, the founding of Thebes by the Phoenician
Kadmos may by good rights seem legendary. We frequently invoke the law; we thus should one time establish it well in
some typical examples for all. The well-explained examples together show in the land voyage of Telemachus, no longer
the geographic fiction which some imagine, but a real itinerary, familiar to travelers of ancient times: the land route of the
Telemachead is of a description as materially exact as the ocean voyage

*
* *

Here to begin with is a text from Thucydides. During the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans occupied Dekelia: the
provisioning of Athens immediately became difficult, because the Athenians brought their victuals from Eubea. Take a
map of Attica and read the text again. Dekelia is a fortress of the interior, on terra firma, far from the coast, at an equal
distance from all the Athenian seas. What influence would the occupation of that continental fortress thus be able to have
on the maritime commerce? Athens is still mistress of the sea: it has in Piraeus a well-defended port and a numerous fleet
which assure its convoys and foreign convoys of the free usage of the straits leading to Eubea. The Eubean markets which
nourish Athens are island ports sheltered from all Spartan attacks. Thus what influence could the seizing of Dekalia have
on the deliveries from Eubea? Do the boats, which come from Chalkis or Eretria, in coming down the Euripe, in going
around Attica and the Sounion, arrive at Piraeus any less surely? In the inverse sense, will the boats which return from
Piraeus be stopped in their passage toward Marathon and Euripe? The conceptions and habits of our commerce will
render the text of Thucydides incomprehensible to us: since the sea remains free, we believe the Athenian markets can
overflow with Eubean provisions. But the same text of Thucydides reveals to us habits totally different, for the author
adds that the wheat of Eubea arrives at Athens by a land route.
Loaded on the boats at Chalkis or Eretria, the wheat passes the strait at the most restricted points. For the shortest sea
route, it comes to be unloaded opposite, on the coast of Boeotia or Attica, at Aulis, Delion or Oropos: Oropos especially
was the great market of Eubean produce. There it took the land route. On the backs of asses or mules, through the pass of
Dekelia, they reached Parnes and descended to the Athenian plain. Dekalia, which has the pass, thus controlled the land
route. Occupied by the Spartan marauders, Dekelia controls or interrupts the caravan traffic and the food supply. The
Eubean deliveries should take the maritime route, make the circuit of Sounion and go by sea all the way to Piraeus. But
that route, says Thucydides, is much less rapid and much more costly, ‘ή τε των επιτηδείων παρακομιδη εκ της Ευβοίας,
πρότερον εκ του Ωρωπου κατά γην δια της Δεκελελιας θασσον ουσα, περι Σούνιον κατά θάλσσαν πολυτελης εγίγνετο. It
is impossible to express in fewer words the contradiction to all our conceptions. Up until the middle of the nineteenth
century, up until the the advent of the great navies of sailing or steam ships, it is still the concepts of the ancients which
persist: the sea voyage is more costly and more time-consuming.
In following, in effect, the example of Athens and its relations with Eubea, one can see that up to the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the route of Dekalia is still the ordinary route. From Negrepont, Paul Lucas wishes to go to visit
Athens: a boat takes him through the strait across from Egripo (Chalkis); then, by horse, he passes along the Boeotian
coast and arrives at Parnes “along rugged roads which give him much trouble.” He follows the route of ancient
commerce: the old Dicaerque, in his Description of Greece, complained of the same rugged roads between Oropos and

40
Athens, προσάντη πάντα. But, in the times of Paul Lucas, the route is followed only by military convoys and the Turkish
couriers. In the times of Dicaerque, it was a route of caravans, well supplied with cabarets and good inns. Athens,
mainland town, seated between the two seas, in reality has two ports, two echelles. Piraeus on the sea to the south, Oropos
on the sea of the north. From the echelle of Oropos toward the Athenian markets, the route of Dekalia thus offers the
same spectacle as the route of Piraeus toward Athens today: at each tree giving a bit of shade, around each well, a khani
or a little café opens itself to passers-by, with seated drinkers and lines of small donkeys with loaded carts. Like Piraeus
today, ancient Oropos, at the end of the route, was the haunt of tax collectors and pickpockets - may the devil take them!

πάντεσ τελωναι, πάντες εισιν ‘άρπαγες.

κάκον τέλος γένοιτο τοις Ωρωπίοις.

It suffices to note in reading the text of Dicaerque to see that I have not added anything to his picture. If one now
wishes to deduce well the consequences of such a state of things, I believe that one will discover without difficulty the
reason for certain peculiarities. Oropos is in Boeotian land, and the people of Oropos particularly, Dicaerque adds, “deny
their Boeotianism; they wish to be Athenians in Boeotia.” Without misjudging the Hellinic hearts, one may believe that
the benefits of the caravan incline the hearts of the Oropians predominately toward Athens. Inversely, it appears that the
traffic may popularize among the Athenians a cult arrived from Boeotia. At the first fountain on leaving Oropos, one
encounters the sanctuary of Amphiaraos. He was a local hero whom the natives would deify and whose devotion they
would inculcate among the people of Athens and, through them, among all the Greeks. The fortune of this poor little god
would be surprising, were it not for the proximity of the great route. For he was only a lesser god, but much utilized by
the people among the drayers, travelers, monopolists and brewers of business. He was divine. He explained dreams. He
gave useful advice for business speculations and the enterprises of land and sea. Perhaps he announced the future arrivals
of ships for the waiting sailors. Like Saint Antoine of Padua, whose return to popularity took birth among the workshops
of Toulouse, Amphiaros undoubtedly retrieved lost objects. Accordingly, he made a large clientel and good profits on the
spot: he could raise his temple, enlarge it, decorate it with marble and statues. Beyond that, he made a parallel fortune in
the esteem of the Athenians and all the Hellenes. The inscriptions, found in the ruins of the sanctuary, show us that the
oracle did not perform throughout all the year. The winter, suppressing navigation, also interrupted the caravan: the
oracle, lacking clients, was unemployed and could shut down. But from the last days of winter, say the rules of the
temple, the priest should be at his post; during all the fair season, he should stay in the sanctuary, at the service of the
faithful, at least ten days per month, and never be absent four days in a row.
I have taken as a prime example the small isthmus of Attica. But one did not hesitate before the traverse of much
larger isthmuses: here again the recent voyagers make us understand such improbable traditions of antiquity. Here is M.
de Marcellus who, in 1820, desires to pass from Smyrna to Constantinople. He does at first what we do today: he awaits a
boat and a favorable wind. “But for three days I saw nothing come but a wind directly from the north, which shut the
Dardanelles and the sea of Marmara to all navigation. I then decided to take the land route and to arrive at the echelle of
Moudania on the Propontide, from where the sea passage to the Bosphorus would be possible almost all the time.”
Between the gulf of Smyrna and the gulf of Moudania, between the archipelago and the sea of Marmara, a caravan route
has always been frequented by the voyagers who do not wish to venture through the capricious Dardanelles: for the
Turks, Brousse marks the great halting place of commerce between Smyrna and Constantinople.
At the beginning of written history, it is the Milesians who, the first of the Hellenes, undertook the commercial
exploitation of the Pont-Euxin (Black Sea). They had all the harbors, from Milet to Trebizonda, as tributaries or colonies.
But the ancients also attribute to them the founding of certain continental towns: Skepsis in the middle of Ida is of
Milesian origin. The tradition seems unworthy of belief. Nevertheless, follow the land route which joins the gulf of
Adramyttion in the archipelago with the gulf of Kyzique on the Marmara: along that route which will be exactly parallel
to our Smyrna-Moudania route, we see that Skepsis is exactly the middle stop, at equal distance from the two seas.. Like
M. de Marcellus, the Milesians took account of the winds of the north which shut the strait. Like M. de Marcellus, they

41
did not content themselves by awaiting a calm or a favorable change; for the winds from the north or northeast are the
predominating winds of summer; they rule during almost all the season of navigation. Like M. de Marcellus, the
Milesians cut across the isthmus, from one sea to the other. But having little assurance of the goodwill of the natives, they
had chosen the shortest trajectory: leaving the last gulf of the archipelago, they went to regain the first gulf of the
Marmara.
Do we need to further show, through other examples, that the traverse of isthmuses, broad or narrow, is a forced
consequence of the navigation of small sailboats? Here is the bay of Smyrna deeply enclosed between the Phocian
promontory to the north and the peninsula of Clazomene to the south. The peninsula stretches, twists and bifurcates very
far and long before the high sea, from Smyrna to Kara-Bouroun. It is a rocky mass which frequently exceeds a thousand
meters in height and fifty kilometers in breadth. It is seventy kilometers long. The contour of the seacoast exceeds three
hundred kilometers, that is to say three or four days of navigation for the ancient sailors and, for the entire circuit, the
pattern of winds is very unstable. The few ships which come from the north enter without difficulty to the depth of the
bay of Smyrna. For the ships which come from the south or the west, the peninsula is an obstacle which can cause great
dangers, which always causes long delays. But the rocky mass is arranged in such a way that numerous valleys cut it from
north to south and east to west. In these steep valleys are going to be created the land routes which the caravans will take
to the advance-ports of Erythres, Teos, Lbedos, and Notion on the free ocean - to the importance and fortune of their outer
harbors. At the time of Tournefort, Smyrna is the capitol of Levantine traffic. In its bazaar abounds the commerce of Asia
Minor, Armenia, Syria and likewise of Persia. Its echelle is frequented by all the western navies. But a large number of
boats go no farther than Smyrna: “We debark today at Seagi to come to Smyrna by land, without entering the bay, to
avoid the long and dangerous circuit of Kara-Bouroun.” The Seagi of Tournefort, the Sighadjik of the Turks, is the
ancient echelle of Teos, situated in a deep gulf, on the southern face of the peninsula. Our Nautical Instructions still know
the harbor, well sheltered from the winds of the north by the mass of the peninsula and covered to the south by small
promontories or islets:

Mooring at 13 to 15 meters. Good-holding bottom. The town of Sighadjik has a certain commercial importance. One may easily
procure beef, sails, fruits and water there. It is about twenty miles from Smyrna, with which it maintains frequent relations. The
sailing ships, arriving a Smyrna and prevented from passing to the north of Chios or tacking through the strait by a heavy north wind,
frequently anchor in the port of Sighadjik and expedite their cargos to Smyrna by land.

On the eastern face of the peninsula, the echelle of Tchesme there plays the same rôle: all the French travelers
recognize it as the advance-port of Smyrna. In antiquity, Erythres replaced Tschesme as Teos replaced Sighadjik. The
same land routes still dispensed the Greek and Roman vessels from passing around Kara-Bouroun: to cross the isthmuses
reached, the caravans came to seek the fleets at the end of the promontories.
And it is not only the isthmuses and the peninsulas which the caravans cut across to permit the navies a shorter
passage: it was occasionally entire continents. In the middle ages, the Arabs and Syrians made a great commerce between
the ports of the far east, Alexandria, Saint-Jean-d’Acre, Saida or Tripoli, and the ports of the Crimea or the Caucases,
which they conveyed to the Tartar, Bulgarian or Finnish markets. But it is by land that most of the passage is executed:
embarked at the ports of Syria or Egypt, the navies did not sail around Asia Minor; they came to debark at the seaports of
Cyprus, Adalia, Alaya or Mersina, and their caravans traversed the continent from south to north, to rejoin the ports of the
Black Sea, Samsoun, Sinope or Trebizonde, then in fleets to reach the ports of the Crimea and the Sea of Azof, Soudak,
Kertch, Caffa, etc…
Sometimes the land route is too long, too dangerous or barred by brigandage and the hostility of the inhabitants; the
navies cannot risk themselves there in person: they then seek there among the natives clients and associates to whom they
entrust their merchandise and who arrange the caravan. When in the middle ages the Venetians detained the eastern
commerce, or in our days when the privateers of Trieste held the roads of the Turkish markets, the one or the other
submitted to the losses and the delays of the long descent of the Adriatic sea and the interminable circumnavigation of the
Turko-Greek peninsula. A land route, across the defiles of Bosnia and Pinde, more rapidly transported their merchandise

42
to the bazaars of Salonika and Constantinople. But the transit of Albanian or Bosnian land offered no security to the
foreigner, least of all to the infidel. The Venetians made alliance with the Slavs of Raguse; the people of Trieste gave their
merchandise to the Valaques of Pinde. Slavs or Valaques, it was natives who made the transit of the continent for the
navies; the coming and going of the Valaques muleteers in the service of the Adriatic navies still continues today between
Avlona or Durazzo and Salonika.

*
* *

Our “law of the isthmus” is, I think, sufficiently established. I have said that it truly dominated all the preHellenic
history. The Homeric topology is not understood without it. We have again the example of Mycenae. Guarding the land
defile between the sea of the east and the sea of the west, Mycenae is “the town of gold,” its master is the “king of kings,”
since it levies a toll on the loads or persons who are forced to pass that isthmus. The tradition would have it that Mycenae
owed its existence to a hero come from the sea, Perseus. Of a surety, it owed its wealth to commerce from the sea
extended along the land route. It was not its flinty hills dominating an arid plain, nor its denuded mountains loosing their
rockslides and torrents, which gave it the power and the gold: it was only a great foreign commerce, conveying or made to
convey through it, its merchandises debarked at the port of Nauplia. Similarly we recount the example of Thebes, founded
by Cadmus the navigator, fully in Boeotia, in the middle of the most continental land, it would appear, in all Greece.
Consulting our maps and our present habits, the archeologists cry that here we have a pretty fable: a town of the interior
founded by sailors, a long journey from all the coasts! Thebes is, in effect, one day from at least four or five coasts: the
Gulf of Krisa, the Gulf of Antikyra, the Gulf of Pagae, the Gulf of Megara, the Gulf of Delion, the Gulf of Anthedon, it
has around its land routes a necklace of harbors which face the four points of the horizon. And it is precisely - we will see
later - the land routes, joining the seas of the east, north, south and west, coming to cross in that spot, that made Thebes a
foundation of foreign commerce… But here is another most Homeric case, if we may say so again. Consider the site of
Troy.
After the excavations of Schliemann, it is difficult to deny that, during several centuries, the site had possessed, if not
some great town, at least some powerful residence of kings and “rich men.” The wealth of Troy, celebrated through all the
modern world, attracted to the town the greed and the attacks of the Achaean pillagers and perhaps of many other pirates.
But from whence came that wealth? It is probable that the nearness of the Dardanelles made the principal factor. For, here
again, it is the location, and not the nature of the site, which produced this Asiatic capitol. Compared with the plains of
the Menander, of Hermos or Caystre, what are the poor pastures of the Skamander? Look at the valleys of Kaikos and
Granique and, in comparison, the narrow pasasge of Simois. The domain of Troy is without extent and without great
richness. Sardes, Laodicia, Pergame or Aden are the foreseen fruits of the soil which bears them. Troy, in its poor corner,
appears a geographic paradox: from historic times a great town has never reappeared in that place; it is elsewhere that the
capitols of that Asiatic coast, Milet, Ephesus, Smyrna, Kydonia or Brousse, are founded…
But reconstitute it in the spirit of the navigations of that time: Troy immediately appears like the Byzance of the
preHellenic period. It is not, like Byzance, similarly placed at the edge of a strait, on the sea which nourishes it (and with
still more bays and harbors along the Dardanelles where twenty miles farther they jostle each other!): in that epoch of
piracy, Troy was not able to similarly occupy the beach; it needed to be, in the mode of the times, a high town, αιπυ
πτολίεθρον, perched on the hill with an echelle at its feet. But why is Troy so far from the strait? Neither the entrance nor
the two coasts of the Dardanelles lack high riparian cliffs where the Hellenes later installed their acropolises of Sigeion,
springfed Ophrynion, Abydos Sestos, etc. How did it happen that Troy might come to choose, fully inland, a mediocre
butte separated from the beach by one or two hours of road? In viewing the map it is a singular fantasy.

43
 Take a detailed map and remember our “law of isthmuses.” The small maritime plain of the Skamander is in reality an
isthmus: it stretches from south to north between two seas, as to join to the bay of Besika, which is the last anchorage of
the archipelago, the bay of Koum-Kaleh (port of the Achaeans) which is the principal anchorage of the Dardanelles. The
isthmus extends for twelve or fifteen kilometers in length; but it is very restricted in breadth: on the left some steep hills,
which edge the plain, make a corridor there; on the right, to the east, the continental terraces carry Troy; on the left, to the
west, there are the rocky eminences of a formerly insular mountain which the sediments have joined together with the
coast and which bears the antique Sigion. Between the two walls of hills, from one bay to the other, the isthmus is nothing
but a corridor of marsh, of fluvial beds, of ponds, of mud, of flowing or dry streams. Indifferently, toward the south or
toward the north, toward the archipelago or toward the Dardanelles, without encountering any obstacles, the Skamander
can course into the bay of Koum-Kaleh or the bay of Besika. Presently, the principal current trends toward Koum-Kaleh,
but some secondary branches turn toward Besika and some nearby ponds. Still today the valley is just a poorly filled-in
strait. There was a time when the sea extended there. The mountain of Sigee was a coastal isle. The current of the
Dardanelles surrounded all parts of the isle. The strait already had its present great port of Sigee to the north; but it also
had another postern which, in the south, abutted the bay of Besika. Cut in two by the island mountain, the current divided
itself to pass through the double passage…But here, as on all the western face of Asia Minor, the streams and rivers of
mud do their work. The descent of sediments, which already struck the ancients with astonishment, and which
successively closed the ports of Milet and Ephesis, came to close the passes of one of our double straits. Between the isle
of Sigee and the hills of Troy, the sediments at first constructed a bar, then a wider jetty, then a valley which still today
does not cease extending to the south and to the north.
The descriptions of the Iliad prove that in Homeric times muddy fields already joined the hills of Troy with the hills of
Sigee. The corridor already offered a land route between the bays of Besika and Koum-Kaleh. It is likely that the bays,
much less filled in, were much deeper, and consequently much closer to each other: the sediments had not effected the
extension and widening of the isthmus for thirty centuries. But in Homeric times the valley and its route already existed,
and it is at the edge of this isthmic route, just at the halfway point between the two bays, that Troy chose a butte to install
its acropolis. The isthmic route was very short: ten kilometers altogether at the most. But it was very important. It had to
be very frequented. The Nautical Instructions will explain why to us. The sailing ships, which wished to pass into the
Marmara, encountered at the mouth of the strait two frequently insurmountable obstacles, an adverse current and an
adverse wind:

The general current in the Dardanelles carries from the sea of Marmara to the Mediterranean, which is to say in the direction of
southwest. The force of the current depends on the force of the wind and its direction, as also, which is easy to understand, on the
abundance of rains or of flows from snow coming to fill the streams which flow into the Black Sea. When the wind blows from the
north, the force of the current increases, especially in the narrow passages, and they have stated that it sometimes attains five miles
per hour between the Vieux-Chateaux. With the strong winds from the southwest the current sometimes reverses. But the
phenomenon is rare and since the winds from the northeast predominate during nine months of the year, one can consider the
southwest current almost permanent. From Gallipoli to Koum-Kaleh, one can take the mean speed over the entire distance to be one
and one half miles per hour... The winds from the north and those from the northeast, or Etesian winds (called meltems by the Turks),
generally predominate for nine months of the year: the irregular winds of the west quarter last at most for three months. In winter the
winds of the northeast are accompanied by fog and snow: navigation is impossible for a sailing ship. In summer they are more
constant. They generally rise in the morning and fall at sunset. It is not rare to see in the channel of Tenedos or in the other
anchorages two or three hundred ships awaiting a favorable breeze. With each light breeze from the south, they weigh anchor, but
only to go from one anchorage to another, and they do not reach the sea of Marmara until after having covered by short passages the
distance which separated them.

With contrary wind and current lasting all the summer, our large sailing ships encounter some difficulty in passing the
Dardanelles. The entry especially is hazardous. At the mouth of the strait, the wind and the current rule as masters.
Farther up, “the extending points of the coast change the direction of the current and give birth to countercurrents which
can, in some parts of the strait and especially in the bays, aid a ship to progress to the east with weak winds: on the coast

44
of Asia one finds some favorable countercurrents.” Once having entered, the ships also seek land breezes which oppose a
bit the effect of the violent northeaster and one can await winds from the south before sunrise or after sunset. The
navigation in the interior of the Dardanelles is thus relatively easy. But it is necessary to enter: before making the port, it
is frequently necessary to make provision of patience. One must anchor several days, several weeks, sometimes an entire
month, at Tenedos or in some other anchorage at the entry of the strait. One must be at the entry: “one should draw profit
from all the advantages, for the favorable winds are never of long duration, and likewise rarely make themselves felt for
twenty-four hours at a time.”
If our large sailing ships waste their time thusly, the primitive boats have the greater to sojourn for a long time in the
anchorages of awaiting. Among the anchorages, the closest to the Dardanelles and the most frequented, still today, is our
bay of Besika. “One can anchor there in thirteen to twenty meters of water; the bottom there is of mud, of sand or of
seaweed; one will seek the refuge of preference. The bay is favorable to sailboating, for, although the wind there is
frequently fresh, in general there is not too much of swells or current there. The bay is considered a safe anchorage in
summer.” The shelter offered still more security to primitive boats, which one drew up onto the low beaches roundabout.
But once the boats were beached, why lose the days awaiting a favorable wind which does not come, and risk the
altogether dangerous entrance of the strait? The land route offers itself: across the isthmus, one arrives in two hours of
march at the other sea. Debarking and unloading at Besika, it suffices to carry the merchandises to the bay of Koum-
Kaleh…The people of Troy gained their wealth on the portage. Their town became the interpository of commerce
between the mysterious and tempestuous sea of the north and the calmer waters of the interior sea. The masters of Troy
became the commissionaires of all the people of western Asia, who all became their clients and their friends: the catalog
of Trojan allies, such as the Homeric poems furnish us, is perhaps of a rigorous exactitude.
Now let us transport the habits of primitive navigations to our itinerary of Telemachus. Surely, the sailors of the
Odyssey, embarked at Ithaca, did not did not debark in Laconia after a single trip. The extreme points of the
Peloponnesus, Malea or Matapan, have always had an evil reputation among sailors. “Beware of Malea!”

Πλωε Μαλειάων ακρα φυλασσόμενος

said one proverb. “Upon rounding Malea,” said another, “forget the people and things of home.”

Μαλέας δε κάμφας επιλάθου των οίκαδε.

Around these points, the wind blows in gusts and abruptly jumps from calm to tempest. Ulysses will tell us how he
failed to make the strait of Kythera: the current and the terrible wind from the north chased him from Greek seas and
threw him to the south upon the African coast.

αλλά με κυμα ‘ρόος τε περιγνάμπτοντα Μάλειον

και Βορέης απέωσε παρέπλαγξεν δε Κυθήρων.

During the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians, in spite of their numerous fleets, could not sufficiently supply their troops
camped at the Messinian Pylos: “We feared that the winter would render the guard impossible; the transports of food and
arms would no longer be able to sail around the Peloponnesus; already in summer, they were not sufficient for the task.”
Strabo, having described Malea, adds: “It is why the traders between Italy and Asia avoid the periple of the Peloponnesus:
they prefer the way from Corinth and, debarking on a coast of the Isthmus, reëmbark themselves on the other coast.”
Telemachus thus is not going to make the circuit of Matapan. He will prefer, he too, the traverse of an isthmus.
Debarking across from Ithaca on the Peloponnesian coast, at the first point from which a land route leads, he will leave
his boat for a vehicle. The Odyssey gives the name of Pylos to that point of debarkation. By the arrangement of the routes

45
across the Peloponnesus, from the length of the voyages of Telemachus, maritime and terrestrial, is it possible to precisely
determine the location of this Pylos?

*
* *

Across the Peloponnesus, two great land routes lead to Sparta. The one, leaving the Gulf of Corinth or the Gulf of
Argos, crosses the eastern Peloponnesus. From the eastern or northern coasts of the peninsula, it climbs rapidly to the
passes of the Arcadian mountains. Then, from the north and the south, it follows the line of lake-filled depressions which
occupy the eastern part of the plateau of Arcadia: Phenea or Stymphale, Orchomene, Mantine and Tege are its principal
stations. It redescends quickly across the defiles of the Tege toward Sparta the Hollow…This route is the most frequented
today; it was always the most important in the Hellenic Peloponnesus, that is to say in a Peloponnesus oriented to the
truly Hellenic lands and seas of the east and the north: it serves in antiquity for all the military expeditions and for all the
commercial relations of the Spartans. It is nevertheless rugged, cut by defiles and marshy plains, impractical in winter
because of snow and overflowing streams, unhealthy and feverish during the summer. It corresponds otherwise to a
certain state of commerce, which Sparta took in the clientel of the Argian, Athenian or Corinthian ports, and that state did
not exist other than during the times of the Greek thalassocracies.
The other route, even before the labor of man, was a little bit less rugged. It crosses the Peloponnesus of the southwest.
It leaves the gulf of Elide and goes to the gulf of Laconia, following the two fluvial valleys which cut the southern
mountains of the peninsula there with a veritable channel. Beginning at the mouths of the Alph, it climbs the river up to
the high plain of Megalopolis; then some slopes without steepness and the valley of the Eurotas conduct it gently to
Sparta. It thus crosses, from the gulf of the Alph to the gulf of the Eurotas, a veritable isthmus. From one sea to the other,
the channel of valleys is continuous, with a single difficult pass: the defile of the Lycea, where the Alph, in steep
cascades, leaves the upper plain of Megalopolis to rush through the gorge of Heraia. But by holding to the flanks of the
mountains, the route can negotiate the pass without great effort. Otherwise, nature has already made the first trail…This
way does not correspond well to the needs of the Greek sailors of the archipelago. But if a foreign navy ever needed to
frequent at the same time the ports of Elide and the Laconian ports, the Cretan sea and the Italian sea for its trade, one can
predict that the foreign caravans surely took the isthmic route along the Alph and the Eurotas…It is near the mouths of the
Alph that Strabo and the most Homerics place the Triphylian Pylos and the place of Telemachus’ debarcation.
The Peloponnesus does not have another interior route to suit the Spartan march. The tourists, who love impractical
roads, additionally know a third road to Sparta. It is a path of goats and brigands, which can lead from Messinia into
Laconia over the Taygete: from the plain of the Kalamata, the Langada leads over the mountains to the plain of the
Eurotas. The path has enjoyed a somewhat great renown during the past centuries: during the times of the Turks it was
followed by the asses and beasts of burden of the natives. It is that the Maniotes lived there on the flanks of the mountains
in a complete independence. But the bays were in the hands of the Turks. The mountaineers were not able, without risk, to
descend from their haunts. Nevertheless they needed to traffic with the neighboring towns and the people of the sea. The
routes of the plain were closed to them; they persisted, for the trade between the two sides of their mountains, to seek an
interior passage and content themselves with the perilous Langada. But when one follows the gorge, one truly admires the
geographers of the cabinet, who made the chariot of Telemachus roll over rockslides, hanging boulders, ladders of rolling
pebbles and narrow vertiginous landings. Only beasts of burden, with a light load, are able to negotiate the pass, single
file in a queue. The riders needed to be afoot for most of the distance. Our engineers still seek the means to open a route
through the pass. Today as in the past, between Messina and Sparta, the only drivable road does not follow the Taygete,
but turns to the north: the large defile of Leondari, which opens between the Messinian plain and the region of

46
Megalopolis, allows the Messinian cartage to rejoin the upper valley of the Alph and take the great route of the streams
described above.
It thus appears that the topography gives us a presumption in favor of the Triphylian Pylos. The only land route which
could in probability have been followed by Telemachus follows the Alph and the Eurotas. It is likely that Telemachus left
his boat at the mouths of the Alph for the vehicle. We have a rapid means to verify or further weaken this presumption by
a sufficiently precise calculation. The Odyssey funishes us the distances and the stops which we will apply to the itinerary.
We first have the duration of the maritime voyage, and that duration alone perhaps localizes Pylos. From ten or eleven
of the evening until sunrise, the vessel passed with full sails during a short summer night: whoever says primitive
navigation, in effect, also says fair season, from the middle of spring to the beginning of autumn. Thus the traverse lasted
only eight or nine hours, at the most. It was made under the most favorable conditions: Athena has sent a strong breeze
from astern. We calculate a maximum speed of five or six knots. The Homeric poems permit us to establish the
calculation. In the Iliad, Ulysses departs the Greek camp to return Chryseis to her father. He sails to the south. He profits
from the winds of the north, which emerge from the Dardanelles with the rising of the sun. He departs at dawn. Apollo,
who serves the father of Chryseis, sends to the boat of Ulysses the same strong breeze from astern as Athena to her dear
Telemachus, and the vessel courses all the day: “From the camp of the Greeks before Troy to Chryse, there are,” says
Strabo, “seven hundred stades, that is to say the voyage of one day. It is surely the distance which Ulysses was able to
make according to the account of the Iliad: leaving at dawn, he arrived in the evening.” For the Homeric boats, the
navigation of one day is about seven hundred stades, ‘ό τε πλους ‘επτακοσλιων που σταδιων εστιν ‘ημερήσιός πωσ.
Seven hundred stades, from the rising to the setting of the sun, is the maximum, under the most favorable conditions, a
hundred twenty to a hundred thirty kilometers in fourteen or fifteen hours, would be the great maximum (one will soon
see why I always calculate the maxima) nine kilometers per hour. From the study of Homeric ships, of their construction
and their rigging, and from the approximate calculation of their maximum speed, we come to the same figure altogether.
Herodotus (IV,86) tells us that during the long days and good conditions, a ship could make 70,000 orgyies, and 60,000 at
night, νηυς επίπαν μάλιστα κη κατανύει εν μακρημερίη οργυιας δε εξακισμυρίας, which would be about one hundred
twenty-four kilometers in a long day and a hundred six kilometers in a night, a total of two hundred thirty kilometers in
tweny-four hours, that is to say, nine or ten kilometers per hour.
Applied to the voyage of Telemachus, the figure will give us, for the eight or nine hours of our summer night, eighty
to ninety kilometers. We even take the great maximum of one hundred kilometers. That is, I repeat, a great maximum
which the small sailboat would almost never attain. During a cruise it is quite rare that the breeze would hold eight or nine
hours without change or weakening: along the intersected coasts, across channels and points, the wind is blocked or
reversed. Still we compute one hundred kilometers. Of the two Pylos which we know on the Peloponnesian coast, there is
one which the calculation discards immediately. Between the last point of Ithaca and the Pylos of Messina, the distance in
a straight line, as the bird flies, would still be a hundred eighty kilometers. Besides, the town of Ulysses was not on the
last point of Ithaca: to the contrary, we find it on the other end of the island, almost at the northern extremity of the
channel, across from the islet Asteris; it thus is still necessary to add the length οf the channel, perhaps some twenty
kilometers. Beyond that, the distance as the bird flies is not the distance as the ship flies. The old sailors did not travel in a
straight line across the open seas. They followed the coasts and rounded capes and sinuosities. They did not abandon the
land until the last promontory and went to approach the nearest promontory. Telemachus at first had to round all the
points of the channel of Kephallenia. Then he directed himself to the easternmost cape of the Peloponnesus. He finally
arrived at the Elean plain by the Chelonatas promomtory. He sailed along that plain. The poet does not minutely describe
to us the navagation of the outbound voyage. But, for the return, he shows us the ship leaving Pylos, passing along the
coasts of Elide, and leaving the small streams and capes in the wake:

‘η δε Φεας επέβαλλεν επειγομέν Διος ούρω

ηδε παρ’ Ήλιδα διαν ‘όθι κρατέουσιν Επειοί.

47
 Thus it is not two hundred, but two hundred fifty or two hundred eighty kilometers which one should compute
between the port of Ithaca and the bay of Navarin. With the most favorable breeze, two nights would not suffice
Telemachus to attain the Messenian Pylos, and this difficulty for the whole of the voyage is complicated in the detail.
The poet gives us the stations of traverse of cape Pheia - and gives the approximate duration of the traverse. Cape Pheia is
sutuated to the northwest of the mouths of the Alph, at a distance of fifteen or twenty kilometers. Between Pylos and
cape Pheia, the the navigation of Telemachus should last only a few hours. Study, in effect, the return voyage.
Telemachus, having left his friend Pisistrata on the beach at Pylos, embarks and takes sail. Once again he has a favorable
wind with him, sent by Athena. “The ship courses over the sea.” After sunset, at the time, “when all the streets are filled
with shadows,” he rounds cape Pheia. For Telemachus has only lately left the beach of Pylos. He apparently had made a
long route in a vehicle. In the morning he had left Pheres, his lodging for the stop. He had traveled in the chariot of
Pisistrata a part of the day. Descening from the vehicle, he had lost some more time on the beach: the vessel had been
hauled onto dry land; it was necessary to set it afloat and rig it. He delays further to acquire an offering to sacrifice to the
gods and finally for the maneuvers of departure. He thus did not take sail until long after midday. At maximum it is a
short half day of journey which separates Pylos from cape Pheia: the Messinian Pylos is more than a hundred twenty
kilometers from there.
There are more new difficulties, if one wishes to apply some particularities of the Homeric description to Messinian
Pylos. Below Pylos, which is a high town, the Odyssey mentions a plain where herds of cattle pasture, where chariots and
horses run, πεδίονδε, ες πεδίον. Below the Messinian Pylos, there is only a lagoon and the sea: the good map of the
expedition of Morea, of which I give a phohotogravure, shows us plainly that the rock of Koryphasion is just an ancient
islet stranded between the lagoon and the sea. Add that the Homeric Pylos is a great port, the capitol of a sea people. Its
harbor should be in conformance with the necessities and habits of the contemporary sailors. For we see why the
primitive navies avoided the deep gulfs and closed bays. The bay of Navarin, with the islet of Sphagia (ancient
Sphacteria) which closes it, may appear to us the ideal of a modern anchorage: across from the Sikia channel and on the
promontory of Palio Avarino, the Pylos of Koryphasion dominates the bay and the small lagoon Dagh-Liani. But the
sailing fleets have always disdained this bay. With difficult entrances and departures, the anchorage serves only with
certain winds, and recent history shows us the danger which courts a fleet blocked in a cul-de-sac: the Pasha of Egypt saw
his ships burn there without being able to leave…It is a law of the primitive navies - I claim a provisional credit for the
statement - that their ports and debarkations are never at the base of a close bay, but rather within range of the open sea:
on the open sea, the rock of Koryphasion presents only a steep façade without any slope of access.
I have already mentioned the impossibility for a chariot to seek its route between Navarin and Sparta, first across the
ridges of Ithome, then across the sierra of Taygete. Nevertheless, certain archeologists hold to that itinerary. They have
explored the ruins of Pheres on the first ridges of the Taygete. They have discovered, at the edge of the ancient town, a
section of paved road. They have concluded that in the past the roadway continued across the mountains. I have said that
the French and Greek engineers, less clever, have already sought a passible passage between Sparta and Kalamata…The
Homeric text, at least, had put the archeologists on guard. The Homeric poems recognize several Pheres, which we should
not confuse. According to the Odyssey, the Pheres where Telemachus stayed is the property of the king Diocles, son of
Orsilochos, son of the Alph. The Iliad, on the other hand, mentions the Messinian Pheres with the six neighboring towns
of Kardamyle, Enope, Ira, Antheia, Aipeia, and Pedasos. The Messinian towns form a maritime heptapolis, which is in
the hands of the Achaeans and under the subordination of Agamemnon. The king of kings promises to give Achilles the
heptapole,

‘επτα δε ο‘ι δώσω εύ ναιόμενα πτολίεθρα

Καρδαμύλην Ενόπην τε και ‘Ιρην ποιήεσσαν
Φηράς τε ξαθέας ηδ’ Άνθειαν βαθύλειμον
Καλήν τ’ Λίπειαν και Πήδασον αμπελόεσσαν.

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 The Messinian Pheres thus belongs to Agamemnon and not to Diocles. It is not in Messinia where one should seek the
domain of Diocles, grandson of the Alph. The Alph, which is not a Messinian river, crosses Arcadia and Elide. It is thus
probable that the descendants of the Alph posess some canton of that country. Another son of the Alph, Phegeus, rules in
the Arcadian Psophis…Below the Pheres of Diocles, the Odyssey mentions a plain, where the horses of Telemachus,
turning toward Sparta, wish to cross the fields of wheat, ες πεδίον πυρηφόρον: the Messinian Pheres, again, is in the
mountains, and it is the mountain, bare and uncultivated, which must be passed to reach the valley of Sparta.

*
* *

Here are plenty of difficulties or impossibilities, if one wishes to hold to the Messinian Pylos. The common usage, it is
true, is to not study the details of the Odyssian text: it is so convenient and so classic to always invoke the famous right of
poets to invent that which pleases them and to write that which they sing!…Still we see whether the Pylos of Triphyli
does not legitimize the theory of the Most Homerics regarding the perfect reality of the Odyssian geography.
In the Homeric poems, the name of Pylos, like the name of Argos, designateds at the same time a town and a territory:
‘άπασαν την χώραν καλει Πύλον ‘ομωνύμως τη πόλει. The territory extends between the Alph, “which crosses the land of
the Pylians,” and the Messinian heptapole “which is near to Pylos.” For the seven maritime towns, says the poet, touch
Pylos,

πασαι δ’ εγγυς ‘αλός, νέαται Πύλου ημαθόεντος,

and Thryoessa, which has the ford of the Alph, also touches Pylos,

εστι δέ τισ Θρυόεσσα πόλισ, αιπεια κορώνη,

τηλου επ’ Αλφείω, νεάτη Πύλου ημαθόεντος.

The territory of Pylos is thus situated somewhere between the Alph and Messinia. The town, according to the mode of
the times, is a high town, αιπυ πτολιεθρον, aipu ptoliethron: it is the old capitol of Neleus and Nestor. Pylos, as town and
territory, is a well characterized site. In the survey of that rocky Greece, where the steep cliffs are hardly ever interrupted
except by muddy deltas and stagnant estuaries, Pylos is sandy. Ημαθόεις, the Sandy, is its constant epithet. In the Homeric
poems, that epithet is always applied to it. And that epithet is reserved for it. The Homeric world has no other coasts of
sand. It is the “Port of dunes.” Its beach is unbroken, without rocks. The vessels are able to approach without precautions,
perpendicular to the coast, then to run aground without risk of damage:

ο‘ι δ’ ιθυς κατάγοντο ιδ’ ‘ιστία νηος είσης

στειλαν αείραντες την δ’ ‘ώρμισαν.

Behind this beach of sand extends a pleasant country, fair Pylos, Πυλος εγαθεη. Nestor, king of sandy Pylos, also
reigns over the charming Arene. It has praries for his herds of heifers and bulls, for his studs and horses. It is a
horseman’s delight. Also behind the beach, just next to the plain, are placed high and rocky hills, which furnish the
emplacement and material for the “high and well-built” towns. We are still in the epoch when the sea, infested with
pirates, is a dangerous neighbor. “Do you wander on the sea like the pirates seeking the harm of your neighbor?” is the
first question of Nestor. The towns need to take refuge on the mountains. The beach is deserted. When the foreign sailors

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no longer come to set up a camp and temporary bazaar, the natives come down only to worship the gods of the sea. Below
Pylos, among the sea sands, επι ψαμαθοις ‘αλινσιν, Telemachus finds the Pylians occupied in sacrificing to Poseidon. But
the high town is not far. It should be entirely quite close. Reread the arrival of Telemachus. Near Poseidon on the beach,
the celebration continues until the night. To return to the high town where they will sleep, they do not leave the beach
until after the sun sets. The next day, at dawn, they come out to seek the companions of Telemachus who have slept near
the vessel. They depart forthwith to take part in a new sacrifice which they clebrate in the high town…Similarly, see
Telemachus returning to Sparta. He arrives in the plain which extends at the feet of the town. He is in a hurry to leave. He
asks his driver, Pisistrata, not to return up to the town. He fears the long giving of farewells and the affectionate prattling
of Nestor. He wishes to leave the same day: “Then Pisistrata turns the horses to the sea and to the beach and replies,
‘Hasten to leave before I tell it to the old man upon entering the house. For he will not let you leave. He will come here
himself and you may be sure that he will not reënter alone.’ Then he turns the horses again to the town of the Pylians and
he quickly arrives at the houses.” The high town has to be very close: I expect it looks down on the beach.
Thus a beach of sand, bordering a plain, at the foot of a high town and, on the beach, a temple of Poseidon: there is the
site. And the sight should not be far from the Alph, “which crosses the land of the Pylians.” The Alph flows into the sea
in the bay which, in antiquity, bore the name of the gulf of Kyparissia or of Arkadia, after the town with that double
name. The gulf, between the rocky point of Pheia to the north and the rocky coast of Kyparissia to the south, is just a half
circle of dunes: “Over almost all of its extent,” say the Nautical Instructions, “the coast is low, sandy, bordered on the
back plain by a mountainous land. It is a beach of even sand, across which several watercourses flow into the sea.”
Behind the beach, a band of well-watered plain is planted with woods and arbors, which from all times have elicited the
admiration of travelers. Pausanias and Strabo, like Beule, Boutan and Frazer, praise the beauty and fertility of the land.
“The land is full of sanctuaries of Artemis, Aphrodite and nymphs, in the midst of flowering arbors which the abundant
waters feed; the temples of Hermes border the roads; the temples of Poseidon mark the promontories.” The antique
Poseidia have been replaced today by the churches of Saint Nicholas. The great saint, who in the past saved infants in a
tub, still saves sailors in peril of the sea…And, bordering along the plain, the mountains with long slopes send their ridges
full of vines and villages to within some kilometers – and at one point some meters – from the coast. Today all the
inhabitants are still on the heights. The coast is deserted. But to each of the elevated burgs correspond, on the beach or
close to the beach, a complimentary station of huts and shelters for work, kalivia: the map of the French general staff
show us particularly, below Strovitzi, below Mophitza, below Piskini, etc., the kalivia of Piskini, of Strovitzi, and of
Mophitza. Sandy beach, fertile plain, high towns, temples of Poseidon, it appears that we have here all the conditions for
the Homeric site. But today we have something more in the gulf. One should add in passing a trait which is of recent
origin. There are some lagoons which neither Pausanias nor Strabo pointed out.
In the times of Pausanias, already, the rivers and rivulets descending from the high ground experienced some
difficulties in reaching the sea. Their waters remained in the sands, when they had to battle against the wind. For the
winds from the west are violent on this face of the Peloponnesus. The ancients there had cults of Our-Lady-of–the-Wind,
Athena Anemotis. The modern Greeks there have Towns of the Wind, Anemochorion : “The river Anigros flows into the
sea. But frequently the current is turned back by the blowing of very violent winds which, heaving the sand up from the
sea, stop the flow of water,” says Pausanias. Strabo adds that the neighboring plain is very low, frequently flooded. The
plain of the Anigros, that is to say the coast of the gulf which extends to the foot of Mount Kaiffa or Kaiapha, was at that
time an intermittent marsh. Similarly, to the north of the Alph, behind cape Pheia, near to Letrini, antiquity already knew
another pool, that one permanent, a small lake of about three stades. Today, the gulf for the most of its extent is bordered
with long and wide lagoons. The small lake of Letrini, which measured three stades in the time of Pausanias, has become
the lagoon of Mouria, six kilometers long, two kilometers in width. The marshy plain of the Anigros has become, three or
four kilometers long, the lagoon of Kaiapha. Between the two lagoons, the fisheries of Agoulinitza have intervened anew,
forming a veritable small inner sea, twelve or fifteen kilometers long and three or four kilometers wide.

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 This last pool of salt water is entirely of recent origin. It is joined to the high sea by a littoral strand, of which the
sediments of the Alph and the sands of the bottom have furnished the materials. Everything leads to the belief that the
little sea did not exist during antiquity. We see the vessel of Telemachus pass along Krounoi and Chalkis at a good pace,

βαν δε παρα Κρούνους και Χαλκίδα καλλιρέεθρον.

This verse 295 of chapter XV has been subjected to reversals by the philologists. It passes, without any known reason,
for an interpolation. For a certain fact, it already existed in the Odyssian text which Strabo knew; for Strabo cites it and
comments on it. That alone matters to our discussion. To the south of the Alph, along the mountain Makistia “which
separates Triphyli from Elide” is surely the line of heights which stretches from mount Kaiapha to the north, where it
descends to the last bend of the Alph. The spring Krounoi is a fountain which notifies travelers on the mainland coast of
the fisheries, a bit to the north of Kaiapha, of the entrance to the small valley of Tavla. The coast of Tavla was the Chalkis
of good waters. In the times of Strabo, the river flowed into the open sea: Strabo allows that Telemachus was able to see
it. A century later, Pausanias crossed the land to go to Samikon at Olympia: “it is a region of sands, planted with wild
pines”: Pausanias saw neither lake nor lagoon. All the modern travelers speak at length of the fisheries and the salt
marshes which make the richness of the coast. All the modern governments dearly affirm this to the peasants all around.
If the lagoon had existed then, the Roman treasury would not have neglected such a source of benefits and Pausanius or
Strabo would have called it to our attention, as they point out to us the lagoon of Letrini or the fisheries of the similar
Spanish coast.
The fisheries thus do not appear to date from classical antiquity. Do they represent a portion of the ancient gulf,
separated from the sea by littoral bars, and does the landward shore of the lagoon still represent the ancient seacoast?
Conversely, is it a portion of the former plain, which was inundated like the ancient plain of the Anigros? I would
obstinately believe that, in the middle of the fisheries, the string of islets which stretch north and south furnish us the
evidence of the ancient seacoast: it delimits to the right a portion of the inundated plain, to the left a parcel of the gulf
barred by the littoral bank. But the mode of formation matters little. In some fashion, the streams, springs and rivulets in
former times abutted the sea. No obstacle separated Krounoi and Chalkis of the good waters from the sea. From the sea,
the sailors perceived the spring and the little river which the littoral bars completely hide today. The changes of the
coastline are in conformity with what we know of the most recent history of the region. In effect, for us to accord with the
most modern documents, it is completely certain that, within a century at the most, the coast has changed again. Without
speaking of the moving mouths of the Alph and the capricious bars, which are the consequences of them, the Lagoon of
Kaiapha was at the time of Leake a mouth visible from the sea: that mouth has disappeared completely.
Thus, in Homeric times, the fisheries did not exist, and that is what completely changed the anchorages of the gulf.
Between the mouths of the Alph and mount Kaiapha, the coast curved there in a half circle up to the foot of the hills.
Kaiapha pointed its free promontory to the open sea. The gulf did not have its curve of sands continuous from the rocks of
Pheia to the north up to the rocks of Kyparissia to the south. The rocks of Kaiapha divided it into two compartments: two
semicircular beaches went from the rocks toward Pheia and toward Kyparissia. Kaiapha, thus proeminent, presented itself
to navigators as the central port of a double gulf. Everything invited one into the anchorage. From the open sea, the high
landmark of mount Alvena indicated and guided the maneuver. That natural pillar appeared from afar, dominating from
its twelve hundred meters the troop of hills which did not surpass eight hundred meters. The beach of sands offered its
slope of landing and its small plain for camping. In the sands welled a fountain which the French map indicates (G) at
some meters from the shore. It is here that the natives had their national temple of the god of the sea, to the Samian
Poseidon. It is here where they had their echelle and their beach of embarkation, ‘ο κατ’ αυτο ‘ορμος, says Starbo. The
sailors found the watering place and the protection of the temple here. The isolated sanctuary, on the deserted beach,
remained, during antiquity, as the memory of another age when the site had known prosperity. Similarly today, on the
same beach of the gulf, but a bit to the south of Kaiapha, “one finds a Greek church, abandoned although nearly intact,
which can pass for one of the most charming models of Byzantine architecture. The church, presently isolated, proves, if

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there is a need for proofs, that in the middle ages the land had many more people than today, for it does not at all resemble
the numerous chapels which one frequently encounters in the fields. It is of very fine construction, which indicated that it
was raised by a rich population.”
Without climbing very high or even passing very far, the Elean coast can still offer us the replica of the old Pylian
harbor, in the beach of Glarentza, which was for such a long time celebrated among the western navies:

Cape Glaretza, say the Nautical Instructions, is formed by a rocky projection of the shore at the base of a low coast, of sand,
wooded and cultivated in the interior. On the coast of the cape, the shore forms a bay open to the north. At the western extremity of
the bay, one finds the village of Glarentza with a customs house and small pier. The products of the rich agriculture of the region are
embarked there, principally to Zante. In front of the village there is an excellent summer harbor. The coasters anchor close to land.
On leaving the cape of Glarentza, the coast has cliffs along a high ground with a remarkable hill, of 261 meters elevation, upon
which is found a castle, Kasrtro-Tornese. At the foot of the castle is built the small village of Klemoutzi.

Change the proper names: we hear the ancient harbor of Kaiapha or, as Strabo says, of Samikon. The fisheries there
were an open gulf, with a beach of sand curving to the north, like the beach of Glarentza. Kaiapha was a cape to the
northwest, like the cape of Glarentza. Below the cape, the anchorage had turned, Strabo tells us, to the north and to the
west, προς δύσιν και προς άρκτον απονεύει. The phrase of the geographer appears to me a new proof that, in his times,
the fisheries had not yet drowned Kaiapha…such is the anchorage where, according to Strabo, Telemachus came to
debark. Here is the beach where the ship grounded itself, the Poseidon where the Pylians offer a sacrifice, and the sands
among which they banqueted in honor of the god, επι ψαμάθοις ‘αλίησιν. The high town of Pylos should not be far. In the
times of Strabo, it had completely disappeared. The geographer looked for it near Lepreon, about thirty stades from the
harbor. Here we distance ourselves a bit fom the theory of Strabo, or at least from his hypothesis. For that location was
for him a simple hypothesis. Between the Homeric epoch and his own times, the land had continually changed its masters.
The people of the interior, the Eleans and Arcadians, had contested the natives for it. The people of the sea, Minyens and
Kaukones, had coveted and conquered it. Each of the conquests brought about, with a change in the way of life, the
displacement of the towns and the confusion of the local place names. In the times of Strabo, under the Roman Peace, the
land was divided between two communities: the Makistians, who are the religious leaders of Triphyle, held the cantons
near the Alph; the Lepreates held the southern cantons, near the Neda. Two centuries earlier, during the times of Polybius,
“Triphyle, which extends on the coast between the Eleans and the Messenians, has nine towns, Samikon, Lepreon,
Hypana, Typaneis, Pyrgos, Apion, Bolax, Stylaggion and Phrixa.” In the times of Heroditus, we remember that the land
had been conquered by pirates. The Minyens conquered the natives there. They founded Lepreon, Makistos, Phrixa
Pyrgos, Epion and Noudon; “but in my times, the Eleans have sacked most of the towns.”
In the Homeric poems, the realm of Nestor comprised Pylos, Arene, Thryon, Aipu, Kyparisseis, Amphigeneia,
Pteleon, Elos and Dorion, nine towns in all. It is the same number in the times of Polybius. Perhaps the figure nine is not
fortuitous. The nine towns equipped ninety (9x10) ships. When Telemachus found the Pylians engaged in sacrificing to
Poseidon, they were arranged in an order, which perhaps is ritual: “there were nine benches, with fifty men on each, and
each offered nine bulls.” Are we not listening here to the national sacrifice of the Pylenian amphictony? The Triphylians
always preserved their national temple and their sacrifices in honor of Poseidon at that location. The people of Makistos
had the guard and the responsibility there: they announced the beginning of the sacred truce, they presided over the feast.
But all the Triphylians gathered at the entrance of the temple and partook of the shade and the food from the sacrifice.
The national cult possibly extends back to Homeric times.
The sanctuary was at the foot of mount Kaiapha, on one of the two rocky rises (E and D, fig. 14) which emerge from
the beach of sand. In the dune interrupted by ponds (F), at the foot of the Mountain, two small limestone islets still
appear, half submerged in the sand over which they rise by a few meters at the most. Nothing lies between the knolls and
the foot of the mountain but a narrow defile of sand. There, I believe, is the Door of the Dune, the Pylos of Sands, Πύλος
ημαθόεις, where the natives have at all times surveyed the passage (we will come back to this below). The Homeric town
was perched above the port, on a ridge of mount Kaiapha. The mountain is very high (744 meters) and very steep. But it

52
projects a pointed ridge toward the sea (C-B), a spur which is no more than 302 meters. It is still a good height, just above
the sea sands, and it is an excellent position for an old high town. For the conical spur is isolated on all sides. Toward the
land, a deep ravine locks it with a moat and separates it from the nearby heights. Toward the sea, the slope dips in a fan
with a double declivity. The spur thus presents to the sea a large natural amphitheater, which to the right and to the left
crowns two esplanades. See the map which the topographers of the Expedition of Morea have given it. The resemblance
of the acropolis with Mycenae appears striking to me. It is, in its parts and in the whole, the same esplanade on a steep
mountain (A), the same ravines and the same rocks encircling the circumference, and the same spring at the foot (G).
Only the maritime façade offers a slope accessible by a twisting path and tangled lanes. I imagine the royal palace or the
fortress on the summit, and the mass of the houses of the populace on the double slope of the declivity. Pausanias and
Strabo have already pointed out the remarkable ruins which cover the esplanade. The ruins still exist. The topographs of
the Expedition of Morea prepared the map and drew the scenes. The ruins struck all the explorers by their character of
grandeur and of strength: “It is perhaps the best specimen of ancient polygonal masonry: they certainly date from a great
antiquity.” Here then is a well constructed high town, in the Homeric mode, αιπυ πτολίεθρον, ευκτίμενον πτολίεθρον.
Strabo and Pausanias did not know the name. They called it Samos or Samia becaused of the Samikon promontory. But I
think further that it may be Arene. Throughout antiquity, the promontory is called Samikon “because of its height, no
doubt,” says Strabo, “for the ancient Greeks gave the name of sames to all the heights.” Strabo adds that the periples
never mention the supposed town of Samos or Samia; they ignore it, perhaps because it might have been in a state of ruin
since always, perhaps because from below, from the sea, the rowers were never able to see anything. The Homeric poems
do not mention Samos either. That is because the high town is precisely the Odyssian Pylos. At the least, everything
which the Homeric poems say about Pylos can to the smallest detail be applied to our site.

CHAPTER II

THE NELEIDS IN MOREA AND IN ASIA MINOR

Πύλιοί τε και Νηλειδαι, ο‘ί πρότερον επήλυδες εόντες

εγένοντο Αθηναίων βασιλέες.

HEROD., V, 65

The state of the places agree on all points: beach of sand, Poseidon, high town. The location also agrees. The distance
between the foot of Kaiapha and cape Pheia is about thirty kilometers, perhaps three or four hours by sea. The navigation
of Telemachus on the return implies that distance. Similarly, leaving Pylos somewhat late in the day, Telemachus, with
the fair wind of Athena, can round cape Pheia in the full night. In the course of that navigation - I retain the verse rejected
without reason by the philologists - the vessel, which sails along the Elean coast and the mouths of the Alph, can salute
the fountain Krounoi and the stream Chalkis in passing. All the texts of the Odyssey thus find concordance here. But the
Iliad furnishes us with still more points of guidance. Nestor, in the Iliad, recounts his wars against the Eleans and the
Arcadians with strong topographic details. We labor over our terrain to follow the march of the armies.
To begin with, here is the war against the Eleans. They lay siege to a Pylian town, the Town of Rushes, Thryon or
Thryoessa, which from the height of its mound surveys the ford of the Alph (the modern Volantza undoubtedly occupies
the mound of Thryon). The Eleans camp in the plain below. During the night Athena hastens to the town of Neleus. She
awakens the Pylian people. They all leave in haste, horsemen and footsoldiers mixed together. They arrive at the banks of

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the stream Minyeos, which flows into the sea not far from Arene. The horsemen halt there until dawn to await the group
of the men on foot. In the morning, the entire army sets to march. They arrive at midday at the banks of the Alph. They
sacrifice to the gods. They make a meal, but without disarming. They are very close to the enemy. The next day, when the
sun rises from the earth, they engage in combat. From the military route, we should rediscover the location of Arene.
Pausanias and Strabo already have ineffectively sought the site: “Noöne, among the Messenians or the Eleans, has
been able to point out to me the ruins of the town, and the natives have great arguments among themselves which seem
unresolvable. Perhaps Samikon was Arene in the time of the heroes. For, according to what the Arcadians say, the
Minyeos is the same stream which later received the name of the Anigros: it flows not far from Samikon.” Pausanias thus
places Arene at Samikon, as Strabo placed Pylos thirty stades (five kilometers) to the south. It was always a simple
hypothesis on their part: they say very frankly that they have not recovered any decisive evidence. I do not believe that
their localizations can accord with the text of the Iliad. Calculate in effect the stops in placing Pylos in the neighborhood
of Lepreon and Arene at Samikon. The cavalry, leaving Pylos during the night, would have halted at the Samikon, five
kilometers from Pylos, to await the men on foot. Then, all together, πανσυδιη, loaded with their arms and their heavy
breastplates, συν τεύχεσι θωρηχθέντες, in the sands, across the pines and coastal torrents, they would have gone in a
single march, without another stop, as far as the banks of the Alph, twenty or twenty-five kilometers away. This march of
thirty kilometers, accomplished in a few hours of night and of day, by the hoplites harnessed and loaded with bronze, is
not probable. The journey has to be shorter and better cut…
Following our hypothesis, return Pylos to the Samikon and seek the Minyeos in one of the rivers farther to the north
which descend from the mountain Makistia toward the fisheries. In leaving the Samikon, one first reaches the river of
Tavla and its fountain near the coast: we have there recognized the river Chalkis and the spring Krounoi. A little farther to
the north, the Town of the Wind, Anemochori, is placed on an eminence whose base another small river circles. An old
khani, already noted on our maps, marks an habitual resting place at the crossroads: it is here that, from the coastal route,
a branch detatches which reaches the hills and passes into the valley of Olympia. For the guarding and exploitation of this
double route, there should exist at least a market town and acropolis here. The river should be the Homeric Minyeos;
Anemochori should occupy the site of Arene the Charming, Αρήνη ερατεινή. The last epithet is not misplaced: here we
enter the back country of Skyllonte; Xenophon, Pausanias and all the modern travelers make a charming picture of the
area; among the gentle wooded hills, its valleys and praries are an idyllic land.
With the site for Arene, we again take up Nestor’s recitation. Having left Pylos during the night, the cavalry leave the
Samikon. They cross in one march the eight or nine kilometers which separate the Kaiapha from Anemochori. The loaded
hoplites follow as they can, somewhat disbanded, τα δ’ επέρρεον έθνεα πεξον: they are still far from the enemy. But on
leaving the Minyeios, they need to be on their guard. The cavalry await the men on foot and they leave in order, in a
column. They march to the ford of the Alph. Perhaps they follow the seacoast: they then have ten or twelve kilometers to
pass, with care, in doubtful country. Perhaps they leave the coastal roadway for the branch to Olympia; across the hills
and the region of Skyllonte, they reach the Alph upstream… By the coast or by the interior, they arrive at the Alph. The
troops have need of rest after the march through the sands. They are allowed to breathe and to sleep: only the next day
they attack… If Pylos is at the Samikon, the expedition against the Eleans is understood without difficulty.
Here now is the war of the Arcadians: “The Pylians and the Arcadians fought at the Keladon rapids, before the
ramparts of Pheia, around the currents of Iardanos.” The Arcadians lived to the east and southeast of Triphyle, on the
other side of the mountains. The Iardanos and its maritime prarie are at the foot of Kaiapha, to the southeast. The site is
well-localized by the sulfurous springs which the ancients describe and which still flow. They issue from shallow grottos,
at the base of the mountain of Kaiapha. The grottos were sacred to the Anigrides nymphs: the nearby small stream, which
flows into the lagoon and which the natives today call the Black River, Mavropotamo, is the Ancient Anigros whose
waters flood the plain when turned back by the wind. Between the Mavropotamo and Anigros I suspect some toponymic
parentage. It is by the intermediary of some Roman or Italian pun, at the time of the navies of Pouzzoles or of Venice, that
the Anigros of the Hellenes became a Black River, Fluvius niger or Fiume nero; the modern Greeks afterwards

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retranslated the Latin name into Mavropotamo. The example of the Hymette having become, by a foreign pun, Il Matto,
and by a subsequent translation the Mount of the Fool, Trelovouno, can legitimize the hypothesis.
It is near the Anigros that the ancient guides showed the prarie and the falls of the Iardanos. The Anigros, Pausanias
adds, takes its source in Arcadian territory, at mount Lapithos. Pausanias makes a small error. In the network of coastal
brooks, streams and rivers which flow along the inclined country into the sea or into the lagoon, he has confused several
offspring. The Mavropotamo, the Anigros, is only a few hundred meters long and takes its source at mount Kaiapha, in
Triphylia territory. But, very close by, another much longer river flows, which in effect descends through a narrow gorge
of the last Arcadian mountains. It takes its source in the territory of Aliphera, the last Arcadian town. It flows into the sea
near Khani of Saint Isidore. We do not know the antique name of this river. One may propose, by the proximity of the
Iardanos, that the name of the other Homeric river, Keladon, applies to it. Its valley traces a convenient route for an
Arcadian invasion toward Pylos. The Arcadians rapidly descended the Keladon, that is to say the river of Saint Isidore.
The Pylians routed them near the Iardanos, that is to say at the foot of Kaiapha. Thus we retrieve most of the places
mentioned in the Iliad. All that remains is to discover the town of Pheia, of which Nestor speaks.
From antiquity, a fault of the text is revealed in the name. Cape Pheia, which we know, will not be known to be put as
the cause: it is a cape, not a town, and neither the Arcadians, nor even less the realm of Nestor, ever reached there. The
fault of the text appears certain: no town of the Peloponnesus nor of Greece bears the name of Pheia. The ancient critics
have proposed two corrections. The first is radical: it confuses the entire passage: Strabo, having discovered in Triphyle
the ruins of a town, Chaa, on the banks of a stream Akidon , proposes to correct Pheia to Chaa, and Keladon to Akidon…
The second is much more simple. The scholiast tells us: “In place of Pheia, one should read Phera, such as Didymos has
made it, for around Phera they know the war of Nestor as Pherecyde.” The correction of the scholiast appears preferable
to me. It renders good account of the fault itself and of the fashion in which the fault is produced: it is a maladroit copyist
who has made Pheia, Φεια, for Phera, Φέρα or Φήρα, and the spelling was entered in the classical text at a time when, the
Pylian Pheres having disappeared (at least the name: we are going to retrieve the town itself under a name hardly
different), the ancient commentators and critics knew only Pheia of Elide in those regions. The correction agrees,
furthermore, with the accounts of the old mythographers, with Pherecyde in particular, and it agrees even better with the
other Homeric texts. For it makes us recall the Pheres of the Telemachaia. It is below the Pheres of Diocles, son of the
Alph, that Nestor fights the Arcadians, the same as Telemachus, crossing Arcadia, goes to rest in the Phera or Ali-phera
of the Alph.
Not far from the sources of the river of Saint Isidore, guarding the passage between the Alph and Pylos, an Arcadian
town bears the name of Ali-Phera, Aliphera. It had been built in a very strong location. At eight hundred twenty two
meters altitude, it occupied the summit of a large and steep rise absolutely isolated. All around, the tributaries of the Alph
course large and deep ravines. It is for the people of the interior the key of passage toward maritime Triphyle. Read in
Polybius the campaignof king Philip. Climbing from the Alph and from the town of Heraia, he gave chase to the Etolians
of Triphyle. The Etolians occupy Aliphera “situated on a rise steep on all sides, which has more than ten stades of height
and is crowned with an acropolis.” Philip takes Aliphera by sheer force. Then all the Triphylians flee and no longer know
where to make their home in safety. Triphyle is open. Philip, without further battle, enters the capitol, Lepreon.
If one examines the old legends, it well appears that Aliphera might be Homeric Pheres: “They arrived at Pheres, in the
palace of Diocles, son of Orsilochos, himself the issue of the Alph.” The Iliad gives the complete geneology of the kings
of “Phera the well-built” (one has here the singular Φηρη, Phere): The Alph, which flows through the land of the Pylians,
engenders Orsilochos, who engenders Diocles, who engenders Orsilochos and Krethon.” Here perhaps is the origin of the
geneology: “Aliphera,” says Pausanias, “is an ancient small town, abandoned since the founding of Megalopolis. In
leaving Heraia, one passes along the left bank of the Alph. Ten stades of the surrounding plain lead to the mountain; then
one must climb another thirteen stades to reach the town. The great goddess of the Aliphetarians is Athena, who, they
relate, was born and raised with them. They also have an altar to Zeus Lecheatas, Zeus of birthing, Διός τε ‘ιδρύσσαντο
Λεχεάτου βωμόν.” The location of Aliphera near the river makes of Diocles the grandson of the Alph, and the legend of
the god Lecheatas, of the god of childbirth, makes of Diocles the son of Orsilochos, of the Obstetrician, for Orsilochos

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and Lecheatas are but one single and same thing: Ορσιλόχη, Λέχω or Λοχεία, Εύλοχος, Orsiloche, Lecho or Locheia,
Eulochos, etc. are the equivalent epithets for the goddesses of childbirth…
Diocles thus reigns at Alphera in the lower basin of the Alph. Here we understand a certainty apparently forgotten by
the Homeric geography. According to the Catalog of Vessels, the Homeric Arcadia is again a Greek Arcadia. The federal
realm of Agapenor no longer has its capitol a Lykosoura, like the old Arcadia of the Pelasgians, but at Tege, like the
recent Arcadia of the Hellenes. The large Arcadian towns or demes are again in the neighborhoodof the Hellenic ports, on
the façade which borders the archipelago, at Phene, Orchomene, Stymphale and Mantine. The Iliad furthermore knows
the Arcadians who live dispersed around Kyllene, in the Arcadia of the northeast, and those which occupy Parrhase, in the
upper basin of the Alph. But it does not make any mention of the Arcadians of the southeast, of the cantons or towns of
Phigalia, Heraia and Aliphera. It is that the Kaukones for one part - we will presently see - and , for the other part, the
realm of Diocles, now occupy the lower valleys of the Alph and the Neda, around Aliphera and Phigalia.
The realm of Diocles thus has the confines of Arcadia and Pylos: in his territory the caravans and the armies of the two
neighbors will be obliged to meet. For, in the region of Aliphera, Pausanias knew a subtributary of the Alph, named
Kelados. The river descends from the mountains which border the basin of the stream to the south. This tributary of the
left bank is one of numerous torrents which today bar the route between Karytainia and Andritzena, the ancient route of
the Arcadians descending to Pylos… I believe that we are going to understand our entire text of the Iliad without any
hypothesis. There is no longer need of the corrections proposed by Strabo. Similarly there is no longer need to suppose, as
we have done, the existence of a Keladon near to the Iardanos. Here we have the Homeric Keladon. In changing one
solitary letter as Didymos proposed, in reading Phera in place of Pheia, we have a perfectly intelligible text: “On the
Keladon rapids, the Pylians and the warlike Arcadians fought, close to the walls of Phera, not far from the currents of the
Iardanos.” On the terrain, we reconstruct the phases of the battle. When the Pylians are in force, they chase the Arcadians
up to the Arcadian frontier and across it, up to the edge of Kelados-Keladon. When the Arcadians have reached there, the
Pylians return to Pylos, back to the praries of the Iardanos and the sources of the Anigrides. The walls of Phera-Aliphera
are like the pivot of a seesaw. Phera is the bazaar and the frontier fortress, the first stop for the people of the sea, the last
stop for the people of the interior, as we verify it similarly is for the voyage of Telemachus.

*
* *

Now we have our route of the Telemachead with its stop at Pheres between Pylos and Sparta. Aliphera is twenty or
twenty-five kilometers from Samikon. It is just the distance which one should suppose between Pylos and Pheres. We
take again the voyage of Telemachus and his driver. At Pylos, arising at dawn, they first listened to the discourse of the
old men on the polished stones. They then went to seek the beef, the wood, the water, the blacksmith, the equipment of
Telemachus, the instruments and the participants in the sacrifice. They gilded the horns, killed the beast, lit the fire,
broiled the quarters and the portion of the gods, and roasted, on hand-held skewers, the portions for the assistants. They
then washed, bathed and perfumed themselves. They made their toilet before sitting down to table. After a long and
plentiful feast, they attended to the horses and loaded the provisions. Finally, they determined to depart. The journey
would be difficult to undertake. They descend from the town to the plain. They lash the horses, which take off with great
speed. When the sun sets they climb to Pheres, which is also a high town in the mode of the times. The distance from
Pylos to Pheres thus cannot be very great. Add the difficulties of the climb. Between the Samikon and Aliphera, the route
leaves the coast to ascend to more than eight hundred meters of altitude. They follow a steep defile encumbered with
pools and debris. On the return the descent will be easier: Telemachus and Pisistrata leave Pheres at dawn; “They rapidly
descend to Pylos,”

56
 Αιψα δ’έπειθ’ ‘ίκοντο Πύλου αιπυ πτολίεθρον,

And Telemachus, arriving at the beach, will have the time to make his long preparations of departure, of debarking and
making cape Pheia before the full night. Between Pylos and Pheres, there are thus only a few hours of road: it appears to
me that the twenty-five kilometers of our route corresponds to what is given.
From Aliphera to Sparta, the journey is very long, ninety or a hundred kilometers. But for two horses lightly loaded, it
is not impossible to achieve in one long journey broken with one rest stop. Telemachus and Pisistrata leave Pheres at
dawn. They do not arrive at Sparta until full night. They make the trip, says the poet, by grace of the speed of their horses,

ιξον δ’ ες πεδίον πυρηφόρον. ένθα δ’ έπειτα

ηνον ‘οδόν. τοιον γαρ ‘υπέκφερον ωκέες ‘ίπποι.

One should not forget - Helbig has reason to insist on this in his Homeric Epic - that the chariots are extremely light.
They “fly” over the battlefields, without being stopped by the corpses or the debris of arms which are strewn on the
ground:

‘ρίμφ’ έφερον θοον ‘άρμα μετα Τρωας και Αχαιους

στείβοντες νεκυας τε και ασπίδας…

They jump over the ditches:

‘ίπποι δε ‘ρέα τάφρον ‘υπερθορέονται ορυκτήν.

Eumelos drives his chariot himself. Diomedes asks him not to charge past the shoulders of the chariot of Rhesos. A
similar vehicle, drawn by two trotters, can “fly” in one day from Aliphera to Sparta: five or six hours of travel in the
morning, four hours of rest during the great heat of the day, five or six hours of travel during the evening, and the ninety
or hundred kilometers are achieved. The route is easy enough. The defile of the Alph climbs to the Parhassian plain, from
where the course of the Eurotas redescends toward Sparta. From Aliphera up to the Parhassian plain, the climb is neither
long nor difficult. The traverse of the plain, then the descent to Sparta, are even less hard.
One day, a train will connect the gulfs of Elide and of Laconia by this route. From all times a route frequented by
foreigners has followed this defile. Turks, Venetians or French, the armies and foreign caravans climb and descend from
one gulf to the other, and the fortress of Karytaina overlooks the the passage of the single dangerous gorge: Karytaina,
perched on the very top of a rock, raises its bastions above the narrow river of the Alph; but today Karytaina is in ruins.
For liberated Greece, the foreign fortress has lost all importance, at the same time as the route of the foreigners. The
traffic of the Hellenes has gone to the Hellenic ports of the Greek sea above all, to the archipelago: it is no longer between
the gulf of Laconia and the gulf of Elide that the great Peloponnesian route circulates: the railroad unites the gulf of
Messinia to the gulf of Argolide, Nauplia to Kalamata. It was thus each time that the Peloponnesus has been in the hands
of the Hellenes: it is to the archipelago that the Peloponnesus has its Greek face. But before the Hellenes, as at the times
of the Venetians and the French, the Primitive Pelassgians, like the Moors of the middle ages, hold the route of foreigners:
the Pelasgians have their town of Lykosoura on the left bank of the Alph, just across from Karytaina and surveying the
passage like it. A high town and a preHellenic town, Lykosoura also may be, like Pylos, one renowned in the world of its
origin for power and civilization. It disappeared, like Pylos, in the rise of the Greek world. It was the first of the towns
which cultivateded the land and lived in the sun. It is there that the Arcadians placed the beginnings of all their legend. It
is there that Lykaon, son of Pelasgos, reigns: on the neighboring mountain, on the Lycea, the supreme god was enthroned,
the federal god of the Arcadians. Outside of Arcadia, the panHellenic tradition accepted the legend of Lykosoura, and the
geographers explained how the very ancient towns are on the summits of the mountains, witness Lykosoura; the more

57
recent are on the flank of montains, witness Mycenae; the new towns are on the seacoast, witness Rhodes, Piraeus and the
Ionian towns. The site of Lykosoura denotes, in effect, a preHellenic town. Arcadia of the Hellenes abandons somewhat
the pastoral cantons of the southwest and moves its towns, Tege, Mantine, Orchomene, Phene, Stymphale and Klitor, into
the farming cantons in the closed plains of the east and north.
With their rich alluvial soils, their waters, their lakes, their easily irrigable fields, their easy routes to the truly Greek
gulfs of the archipelago, each of these plains in effect was able to nourish one or two towns. The greatest would be the
two rival capitols of Greek Arcadia, Tege and Mantine, and the capitol of Turkish Peloponnesus, Tripolitza. It is in vain
that Epaminondas tried to bring back the Great Town of the Arcadians to the cantons of the Alph. He founded
Megalopolis in the middle of the Parrhasian plain some distance from Lykosoura. An artificial foundation, a work of
politics and of force, Megalopolis was ephemeral and without importance. The nature of the places did not call for a large
Greek town in that location. Agitated with torrents, loaded with gravel, with sand, with rocks and pebbles, the plain is
only marginally arable. It has no real utility except as a place of transit, by grace of passages which descend to the sea,
from the four corners of its crossroads. Route of the northeast toward Tege and Argos, route of the southeast toward
Sparta and the gulf of the Eurotas, route of the south toward Messinia and the gulf of Kalamata, route of the west toward
Phigalia and the maritime valley of the Neda, finally, route of the northwest toward the sea of Elide by Karytaina and the
Alph, it is like a rose of divergent routes. At the crossroads, a lodging of journey and a relay can prosper, and a guard post
is necessary. Today, the train station assures the life of Sinanou. Under the Turks, Leondari and its mosque commanded
the double descent toward Mistra and toward Kalamata, and surveyed the great military route between the Turkish
fortresses of Coron and Modon to the south and the capitol of Tripolitza to the northy. Under the Venitians and the
French, Karytaina barred the defile toward the sea of Elide. In the preHellenic times, Lykosoura, better placed, was able
to hold at the same time the entrance of the Neda and the entrance of the Alph, the double route toward the western sea.
Thus if Lykosoura became powerful and celebrated, it is that the contemporary traffic descended to the sea of the west.
In primitive times, the caravans pass here. Between the sea of the south and the sea of the west, Lykosoura is the middle
stop. The coursers of Telemachus do not stop here. But the packhorses of the merchants do not “fly” in such a single
bound. They divided the hundred kilometers which separate Aliphera from Sparta into two journeys. The first evening,
they climb to the high town of Lykosoura to pass the night there, as Telemachus climbed to the high town of Pheres. One
is surprised that the Telemachead does not mention the name of Lykosoura. But we have already seen that Homeric
Arcadia is not the Arcadia of the old Pelasgians: under the influence of the Hellenes, it has already traded its old capitol of
Lykosoura for the new capitol of Tege. Furthermore we reply that the poet did not know the places by sight. Domociled in
some maritime village of the isles or of the Asiatic coasts (we give the proofs of the domocile), he speaks of the
recitations or the periples of men of the sea. He only repeats that of which he is informed by his written or oral sources.
For, when the route of the isthmuses is a bit long, other examples have shown us that the sailors did not themselves make
it entirely. They only set up the first bazaar. There, they encountered the caravans of the interior, which took from them
their maufactures and brought to them primary materials. The common bazaar is, according to the case, more or less
distant from the coast, sometimes a few hours from the echelle, more frequently a short journey. In the times of the
Eginetic thalassocracy, Pausanias tells us, “the Eginetes debark at Kyllene, load their merchandise on beasts of burden,
and climb up to Phygale, the Arcadians’ home. Pompos, king of the town, heaps them with honors and proclaims his
friendship with them by naming his sons ‘Eginetes’.” Here is a fine route of antique commerce. The vassals of Egine did
not make the circuit of the peninsula to the south, since they debark on the northwest coast to come to the western
cantons. If they had made the circuit of Malea, they would have approached the western façade of the Peloponnesus from
the southwest, and would have debarked, not at Kyllene, but at Navarin or Kyparissia. The prudent sailors thus avoided
Malea and followed the route which Strabo recommends to the navigators of Asia Minor and Italy: having debarked on
the eastern beach of the isthmus of Corinth, they crossed the isthmus on foot and returned to the sea in the gulf of Patras.
All along the Achaean and Elean coasts, they then followed the northwest façade of the peninsula and finally come easily
to the first port which offered them a convenient route to the interior of Arcadia, at Kyllene.

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 In the Eginetic periples, where Kyllene had been described as the debarkation and the great port, Phygalia should have
been mentioned as the bazaar and the great town of the interior: near to Katakalo, which is actually the echelle of those
waters; we see our Nautical Instructions similarly point out the town and the market of Pyrgos. In the periples which our
Odyssian poet might have read or in the accounts he might have heard, Pylos is the echelle and it is Pheres-Aliphera
which is the bazaar. The maritime convoys climbed up to Pheres, but no higher: down as far as Pheres, the mountain
caravans descended to meet them. The sailors are able to know that the caravans arrive from afar, that they come from
Sparta in a journey thereabouts. But they do not know the relays or the details of the route…The boatman of Smyrna or
Beirut today know that Marseille is the echelle of Paris, but they no not know that Lyon and Dijon are the great
intermediary stops.
Now study the bazaar of Aliphera and see if the existence of the bazaar does not imply the debarkation point of
foreigners where we have put it, at the echelle of Samikon. It is with the verification of all our topological calculation that
I propose it to you. Well though it might be a bit long, this verification is worth the trouble to make.
Aliphera is thus the bazaar. Western Arcadia was from all times a bazaar of this sort, at one stop, short or long, from
the echelle. But the bazaar does not always stay in the same town. From the preHellenic antiquity to our times, it has been
moved through four or five places, to Pyrgos today, to Andritzena under the Turks, to Phigalia in Hellenic times, to
Aliphera in Odyssian times. The changes of the bazaar coincided, as one may foresee, with changes of the echelle. The
echelle itself is displaced at the will of the different navies, but not following their caprice: ineluctable necessities
determined the changes. Similarly to other mediterranean rivers, the Alph was not known to have its port at its mouths.
We know that, Barcelona near the Ebre, Marseille near the Rhone, Livourne near the Po, Smyrna near the Hermos, Milet
near the Meander, all the Mediterranean ports are installed at the edge of the deltas, on the first or most convenient rocky
point. Today the Alph has its great port at Katakolo, on the rocky promontory or, more exactly, on the ancient isle of rock
drowned in the sediment, which bears cape Pheia: Pyrgos in the neighboring plain has become the great bazaar. But, up to
the middle of the nineteenth century, it is Pyrgos itslf which in reality was the echelle; the quite nearby beach furnished a
harbor sufficient for the caïques. The harbor drew the caravans of the interior to Pyrgos. Two routes then climbed from
Pyrgos toward Arcadia. The one followed the right bank of the Alph through the bottom of the valley, up to the falls of
Karytaina. It was the less important, being the less safe and the less bordered with towns. In that state of civilization -
tyrrany of the Turks, pillages of the Klephtes, attacks of the Albanians - the plains had been abandoned for the heights:
the habitated places were, all, at the summit or on the slope of the mountains. Today the villages redescend slowly toward
the river. Some day, a railway between Pyrgos and Sparta will reëstablish the antique way, through the old towns of the
valley, Olympia and Heraia. But, in the last century, it was the other route which the commerce followed. Leaving
Pyrgos, the other route went straight to the ford of the Alph: at the Town of Rushes, it crossed the river. Then, cutting the
hills of the left bank, it hangs on the flanks of the mountains which border the basin. It held fast over the flow from the
montains, in midslope. It connected and still connects a large number of perched villages. It led to the great bazaar of the
interior, which was then Andritzena. The bazaar was opened within a day’s journey of the echelle and at the intersection
of two routes coming from the sea. At this spot, in effect, the route coming from Pyrgos met the road which comes from
the other port of the Alph, Kyparissia.
For, at the southern extremity of the gulf, at the very bottom of the curve of the dunes, Kyparissia, on the rocks,
occupies the position for the Alph symmetric with Katakolo. It also is a port of the Alph. It is a little farther away from
the mouths of the river; nevertheless, in certain epochs, the navies will be able to prefer it. For it offers itself first to the
sailors who come from the south or east, as Katakolo offers itself to sailors who come from from the north or west. From
Kyparissia, the road toward the Arcadian valleys is also convenient: the valley of the Neda and the defiles of the
mountains lead either to the lower basin of the Alph by the passes of Bassai, or to the upper plain of Megalopolis, by the
passes of the Lycea. The Alph thus in reality has two echelles, one on each coast of its delta, Kyparissia and Katakolo.
Following the direction of commercial currents, the echelles alternate in importance. When the commerce will come from
the north, it is Katakolo or Pyrgos which will be the principal echelle. When the commerce will come from the south, it is
at Kyparissia where it will have its place of debarkation. And, following the respective importance of the two echelles, the

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bazaar of the interior will be closer to the one or the other. Katakolo or Pyrgos, frequented by the modern navies, have
arranged the bazaar at Andritzena. Kyparissia, frequented by the ancient navies, had created the fortune of Phigalia. But,
Andritzena or Phygalia, the bazaar moved only between certain places, to the north or the south of the passes of Bassai.
And we clearly see that the bazaar is not able to be other than at one or the other of the two towns, accordingly as the
Alph retains its ports at Kyparissia and at Pyrgos or Katakolo. Thus if, in Odyssian times, the bazaar of the region
transported itself elsewhere, if Aliphera really held the rôle of Andritzena or Phygalia, it is that the echelle of the river
was at that time neither at Katakolo nor at Kyparissia; it is that theAlph had another port.
On the present edges of the gulf, with the sands and the lagoons which block the coast, and in the present state of the
navies, with our enormous vessels which require deep waters and steep coasts, we do not imagine that the Alph can have
another echelle. But let us reëstablish the coast of previous times on our maps. Omit the fisheries of Agoulinitza. The
Samikon again becomes a free promontory covering a sheltered anchorage: the rocks of Katakolo and the rocks of
Kyparissia do not offer a better refuge…Place again in these waters the Homeric navy with its light boats of little depth,
which they run aground at the port of debarkation and hauls onto the beach: the sands of Samikon become the best
debarkation of the gulf…Finally reëstablish, across the hills of the interior, the route of the caravans toward Aliphera:
Pylos becomes the closest port of the Alph. Pylos is then for the Alph exactly that which Genoa is for the Po - with all
proportions retained. Separated from the fluvial basin by the mountains, Pylos is nevertheless the veritable outlet to the
sea for it, since the defiles of Kaiapha turn toward it, as the defiles of the Appenines turn toward Genoa, a shorter route
than the descent of the river itself. Through the opening of the river of Saint-Isidore and by the plain of the Iardanos, that
direct route leads from the middle Alph to the coast, in passing through Aliphera and ending at our Pylos. Thus when
Pylos, by grace of that route, became the echelle, Aliphera became the bazaar; at the foot of Pheres, the caravans of the
interior and the caravans of the sea meet. There, I believe, is all of our topological calculation verified: the echelle of
Pylos entrains the bazaar of Pheres, and vice versa.

Katakolo is frequented by the packboats and, during the harvest season, large steamships come to load grapes from Corinth and
wine produced by the plains of Pyrgos. Water is rare there; the only wells are in the hollow of the bay. The town of Pyrgos, with
5,000 inhabitants, is built on a hill seven miles from Katakolo. It has a telegraph. The surrounding plains are well-cultivated. But
near the coast the miasms of the lakes render the air unhealthy.

Among the important details, our Instructions note that there is a telegraph at Pyrgos. It is a convenient instrument for
the rapidity of exchanges. But it is, better still, a veritable guarantee of security and legality, the voice of law and order.
Our navies and our merchants everywhere introduce the great regulator, which renders robbery by the populace and
extortion by authority less frequent. It is not that the natives receive illy the people of the sea: Pompos in the past gave his
sons the name Eginetes in honor of the sailors of Egine; today the people of Pyrgos give their streets the names of
Gladstone or Gambetta. But the goodwill can be intermittent, and the people of the sea have always had to guard against
its caprices. Without the telegraph, the navies of the past, to protect themselves, brought their gods, and strove to
inculcate respect for them among the barabarians of their clientel. The common cult was the sole guarantee of the peace
and of contracts. Whoever, at that time, said common bazaar, also said common cults: regular commerce was not able to
operate except by the shelter of religion; exchanges of merchandise forcibly implied an exchange of gods. It is this which
the mythologists sometimes appear to forget for that period of Greek origins. And still the spectacle of the last centuries
should furnish them material for reflection. Up until the day when the telegraph installed the principles of international
law in the Levantine world - and the day is most recent and the principles are installed with difficulty - it was always only
under the protection of a sharing of cults and of religious sermons that commerce could be established. A commercial
influence was always translated by a religious influence: the English bring the Bible, the French introduce their Jesuits
and Capuchins, the Arabs bring their Koran and prayer rug. At Memphis, in the camp of the Tyrians, Herodotus saw the
temple of foreign Aphrodite. In the times of the crusades, the Venetians reserved, in each town seized, the emplacement
of a church and a market: above all they installed the cult of Saint Mark. It was no different in the primitive bazaar of
Aliphera: certain cults of the town are imports of the foreigner. “In the feast of Athena,” says Pausanias, “one first

60
sacrifices to the hero Myagros, who delivers from flies.” The Hero Myagros, whom the Alipherians honor nearly as much
as their great goddess Athena and their healing god Asklepios, appears to be of the same origin as the Zeus Apomyios,
chaser of flies, whose cult Hercules had introduced at Olympia, at several places lower down in the same valley of the
Alph. The Elean god, whom they otherwise call Myiodes and Myagros, is also a god of health, for, chasing the flies, he
prevents the plague: many flies bring illness. For it is also a god of health, the god of the Fly, Baal-Zebub - Βάαλ Μυια,
translates Josephus and the Seventy - whom the Philistines of Akkaron worshipped on the Syrian coast and whom the ill
Ochozias, king of Israel, sought to consult: “..the plague-bearing fly,” says Ecclesiastes. We believe that the people of the
sea sent missionaries, to Aliphera as to Olympia, of the god of the Fly.

*
* *

Site and location, beach and routes, Samikon thus unites all the conditions for being the Homeric Pylos. Without
doubt, excavations in the high town would be the best means to verify our calculations. Already abandoned by the
ancients, the ruins have been able to preserve another Mycenae for us. But, lacking archeological monuments, we have
the historic and legendary traditions. When Telemachus, returning from Sparta, goes to embark on the beach of Pylos, a
great-grandson of the divine Melampous comes to request to be taken aboard: the spring of the Nymphs Anigrides, at the
foot of Kaiapha, owed its sulfurous odor to the purifications of Melampous and it was Melampous who had brought to
Nestor the oxen of Phylake…The mountain Alvena was dedicated to infernal divinities. It bore the name Minthe, because
of a concubine of Pluto whom Proserpine had transformed into garden mint. It had a sanctuary of Hades, which the
Makistians still maintained, and a wood sacred to Proserpine. Hades, according to the Homeric legend, had been blessed
by Hercules, en Pulo, at Pylos: Nestor recounted at length the invasion of the Herculean force. At the source of our river
of Saint Isidore, near the village of Troupais (Holes)[in the ground], the ground burns each year with a disagreeable odor.
Pausanias already pointed out the volcanic accident, which should reconcile the sulfurous springs of Kaiapha, the
petroleum springs of cape Pheia and of Zante, and the earthquakes which devastate the region annually. The Holes should
be near to the ancient sanctuary of Hades.
The traditional history of Pylos is especially worth our lingering on it. Pylos is not a native village. It is the people of
the sea who founded it. We know that Nestor and his father Neleus came from Thessaly. They are of the race of Poseidon,
of Tyro and of Salmoneus. Their family reigned at Iolkos, on the Pagasetic gulf, where in former times the fleet of the
Argonauts assembled. For the town of Samikon is just the type of foreign establishments on Mediterranean coasts, a
primitive Gibralter or, as Thucydides said, one of the promontories overhanging the sea, άκρα επι τη θαλάσση, which the
Phoenicians occupied all around Sicily in the same times as the coastal islands. Above a fine beach of debarkation, it is a
fortress independant of the natives. It is easy to defend from the coast and from land, by grace of a ravine which separates
it from the neighboring mountains. The ravine cuts off Pylos from the mainland. It is, in miniature, the same disposition
as the Castel Tornese, built by the Venetians above the beach at Glarentza. But the Venetians had to reckon with cannon:
the ravine at Pylos would not suffice for them. Thus they installed their Castel Tournese on a rocky isle which the
sediments of the Pene have joined with the Elean plain. Between the isle and the coastal mountains, the wide plain places
a ditch of several kilometers, the bottom of which the winding course and muds of the Pene fill. Castel Tournese has
retained its Italian, foreign, name to our time. Around Pylos it is possible that we may also find some foreign names,
coming from the sea.
The name of Pylos is native: it is a Greek name. A particularity, which has always been noted by the natives, gives it
birth. We know that a veritable gate is at the foot of the fortress. A coastal defile at that point strangles the land route
which passes along the sea and joins Elide and Messinia. On the rocky prominences, which arise from the sands and bar
the defile, there may be at all times a post of brigands or guards. In modern times, all the masters of the land, Venetians,

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Turks, Albanians, Egyptians (under Ibrahim-Pasha, son of Mehemet-Ali, during the campaign of Morea), etc., have
maintained a small fort there, which always retains its native name, το Κλειδί, the Key. The small fort was, in effect, the
key to the gate: it could open or close the passage to caravans and to armies, to transports and cartage of all sorts. Up to
recent times, the solid beach was, in peace as in war, a frequented way. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is
again through here that Ibrahim-Pasha, chief of the Egyptian army, maintained the communication between his two main
places of occupation, Modon to the south and Patras to the north: “Ibrahim-Pasha had made of the Triphylian littoral one
of his greatest military routes, to communicate with the north of the peninsula by Patras. That way appeared to him
preferable for all his troops, particularly for his cavalry and his transports, which did not fear, in the plains of Elide and
Triphyle, the surprises and ambushes which they encountered at each pass in the more mountainous countries. The region
retained for a long time the memory and the traces of the daily passage of the Egyptian troops.” For their horses and their
war chariots, the Achaeans had the same needs as Ibrahim-Pasha, and the Iliad has described to us the marches of the
warriors along the route…At the times of Strabo, when the high town was already deserted, the small Samian fort, το
Σαμικον ‘έρυμα, always remains below.
But, if the name of Pylos is native, it is possible that the name of Samikon might have come from abroad. Σάμη,
Σάμος, Σαμικον, Samë, says Strabo, signifies without doubt the height, for the ancients Sames, Σάμους, the elevated
places, σάμους εκάλουν τα ‘ύψ. The root ,‫שמם‬s.m.m. or ,‫ שמה‬s.m.’. exists in all the Semitic languages: in Arabic
especially it has given numerous derivatives, sammoun, smimoun, asammoun, which all signify elevation, height, high,
raised; sammaou designates the highest crest of a mountain. It thus appears that the text of Strabo had conserved for us
the Greco-Semitic couplet sam- ‘ύψηλος, and that Samos may be a name of Semitic origin, brought there by the people of
the sea. For, if the topology brings us to think that Samikon and Pylos are one single and same thing, it is also
toponymically easy to explain the identity. The two words are not synonyms because they were not invented by the same
people to describe the same view of the land. At the site, the people of the sea first see the high cape, dominating the gulf
and the low beach, and they say Samos, the Height. The natives do not distinguish the hill among the troop of the
neighboring heights: it is indiscernible to their eyes of mountaineers, because they overlook it from the height of the
neighboring mountains. But the locals somewhat fear the restricted passage at the base, where some caution is never
needless: the door is carefully noted in their geography; the Key remains celebrated among their descendants. The Door of
Sands, Πυλος ημαθοεις, Pulos emathoeis, was then wholly similar to Hot Doors, Thermo-Pyles, of another Hellenic coast.
The original founder of the port, the father of the Doorman, Πύλος, Πύλας or Πυλων, Pulos, Pulas or Pulon, was the
Man of the Key, Κλήσων (cf. κλησις, κλεισις, etc.). He was not of the family of Nestor and Neleus. Long before them he
also had come there from the sea. They said he was originally from Megara. His father, Lelex, came from still farther
seas. For Lelex was an Egyptian king debarked on the Megarian coast. Thus before the Homeric times, the legend knew
of two occupations by peoples of the sea on the Megarian coast. The second, which lasted still at the time of the
Telemachead, is personified by Nestor and Nele: it is of Thessalian, Achaean, Hellenic origin: nothing differentiates the
Pylians from other Achaean populations; they are the allies of Agamemnon; Nestor is a king of the Greeks; the Pylian
place names present words entirely Greek, the Door, Pylos, the Marsh, Helos, the Rock, Aipu, the Reeds, Thryon, the
Elm, Pteleon. But the first colony had a foreign, barbaric origin. Lelex had come from Egypt to occupy, near Megara, the
outlet of a coastal door, entirely resembling Pylos (Skiron, grandson of Lelex, will give his name to the defile of the
Skironian Rocks). Kleson was the son of the Egyptian or of the vassal from Egypt (it is all one in the Greek legend). Thus
if the legend was truthful, it should have, before the Achaean Pylos, retrieved in our Triphylian waters a foreign, Egyptian
or half-Egyptian, Levantine town. For the topology and the toponymy of Megara are going to shortly prove to us that the
Megarian tradition is the echo of a real truth. The echelle of Megara has surely been the station of a foreign navy. Its
harbor of Minoa was familiar to vessels from Egypt. It is possible that Megara itself had been founded by the sailors, who
spoke a Semitic language and who probably came from Phoenicia. I will give, during the following chapter, the proofs of
the assertion…Should it then surprise us that, mixed with Greek names, place names apparently Semitic are retrieved on
our Pylian coast, where the sons of the Phoenician Lelex had come to settle?

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 Samos is presented to us as a Semitic name. We wished to find a parallel origin for the name of the other rock which
borders the gulf of the Alph to the north: Φέα, Φεια, Φειά or Φειαι, Pheia, Phea, Pheiai will be the Greek transcription of
the Semitic ‫ פה‬Phea, the extremity, the point. The transcription into φεια or φέα will be regular.(‫=פ‬φ, ‫=ה‬ε or ι + the Greek
ending α) The name will accord well with the narrow, rocky and pointed isle, which the sediments have not joined to the
plain except at its northern extremity, and which points, long and straight, toward the high sea. But no doublet comes to
us to certify the value of the etymology.
If, to the contrary, we combine in a system the names of the streams discharging on the coast, Alph, Iardanos, Neda, it
is somewhat remarkable that none of them can have any Greek etymology. We have, after Olshausen, compared the
Pylian Iardanos (as also the Iardanoi of Crete, of Lydia and of the Elide) with the river of scripture, ,‫ ירדן‬Iardan or
Iordan. The Hebrew name signifies the River of the Descent: it accords particularly with our river of Pylos and to the
descent of the Arcadians…We have believed to see also in the Alph the river of oxen. The Semitic word ,‫אלפ‬a.l.p., which
would say ox, has arrived to the Hellenes under the emphatic form, alpha, the name of their first letter. The transcription
into Alpheios will be regular (‫= א‬α, ‫=ל‬λ, ‫=פ‬φ, ‫=א‬ει, + the Greek ending ος). The appellation accords again. The Alph is
celebrated by its histories or its legends of oxen: the Augean stables, the herds of Apollo, the Cattle of Melampus, etc.
The ox, which does not abound in the rest of rocky Greece, has always found in the maritime plain the suitable pasturage
and water. Nestor recounts the fine raids of cattle, of pigs, of goats and sheep which he had made in the plain of the
Epeans.

ληίδα δ’ εκ πεδίον συνελάσσαμεν ήλιθα πολλήν,

πεντήκοντα βοων αγέλας, τόσα πώεα οιων,
τόσσα συων συβόσια, τός’ αιπόλια πλατέ’ αιγων,
‘ίππους δε ξανθας ‘εκατον και πεντήκοντα.

In favor of the Semitic etymology Alpheios = River of Oxen, one will find several indications. The Alph, it was said,
received seven tributaries. Pausanius, who adopted the traditional figure, enumerates in effect seven rivers, the
Brentheates, the Gortynios, the Bouphagos, the Ladon, the Elisson, the Kladeos, the Erymanthe. He forgets only that he
has himself cited many others (the Mylaon for example), and one clearly sees that he is a bit embarrassed to put in
agreement that which he knows with the tradition of seven affluents. For we retrieve many examples together of the figure
seven applied by the Greeks to phenomena which do not require it: frequently the number seven appears to persist as the
mark of an ancient period when seven was the ritual number… For the Alph, the legends of Hercules also can invoke it,
and the situation of the sanctuary of Olympia.
On the river, one short stop from the sea, near the last place where the boats can pass, the Hellenes had their great
temple of Olympia. Why are the great sanctuaries of antique Greece, Delphi, Isthme, Nemea, Heraion of Argos,
Hyakinthion of Amycles, Olympeion of Elide, at locations one short journey from the coast and, thus, in the same
situation as the bazaars up higher which we have studied, at the point where the caravans of the sea can meet the caravans
of the interior? The legend joins the names of Hercules and Olympia. It is near Olympia where Hercules diverted the Alph
to clean the stables of oxen. It was a Hercules coming from Crete who founded the Olympian games and the cult of
Olympian Zeus: the Odyssey is going to speak to us of the maritime relations between Crete and Elide by Phoenician
ships. Hercules had introduced to Olympia the cult of a God of Flies, Zeus Apomyios, which we have already
encountered at Aliphera. Hercules imported the white poplar.
It is near the Alph that the Hellenes have the Ox Market, Βουπρασιον, Bouprasion, already known to the Homeric
poets, and the Ox Feast, Βουφαγος, Bouphagos. Bouprasion, an Elean burg cited in the Iliad, had disappeared in the times
of Strabo, κατοικία της Ηλείας, ‘η νυν ουκέτ’ εστιν. The country between Elis and Dyme retains the old name. On the
west coast of the Peloponnesus, there has always been in the interior, but not far from the coast, a livestock market where
the neighboring isles come to provide themselves with oxen. For the rocky isles, Ιθάκη αιγίβοτος, τρηχεια, Σάμη

63
παιπλόεσσα, nourish only goats, sheep, and pigs: “None of the isles is good for horses, and none has good praries. Ithaca
is without large spaces, without pastures:”

εν δ’ Ιθάκη ούτ αρ δρόμοι ευπέες ούτε τι λειμών…

ου γάρ τις νύσων ‘ιππήλατος ουδ’ ευλείμων...

Ulysses had only goatherds and swineherds to guard his flocks…In Homeric times, the ox market is thus at Bouprasion.
In the times of Strabo, the market is in the Amphidolide, εν η και κατά μηνα αγοραν συναγοθσιν ο‘ι περιοικοι. In the
times of the Turks and in our days, it is Gastouni, not far from Pene and from the coast, which has long remained the
great, the only market of oxen of the entire Peloponnesus. We thus can admit that Alpheios was for the first navigators the
River of Oxen. But, here again, we lack the decisive proof of the etymology, I mean to say, a Greco-Semitic couplet.
For the Neda, here it goes differently: “The Neda,” says Strabo, “is a rapid river which descends from the Arcadian
mountains; its source was opened by Rhea who came to purify herself after having lain with Zeus.” Near to the Purifying
Spring, Hagno, the Arcadians worship the three nurses of Zeus, Theisoa, Neda and Hagno, each of whom has her spring
on the mount Lycea. “Descending from Lycea, the Neda,” says Pausanias, “receives quite close to Phigalia the small river
of the Impurity, the Lumax. The name comes to it from the purifications of Rhea. The nymphs washed the newly laid
Rhea in the stream and discharged the impurities, katharseis, which the ancients named lumata.” The Greek word
impurity, katharsis or luma, had for an exact translation in Hebrew ‫נדה‬, nida. Nida designates all contaminations, but
especially the impurities of women, the contaminations of menstruation and of intercourse, and the Scripture names
‫ מידנדה‬Mei-Nida, waters of the impurity, the waters which serve for the ritual purification. It appears that we have in
Neda-Lumax a Greco-Semitic doublet to designate the Stream of the Impurity or of the Purification, and that the waters
may have served in the past, as the legend would have it, for ceremonies of purification.
The River of the Impurity flows at the foot of Phigalia. The Semites have the root phagal to designate impure things:
from the root ‫פגל‬, ph.g.l., one regularly derives a substantive, ‫פגלה‬, phigalea, of which Phigalia, will be the adequate
Greek transcription. All the place names will be explained to us without doubt by the presence of hot water and of baths -
θερμά τέ εστι λουτρά - near to which the Lumax passes. Like the baths of the Nymphs Anigrides, at the foot of Kaiapha,
and of the Nymphs Ionides, at the foot of the Pholoe, where the leprous, mangy, cancerous and miserable of the entire
skin come in crowds, the baths of Phigalia should have been frequented by a clientel which furnished to the capitol of the
neighboring Kaukones the name of Town of the Lepers, Lepreon, τοις πρωτον οικήσασιν εν τη γη νόσον φασιν
επιγενέσθαι λέπραν. Leprosy was for the Semite an impurity which the religious laws recognized. Leviticus has long
chapters on the purification of the leprous. Had the foreign navies introduced into our Pylian region the purifying rites for
leprosy and other ulcers? The Phoenicians frequent the coast of Pylos and of the Elide; they make it their business to pass
between Crete and the shores of the Peloponnesus: “I arrived aboard a vessel of the illustrious Phoenicians; I paid them
very dearly for my passage and ordered them to deposit me either at Pylos or on the Elide coast, where the Epeans reign.”
If the Phoenicians have been masters of the coastal traffic, they should also have made navigations on the Neda and
climbed the land route up to Phigale: The Neda,” says Pausanias, “is a stream capable of bearing boats at its mouth.”
The valley of the Neda was always a route for the merchants of the sea: at its upper extremity, Phigalia or Andritzena
always made a great bazaar. For it appears that Phigalia has, like Aliphera, retained in its cults a memory of foreign
navies. The Syrian towns worship a fish goddess and god. On a great number of Syrian coins and monuments the
divinities figure, which Lucian describes to us, “In Phonecia, I saw the statue of the goddess Derketo, a strange spectacle,
for, half woman, from the legs down she ended in a fish’s tail.” – “At Phigalia,” says Pausanias, “at the same confluence
of the Lumax and the Neda, one sees a temple of Eurynome of which the statue, woman down to the legs, ends in a fish.”
In the same country of Phigalia, they worship a goddess who, woman for the rest of the body, has the head and mane of a
horse and who has, as symbols, the dolphin and the dove. Appearance and symbols, it it well appears that here again we
have an oriental goddess, an Astarte of the dove, of the fish, and with the head of a bull or a horse. I have spoken of these
symbols, in my book on The Origin of the Arcadian Cults, for too long a time to need to review it here. Let us only note

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the similarities in comparison with a certain number of rites: “At Hierapolis of Syria, the young girls let their hair grow
from infancy, which they cut before their marriage and which they go to offer in the temple.” At Phigalia the children go
to offer their locks of hair to the Neda. Also at Phigalia, they make certain ritual breads, mazes, which we find again on
the coasts of the purple conch in the archipelago, in the fountain of the Iaconian Ino. The breads would be served during a
great religious festival termed mazon: Bouchart had already remarked the similarity with the Hebrew maze, which is to
say, unleavened bread, and mazon which is to say nourishment, meal. But I reserve this discussion for the study which we
are going to make of the Iaconian coasts and their springs…
The Telemachead informs us that the valley of the Neda had at that time already been occupied by the Kaukones.
Athena in the appearance of Mentor led Telemachus to Pylos; there, she alleged a dept to recover from the magnanimous
Kaukones. Herodotus knows that later the Minyens, to seize the land, chased out the Paroreates and the Kaukones, “the
Pylian Kaukones,” he adds elsewhere. At Lepreon, they show the portrait of the hero Kaukon, who passes with the
Messenians as the founder of the Andanian mysteries. In the mysteries, they worship both the Spring and the Goddesses
of the Purification, ‘Αγναι Θεαι. When they wanted to relate Andanie to the mysteries of Eleusis, they invented a
geneology which made of Kaukon a son of Phlyos the Athenian. But the old tradition remembered that the Kaukones
were foreigners coming from the sea: Kaukon was a son of Poseidon. The epithet ‘αγνή, the Pure, which the goddesses of
the entire region bore, is a customary epithet of the Aphrodites and the Syrian Atargatis, Αφροδίτη ‘αγνή, ‘αγνη θεός,
‘αγνή Αφροδίτη Ατεργατις, Αταργατις ‘αγνή θεός, etc… Perhaps they are not fortuitous resemblances. But here is what
appears to me more convincing.
In the upper reaches of the Neda and the course of the Alph, the Lycea raises its highest peak. From its vantage it
dominates the gulfs and the plains of the entire southwest Peloponnesus. All the land routes pass at its feet. It appears that
the high place has acquired foreign gods. In the detail, the resemblances between the Zeus of the Lycea and the Semitic
Baals are striking: I again refer the reader to my study on the Origin of the Arcadian Cults. The human sacrifices, the cult
of the two pillars, the tabernacle with its tables and its lecturn, the holy of holies, the sanctuary (abaton), where noöne
should set foot, all the materials and rites of the cult still retain the mark of the foreign. The archeologists exclaim over
the Semitic penetration at such a great distance by sea! They should consider somewhat the remark of Helbig: “The
Phoenicians pursued a uniquely commercial politic. They sought to maintain peaceful relations with the populations of
the lands with which they had commerce. The civilization brought by them was able to at first react with the natives of the
coast and later to spread to the interior of the country.” The Hellenes followed a very different politic: “The Greek
colonies were not only commercial but also agricultural. The occupation of vast territories necessary fo agriculture
occasioned conflicts with the natives.” The penetration of the Hellenes, because of this hostility, hardly extended past the
maritime region. The penetration of the Phoenicians had, in contrast, pushed very far into the interior. One should
compare the Phoenician exploitation, not with the Greek occupation which followed it, but much more with the entirely
commercial manner in which the Arabs have in the past exploited western Asia or, in our times, the center of Africa. We
know that across Iran and the Caspian, the Arabs have converted the Bulgars along the Volga to Islam; on the amber
route, their mosques extend up to the Muscovite region. We still see today, on the ivory routes, at what a distance from
the coast their mosques are found…
To return to Pylos, it is possible that the legendary geneology of Nestor furnishes us a final indication. Nestor
descended from Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, whom Poseidon had loved under the form of the beautiful river Enipeus.
One would not know exactly where this amorous violence had taken place. Strabo rediscovered the river Enipeus and the
spring Salmoneus in Elide. Others placed them in Thessaly. The name of Tyro offers a perfect resemblance to that of
Tyros which the Greeks gave to the Phoenician town of Sur: we know for the rest that the legitimacy of the Greek
transcription Tyros for the Semitic word ‫ציר‬, Sur or Tur, the Rock. Scripture furnishes us, for the other part, place names
of the form Salmon, ‫צלמין‬, or Salmona, ‫צלמינה‬, which relate to the root ‫צלם‬, s.l.m., cut. On Mount Kaiapha, above the
prarie of Iardanos, they show the Cut Rocks, Πέτραι Απότομοι, which are also the Rocks of the Achaeans, Αχαιαί. I well
believe that in the times when the Height received the name of Samos and the river that of Iardanos, the Cut Rock was
called Tour Salmon, like the rocky promontory of Crete pointed toward Phonecia, which the Greeks named Salmonion.

65
From Semitic Tour Salmon, the Hellenes had later drawn their Pylian geneology, when they ceased to understand the
doublet of the Cut Rocks Petrai Apotomoi-Tour Salmon. The collection of Odyssian legends is going to give us
information at length on the general procedure of Hellenic mythology. In his custom of humanizing everything, the
Hellene frequently takes Piraeus for a man: Nestor, the sire of the Cut Rock, becomes the son of the Rock and the
grandson of the Precipice, the descendant of Tyro and of Salmoneus.

*
* *

In resumé, the topology and toponymy of Pylos prove, I believe, the historic truth of the ancient traditions, which show
the land disputed between the mountaineer tribes and the maritime peoples. It suffices, for the rest, to study the recent
history and the present state. Today, unencumbered of the people of the sea and of the foreign conquerors, French
Venetians, Turks and Albanians, the coast is populated by Arcadian communities. In the maritime plain of the Pene and
the Alph, not far from the echelles of Glarentza and Katakolo, the Arcadians of Magouliana and of Phene have founded
their towns of Phonoaitika and Magoulianitika, of whom the same place names show the original well enough. But the
old place names of the people of the sea still exist, with their French, Italian and Turkish words, Santameri, Portais,
Castel Tornese, Roches Montague, Dervich-tchelebi, Veseri, Duka, Ali-Pasha, Soliman-Aga, etc. In Homeric and post-
Homeric times, the processes were entirely similar. People of the sea, Phoenicians, Achaeans and Kaukones had occupied
or exploited the gulf; the mountaineers of Arcadia, of Elide and others will seek them there. A new system of Greek place
names is installed. But the old foreign place names persisted, which were transmitted more or less faithfully. We have
believed to retrieve some traces of them. We attribute the names of Pylos, Pteleon, Helos, Thryon, etc., to the Achaeans.
It appears that the Phoenicians had imported Samos, Neda, Alpheios, Tour Salmon, perhaps Phigalia. What was the part
there of the Kaukones and the Minyens, the origin, race and language of whom we are totally ignorant?
In the modern period it is from the north that the people of the sea, Venetians and French, had come. In the primitive
period, it is probably from the south that the exploiting navies came. For the people of the north, it was the northern coast
of Elide which offered its ports first: the French took the habit of debarking at Kato-Akhaia, and the Venetians at
Glarentza. For the people of the south, it is the southern coast which will first offer its harbors: Pylos is in the primitive
Achaea that which Kyllene later was in the Hellenic Peloponnesus, that which today Patras is in the Greek Morea. From
all times the eastern façade of the peninsula possesses a great emporium, whose location varies but little with the needs of
the contemporary navies, but whose double rôle remains always the same: it is a port of exchanges for the local commerce
of the natives, and it is a port of transit for the international traffic of foreigners. The locals are the kings of the town; but
the thalassocracies have the high side of the street there. Patras has a colony of rich English commissioners, who control
the market in grapes; Glarentza had its colony of French or of Venetians; Pylos should have similarly attracted and
retained some traders from Tyre or Sidon.
It is paramount, for the comprehension of the entire Odyssead, that we should represent well to ourselves the rôle and
the importance of Pylos in the world of origins. The example of Patras, in our contemporary world, or of Glarentza, in the
Venetian or French world, can put that representation before our eyes. Pylos is the great port of the Achaean
Peloponnesus: its renown was spread afar and its glory long survived its ruin. After the disappearance of the Achaean
world, it is the family of the ancient lords of Pylos which furnished the kings of the Ionian towns of Asia: three or four
hundred years after the disappearance of the French knighthood and the Venetian thalassocracy, the English still have the
dukes of Glarence among their sons of the king… Like Patras and like Glarentza, Pylos is from the first a great market of
local products. The commerce of the time does not live on grapes; but it exports other products of the earth, which
descend to the coast from all the interior, by grace of the routes of the Alph. The Alph to our eyes is just a small river, the
same as the Aegean sea is just a very small sea. But it should well show us that the Aegean was then an ocean, “the Great

66
Sea,” the archipelago: the Alph counted among the great rivers; it was bound to be one of the great paths of Homeric
commerce.
Descending from the Arcadian forests and pastures, it was the river of oxen and of wood. The people of the sea came
to its mouth to load cattle, hides, and the firs or oaks from the high country. They found in the agricultural and pastoral
population a clientel for their manufactured goods. We study at length their system of trade. It is with the flocks and hides
that the Achaeans below Troy pay the people of the sea. It is foodstuffs that the sailors of Sidon purchase in the Aegean
isles. The sailors have need of hides and cattle. Their cordage is of leather, their shields are of leather. Their ship
construction, their oars and masts are of fir, and fir covers their decks. In the times of Strabo, the Romans had founded
Aquilia at the extremity of the Adriatic Sea to traffic with the neighboring barbarians of Illyria: “Aquilia is sixty stades
from the coast and one ascends to it by the river Natison. The barbarians come and take the cargos arriving from the sea;
they take away the wine in wooden barrels and the oil; they bring slaves, flocks and hides.” Arcadia also has always
furnished the commodities which the people of the sea have always appreciated: human livestock, slaves or mercenaries.
Arcadia has never been able to support its too-fecund population. The Swiss or Auvergne of the Peloponnesus pour from
all the slopes a surplus of soldiers, laborers or bandits, according to the epochs. In the Telemachead, the suitors ask
themselves whether Telemachus does not go to Pylos to recruit mercenaries. The Arcadian legend relates that one of the
grandsons of Pelasgos, Oinotros, had passed to Italy and had given the name of Oinotria to his conquest. The king of
Pylos should have played the same part for the Arcadians of Oinotros as Agamemnon for the people of Agapenor who
went to Troy: the king of the coast furnishes vassels from the Arcadians “who know nothing of the things of the sea”. It is
Pylian ships which transported the mountaineers to the lands of the west. I speak of the legend as though it really merited
faith. It is not that I entirely believe it. But it contains, I think, a precious clue. Oinotros and Oinotria are going to have a
place, a large place, in the Voyages of Ulysses. It is useful for us to know meanwhile that perhaps the Hellenes knew the
place and the name through the sailors of Pylos and the Peloponnesus.
It is that Pylos is not only a local market; it is also a port of transit: like Patras today, it is the last Levantine step on the
road of the western seas. Patras has taken this rôle today, when the Levantine commerce has taken the route of Corinth to
Europe. In Acahaean times, Pylos is also the terminus of the great land route which traverses the Peloponnesus: it is the
route of the Telemachead. For the Achaean times, the route Gythion-Sparta-Pheres-Pylos replaces our railway Piraeus-
Athens-Corinth-Patras. Similar to the railroad, the route of the Telemachead is nothing but the continuation by land of
maritime routes which pass through the archipelago. The Telemachead tells us nothing of the maritime routes:
Telemachus does not go as far as the Levantine sea; he stops at Sparta. But study again the example of Patras and see how
the prosperity of the port implies certain commercial constraints of the maritime routes of the archipelago; the variations
of this forcefully result in the variations of that. Being given a transPeloponnesian route, one can always retrieve the
transAegian route which corresponds to it.
The transit on the Piraeus-Patras line implies the navies bringing their passengers and merchandise through the Gulf of
Athens; the transAegian routes have to flow through the gulf. For all the routes of the archipelago are not able to converge
here from the four corners of the horizon: all of the eastern navies do not have interest in directing their convoys to
Athens. Only those shipments from the archipelago to the north, northeast and east, only the convoys from Salonika, the
Dardanelles and Smyrna, can find a shorter way cutting across the isthmus. What profit would the convoys of the
southern far-east have from the long turning to the north? Leaving Egypt, Syria or Crete, the convoys from the far east
pass to the south, very far to the south, of Matapan. In the present state of our navies, it is not necessary to take the
transPelopennesian routes. But our present navies are not the primitive marines.
Leaving the far east and bound for western Europe, our large vessels come straightaway from Alexandria, Beirut,
Rhodes or Palestine all the way to Naples, Genoa or Marseille: they cross “the abyss of the misty sea.” The primitive
boats cruised prudently along the Syrian, then Cypriot or Asiatic coasts. They thus arrived at the channel of Rhodes,
where the bridge of islands, Rhodes, Kasos and Karpathos leads them to Crete. Along the Cretan coast, the cruise leads
them to the other bridge of islands, Cerigotto, Cerigo and Cervi, which finally leads them to the Gulf of Laconia, at the
depth of which the isthmic route of the Eurotas and the Alph offers itself: thus, a great abyss of ocean can be avoided and,

67
in that abyss, the terrible circuit of Matapan… From Crete, the navigators sometimes set out across the great distances of
the western sea and directly gain either the ports of Libya, the echelles of the Elide, of Epirus, or of the Ionian isles:
Ulysses will speak to us of the Phoenicians who would wish to pass from Crete to Libya, to Pylos, to the land of the
Epeans, or to the land of the Thesprotes. But Ulysses also speaks to us of the storms and shipwrecks which punish the
rash navigators for their folly. The wise people interrupted their navigation at the Gulf of Laconia and took to the beaches
of Elide: the transPeloponnesian Gythion-Pylos route could replace our Piraeus-Patras path.
But let us take good heed of the solidarity of land and sea routes. The route of the Telemachead implies a certain
thalassocracy. For the two extremities, the ports of Gythion and Pylos may become the ports of transit: along the route,
the caravans may make their stops at Sparta, Lykosoura and Pheres; it is absolutely necessary that the the archipelago was
then under the exploitation of navies of the far east. A Cretan, Rhodian, Cypriot, Phoenician or Egyptian thalassocracy
had to have extended its line of correspondants and accountants up to the western seas. Only such a commercial system
could turn the transPeloponnesian traffic toward the arrivals from the southeast. We come back to the phenomeneon
already noted by Strabo when, above, he tells us, regarding the Old Towns, that the preHellenic ports, “face to the south
and toward Alexandria,” πολυ προσ μεσημβρίαν ανατείνοθσα και προσ Αλεξάνδρεια μάλιστα. Presently we will
rediscover the maritime stops between the far east and the Gulf of Laconia: a necklace of Greco-Semitic doublets marks
the coasts between Sidon and Gythion. And we also will retrieve in the western seas, at the other end of the
transPeloponnesian route, the great stops of the preHellenic navigations toward the west.
Thus, like Patras today, Pylos at that time is the last Greek port toward the west. It is not that the Greek lands, then as
today, would stop at that coast of the Peloponnesus. From all times, the neighboring isles, Zante, Kephallenia, Ithaca, etc.,
have been under the influence of the Greeks, Hellenes or Achaeans. Pylos or Patras, the great echelle of the western
Peloponnesus has always relied on the isles for the going and coming of numerous ships and boats. But the channel
between Ithaca and Kephallenia is the last passage of the Greek world in the west. At the end of the channel the Greek
seas end: from there begin the Albanian lands and seas - Thesprotes, said the Odyssey - toward the west, the antique
Hellenes or modern Greeks have been able to appropriate some isles or some bits of foreign lands: today it poseses Paxos
and Corfu. But the traffic of the Greek boats and small steamers always stops at the end of the Channel of Ithaca; the
great abyss of sea which separates Ithaca from Paxos or from Corfu is not crossed regularly except by the vessels of the
thalassocracies, Austrian, Italian or English. In the times of Pylos, Ulysses already is the last of the Achaeans on the route
of the west; Ithaca is the last of the Achaean isles toward the northwest,

αυτη δε χθαμαλη πανυπερτάτη ειν ‘αλι κειται

προς Ζόφον.

The echelle of Corfu was held by the Phoenicians. Ithaca thus becomes the rest stop between the last great port of the
Achaeans, Pylos, and the first great port of the foreigners, the town of Alkinoös. Its refugees and its rowers find their
work in the double service of Achaeans and foreigners. The renown of their hero Ulysses cannot be understood in any
other way. Similarly, the adventures of the hero, such as the Ulyssiad tells us, are not able to be explained unless some
foreign stories or writings penetrated into the Achaean thoughts and poetry: by the channel of Ithaca, the periples of
Occidental navigators have invaded the literature of the Levantine Hellenes… But, on the rôle of Ithaca, we have twenty
occasions to return. We should now finish with the Nelean Pylos.
Pylos is not only a large port, a town: it is also a territory. The rôle which we attribute to the town imply in effect the
possession of a certain region, to give the free usage of the land and maritime routes to the navigators. In this state of the
navy, the exploitation of the sea does not go without the ascent of the rivers. On the Alph and on the Neda, the shallow
boats can enter when the waters are high enough: “The Alph,” say the Nautical Instructions, “is one of the most
considerable watercourses of the Morea. Boats drawing 0.9 to 1.2 meters can ascend three or four miles. In summer, the
ships anchor before its mouth and load construction lumber floating on the river.” Pausanias tells us that in his times, they
also ascended the Neda. The river navigations continued the maritime navigation without interruption and caused the

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direct influence of the people of the sea to penetrate earlier. “On the great river Chremes,” says the periple of Hannon,
“we ascend to a great lake populated with isles, at the extremity of which we ascend further up to the foot of high
mountains.”
For the exploitation of coastal rivers, the Pylian realm had to extend itself on the Alph and the Neda: the Pylians
possessed the Ford of Reeds, Thryon, on the Alph and, near the Neda, the port of the Cypresses, Kyparisseis. The long
maritime façade was to have only a narrow depth. The realms of Diocles and the Kaukones bordered it narrowly. Other
than the Ford of Reeds and the Port of the Cypresses, the Iliad mentions seven Pylian towns: two among them, Pylos
itself and Arene, should be on the coast, between the Alph and the mountain Kaiapha. But where are the towns of the
Elm, Pteleon, of the Rock, Aipu, of the Marsh, Helios, of Amphigeneia and of Dorion? Disappeared since the first Dorian
antiquity, the old establishments of the Achaeans have not left a trace. Only the names survived, by virttue of the Homeric
verses; but the ancients asked themselves whether all the names designated towns, mountains or plains, ο‘ι μεν ορος ο‘ι
δε πεδιον φασιν. They still wished to rediscover the Rock, the Elm and the Marsh in the lands of the Makistians, on the
inner flank of the mountain which borders the fisheries, on the route between Aliphera and the Ford of the Alph. It is
probable that Pylians in effect had experienced the need to guard the natural frontier and to construct fortresses at all the
passages through which the natives of the Alph could descend upon them. The Achaean Rock, Aipu would thus be the
Aipion or Epion of the classical times, which, on the coastal mountains, guarded the passage between the bridge of the
Alph, Heraia, and the Samikon: the Pylian Rock had been opposite from the Arcadian Pheres, Aliphera, which faced it
from the other side of a torrent, at the side of the same route (present town of Platania). Similarly, Dorion, a little farther
to the south, guarded another route important for the Pylian commerce: in the Aulon, in the pass of Messinia, between the
ridges of Lycea and the ridges of Ithome, it had the defile, the Klisoura, which the convoys of the Upper Messinia still
take today to reach either the port of Kyparissia or the markets of Phigalia and Andritzena: the railroad from Meligala to
Kyparissa will soon follow that route. The legend of Thamyris, of whom the Homeric verses speak regarding Dorion,
always stays localized in this region. Aulon (canal) of the ancient Hellenes, Klisoura (neck) of the modern Greeks, the
name alone describes the site. The route without doubt had less importance for the Pylians than the great route of the
Telemachead. Still it was another way of transit which went from the Gulf of Messinia to the Pylian beaches, in joining
the plain of Pamisos to the Valley of the Neda. It was through there that Pylos touched Messinia: for Pylos, as the Iliad
says, is neighbor of the Messinian heptapole, which occupies the maritime plain of Pamisos.

πασαι δ’ εγγυς ‘αλός, νέαται Πύλου ημαθόεντος.

We always come back, as we must, to the terms of the Homeric poems. From the study of the Telemachead, at least
one certainty is obtained. It is that the method of the Most Homerics is applicable. We must attend to all the words of the
epic. It requires some care and some patience. But surely the Homeric text is not the teratology which the present
literaries, philologues and commentators represent to us. The Odyssian descriptions are the exact copy of reality. They
correspond to very characteristic sites, the only question of which is to localize, and which we succeed in retrieving if we
wish to take the trouble to examine all the words of the text. The Most Homerics have reason to speak of the geographic
precision of the poem. Here, at the end of the Telemachead, is a new convincing example.
Telemachus, leaving Pylos, takes sail toward Ithaca. He rounds Cape Pheia. Pushed by the favorable wind of Zeus, he
cruises the Elide and the plain of the Epeans (it is the present plain of Pene). Then, “he proceeds toward the pointed isles
with the double anxiety of avoiding shipwreck or grounding,”

‘η δε Φεας επέβαλλεν επειγομέην Διος ούρω,

ηδε παρ’ Ήλιδα διαν ‘όθι κρατέοθσιν Επειοι
ένθεν δ’ αυ Νήσοισιν επιπροέηκε Θοησιν,
‘ορμαίνων η κεν θάνατον η κεν ‘αλών.

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 Where can the pointed isles be? Between the Elean coast and the channel of Ithaca no isles appear on our ordinary
charts. The ancient geographers experienced the same embarrassment as us. Strabo, copied by all the ancient and modern
commentators, hazards an hypothesis. Telemachus, he says, fearing to be captured or killed by the suitors, left the direct
route to Ithaca. He continues to follow the Elean coast and goes to seek an indirect route to the north of the Gulf of
Corinth. He thus encounters, at the mouth of the Acheloös, on the coast of Acarnania, an archipelago of pointed isles
which accordingly are called the Echinades… A landsman can reason thusly. But the navigation is impossible. After “the
streets are filled with shadow,” the land breeze rises and chases the ships toward the high sea. Telemachus, pushed by that
breeze, leaves the Peloponnesian coasts at the last western cape, at our Cape Trepito. He wishes to reach the extreme
promontory of Kephallenia. He sails across the channel of Zante. In the channel, sailors know a danger which the
Nautical Instructions point out and which the marine charts carefully indicate. It is, in the open sea, an archipelago of
reefs, some barely emerged, the others covered with water, with which the landsmen are not acquainted, but which the
sailors fear. They are the Monague rocks, as our Instructions say. The name is the transcription of the old Venetian name
Mont Acuto, the Pointed Mountain: “the dangerous plateau of rocks extends for the space of a mile from north to south
and consists of four distinct blocks. Covered by five to nine meters of water. The shallowest depth found in 1844 over the
north block was 5.02 meters. In 1865 it was 4.09 meters. But certain points have still escaped investigations. A sailing
vessel needs to avoid these hazards by a good distance. With weak winds or calm, it can be drawn by the current which,
from south winds, is strong in the vicinity.” Here are the Pointed Isles of the poet, who speaks according to the periples
or the accounts to his audience of sailors. They understand the anxiety of Telemachus there, “who has the favorable
breeze of Zeus,” the wind from the south. Telemachus, in cruising along the Pointed Isles, fears to be grounded by the
current and lose his life or be held on the points of rocks.
The example of the Pointed Isles should serve us, when we encounter the Hollow Port and the Small Isle. They are not
common nouns dressed up by an epithet. They are proper nouns like Belle-Ile (Beautiful Island) or Chateau-Roux (Red
Castle) of our system of place names. (We still have our Port Creux sunk among the Pyrenian ridges; the modern Greeks
have a multitude of Micronisi, Small Isle, for contrast with Large Isles.) It sometimes suffices to retrieve the exact
location of the place names to suddenly clarify an entire Odyssian description. And experience has proven to me that one
can always arrive at that localization. When we do not “realize” an Odyssian description, it is a lack of explaining
everything, a lack of respecting the text, a lack of following all the indications in it and of treating it as a true geographic
document. One can be astonished, at the first encounter, by such an exactitude. For the Telemachead especially, we
should ask ourselves how the Ionian poet knew and so faithfully described the west coast of the Peloponnesus with the
precise sites, the routes, the legends and the cults of of the different interior or coastal towns. The coast of Pylos is far
away from Ionia. It has few relations with the Asiatic poets of the continent or the isles in which the epic probably took its
final form. It does not appear that the Ionian or Aeolian sailors had often frequented the waters of Pylos: the Etolian
invasion had destroyed the old Achaean town. And additionally the poet did not describe the lands of Milet, Ephesis or
Phocia in any better or more detailed manner. On reflection, an hypothesis presents itself, which we will later have
occasion to discuss at length: perhaps it will furnish us at the end of the study the only rational explanation for the origin
of the Odyssian poem. At the beginning of his Homeric Epic, Helbig warned his reader:

We will not be able here to study at length the complicated problems which are known under the name of the Homeric Question.
We will be content to point out some completely established or very probable facts, in accepting completely the opinion of von
Williamowitz-Moellendorf developed in his Homeric Researches. The epic, as we know it, is the work of several centuries. It is first
developed among the Aeolians of Asia Minor, then among the Ionian populations of that region and the isles. Only some fragments
took birth in Greece proper. The poet who compiled the Odyssey in its present form was also a son of Greece proper.

And in holding to the geographic arguments, we see that the Odyssian poet or poets speak as inhabitants of the Asiatic
coasts. For them, the isle of Syria is “on the other side of Delos toward the west,” which supposes navigators leaving from
Chios or Milet and encountering, on the passage from the west, first Delos, then Syria. Also for them, Eubea is “the

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farthest of the isles,” which supposes a similar navigation from Samos to Ikaria, Mykonos, Tenos and Andros, to arrive,
on the other side of the archipelago, at Eubea, the last of the isles. It is possible - I do not believe it - that the final
arrangement of the Odyssian poems might have been made in European Greece. But the composition of the different
episodes was prior to that arrangement, and the poems had been brought to Asiatic Greece in that form, or nearly so,
which the final redaction retained. How can it thus be that the author of the Telemachead knows the Pylian region so
well? He could not have written of that region with more exactitude. Should it be said that the Telemachead did not come
from Asia Minor, but that it took birth in European Greece? The study of the other Odyssian poems will reveal to us a
parallel exactitude in the description of lands which are also far from the Asiatic coasts, even farther, and furthermore
which the Ionian sailors did not frequent: the Telemachead should not be separated from the other Odyssian episodes.
Here is the explanantion which seems to me the most likely. Composed in an Asiatic, Ionian isle or town, the
Telemachead is contemporary with an epoch when the cities of Asia still knew the monarchical system, when each still
had its king, its royal family and its royal court with its customary functionaries, priests, musicians, singers and poets. For
the Ionian cities of Asia Minor had chosen their royal families, Heroditus tells us, some from among the Lycians,
descendants of Glaucos, son of Hippolochos, others from the Pylian Kaukones, descendants of Kodros, son of Melanthos,
some finally from the ones or the others, βασιλέας δε εστήσαντο ο‘ι μεν αυτων Λυκίους από Γλαύκου του ‘Ιππολόχου
γεγονότας, ο‘ι δε Καύκωνας Πυλίους από Κόδρου του Μελάνθου, ο‘ι δε και συναμφοτέρους. Hellanicos traced the
geneology of the Pylian Kaukones thusly: originally Salmoneus engendered Tyro, who from Poseidon gave birth to
Neleus, who engendered Nestor, who had for successive descendents Periclemenos, Boros, Penthelos, Andropompos,
Melanthos and Kodros. Melanthos is the veritable chief of the Ionian dynasties. Up until him, the Neleides do not reign in
Ionian lands, but at Pylos: for the Ionian people lose themselves somewhat in the mists of legend and of the past.
Melanthos, driven from Pylos by the Heraclides, transports the family to the future Ionian metropolis, Athens. He comes
there with his forebears Alkmaion, Paion and Pisistratos. We again find the name Pisistrate among the Neleides in the
Telemachead. Pisistrate is the driver of Telemachus; later, it is in memory of the Odyssian hero that Pisistrate the
Athenian will bear the name to affirm his Alcmeonides and Neleides descendance.
Melanthos is thus the veritable founder of the Ionian dynasties. Established with the Athenians, they achieve royalty
after the death of the last Theseid, Thymoitas. When the Ionians emigrate to Asia Minor, they transport with them two
offspring of Melanthos. Melanthos is the hero to whom the Ionian towns later relate their kings. Let us then examine the
family of Melanthos.
Melanthos is the son of Andropompos; the Transporter of Men, and of Henioche, the Woman of the Reins. This
Henioche – Hellanicus has traced her geneology for us, as suiting the grandmother of so many royal houses – descends
from Admetos by Eumelos, Zeuxippos and Armenios. Do we not have here a geneology which suits the hero of our
Telemachead? The Woman of the Reins, ‘ηνιόχη, daughter of the Man of the Chariot, ‘αρμένιος, ‘άρμα (the historians
and geographers then make him an Armenian), αρμένιος, granddaughter of the Binder of Horses, ζεύξιππος, and wife of
the Transporter of Men, ανδρόπομπος, is surely the parent of the Odyssian Neleides, who transported Telemachus from
Pylos to Sparta in their chariot:

Αυτας εμε προέηκε Γερήνιος ‘ιππότα Νέστωρ

Τω ‘άμα πομπόν ‘έπεσθαι.

“My father, Nestor,” says Pisistrate to Menelaus, “has sent me as a ferryman, πομπος, of Telemachus.” It is the ordinary
occupation of the sons of Nestor,

ει δ’ εθέλεις πεζός, πάρα τοι δίφπος τε και ‘ίπποι,

παρ δέ τοι υιες εμοί ο‘ί τοι πομπηες έσονται
ες Λακεδαίμονα διαν,

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the Neleides are binders of horses, ζεύξιπποι, holders of reins, ‘ηενίοχοι, drivers of chariots, ‘αρμένιοι,

παιδες εμοί, άγε Τηλεμάχω καλλίτριχας ‘ίππους

ζεύψαθ’ ‘υφ’ ‘άρματ’ άγοντες…
παρ δ’ άρα Νεστορίδης Πεισίστρατος όρχαμος ανδρων
ες δίφρον τ’ ανέβαινε και ‘ηνία λάζετο χερσίν.

The Telemachaia – that is to say the conduct, πομπη, of Telemachus by the Neleides toward the divine Lacedemonia –
appears to me an ingenious development of the more or less legendary genealogies which the Neleid royalties of Ionia
liked to attribute to themselves. It appears probable to me that, among the royal families of Ionia, some of them,
authentically ancient and noble, had a Neleid ancestor; but not all of them dated from the Crusades, I wish to say, from
the Trojan War. During the period of wars which the Ionians sustained against the Asiatics, before the definitive
establishment of their towns, it is probable that more than one adventurer of valiant arms, with a cunning spirit, had
achieved command and royalty. Such families, which later were termed Neleids, undoubtedly did not stretch back to
Neleus, the founder of Milet. This Neleus is an historic personage. He appears to have really existed, to have truly
founded Milet. But that he was a son of the king of Athens, Kodros, a descendant of the Pylian Melanthos and, through
him, of Pylian origin - εκ Πύλου το γένος ών - that he thus might have belonged to the old family of Nestor and of
Neleus, the glory of whom the Iliad and the war epics sang to the four corners of the Greek world: it is here, I believe,
where the local vanity and flattery begin to play. The Odyssian poems have nothing of popular poetry. They appear to us
as the reflective and learned work of professional writers. They presume the scripture, in effect, and they similarly reveal,
by certain words, the study of the “scripture,” as we say, and of the art. They are cloistered, not among the grossness of
the populace but by the polite refinement of some court: “The Epic,” says von Wiliamowitz-Moellendorf, with reason,
“unquestionably differs much more from the popular poetry than does the the tragic dialogue.” The Telemachaia thus
appears to me as the work of a courtesan bard of Neleid royalty.
It is not that there is no truth in the tradition, nor that, among the Ionians, there are no Pylians nor authentic
descendants of Pylians. Herodotus knew that Kaukonian Pylians figured among the first emigrants. I willingly admit that
among the Ionians, worshipers of Athena, there are the Pylians, perhaps, who made the cult of Poseidon the most
important. For we see that Neleus of Milet had set up the altar of that god on the cape of the Milesians; take the map: the
Poseidon was at the mouths of the Meander in the same situation as the Pylian Poseidon at the mouths of the Alph.
Furthermore, Poseidon became the federal god PanIonion, as he had been the federal god of Pylos. Also the Odyssian
poet, following his flattery, made of Poseidon the father of the Neleads. That fine invention did not go without some
difficulties. In the authentic legends of Greece proper, Elide and Thessaly, it is the river Enipeu which engenders the first
Neleus. It was difficult to contradict that common belief. But our poet has quickly found a subterfuge: he relates that
Poseidon has taken the form of the beautiful river and by this means tricked the amorous Tyro. This is how the kings of
the Ionian towns trace themselves back not only to the war but to Olympia.

*
* *

The historic relations between Pylos and Ionia sufficiently explain, I think, the exactitude of the Odyssian descriptions.
The glory of Pylos was alive and lived long in the memories of the emigration. The topography also survived in the
stories or in the periples brought from overseas. Many of the bards, before the author of the Telemachaia, had
undoubtedly wearied the royal ears with the Neleid glory. Pylos, its location, its town, its harbor, its surroundings and its
legends, had become poetic material, a given as familiar to the authors of the epics as Thebes and Mycenae would later be

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to the tragic authors: “The Homeric poems,” adds the same von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, “speak a conventional
language which the rhapsodist himself was obliged to immediately understand, with a clothing of traditional comparisons
and formulas. The style was transmitted by grace of an uninterrupted tradition which, up to the more recent times when
the mores were entirely different, retained a very exact idea of the mores of the epics.” The remark is even more
appropriate applied to geographic ideas, for the Tememachaia in particular is in the Pylian tradition, preserved by the
bards of the Nelean royalty who, after generations, perhaps after centuries, preserved the exact memory of the town and
the Nelean community…
Between Nestor and our Odyssian poet, generations or centuries may have passed. In the confusion of Achaean
Greece, in the changes of the navies and commercial routes, Pylos has disappeared from the Hellenic world. The other
ports, Kyparissia and Kyllene, have divided the ancient clientel between themselves. The “transporter kings” reign
elsewhere: it is at Phigalia that Pompos henceforth welcomed the people of the sea. The sands and the lagoons swallow up
the harbor of Telemachus and the Poseidon of Nestor. On the high acropolis, the ruined and unknown town loses even its
name. After twenty-eight or thirty centuries of dreary solitude, it still awaits the excavator’s pick which will reveal it. And
meanwhile the beach of sands always survives in the memory of men by grace of the Homeric verses. I have shown, I
believe, that before our own eyes it has been able to arise intact, if only we would truly desire to take the trouble to treat
the Odyssian text as a document, not as a babbling, and to explain it in the fashion of the Most Homerics.

THIRD BOOK

KALYPSO

νησος δενδρήεσσα θεά δ’εν δώματα ναίει

Άτλαντος θυγάτηρ...

Odyss., I, 51-52

CHAPTER I

THE PRIMITIVE NAVIES AND THEIR ESTABLISHMENTS

την Οδύσσειαν καθάπερ και την Ιλιάδα απο των

συμβάντων μεταγαγειν εις ποίησιν.

STRAB., III, p. 149.

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 The study of Homeric Pylos has furnished us some facts on the origin of the Telemachaia. We now enter the study of
the Ulyssiad, the Odyssey properly speaking, the Return, or the Wandering of Ulysses. Respecting the arrangement and
the entirety of the poem, we take the diverse episodes in it one after the other. It is on the isle of Kalypso that the Odyssey
opens. After seven years, captive on the isle, Ulysses awaits the dawn of his return. Upon the prayers of Athena and on
the order of Zeus, Hermes goes there to rescue the hero. Hermes dives from the summit of Olympus to the surface of the
waves and flies at length in the form of a seagull. All the way at the end of the world, at the strait where the pillars
separate the sky from the earth, he finally reaches the remote isle: there, in a large cavern, lives the nymph; Ulysses weeps
on the rocks.
Did this isle of Calypso really exist? Or isn’t it just a poetic fiction, an El Dorado, a paradise dreamed by the
navigators of the time and described by the poet at the whim of the imagination and popular stories? Between the two
alternatives one thinks, on first reading the text, of the second. It is the simplest. It necessitates less research and more
submission to commonly received opinions. The kindly Fenelon has elsewhere clouded the distant horizon of all the
dreams of his Telemachus. He is of the common opinion that the isle of Calypso never existed. But, if one makes a “most
Homeric” study of the text, it immediately appears that certain details, certain epithets and certain proper names
characterize our site, for one part, and, for the other, localize it in a strictly defined region:

“Ulysses,” says Athena, “bears misfortunes far from his friends, on an isle circled by currents, where a navel of the sea is located.
On that isle of trees lives the daughter of the pernicious Atlas, who knows the abysses of all the sea and who alone holds the high
columns placed between the sky and the earth…

I recall the rule posed by W. Helbig, which we should always have present in our mind: “The Homeric epithets
translate the essential quality of the object which they would characterize. They never recall the secondary characteristics,
but only those which strike the eyes in a lively way and imprint on the object a particular character.” There are few banal
epithets in the Odyssey, much fewer than is generally believed. We do not like [nuts and] bolts in our verse: why would
the Hellenes, our masters, have had a less demanding taste than ours? The isle of Calypso is an isle with a cavern, an isle
of birds, of springs, of trees, situated in its parentage, which is to say in the vicinity of the High Pillars: if we hold a
rigorous account of the multiple epithets, the isle presents sufficient particularities for us to distinguish it from among a
thousand.
But in commencing, we make all concessions to current prejudice. We admit that the isle of Claypso may be an
invention of the author. Suppose that this El Dorado had never existed. We still can draw from our study many useful and
precise pieces of information. Each person makes his paradise to his own preference. Paradise is entirely, in sum, nothing
but the embellished picture of the ordinary life. The isle of Calypso is the Eden of a navigator people. We study the Eden
as the ideal type of a maritime establishment at a certain epoch of the Mediterranean history. For following the origin and
the needs of a navigator people, following also the size, the form and the equipage of the ships, we can see that each
epoch in the history of the inner sea has its type of establishment, location for fishing or piracy, embarkation point or
trading post of debarkation. For the preHellenic period, the isle of Calypso thus offered this type of ideal port. Here is the
precise description of it:

Hermes at last arrived at the distant isle where, in a large cavern, lived the nymph with beautiful hair… All around the cave a
forest had grown vigorous alders, poplars and fragrant cypress, and the wide-winged seabirds, owls, sparrowhawks and sea crows
made their nests there. Over the mouth of the deep cavern a vine extended its thick branches, which abounded with grapes. Four
springs poured out their clear waters there, near to each other but divergent. And all around were gentle fields of parsley and violets,
which a god himself might have admired on debarking, and where his heart would be made to rejoice.

If we separate out the principal characters of our site, we find: 1) a verdant isle with one or several hills, “navels of the
sea”; 2) a cavern; 3) springs; 4) trees populated with sea birds.

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 *
* *

1) Springs. – Of these characteristics, this is the one which, for all sailors and for all times, will have about the same
importance among them: this, the springs. Up until recent years, in effect, up until the invention of large water tanks and
distillation of sea water, the source of water was, for all the navies in all the seas, of primordial necessity. But, navigating
between marble islands or along rocky coasts, equipped only with imperfect, small (skins) or fragile (jugs) containers, the
sailors of the primitive Aegean had a greater need of springs. In the sea, the antique navigator, like the navigator of today,
easily found his sustenance by grace of the fishing (isle of tuna) or the hunting (isle of Quail, of Rabbits, of Deer, etc.).
Almost always, in the complaints of the Levantine world, “the food has not run out.” But the water is sometimes lacking
and it is thirst which kills the little cabin boy of the Anthology.

“The isle of Patmos,” says Tournefort, “is one of the meanest reefs of the archipelago. It is bare, without wood and very dry,
although it does not lack rocks or mountains. Jean Cameniate, who was one of a number of slaves which the Saracens made at the
seizure of Thessalonika, which they transported to Candia, confirms that all these unfortunates stayed six days on Patmos and that
they found no water to drink. They would have made good fare if they had been allowed to hunt, for the isle is full of partriges,
rabbits, quail, turtledoves, pigeons and pipits.”

“To remedy the lack of freshwater, from which the navigators suffered so much,” says Pliny, “the physicists had set
themselves in quest of remedies: fleeces hung from the rigging to collect the dew, leathern or earthenware vessels sunk
into the sea, etc.” With such remedies, the Greek or Roman sailor had a good chance of dying of thirst. Among the
Homeric pirates, the lack of water threatened to make itself felt even more frequently. Like the French corsairs of recent
centuries, these raiders were not able to replenish themselves at all of the springs of their cognizance. Many of the harbors
and water sources were closed to them by the hostility of the natives, on the coasts which they had previously raided and
where they feared just reprisals. Prisoner of a French corsair on the coast of Egypt, Thevenot knew all the torments of
thirst, just across from the mouths of the Nile:

The corsairs had so little water that they were obliged to dispense it by measure, and gave each two glasses per day. Our nutrition
consisted of two meals per day. They gave us some biscuit which, being thoroughly moldy, was completely discolored, and, to
improve the flavor, and so that it should not be so hard, we dipped it in the water, which stunk to the extreme, and when at first we
brought it near enough to smell, and in forcing the biscuit past the teeth, that water from hell ran down the throat, which made a
horrible sensation, we drank that stinking water with very little wine… We arrived at Damietta… On entering upon the Nile, we
drank our fill of good water, it seemed to us that we had passed from hell to paradise, as we had passed from the sea to the river.

Ulysses and his companions, blown by the storm for ten days and tossed from the Greek seas to the coast of the Lotus-
Eaters, similarly hasten to the coastal spring, and eat and drink their fill.

ενθα δ’ επ’ ηπε;iρου βημεν και αφυσσ;aμεθ’ ‘ύδωρ

αιψα δε δειπνον ‘έλοντο θους παρα ηνυσιν ‘εταιροι.
αυταρ επει σίτοιο τ’ επασσάμεθ’ ηδε ποτητος…

Besides drinking, the primitive sailors had to figure on the need of a large quantity of water for cooking. The
provisions for passage consisted of wheat as grain or as flour, σιτος, water and wine:

75
 αυταρ εγω σιτον και ‘ύδορ και οινον επυθρόν
ενθήσω μενοεικέ’, ‘ά κεν τοι λιμον ερύκοι,

“I put an abundance of grain, water and red wine in the boat, to banish hunger,” says Calypso, who loads a skin of
black wine, a large waterskin and a bag of provisions, ηα (we will come back to this term), on the raft. Similarly, one of
the Pheacian servants brings grain and red wine to the vessel which will repatriate Ulysses:

.. σιτόν τε φέρεν και ονιον ερυθρον.

Mentor similarly says to Telemachus: “Prepare all the provisions for travel, that is to say, wine in amphoras and flour
in skins.”

‘όπλισσόν τ’ ήια και αγγεσιν άρσον ‘άπαντα,

οινον εν αμφιφορευσι και άλφιτα μυελον ανδρων
δέρμασιν εν πυκινοισιν.

and Telemachus has twelve amphoras of wine and twenty measures of flour carried to the vessel. For the wines of Greece,
hot and thick, quench the thirst poorly. Without water to cut them, the best crush of the Levant cannot moisten a crew for
long, at the same time that they have plenty to eat. One should not compare them to our light wines of the north. One can
imagine a crossing made on champagne or chablis, with very little water. But, in just a few meals, the uncut wines of
Samos or Cyprus give a distaste. The ship, which is returning from Fresne-Canaye in Turkey, is surprised by a calm in the
Ionian Sea: “We suffered a desperate thirst, having only dusty water, and unable to drink wine because of the heat… The
most perfect Greek wines no longer taste pleasant to the palate of sensitive persons unless accompanied by well water, of
which we suffered the lack for many days.” For a stronger reason, the black wine, as the poet says, is not able to be
consumed straight. It is a thick and viscous sort of confection, which needs to be diluted with plenty of water to make it
into red wine. Maron gives to Ulysses a marvelous wine, a divine drink, a wine without water, ακηράσιον, a black wine to
which one should add, if one wanted red wine sweet as honey, twenty measures of water to one measure of wine; from
the skin which holds the extract of the grape suffuses a divine fragrance. When the crew of Telemachus on the return
from Pylos comes to debark on the extreme point of Ithaca, they hasten, after the night at sea, to prepare the supper and
“mix the black wine,”

ειπνόν τ’ εντύνοντο κερωντό τε αίθοπα οινον.

At all the Homeric meals, the operation of the mixed wine repeats itself. It is the first duty of the valets, of whom the
meal is requested: they mix the wine in the common bowl, the cratere, from which they fill the cups of each person.
The same with the wheat or flour, it requires lots of water to make the gruel or cakes on which everyone lives during
the passage. Today the Italians nourish their crews with macaroni. The Homeric crews live on flour “which makes a
man’s strength, which gives a man marrow.” They only roast meats on land. Meat and milk are the pleasures of landsmen.
Wines and grains are the provisions aboard, ήια, ηα. The companions of Ulysses, debarking on the isle of the Sun, were
not to touch the sacred beasts. They should continue to live on their provisions aboard, ηα, wheat and flour. As long as
they have grain remaining, they respect the warning and abstain from the cattle. But when all the provisions are
exhausted, they slaughter the herd:

ο‘ι δ’ είως μεν σιτον έχον και οινον ερυθρόν

τόθρα βοων απέχοντο λιλαιόμενοι βιότοιο.
άλλ’ ‘ότε δη νηος εξέφθιτο ήια πάντα…

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 In historical times, for swift transportation, it is still this way. The Athenian trireme which carried the decree of pardon
for the people of Mitylene and which needed to overtake the decree of death, nourished itself only on flour relieved with
wine and oil. The provisions of travel for land voyages are no different. When the Ten Thousand, returning from their
expedition, finds itself again assembled at Byzance, a certain Koiratadas, recruiter of mercenaries and professor of tactics,
presents himself to conduct them to the delta of Thrace, in a land of good raiding and pillages: he will furnish everything
necessary, the cult objects, a priest, provisions in abundance, food and drink. The next day Koroitadas returns in effect
with the sacred objects, his prophet, twenty men in charge of flour, twenty in charge of wine, three in charge of olives,one
resourceful man in charge of garlic, and finally one man in charge of onions. The recent navigators of the Levantine
Mediterranean retain the same habits. In the sixteenth century, Belon thusly describes the life of the corsairs:

Because the word Corsair is not well understood in the Mediterranean regions… I wish to here give the understanding… three or
four leaders of sailors and hardies set themselves to the enterprise, who from the first beginnings are poor, having only a small, ill-
equipped boat or frigate or brigantine. For the rest, they have a box for a quadrant to navigate, called a Busselo and also have some
military equipment. For their food they have a sack of flour and a little biscuit, a flask of oil, some honey, and a few braids of garlic
and onion, which is their provision for a month. This having been done, they set to the adventure… If the wind constrains them to
remain in port, they pull their boat ashore, which they cover with tree branches, and cut some wood with their blades and light a fire
with their firearm and make a pastry of their flour which they cook… on a tile or piece of copper or beaten iron which they prop on
two stones and make a fire underneath.

Still today, in Greek isles and lands, the boatman of Syria and the laborer of Arcadia live on the same diet. Bread more
or less cooked, Albanian bobota (that is to say coarsely ground cornmeal mixed with water and cooked on a piece of
metal in the manner indicated by Belon), wine, some olives and some preserved sardines, oil and raw onions form the
basis of the diet. Meat does not appear except on holidays or feasts, when they roast a lamb and devour it entirely, among
friends.
One thus needs a great supply of water aboard. The supply runs out quickly. It is necessary to put in frequently, and
almost every evening, to renew it. Near known and dependable springs, each evening they debark to prepare, as
Euryloque says to Ulysses, a good supper. For, except for exceptions easily numbered, the springs which border the
Levantine Mediterranean are meager and occasionally go dry. In order that a settlement might be assured of never lacking
water, that a fleet might be assured of rapidly and continually finding a sufficient supply, one needs many sources of
water; the isle of Calypso has four:

κρηναι δ’ ‘εξείνς πίσυρες ‘ρέον ‘ύδατι λευκω,

πλησίαι αλλήλον τετραμμέναι άλλυδις άλλη.

*
* *

ΙΙ. Cavern. – The other characters of our site appear less important to sailors of today. The cavern especially will not
be of great use to them. To the sailors of the Oddysey, the coastal caverns are indispensable. But to comprehend well the
necessity requires a somewhat long dissertation on the boats and on the usage and customs of the navigators. I pray for
the reader to have patience.
Let us first consider that their galleys are small, poorly decked, and of little comfort. The galleys are small, because
they are propelled by oars and a crew of twenty rowers suffices, which supposes eight or ten oars on each side. They haul
the galleys onto the shore without difficulty, and a few men are enough to set them afloat. These are boats rather than
ships. Like the boats of the archipelago in the times of Tournefort, they “leave only with a calm or with a favorable wind;
in truth, one will be better under sail, but one will lose time sighing for a wind.” The galleys are not comfortable. They are

77
not covered with a deck from one end to the other, under which the rowers stay, with enclosed rooms and a gun deck
where the crew lives and sleeps. They do not have cabins. The hold is open. They are “hollow vessels,” that is to say,
open, not decked, which only have, at the front and rear, a sort of castle, ίκρια. The ikria are only, I think, stages rising
from the hollow vessel supported by four pillars; one mounts them by a ladder. Such at least is the sense of ikrion in the
language of the Greeks of Asia. A text of Herodotus gives us the exact meaning of the term. Herodotus describes the lake
habitations of Macedonia and their towns on pilings: “There are huts on platforms, on ikria, which high pilings support in
the open lake, ίκρια επι σταυρων ‘υψηλων εν μέση τη λιμνη.” I picture the Homeric ikria the same. At each end of the
boat, a platform, surveying the hold and the sea, rests on four pillars; planking surrounds it on the three sides which face
the sea, but the stage is open, without guard-rail, on the side of the hold, where one descends the ladder. All the details of
the Odyssian text agree with this conclusion. Beneath each of these ikria, between the four pillars, perhaps there existed a
hold or recess, a cabin, “la chambre,” as the French corsairs say. But in the entire poem, there is no mention of the retreat.
I will most willingly believe that beneath the ikria there is nothing to be distinguished from the rest of the hold. The poet
never speaks other than of the castles of the upper platform.
The forward castle serves as the post for the lookout. The aft castle is the retreat of the captain, the pilot, and
passengers of note: they sit there during the day; they lie down there during the night. It is on the aft castle that
Telemachus and Mentor, departing for Pylos, come to situate themselves:

νηι δ’ ενι πρυμνη κατ’ άρ ‘έζετο, άγχι δ’ άρ αυτης

‘έζιτο Τηλέμαχος…

On the return from Pylos, it is on the castle of the poop that Telemachus places the spear of the suppliant
Theoklymenos; it is there where he himself sits and makes Theoklymenos sit before him:

ως άρα φωνήσας ο‘ι εδέξατο χάλκεον έγχος,

και τό γ’ επ’ ικριόφεν νεος αμφιελίσσης.
άν δε και αυτος εβήσετο ποντοπόροιο,
εν πρυμνη δ’ άρ έπειτα καθέζετο, παρ δε αυτω
εισε Θεοκλύμενον…

The night having come, the captain, who is occasionally at the same time the pilot,

αιει γαρ πόδα νηος ενώμων, ουδέ τω άλλω

δωχ’ ‘ετάρων ‘ίνα θασσον ‘ικοίμεθα πατρίδα γαιαν,

the captain and the pilot, with the passengers of distinction, can lie down on the deck of the stern castle, επ’ ικρίοφι
πρυμνης. It is there that the Pheacians make a bed for Ulysses, with a cover, ‘ρηγος, and linen sheets, λίνον, and it is there
that Ulysses sleeps a leaden sleep during the passage; the Pheacians, without awakening him, deposit him on the beach of
Ithaca, wrapped in his cover and sheets… “I have in my home,” says Nestor, “enough covers and bedsheets so that the
son of my old friend Ulysses can go to sleep on the castle of his ship,”

αυταρ εμοι πάρα μεν χλαίναι και ‘ρήγεα καλά.

ού θην δη του δ’ ανδρος Οδυσσηος φίλος υ‘ιος
ηνος επ ικριόφιν καταλέξεται…

On the deck of the fore castle, the fo’c’sle, several rowers likewise can lie down for the night. But most of the crew,
packed into the hollow of the vessel, row or sleep under the spray and mist. Nothing covers them. Between the two castles

78
of rear and front, ίκρια πρώρης and ικρια πρυμνης, the vessel is hollow, γλαφυρη, not decked. In the hollow of the vessel
are aligned the benches of the rowers, perpendicular to the planking. In the middle of the vessel lies a free space, a
passage, a gangway: “the gangway is like the street of the galley, by which one goes from one end to the other.” From one
end of the vessel to the other, δια νηος ιων, Ulysses walked in the gangway encouraging his men at the moment of
passing Skylla:

αυταρ εγω δια νηος ιων ωτρυνον ‘εταίρους.

The expression, “go through the vessel,” δια νηος ιων, is explained more clearly to us in the last visit of Alkinoös to
the Pheacian vessel. They have prepared everything for the repatriation of Ulysses. The Greek vessel is put afloat, then
arranged for the rowers and anchored in the outlet of the port. The swell of the open sea rocks the vessel. They are going
to leave in a few hours. The Pheacians have sent aboard the gifts destined for Ulysses, cauldrons, tripods and other
manufactures. They have arranged the encumbering objects in the hollow of the vessel, under the benches of the rowers,
on each side of the gangway. Alkinoös comes to make the final inspection. From one end of the vessel to the other, αυτος
ιων δια ηνος, he walks in the gangway and verifies the arrangement, “so that nothing impedes the men when when they
give the stroke of the oar.” On the Italian or Provençal galleys, an expression had been employed which exactly translated
our Homeric word: it is run the boat, or run the gangway (run the gauntlet). It was that which they later termed in France
run the bowline. Rebellious or delinquent sailors would be condemned to pass several times from one end of the galley to
the other running in the gangway; the crew gathered on either side strike the condemned hard blows with bowline, a
heavy rope.
In the hollow of the vessel, in the gangway, they could lay the mast when, stowing the sail, they demasted to row.

ανστάντες δ’ ‘έταροι νεος ‘ιστία μηρύσαντο

και τα μεν εν νηι γλαφυρη θέσαν…

Certain ships perhaps have blocks to receive and hold the lowered mast, ‘ιστοδόκη. But a single passage of the Iliad
and a passage from the Homeric hymns mention the blocks, which should not have been commonly used. Consequently,
it is in the hold, or in the gangway, that one lays the mast and rigging. When the wind blows down the mast, everything
falls into the hold, which thus is not covered. From the hollow of the vessel, Skylla is able to fish out six men which she
lifts at the end of her arms; thus there is nothing which covers them; there is no deck over them:

τοφρα δε μοι Σκύλλη γλαφυρης εκ νηος ‘εταίρους

‘έξ ‘έλετο…

In the hollow of the vessel, they pack the provisions and the gifts:

εν νηι γλαφυρη βίοτον πολυν εμπολόωντο.

The most precious merchandise lies there, with nothing to hide it from the view of the avaricious crewmembers. The
same on the ships perfected by the Pheacians, there is no cabin in which to secure the valuable objects:

Then the queen Arete (Alkinoös’ wife) brought an admirable chest; in it she put the gifts, the cloth and the gold which the
Pheacians gave to Ulysses, and she said to the hero: “Come yourself to observe the closing and quickly add a knot so that, during the
voyage, noöne can rob you, as you will have a goodly sum on the black ship.” At these words Ulysses came at once to arrange the
closing and quickly he made the clever knot upon it, which the venerable Circe had shown him.

79
 If he made such precautions to seal the chest, it is because it is going to remain among the hands of the crew. The good
queen Arete knew her people for pilferers who pick up and appropriate everything they find “in tow”. During Ulysses’
sleep, they would open an unsealed chest, as his crew opened the famous skin of king Aiolos. Reread the episode. Ulysses
receives from Aiolos the marvelous skin which contains the breath of storms. He stows the skin in the hollow of the
vessel. He binds it with a silver cord. Then he falls asleep. His companions are unable to resist the temptation. This skin
which they have there, under their feet, within their reach, always before their eyes, what could it possibly contain? What
treasures does that cunning Ulysses still hide from them? They open it. The storm rushes out… If the hollow of the ship
were an enclosed chamber, a covered hold, the account becomes unbelievable, incomprehensible. Let us read again an
account by Ulysses in verse XIV, his alleged captivity aboard a Thesprote vessel. The pirates stripped him of his clothes
and tied him securely under the benches of the rowers. They debark in the evening on the coast of Ithaca to mix the wine
and take the meal. Ulysses detaches his cords, glides along the rudder into the sea and escapes by swimming:

ένθ εμε μεν κατέδησαν ευσσέλμω ενι νηι

‘όπλω ευστρεφέι στρερεως.

It is not a question of a locked hold where they put the slaves and captives in irons. The prisoner is only bound with a
cord, under the benches of the rowers. Once the cord is loosed, nothing impedes flight, neither doors to open nor walls to
break. On the boats of the seventeenth century, here is the account of a very similar escape. Robert, an English captain,
has been seized by Tukish pirates, with a young son of his friend:

I did not doubt that we would sold at Rhodes to be slaves the rest of our days. Nevertheless, they behaved better in dealing with
us, seeing that they did not put us in chains, so that we did not wait. There were already five days that we were in their hands, until
they moored at Samos. It was here that I risked the night to take my little boy on my back and swim to shore where we fortunately
landed. In order not to be discovered by the Turks who had arrived there, we had to remain hidden six days and nights in the
crevasses of a rock, where we had nothing for nutrition other than three snails and the roots of some wild herbs.

Let us note well the detail of the account. If our people are able to flee, it is because they have not been put in chains,
at the bottom of the hold. The Turkish corsairs have rooms where they put (people) in chains, holds which can serve as a
prison. But they “behave better” with their captives. Our people have not been locked up. Like Ulyssses, they were able to
slip into the sea and swim to shore. Like them, Ulysses had no door to break open; for the Thesprote vessel had no brig…
It is the same: in the hollow of the ship, under the benches of the rowers, and not in a closed room, they bind the fugitives
taken aboard. Ulysses overcame by force the sailors who wanted to desert in the land of the Lotus Eaters: “In spite of their
pleas, I brought them to the ship and, in the hollow, under the benches, I bound them thoroughly.”

τους μεν εγων επι νηας άγον κλαίοντας ανάγκη

νηυσι δ’ ενι γλαφυρησιν ‘υπο ζυγα δησα ερ’υσσας.

The entire poem shows us that merchandise, persons or provisions lie piled in an open hold, the same in the course of
long voyages. In leaving the isle of the Pheacians, Ulysses is situated on the aft castle. But it is in the hollow of the vessel
that they have deposited the gifts of Alkinoös and his people, not only the manufactured goods and the objects of metal,
but also the fine fabrics, the embroideries and the provisions sent by the good queen Arete and carried aboard by her three
chambermaids. They leave their burden with the sailors who arrange it in the hollow vessel,

αιψα τά γ’ νηι γλαφυρη πομπηες αγαυοι

δεξάμενοι κατέθεντο…

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 From the hollow of the vessel, when they arrive at land, they remove the cargo, merchandise and livestock,

ο‘ι δε χρήματ’ εμα γλαφυρης εκ νηος ‘ελόντες…

μηλα δε Κύκλωπος γλαφυρης εκ νηος ‘ελόντες…

The sheep of Cyclops have found a place there without difficulty. The men are content to throw them aboard, which
supposes a hull of little depth. Thrown into the gaping hole of our holds, the sheep would break their legs. We know what
procedures and how much time is needed to load livestock aboard our smallest vessels and in our holds of the least depth.
Ulysses and his companions, fleeing from Cyclops, do not take any care, nor waste any time: sheep, all aboard!

…εκέλεθσα θοως καλλίτριχα μηλα

πόλλ’ εν νηι βαλόντας.

In two passages, the hollow of the ship is designated by the word antlon, αντλον, which in classical Greek properly
signifies the bilge, the reservoir at the bottom of the hold where the water collects (αντλον also signifies stagnant water)
and which they empty (αντλεω) with a scoop (bailer, αντλημα). On the Homeric vessels, the antlon is not a large covered
space, a closed and cozy deck. It is just the most hollow part of the hull, a sort of open hole, but of little depth, beneath the
planks where the feet of the rowers are supported, a sump between the timbers of the bottom. Each time that the poet
mentions the bilge, it is evident that nothing separates it completely from the rest of the hold: nothing covers it entirely.
From above, the sails and the passengers fall to the bottom of the antlon (thus, there is no deck), and the mast falling aft is
going to break the skull of the pilot (who is seated on the aft castle),

…‘ιστος δ’ οπίσω πέσεν ‘όπλα τε πάντα

εις άντλον κατέχυνθ’. ‘ο δ’ άρα πρυμνη ενι νηί
πληξε κυβερνήτεω κεφαλην,

and the pilot falls from the castle into the sea,

κάππεσ’ απ’ ικριόφιν…

The Phoenician nanny of Eumea similarly falls (from the top of the castle) into the antlon. She is fleeing the house of
her master, the king of Syria, in carrying away the little Eumea. She has taken passage on a Phoenician boat: “For a whole
week, we travel day and night; but on the seventh day, Artemis makes her fall into the antlon.”

αλλ’ ότε δη ‘έβδομον ημαρ επι Ζευς θηκε Κρονίον,

την μεν έπειτα γυναικα βάλ’ Άρτεμις ιοχέαιρα,
άντλω δ’ ενδούπησε…

It is not necessary to impute such mishaps to goddesses. Artemis had nothing to do with the accident. The thing
happened, on the ship of Semites, the seventh day. It was supposed to be the day of rest, of leisure, the Sabbath. Above,
on the aft castle, they had a holiday on the day of the Lord, as they partied aboard the French corsairs of the seventeenth
century, piously and copiously. The wines of the archipelago too frequently played nasty tricks on foreign sailors. In the
seventeenth century the European traders, English, Dutch and French, established in Smyrna, had habituated the naval
captains to wise precautions:

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 “The merchants, “relates the Chevalier d’Arvieux, “sometimes go to entertain themselves aboard the vessels which are in the
harbor… They come there in the early morning and return very late. Very frequently the guests have need to be hoisted into their
boats, for fear that their feet will fail them in descending the ladder. This precaution is wise and necessary, after the sort of long
festivities where they have drunk a lot and, as usual, too much… When the entertainments are conducted ashore with the merchants,
and especially with the English, one could not possibly exceed the magnificence of the festivities nor the quantity of wine which is
drunk. After they have broken all the glasses and bottles, they take to the mirrors and the furniture. They break and destroy
everything in honor of those to whom they drink and they sometimes extend the debauch so long that, nothing more being found to
break, they light a bonfire and throw in their hats, wigs and clothes, down to the underwear, after which the gentlemen are obliged to
remain in bed until someone brings them more clothes.”

Our Phoenician corsair had filled its hold with provisions before leaving Syria. The captain, gallant man, treated that
tall and attractive countrywoman well, who, for her part, appearing neither greedy nor cruel, payed, in her manner, “in
bed and in love,” ευνη και φιλότητι… The aft castle was not edged with planking except where it bordered the sea.
Nothing served as a guardrail on the side facing the hold. The poor girl having bad balance, and some force of the roll
aiding, the accident happened without Artemis putting a hand in. In the squadron of the Duke of Edinburgh, which I have
known in the Levantine seas, similar falls from the poop deck were frequent enough on Sunday evenings.
Thus the hold does not appear to be decked. The vessels are not covered at all, but equipped as corsairs of the old
fashion, of which Thucydides speaks - ουδ’ αυ τα πλοια κατάφρακτα, αλλα τω παλαιφ τρόπω ληστικώτερον
παρεσκευασμένα. The Greeks did not know completely covered vessels until later. It was the Thasians, said Pliny, who
first would construct fully covered longships, naves tectas longas Thasii invenerunt. Pliny adds that apparently they
fought only from the prow and the poop, anta ex prora tantum et puppi pugnabatur. We say: from the fo’c’sle or fore
castle and from the poop deck or aft castle. It is in just this way that things happen in the Iliad and the Odyssey, επι
πρυμηνσι μάχωνται. Ulysses, perceiving Skylla, puts on his arms, takes two javelins, and stations himself on the foc’s’le:

αυταρ εγω καταδυς κλυτα τεύχεα και δύο δουρε

μάκρ’ εν χερσιν ‘ελων εις ίκρια ηνος έβαινον
πρώρης…

The vessels of Ulysses resemble the bronze ship found in the cave of Ida, beside the shields and other “products of
Phoenician industry.” They resemble even more, as Helbig has already remarked, the vessels of the people of the north,
represented on the Egyptian monuments. The prow and the poop, equally high, are both equipped with a straight horn,
ορθόκραιρος: the Sicilan boats, in the strait of Messina, still keep the straight horn fore and aft today, which allow the
attachment of ropes to haul the boat on the beach or set it afloat… The prow and the poop have on the outside a
symmetric double curvature - ηνυς κορωνίς, αμφιέλισσα - and on the inside two platforms, ίκρια, surrounded by planking.
The soldiers, standing on the platforms, επ’ ικριόφιν, stand completely above the chests of their companions standing in
the hold, εν ηνι γλαφυρη. Covered up to the thighs by the boarding, the soldiers can easily protect their upper bodies with
their breastplates or their shields.

“The Phoenician ships,” says G. Maspero, “were narrow and long and emerged from the water at the two ends. The prow and the
poop carried a platform, bordered by wooden railings of the fo’c’sle. The hull measured twenty to twenty-two meters: but it appears
not to have had a draft of more than a meter and fifty centimeters at the deepest. It had no cabin at all, but had arms, provisions and a
change of rigging. The side was about fifty centimeters high. The rowing benches bordered it and left a space in the center free for
holding the bundles of merchandise, the soldiers, slaves and extra passengers. The crew contained thirty rowers, four topmen, a pilot,
a captain, and a crew chief. In battle, when the rowers found themselves exposed to projectiles, they raised the side with an
extension. The soldiers distributed themselves between the fo’c’sle... and the poop, where they tried, in awaiting the attack, to kill
the enemy by arrow hits.

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 The description by G. Maspero deserves a minute attention: “No monument,” the author adds, “teaches us in a direct
fashion what the vessels of the Phoenicians were. But we know the structure of the galleys of the Pharaohs of the
Eighteenth Dynasty. We hardly risk fooling ourselves if we imagine the Phoenician ships to differ from the Egyptian in
only small details of shape and rigging.” This reasoning is all the more legitimized by the fact that in reality we have a
monument to verify it. The votive barque of Ida, which the archeologists recognize as a Phoenician work, is the exact
reproduction of the Egyptian votive barque of the times of Ahmosis: the same elongated hull ending in two horns, which
rise from the water; the same double row of rowers seated in the hollow of the vessel, while at front and rear are placed
two small platforms. The barques are the exact reproductions of the large vessels in miniature. If the barques, Phoenician
or Egyptian, resemble each other, it is because the vessels also did.
There was a time when all the navies of the Levantine Mediterranean built on this model. The Egyptian monuments
permit the establishment of the complete resemblance among all the navies of the People of the Sea, Shardanes, Danaans,
Achaeans, etc., and the sailing vessels of the Eighteenth Dynasty. G. Maspero, in his Ancient History, insists on the
resemblances with reason. The barbarian galleys, like the fast ships of Deir-el-Bahari, had elongated shapes, with shallow
hulls.

The lines of the front and back rose straight up in the shape of a swan- or goose-neck. Two castles dominated the hull and a
parapet ran above the plate of the side, protecting the bodies of the rowers. Only the mast was equipped with a curved spar and ended
with a top where a lookout perched during the battle. The top spar was not brought along. But the topmen maneuvered the sail in the
same manner as the Egyptians. The analogies between the fleet and that of Ramses are explained without difficulty. The Aegeans, by
examining the Phoenician galleys, which passed through their waters every year, were instructed in the art of naval construction.
They had copied the lines, imitated the rigging and adopted the maneuvers of sailing or combat.

In sum, it is to the Egyptian ships of the eighteenth dynasty that we should turn to if we want to know the Homeric
vessels. Hold before your eyes the fast ships which Queen Haitshopitou sends to the echelles of the land of the Encens,
and you understand in the smallest details the Homeric descriptions and maneuvers. The memoirs of G. Maspero, On
Some Navigations of the Egyptians, and the illustrations which accompany it would be the best commentary on the
Odyssey. We have already seen the resemblances of shape and form, the same arrangement of the benches in a shallow
hold and the same castles at the two extremities. There is also the same rigging. The mast is unique. Judging by the height
of the men, the mast of the Egyptian boats can be eight meters high. The Odyssian poet tells us that the club of the
Cyclops was the height of an olive tree, like the mast of a twenty-oar ship. The commentators remark with justice that the
olive, compared with the oak, fir, plane tree or cypress, is a low tree, squat, without tallness. The Homeric mast thus does
not have great height. It should not exceed the eight meters of the Egyptian mast. – “The Egyptian mast,” continues G.
Maspero, “was set perpendicularly in the center of of the hull; lacings of cord secured it.” This is also the the arrangement
of the Homeric mast. To mast the boat, they raise the mast of fir; they set the foot in a hole which is in the middle of the
gangway, μεσόδμη, then in a square of wood placed at bottom of the hull, on the keel or keelson, and which is called the
foot of the mast, ‘ιστοπέδον,

‘ιστόν δ’ ειστάτινου κοίλης έντοσθε μεσόδμης

στήσαν αείραντες κατα προντόνοισιν έδησαν.

In the Egyptian vessels and in the Homeric vessels, the mast does not have shrouds . At its foot or at the top of the
mesodme, it is tied to the hull or the gangway with leather cords; but it is especially at the top that it is secured: a double
system of ropes, stays and false stays, πρότονοι, go to be attached to the prow and the poop. When the mast is raised, they
tighten the stays and false stays, and they “secure them below.” To demast, the inverse maneuver. They loosen the stays,
remove the mast from the foot and from the hole, and lay the mast on the gangway or on the two forks intended to receive
it, ‘ιστοδόκη.

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 ‘ιστου δ’ ‘ιστοδόκη πέλασαν προτόνοισιν ‘υφέντρς.

“On the Egyptian vessels,” says G. Maspero, “the mast a pible (lit “of poplar”, that is to say, of a single piece) does
not have shrouds taking their point of attachement on the sides of the ship, but has stays, two in front, one to the rear. The
upper end of the fore false stay is passed around the head of the mast, and the lower end is attached to the ram (or the
forward “horn”). The fore and aft stays leave the mast and go to be secured symmetrically to the belays of the prow and
the poop.” Similarly, on our Odyssian vessels, the mast is held up only by the stays and false stays. When a gust snaps the
two stays, the mast suddenly falls on the aft castle:

‘ιστου δε προτονους ερρηξ’ ανέμοιο θύελλα

αμφοτέρους ‘ιστος δ’ οπίσω πέσεν…

If it were a matter of two sets of shrouds, attached to the sides of the vessel, their parting would guide the fall of the
mast to one of the sides, and not to the rear. The attachment of the mast makes it so that they can hardly navigate except
with a wind from behind. If the wind takes the sail from the side, nothing adequately secures the mast, which then risks
falling or being whipped into breaking. On the other hand, being well-secured fore and aft, the mast can support the sail
which the following wind fills and pushes violently toward the prow.
The Homeric mast carries, like the Egyptian mast, a sail and spars, weapons ‘οπλα. The word, hopla, designates most
especially the sails and the yards, which fall with the mast. Like the Egyptian vessels, the Homeric ship has one sail,
‘ιστιον, supported by two yards, ‘ιστοι: they spread it to the wind in setting the mast and raising the yard,

‘ιστόν δε στήσας ανα θ’ ‘ιστία λευκα πέτασσας.

The sail is raised by leather ropes, which are passed through a pulley at the top of the mast, the ends of which they pass
around some pegs [belaying pins] fixed along the side.

Sailors of such inclinations would hardly be capable of sailing the high seas. Other than crossing the gulf of Arabia, I
do not think the Egyptian captains were ever so bold as to lose sight of the coast. They went along the coast during the
daytime hours and stopped each evening to set out again the following morning. The arrangement of the spars and the
form of the sails show that the spars were never able to make an angle greater than 15 or 20 degrees with the axis.
Consequently, the ships would not have been able to advance easily into the wind. They would not have traveled by sail
without a wind from, or nearly from, astern.

When we calculate seven knots for the Homeric navigations, it would thus be a great maximum; “The Greek sailors at
the beginning of our era,” adds Maspero, “evaluated one day’s sailing at an average of five hundred stades; I do not think
that the Egyptian sailors ever achieved a comparable speed.” The Homeric vessels and the Egyptian vessels resembled
each other still further by the arrangement of the hull and in the stowing of the cargo: they had neither a covered deck nor
a deep hold. “It does not appear that the hold had more than a meter and a half of depth at the greatest; furthermore, it
became more shallow toward the two ends. It held the ballast, the merchandise and the provisions.” The monuments of
Deir-el-Bahari show the arrangement well. The cargo is arranged between the benches or under the benches of the rowers.
It rises above the gangway, which it encumbers. We note the cargo which the paintings show and which the inscriptions
describe. Leaving the Red Sea across from the echelles of the Encens, the flotilla of five vessels went as far as the land of
Somalia. It entered a river. It reefed its sails and dropped anchor in the middle of the stream. It set some planks to the
shore to communicate with the natives. It anchored in front of a village, the huts of which, surrounding the pilots and
perched over them - over the ikria said Herodotus - are scattered among the sycamores and palms. “The royal messenger
debarks under the escort of eight soldiers and one officer. In order to prove their peaceful intentions, he spreads out a

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table of various gifts, five bracelets, two gold necklaces, a poignard equipped with a sheath and belt, a battle axe, eleven
strings of glass beads: ‘How have you come to this land unknown to men?’ asked the natives, ‘have you come down by
the roads of the sky or have you really traveled by water on the sea of Tonutir?’ The first compliments having been
exchanged, they begin the serious business. The Egyptians erect a tent under which they will gather their cheap goods
and, to spare their hosts from too lively a temptation, they station a line of troops all around. The procedures of the market
are set out at a banquet where they introduce the barbarians to the delicacies of Egyptian cuisine. Then they make the
trades. We observe the loading of the cargo. Over several days there is a line of people and asses bent under their
burdens.” The paintings of Deir-el-Bahari show the line. The porters, or pairs of porters, circulate over the planks to the
shore. They come to deposit their loads in the hold of the vessel, in the place where the superintendant, standing on the
fo’c’sle, shows them. The hold of the vessel is filled. “In it there was all that the Egyptians would buy, elephant tusks,
gold, ebony, cassia, myrrh, baboons and green monkeys, rabbits, leopard skins, strongly built bulls, slaves, and even
thirty-one incense trees, uprooted with their earth ball and transplanted in pots.” The products fill the hold and pile up
above the sides to the level of the lower yard. The incense trees are aligned along the gangway between the benches of the
rowers. The packets form a mass on which the monkeys gambol. There, translated before our eyes, is our Odyssian verse:
“the hollow vessel was full of goods.”

αλλ’ ‘ότε κεν δη νηυς πλείν βιοτοι γένηται…

“The packing was long and arduous. When there was no more room, the boats, as fully loaded as possible without
impeding their maneuvering, took to sea.” The Egyptian fleet of queen Haitshopitu gives us a completely accurate idea of
what the Homeric fleets also were like. A. Jal had reason to conclude his study of Egyptian navies by saying that, “our
fine-galley of the eighteenth century is a faithful enough tradition of the Egyptian galley of the fifteenth century B.C.”
Between the Egyptian galley and our fine-galley, the Odyssian cruiser, the naus-thoe, νηυς θόη, is the intermediate link,
and the same name of naus-thoe, fast-galley, is the prototype of the name fine-galley (galere-subtil), currently employed
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is from the Egyptian monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties
that a representation of the Odyssian navy should be sought. We carefully note the date. It is important. For the later
monuments of Phonecia and Assyria give knowledge of another type of vessel:

They are no longer galleys of the Egyptian type, recurved at both ends, undecked, weak against the attack of waves or wind. The
new vessels have a long hull, low, narrow and well-balanced. The poop is still raised, and overhangs the pilot. But the prow is
straight, equipped with a sharp ram which is fixed to the keel, which serves quite well to cut the lath and break open the side
of the enemy ships. Two rows of rowers are superimposed. One row supports its oars on the flat edge. The other handles its
through ports cut through the sides of the ship. A false deck, supported on solid posts, runs from front to rear and forms, above the
rowing crew, a level space reserved for soldiers and the rest of the crew.

Here we are very far from our Homeric vessels. The castles of rear and fore have disappeared: no ikria! A deck
replaces them, running from one end of the vessel to the other. It is no longer the hollow ship of the Odyssey, ναυς
γλαφυρή. It is, nevertheless, a type of ship which the Hellenes have known; it is the decked vessel, πλοιον κατάφρακτον,
which superceeds, says Thucydides, the ancient fast ships; it is the covered longship, navis tecta longa, the invention of
which the ancients attribute to the people of Thasos. The invention is not inexplicable. Thasos, says Herodotus, was a
Phoenician colony. It is the Phoenicians who introduced the new ship to Thasos. Vessels of this type figure in the fleets of
Sennacherib. The inscriptions of the king affirm that they were constructed by Syrian carpenters and that they had been
crewed by Tyrian, Sidonian and Ionian sailors. Thucydides thus had reason: the weaponed decked ships are more recent;
the Homeric cruisers were of a more ancient type, resembling more closely the ships of the People of the Sea, τω παλαιω
τρόπω ληστκώτερον παρεσκευασμένα.
The Homeric cruisers are in the Egyptian style. The fast galley, the cruiser galley with the double castle at front and
rear, is but the logical development of the more ancient ships employed on the Nile. From the sixth dynasty, the tombs of

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Saqqarah already show us the ships of the type which still have only a single castle at the rear, where the pilot is seated:
“The hull,” says G. Maspero, “built on a round, narrow keel, narrows at the two ends, is low in front, very high at the rear
and bears a long covered platform; the man standing on the prow is the fore pilot, who sounds the river and indicates the
direction to the rear pilot who maneuvers the steering oars.” In the open sea, the fore pilot no longer sounds every minute:
he is no longer obliged to be always thinking of the water, of the depth. He becomes, to the contrary, a lookout who will
need to watch the fleets and rocks in the distance: he will need to tower above the sea; they thus construct a platform for
him, just like the platform of the aft pilot: the Homeric galley with two castles will be created. The classical trireme, the
decked galley without ikria, appears to me derived from another model. We know it poorly in its details. But, in the
whole, with its low prow and high poop, with its two levels and its double or triple rows of oars, it appears derived from
the boats of the Euphrates which also, upon their entry to the sea, experienced some modifications.
The most ancient type, I believe, is the ship round in shape with a deep bottom, with the two ends rounded and raised
into horns, which still figure in the fleet of Sennacherib. The more recent type is furnished to us by the other ships of that
fleet. The progress has consisted of transforming the cargo ship into the ship of cruising and of war, by lowering and
sharpening the front horn, which has become a beak for fending the waves or for broaching enemy ships. But, ancient or
recent, the boats of the Euphrates have as a characteristic, like the trireme of the Hellenes, their division into two levels by
a continuous deck, with soldiers or passengers stationed on the deck, on the upper level, and the rowers in multiple rows
below the deck, in the lower hold. The castles have disappeared. The entire deck can be covered with soldiers: they no
longer “fight only from the prow and the poop.” The texts of Thucydides and Pliny become, perfectly clear from the
various pictures.

It is now easy for us to imagine the Homeric navigations in similar boats. Seated or lying on the aft castle, during the
passages of day or night, the chiefs and the passengers of note cannot complain. They are not too cramped. They are
where it is dry. The edge of the castle shields them with planking. The spray of the oars does not reach them. A stretched
tarp can cover them from the sun or rain. Some rugs, sheepskins and “fine blankets” make a soft bed or seat for them on
the floor: it is a divan where one ascends only barefooted; Telemachus, to situate himself there, has taken off his shoes,
which he put back on as soon as he descended and debarked. If the wind blows too cold or the rain falls too heavily, they
have their thick felt coats, their fur overcoats, under which they huddle. If the weather is fine, they watch the ship glide
over the surface of the sea; they listen to the waves murmer, passing along the side: they bring out the wine, which they
mix in a bowl, and they pass the hours in conversation,

στήσαντο κρητηρας επιστεφέας οίνοιο.

But in the hold of the vessel, the crew are much less in comfort. They are seated on the benches. They are protected
neither from the rain from above nor from the mist and splashes from the oars which come from the sides. In spite of the
rowers’ clothes, the drops and splashes of water rain on the back of those nearby when rowing against the wind.
Supposing that below the ikria, under the two castles, there might be a space better covered and almost enclosed (I do not
believe in this hypothesis), it was not a great thing. “The cupboards protecteded under the two castles might be able, if
need be, to shelter a few men on condition that they stay lying down, or at least squatting. They were the only covered
lodgings which the vessel contained, if the crew even used them as lodgings, and not as holds, for arms and provisions.
Thus for the daytime navigations. At night, the crew lacks space to straighten their limbs and stretch out. They can only
sleep sitting, even when they don’t row, when a good wind takes the load of pushing the ship. Damp, soaked, exhausted,
in times of bad weather, the men are at their limit. Thus, what a delight when they arrive at land to lie out at full length
and rest for hours or nights, stretched out on the beach, wrapped in their coats “to digest the fatigue and the pain!” For
two days and two nights after debarking, Ulysses and his companions stretched out on the beach of Circe:

ένθα τότ’ εκβάντες δθο τ’ ήματα και δύο νύκτας

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 κείμεθ’ ‘ομου καμάτω τε και άλγεσι θυμόν εέδοντες.

The third day, Ulysses set himself in search of fresh nourishment and left for the hunt. But his men still did not want to
listen to anything. They stayed under their coats, wallowing in the sand. They were still hungry. Aboard, they had not
much space or time to cook: when they are not nourished for several meals, except by wine and gruel, they feel a great
hunger for meat and fresh food. The companions of Ulysses and the hero himself threw themselves on the cheese and
milk of Cyclops with voracity. On the isle of Circe, a huge deer lasted them just one day. So each evening, when they can,
they put in to the coast to eat and sleep on the beach. Menelaus and his companions did the same on the isle of Pharos:

δόρπον θ’ ‘οπλισάμεθ’, επί τ’ ήσυθεν αμβροσίη νύξ,

δη τότε κοιμήθημεν επι ‘ρηγμινι θαλάσσης.

At the least, they never pass the evening in sight of a coast without debarking there for the night. When Ulysses wishes
to sail around the isle of the Sun, Euryloque undertook to communicate the general malcontentment:

You are a terrible man, Ulysses. You are always full of fire. You do not feel tiredness in your joints, and your bones are
undoubtedly made of iron, you who do not wish to let your crew, dead of fatigue and drowsiness, debark on this isle where we could
prepare a good supper. And you wish that we should wander the night on the misty high sea, while during the night gusts of wind
always arise… We obey the dark night. Let us go to sup and pass the night beside the black ship; tomorrow, at dawn, we will rebark
and set the ship afloat.

The Greek bravura has never accustomed itself to the dangers of the night: in the terrible war of five years, which the
Lydians maintained against the Medes, there were, says Herodotus, a number of battles; there was even one nocturnal
combat, εν δε και νυκτομαχίην εποιήσαντο…
Ulysses is obliged to accede. They debark near the spring, άγχ ‘υδατος γλυκεροιο. They sup. They sleep. But the next
day, here is the storm, with its “grains” of heavy rain. They retreat there into a cave. For the foreign sailors, in effect, the
coastal cave is a shelter all prepared, a shelter from the elements, a refuge and a hiding place from the natives. They can
pull the ship out there and, noöne aboard being on duty or on guard, the entire crew rests. It is this which Ulysses and his
companions did during the storm, on the isle of the Sun:

Ηνα μεν ‘ωρμίσαμεν κοιλον σπέος εισερύσαντες.

If the cave is not large enough to receive the vessel, they can at least transport the merchandise and the rigging and
keep them dry, in leaving the ship to the rain. It is this again which the people of Ulysses do, on the advice of Circe:

Κτήματα δ’ εν σπήεσσι πελάσσατε ‘όπλα τε πάντα.

Without being seen by the natives, they can light a fire there to dry themselves from the gust or prepare the food: the
first thing Hermes sees in the cavern of Calypso is the great fire of cedar and resinous wood, crackling, flaming and
feeling good. If they wish to stay on land, explore the forests and the mineral deposits of the coast or climb to the interior
for trade with the natives, the cave again is a storehouse, a hiding place where they bury the greater part of the cargo, the
precious objects, the gold, the bronze, the embroideries and the cottons that they do not take with them. This is what
Ulysses did, debarked by the Pheacians on the coast of Ithaca: he did not wish to risk his valuable gifts on the possibly
dangerous roads, in the palace invaded by the suitors. The wise Athena had given him this council: a good cave and some
large stones rolled into the entrance are worth more, for the treasures, than the voyages to unknown lands,

αλλα χρήματα μεν μυχω άντρου θεσπεσίοιο

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 θείομεν αυτίκα νυν, ‘ίνα περ τάδε τοι σόα μίμνη.

Eventually, each of the honest traders being replaced by a pirate, the cave is a precious ambuscade, perhaps when it is
near fountains where women and flocks come down every day, perhaps when it surveys, from the bottom of its shadow,
the straits where ships pass, and the harbor where foreign traffic rests… to all the human reasons should still be added the
mysterious and divine reasons, of cult, of magic, and of oracle. The nymphs and the gods love the subterranean secret and
darkness. The Nymphs especially, Circe, Calypso and the others, live in the caverns, εν σπεεσσι γλφυροισι. Near Cape
Malea, the ancients gave the name of Nymphaion to the harbor which Pausanias describes to us: “Below the cape is the
Port of Nymphs, with a cavern near the sea, where a fountain of sweet water wells up. There are some habitations all
around.” On the coast of Ithaca, it is in a cavern of Nymphs that Ulysses hides his treasures.

τουτο δέ τοι σπέος εστι κατηρεφές ενθα συ πολλας

έρδεσκες νύμφησι τεληέσσας ‘εκατομβας.

On the isle of the Sun, a cavern of the Nymphs received Ulysses and his companions. Speio, the Cavernous, is one of
the Nereids. Among the denuded and overheated rocks, Nymphs and Nereids could find fresh and constant water only
under the vault of the caverns. The Odyssey particularly praises the sheltered springs under a cave, κρήνη ‘υπο σπείους.
The cavern thus becomes the necessary compliment to a good source of water.
We understand sufficiently, I think, why the Ports of the Cavern should be known and frequented by all. It is this way
up until recent times. The coastal grottos of Malta are celebrated by all the navies, ancient and modern. The shipwreck
and alleged sojourn of St. Paul in one of the grottos attracts the pilgrimages of the faithful there and the miracles of the
divinity. Dapper, in his Description of the archipelago, does not fail to point out, “on the southern coast of Calymno, two
ports near which one sees a large cavern from where wells a large and beautiful fountain which furnishes water
copiously.” The Hollander, Dapper does nothing but copy here, almost word for word, that of which the Venetian or
Greek pilots had in the past apprised Buondelmonte: “On the isle of Calymno, there are two ports, in the vicinity of which
is a spacious cavern, where there gushes an abundant spring which never fails.” Our Nautical Instructions say further:
“Though the isle of Grambousa may well be nothing but a bare rock, one can find there a source of good water. It is
therefore frequented by the small coastal ships. There is on that isle a natural cave into which the boats can pass.” And
further: “On several points of the coast, one finds large caves, in which the water is deep… Another situated near a very
low entrance and is so vast in the interior that, in ancient times, the fishermen went there to seek shelter from the
barbarian corsairs.” As always, the travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries furnish us the best commentaries
for comparison. The navigation of Chandler in the gulf of Megara resembles, barely embellished, a page of the Odyssey.
Chandler left Piraeus on local boats. He cruised from Salamine to Eleusis at lengh, then to Megara. In spite of menacing
weather, he traveled the length of the isthmus. But, from the Skironian rocks there suddenly fell a squall accompanied by
rain. They retreated to a creek and searched for a shelter:

We left our boats in the creek and climbed to a vaulted grotto in the rock. It was totally black from smoke; it was the result of
fires which had been lit, perhaps by travelers staying there, perhaps by sailors and fishermen who, like us, had sought there an
asylum for not exposing themselves at all at night along such a dangerous coast or for awaiting favorable weather. The view from the
place is very extensive. Our eyes traveled with pleasure both over the sounding gulf placed below us and over the isles which
enclosed it. We built a fire and rested in the grotto until the next morning. The calm weather then returned, and we reëmbarked…
But a fresh wind arose and wearied us much by increasing; in addition, it was accompanied by rain. We were very easily able to
reach the coast, although it offered us neither an hospitable grotto nor a shelter from the bad weather. We situated ourselves above
some rocks which protected us from the wind. We stretched our sails over some poles in the form of a tent over our boats and stayed
there all night, anchored, ill at ease, thrown about by the waves, discomforted by the smoke of our fires, especially while we cooked
our fish. The following day, the breeze abated a bit and we took advantage of it by setting sail. Then, leaving our boats, we climbed
to the town of Egine, where we rested two days, the wind continuing to be strong and adverse.

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 Listen to another traveler:

We embarked (from Samos) for Nicaria February 6. But the southwest wind made us resort to Port Seitan. They had reason to
give the port the name of Seitan, which in the Turkish language means the devil. It happened that our caïque was thrown aground
and during the night another was lost which was loaded with wine. The north wind kept us in Seitan until February 12. We lodged
there in a cavern where day and night we burned nothing but laurels, wild strawberry tree, and storax, and we passed the time there
quite agreeably. Our sack of biscuit diminished greatly and the weather did not permit either hunting or fishing. We barely were able
to collect a few sea urchins and shellfish, and, what was worse, we drank all of the water which the the nearby rocks could furnish,
which we collected in drops with crustacian shells tilted to guide it together into the leathern bottles which were in usage in the
country. We saw an ancient well dug by the side of the sea, but found the water there half-salty. Finally the weather became good
enough during the night of the 12th to 13th and we took advantage of it to go to Patmos.

*
* *

III. Islands. – The primitive navy searches the islands. But it does not value them, as we do, for their size, their fertility
or their wealth. That which makes the renown of an isle among the coastal sailors is primarily its smallness and its
nearness to the mainland or a large island. The establishments of the Phoenicians, on the perimeter of Sicily, are of islets
attached to the coast, sometimes of bare rocks, as we view them, of parasitic isles, as Thucydides says, νησιδια
επικειμενα. It is not difficult to perceive the reasons for that preference.
The coves, the bays and the estuaries, where today we place our ports, hold no attraction for the navigators who use the
wind and the oar. Under the shelter of land, the wind falls or is blocked. The entry or exit of gulfs necessitates a rude
labor with oars. Ulysses, charged with returning Chryseis to her father, arrives before the port of Chryse. The port is
deeply sunk among the lands. It is necessary to demast, then row the ship with oars to the point of debarkation:

ο‘ι δ’ ‘ότε δη λιμένος πολυβενθέος εντος ‘ίκοντο,

‘ιστία μεν στείλαντο, θέσαν δ’ εν νηι μελαίνη
… την δ’ εις ‘όρμον προέρυσσαν ερετμοις.

If the wind is not blocked at the entrance of the bay, if one can enter by sail, still one is never sure of the breeze which
one may find in its depth. Ordinarily, in deep bays, the sea breeze and land breeze oppose one another. Also, frequently,
the gulf making a turn, the winds from the west or north are needed for the entry and the winds from the south or east for
the depth:

At qui dehiscit inde prolixe sinus

non totus uno facile navigabilis
vento recidit; namque medium accesseris
Zephyro vehente : reliqua deposcunt Notum.

The primitive great ports thus are never located far from the high sea. Let us study the first Ionian establishments on
the Asiatic coast. At the depth of its admirable bay, Smyrna, for our traffic, is the best port of the entire archipelago and
similarly of the entire Levant. But Smyrna does not attract the first sailors of Ionia. Up until Alexandrian times, it
remained a poor burg without importance. It is because the navigation of its gulf is subject to long delays, which is
pointed out to us by all the modern travelers. Chandler leaves Smyrna:

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 We weighed anchor toward the middle of the night… the imbat took us during the morning, and we sought shelter in a small
creek near the mouth of the gulf… A Venetian vessel had done nothing but anchor in this creek, although it had left Smyrna several
days before us. The next morning, at the approach of day, the breeze from the land blew anew and we sailed between Lesbos and
Chios… (Choiseul-Gouffier made the same voyage; “We pretended to take sail the 13 th of June, and after fighting the winds for three
days, we anchored in the port of Chios.”)

It is at Erythre, Clazomenes, Phoce, on the promontories in front of the Smyrnian bay, that the primitive commerce
installs its emporia. Similarly following the fortunes of Smyrna, up until our times, it is in the ports of Erythre, Tchesme
or of Sighadjic, completely ouside the bay, on the open sea or on the strait of Chios, that most of the embarkations and
debarkations are made. Following the long promontory, which closes the bay to the south, we have studied the routes of
the caravans to the open sea. For the French boats of the archipelago, one can say that Tchesme is still the veritable
echelle of Smyrna, somewhat like le Havre of the Asiatic Rouen.
In miniature, it is exactly the picture which Ithaca and its port offer us. The high town is at the depth of a small bay,
λιμην. At its feet, a beach of embarkment and debarkment, ‘ορμος, receives the boats on dry land. But they do not travel
to the beach before deballasting or even unloading entirely at the first promontory, at the mouth of the port. By land, on
the backs of men or beasts, they bring the cargo from the promontory of the outlet to the town, while the rowers more
easily row the boat to the anchorage. When they are to regain the sea, the rowers again row the empty boat to the
promontory, επ’ εσχατιν λιμενος, without the cargo, with only the rigging. By land, the men or the beasts carry the
merchandise and the provisions together.

και τότε ηνα θοην ‘άλαδ’ είρυσε πάντα δ’ εν αυτή

‘όπλα ετίθει, τά τε ηνες εύσσελμοι θορέουσιν,
Στησε δ’ επ’ εσχατιν λιμ’ενος.

To only take account of the commodities for the voyage, it is thus more practical, when they can, to install the town
and its stores on some promontory: there, regaining the sea by the slightest favorable breeze, ανεμον τηρησασι
εκπελευσαι; they board and depart without losing time waiting for the wind, without tiring the crew with a long row: it is
not from port to port but from promontory to promontory that the antique navigation measures its distance; at the
extremity of Taygete, the Matapan is, in the evaluation of Strabo, the point from where the routes to Sicily, Cyrene and
Asia leave. But it is for still other reasons that a very extended promontory or, better, a small isle entirely sparated from
the coast, are the sites of choice for the sailors. Their commerce is always armed, always in fear of pirates and ambushes.
We listen to the wise councils of Dapper on the navigation of the isles of the archipelago:

There is a gulf where the vessels can be in the shelter from all sorts of winds, attached to a coast with a line to the beach and
another to the anchor. But since the wind from the east is the one crossing the port, and one leaves there with some
difficulty when it blows, it would be imprudent to anchor there, unless one wished to be attacked by the galleys of the
Turks. This is why it is safer to go anchor near some small isles situated a little outside the port, on the north coast, even
though one must anchor in forty fathoms of water and it might be a harbor completely bare and uncovered, where the
winds of north and south blow from the open sea and directly from both sides.

In the times of the Odyssey, it is not only the Turks which one should fear. On the unknown coasts, among savage
peoples, perhaps cannibals, to venture to the depth of a harbor is to risk not only prison, but also the spit and the
rotisserie:

We enter into an admirable port, circled all about with a continuous and steep cliff. At the entrance, two peaked promontories face
each other, and the throat is narrow. My entire fleet of doubly curved vessels makes entrance there and , in the interior of that hollow
bay, the vessels attach themselves to each other in clusters: no swells, no wind, strong or weak, flat calm throughout. I alone remain

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without, and I attached my line to the rock at the entrance… My crew debarks seeking an easy route to climb to the town… The king
will prepare a cruel death for them: seizing one of my men, he will prepre him for his supper. The others flee. But upon the shouts of
the king, the Lestrygonians pour in from all the corners of the town; from the top of the rocks, they overwhelm our fleet with
enormous rocks; this makes a lamentable crash of killed men and broken vessels; harpooning my men like fish, the Lestrygonians
carry them off for a disgusting feast… Only my vessel was able to escape; for I had cut the mooring when the massacre had
commenced in the interior of the bay.

If one wants an historic commentary to the legend, here is the periple of Hannon: “After a day of navigation, we
reached the entrance of a sort of inland lake; large mountains dominated it, full of savages who, clothed in animal skins,
set themselves to throwing stones at us and trying to impede our leaving, ο‘ι πέτραις βάλλοντες απήραξαν ‘ημας,
κωλύοντες εκβηναι.”
In the seventeenth century, some analogous misadventures can occur in the open Mediterranean. There is a port which
all the occidental sailors have known and frequented to the south of the Matapan. It is the port of Cailles, where Turks,
Greeks, French and Italians, driven by the storm, go to await a favorable wind to enter the archipelago. But the nearness
of Mainote brigands renders the harbor dangerous.

It became impossible for us to round Cape Saint-Ange. The wind increases: it is from the east-northeast; it rises and becomes
furious. “Come about and turn back,” says the captain, “to anchor at Port Caglia below Cape Matapan.” It was then eight in the
evening. Good harbor on the coast of the cape. But to the west of the port there is a rock which puts the vessels in danger. Here we
believed that all who went there had their throats cut by the inhabitants of the place, sailors and bandits. The port is made in the
shape of a horseshoe, half a league wide in the middle, but so narrow at the mouth that three vessels could hardly pass abreast
without damage. The entry is guarded by steep rocks, on which there is a kind of platform on both sides, where ten men could sink a
ship and assassinate the crew with rocks alone. It was in this veritable cutthroat that the bad weather and adverse wind obliged us to
put in. We had hardly dropped anchor and reefed the sails when we perceived a swarm of more than two thousand of these brave
men, who live in the inaccessible caves around the port… It was necessary to lay a line to shore in order not to drift. At daybreak we
see our vessel floating to drift onto the rocks. We have to cut the cable. A hail of missiles whistles about our ears. We cannot put to
sea without danger. The wind does not suit taking sail. It is nevertheless necessary to do so or be exposed to being massacred. We set
the sails. But what misfortune we had when we came to the outlet! More than six thousands of these men await us. Our cannon is
useless. We are too low to reach them. Our vessel is not able to manage so narrow a passage. We try a triple volley almost touching
bottom. Finally by dint of maneuvering, we entered the gulf of Calamata. Now we make such play with the cannon against that
channel that for two hours we heard nothing but terrifying cries and screams. It was the 11 th of January (1719) that we left that race
and that we made it to safety after having lost two anchors and our land cable, after having had six sailors and two passengers
wounded.

In spite of the storms and the fierceness of Malea, we understand why the vessels of the seventeenth century did not
frequent the port of Cailles except in cases of extreme danger. The open sea or some foreign harbor offers even fewer
risks. It was this way all around the primitive Mediterranean. Certain statements of the ancients, certain retreats of
primitive commerce can appear irrational at the first encounter, hardly credible. Why, on the Bosphorus, did they
formerly prefer the promontory of Chalcedone to the horn of Byzance? Why were Syriacuse and Carthage not established
in the depths of their peaceful bays? Chandler, whose voyage by boat has already served us, is astonished upon arriving at
Phalere that its open fairground of a bay had always been able to attract the fleets, in preference to the fine enclosed bay of
Piraeus, quite close by. History nevertheless affirms to us that it was there so:

The port of Phalere served Athens up to the times of Themistocles. It is small and of a circular form. The bottom is of a lovely
fine sand which one distinguishes through the clearness of the water… The traveler, accustomed to our deep ports and our large
vessels, doubtless does not fail to be surprised at the sight of the port of Phaleres. But his astonishment soon ends, if he wishes to
realize that the famous ship Argo was carried on the shoulders of the crew; that they hauled them onto dry land on the coast, to serve
as fortifications for the camp of the Greeks before Troy, as they did the vessels which they had brought; and that finally the so
formidable fleet of Xerxes was composed of almost nothing but galleys and boats.

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 The reasons given by Chandler are good. They are not complete. If Piraeus was not a great port until after Themistocles, it is
because at that time only the natives of that coast, the Athenians, became a people of sailors: “apparently,” says a character of
Thucydides, “they had neither the experience nor the desire of things of the sea: it was the Persians who forced them to become
sailors.” After the Persian Wars, the Athenian proprieters of the bay, patrolling it with their police and defending it with their army,
were able to enter, leave, embark and debark at their will. But earlier the traffic was in the hands of foreigners, Megarians,
Corinthians, Chalkidians, Ionians or Eginetes. The fleets from outside did not come to voluntarily set anchor in the depths of that
circular prison, which a stretched chain or two boats abreast could close at the least whim of the Athenians. The open bay of Phalere
did not hold similar surprises: it was long preferred. Let us consider this example well. It is characteristic, among all, of the two
navies and the two methods of navigation…
They would thus wish to never enter into similar nets. Always to keep to the passage of the open sea is the first rule of these
navigations. They prefer the open bays or even completely uncovered beaches to the most sheltered interior ports.

“The Carthaginians know,” says Herodotus, “populations and towns of the Libyans outside the Pillars. They go there; they unload
their merchandises and spread them out above the high tide mark, then they return aboard and make signals of fire and smoke. At the
signal, the natives come down to the beach, examine the displays, place before the merchandise the gold which they offer for it, then
return inland, at a distance from the merchandises. The Carthaginians then return: if the offered price satisfies them, they take it; if
not, they return aboard and await a new visit of the natives who raise their offers up to a reciprocal agreement. They never steal: the
sailors take the gold only in exchange for the merchandises offered; the natives take the merchandise only on acceptance of the gold
by the sailors.

Chardin describes for us, again in the seventeenth century, the same prudent habits of European commerce among the
savages of the Black sea, Mingrelians, Georgians and Cherkessians:

They carry to them all the same things that they carry to Mingrelia. They take from them, in exchange from persons of all ages
and both sexes, honey, wax, leather and pelts. The exchange is made in this way. The boat from the ship goes close to the coast.
Those in it are well-armed. They allow only a certain number of Cherkes to approach the place where the boat is landed only a
similar number of Cherkes. If they see a greater number coming, they retreat to sea. When they have come near, they set out the
items which they have to exchange. They agree on the exchange and make it. Meanwhile they need to be on guard, for the Cherkes
are both unfaithful and treacherous. It is impossible for them to see the opportunity to commit larceny without profiting from it.

In Homeric times, the Phoenicians make the same displays of manufactures in the Greek ports, and three words from
the Iliad on a bowl which the Phoenicians “have displayed in the ports,” στησαν δ’ εν λιμένεσσι, sum up the entire
passage of Herodotus, εξέλωνται τα φορτία θέντες αυτά επεξης παρα την κυματωγήν. For such exchange, an open beach
is necessary. But the anchorage in a fairground bay has no convenience or safety. It is undoubtedly good to watch the
necessities of guard and surveillance. Additionally one should not forget the convenience of debarkment nor the
necessities of the shore.. the exchanges are easier and the protection much more sure on an islet or under a promontory.
The antique peoples, like the recent portulans, always mention the refuges, which our sailors of today term temporary, but
which were the ordinary harbors of the old navigators: “There,” says Skylax, “are the ports where anchorage is safe from
all the winds, εισι δε ουτοι λιμένες πάνορμοι, and here are other refuges below the islets, καταφυγαι ‘υπο νησιδίοις,
temporary refuges on promontories, ‘ύφορμοι και ακταί.” The primitive sailors prefer the refuges for good reasons.
Whether one makes a long sojourn or a short stopover, count the advantages which the islet presents. If one wishes
only to remain an hour to take on water, the island watering place is always safer than the rivers and mainland springs,
especially if the isle is uninhabited, and still better if it is only a rock lost in the sea. The watering places of the mainland
always present some dangers, ambushes by the natives, greed and extortion of money by the authorities, etc. On an
uninhabited rock, one has nothing to fear: completely at ease, without haste and without vigilance, one can refill one’s
jugs or one’s skins; one washes ones linens, one dines around the spring and one is not obliged to sacrifice to the gods. In
antiquity and in our days, certain watering places make the celebrity and wealth of miserable reefs. The sailors of the five

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past centuries frequent, to the south of Zante, the Strophade isles which are nothing but two small islets of rock in the
open sea:

The larger, named Stamphane, has a length of seven cables and fifteen meters of height. The smaller, called Harpy, is lower still.
The two islets are joined by small bays and numerous small rocks, some with vegetation, others bare, extending to the south. The
rocks obstruct the passage which separates the two islets. Nevertheless a ship of shallow draft can pass there in good weather. There
is a passable anchorage on the east coast of the islets. One will make an approach with prudence. One debarks in the cove near a
fortified monastery, in white rock, of twenty-seven meters height and surmounted by a flagpole. The building is the first object
which strikes the open view, and in clear weather it is visible for twelve or thirteen miles. Stamphane is provided with sweet water
from numerous remarkable springs.

The springs make the renown of the Strophades among the French and Italian sailors and, as always, the frequentation
of the navies leads to the erection of a sanctuary. The monastery which the Instructions still point out to us is today
without revenue. Steam navigation and large water tanks have taken away the greater part of its clientel from it. But in the
last centuries, utilizing some good walls to protect from attacks, utilizing also some cannons and some valiant brothers of
Jean of the Entommeures to drive the infidel pirates to sea, the monastery drew a pretty annual beneficefrom its springs
and from its prayers. The sailors did not neglect the last watering place in Christian land a few hours from the Turkish
coast. The corsairs brought the tithes and candles there to obtain divine favor for their fine enterprises or to make amends
for some too unChristian misdeeds. The monks, vendors of water and grace, thus lived in abundance. During the
preHellenic period, a similar spring gained the rock of Delos its maritime clientel and its religious fortune. Would we
imagine the old Ortygia, the Isle of Quail of the archipelago, such as the old sailors knew it before the erection of the
great sanctuary of Apollo? Under another name, here it is described by the French navigators:

“The Lampedouze,” says Thevenot, “is a small isle or rock having a small circuit. It is about one hundred miles distant from
Malta. The isle produces nothing and is uninhabited except by conies (rabbits). Since it has good water, vessels frequently go there to
take on water. The port there is very good. There is a small chapel on the island, where is an image of the virgin which is much
respected both by Christians and by infidels who land there. Each vessel always leaves some gift, of silver, of biscuit, wine, oil,
gunpowder, bullet, sword, musket. Eventually there is there everything which could be necessary, down to the least thing. When
anyone has need of any of the things, he takes it and puts silver or something else in its place. The Turks observe this as well as the
Christians, and leave gifts there. As for the silver, noöne touches it, and the Galleys of Malta pass there all year long and take the
silver on the altar and convey it to Notre-Dame of Trapano in Sicily. They tell me that six Christian vessels, having come there one
time, having supplied themselves with water, when the wind was good, took sail and left the harbor, except one which, although it
raised sail with the others, was not able to leave. This was astonishing. Nevertheless, having patience, it awaited another more
favorable wind, which having come, it was put ready to leave the port. But again it was not able to leave, which appearing to them
very extraordinary, they were advised to make a visit to the vessel, and it was found that one of the soldiers had stolen something
from the place, which having been returned, it took sail and left the port easily.

The primitive Delos had, near its spring, a similar sanctuary where all the peoples of the sea came for the occasion of
leaving their offerings. What was, originally, the God worshipped there? Was it native? Was it foreign? Greek, Carian,
Phoenician or Cretan? We see, by the example of Lampedouze, how easy are the exchanges of Gods among the devotee
sailors. Whatever the Delian Divinity originally was, it rapidly became the object of a universal cult. Some fine miracle, a
vow fulfilled or a shipwreck avoided, rendered the god of the spring celebrated among all the sailors of the Levant…
If one needs to stay at length, if one wishes to found an establishment of refuge, the small isle is even more preferable.
It is easy to explore all the way around, before debarking: one post or only one lookout suffices. It is less exposed to
attacks, and its small size similarly makes a more constant protection from winds and storms. At the least sign predicting
a storm, at the least chance in the breeze, the vessels have only to modify their anchorage a bit and to turn around the isle
in measure as the wind turns: they can always hold themselves in the lee of the isle, that is to say in the shelter. The
coastal islets thus become, for the primitive commerce, wharfs easily guarded, but also of convenient access to the larger

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land, places of commerce, excellent warehouses: “In the interior of a gulf,” Hannon continues, “we find a small isle
having five stades of circuit; we occupy it and name it Kerne.” – “Kerne,” says Skylax, “has become a Phoenician market.
It is there where the Phoenicians come to debark. They leave their cargo boats (Skylax employs the Semitic term gaulos
exactly the way I employ the English term [in French]) there, and they install temselves there in tents. Their vessels
having been unloaded, they transport their merchandise to the facing coast, in canoes; they go to trade with the negroes
who bring them ivory, pelts and wine.”
In all the new lands, of Europe, of Asia and of Africa, at the moment when the Greek and Phoenician civilization
discovered them, the commerce made itself similar warehouses there. Such present establishments of the English or the
Portuguese, on the Asiatic coasts, Diu, Goa, Hong Kong and Macao, still retain the memories of similar necessities. The
Periple of the Red Sea describes to us one of the points of debarkation of the classic age, where the foreign commerce
installs its storehouses far from the native incursions. There is in the Red Sea the isle which the ancients named the Isle of
the Mount, νησος Ορεινή: “In front of the coast rises the Isle of the Mount, which about two hundred stades separate from
the gulf, and which the continent surrounds on all sides. It is there where the ships come to rest in order to avoid the
incursions coming from the land. Formerly, they rested in the gulf itself on the isle of Diodorus, very close to the
mainland. But, able to reach it by land, the barbarians pillaged the isle.” In Homeric times, in the Mediterranean, the
traffic was made thusly. Wishing to give the Pheacians an idea of the barbarity of the Cyclops, Ulysses is full of irony for
the brutes which, at the entry of their bay, have a small admirable isle which they neither inhabit nor cultivate, but
abandon to wild goats:

A little ouside the bay extends a small isle, neither too near nor too far from the land. It is wooded, peopled with innumerable
wild goats, which the human race never diminishes, for noöne hunts them, and neither shepherd nor laborer ever goes there. Deserted
all the year, without work, without cultivation, the islet nourishes only the goats. It is that the Cyclops do not have vessels painted in
red, no builders who, giving them a fleet, would supply all things in the towns of the people and would make of their isle a well-built
town.

The Cyclops are barbarians who did not know how to make “a well-built town” of their little isle, a Tyre, a Milet, a
Syriacuse or a Marseille. Civilized people use them differently. When the Greeks begin to explore the Spanish coasts,
they install their Emporion, Εμπόριον, on an islet, where their town long remained isolated, ώκουν ο‘ι Εμποριται
πρότερον ηνσιον τι προκείμενον, ‘ό νυν καλειται Παλαια πόλις: the same name of Emporion given to the town shows that
we have there the perfect type of the primitive emporium. At the foot of the Adriatic, they do not choose a deep bay in the
vicinity of passes and defiles which today lead all the commerce of the interior toward the great port of Trieste, for their
principal embarkation point. Instead, at the most advanced extremity of the Istria, right at the edge of the high sea, the bay
of Pola attracts them because of the numerous parasitic islets, ‘η δε Πόλα ‘ίδρυσται μεν εν κόλπω λιμενοειδει νησίδια
έχοντι εύορμα και εύκαρπα: “Pola,” adds Strabo, “is a very ancient foundation of the Kolchidians sent in pursuit of the
Medes.”
Across from a strait between two large lands, the advantage of coastal islets, warehouses of a double commerce, is not
only doubled. For the sailing navies, the strait, a difficult passage, is, with certain winds, a long and dangerous passage:

We caught sight of Rhodes; but since the wind ceased to be favorable to us, we were not able to reach the port there for a long
time. Without ever anchoring, we spent time in the channel and only passed from a cape of the mainland which they call Marmaris to
the nearest coasts of the isle which we could reach, and thus we always force ourselves to advance a little, but uselessly, because the
large galleys of Turkey have such extraordinarily large sails, and consequently so difficult to manage, that unless one has the wind
from the poop, it is difficult to make headway…Thus we spent four or five days with all our labor without being able to reach
Rhodes, for we were ultimately able only to go from one side of the channel to the other. After having lost hope of entering there, a
small vessel of ten or twelve oars came to our side to take those who wished to land.

The islets which obstruct a strait thus become almost obligatory retreats. Such a small archipelago is still today
minutely described by our Nautical Instructions because of its location before the coast of Eubea: “The Petali isles and

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islets lie before the coast of Eubea…The coasters take shelter there temporarily…against the winds of the south which
prevail in winter. The ships which wish to repair themselves there can go to the inner harbor. For the sailing ships going
south, the outer harbor is preferable, which permits them to leave the harbor with ease, because the wind shifts suddenly
from south to north.” A page from an English traveler, Walpole, makes us aware of the great utility of the harbor. In full
summer, Walpole takes eight days to go from Sounion to Negrepont:

25 July: leave Sounion at one o’clock in the morning; adverse wind in the channel; after frequent runs along the coast, we set
anchor in Port Mandri. – 26-27: remain in Port Mandri; adverse wind. – 28: The wind forces us to leave Port Mandri and go across
from Makonisi. – 29: Coastings and futile efforts to enter the Attic and Eubean seas; impossible to enter the channel; resort to the
Attic coast at Seraphina or Port Raphti. – 30: The storm continues; we pass the entire day on the small deserted isle of Port Raphti. –
31: At one o’clock in the morning we leave Port Raphti and sail toward Negrepont: but at four o’clock the wind rises and we return
to the channel; it is necessary to anchor below one of the small Petali isles; at three in the afternoon, a new rise in the wind which
chases us from the anchorage; it is necessary to go back to the coast of Attica; at sunset we are before the plain of Marathon. – 1 st of
August: finally a favorable wind; we depart and advance slowly but continually; at ten in the evening we anchor under the walls of
Negrepont.

We note well the difficulties of navigation: the straits almost always oppose the small sailboat. They explain to us the
renown across all the navies of such well-placed isles, of Tenedos before the Dardanelles, of the Isles of the Princes
before the Bosphorus: at midway between the two passages, the rock of Marmara gives its name to the neighboring sea;
all the travelers in the Levant have had to spend time in one of these retreats. The difficulties also explain to us the site of
numerous antique establishments, and the origin of numerous legends, place names or cults, which appear to have come
from the sea. The coastal sailing of Walpole informs us of the ports of call forced upon every sailor exploiting the Euripe.
During the primitive thalassocracies, the ports of call surely divert the Carian, Phoenician or Cretan fleets: also, the cults
and the names of the coasts present a foreign aspect. To take only one example, see what utility the bay of Marathon can
have at the mouth of the strait. Open widely to the southeast, closed to the north and the east by a low coast and a long
promontory, it is covered from the winds of the north or northeast, which prevail in the summer and close the entry of the
Euripe. Our Nautical Instructions commend the harbor only moderately because of the torrents which pour out their
sediments and create banks of sand or mud all around. They prefer the rocky and well-closed Port Raphti. The primitive
sailors should, to the contrary, like better the less closed bay of Marathon and its beaches suited for loading. Some wells
and a spring assure a supply of water: the nearby lagoons were poisonous. A land route ends there which crosses Attica
and comes to the Eubean Sea from from Piraeus or from Athens by the gap which separates the Parnes from Pentelaque.
“Marathon,” says Pausanias, “is at mid-route between Athens and Karystos.” Our Nautical Instructions tell us today that
the voyage from Port Raphti to Athens lasts five hours. Pausanias adds: “The people of Marathon worship Hercules and
claim to have introduced the god among the Hellenes. The spring, Makaria, received the name of a daughter of Hercules.”
The tradition remembered that Marathon had been one of the seven towns of the Calaurian amphictyone. The name of
Marathon appears to us to refer to the Syrian place name, Marathous or Maratha. The spring Makaria, daughter of
Hercules, is it not an old Phoenician watering place, a Spring of Melkart, ‫צינדטלקות‬, In Melkart, resembling the watering
places which we will encounter shortly? I believe that the sailors of Sidon put ashore at this point. Their crews and their
cargos found a shelter among the ridges of the mountain. The grotto of Pan which Pausanias describes to us is somewhat
far away from the coast: “remarkable grotto, σπήλαιον θέας άξιον, with a somewhat large entry, έσοδος μεν εν αυτό
στέην, with rooms which they call the chambers, the baths and the stables of Pan, and with rocks which resemble a herd
of goats.” But there are two other caves in the same flank of the promontory. Marathon, because of all these advantages,
was preferred by the first thalassocracies to the Petali or Stoura isles, which perhaps had offered more security, but which
lacked fresh water.
A primitive thalassocracy implies parallel Marathons at all the straits. To the needs of navigation, one should also add
the profits of the “cruise,” as the people of the seventeenth century say. The straits are the “cruises” of pirates; it is at the
bogas that the corsairs await their prey. The isles across from a strait become very advantageous posts, surveying and

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exploiting the channels, opening them in return for taxes or ransoms. In the Odyssey, the islet of Asteris thus bars the
channel of Kephallenia. It is there that the suitors go to waylay the return of Telemachus:

έστι δέ τις νησος μέσση ‘αλι πετρήεσσα,

μεσσηγύς Ιθάκης τε Σάμοιο τε παιπαλοέσσης,
Άστερις, ου μεγάλη. λιμένες δ’ ένι ναύλοχοι αυτη
αμφίδυμοι. τη τόν γε μένον λοχόωντες Αχαιοι.

They pass their days watching the strait, from the top of the windy capes:

ήματα μέν σκοποι ιζον επ’ ακριας ηνεμοέσσας.

During the night, when the darkness renders the watch useless, they take sail in crossing the channel. Thusly did
pirates and corsairs of all times, and it is one more reason for our old navigators to not risk the night in strange waters.
The travelers of the seventeenth century knew the perils of nocturnal navigation and pointed out the straits occupied by
pirates. The islets of the strait of Samos, the small isle of Cervi in the channel of Cerigo, the archipelago of la Sapienza in
the channel of Modon, the Lampedouze isles between Sicily and Africa, or Capraja between Livorno and Corsica are
equally lookouts for “cruisers,” for Christian, Turkish and barbarian corsairs. Paul Lucas, on the Syrian coasts, knew the
corsairs of the small isle of Tortose:

Although the isle may be small, it does not fail to have a freshwater spring there which would furnish an entire army. It is about
eight years since the corsairs came there to obtain their water and took it in cruising to seize several Turkish buildings. This is why
the Turks have built a fortress there…near a quarry which bears the name of Tortose, because it is opposite the town of that name…
The town is surrounded by walls, particularly toward the sea. When they see some vessels at sea which they think to be corsairs, they
light fires on the towers to warn the inhabitants of the place to come into the port.
“We departed,” recounts Tournefort, “from Scalanova for Samos on the tartane of captain Dubois, who collected a crew of Turks
from the coast of Asia to go to Alexandria: the Turks will go on together from Alexandria to Mecca. The occasion appeared
favorable to us for taking protection from the bandits which occupy the bogas (openings, ambushes: bogazi in Turkish) of Samos.
They call by this name the straits which are at the two points of the isle…The sailing boats pass the coast in bands. All the vessels
which come from Constantinople into Syria and Egypt, resting at Scio, are obliged to pass through one of the straits. It is the same
for those who go from Egypt to Constaninople. For the bogas are the veritable cruises of corsairs, as one says in the Levant, which is
to say, the proper places to watch for boats which pass.

Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the strait of Samos will retain this sad renown…The Carian piracy during
antiquity proliferates in the island channels between Samos and Rhodes, and it is in the channel of Cyprus that the other
classical piracy of the Cilicians took birth: in the Cypriot channel the small isle of Provençale next to the Asian mainland
always retains the memory of our corsairs of the seventeenth century.
An observatory, ####

*
* *

IV. Trees and Navels. – Verdant, the isle has a new appeal. In the seas bordered by rocks, it is frequently difficult to
pull the ship onto dry land and to find, for the camping and sleep of the crew, a shady tree and a bed of sand or grass.
They need a solid beach and verdant groves, “carpets of parsley and violets,” if they want a comfortable encampment.
They need a smooth ground of sand or mud to haul the ship, if they wish to access the hull and repair the damages. But a
“navel” is still missing, a lookout, σκοπιη, from which they can dominate the entire isle, an observatory, περιωπη, from

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which they can inspect the surrounding land, the high sea, the strait and the neighboring coast. For one should always
remain on guard against an aggression and foresee a landing of natives, τάς εκ της γης καταδρομάς, said the Periple of the
Red Sea. They need, in case of alert or attack, to be able to give the signal for the retreat of the dispersed crew, to reunite
and arm everyone near the encampment and the vessels:

“We arrive,” says Ulysses, “in the isle Aiaia. We guide our ship to the coast into a port where the sailors can rest. We debark and
for two days and nights rest stretched on the beach, digesting our fatigue and our grief. But at the dawn of the third day, taking my
lance and my pointed sword, I rapidly climbed an observatory, πριωπην, to see if I would perceive a sign of activity or sound of
human voices. Arriving at the summit of the lookout, σκοπιην ες παιπαλοεσσαν, I stayed standing and there, on the plain with large
roads, a smoke appeared to me.”

The Nautical Instructions again point out to us, across from the Cypriot channel, the islets and the rocky promontory
where “one could easily reach the highest parts of the cliff to dominate the channel and signal the approach of any ship.” I
translate navel, ομφαλός, by highest point, and νήσω αμφιρύτη, ‘λοθι τ’ ομφαλός εστι θαλάσσης, by isle circled by
currents where a navel of the sea is located. Ordinarily one translates navel by central point and one can imagine that, in
the spirit of the poet, the isle of Calypso had the navel, the center of the oceans, as Delphi was later, in the spirit of the
Hellenes, the navel, the center of lands. From where came this conception for Delphi to the Hellenes, and the explanation
of the word navel? We do not have the research here. But conception and explanation are posterior to the Homeric poems.
In the Iliad and the Odyssey, ομφαλος signifies simply a rounded point, a flowerbud. The homeric shields had only a
single ομφαλοσ at their center:

εν δέ ο‘ι ομφαλοι ησαν εείκοσι κασσιτέροιο

λευκοί, εν δε μέσοισιν έην μέλανος κυάνοιο.

there are ten and twenty navels pointing over all the surface and the periphery. Crete had the town of the navel,
Ομφάλιον, in its high plain. Epirus and Thessaly also had towns Omphalion. the scripture similarly speaks to us of
peoples who descend from mountains, navels of the earth.
A high island, like the Νησος Ορεινέ, the Isle of the Mount, of which the Periple of the Red Sea just spoke to us, is
thus preferable... Wooded, the isle is of a more comfortable recognition and landing. The trees can serve as a seamark to
the pilots for entering or leaving. Such as the olive which was located on the coast of Ithaca at the mouth of the port of
Phorkys:

‘ήδε δ’ κρατος λιμένος τανύφυλλος ελαίν.

The wooded isle is further a landscape of hunting and cutting wood. The ship can replace its oars, its sides, its damaged
parts. The crew, in addition to the wood necessary for cooking (and the most recent portulans still mention the isles where
one can obtain water and wood), can find fresh meat there. The hunt is the first concern of the debarked sailors:

Since the wind became adverse in the strait, we were obliged to set anchor among the Torla isles. The next day we made a sort of
landing on the isles, where we found for inhabitants only game and large horned beasts, which we judged to be wild since they fled
from our sight and wandered without a herdsman. A Scottish sailor who shoots very well and the cannoneer kill at the time same a
young bull with a shot from a musket loaded with balls. They dress it in the field, and most of the crew, who eat it with appetite, find
the flesh has the taste of venison. While we are getting ready, together with the beasts appeared some peasants of the country... .We
returned to the chase, not of the horned beasts but of small game, and we killed two rabbits and a number of thrushes, with which
made good fare during two days that we relaxed there.

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 On the isle of the Sun, the companions of Ulysses undoubtedly found the cattle of the sacred herd to have the same
taste of venison, which quieted their unease of conscience... On the coast of the Cyclops, Ulysses left to hunt on the small
isle of goats, and he killed a hundred of the beasts. On the isle of Circe, a new deer hunt. The old navigators thus land by
preference on wooded isles, and since they need different trees to repair the planking, the oars or the masts, they thus
prefer, and they celebrate in their periples, the isles planted in varied types, elms, poplars, cypress, cedars, fir, etc. They
esteem above all the resinous varieties which provide, along with easily worked wood, the resin and tar to caulk the black
ship. If one wishes to “care for one’s ships”, as the Odyssey says, ηνας ακειόμενος, and rest the crews, nothing is better
than an uninhabited isle, well provided with trees and fresh water, ηνσον εύυδρον και εύδενορον ερήμην, and fitted with a
cave.

CHAPTER II

A FOREIGN STATION

λέγουσιν ο‘ι Μεγαρεις Λέλεγα αφικόμενον εξ Αιγύπτου βασιλευσαι.

Paus., I, 39, 6.

There are all the reasons which make the isle of Calypso a corner of paradise, and there are all the conditions which
the ideal port should unite, to the preferences of the first navgators. There are few harbors which unite them all. But each
time one of the conditions is properly realized, the port sees the foreign flotillas arrive and, in the periples as in the
language of the thalassocracies, the port is carefully noted. The crews give it a name. The periples take great care to
describe it. It becomes celebrated among the navies of the time, which quite ordinarily designate it under the same name,
and the name is furnished, most frequently, by such of the particularities just studied, trees, birds, springs, fields,
lookouts, caves, or by the form and the size of the harbor. The Mediterranean navies always have Raven Rocks, Gull
Rocks, Isles of Vines or of Olives, etc. The Greeks and the Latins had their Ports of the Cave, ‘Ιεράκον νησος, Accipitrum
Insula, their Isle of Pines, Πιτύουσσα, their Port of Cypress, Κυπαρισσία, etc. Before them, we can be sure that their
predecessors already used similar names. If we then can make the hypothesis (and the study of Homeric Pylos leads us to
it) that before the Greeks a Semitic navy exploited the Mediterranean, perhaps in the oldest Mediterranean place names
we should recover some of the Semitic words. For one of the words the research is neither long nor difficult.
The Isle of the Sparrowhawk of the Greek and Latin world was situated on the southwest coast of Sardinia, in the bay
of Carloforte, which schools of tuna frequent and have always frequented, with the flocks of birds of prey which follow
them: whence the name of the isle. We know that the Sardinian coasts had been colonized by the Cathaginianns and by
the Phoenicians before them. Pliny gives to our Isle of the Sparrowhawk the name E-nosim: the name E-nosim forms with
Accipitrum Insula a Latino-Semitic couplet. For the Semitic word, ‫אי‬, ai, or ‫י‬, i, would say isle: under the form ai, e, i, αι,
ε, ι, we retrieve it as the initial syllable of a great number of island names of the Greeks and the Latins; the geographers
and the editors of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum have pointed out the numerous Mediterranean isles of which the
name begins with the monosyllable, E-busus, Ae-naria, I-gilium, etc. As to nosim, the Semitic orthography is given to us
by a Punic inscription found in Sardinia and speaking of the same Isle of the Sparrowhawk: it is ‫בצס‬, nosim, plural of ‫בץ‬,
nes or nis, which in Hebrew would say sparrowhawk. The transcription of Pliny is exact. The Latin n and the Greek ν are
the equivalent of the Semitic ‫ב‬. The second consonant, ‫ץ‬, is a dental sibilant which all the Semites posess and which the
Hebrew alphabet interposes between the p and the q. But the Greeks and the Latins, as unable to pronounce it as
ourselves, have rejected it from their alphabets. Of this unique letter, the Arabs have made a sibilant, sad and a dental,

98
dad. It appears likely that among the Canaanites of antiquity this letter was also susceptible to two pronunciations. In
transcribing the Semitic names, the Greeks rendered it sometimes by a sibilant, sometimes by a dental: in the two words
Sidon, Σίδων, and Tyr, Τύρος, it is the same initial consonant, ‫ץ‬, which they render as a Σ on the one hand and as a Τ on
the other. We thus have the regular transcription of ‫ בצס‬as nosim and we can transcribe the singular ‫ בץ‬as nes or nis: if we
add a Latin or Greek terminatioin - which the ancients always did in similar cases - we have the doublet nesus or nisus,
νέσος or νίσος = ‘ιέραξ, sparrowhawk.
Similarly, for the cavern: one should retrieve in the oldest place names of the Mediterranean some names resembling
the Cave of the Sidonians, ‫ מערה צדנים‬Megara Sidonim, of which the Scripture speaks. The Greek and Latin transcription
of this megara would undoubtedly be megara, μέγαρα. There can be no doubt that the second consonant, ‫ע‬, is rendered as
a γ or a g. This consonant, ‫ע‬, occupies in the Hebrew alphabet the place of the o in the Greek and Latin alphabets. It is a
deep gutteral, which our throats are unadapted to pronounce and which it appears the Greeks and Latins were also
incapable of pronouncing.. Of this consonant which was useless for them, they made a vowel. In the Arabic alphabet, this
consonant, doubled like the ‫ע‬, also gives two letters, a throaty gutteral, the gain, and a very softened gutteral, the ‘ain. The
two names of the Arabic letters mark the difference in the impression which they produce on our ears. We hear the gain
as a hard g. The ‘ain for us represents only a sort of hesitation, of aspiration or of expiration which we are incapable of
noting and which we most frequently neglect to render in our pronunciation and transcription of Arabic words. The
Hebrew and Phoenician ‫ ע‬should produce the same effect on the Greek or Latin ears. Sometimes throaty, it becomes for
the ancients a γ or g, as in ‫עזה‬, Γάζα, Gaza, or ‫עמרה‬, Γόμορρα, Gomorrha, or ‫פעור‬, φόγωρ, Phogor, etc. Sometimes weak,
it would not be perceived - ex.: ‫עשתרת‬, Αστάρτη, Astarte, or ‫יעזר‬, Ιάζηρ, Iazer, or ‫עברי‬, ‘Εβραιος, Hebraeus, etc.: in the
Phoenician especially, it should frequently have escaped the ear, since the Phoenicians themselves neglected to write it in
a large number of their words, like ‫בעל‬, Ba’al, which they spelled ‫בל‬, Bal. Also sometimes the deep gutteral gave the
impression of the vowel o, with which the Greek and Latin alphabets have replaced it, and Ba’al became Βωλος for the
Greeks, Bolus for the Latins, Αγλιβωλος, Aglibolus; similarly Booz, Noema, Odollam, Βόοζ, Νόεμα, Οδόλλαμ, etc. But in
megara, it is probable that the ‫ ץ‬should have been easily perceptible. Perhaps we can evaluate it by a Greco-Semitic
couplet. In Boeotia, in the land of Kadmos, they gave the name megare, μέγαρον, to the sacred caves or holes, which they
opened for certain celebrations and where they threw offerings to the gods, Demeter in particular: “Μέγαρα,” says
Hesychius “designates the subterranian haunts and abysses, τάς κατωγείους οικήσεις και βάραθα”: the Boeotian megares
are just the ancient megares, ancient holes of the Semites.
Not only following the legend, but also following the certain history, Megara was at some time, at the beginning of the
Hellenic period, a great place of commerce, a great naval power, a founder of colonies. For, in the truly Greek Greece,
Megara never had that rôle. Neither the location nor the nature of the land appeared to destine it for the empire of the sea.
In the middle of a small plain, which bordered arid mountains on all sides, Megara was able to nourish neither a large
population nor a great commerce. A little wheat and wine, a bit of wood and tar, was all that the ships came to load in that
spot. Furthermore, Megara did not appear to us as the end or the crossroads of numerous land and sea routes. For the
traverse of the isthmus, Corinth is much better situated. For the penetration of the interior, toward the markets of Attica or
of Boeotia, Eleusis and Piraeus appear much more convenient. From the Greek point of view, Megara is thus nothing,
and, at the time of the Greek power, played no rôle. If, at times, its name is cited in the truly Greek history, it is that its
territory and its people serve as the site of army engagements or of the intrigues of the Spartans and the Athenians... And
still all the Hellenes remember that for one moment it was mistress of the sea. Its sailors went, they say, to the depth of
the Black Sea and the western sea. Certain others similarly maintain that the colonies of Megara bordered the Sicilian
coast and the route of the Kolchide... Between the two chapters of Megarian history, there is a contradiction. Should we
therefore deny the preHellenic grandeur of Megara? Or perhaps can that same grandeur be explained to us by a
combination of conditions and causes which prevailed then and which disappeared together? The problem of Megarian
origins is worth our pause, not only as before a very characteristic testimony of a disappeared epoch. We know,
furthermore, that the Pylian tradition claimed for the founders of Pylos a kinship with founders of Megara: the hero
Kleson had come from Megara to found the first Pylian town; he was son of the hero Lelex, who had come from Egypt to

99
found Nisa, the first Megarian town, Μέγαρα πρότερον Νισα καλουμένη. In the Odyssian question, Pylos holds a place
which will appear to us increasingly important: the origins of Megara will furnish us some certainty on the origins of
Pylos.
At the depth of the Saronic Gulf, the east coast of the isthmus of Corinth and the western shores of the isle of
Salamine form a channel which from all times has greatly served small sailing boats. Bordered on the east by the two
arms of Salamine and on the west by the steep cliffs of the isthmus, the bay is open widely to the south; to the north it is
not entirely closed: a narrow and muddy channel makes communication with the inner bay of Eleusis. It is the bay or cove
of Megara:

“On parting from Kalamaki (on the isthmus of Corinth),” say the Nautical Instructions, “the coast, on going to the east, is high
and forms the base of Mount Gerania which, at 4½ miles inland, rises 1370 meters above sea level. Between Point Theodoro, near
which one sees a small church, and the isle of Salamine, the coast recedes to the north and forms a recess which is calleed the bay of
Megara, from the name of the town built on a hill 1½ miles from the coast. In the bay one finds no watery dangers, and one finds
deep water throughout; but under sail one must be alert because of violent gusts which are felt from the strong winds of the north.

This, for sailors, is the appearance of the present state of the place. Nevertheless, in certain details, that state does not
seem to extend to distant antiquity. Presently, a single channel opens at the depth of the bay to lead to the closed cove of
Eleusis. Our Nautical Instructions describe the single channel thusly: “The approach of the bay of Eleusis is bordered by
islets which, with a tonge of land projecting from the mainland and covering the point projecting from Salamine, form a
narrow and tortuous channel leading into the bay; the channel has little depth, the deepest there being four meters, with a
muddy bottom.” During the earliest antiquity, the channel, single today, was double. The islets, which obstruct or litter
the entrance, numbering four today, were formerly more numerous. The long tongue, today joined to the Megarian coast
and pointing its rocks toward the sinuous coastline of Salamine, was then also an isle. At least this is what comes to me
from the antique texts. I believe that, detached from the mainland and moored in the pass, the isle left a double channel to
right and left; the larger remains today on the coast of Salamine; the smaller toward Megara was filled with mud... But I
should validate this opinion by the detailed study of a text of Thucydides which, I think, contradicts the generally
accepted identifications.
Megara, mainland town, had on the coast an echelle, Nisaia, Νισαια. There is general agreement to localize the echelle
of Nisaia at the foot of the high hill which presently bears a church of St. George and which still guards the ruins of an
ancient acropolis. The identification agrees perfectly to the present sites and to antique descriptions that we will see later
(the map which I give here was made according to the map of the expedition of Morea and to the marine charts; it should
bear a little to the right the name of Nisaia and attribute it to the high, almost conical hill which dominates the depths of
53 meters). But, on the coast, the antique Megara also had an isle or peninsula, Minoa, Μινώα. In spite of the concordant
conclusions of all the recent topographers and commentators, Lolling, Frazer, etc., the debate appears to me always open
concerning the site of the isle or peninsula, Minoa. The ancients speak to us of it sometimes as an isle, νησος, sometimes
as a promontory, άκρα. Most of the modern geographers retrieve this Minoa near the chapel of Saint Nicholas (see the
map of Channels of Megara), on a small rocky rise which, today mired in sediments, rises from the marshy plain, at the
edge of the sea, to the west of Nisaia, between Nisaia and the Skironian rocks. I well believe that this rise may have
formerly been an isle surroundede by water or marsh. But I cannot comprehend that the periples would ever have given it
the term of promontory.
In effect, we should distrust our language and our view of terrains. The “views of the land” of the terrestrial geography
differ strangely from the “views of the coast” of the maritime geographer. It is the altitude of the lands, the height of the
hills before the horizon, which at first strikes our eyes and which our maps carefully note. But, in the maritime language,
a promontory is not always a rock which points to the sky; it is foremost a tongue of land which extends into the
waves.The supposed Minoa, with its almost regular cone, detaches itself neatly from the plain: it will be carefully noted
and named by the landsmen. But take a view of the coasts and not of the plain: on that coast completely bristling with

100
tongues, with capes and with toothed projections, this mainland or island rise, drowned among the lands or marshes,
would never be able to receive the name of a promontory... And compare our view of the coasts with the ancient texts.
Thucydides already knew this isle under the name of νησος Μινώα. Two channels bordered it at that time. The one,
deep and wide, separated it from Salmine, which projects toward it the promontory of Boudron. The other, very narrow
and without depth, separated it from the Megaride. The second channel is properly speaking just a band of marshes,
across which a bridge and a road establish the communication between the isle of Minoa and the Megarian land.
Thucydides describes to us very clearly the state of the place:

Under Nikias, son of Nikeratos, the Athenians made an expedition against the isle of Minoa, which lies in front of Megara, ‘η
κειται πρό Μεγάρων. It has served the Megarians as a fortress, after they constructed a tower there. Nikias saw numerous advantages
to the acquisition of the isle. For the Athenians, the guard over the narrower channel would usefully replace the guard which they
had at Boudoron and at Salmine (over the larger channel); the Peloponnesians would no longer be able to hide (behind Minoa) their
incursions by sea and their sending of triremes or cruisers, as in the past; the Megarians would no longer be able to enter their port at
all. Thus, by means of his devices, Nikias knocks down two projecting towers, so that the passage between the isle and the land is
opened, debarks and occupies the isle, strengthened from the coast of the land, for an attack from the coast was easy, by virtue of a
bridge which went from the isle to the neighboring land across the marsh. Having finished his work in a few days and leaving a
garrison together with fortified works on the isle, Nikias returns to Athens with his Army.

It is by way of land that the expedition of Nikias is made, εστράτευσαν, τω στρατω, says Thucydides. In that period of
the war, the Athenians, each year, make an incursion in the Megaride, with all their land forces, citizens and resident
foreigners, πανδημει, αυτοι και ο‘ι μέτοικοι, πανατρατια. Sometimes, when the Athenian Fleet is in the area, they also
come to take part in the celebration, and they cut down the olive trees, they burn the harvest, they pillage to their hearts’
delight. But the annual expedition is able to ravage only part of the Megaride: only the plain contained between the
mountains of Eleusis and the two fortresses of Megara and Nisaia is exposed to their attacks. Megara is defended by its
citizens. Nisaia is occupied by a Peloponnesian garrison which the Megarians have requested. Between the two fortresses,
a line of Long Walls maintain the communication. The long walls were prviously built by the Athenians, at the times
when Megara was an ally. They joined the town to the seashore, and put the town within access of the aid, but also of the
interventions and the aggressions of the fleet. When the Athenians, having become the enemies of Megara, come to be
masters of Minoa, the Megarians will destroy the Long Walls which only serve to lead the Athenian incursions to them.
But the destruction is after the attack of Nikias. When Nikias comes to attack Minoa, the Long Walls still exist. Between
Megara and Nisaia, between the present town and the rise of St. George, the Long Walls oppose an impassable barrier to
the invasion of Nikias, and they put in the shelter the entire triangle of beach and plain which, behind them, extends
between Megara, Nisaia and the Skironian rocks (on our map from the Channels of Megara, the triangle would be
determined by the railway, the coast, and a line drawn from from Megara to the rise of St. Georgio). It is thus impossible
that Minoa, attacked by Nikias, might be in the triangle. It should not be sought on the little coastal rise where the recent
topographers have placed it. (The rise bears the ruins of a Venetian fortress. The Venetians had need of a tower which
surveyed the plain and the gulf, but not the strait where they would no longer venture, lacking an anchorage: their harbor
was no longer between Salamine and the Megaride, but in front of the Megarian beach, across from the town... ) Before
reaching the rise, Nikias would break himself against the Long Walls. We must seek it elsewhere.
Nikias wishes to occupy Minoa for several reasons:
1° The Athenians have up until now guarded the entry of the gulf of Eleusis by a garrison installed at Salamine, at the
Boudoron promontory: on the point a fort and a naval station are established to block all entry and all exit of Nisaia, the
port of Megara, φυλακη του μη εσπλειν Μεγαρευσι μηδ’ εκπλειν μηδέν. Across from the Athenian post and the
promontory of Salamine, the Peloponnesians on the Megarian coast occupy Nisaia where the Megarians have put away
forty vessels in their arsenal. One day the Peloponnesians launch the Megarian fleet, take the post of Boudoron, ravage
Salamine and threaten Piraeus. The proof is thus made to the Athenians that the post of Boudoron, over the larger entry, is
not sufficient. In the shelter (of Minoa), λανθάνοντες, the Peloponnesians of Nisaia can renew the sortie any day and, by

101
the larger channel, δι’ ελάσσονος, do again what they have already done, οιον και το πριν γενομένον, that is to say,
threaten Athens in her territory or her most immediate dependents, try an incursion of corsairs or an expedition of
conquest against Salamine, Eleusis or Piraeus.
2° The occupation of Minoa should more tightly close the port of Megara, that is to say, Nisaia, to the resupply by sea,
τοις τε Μεγαρευσιν ‘άμα μηδεν εσπλειν.
The text of Thucydides thus implies a certain number of conditions for the site of Minoa: 1 ° the isle of Minoa at the
same time commands the strait of Salamine and the entrance of Nisaia; 2° the isle is separated from the Megaride only by
a narrow channel of marsh or lowlands on which they are able to build a levee. On these conditions, take the marine chart
and consider the “long tongue” projected from the Megaride toward the bay or passage of Trupika. It is a narrow rock
which, on its southern and eastern faces, falls steeply and plunges into deep water: depths of nine meters border it; at
some distance the sounding marks twenty-four ande twenty-seven meters. But to the north, the rock dips into the mud of a
small marshy gulf which, for a portion of its extent, does not have one meter of depth, and which gradually, toward the
low plain, ends in a saltwater marsh. To the west, the rock does not go all the way to the mainland: a low isthmus still
marks the ancient marshy passage which formerly joined the marsh of the north to the southern bay, and which made an
isle of the promontory. Across the isthmus, modern berms have replaced the ancient ditch of seawater. They have earned
for the promontory its name of Cape of Walls, Tikho τειχος...
Looking at the marine chart, take the text of Thucydides: down to the least detail, you follow the march and the
operations of Nikias there. There is truly the isle between the two channels, the one deep, the other already half filled.
There is the coastal marsh which allows an attack on the isle from the coast of the land, and there the modern berms
which have replaced the wall of defense raised by the Athenians. Almost nothing has changed. In the times of
Thucydides, a bridge already joined Minoa to the Megaride. From antiquity, human labor or the sediments of torrents
enlarge the levee. The small channel became a marsh, then a small plain. In Roman times, the process succeeded in
making the isle a veritable promomtory. Strabo describes a condition of the site totally resembling that of our marine
charts: “After the Skironian rocks, the point of Minoa presents itself, άκρα πρόκειται Μινώα, which forms the port of
Nisaia. This Nisaia is the echelle of Megara, from which it is separated by eighteen stades, and to which it is joined by
Long Walls. The echelle is also called Minoa.” In the times of Strabo, the sediments, joining Minoa to the coast, have
made it that Minoa and Nisaia are united, and confused. They form only a single block of rocks and plains, a single
promontory with a single harbor. Pausanias, who came fully informed by classical lectures and memories, researched the
isle of Minoa, which had played such a great part in the Peloponnesian war. He needed an island. He believed to have
found it in one of the rocky islets, Pkiaki, Trupika, Paki or Rhevituza, which still litter the bay and the channel: he notes
that the small isle of Minoa extends in front of Nisaia, παρήκει δε παρα τήν Νίσαιαν νησος ου μεγάλη Μινώα. The rocky
islets, separated from the coast by great depths (for one of the channels, the marine charts give twenty-one meters), would
not be known to represent the marshy Minoa of Thucydides: the error of Pausanias is certain, and is easily explained.
Thus, originally, the channel between the bay of Megara and the harbor of Eleusis was double. But from the sixth
century before our era, in the times of Thucydides, one of the passages was half filled, and from the beginning of our era,
in the times of Strabo, it was closed. It is possible that before Minoa other similar isles may have been of the same sort.
The land of Megara is a plain, marshy or dry, but united, from which emerge, as veritable isles mired in sediments, some
rocky rises. It is one of these rises, the present hill of St. George, which served as the acropolis of the town of Nisaia, the
echelle of Megara, which is itself also called Nisaia. Another rise very close by, consecrated today to St. Nicolas, passes
by mistake for the ancient Minoa: it is in reality the rise of Athena the Gull. Still others raise themselves up on the
perimeter of the bay of Eleusis... In the middle of the plain, at the foot of the last slopes of the mountains, two joined hills
formerly bore the double acropolis of Megara; the present town covers all the slopes.

*
* *

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 Megara was the principal town, Nisaia was the echelle, επινειον, the port, λιμην, the depot and arsenal, νεώριον.
Minoa was the fortress, the lookout across the strait. Taken all together and in its details, we understand without difficulty
that in the Hellenic times the site was not of great importance. The plain being small, confined between the marsh and the
mountains, έστι δ’ ‘η χώρα των Μεγαρέων παράλυπρος και το πλέον αυτης επέχει τα Όνεια όρη, the capitol could be
neither very rich nor heavily populated: the echelle consequently was not a great port. Similarly, the strait of Minoa was
little frequented. The Greeks, having become navigators, had taken the admirable situations of Piraeus and Corinth to
their profit. The commerce of transit across the isthmus made the wealth of the one. The commerce of the interior, of
Attica or Boeotia, descended to the other and, with the proximity of Piraeus changing all the habits, the gulf of Eleusis
now had for its great entrance and exit, for an almost exclusive commercial portal, no longer the strait of Megara, but the
passage of the northeast, the strait of Psyttale. This state of commerce implies that the civilized Hellenes, being
navigators, arranged their affairs themselves and no longer depended on foreign navies for their traffic and their voyages.
If it had been a period of time when this independence had not existed, the routes and the harbors would undoubtedly
have had an entirely different orientation and importance. Our portulans of the seventeenth century point out the port and
the town of “Maigra (Megara) where they make plenty of tar, pitch and caulking, and quantitiies of construction timber;
they load much construction material there for the archipelago; one can also load wheat from all the villages which are on
the mainland coast.” Megara is then a loading port. The French sailors also knew Piraeus, which they call Port-Lion: “The
port is very good; large ships can enter there and they anchor in ten or fifteen fathoms, mud bottom, sheltered from all
winds; one runs no risk in hauling out, as all is mud. On the north coast, at about three leagues, is a castle on a very high
mountain, which is the lookout. They load wax, oil, wool and wheat there.” But the Port-Lion has no importance. It
similarly serves only as the echelle of the village which appears at the foot of the castle, on the mountain to the north, and
which is Athens with its acropolis. For the portulans describe to us, next to Port-Lion, the echelle of Athens, which is
ancient Phalere: “The village is at one league, at the mountain; they anchor before the town, which lies to the north, the
bottom is mud, at twenty two fathoms; it is thus better to go to Port-Lion in winter.”
Up until the first part of the nineteenth century, up until the liberation of Greece, Piraeus remained a desolate bay,
where a few boats rotted in the mud before a miserable Turkish customs house: “The port, as renowned as those of Tyre
and Sidon and which had contained up to four hundred galleys, today receives nothing but fishing boats. At its depth, one
perceives a few hovels where a poor Turkish family shelters. The customs officials, who are there like the guardians of
the desert, had taken flight at our approach; we have not found anyone to point out the road to us.” We have explained
why the closed bay of Piraeus, so convenient to native navies, does not attract either primitive navies or the Christian
navies. The ones or the others have preferred the open bay of Megara. That preference entrained a complete change in the
land routes.
Among the land routes which end at Piraeus, there is one which we have described at length. Across the peninsula of
Attica it goes, by Dekelia and Oropos, up to the strait of Euripe. It is the antique route of commerce between Eubea and
the markets of Athens. It was also the route of armies and Turkish Pashas between the fortress of Negrepont and the castle
of the Acropolis. Another more important route, still today, turns the traffic of Boeotia and continental Greece toward the
quays of Piraeus. Leaving Piraeus to end at Thebes, the route cuts the Athenian plain, from south toward the northwest,
crosses the mounts of the west by the pass of Daphni, redescends in the plain of Eleusis, which it crosses entirely, and
reaches Boeotia by the defiles of Kitheron. Today, it is along this route that the manufactures and products of Europe,
debarked at Piraeus, ascend to Boeotia, and that the wheat, fruits, wines and livestock etc. of the great Boeotian basin
descend to Athens. By virtue of this route, Piraeus is the port of Boeotia for the southern archipelago.
Between Thebes and Eleusis, The Boeotian route is drawn by the same nature: its direction and its stops are imposed
on it by the gorges and passes of the Kitheron, through the opening of Eleutheres. But we see clearly that upon departing
from Eleusis, it is the caprice or the interests of men which push it toward the pass of Daphni and toward Piraeus. Another
path was offered to it, which will lead it more directly to the open sea. Following the gulf of Eleusis to the west, it can
reach the plain of Megara and come to rejoin our Megarian ports. In the new route, the natives of Boeotia find their
advantage. The port will be nearer to them, the same whether they descend by the great route up to Eleusis or if they

103
follow the western beach of the bay. In reality, there is a still shorter route. Without descending as far as Eleusis, they can
come directly from Eleutheres to the bay of Megara, across the mountains of the Megaride, by the pass of Kondoura.
From Thebes to Piraeus, one should compute some 85 or 90 kilometers: from Thebes to Megara, it is barely 65 or 70.
And the route to Megara is safer for, between Eleusis and Piraeus, the pass of Daphni is conducive to attacks and
ransoms. And for the beasts and people, the route toward Megara, marked out with springs, will be more convenient than
the eastern circuit of the bay of Eleusis, where one lacks water: “One cannot take on water in the bay,” say the Nautical
Instructions, “because the springs, which turn the mills of Rheiti, are strongly impregnated with saltpeter.”
The foreign navigators will also find their profit in this route. Our isle of Minoa, which closes the strait, appears created
especially to serve as a depot. It is of the same type as the coastal islets, across from a strait, which we come to describe.
For a primitive navy, it is the ideal point of debarkation. Harbor, water, forests, beaches, it has nearby all the conditions
which make the happiness of sailors. It is easily boarded from the coast of the sea. Near to it the vessels can moor and set
anchor: “In the bay of Megara,” the Nautical Instructions tell us, “one has nothing to fear from gusts of wind from the
north.” In the shelter of the isle, to the south of Minoa, the ships are sheltered from all the winds. The rocks of Minoa
arrest the winds from the north. The small islets of Rhevituza and Trupika block the breezes and swells from the open sea.
To the east and west, the tongues of land and the islets appear ingeniously interwoven to form a screen while leaving the
necessary channels. Our large vessels would not be at ease in that narrow space. But the primitive fleets were able to
maneuver there... From the coast of the mainland, the isle is easily accessible and easily defended at the same time. The
marsh makes a ditch for it, across which a bridge or pilings of a causeway can bear a route or a floor; the slightest rampart
suffices to close this Isle of the Wall, Tikho. One imagines without difficulty a foreign countinghouse on the site. A
lookout at the top of the rocks surveys all around, plains and straits. In the morning, they open the bridge over the ditch
and the local convoys are admitted. At evening, the bridge is raised and the isle is closed. Minoa thus being the point of
debarkation of foreigners, Nisaia and Megara become the advance-bazaar and the bazaar of the natives, the point where
the exchanges take place, where the two peoples and, when they speak different languages, the two languages meet and
mix. If our hypothesis is just, the local names perhaps retain some trace of a bilingual period. In fact, the Megarian place
names are a mix of Greek names, which the Greek etymology explains without difficulty, and foreign names, of which
the Greek language cannot render account to us.
Already in the antiquity, the three names, Megara, Nisaia, Minoa, had no sense for the Hellenes, who give to each of
them an explanatory history or legend. From the combined legends, we put together the primitive history of the land.
Nisaia had taken the name of a hero who formerly ruled over the entire country: it was Nisos, husband of Abrote. Nisos
had red hair, and the oracle promised him that his reign would not end as long as he retained his hair. But the Cretan
Minos came to attack the town; Skylla, daughter of Nisos, falls in love with the foreigner and, to assure him the victory,
cuts the paternal hair. Now the Master of the town, Minos refuses to marry Skylla, who throws herself into the sea where
she is changed into a fish or devoured by the birds. Nisos is also metamorphosed: he became one of the sea eagles, which
hunt above the waves, and he continues to follow his daughter. Thus for Nisaia and Minoa. As to Megara, they recounted
that the hero Megareus, its founder, had come from Boeotia, that he was son of Poseidon or of Onchestos, and that he had
become the ally of Nisos by the marriage of his sister, Abrote. Let us note well the origin of Megareus - one of his sons,
Evippos, had alrady been killed by the lion of Kitheron, on the route from Eleutheres, of which we spoke earlier - and the
relations of Megara with Boeotia where the sacred caves are named megares, μέγαρα. At Megara, Demeter had one of the
megares. The megare was in the high part of the town, on the summit of the Acropolis which they named Karia, in
memory of the hero Kar, son of Phorone; the hero Kar formerly reigns in that place and it is he who founds the temple.
When we make the list of the Megarian names, it well appears that we have a long series of Greco-Semitic couplets.
####
In its anthropomorphic language, the legend of Megara translates for us another detail of the Odyssian legend. We
have seen that the springs pour into the sea their white waters,

κρηναι δ’ ‘εξειης πισυρες ‘ρεον ‘υδατι λεθκω.

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 The Mediterranean springs, especially of Greece, can be divided into two classes. The ones, issuing from the lips of
the rock and flowing over the stone or over the calcarious detritus, are clear, limpid, white. The others, lying in the
marshy alluvium at the foot of the coastal mountains, are the round, deep eyes, black or blue eyes (the same Semitic word
in or oin designates the eye and the spring at the same time), such as the Black Spring of the isle of Pharos, of which
Menelaus speaks to Telemachus,

αφυσσαμενοι μελαν ‘υδορ,

or, again, such as the Blue Spring, Κυανη, which pours into the marshy depth of the gulf of Syriacuse. At Megara, the
mother of the two twins Learchos and Melikertes is a daughter of Kadmos, Ino. She descends from Boeotia into the
Megaride to throw herself into the sea. There she becomes Leukothea, Λευκοθεα, the White Goddess. The Megarians had
the legend in common with the Boeotians and the Corinthians. In good time, it had entered into the general mythology of
the Hellenes. The Odyssey already knows “the daughter of Kadmos, Ino the white goddess, who was formerly a mortal
and who now enjoys divine honors in the sea.” One again finds this daughter of Kadmos on the coasts of the purple conch
in Laconia. She appears there at almost all the watering places. They worship her near the springs, at Epidaure Limera, at
Brasiai, at Leuktra, at Thalamai. It should be noted that she never leaves the coastal watering places and that she is to be
found near the characteristic place names: “Not far from Epidaure Limera is the water which they call Ino’s, Ινους
καλουμενον ‘υδος, an expanse of water of little breadth but very deep, into which, on the day of the feast of Ino, they
throw the mazes” (and this, we have seen a propos Phigalia, is perhaps a Semitic word borrowed by the Greeks: ‫טוצה‬,
masa, in the Scripture, designates the unleavened bread, like the maze of the Greeks). “Not far from there is the
promontory Minoa, sheltering a gulf resembling all the Laconian crevices; but here the beach is covered with very
beautiful shells, of highly varied colors.” We return to the Laconian coasts. We study the harbors there, the watering
places and the place names, on the occasion of the fisheries of the purple shell. We see there that the Nymph Ino, the
daughter of Kadmos worshipped near the springs, is truly a descendant of the Phoenicians: she is simply the Phoenician
spring, ‫עין‬, ‘In, whose Semitic name has been furnished by the Hellenes, as they always do in parallel cases, with a
termination indicating the sex of the divine personage, In-o, Ιν-ω (cf. the names of the Nereids, Speio, Doto, Proto, Kymo,
Σπειω, Δωτω, Πρώτο, Κυμω, etc.) who is also the White Goddess.
Ino is the mother of the double god Melikertes-Palemon. It is again and always the same relationship or
anthropomorphic descendence established by the Hellenes between neighboring words or phenomena. Megara and
Boeotia, in the times of the Phoenician occupation, had some springs of Melkart, In-Melkart, resembling the spring of the
temple of Gades: “in the enclosure of Hercules at Gadira there is a spring of water,” says Strabo; the Hellenes had made
their Hercules of the Pillars from the Tyrian Melkart: the spring of the Gadirite Herakleion was an ancient ‫טלקרת‬-‫עינ‬, In-
Melkart, Spring of Melkart.
One would not know how to insist too much on the procedure of anthropomorphic engenderation. All of the races have
known it to a greater or lesser degree: in all the mythologies, one may encounter its effects. But one can say that it was the
Greek procedure par excellence, because it was most in conformance with the native tendency of the people. Relate
everything to the human condition; make man the center and judge of everything; impose the rational rule of our
understandings and the measure of our syllogisms upon the world of beings and things: the Greek is never able to
conceive that the universe was anything but a domain, a garden of humanity, of which man is the most beautiful plant,
without doubt, but of which all the other plants resemble man in their intimate nature. For the Greeks, everything lives in
human style, and everything can be described and imaged in human style, under human traits and names. The German
mythologists, disciples of Max Muller, have gone searching under the sun and moon for the explanation of the Greek
myths: their philological exercises pass for the style of the day. But here come another band of augurers... It is not the
solar myth, it is the totem which is going to explain to us, in a wave of the hand, all of the mythologies and all of the
religions, past, present and future. Now, see the logic of the new hypothesis.

105
 One person establishes that there are variations in the skin between the various humanities, yet another person does not
wish to establish variations of the mind. The one establishes that the Greeks have possessed from all time a certain form
of reasoning, the syllogism; that the oldest Hellenes already had the instinct and the usage, if not the theory; that the most
degenerate and “Turkified” Greeks still possess it; that a Greek is unable to think for one minute without syllogism; that
the other humanities have not had that form of logic until the day when they accepted the lessons in Greek “humanism”;
that certain human intellects appear to always remain in rebellion to that form; that the Arabs today, as the Hebrews in the
past, juxtapose their sensations or their ideas, but do not coordinate them; that the Semitic languages do not have the
similar material of conjunctions or adverbs indispensable to that operation... In brief, one establishes that the Greek
intellect is entirely particular: it produces reasonings of which the rule is to relate everything to the human measure and to
affirm that, always and especially, a rule possessed by man is applicable and sovereign. And the other person wishes the
Greek intellect to produce myths entirely resembling the myths coming from the intellect of a redskin or a negrito. “The
apple tree,” says the wise Renan, “produces apples, and the pear tree, pears.” If other peoples, if many other peoples, if
all the other peoples, have produced nothing but totemic myths, and have had, in their religion as in their sculpture,
nothing but animals, it still would not follow at all that the Greeks did not have an anthropomorphic mythology, like their
sculpture and all their works. See how they animate everything which surrounds them, how they personify in the same
way the works of their hands and how, in the language of their architects and their masons, the anthropomorphism creates
pretty figures. The column, for them, is not a lifeless post, nor similarly an inanimate member, “a foot,” as we say [in
French]. It is a person: “The Greek spirit, with its habit of animating and personifying everything in nature and art,
delights itself in comparing the column to a human body. Consequently, it has had it take on this or that sex, accordingly
as it relates to this or that classification. For it, the capital would be the head of the column, as the name indicates. It has
compared the space circumscribed between the upper and lower rings to the neck of the man.” The remainder of our study
is going to lead us before a column which, from the Homeric times, the Hellenes have again personified: Calypso, the
hiding place, is a daughter of Atlas, the Pillar of the sky... .
The Megarian legend offers us another filiation of the same sort in the family of Nisos, father of Skylla. We know how
Nisos is the Semitic Nis, the sparrowhawk or sea eagle. Skylla, cursed by her father, had been thrown into the sea by
Minos, her faithless lover. Her body had been carried by the waves to the distant Skyllian promontory, Σκυλλαιον, which
marks the entrance of the Saronic Gulf to the north of Hydra. But there, they did not show her tomb: the sea birds had torn
apart her corpse. In the entire antique Mediterranean, a large number of promontories bear the names of Skulle, Σκυλλα,
Σκυλλαιον, Σκυλλακιον, or Σκυλλητιον. Under the slightly different forms, the name presented a single meaning to the
Greek sailors: it was the Point of the Dog, σκυλιον, σκυλαξ. The monster of the strait of Sicily, Skylla, had a belt of seals
(sea dogs) and bayed like a young dog:

... φωνη μεν ‘ορη σκυλλακος.

For certain capes, the explanation is perhaps good. All the sailors have their Cape of the Dog, of the Lion, of the Bull,
etc. But it is possible that this explanation does not pertain to all our capes: perhaps we sometimes need to examine the
popular etymology closely. The Odyssey says that Skylla is a Rock,

πετρη γαρ λις εστι περιξεστη εικυια

it is a bald rock which appears planed and polished. The epithet which the poet gives Skylla, and which he reserves for it,
is πετραιν, the stony. Skylla is the Stony as Pylos is the Sandy. This epithet is not encountered anywhere else in the
Homeric poems. And it appears that Skylla might in reality be the Rock, the Stone. F. Lenormant remarked with justice
that all of the Skylla, Skyllai, Skyllaion, etc., are in localities of a very specific similar nature, of points of rocks
dangerous to navigation and garnished with reefs. In the Strait of Sicily, Skylla is in effect a rock cutting into the sea, a
peninsular promontory with steep sides all around, το Σκυλλαιον πέτρα χερρονησιζουσα ‘υψηλή. Similarly, on the coast

106
of Brutium, the cape which Strabo calls Σκυλλητιον, Σκυλλαιον or Σκυλλακιον, is “a sharp and precipitous point,” say the
Nautical Instructions, “emerging from a low and sandy coast.” The modern sailors call it Pointe de Staletti: navifragum
Scyllaceum, (shipwreck Scylla) says Virgil. Similarly again, the Σκυλλαιον of Argolide, the present Cape Skyli, is the
“extremity of the high chain of mountains which form the southeast point of the gulf of Athens.” It is a steep promontory,
a high perch for the seabirds which will devour Skylla.
Pliny cites two other Skulles, Σκυλλια or Σκυλλα, which, both, according to him, were deserted isles of the northern
archipelago, the one near the Chersonnese of Thrace, the other between that Chersonnese and Samothrace. In the northern
archipelago, the Nautical Instructions point out two uninhabited rocks on the west coast of Lemnos which they call
Skylax. It is possible that we have here the second of the isles of Pliny. But, for the first, it appears that the author may
have deceived himself.
On the perimeter of the Mediterranean coasts, it is probable that each of the rocks, of these primitive Skyllas, may
have its determinative which distinguishes it from the others. Our sailors have their Gull Rocks, Black Rocks, etc., as the
classical sailors had in the south of Italy their White Rock, Λευκοπετρα. The Odyssian Skylla is the Cut Rock: πετρη
περιξεστη, says the poem in its Greek context; Skylla Kratais, Σκυλλα Κραταις, it says in its legendary text. We see in
effect that the Greek word περιξεστη, cut, is with the Greek word πετρη, the rock, in the same relationship as the two
foreign words Skoula and Krata are with each other: Two by two the words should be reunited to give us the complete
name of the promontory, Skoula krata - Πετρη περιξεστη - Cut rock. Having made of Skoula a person part human, part
divine, with monstrous attributes, the poet has similarly personified Krata, who has become Kratais, Κραταις in his ####
* *

Spring of Friendship, Town of the Cavern, Spring of the Argument, Melkart King of the People, Stone of the
Sparrowhawk, Stone of the Birds, a series of Greco-Semitic doublets thus give us an account of the legend and of the
Megarian toponymy. Nevertheless the name of the site which should have played the principal rôle in the time of the old
navigators remains, the name of the islet or promontory Minoa. If the first thalassocracies truly stayed in the vicinity, this
islet should be their principal station and the name of the islet undoubtedly retains the memory of their establishment.
The name of Minoa, Μινώα, is widespread in the most ancient Mediterranean toponymy. From Syria to Sicily, one
finds it on all the mainland and island coasts, particularly at watering places. The Greeks wish to find there a trace of their
legendary Minos. It was Minos who had founded the Arab Minoa, the Syrian Minoa (later Gaza) and the two Minoas of
Crete, the one in the bay of the south, and the other in the gulf of Mirabello. It is to the thalassocracy of Minos that they
attributed the Minoas of Amorgos, of Paros, of Siphnos and finally the Sicilian Minoa. These Minoas are the foundations
of Minos on the same grounds undoubtedly as the Solei of Cyprus became in the times of the Athenian thalassocracy a
supposed foundation of Solon, or Khaifa of Syria, in the times of the French thalassocracy, a supposed foundation of the
high priest Kaiphas. All the puns have value and proof only that Khaifa, Soloi or Minoa may be from words foreign to the
sailors who interpret them in such a fine fashion. It is possible to retrieve the veritable meaning of Minoa by a less
fantastic procedure.
The Sicilian Minoa is called in its complete name Makara Minoa or Herakleia Minoa, Μάκαρα Μινώα, ‘Ηράκλεια
Μινώα. It was situated on the coast of Sicily which faces Africa. It occupied the summit of a high promontory, which our
sailors call the White Cape:

“The white cape,” say the Nautical Instructions, “has about 28 meters of elevation and descends from a height of 127 meters. The
shallows extend for more than a half mile from the coast. Between the cape and Sciacca, the land presents a large rolling and well-
cultivated plain, watered by several rivers. the largest are the Verdura, the Maggazzolo and the Platani, which flow from the two
sides of Mount Sara, of which the summit, of a dark color, is of 433 meters height. The plain abuts a hilly highland and has in the
northeast some sulfur mines two miles from the cape. From Cape Bianco to Cape Rosello, situated at six miles distance to the
Southeast, the coast is cut by several capes and rocky cliffs rising to heights of 70 to 150 meters. On the points, there are towers...
Some important sulfur mines are exploited in the vicinity.

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 Herakleia Minoa thus occupys “one of the promontories of the sea,” άκρας επι τη θαλάσση, which Thucydides points
out around Sicily as old Phoenician trading posts. A foreign establishment found here all the conditions of security and
fortune. The cape protected the debarkation: the watchtowers, which still exist, relate that the modern Cathaginians, I
mean to say the barbarian pirates of Tunis or Algiers, frequented the harbor. It is here that the African sailors found the
most convenient route to penetrate to the interior of Sicily and similarly to cross the isle from one part to another. Across
Sicily, in effect, from the south coast to the north coast, two facing fluvial valleys trace a continuous road, the only natural
road to ascend from the African sea to the summit of the mountains and redescend to the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Platani,
which flows from the north to the south and which comes to empty into the African Sea at the foot of Minoa, takes its
source not far from Fiume Torto, which flows from south to north and goes to empty into the Italian Sea near Termini.
We know the importance of the land corridors, of the isthmic routes, for the sailors of antiquity. At the two ends of the
Sicilian corridor, the ancients always had two great ponts of debarkation. On the Italian Sea of the north, they made
Ilimera (we have taken charge of the harbor and the name). On the African Sea of the south, they made at one time
Minoa, at another, Agrigente, following the orientation of the maritime commerce. For the same valley of the Platani (the
ancient Halycos) ended at Minoa. But the river, which, during the first part of its course goes entirely straight from north
to south, abruptly makes a right angle bend in its lower course and flows from east to west: its valley thus ends at thefoot
of White Cape. If the river had not turned shortly, if it had directly followed its original course, it would have emptied
near Agrigente. For its bend is not very far from the sea. Some hills of little height between the coast and the middle
valley of the river place but a weak obstacle; furthermore, the small corridor of the Draco, the river of Agrigente,
penetrates straight through the heart of the hills.We can take for Agrigente the comparison which already has served us
for Pylos: Agrigenti is in the valley of the Platani as Genoa is in the plain of the Po, as Pylos is in the valley of the Alph,
the nearest port. Our railroads today come from Termini on the sea of the north to Porto Empedocle, which is the harbor
of Agrigente, on the sea of the south. It is already the Sicilian great route of the middle ages and of antiquity. Since the
Hellenes, Agrigente is the market, the fortress and the echelle of the route on the African Sea. The Hellenes, coming from
the east, had adopted the harbor because it was the most eastern, the closest to their other ports. But the Semites came
from Carthage, from the west: Minoa presented itself to them first; for them, Minoa was the most western harbor, the
nearest. Besides, Minoa, town of the promontory, is not under the hand of the natives: it can be, in the Phoenician style,
only a peaceful station, a commercial trading post. At some distance from the sea, on the slopes of the hills of the interior,
Agrigente is to the contrary a fortified colony, in the Hellenic style; its security requires an effective occupation of the
valleys and mountains, a conquest and an armed guard. If Agrigente is thus for the Hellenes the echelle of the great
Sicilian route, the export for sulfur, wine, fruits, grains and other native products, and the import for manufactures, fabrics
and other foreign products - the topology predicts to us that Minoa will have that rôle in the times of the Semitic Navies.
And the toponymy verifies that prediction.
The coins with Semitic inscriptions inform us that the White Cape bears the town of ‫טלקרת‬-‫רש‬, Ros Melkart, of the
Cape of Melkart. The Sicilian Minoa, like the Megarian Minoa, knew the cult of the god Melkart-Melikertes. It is the
name of Melkart which the Hellenes transcribe as Makara and which they translate as Herakleia. The translation goes
without saying: the Hellenes recognized their Hercules in the Melkart of Tyre, in the “Tyrian Herakles,” as they say; the
town of Melkart thus became for them a Heraklea. The transcription Makara, Μακάρα, is less exact: it is probable that it
comes from a popular pun. Melkart says nothing to the ear of the Greek sailor; Makara was the blessed town, μάκαρ,
μάκαιρα. The Melkart of Sicily had its determinative epithet like the Melkart of Malta or the Melikertes of Megara. It was
the same Melkart, the same King of the Town, whom the Semites worshipped everywhere, as our sailors everywhere
invoke the same Our-Lady (Notre-Dame), the same Queen of Angels. Similarly, our sailors here have Our-Lady of the
Guard, Our-Lady of Good Help, or of Good Rest, others Our-Lady of Health, or Our-Lady of Graces. Melkart was in
Malta the Lord of Tyre, Bal-Sour; at Megara, Melikertes was the Lord of the People, Bal-Minoa. Here are at least a few
other place names which appear to me to validate the complete interpretation of the complete formula “Herakleia Minoa.”
Another port of Hercules, on the western sea, has retained the name of Monaco up to our days. Pronouncing the name
is sufficent to evoke the site. At the edge of the Ligurian coast, in the vicinity of a land route which penetrates through the

108
mountains and passes through the opening of the Var up to an entrance to the mountains - our pass of Tende - and up to
the higher valley of the Po, Monaco is an almost insular rock, a “promontory above the sea” poorly attached to the
mainland and which hems in a small closed bay. It is of the same type as the old maritime establishments on the flank of a
foreign coast: The posessor of Monaco is, still today, independent of the adjacent sovereign. The entirely small harbor is
without importance to our navies:

Open to the east, between the coast of Mont Carlo and the rock of Monaco, the port offers to ships of all tonnage a good shelter
from the winds of south and north, in passing to the west: but it has only three cables of length and is frequented only by coasters.
The wind from the northeast blows there in very violent gusts and necessitates doubling the anchor. But the east wind, which raises a
large swell, is the only one to fear. At the foot of the rock of Monaco, the coast can be cruised at the distance of fifty meters. The
depth reaches forty meters at the entrance of the port, where the bottom is of gray mud with good purchase. But it diminishes rapidly
and is only ten meters, mud and vegetation, at one cable from the beach which occupies the depth of the bay, and above which is the
vast establishment of sea baths. One takes on water easily, either at Monaco itself, or at the watering place of Monte Carlo, in front
of the viaduct bridge.

Insular or nearly insular rock “which the town, the palace with crenellated towers and the fortifications still crown;”
bay open only to the winds from the east which are not frequent in this area; a long and low beach, favorable for hauling
of embarkations; double or triple watering places: there is a harbor of complete security and complete rest, where one has
nothing to fear from the sea or the natives. It is a precious thing on the barbaric coast where the mountaineers, shepherds,
hunters and brigands have always had a sad renown and where the sea, raised into great swells from the south, hits the
rocks and breaks on the sides of the stones and reefs:

“From Monaco to Etruria, there are no ports,” says Strabo: “the steep coast offers only beaches without extent and some
anchorages in open water. The cliffs of rocks overhang the coast and leave only a narrow passage to the route which borders the sea.
The Ligurians live on husbandry; milk and barley beer are their only drink; they occupy the coast and the mountains; all the land is
covered with forests. The port of Monaco is a harbor only for a small number of small boats. One sees the temple of Herakles
Monoikos there. The Ligurians in the vicinity have been celebrated for their brigandage on land and for their piracy.”

From whence came this Herakles Monoikos, and what could his name signify? The fantasies of the Greeks do not have
much difficulty in finding multiple meanings. Herakles, said the ones, was named thus because, in the temple, he had
allowed no adornment, no attendant; he wished to live alone, μόνος οικέω. But no, said the others: the reason is that in
this place Herakles the traveler came to sleep one night; he was tired; he wished to sleep peacefully; he abstained from the
nocturnal feats with the daughters of his hosts of which he had the habit; he sleeps alone; he made the bed or room apart,
μόνος οικέω... There again is a pretty pun. The true reason is that the Phoenicians had in that place their port of Melkart of
Repose or of the Stop, ‫מנוחה מלקרת‬-‫בעל‬, Melkart Bal Menokha. He was a god of Repose, on the restless seas, a god of
Peace, among the hostile tribes: The Scripture gives to Solomon the Pacific the title of ‫איש מנוחה‬, Is Menokha, Man of
Repose. The port was a place of repose, the Port of Repose, of which Melkart was the Lord: “Here is the Place of
Repose,” says the scripture, “‫מנוחת‬-‫מקוס‬, Makom-Menokha, the House of Repose, ‫מנותה‬-‫בית‬, Beth-Menokha,” τόπος της
καταπαύσεως, οικος αναπαύσεως, translate the Seventy. It is precisely here that Hercules rests and sleeps. From
Menokha, the Greek fantasy draws Monoikos without difficulty, from which the Romans make their monaecus, and the
Italians Monaco. But the best Greek transcription - in eliminating the pun - would be Menoa or Minoa, Μινωα
The third consonant of Menokha is, in effect, a ‫ח‬, het, a very strong aspiration which the Semitic throats pronounce
without difficulty, but which most of the other peoples are incapable of reproducing. It occupies in the Phoenician
alphabet the place of the letter h in our latin alphabet. The Greeks will at first employ it as a sign of aspiration: it takes the
place of the “rough breathing” [ ‘ ] in their archaic inscriptions; then, finding it useless as a consonant, they make of it the
sign for the long vowel η. This Semitic consonant, doubled by the Arabs, has given them two aspirations, the one strong
and rolled, which we can represent by kh or khr (it is at the beginning of the word that our newspapers have transcribed
Khoumirs or Khroumirs), the other weakened, which we are unable to render in our languages where the aspiration has

109
virtually disappeared. The Hebrews and the Phoenicians should also have given two values to their ‫ח‬: also in the
transcriptions of Hebrew and Phoenician words, the Latins and Greeks sometimes render the ‫ ח‬by a k, a χ, an h, or a sign
of aspiration, “rough breathing” or “soft breathing”, sometimes they neglect it entirely: ‫ חבור‬has given Χαβώρας and
Αβόρρας, ‫ חבקוק‬Αμβάκουκ, ‫ חבר‬Χάβερ and ‘Άβαρ, ‫ אחאב‬Άχαβ, ‫ אחונדב‬Αχίναδαβ and Αίναδαβ, ‫ נחום‬Νάουμ, ‫נחשן‬
Ναάσων, etc. It appears that in falling within the words, when it is not transcribed, the vanished consonant perhaps
brought to the Greek ear a prolongation of the preceeding vowel: ‫יהוחנן‬, Iokhanan, has given to the Ionian Greeks
Ιωάννης, and ‫נוחה‬, Nokha, has given them Noe, Νωή. The word ‫מנוחה‬, Manokha, itself is a proper noun in the Scripture:
the Greeks have transcribed it into Manoe, Μανωέ, and into Manokhes, Μανώχης. We will comprehend that Menokha or
Minokha had similarly given at the same time Minoa, Μινώα, and, as a pun, Monoikos, Μονοικος.
The primitive title of our Sicilian station, Makara or Herakleia Minoa, is thus Melkart-Minokha, the town of Melkart of
Repose where, as the coins say, the Cape of Melkart of Repose. And our Megarian isle, νησος Μινώα, is truly an isle
Minoa, ‫מנוחה‬-‫אי‬, I-Minokha, an Isle of Repose, resembling the Houses of Repose, the Places of Repose which the scripture
furnishes us. And for our Megarian isle, if we do not have a doublet which affirms to us the truth of the etymology, we at
least have an indication: “A son will be born to you,” says the Eyernal to David, “who will be a man of repose (is-
menokha): I will give him repose against all enemies; his name will be the Pacific, Salomon, because I will give peace
(salam) and repose to Israel during his reign.” Our Megarian isle, of Repose, is near the isle of Peace, Salamine, whose
western coasts border the Megarian strait.
Salamine had a Phoenician station. Everything proves it, first its toponymy, then its topology. The geographers agree
in recognizing in their different Salamines, Σάλαμις, of the Greeks, a Semitic word, ‫שלם‬, salam. The Greek etymology is
helpless to render account of the word. The ancients had uselessly invented some fine puns, σαλεύειν, σάλος = κλυδων,
says Hesychius, who also says σάλα = φροντίς, Βλάβη, and again ασαλαμίνιος = άπειρος θαλάσσις. Our isle of Salamine
had a series of other names. It was Πιτύουσσα, the Isle of Pines - the central mount of the isle, covered in pines which
made a dark shade over the whiteness of the limestone, is today called the Black Montain, Μαυροβουνό. Salamine is still
called Κύχρεια, Ιαουνία, Σκιράς, Πέλανα. But it does not appear that one or the other of the names can furnish material
for a doublet. On the other hand, ‫שלם‬, salam, in all the Semitic languages, signifies the peace, the security, the health.
Salamis is an Isle of Health, Νησος Σωτηραίας, if one wishes to make a Greek name on the patron of the Λιμήν Σοτηρίας,
Port of Health, of the Arabic Sea, ‘όν εκ κινδύνων τινες σωθέντες των ‘ηγεμόνων απο του συμβεβηκότος ο‘ύτως
εκάλεσαν, “to which the kings, having escaped from shipwreck, give the name in memory.” All of the systems have
derived place names from the common noun: the Scripture has towns of Salam, towns of the Peace; Dahr-al-Salam, the
Stay of the Security, and Nahr-al-Salam, the River of the Security, are the names applied by the Arabs to Baghdad and the
Tigris. Salamis is an Isle of the Peace, Νησος Ειρήνης: such as the isle the Greeks knew on the coasts of the Taprobane.
Salam signifies the peace with the men (Σαλάμιοι, says Etienne of Byzance, έθνος Αράβων. Σαλαμα δε ‘η ειρήνη.
ωνομάσθησαν δε απο τοθ ένσπονδοι γενέσθαι τοις Ναβατίοις.) or the peace with the gods: “Gedeon sacrificed and
roasted the sheep, and made offering of the flesh, the juice and the unleavened bread... and the Lord says to Gedeon:
Peace to you... Gedeon raises an altar in that place, which is still called Peace of the Lord, Salam Iahve.” The Semites
have a sacrifice which the seventy call the sacrifice of the peace or of health, θυσία ειρηνική, θυσία σωτηρίου: it is the ‫זבה‬
‫שלמים‬, zebah selamim, or ‫שלם‬, salam, in brief, for which Leviticus gives the ritual rules: “if one offers an ox... ‫בקר‬,
bakar.” The small river of our isle of Salamine is called Bokaros: the Hebrew word ‫בוקר‬, boker or bokar, which would
say the Cowherd, would give us, transcribed in Greek, Bokaros, βώκαρος. The first thalassocracies should have carefully
noted the small river, because the isle entirely lacks springs, and watering places are rare in all the neighboring seas... To
the north of the River of the Cowherd, the Salaminian coast has its cape of the Oxhide, Βούδορον.
The toponymy of Salamine thus appears foreign, and it corresponds to a topology which surely is not Greek. If, in
effect, we cast our eyes on a map of Salamine, that which first strikes us is the relocation of the capitol through the ages.
The modern town is at the foot of the large bay of Kolouri, in a site which has its advantages in the depth, the safety and
the size of the harbor, but which has the grave fault of completely lacking fresh water: “The harbor,” say the Nautical
Instructions, “offers neither water nor provisions.” Nevertheless, for a native capitol, which can dig cisterns or maintain

110
wells, it is the site surely indicated: at the point of a dominating hill, the town surveys all the approaches of the isle and
observes the descent of pirates or corsairs: “one sees the village on the mountain; from whichever coast of the isle one
wishes, one sees it, because it as at the summit.” But the natives of Salamine have almost always lived in the commercial
and political dependence of their neighbor. From the beginning of historical time, an autonomous community has never
existed on the isle. From the earliest antiquity, Megara and Athens competed for it. Athens ends up acquiring it. The
capitol of Athenian Salamine is installed facing Piraeus, on the strait of Psyttaly. It was a convenient echelle for the
passage to Athenian land, also convenient for the transit between the two Athenian gulfs of Phalera and Eleusis. But, on
the word of Strabo, it was a new town there, and we see well what relations of politics and commerce it created. The site
is on a strait with Attica. The Athenians hold the capitol in their hands, not only for the incursions with which it can
menace them in times of war, but also for the thousand daily necessities in times of peace: “The strait,” say the Nautical
Instructions, “offers an excellent harbor; but one cannot obtain fresh water from the neighboring coasts; it all needs to
come from Piraeus, and the strong winds from the south occasionally raise a heavy sea between the two points.” Before
Salamine belonged to the Athenians - in Homeric times, it was the independent realm of Ajax - it had its old town, says
Strabo, turned toward Egina and toward the south, την μεν αρχαίαν έρημον προς Αίγιναν τετραμμένην και προς νότον.
The southern point of the isle presents in effect a small bay which, open toward Egina, protected from the waves and the
wind by the small archipelago of Colombes, is a site very favorable for a port of refuge and a town of commerce. An old
watch tower still exists in the cove to repel the attacks of corsairs. Some wells and small streams assure the availability of
water.
The advantages of the bay and the islets, with the habits of commerce which they suppose, are familiar to us. The
situation of the emporium, on the other hand, denotes a foreign, preHellenic traffic. For the port turns its back to the
plains of the island, and to the Greek land. It opens itself to the high sea and to the arrivals of foreigners. Do we need to
recount further how the Mediterranean isles see their principal town move itself at the whim of the commercial currents,
how the Genoese Corsica had its great port facing Italy, at Bastia, and how French Corsica transports the capitol to face
France, at Ajaccio? In Sicily, the Greek commerce made the wealth of Syriacuse; the Carthaginian commerce makes the
greatness of Agrigente; the Italian commerce has created Palermo. The Turkish isle of Paros had its echelle on the
southeast coast, in the port of Trio, where the captain-pasha was installed every year to raise the tribute, the kharadj of the
isles; when Paros became Greek again, the port of Parikia was revived on the west coast, across from Greece, on the site
of the ancient Hellenic capitol. In almost all of the isles of the ancient archipelago, it can be noted that the old towns are
not turned toward the west or the northwest, that is to say toward the lands of Europe or of Asia peopled by the Greeks:
they all face the south or southeast, that is to say toward Egypt or Phonecia. At Rhodes, at Kos we have studied the
phenomenon. Lindos, the old town of Rhodes, opens its bay and points its rocky promontory toward the south and toward
Alexandria, πολυ προς μεσημβριαν ανατεινουσα και προς Αλεξανδρειαν μαλιστα. It is at Lindos that the Danaides,
coming from Egypt, founded the temple of Athena; it is at Lindos that Kadmos, coming from Phoenecia, consecrated the
sanctuary of Poseidon and left a great basin with an inscription. In Crete, similarly, it is at the south coast, across from
Africa, that Gortyne, the old capitol, has its two ports: when Minos establishes the thalassocracy in the Greek archipelago,
he transports the Cretan capitol to Knossos on the north coast, across from Greece. We see, at Santorini, the present town
dominates the great bay of the west, which opens itslf to boats coming from Greece; but the old town covered the
opposite promontory, on the southeast coast, and turned its beach, its points of debarkations, its spring frequented by
sailors and its cliffs pirced with Phoenician tombs to the arrivals from the Levant. At Seriphos, at Siphnos, at Keos, the
same alternation. And here, at Salamine, finally, the deplacement is totally parallel: the old capitol of the origins, turned
toward the sea of the southeast, was abandoned by the Hellenes, who will transport the new Greek emporium of the isle to
the north, facing the Greek lands.
For all the changes, the same cause should be retrieved. At Salamine, at Kos, at Rhodes, at Santorini, in Crete, etc., in
all the isles there can be but one commercial current, coming from the south or southeast, which has created the old
trading posts. The topology by itself will permit us to affirm the existence of the old traffic. But, as always, the toponymy
leads to the same conclusions. For the commercial current leaves in its trading posts a system of foreign place names

111
which presents nosense in Greek, Lindos, Oea, Thera, Seriphos, etc., and which is explained without difficulty by the
Semitic etymologies. It is the Phoenician current which, in our Salamine, after having created the old town, brings the
names of Salamis, Bokaros, etc. It is the current which, already more in the south, toward the entry of the Saronic gulf,
had left the Rock of the Birds, Skoula Abrot, which the Greeks name Skullaion. The Phoenician current goes past
Salamine-Isle of the Peace and, extending its advance toward the north, makes of Minoa the Isle of the Stop. There its
vessels stay. But the merchandise and people debarked continue their journey by land route They follow the beach of
Kerkyon and the Spring of Friendship. Then they cross the mountanous massif which separates the Boeotian basin from
the sea. They climb into Boeotia, toward the Town of Kadmos.

*
* *

The legend affirms to us that Kadmos, son of Agenor or of Phoinix, came from Sidon to found Boeotian Thebes. The
philologists can deny the tradition, which somewhat impedes their system of IndoEuropean Mythology. But the tradition
carries in itself the marks of its authenticity, toponymic and topologic marks.
I will not insist on the Toponymy. We have long since discovered the Semitic etymologies of the great names of the
Theban Legend, Kadmos, Europa, etc. But we have not adequately stated that the names form among them a complete
system, and that the entire system can be explained by a unique hypothesis. Kadmos and his sister Europa are born to
Phoinix or Agenor and Telephassa. The name of Phoinix speaks for itself. As for Telephassa, Delephat, Δέλεφατ,says
Heschius, is, among the Chaldeans, the name of the star of Aphrodite, the planet Venus. The star is double. It appears in
the morning and in the evening, before the dawn and before the dusk. It is called the Star of the Dawn, or of the Light,
Εωσφόρος, Φωσφόρος, and the Evening Star, ‘Έσπερος. Oriental astrology indicated that, male in the morning, the star
was female in the evening, or, more exactly, male from the rising to the setting of the sun and female from the setting to
the rising of the sun. For the Semites, the exact translation of Εωσφόρος, the Morning Star, would be derived from the
root ‫קדם‬, kadam: ‫קדם‬, Kedem, signifies the east. Similarly, it is the root ‫ערב‬, ‘arab, and the participial or substantive form
‫ערובה‬, ‘eroba, which would designate the setting. Erobe leads us to Europa, Ευρώπη, by a popular pun which, for the
comprehension of the foreign word, changes the β into π: Ευρώπη, says Hesychius, σκοτεινη, χώρα της δύσεως, Europa
is the western, the dark. The star of Venus, Delephat-Telephassa, is truly the mother of the hero Kadmos and the heroine
Europa (in Crete, Europa becomes the wife of the King of the Star, Asterios), and we have here an astronomical legend
completely parallel to that which we will discover presently for Io. The Venus of the Morning or of the East, Delephat-
Kadem, is male: the Hellenes say that Telephassa is mother of Kadmos. The Venus of the Evening or of the West,
Delephat-Erobe, is female: the Hellenes say that Telephassa is also mother of Europa. It is always the same
anthropomorphism to the Greek mind.
For the name of Thebes, the following of our studies will uncover an Egypto-Phoenician doublet, which will give us
the veritable etymology of the Semitic word. But the topology alone would furnish us a proof for the Phoenician
foundation. The foreigner Kadmos, coming from the east, founds Thebes, and the site of Thebes would prove by itself
that the bazaar and the capitol of Boeotia in effect suppose a foreign commerce coming from the eastern seas. Thebes is
not in the middle of the Boeotian basin, but at one of the extremities. The indigenous capitol and the agricultural market
of Boeotia should be in the middle of the fields and harvests, in the center of the basin, in some site comparable to the
Orchomenes of the Minyens. It is at Orchomene, as the legend would have it, that the first native power should flourish.
Orchomenes is almost at the middle of the basin, and the laborsof drainage, accomplished by the ancient inhabitants, have
given them a wholly fertile plain which the muds or marshes of Copais flood today, but which the modern engineers are
going to finish recovering tomorrow. Distant from the center, Thebes has other advantages: it is at the crossing of land
routes which traverse Boeotia and which, especially for the eastern navies, would serve to join the seas of the south with
the sea of the north. A Phoenician thalassocracy implies a counting house and a fortress in this place.

112
 It is necessary to rectify certain ideas which we can have of Boeotia and its commercial rôle. B oeotia for us is a
continental plain, without great relationships to the sea, a land of peasants and herdsmen, without great influence on the
traffic and routes of maritime commerce. But we should not forget the habits of the old sailors and our “law of
isthmuses.” For the peoples of the sea, Boeotia is not only the rich and luxuriant plain which the ancient geographers and
poets praise to us, the farm country from which the navigators draw their provisions, their cargos of wheat, fruit,
vegetables, wool and animals, by the mediation of native caravans. It is other reasons which drive the navigators
themselves to climb, penetrate and stay in the interior of the land, to posess some points of defense and warehouses there:
Boeotia is a crossraods of isthmic routes. “Boeotia,” says Ephore, “has a great advantage over all its neighbors; it touches
three seas and the great number of its excellent ports results that it is at the confluence of the routes which come from the
seas of Italy, of Sicily, of Africa, for the one part, and from Macedonia, the Hellespont, Cyprus and Egypt, for the other.”
The fortunate location of Boeotia between the three seas was proverbial among the ancients. The manuals of geography
described it as the best of the best, and the supposed Scymnus of Chios celebrated it in his pan pipe verse: “Here is
Boeotia, great land, favorable location; it alone, they say, joins three seas and posesses ports to all the horizons.” This we
attribute to our law of isthmuses and to the traversing of the land by the caravans of the thalassocracies. The history of
modern Boeotia can provide us its primitive history. Boeotia was always crossed by foreign caravans. Mainland Greece,
in the power of the Occidentals, French, Catalans or Venetians, has its great bazaar, its center of the commercial and
military routes in Boeotia, in the town of Livadi, which the Turks then retain for the capitol. The Occidental commerce
had created a trading post, because Livadi had at the southwest extremity of the Boeotian basin, at the point of
termination, on the interior plain, the two routes coming from the western sea, I wish to say, from the Gulf of Corinth.
The two routes come from the two safest and most trafficked harbors of the gulf on the northwest coast: the one comes
from the bay of Salone or of Krisa, and the other comes from the bay of Aspra Spitia or Anticyre. The first of the harbors,
during antiquity, was the most important. The ancient great route, the λεωσφόρος of Pausanias, left from Krisa. Passing
the foot of the great temple of Delphi, then passing along the escarpments of Parnassas, it took the valley of the Plistos
with the celebrated crossroads of the Three Roads where Oedipus kills his father Laios. Leaving from the bay of Aspra
Spitia, the other route, difficult and mountainous - ‘ετέρα τραχειά τε ‘οδος και ορεινη - was in the past the less
frequented. But, being shorter, it has become the the great commercial way of the moderns and, replacing for the
Christians the oracle of the Delphic temple, the famous sanctuary of St.-Luc marks one of the stops there, after a thousand
years: “The port of Aspra Spitia,” say the Nautical Instructions, “is the echelle of the town of Livadia and makes a
considerable commerce.” The two routes from the sea join at the edge of the Boeotian basin. On the last hills which view
the plain, near the copious and always clear springs, Livadi is situated. From Livadi, diverging to the north, to the
northeast and to the east, the routes, radiating across Boeotia, take themselves to the other end of the basin to cross the
mountains or the coastal hills to redescend to the echelles of the sea of Eubea, Aulis, Anthedon, Atalante, Thronion or
Lamia.
But if Livadi is the bazaar of the Occidentals, it is Thebes which will have the rôle for an Oriental navy. At the eastern
end of the Boeotian basin, Thebes occupies the position exactly symmetrical to that of Livadi, and also a completely
convenient location. Its hills with steep slopes also offer themselves to view the neighborning plain. A spring flows at the
foot, which the legend of Cadmus has made celebrated, the spring Dirke where the Phoenician hero made battle against
the serpent, son of the land, and against the native giants. The routes from the eastern sea end here; from here, diverging
across the plain, toward the echelles dispersed to the four quarters of the horizon, pass the routes of Aegosthenes, Kreusis,
Thisbe and Bulis on the gulf of Corinth, of Anthedon, Aulis, Delion and Oropos on the strait of Eubea, of Eleusis and
Megara on the Saronic gulf; “Thebes,” says an ancient geographer, “has no rival as a business town. The abundance of
fresh water, the verdure of its gardens, the sweetness of its breezes, the low price of its vegetables, of its fruits and of all
the necessities make a delightful stay there.”… The legend thus has reason to place here an eastern Livadi, a Phoenician
market and retreat.
The legend of Cadmus has the hero debark at the port of Delphi: by the Three Crossroads and the same route to Livadi,
Cadmus came, across the plain, to Thebes. It is possible that only the renown of the oracle of Delphi had made him

113
imagine that itinerary. It is also possible that the gulf of Delphi may have had some station of Oriental comerce; the
legends and the old Delphic traditions retain the memory of Cretan sailors who would have come to debark there. The
study of the Telemachaia has retrieved the maritime route which the Phoenicians followed, from Crete toward Pylos and
toward the divine Elide. Rounding the Peloponnesus by the west, the prolonged route was able to finally lead the
Phoenician galleys to the gulf of Corinth and to the echelle of Krisa: we will study this later. But the Oriental commerce
had a shorter way to reach the bazaar of Boeotia. This way left the Saronic gulf from our Megarian harbors.
Two routes ascend toward Thebes from the depth of the Saronic gulf. Both leave from Megara and Minoa. But the one
traverses the high mountain of Kitheron by the pass of Eleutheres: it also crosses a sacred land, a great Hellenic sanctuary,
Eleusis. The other route skirts the mountain and crosses the fields of Plateia. The two routes do not have an equal
importance. The second is only a path. But, on one or the other, it is easy to retrieve some evidence, some traces of the old
preHellenic commerce. On the great route, Kitheron has retained, I believe, an indisputable memory: Here are at least two
texts which perhaps suffice to approach it:

To commemorate the reconciliation of Zeus and Hera, the Plateans celebrate the Daidala, a celebration so named because of the
crucibles (χοανος, choanos, “xoana”), which were called dedales, δαιδαλα, cunningly wrought. The Daidala came every seven years,
an official of the country told me; to speak the truth, they come more often, without a fixed interval. The first Daidalas, or small
Daidalas, are peculiar to the Plateans…But there are further the great Daidalas which the Boeotians celebrate with them every sixty
years. During the interval, at each small Daidalon, they prepared a crucible, and they were supposed to have fourteen altogether. The
fourteen crucibles were distributed among the Boeotian towns. The large towns, Platea, Korona, Thespias, Orchomene, Tanagra,
Cherona, Lebada, Thebes, each have one of them. The small towns joined together for a single crucible. Each crucible was placed in
a chariot and, following an order of drawing lots, the representatives of the towns conducted the chariots to the summit of Kitheron.
There an altar had been prepared of dressed stones, arranged as the stones of a construction, and the pyre was crowned with dry
branches. Each town or association of towns sacrifices a cow to Hera and a bull to Zeus. The victims, sprinkled with wine and
incense, were burned with the Daidalas. The rich citizens also sacrificed, the same as the poor. All the victims and the altar itself
were to be burned together and totally consumed. An immense flame arose which could be seen from afar: I saw it.

To the Boeotian holocaust, compare a holocaust of Syria:

Of all the ceremonies which I have seen, the most solemn is that of the spring, which they call Piraeus or the Light. They cut large
trees which they set in the court of the temple. They lead goats, sheep and other live animals which they tether to the trees. In the
interior of the pyre they further place birds, clothing, and gold and silver objects. When all is prepared, they parade the statues of the
gods around the trees, then they sit it on fire, and all burns. An immense multitude comes to this ceremony from all of Syria and the
neighboring countries: each bring the gods and the statues which they have prepared for the ceremony.

The two compared texts speak for themselves. Notice however the rôle of the number seven in the Platean rites: seven
years and fourteen daidala. The Hebraic holocausts entail seven lambs or fourteen lambs, and some of them are renewed
during seven days. Seven is the ritual number of the Semites. We have already encountered it in the navigations of the
Phoenicians, where the seventh day is supposed to be the day of the Lord. Presently we are going to find it frequently in
the legends of the Homeric Greeks: the Odysean navigations are ordinarily rhythmed with the figure seven. The Thebes of
Boeotia is the Town of Seven Ports; it has, they say, seventy stades of circumference; Kadmos, after having wandered
seven years, remained and rested and consacrated to the gods the eighth year. We also note that the rite of the holocaust is
not frequent among the Hellenes, an economical and easygoing people, who ordinarily burn only a small part of the
offering, the hide, the bones, the entrails, the viscera, the parts which men do not wish to, or cannot eat: the truly edible
flesh is saved for the priest and for his assistants. The Odyssey nevertheless appears to know sacrifices similar to our
Platean or Syrian holocausts: “When you will return to Ithaca,” Says Circe to Ulysses, “you will sacrifice by filling the
pyre with precious objects, πυρήν τ’ εμπλήσεμεν εσθλων.” But ordinarily the divine pyre is only filled with fragrant
smoke. The verb θυμιω, which signifies burn, smoke, cause to burn, cause to smoke in honor of the gods, signifies more
specifically burn incense. It had given the substantive θυμιατηριον, the censor. Thus the first town which the

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Carthaginian Hannon founds in passing through the Pillars of Hercules is called, in the Greek translation of his periple,
Thymiaterion.
We have discussed the sense and the origin of the word at length. I believe it to be authentically Greek. For the Greek
translation of a Carthaginian periple contains two sorts of place names. The one, simply transcribed from the original, are
used with difficulty in Greek speech: “We arrive at Soloeis, Σολόεις, a promontory covered with trees;” we will see
presently that Soloe is a Phoenician word signifying the Rocks, the Rocky Cape. But other names are evidently translated
from the Phoenician into Greek, such as the Horn of the West, ‘Εσπέρου Κέρας, the Chariot of the Gods, Θεων Όχημα,
the Horn of the South, Νότου Κέρας, etc. I think that Thymiaterion is one of the translated names. It is presented as a
completely Greek word. When they have wished to see in it a foreign word, it has been necessary to resort to strange
etymological play. We can explain without dificulty that the demireligious word has been given by the Carthaginian
explorers to their first station outside the Pillars, in unknown lands. Hannon founded a sanctuary of the God of the Sea,
ένθα Ποσειδωνος ‘ιερον ‘ιδρυσάμενοι: he made the propitiatory sacrifices, burned the offerings and incense; it is truly the
Censor, θυμιατηριον. Skylax, who names the station Thumiateria, adds: “From the point of cape Sloeis stretches the most
renowned and holy, ονομαστοτατη και ‘ιερωτάτη, region of Libya, and on the point of the cape is erected a great altar,
επεστι βωμος μέφας.”
It is thus necessary to suppose a Semitic original which translates the Greek word Thymiaterion. The original should
have been derived from the root ‫קטר‬, k.th.r., smoke, burn, and the perfect synonym of the Greek θυμιω, burn, or cause to
burn the offerings or the incense, would be the piel form, ‫קטר‬, kither, with the two vowels characteristic of the form i and
e. At least it is the piel form which the Seventy translate as θυμιο in the phrase which repeats so frequently in the book of
Kings: “they sacrificed and offered incense on the high places, εθυιων εν τοις ‘υφηλοις.” For the place names of the high
places, if one wished to derive a proper noun from ‫קטר‬, kither, it would be necessary to resort to the models which we
have in the Scripture, ‫לבנון‬, Liban-on, ‫הרםון‬, Herm-on, ‫צלםון‬, Salm-on, etc.: in studying the names of Palestinian
mountains, it appears that the termination ‫ון‬, on, joined to the verbal root, may be the rule. We would thus have ‫קטרון‬,
kitheron, and we find the place name Kitheron in the Bible: it is the name of a Canaanite region or old town, which was
saved by the tribe of Zabulon and which the Canaanites continue to occupy in lieu of taxes. The Greek transcription
Kitheron-Κιθαιρων was applied exactly to the Hebrew proper noun, for it conserved well the special vowelization i and e
of the piel form. The Kitheron would be θυμιατηριον, the Mount of the Holocaust or of the Smoke, the Mount of Piraeus,
as Pausanias says, of the Light, as Lucien says, the Censor, whose column of flame and smoke they see from afar,
μεγίστην ταύτην φλόγα και εκ μαψροτάτου σύνοπτον οιδα αρθεισαν: the dedales conserved and dried during seven years
are full of aromatics, θυμιαμάτων πλήρη. The Kitheron at first had borne the very Greek name of Asterion, Αστέριον, the
Mountain of the Star, “because,” says Etienne of Byzance, “the summit shines at a distance like a star.” Εφ ‘υψηλου
όρους κειμένη τοις πόρρωθεν ‘ως αστηρ φαίνεται.
The route of Kitheron thus was followed by the Semitic caravans as it is today followed by the convoys of Athens. At
an interval of twenty-five or thirty centuries, the same conditions of commerce have imposed the same route and the same
capitol on Boeotia. An oriental traffic, coming from Megara, as in the past, or from Athens, as today, makes Thebes the
Boeotian capitol, beacause it makes the passes of Kitheron the great commercial route. Examine that which is produced
before our eyes. The capitol imposed on Boeotia by the navigators and by the routes of the Occident, Livadi, the great
Livadi of the French, the Venetians and the Turks, loses its wealth and population in measure as the traffic by the gulf of
Corinth diminishes. Bit by bit, Thebes, which had nothing forty years ago, again becomes the great town, the seat of
authority and of business. We are going to take up the history again at length. There was a very long time, preHellenic,
when Thebes had nothing. The native capitol at that time was Orchomene, a little to the north of Livadi. The native
commerce and the immigrants coming from the north had created the capitol at the point where the routes coming from
the north, from Atlanta and from the Thermopyles, converge from the last hills toward the center of the basin; the
Minyens, coming from Thessaly, had climbed from the Eubean strait and the Malian gulf; it is why their town is at the
exit of the routes from the north. Orchomene was rich, Orchomene was powerful up to the day when Thebes was founded.
The original political and military rivalry of the two towns was later expressed through their commercial competition.

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Thebes ended up being the importer, when the development of the great ports of the east, Corinth, Megara, Egina or
Athens, assured it the monopoly of the Boeotian traffic. Orchomene fell as Livadi falls today. But in Greco-Roman times,
when the echelles of the Saronic gulf lose their traffic and when the Occidental sailors come to harbors in the gulf of
Corinth, Thebes declines and empties in its turn. Strabo describes it to us as a simple village. Dion Chrysostome sees the
low town deserted and only the arcopolis still inhabited: in the middle of the deserted agora, a statue stands amid the
ruins. Pausanias finally tells us: “The lower town is all completely deserted: there is nothing left there but the temples.
The Acropolis still has a few inhabitants; it has taken the name of Thebes in place of its ancient name of Kadme.” Livadi
or Lebade is again the great Roman town of the Boeotians: “it presents an aspect as ornate as the as the richest towns in
Greece.”
Between Megara and Thebes, Kitheron is not the only location of the great Phoenician route. Legends, tombs and holy
places of foreign origin, it seems, are spaced out at diverse stops. In the village of Megara, there was the tomb of the
mother of Hercules, Alkmene: she came there from Argos to Thebes; she died on the road. At the pass of Eleusis, the
chiefs of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes were buried. At the pass of Eleutheres, it was the soldiers of the same
expedition. And perhaps, in the speech of certain savants, we hear a religious memory of the epoch in the mysteries of
Eleusis as much as the particularities attaching to oriental practices. I do not have to discuss nor likewise to expound on
the so logical and likely conclusions which M. Foucart has drawn solely from the studies of the ancient texts: the legend
of Eleusis recognized in Eumolpos, who founded the mysteries, a son of the sea, a descendant of Poseidon, a foreigner
coming from Thrace (like Cadmus) or from Ethiopia; the ancients related the Eleusian cult to Egypt. As they similarly
made the hero Lelix, founder of the Megarian Karia come from Egypt. For us to hold to our geographical arguments, the
sanctuary of Eleusis is situated, like the other great temples of Greece (Heraion of Argos, Hyakinthion of Amycles,
Olympieion of the Elide, Delphi of Phocide), at a short or long distance from the port of debarkation, at the point where
the foreign convoys ordinarily meet the native caravans: the hero Eleusis passed for a grandson of Okeanos. And names
of foreign aspect, of places or relatives of the hero, remain in the land of Eleusis.
Near the Eleusian Kephise, whose current is much more violent than that of the Attic Kephise - ‘ρει δε Κήφισος προς
Ελευσινι βιαιότερον παρεχόμενος του προτέρου ‘ρευμα - they show the tomb of a certain Zarax or Zarex, ‘ηρψον
Ζάρηκος: “They allege that Apollo taught him music. I believe that Zarax is a foreigner come to the land from
Lacedemonia and, if a hero Zarax of Athens truly exists, I have nothing to say about it.” [Thucydides] On the Laconian
coast, in effect, one finds a port of Zarax. This coast which “furnishes the best purple shells after those of Phoenicia,”
presents two harbors, neighboring but very different. To begin with, there is an islet, joined to the land by a thin jetty of
sand and rocks, point Minoa, άκρα Μινώα, or the isle Minoa, νησος Μινώα, totally resembling our Megarian Minoa, with
the spring of Ino in the vicinity, Ινους καλούμενον ‘ύδωρ: the spring is a deep hole - a black “eye”, said the myth; - it is
not a flowing stream. The port, which ajoins, is called Zarax (present port of Hieraka): it is a sort of long fjord or rocky
channel which holds the ouflow of several torrents, with a very good harbor, άλλως μεν ευλίμενον χωρίον. We will later
see at greater length that the coast was frequented by Phoenician fleets, and how numerous are the memories of them it
has preserved. Zarax should be one of these: the root ‫זרק‬, z.r.k. , signifies pour in Hebrew. After the Port of the Spring,
Ino, we have the Port of the Outflow or of the Current, Zarax, which would surely be a name coming from the foreigner
in Laconian land, ξένον μεν αφικόμενον ες την Λακεδαιμόνιον. It similarly appears that a doublet, under the form of
anthropomorphic legend, permits us to verify our etymology: for the hero Zarax of Eleusis, Ζάρηξ, had for a daughter
Rhoio, ‘Ροίω, that is to say, the Current (‘ρον, ‘ροία, ‘ροιάς, etc.): in ascending from Megara, town of Ino-the-Spring,
toward Kitheron, mountain of the Censor, the caravans would have to pass the Kephise, which, dry during the summer,
becomes, during the winter or after the storms, a great current of turbulent waters, ‘ρευμα βιαιότερον, the outflow of the
gorges of Eleusis and of Oinoe, the Saranda-Potamos, Forty-Rivers, of today: ‫זרק‬, Zarak, the Phoenicians would say;
Rhoio, say the Hellenes. And the Odyssey would give us as always the most exact translation: it knows a harbor of Ithaca
which is called the Port Rheithron, the Port of the Current, λιμήν ‘Ρειθρον, in contrast to the other harbor of the isle
where the Nymphs have their spring in the cavern.

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 In historic times, the great route of Kitheron was doubled by a difficult path which, by Pagae and Aegosthenes, wound
around the mountain and crossed the lands of Platea: it is the path which Agesilas follows to reënter the Peloponnesus
from Boeotia, when the Athenians of Chabrias guard the defile of Eleutheres. But, dangerous, narrow, exposed to terrible
squalls from the gulf, the road was followed only in case of necessity: on its course, at the town of Ereneia, they show the
tomb of a daughter of Cadmus, Autonoë, who had come to live and die there.

*
* *

I thus believe that, on the route leading from Sidon, the town of Phoenix or of Agenor, to Thebes, the town of Cadmus,
it suffices to explore the southern coasts of the Isle of the Peace, Salamis, the Isle of the Stop, Minoa, and the Rock of the
Sparrowhawk, Skula Nis, to retrieve, by virtue of the place names, the emplacement of a Phoenician emporium. At the
entry of the passes which penetrate into the bay of Eleusis, the three points of debarkation, of defense or of surveillance,
the three lookouts and the trading post may support and complete each other. But an essential thing for it is still missing,
the watering place. To have water, the sailors needed to go to the Spring of Friendship, Alope, or, better, to the Rock of
the Cavern, Megara, under which or near which the Spring of the Dispute, Sithnides, and the Spring of Melkart, Ino
Melikertes, were able to assure the supply. It is near the springs that the bazaar is installed and the Town of the Cavern,
Karia Megara is built. The natives related that in the land Lelix had reigned, who, coming from Egypt, was a son of
Poseidon and of Libya, αφικόμενον έξ Αιγύπτου, παιδα δε Ποσειδωνος και Λιβύης. But they also said that the town was
then Nisa and that the hero Megareus came later from Boeotia to found Megara.
The legends signify, in historic language, that Nisa was the point of debarkation of the foreigners, Megara the bazaar
of the natives, and that Boeotia at that time had a port facing Salamine: all things perfectly possible. In our recalling of the
habits of the primitive sailors, we know that the navigators traversed the isthmuses and the peninsulas: Ephore told us that
Boeotia is a peninsula bathed by all the Greek seas; it is a veritable isthmus between the gulfs of the south and the channel
of the north, between the seas of Corinth or of Megara and the Eubean or Maliac seas. Let us recall such a route which we
have studied between the Eubean sea and the Saronic gulf, the isthmic route of Dekelia. Across the Attic isthmus, the
caravans debarking at Oropos come to regain the sea at Piraeus. Across Boeotia, from Chalkis to Megara, we can trace an
exactly parallel route. When Piraeus is once again nothing, when Megara is the emporium of the Saronic gulf, the
Boeotian route advantageously replaces the Attic route of Dekelia. It is then across Boeotia that the Eubean convoys
descend toward the foreign fleets and that the foreign caravans climb to meet them. At mid-road between the two seas,
Thebes marks the principal stop. Thus when the route is followed, Thebes is the bazaar, and reciprocally, when Thebes is
the bazaar, there need to be two echelles at the two ends of the land route, one on the sea of the north, the other on the sea
of the south. This is why, in Homeric times, Thebes has the two echelles of Nisa and Aulis.
Aulis is the port of the Achaeans on the strait of Eubea: it is at Aulis that the epic has the fleet of the King of Kings
amass. Nisa also figures in the Iliad: Nisa at that time has the place of Megara. For the Homeric poems do not similarly
mention the name of Megara. On the other hand, the Catalog of Vessels ranks among the Boeotian towns Nisa the Divine,
Νισάν τε ζαθένη. The inland town of Megara no longer exists; but the local legend has always related that Nisa was at
that time the echelle and the town Μέγαρα, says Pausanias, πρότερον Νισα καλουμένη. In Hellenic times, the
philologists, commentators and geographers vainly seek the Homeric Nisa in the Boeotian basin. Their Boeotia has no
Nisa - ‘η γαρ Νισα ουδαμου φαίνεται της Βοιωτίας. They cannot imagine the Megarian Nisa because, in their time, all
commercial ties between Thebes and Megara are broken: Thebes traffics with Chalkis and Piraeus. The commentators add
to the mistake. They thus correct the Homeric text and the ones read Isos, Ισόν τε ζαθέην, the others Kreusa, Κρευσάν τε
ζαθέην, and still others Phares, Φαράς τε ζαθέας. Some of them, finally, discover in the Helikon a town of Nysa, which
appears invented for the needs of the cause: Strabo and the scholiasts, who copy it, are the only ones to speak of it to us;
Hesychius invents another Boeotian Nisa, near Erythres, he says. Boeotia has never had an Erythres; but on the coast of

117
Eubea , a Nysa is near Eretria. We clearly see the invention or error of Hesychius. The error or invention of Strabo is less
easy to prove. But Nisa, in Homer, is divine, ζαθέν, and this epithet of divine, ζαθέν, appears reserved by the poet for isles
or coastal towns: Killa of the Troad, Pharai of Messenia, Krisa of Phocide, Kythera of Laconia. It is a peculiarity to which
we will return. I believe, then, that the Iliad truly speaks of Nisa, the Megarian echelle: in Homeric times, Nisa is
Boeotian, as Megara and Aegosthenes became Boeotian again in Hellenistic times. We see, in effect, by the inscriptions
of the towns in the epoch of the successors of Alexander, that both of them then belong to the confederation of the
Beotians and date their decrees by the federal archons of Onchestos - it is the native town of the legendary Megareus. The
prosperity of Alexandria and the exploitation by the Greeks of the Levantine world established at that time a great route
of commerce between the Egyptian or Syrian Levant and Thebes, which is the great agricultural market of central Greece.
The new Hellenistic current takes up again the old ways and stops of the old Phoenician current: in the depth of the
Saronic gulf, Megara again becomes the Boeotian echelle, the point of embarkation of the mainland towns, the point of
debarkation of the foreign vessels…
But the Hellenistic commerce soon disappeared. The fleets of the Levant no longer sailed toward Greece, but toward
Italy and Rome. The Greek markets lost all importance and the Greek ports were abandoned. Megara became that which
it had been before the appearance of the first navigators: a poor burg in the arid plain; some useless echelles near the
marshy beach, which only the flocks of seabirds populate. Before the arrival of the Levantines from Tyre or Sidon, it was
that way there. The coast was covered with sea birds, of which the place names still retain the memory. The
sparrowhawks occupied Nisa. The seagulls camped on the neighdoring rise, the conical rock of St. Nicholas where the
topographers mistakenly place the ancient Minoa: it is the Rock of Athena the Gull, Αθηνας Αιθυίας καλούμενος
Σκόπελος, and on the rock was buried Pandion, whose son-in-law and daughters, Prokne and Philomela, had been
changed into hoopoes or sparrowhawks, swallows and nightingales. Across the isthmus rise the mounts of the Cranes, τα
άκρα της Φερανίας, where the hero Megaros was supposed to have fled during the flood of Deukalion. From the other
coast of the isthmus opened the Sea of the Kingfishers. It is not surprising that the isthmus between the two gulfs had
been the roosting place and rendezvous of the seabirds. The strait of Minoa especially, with its marshes and shallow
waters where the shools of fish come to spawn, could nourish the flocks of sparrowhawks and birds of prey : the other
channel toward the inner bay of Eleusis, the strait of Psyttalia on the north side of Salamine, may also be the Rock of the
Sparrowhawk where the devotees later raised the Tomb of the Sparrowhawk-Circe. But such an abundance of birds
indicates a land neither greatly frequented nor covered with towns. The first navigators found here only the winged hosts.
The rise of Nisa and the isle of Minoa resemble another such isle, of which the ancient geographers tell us: “The isle is
empty of men, but innumerable quantities of birds roost there,” – and the Odyssey itself knew one of the isles in the
Saronic gulf: “Egisthe then transports the bard to a desert isle where he abandons him to be the prey of birds,”

δη τότε τον μεν αοιδον άγων ες νησον ερήμην

κάλλιπεν οιωνοισιν ‘έλωρ και κύρμα γενέσθαι

Before the arrival of the Phoenicians, the plain was deserted: the topography shows us that Megara is not a native,
Hellenic town. But the Phoenicians establish on the coast. Their establishment should have been important, continuous
and durable. The presence alone of the Greco-Semitic couplets, in such great number and which have persisted for so
long, surely permits us to conclude the existence of a mixed population, which spoke or comprehended the two languages.
The subsequent history of the Mediterranean navies offers us entirely parallel phenomena. In the course of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Turkish archipelago, exploited by the French thalassocracy, goes to reproduce,
with almost negligible differences, the preHellenic archipelago exploited by the Levantine thallasocracies. In the Turkish
archipelago, the French commerce has some Minoas and Megares, I wish to say some reposoirs [lit: altar where relics
rest] (it is the word in use at that time), and some bazaars. At Milos, at Nios, at Mykonos, in all the French reposoirs, the
sojourn of the corsairs and the frequentation of Occidental negotiators create a mixed population and a Greco-Italo-
French pidgin whose traces still remain. Milos has retained, since that distant time, some families which have always

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remained French in language, in name and in nationality. The other isles also have Latin families which have not
abandoned the Catholocism of their fathers, in the midst of the Orthodox population. The toponymy of Milos still retains
the Bombarde capes and the Argentiere islets. The dialect of the Isles is full of foreign words. It is that the islanders have
taken the languages of the thalassocracies. The French were obliged to inculcate some notions of Italian, which was the
common language of the French, to their pilots of Milos, along with some words of French and English:

At Milos, the French Capucins are well enough lodged, at the entrance of the town, to the right in coming from the port. Some
years ago their rectory was demolished by the Turks, who complained that they fenced the stolen goods of the corsairs there. The
house has been raised again and the church is very attractive for the country. The King gave a thousand ecus for the building. The
French merchants, the captains of the vessels and the corsairs alike contributed according to their means. Of the two priests who are
in the rectory of Milos, the one conducts the Greek school, the other, the Italian.

At Megara, it was the same under the Phoenician thalassocracy. A population, a language, and foreign customs came
to be installed there, the memories of which have survived for a long time, as well as the place names which we will see.
The women of Megara, in historic times, had a particular costume named aphabroma: “Whence,” asks Plutarch, “comes
the costume aphabroma, αφάβρωμα, of the Megarians? Nisos, having lost his wife Abrote, ordered, as a gesture of
mourning, that the women of his realm should always wear the clothing of Abrote, the aphabroma. Later, it appears that
the goddess would wish to perpetuate the order, for the Megarians would wish to change the style; but the their oracle
always defended it.” At Milos, the natives also adopted the foreign style and were distinguished from other islanders by
their costumes.

At Milos, there is more traffic, and they are more wealthy than elsewhere, because the corsairs come to sell their captured goods
there. From this it results also that the people there are better dressed and more stylish than on the other isles. It is also the refuge of
many fraudulent bankrupts who return there from Marseille, from the Ciotat and from Martigues and who set themselves up as
important merchants among the poor ignorant Greeks, althogh they sell only knives, scissors, combs, needles and other trinkets of
that nature.

The frequentation of foreigners had made another consequence for the archipelago. In the times of Tournefort, “the
Miliots are good sailors; they serve as pilots of foreign vessels for the usage and famliarity with the lands of the
archipelago; the isle abounded in all sorts of goods at the times when the corsairs would bring their captured goods there,
like a great fair of the archipelago.” The same at Mykonos, where, “the French ships, destined for Smyrna and
Constantinople, take to port during bad weather and come to gather information regarding the war, and the sailors pass for
the best dressed in all the land; there are at least five hundred sailors in the isle and one counts more than a hundred
ships.” In the isles, the navigating population similarly exists after the departure of the French sailors. It was this which
took the succession for the Levantine coastal traffic from the French, the day when the wars of the revolution and of the
empire turn the activity of the Provençals toward other needs. At Megara, the frequentation of the Phoenicians also
formed a population of pilots, of sailors and of rowers, which similarly exist after the disappearance of the sailors from
Tyre and Sidon. And this is what explains to us the contradiction between the two chapters of Megarian history. In the
first centuries of the Greek history, when the other Hellenes had not yet turned to the sea, Megara, instructed by the
people of Sidon, was able to retain for a time the traffic of the neighboring gulf and similarly of distant seas. Clients, then
mercenaries, then associates and students of a foreign navy, the Megarians did at the beginning of classical Hellenism
what the islanders did at the beginning of modern Hellenism: they inherited the commerce of their foreign masters, on the
day when some interior revolution, some invasion or some cataclysm interrupted the navigations of Cadmus, of Melkart
and other great lords of the Phoenician People.
With the methodical spirit and traditional habits of their race, islanders and Megarians pursue the work of their
predecessors, without changing anything at first: in all things, the Greek is at first a respectful student; he frees himself
only slowly and seeks progress in small steps. On the roads which they have taken over from the sailors of Sidon, the

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Megarians thus make the same traffic, resort to the same refuges and install themselves in the same watering places. That
at least is what the names and history of certain of their colonies appear to indicate to us. Such a Megarian, or supposed
Megarian foundation as Chalcedone, for example, is, by its site as well as its name, foreign to the Greek world. The
choice of site was so incomprehensible to the Greeks that they called Chalcedone a “town of the blind”: upon study, the
name perhaps relates to another such Chalkedon or Karchedon, Καλχήδων or Καρχήδων, which we know to pertain to a
Sidonian town, a New Town, Carthage.
The comparison between islanders and Megarians does not stop there: it explains to us the decline of Megara as it
explains its fortune. Islanders and Megarians in effect hold the commerce and the empire of the sea, as long as the early
Hellenism remained on the borders of the foreigners. But the day when Hellenism grows and understands its own needs,
the necessity to live by itself and for itself, not for others, little by little it abandons the foreign echelles. It discovers and
adopts the harbors conforming better to its “more native” convenience, if one can put it that way. The nineteenth century
sees the truly Greek port of Piraeus reopen, which was only a deserted marsh under the foreigners. Piraeus enriches itself
and prospers in measure as Hellenism takes force and enriches itself. The echelles of the foreigners, Milos, Mykonos,
Hydra, Spetzia, decline one after the other. Only one great port of the islanders still rivals the mainland port: it is Syria,
whose site and destinies we will study shortly. But Syria slowly declines, and Piraeus always grows. Similarly, in early
antiquity, Megara, a forign echelle, disappeared before the fortunes of the truly Greek navies of Corinth and Athens…
Nevertheless, up to our times, the isles formerly frequented by the French have retained some visible traces of their
ancient splendor. From the benefits of its commerce and its routes the people of Hydra and Spetzia have built the great
houses in the Italian style, the palazzi, which distinguish their towns from the other slovenly burgs of the Levant:

The town of Hydra surrounds the port. Its houses are comfortably constructed. A great number of them are spacious, with
apartmentys well aired and walled in marble. Among the public buildings, one sees many churches and religious establishments, a
stock exchange, a college and elementary, commercial and navigation schools. The streets are hilly but remarkably straight.

The deposed great ports remain long recognizable by the luxury of their homes and the beauty of their façades: Nantes
and Saint-Malo retain their great Louis XIV hotels, Venice its palaces, Pisa its lodgings of rich bourgeois and its marble
bridges: “The Megarians,” says Isocrates, “who have neither land, ports nor silver mines, and who plow rocks,
nevertheless have the greatest houses in Greece.” – “Those people,” says Diogenes the Cynic, “eat like they were going to
die tomorrow and build like they were going to live forever.” The time spent at sea and the sobriety necessitated aboard
develop somewhat the gourmandise; on land the sailor knows how to appreciate a good meal:

“The stay in Mycone,” says Tournefort, “is agreeable enough for foreigners. One makes a good meal there if one has a good
cook. For the Greeks do not understand anything about it. The partridge are in abundance and at a good price, the same for quail, the
same for woodcock, turtledove, rabbit and pippits. They eat excellent grapes and very good figs. They make salads there with a type
of laiteron altogether unappetising when they have rubbed the bowl with garlic. – One makes a good meal at Scios…, which is the
rendez-vous of all the ships which ascend or descend, that is to say, which go to Constaninple or which return to go to Syria and
Egypt… the oysters which they import from Metelin are excellent, and all sorts of game abounds there, especially partridges: they
are kept there as fowl.

The strait of Megara was really a foreign station. The tradition of Lelix is the echo of a true history. Some Levantine
navigators made their reposoir at Minoa. The tradition said they came from Egypt. Nevertheless, their Semitic toponymy
relates them to the sailors and ports of the Syrian coast. But the Syrian sailors and ports were, for several centuries, under
the vassalage or sbjugation of Egypt: the Phoenicians of Lelix could speak of themselves as the envoys or servents of the
Pharao. It is Egypt which has furnished us the veritable model of their vessels. It is Egypt which has given us the veritable
explanation of their theories of the world and the deep sense of their place names: the Pillars of Heaven, Atlas, whose
daughter is Calypso, has come from the Egyptian cosmography.

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 Chapter III
THE ISLE OF THE HIDEOUT

Αλλ’ ‘ότε δη την νησου αφίκετο τηλόθ’ εουσαν.

Odyss., V, 55.

Isle, “navels of the sea,” cavern, springs, fields, sea birds, the harbors of Megara fill all the conditions of our Homeric
paradise and retain all the memories of a Phoenician debarkation. On the perimeter of the Mediterranean, it is probable
that some other sites may, if we might know their history very well, furnish the same evidences of the same thalassocracy.
From Tyre to Cadiz, from Carthage to Chalcedony, the typical site can be retrieved in a number of places, and the
Phoenicians in particular should have resorted and established themselves there. For we see that a primitive thalassocracy,
because of the small tonnage of its boats, supposes a multitude of points of supply… But the Homeric isle of Calypso is
as precisely localized as it is faithfully described. It can only be found in a certain region of the Mediterranean, at the ends
of the earth, τηλόθ’ εουσα, in the kinship, that is to say, in the vicinity, of the Pillar of Heaven. She is the daughter of
Atlas, the man of the Columns which separate the sky and the earth. We now know the true significance of the
anthropomorphic descendencies. The Hellenes personified the columns of their temples: they similarly personified the
Heavenly Pillar which the first navigators had discovered at the end of the Mediterranean world. To this Atlas, they gave
for a daughter an island very close by, as they gave the Rock, Scylla, as the daughter of the Sparrowhawk, Nisos, or the
Spring, Ino, as the mother for the King of the Town, Melikertes. It suffices to discover the exact site of the Homeric
Atlas: the isle of Calypso should be found at his feet.

*
* *

In antiquity as today, the name of Atlas was able to be applied to different things. The Greco-Roman Geographers
knew the entire coastal chain of Africa minor as Atlas. The name still remains in our present manuals. Strabo, like our
present geographic treatises, thinks that the Atlas extends from the Atlantic to the gulf of Tripolitania, from cape Kotes
(Spartel) to the Syrtes. It is in fact the ensemble of the same parallel chains which we still today name Atlas. But the
extension of the name to the entire chain has only come somewhat lately. Originally, Atlas is a mount, a foot, not a chain.
Across Libya, from Egyptian Thebes to the Columns of Hercules, απο Θηβέων των Αιγυπτιέων επ’ ‘Ερακλέας Στήλας,
between the desert and the coast peopled with wild beasts - Libya θηριωδης - Heroditus traces a Wall of Sand marked out,
from ten days to ten days of journey, by a rise of salt in large crystals, from which wells cool fresh water; the last of the
rises near the Columns of Hercules is near Atlas, a narrow and totally round mountain, στεινον δε ουτω δη τι τερες, so tall
that one would not know how to see the summits, ‘υψηλον δε ο’ύτω δή τι λέγεται ‘ως τας κορυφας αυτου ουκ οιά τε είναι
ιδέσθαι. The Atlas, which the clouds never uncover, in summer as in winter, ουδέκοτε γαρ αυτας απολείπειν νέφεα ούτε
χειμωνος, the natives call the Pillar of the Sky, τουτον κίονα του ουρανου λέγουσι ο‘ι επιχώριοι ειναι. We rediscover here
our Celestial Atlas-Column of the Odyssey. The Column of Atlas is, for Herodotus, near the Columns of Hercules: in the

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legend, Hercules comes to relieve Atlas and takes his place for a time. Thus here is how our sailors today describe the
vicinity:

“For the ships coming from the Mediterranean, the points of entry of the strait of Gibralter, ” say the Nautical Instructions, “are
the hill of Gibralter on the coast of Spain, the Mount of Apes and the peninsula of Ceuta on the coast of Africa. If the weather is
clear, one can see the hill of Gibralter and the Mount of Apes at a great distance. The lands appear most frequently as isles of easy
recognition by the forms which they take. The hill of Gibralter shows a somewhat narrow spine at its summit, slightly inclined from
the north to the south. The Mount of Apes presents two conical summits very close together…At Gibralter the winds from the east
predominate during the months of July, August and September. They are very damp winds; they always bring fogs with them on
land, and the fogs become thicker as the wind becomes stronger. The abundant dews, the fogs on the lands and principally the
patches of fog, which form on the summit of the hill of Gibralter and on that of the Mount of Apes or on the flank of the mountain,
are the almost certain indications of the advent of the east winds. The characteristics present themselves during the entire period of
the winds. During the fair season, the winds of the east rarely bring rain in the strait. However, the winds being more damp at their
eastern entry than at their western entry, it frequently happens that the damp fogs which form at the summits of Gibralter and the
Mont of Apes give rain at the foot of the heights, although in the strait the sky remains clear.

The Mount of Apes, whose head hides itself in the mists of the sky, is “the Column of the Sky,” as the locals say, “The
Pillar,” άτλας, atlas, as the Hellenes say. The person of Atlas is just a personified common noun. In the language of the
Ionians, atlas, άτλας, is the bearer: τλάω, to bear. It is a synonym of telamon, an equivalent of kion, both of which
designate supports of a particular form. The legendary Atlas is also named Telamon. In the inscription of the Black Sea,
telamon is fluently used instead of and in place of column: κίων or στήλη, the other Greeks would say. The Ionian
commerce, which had transported the word into the Milesian colonies, made it prevail also in the colonies of Greater
Greece and, through them, in all of Italy: the Roman architects termed telamones the supports of human figure which the
Greeks name atlantes, άτλαντες. Atlas thus is nothing but the Pillar, and the Pillar is the Mount of Apes.
Coming from the east, the navigators of the primitive Mediterranean were able to pass through the strait only by the
winds from the east. They navigated only during the months of summer when the winds dominated and “bring with them
the mists over the lands.” They thus would not perceive the two summits of the Mount of Apes - τας κορυφας αυτου, says
Hoerodotus - which are lost in the mist and crowned with a cap of clouds over which rests the sky. We then better
understand the phrase of Herodotus: the mountain, he says, is so high that one can never see the summits, ‘ υψηλον δε
ο’ύτο δή τι λέγεται ‘ως τας κορυφας αυτου ουκ οιά τε είναι ιδέσθαι.
The phenomenon should have appeared even more strange to the eastern navigators since their mountains during
winter were able to be capped with clouds, but when summer returned, and as long as summer lasted, except for some
storms, their summits gleam bare in the skies. Here, it is in summer as in winter, it is even more in summer than in winter,
that the mountain wraps itself: “in summer as in winter, the mists never leave it.” To illustrate the text of Herodotus, the
American Nautical Instructions furnish us a picture. See how the clouds crown the summit of the Mount of Apes above
the other mountains profiled in the clear sky.
Our Nautical Instructions add: “When one sees the summit of the hill of Gibralter and that of theMount of Apes free
themselves from the clouds which continuously envelope them during the dominance of the winds from the east, one is
almost certain that the winds from the west will not be long in establishing themselves.” With the winds from the west,
the Mount of Apes loses its cap of mists. It ceases to be the Column of the Sky. There is what explains to us, I believe, the
history of Atlas during the most recent antiquity: Atlas, in the classical epoch, emigrates from the strait toward the
Atlantic coast. It is that the navies of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, familiarized with the strait, took the habit of a
regular traffic toward the Atlantic coasts, and especially toward Cadiz: they thus would have at their service the winds
from the west for their reëntry into the inner sea, as often as the winds from the east for their exit toward the western sea.
The Mount of Apes then ceases to continuously appear to them wrapped in mists.

At the western entrance of the strait of Gibralter, between Cadiz and cape Trafalgar, the wind from the east is dry and gusty; the
sky is generally clear. Some light clouds sometimes arise, and when they accumulate at the summit of the neighboring mountains,

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they indicate that the east wind prevails in the strait. At the same time a white mist hangs above the lands, thickening toward the
horizon. The mist thickens with the east wind and similarly signals its approach. In the fair season, the winds from the east are more
constant and stronger than the winds from the west. The winds from the west do not have the same characteristics in the various parts
of the strait. They announce rains on the Atlantic coasts at the west entry, to such an extent that one sees the coasts with difficulty.
The sky clears in measure as one penetrates into the strait. One finds it clear in the Mediterranean. When the summits of the Mount
of Apes and Gibralter become clear and visible after having been enveloped in clouds, one can be almost certain of the approach of
the Pniente, especially if the clouds disappear completely. Once the wind from the west is established, the mountains and the sky
become clear.

Now let us regard the views of the coasts published in our Nautical Instructions. The classical sailors, reëntering from
the Atlantic toward the Mediterranean, would sail from west to east. During the passage of the strait from west to east, the
Mount of Apes is always on the horizon to the right; it never disappears behind or before other lands: its round and
narrow column, στεινον και κυκλοτερες πάντη, is always free, always in plain view. The strait thus always has its
column. But it is not the column of the sky, the pillar of clouds, because the winds from the west break and disperse the
cap of mists. But the navigators of the classical ages knew, by the Homeric legend and by all the manuals of geography,
the Pillar of Clouds, “the inaccesible Column of Bronze, veiled in thick clouds.”

…χάλκειος ες ουρανον έδραμε κίων

ηλίβατος, πυκινοισι καλυπτόμενος νεφέεσσιν.

The popular mythology had seized upon Atlas. It had made him a celebrated and familiar personage: the golden apples
of the Hesperides, his daughters, had given rise to a mass of popular stories. From school, the children of classical
antiquity learned the name and the home of the Pillar of the Sky, as the young Egyptians learned the name and the place
of the four vertiginous pillars, columns or peaks which, rising at the four cardinal points and joined by an uninterrupted
chain of mountains, assured the stability of the metallic heavens. The classical navigators thus would not be able to pass
an Atlas: In the waters there was no Column of the Sky wrapped in clouds. No longer finding it in the strait, they will
seek it elsewhere, and they will discover it a little farther to the south, in the continental chain of Morocco which comes to
end above the ocean at cape Ghir. With its three or four thousand meters of steep rocks, rising to a peak in the midst of the
sands and raising up to the sky two pointed summits, the Atlas touched and truly supported the vault, in arenas mons est
Atlas de se consurgens, verum incisis undique rupibus praeceps, invius, et quo magis surgit exilior, qui, quod altius quam
conspici potest usque in nubila erigitur, coelum et sidera non tangere modo sed sustinere quoque dictus est. And they
were truly the Columns of the Homeric poet, for Atlas was supposed to posess several columns which separate the sky
and the earth, έχει δε τε κίονας: the two High Columns of the Great and of the Small Atlas, Άτλας μείζων, Άτλας
ελάττων, will dominate the Atlantic Gulf of Commerce, Εμπορικος κόλπος, for the Greco-Roman navigators.
But this dates from later ages. Primitively, it is in the strait that Atlas posesses the Columns of the Sky: Herodotus
tells us that it is near the columns of Hercules, and the manuals of geography repeat at length the saying of Herodotus:
“Muses, we begin at the western ocean (says the versifier Dionysos at the beginning of his Description of the World), near
the distant Cadiz, where the Columns of Hercules stand, where also rises the Column to the Sky, inaccessible column of
bronze, veiled with thick clouds.” Thus it is in the vicinity of the Columns of Hercules, on the strait and not on the ocean,
that the Odyssian Atlas stands. Between the Homeric conception and the conception of later ages, it appears that there
may still be another difference. The Odyssian Atlas posesses the Columns to himself alone, έχει δέ τε κίονας αυτός. The
Atlas of Herodotus posesses only one Column of the Sky; But Hercules already also has his columns in the vicinity, of
which the Homeric poet appears to have no notion. Now, the difference is not only in the words; it is in the entire
conception of the columns themselves that the navigators of the two epochs were used to. For the classical navigators, the
two columns of Hercules mark the mouth of the strait; they are the uprights of the Gate of Cadiz: Hercules stood them up
on the coasts of the channel “to keep the route open which he dug between the outer ocean and our inner sea,” say the
ones, or “to prevent the monsters of the Ocean from invading the Mediterranean,” say the others. In the Odyssey, it is not

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a question of a pair of columns, which might form a maritime door, but of a bundle of columns which form support,
pillar, atlas. And the columns in a bundle have the rôle of supporting the roof of the sky, to hold apart, not the two sides
of the strait, but the sky and the earth,

έχει δέ τε κίονας αυτός

μακρας, αι γαιάν τε και ουρανον αμφις έχουσιν.

The oldest Greek literature partakes of the Homeric conception. Hesiod knows that Atlas, standing at the western ends
of the earth, very near the singing Hesperides, at the place where the day and night meet each other, carries the sky on his
head and on his hands - on the summit, we say, and on its ridges: the Mount of Apes, say the Nautical Instructions, has
two conical summits very close together. The Greek tragedies also know the Atlas who posesses the mountain of the sky,
τέρμονα ουρανου τον Άτλας έχει. Atlas is thus the Column of the Sunset, Στήλη ‘Εσπερία: Atlas, brother or father of
Hesperos and husband of Hesperis, is the father of the seven Hesperides. It is similar to that Column of the North, Στύλη
Βόρειος, which Scymnus of Chios knew by the accounts of the navigators and which stands at the northern extremity of
the Keltike, on the last promontory of the Celts,

τουτων δε κειται λεγομένη τις εσχάτη

στήλη βόρειος’ έστι δ’ ‘υφηλη πάνυ
εις κυματωδες πέλαγος ανατείνους άκραν.

Scymnus of Chios or the versifier, whoever he may be, reproduces here a very old description of the coasts. In his
times the navigators passed the Column of the Celts toward the north, which, on our Finistere, stands in the vicinity of the
Enetes, or Vanetes, not far from the land of the Vannes.

οικουσι της στήλης δε τους τόπους

Κελυων ‘όσοι λήφουσιν όντες έσχατοι
Ένοτοι.

The versifier alrady knows that the Celts do not inhabit the north extremity of the world: for him, the Boreal Column is
no longer able to among them : “The Indians occupy all the east of the world, the Ethiopians the south and the southwest,
the Celts the west up to the northwest, and the Scythians the north.” Thus the Column of the North should be with the
Scythians. But our author copies some old periple, which relates to us of the times when the navigation had not yet gone
into the depths of the northern sea, but when the promontory of the Celts was the last column perceived toward the north.
The name Boreal Column was given to Finistere by the first navigators. Who were they? Greeks or barbarians?
“Tartessos,” says the versifier, “imports the tin of the river sediment from the Keltike,”

, ποταμόρρυτον κασσίτερον εκ Κελτικης.

It is at the mouths of the Loire and the Vilaine that we subsequently retrieve the stanniferous sediments. It is from the
lands of the Venetes that Tartessos obtains its Celtic tin “from river sediment:” it is probably some navigators of Tartessos
who first perceived and named the Column of the North in the land of the Venetes. Given by them, the name takes its
whole meaning. They came from the south. They cruised northward from cape to cape. The Celtic coast led them almost
straight and continuously twoards the north, up to the Finistere, where it turns abruptly toward the east. The Finistere is,
for us, who come from the east, the western edge of our land: At the extremity of the western railroad, it is the end of our
world toward the sunset. For the first sailors come from the south, the Finistere was the northern edge, the extremity of
their world toward the north. For a long time, they did not know of a more northerly land. It required years, perhaps

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centuries, before the discovery of the British archipelago caused the northern edge to move from the other coast of the
British Channel. It thus appears that the notions of the Greek versifier and similarly the name of the Boreal Column
extend back to the first navigators of Tartessos, to the Phoenicians. And in the mouth of the students from Egypt, the
value of the name becomes still more precise:

The Egyptians described for themselves the entire universe as an elliptical or rectangular box. Our land formed the bottom of it,
with its continents and oceans alternating. The sky was extended above, similar to a platform of iron, flat according to some, vaulted
according to the others. Since it was not able to remain in the middle of the airs without some support, they had invented for its
support at least four columns or, rather, four forked tree trunks, similar to those which support the primitive house. But they
undoubtedly feared lest they collapse in some upheaval, for they replace them with four high peaks, standing at the four cardinal
points and joined by an uninterrupted chain of mountains. They knew little of that one of the north: the Mediterranean, the Very
Green, was interposed between Egypt and it, and prevented them from approaching it closely enough to perceive it. That of the south
was called Apit-to, the Horn of the Earth, that of the east, Bakhou, the Mount of the Birth, and that of the west, Manou, sometimes
On Khit, the Region of Life. Bakhou was not a fictional mountain: it was the highest of the summits which they perceived from the
banks of the Nile (toward the east) in the direction of the Red Sea. Manou similarly corresponded to some hill of the Libyan desert
whose head appeared to support the horizon. When they discover that neither Bakhou nor Manou might border the world, they do
not for that reason renounce the idea of supporting the celestial platform. They content themselves to move the pillars back to other
summits, to which they apply the same names. They did not say that these delimited the universe: a great river still separated them
from the extremities; analogous to the Ocean of the Greeks, the river circulated on a sort of bench, like a cornice around the sides of
the box, a little ouside the continuous ridge on which the starry sky was supported.

Thus there was a time when the Phoenicians would place the Pillar of the North at the end of Celtic lands. But, in a
preceeding age, doubtless much earlier, their first navigators had moved the Pillar of the Sunset, which Egypt called
Manou, which the Hellenes named, Atlas, the Pillar, and who for them became a twin brother of the Hesperos, the sunset,
out to the Mount of Apes. For the Egyptians of the first dynasties, Manou had become a peak of the Libyan desert: “the
name of Manou is still localized in the Libyan nome of Lower Egypt in the Ptolomaic epoch: one should find it
somewhere on the road which leads across the desert to Wadi Natron.” In measure as the Egyptian explorations or
conquests had penetrated the Libyan desert, Manou had been relocated from rise to rise toward the west: each hillock
newly arrived at received the name, only to lose it when a more westerly rise came to be perceived. Then the Phoenician
navigators pass the desert coast and find a series of mountains along the coast which, bordering the route of their fleets on
the left, dominate their New Towns and their New Phonecia of western Africa: Manou relocates farther to the west.
Arriving at the strait of Gibralter, at the boundless sea which fills the west and curves to the north and south, the
navigators finally perceived the true Pillar of the Sky. Here is the coast of the circular river which should border the
world: the Mount of Apes becomes the Column of the Sunset. It is the notion which the first Greek sailors should have
received from their masters. It is the notion which we rediscover in the Odyssey: the Odyssian sky of iron, entirely
resembling the fimament of Egypt, σιδήρεος ουρανος, resting on the atlas which stands on the earth. It is the notion which
Herodotus still translates, tracing for us again the “route of the pillar” between Thebes of Egypt and the strait: for
Herodotus, from Egyptian Thebes up to the strait, runs a continuous wall, resembling the edge which the Egyptians
imagined around their box: a series of ancient Manous, of deposed pillars, marking the wall.
But Herodotus may not be up to date with the contemporary knowledge. Since it arrived promptly to Scymnus of
Chios, since it often arrives to the borrowers, it is perhaps already an old notion which Herodotus has transcribed from
books or accounts of his teachers. In the times of Herodotus, it appears that the Mount of Apes already is no longer the
Pillar of the Sunset, “the Horn of the West,” to employ the word of the Phoenician sailors. In its turn it was outmoded and
replaced: the Cathaginian exploreres have followed the west cost of Africa and discovered the true Horn of the Sunset,
‘Εσπέρου Κέρας, father west. Hannon went up to the Horn where theAfrican coast turns abruptly toward the southeast,
then toward the east, and appears, in the gulf of Guinea (Hannon can go no farther), to go back toward the Egyptian seas
of the Levant: after the Horn of the Sunset, thus believed to have perceived the last pillar of the earth toward the south, the
Horn of the South, Νότου Κέρας. The Egyptologists remark with justification on the similarity of the two expressions

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Apit-to, the Horn of the Earth, which is the southern pillar of the Egyptians, and Hesperou, or Notou Keras, the Horns of
the Sunset or of the South, which the periple of Hannon discover and name. It is possible that the Column of the North,
Στύλη Βόρειος, may be exactly contemporary with the Horn of the South: the Semitic navigators appear to have
discovered and named both in approximately the same epoch: “Hannon of Carthage,” says Pliny, “leaving Cadiz and
advancing up to the confines of Arabia, relates his expedition in writing. Similarly, in the same epoch, Himilcon was sent
to the discovery of the outer coasts of Europe.” Hannon believed himself to have rejoined, to the west and to the south of
the world, the confines of Arabia to the coasts of Spain: he gives the name of the Horn of the Sunset and of the Horn of
the South to the two extreme promontories, the westernmost and southernmost of his navigation. Himilcon toward the
north similarly toward the north was able to name the last promontory reached the Horn of the North or Boral Column,
the high Breton cliff where the coast turned quickly to the east and took itself, he believed, to rejoin the Levantine seas…

*
* *

After the discoveries of Hannon, Atlas is no longer the Pillar of the Sunset. The strait nevertheless retains its columns.
But they are no longer the Columns of the sky: they are the Columns of Hercules. They are no longer the bearer of the
iron vault, but the bronze uprights of the Gadiride Portal. Then when one speaks of the Columns, one does not mean the
bundle of pillars, the two conical summits of the Mount of Apes: one imagines a pair of obelisques between which the
passage is dug. The famous columns had been brought up in many discussions which Strabo sums up for us:

The Tyrians, he says, had received the order from the oracle to found a colony at the Columns of Hercules. An expedition of
explorers was thus sent which, reaching the strait of Kalpe, believed themselves to have discovered the edges of the earth and the the
end of the expedition of Hercules, in the two coastal points which form the strait, τα ακρα ποιουντα τον πορθμον. But, the auspices
not being favorable, they reëmbark. A second expedition passes through the strait and advances 1500 stades outside of it, εξω του
πορθμου, up to the sacred isle of Hercules which faces Onoba (the mouth of the Guadiana). But the unfavorable auspices again make
them abandon the site. Finally a third fleet founds Gadeira (Cadiz). Thus there are the people for placing the Columns at the strait,
some at Cadiz, others still farther toward the Outer Sea.

The oldest precise document on the era which we have is the Greek adaptation of a Carthaginian periple which the
Latin translation of Avienus has preserved for us in part. Avienus knew the author of the original periple: it is a certain
Himilcon. The periple is certainly long before the time of Avienus. The Latin versifier acknowledges his borrowings: “I
draw my information,” says Avienus himself, “from the source of old Punic annals,”

haec nos ab imis Punicorum annalibus

prolanta longo tempore edidimus tibi,

and Himilcon had seen with his own eyes and verified the things which he relates:

haec olim Himilco poenus Oceano super

spectasse semet et probasse retulit.

We do not question what this Himilcon of Avenius may have in common with the Himilcon of whom Pliny spoke to us
above. In taking the text of Avenius alone, since we wish to make use of it, it is easy to demonstrate that the text
reproduces, in certain passages, the evidences of a periple prior to the foundation of Cartagena by Hasdrubal (228 B.C.).
For certain verses describe for us, very exactly, the Gulf of Cartagena, the bay, the lagoon and the neighboring isles; but it

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does not mention the Carthaginian New-Town: “The river at the foot of the gulf (from cape Gata to cape Palos), formerly
heavily populated,” said the periple, “today is deserted,

littus hic rursum patet

vacuum incolarum nunc et abjecti soli
Porro ante et urbes hic stetere plurimae,
Populique multi concelebrarunt locos.

Formerly the Phoenicians had their towns there,

ista Phoenices prius

loca incolebant,

but today only the natives inhabit it: at the foot of a bay, separated from the high sea and perched on a height, stands the
town of Massieni,

notius inde portus oppidum prope

se Massienum curvat alto aequore
sinuque in imo surgit altis moenibus
urbs Massiena…”

The port, which “is hollowed far from the high sea,” can only be the harbor of Cartagena: “It is,” say the Nautical
Instructions, “the only port, safe and accessible to ships of all classes which one can find on the south coast of Spain. It is
surrounded by high hills and its depth is about a mile to the north, while its width, of 2 ½ cables at the entry, is 7 cables in
the interior.” All this corner of the Spanish littoral had been described by the periple with the greatest exactitude.
Specifically, here is the interior bay, separated from the high sea, and here is the neighboring promontory, cape Palos, the
Round isle, the great lagoon, the sandy beach and the three other coastal isles,

post jugum Traete eminit

brevisque juxta Strongyle stat insula;
dehinc in hujus insulae confiniis
immensa tergum latera diffundit palus,
……. rursus hinc se littoris
fundunt harenae, et littus hoc tris insulae
cinxere late; hic terminus quondam stetit
Tartesiorum.

The recognition of the port of Cartagena,” says the old Portulan of the Mediterranean of Michelot (1704), “is easy,
because there is a small round isle almost facing the port. As soon as one is in the passage, one discovers there the entry,
which is very narrow, and which is found between two mountains. The port is sufficiently large, and of an almost round
shape.” There again is surely our circular bay, our round island, our rocky promontory. Then, on the other coast of cape
Palos, one finds the large salt lagoon which is called the Little Sea, Mar Menor, and the three small isles, Hormiga,
Grossa and Estacio. Thus the old periple describes the harbor exactly and minutely. Is it likely, under these conditions,
that it might forget to mention the New Town, if it had already existed? “The port of Cartagena,” continues Michelot, “is
sufficiently large; in its depth there is an ancient castle on a height, at the foot of which is the town of Cartagena, which
appears very small from the seacoast, although it may be large enough; it is situated in a plain in front of the castle.” The
site explains to us the double town which was raised in that location. On the mountain at first stood the old High Town,
the fortress of the natives, Massienum oppidum surgit altis moenibus. On the plain, at the edge of the sea, the New Town

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of the navigators later came to be established. The periple still knew only of the native High Town. It is thus prior to the
foundation of the New Town, that is to say, to 229 B.C.. Still, this date is only able to give us the lower limit: the periple
is, I believe, more ancient. Before the foundation of their large New Town, the Carthaginians frequented, conquered and
explored the coast; at the time of the periple, it does not appear that they have yet landed there; at least they do not
frequent it.
We thus have here a sufficiently old document, long prior to the Greek adaptation which the Latin versifiere copies.
He did not himself have the original text before his eyes. In the passage which we cite above, an indication betrays a
Greek translation interposed between the original of Himilcon and the verse of Avienus. The round isle of Cartagena is
alrerady named the Round; but Avienus retains its Greek name of Strongyle, Στρογγύλη, for it. Avienus has thus put in
Latin and in verse a Greek adaptation of the Carthaginian original. The Greek adaptation of Himilcon was not altogether
similar to the translation which we still have of the other Carthaginian periple of Hannon. The translation of the periple of
Hannon is nothing but the true transposition into Greek of the original Punic text. Less literal, the Greek adaptation of
Himilcon appears to have added some evidences, some corrections, some commentaries to the primitive text, and
especially some translations of proper nouns which it transcribes: we are going to have some examples in Abila and
Gadira.
Such as it is , the document merits our attention. Here is how it describes the Columns: “On each coast of the strait, the
Columns form the border of the two continents. They are two prominent rocks, nearly equal, Abila and Kalpe, the one in
Spanish territory, the other in Mauritania.”

hic Herculanae stant Columnae, quas modum

utriusque habere continentis legimus.
Sunt paria porro saxa prominentia,
Abila atque Calpe. Calpe in hispano solo
Maurusiorum est Abila.

The two columns are thus the two promontories which face the east entry of the strait. The one, Kalpe, is Gibralter: its
name is Greek, adds Avienus, and signifies the pitcher or the round cup. The other, Abila, carries a Semitic name which
signifies the high mountain,

namque Abilam vocant

gens Punicorum mons quod altus barbaro est
id est latino (dicti ut auctor Plautus est);
Calpeque rursum in Graecia species cavi
teretisque visu nuncupatur urcei.

Κάλπη or κάλπις, in Greek, specifically designates a sort of vase, a pitcher which the girls go to fill at the fountain:

παρθενικη εικυια νεήνιδι κάλπιν έχουσα,

says the Odyssey. Avienus thus has reason to say that the old name of Gibralter, Kalpe, signifies the pitcher.
The etymology of Avienus also appears to me entirely good. Pomponius Mela, who was born in these lands, on the
Spanish coast of the strait, tells us: Deinde est mons praealtus ei quem ex adverso Hispania adtollit objectus: hunc
Abilam, illum Calpen vocant. “High mountain,” said Avienus to explain the name of Abila. “Very high mountain,”
repeats Pomponius Mela, to designate the same column: mons altus, mons praealtus, the terms are identical and we can
believe that Mela did nothing but translate the proper noun Abila. For, to him also, it would connote the exact
signification of the Semitic word. His town of birth was a Phoenician colony, transported from the African coast to the
Spanish coast by the will of Rome, quam transvecti ex Africa Phoenices habitant atque unde nos sumus Tingentera.

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 Another example proves to us that the Greek version of the periple of Himilcon, translated by Avienus, gave the sense
of foreign names and gave it very exactly. Avienus explains to us the old name of Cadiz, Gadir or Gadiera: “Gadir in the
language of the Carthaginians signifies enclosure.”

Gadir hic est oppidum,

nam Punicorum lingua conseptum locum
Gadir vocabat…
Poenus quippe locum Gadir vocat undique saeptum
aggere praeducto.

The etymology of Gadir is perfectly exact: in Hebrew ‫נדר‬, gader, or ‫נדרח‬, gadera, indeed signifies enclosure of rocks,
slope of shelter or of fortification, agger, and Palestinian place names give us Gadur, Gadera, Gaderoth, which bear the
same name as the Spanish Gadir or Gadeira. The Arabs similarly have the same root gadara and the names gadirun or
gadrun.
The palestinian place names also give us Abila or Abel. But ‫אבל‬, Abel, far from signifying high mountain, to the
contrary designates praries, plane or gently undulating surfaces, terraces planted with trees or vines, and the Scripture has,
as proper nouns, the Abel of the Acacias, the Abel of the vines, the Abel of the dance, etc. But a mountain of the Scripture
is called ‫עובל‬, ‘aibal (the Seventy have rendered the initial ain by a γ, Γαίβαλ,; the Vulgate says Hebal with more reason,
for the initial ‫ ע‬is soft, as we can see by comparison with Arabic). The mount Ebal is one of the two conical mountains
which dominate the plain of Sichem in the east, and which form the promised Door of the Earth. It is between the two
columns that the Ark remains and that the ceremonies of the Seizure of Property were performed according to the orders
of the Lord. One of the columns is the mount of the Benediction, the other the Cursed mountain.
The Semitic root abal, ‫עבל‬, is unused in Hebrew vocabulary, which perhaps has replaced it with apal, ‫עפל‬: it is not
found except in the proper noun, Ebal, ‫עובל‬. In Arabic, to the contrary, the root abal is much used: it has furnished the
words ‘abalou and ‘ablaoun which signify white rock (one of the promontories at the foot of the Mount of Apes is White
Point, the Promontorium Album of Pliny), and the word ‘aboula which dignifies burden, load; the root itself signifies lift,
take, load a burden on the back of someone. Abule, Αβύλη, as the Greeks say, would be the precise transcription of
aboula. If one wishes to hold to the more exact orthography of Avienus and of Pomponius Mela, Abila, ‫עבלח‬, is regularly
derived from the root abal, ‫עבל‬, as Gadira, ‫גדרח‬, from the root gadar, ‫גדר‬. But, this being so, Abila, who bears the
burdens, is the equivalent of our Greek Atlas: Abila, like Atlas, is just the bearer, the pillar. It had appeared to us that the
conception of a celestial pillar had been borrowed from the Odyssian poet by the Levantine cosmographies: now we see
that the word itself was passed from the Semites to the Hellenes. Abila-Atlas forms a Greco-Semitic doublet, and nothing
better proves the value of our etymology than the same description of Abila by Avienus: “Kalpe is a spine of rock. Abila
is a foot which bears the sky on its head,”

.......coelum vertice fulcit

Maura Abila.

The Greek Atlas does nothing different. Abila is thus also the Column of the Sky, the Pillar of the Clouds. Abila, like
Atlas, is our Mount of Apes… Here, a difficulty presents itself.
In the opinion of all the ancient and recent geographers, Abila is situated on the African coast. But at precisely what
point? Ancients and moderns disagree, and the majority are not in favor of the Mount of Apes. The current opinion is that
of Tissot who, in his meticulous study of Tingitane Mauritania, has rallied to the opinion of Ptolomy, he says, in
identifying Abila with mount Akho on the peninsula of Ceuta. The theory of Tissot can appear plausible, and even
certain, if we regard a map of the strait of Gibralter. On the map, in effect, Ceuta and Gibralter, on each coast of the pass,
are made counterparts with a complete symmetry. Both detached from the coast, hafted by an isthmus of sand, the two
peninsulas resemble the two obelisks planted before the great door of the Sunset. There, surely, are the two columns: if

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Kalpe is Gibralter, Abila is Ceuta… But it is so only on our maps. It is there a view of geography, and the example of the
mound of St. Nicholas, in the topography of Megara, has set us in defiance of the views of the landsman. The eye of the
navigator does not see the coast in the same fashion. From the deck of his boat, the sailor did not see the peninsulas
equally prominent, nor the heights equally emergent. For Ceuta is low: its mount Akho has barely 200 meters of height,
and Ceuta, viewed from the sea, disappears before the much more elevated screen of the coastal mountains. For an
unfamiliar navigator, the hill of Ceuta is completely confused with the ridges of the Mount of Apes. Gibralter is two times
higher: its last peak surpasses 420 meters. But it is the Mount of Apes on the coast of Morocco which, from all times, first
strikes the view of the navigators: it is 850 or 860 meters high: it rises twice as high as Gibralter, four times as high as
Ceuta: at its feet and in front of it, the poor mound of Akho disappears entirely. Open the Nautical Instructions: “The
Mount of Apes is remarkable. It has a toothed crest presenting inaccessible peaks, of almost equal height and of a very
particular aspect. A rich vegetation covers the foot of the mountains; but gradually in measure as it rises, the verdure
disappears and the slope emerges very rapidly. In the range the Mount of Apes, properly speaking (859 meters), is the
highest summit. It dominates the entire chain which extends along the coast. The mountain, the ancient Abila of the
Romans, formed, with the rock of Gibralter, known by them under the name of Calpe, that which they called the
Columns of Hercules.” We see that the sailors do not hesitate regarding the exact site of the Columns. The African coast
presents to them only one column “of a very particular aspect;” they cannot be mistaken: Abila is the Mount of Apes.
But Tissot claims the authority of Skylax who, he says, identifies Abila and the Libyan Column, and who localizes the
Column on the low peninsula of Ceuta: “Of the Columns of Hercules,” Skylax says in effect, “that of Libya is low, that of
Europe is elevated. “‘Ηράκλειοι Στηλαι η μεν τη Λιβύη ταπεινη, η δε εν τη Ευρώπη ‘υφηλη. The text is precise. For
Skylax, the Libyan Column is low: thus it is Ceuta, and up to this point, Tissot has reason. But Skylax does not say that
Abila and the Libyan Column are but one single and same thing. It even appears to me that he says entirely the opposite.
Let us examine in effect the structure of the text and the context. Skylax enumerates the irregularities of the African coast.
He successively names the Great Cape, town and port. Akros, the town and the gulf, the uninhabited isle Drinopa, Libyan
Column of Hercules, Abila promontory and town, Άκρα Μεγάλη πόλις και λίμην, Άκρος η πόλις και ‘ο κόλπος, έρημος
νησος Δρίναυτα όνομα, ‘Ηράκλειος Στύλη ‘η εν Λιβύη, άκρα Αβίλη και πόλις, etc. We see that he enumerates
successively the proper nouns of the different sites without joining them by the conjuctive particle and, και. The particle
serves him to unite only the different appendages of the same proper noun: Bartas town and port, Abila cape and town,
Βαρτάς νησος και λιμήν, άκρα Αβίλη και πόλις. But he says: the Column of Hercules in Libya, the promontory Abila and
its town. For Skylax, it thus seems that the Libyan Column of Hercules is not Abila. In coming from the east, one first
encounters the Libyan column which is low: it is Ceuta. Then one passes the ridges of Abila which form the
promontory… and it is here that Tissot has made an error in believing that the Abila promontory and Ceuta may be, for
Skylax, one and the same thing. They are two distict proper nouns, since he does not join them in his text with the
conjunction and; they are two different things. Herodotus speaks to us above of Atlas and the Columns of Hercules: Atlas
was the round mountain near the two columns. Skylax has the same conception: Abila stands near the Libyan Column,
facing the European Column. The Libyan Column is Ceuta. But Abila is surely our Mount of Apes.
With Herodotus and Skylax, we are far from the Odyssian or Hesiodic conception of the strait. Their new conception
implies a new navy or, to speak the language of the Nautical Instructions, a new means of choosing the point of landing
on the African coast. Our current Instructions still give the means. When one comes from the northeast, along the Spanish
coasts - they tell us - one can choose as a landing point on the coast of Africa either the Mount of Apes or the point of
Ceuta. To the sailors of the Spanish coast, in effect, the two heights, although very unequal, nevertheless appear with the
same distictness: the Mount of Apes, viewed from in front, stands out from the sky; the point of Ceuta, viewed from the
side, stands out from the sea. If we judge by the most ancient documents which we have concerning the strait, I mean to
say Homer and Hesiod, the first navigators were directed solely by Atlas-Abila, that is to say, by the Mount of Apes. In
the Odyssey, Atlas-Abila “knows the abysses of all the sea;” it is a very high mountain which dominates not only the
neighboring bays, but further the entry of the strait, and all of the strait, and all the sea of the Levant and the Occident, ‘ ος
πάσης θαλάσσης βένθεα οιδεν. Regard the schematic views in our Instructions and you will see that Abila in effect knows

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the abysses of all the sea. Abila dominates the sea from all parts. Ceuta dominates only its little bay. Gibralter, more
elevated and more separated than Ceuta, dominates the east entry of the strait and the bay of Algesiras; but, in measure as
one penetrates toward the west, the Spanish coast obscures Gibralter bit by bit and ends by covering it. Only the Mount of
Apes, at the center of a peninsula which nothing obscures, appears from all points of the neighboring seas, Inner sea and
Ocean sea, πάσης θαλάσσης βένθεα. The periple translated by Avienus, always exact and precise, gives us a description
of Abila, which our Nautical Instructions may be able to transport to their Mount of Apes, preserving down to the last
word:

Scopuli stant ardui utrimque

unus enim Europam, Libyam procul aspicit alter.
Sic discreta freto procera cacumina celsis
emicuere jugis; sic intrant saxa profundum;
sic subuent nubes; sic coelum vertice fulcit
Maura Abila, et dorso consurgit Hiberica Calpe.

“The lands are of an easy recognition by the forms which they take. The hill of Gibralter presents at its summit a
somewhat narrow ridge inclining slightly from north to south: the north part, which is the higher, is of a rounded form,”
say the Nautical Instructions: “Kalpe raises its spine, dorso consurgit Calpe,” says Avienus. – “The Mount of Apes
(always covered in mists) presents two conical summits very close together,” the Instructions take up again: “Abila
supports the sky on its head, coelum vertice fulcit Maura Abila,” adds Avienus, who, we have seen, translated exactly the
epithet of the Greek Atlas, Column of the Sky, Κιων του Ουρανου. It certainly cannot be said of Ceuta and its mount
Akho, that that they they support the sky on their poor mounds. The evidences furnished by Pomponius Mela accord, here
again, with Avienus: “Abila and Kalpe,” he says, “are two promontories extending into the sea. But Kalpe points more
prominently into the waves, where it almost entirely penetrates, Abila et Calpes uterque quidem sed Calpes magis et
paene totus in mare prominens.” It is really the difference between Gibralter, a veritable isle of rock barely joined to the
mainland by a low isthmus, and the Mount of Apes which points its White Promontory into the sea, which has all its mass
on terra firma. If Abila were, as Tissot wishes, our peninsula of Ceuta, the text of P. Mela would be incomprehensible:
Ceuta is a rocky isle, entirely similar to Gibralter, and which points into the sea as much as Gibralter… But the Odyssey is
still more exact. It appears to copy the Instructions. These describe to us the Mount of Apes, speaking of two conical
summits, which neither Pomponius Mela nor Avienus mention, and the Odyssey does not ignore that Atlas has several
columns, a bundle of columns to separate the sky from the earth. But in reality the two summits very close together make
only the same single mountain, and, for the Odyssian poet, the single Atlas posesses the two Columns, έχει δέ τε κίονας
αυτός.

*
* *

We have retrieved Atlas, the Man of the Columns. Here now is, I believe, his daughter Calypso, the Hideout.
At the foot of Abila-Atlas, which is the Mount of Apes, the Nautical Instructions know a small isle very near the
African coast, so close that from a distance one cannot even distinguish it. It bears the Spanish name Perijil: “Although
high and ending in the cliffs of a peak, it is distinguished with difficulty in the middle of the highlands of the Mount of
Apes, by which it is surrounded.” Pliny tells us: “They speak of an isle up against Atlas and named Atlantide, traditur et
alia insula contra montem Atlantem et ipsa Atlantis appellata.” In the times of Pliny, Atlas is no longer on the strait. It is
farther to the south, on the edge of the Atlantic. Is the tradition which Pliny relates to us coming from the times when
Atlas was still on the Mediterranean? Atlantis would be our isle of Perijil. Then we will understand the legend and the

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history of the mysterious Atlantide - the daughter isle of Atlas, νησος Άτλαντος θυφάτηρ, as the Odyssey says - the
existance and disppearance of which the Egyptian priests revealed to Solon and which, since Plato, has had so much said
of it. One easily imagines why the isle Perijil was familiar from the first to the coastal sailors of the African shore - that is
to say the Semites and their patrons of Egypt - and how it later became invisible to the Greeks who navigated along the
Spanish coasts: for them, it is confused with the ridges of the Mount of Apes with which it is surrounded. For it is very
difficult to distinguish. Similarly, from the middle of the strait, one perceives it with difficulty among the mass of the
rocks and the mountains of the coast. Only cruising the African coast is able to make it discovered.
During all of classical antiquity, noöne appears to know of it. If one excepts the so unclear phrase of Pliny (which
perhaps applies to the Greco-Roman Atlas of cape Ghir and the neighboring isles), noöne among the ancient geographers
ever speaks of Perijil. Still, a text of Strabo will be able to lend scorn. The text of Strabo, in the first section, appears
confirmed by the periple of Avienus, to which we accord such credit. “Some persons,” says Strabo, “have placed the
Columns at Abila and at Kalpe; others, on the small isles neighboring the one or the other mountain, ο‘ι δε τας πλησίον
‘εκατέρου νησιδας, and of which the one is named the Isle of Hera. Artemidore knew the Isle of Hera and its sanctuary
well; but he denies the existence of the other isle.” Avienus is much more explicit:

Euctemon of Athens does not place the columns on the rocks or on the summits of one or the other coast. But, between the
European and African coasts, he mentions two isles which he calls the Columns of Hercules, and which thirty stades separate, the
one from the other. They are covered with forests and always inhospitable to navigators,

Atheniensis dicit Euctemon item

non esse saxa, aut vertices adsurger
parte ex utraque; caespitem Libyci soli
Europae et oram memorat insulas duas
interjacere; nuncupari has Herculis
Columnas; stades tri[ti]ginta refert
has distinere; horrere silvis undique
inhospitatasque semper esse nauticis.

On the Spanish coast, just across from our islet of Perijil, “one sees at a few cables from the land an arid islet, of little
extent and of a middling elevation which bears the name of the Isle of Doves or of Pigeons (Palomas),” say the
Instructions. It would appear that we have here the two isles of Strabo: on our maps, Perijil and Palomas adhere to each
coast of the strait, both neighboring coastal promontories. But, if the summated and abridged text of Strabo appears to
find its application here, the more explicit text of Avienus or Eutectamon does not agree at all with the hypothesis. The
Isle of Doves is in effect inhospitable to navigators: Euctemon is going to tell us the difficulties which it presents to
debarking. But we will see that Perijil is, to the contrary, an excellent harbor. Additionally, from Perijil to Paloma, the
distance is at least sixteen kilometers: it is not the thirty stades between the isles which Euctemon gives us. It is true that
the manuscript of Avienus bears tritiginta and that one might be able to correct it to tris triginta: in other ways it is a bad
correction; the line would no longer be there, and it is evidently trigina that we should read; nevertheless, tris triginta,
ninety stades, would give us approximately our sixteen kilometers. But the text of Euctemon imposes another explanation
of complete necessity.

In the isles, Euctemon continues, there was formerly a temple and some altars of Hercules. The foreign boats came there to
sacrifice and they afterward rapidly left. The prolonged stay was a sacrilege. All around, for a large distance, the shallow water
appears to boil. The large vessels, lacking depth and because of the mud, cannot reach it. If one wishes to go to the temple, it is
necessary to put in at the Isle of the Moon, unload the ship, and go with the hold thus lightened.

Inesse quippe dicit ollis Herculis

et templa et aras; invehi advenas rates,

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 deo litare, abire festino pede;
nefas putatum demorari in insulis.
Circum atque juxta plurimo tractu jacens
madere tradit tenue prolixe mare.
Navigia honusta adire non valent locos
breve ob fluentum et pingue littoris lutum.
Sed si voluntas forte quem subegerit
adire fanum, properat ad Lunae insulam
agere carinam, eximere classi pondera,
levique cumba sic superferri salo.

There are perhaps few localities, say the Instructions, which present the phenomenon known under the name of raz de maree
more than the Strait of Gibralter. It is generally produced near all the somewhat prominent points, where the direction of the coast
changes suddenly, and near the bars which exist in those waters. The raz de maree is formed instantaneously without any precursor
indication. The sea begins to boil like water which, in a container exposed to the fire, will be heated up to vaporization ( madere, to
cook, say Euctemon and Avienus, who adds: quidquid interfunditur undae aestuantis, the space is filled with boiling water). The raz
de maree then becomes frightening…The points on the coast of Spain where they are noted are cape Trafalgar, the mound of
Cabezos, point Frayle and Perla rock, finally the point of Europe. [Point Frayle and Perla rock dominate or surrround our isle
Paloma: between the isle and the coast there exist a great number of rocks which appear and disappear, leaving only a channel for
debarkation]…The channel of the Perle will offer some advantages to navigation; but because of the turbulence of the currents, it
would be known to be recommended only for small ships.

The concordance of all the words between the Instructions and the text of Avienus show clearly that our isle Paloma is
his isle of Hercules. On the same Spanish coast, in the bay of Algesiras, about five and a half kilometers to the north of
the isle Paloma, - it would be exactly thirty stades - stands another isle which, since the Arabs, is called the Green Isle:
horrere undique silvis, forests cover it, says Euctemon. There, thusly, is the second isle, that which the ancients name Isle
of the Moon or of Hera, which is doubtless the same thing: for it was the isle of Baalat or of Astarte, and the Phoenician
Goddess, for the Greeks and the Romans, is sometimes Aphrodite or Venus, sometimes Artemis, Diana or the Moon,
sometimes Hera or Heavenly Juno. Between the isle of Hera and the coast, the ships find a good harbor, which we will
presently study. The shelter from the wind under the isle has earned the entire bay and the neighboring port the name
which they bear since the Arabs, the Bay of the Isle, the Port of the Isle, Al-Djezire, Algesiras. But the isle itself is not
very hospitable to sailors: “One should not approach the Green Isle, to avoid the reef of that name, an isolated rock to the
north of the isle. The rocks of the Galera submerge and emerge with each tide.” Word for word again, everything there
accords with the testimony of Euctemon. It thus appears that, for him, the Columns may not be the peaks of each coast of
the strait, non esse saxa aut vertices adsurgere parte ex utraque, but the isles in the same strait, closer, without doubt, to
the Spanish coast than to the African coast, nevertheless at a nearly equal distance from Gibralter and from the Mount of
Apes - “on the two small neighboring isles of the one and of the other, πλήσιον ‘εκατέρου νησιδας,” as Strabo says, “on
the isle of Hercules and on the isle of Hera,” as Euctemon or Avienus says: Strabo adds that of the two islets, which are
the Columns, the one is the isle of Hera, δύο νησίδια ων θάτερον ‘Ήρας νησον ονομάζουσιν. και δή τινες και ταύτας
Στήλας καλουσιν.
What we have here is a purely Greek conception of the Columns, for it could come only from a Greek view of the
coasts. Without great effort, we can reconstitute the Greek view and contrast it with the Semitic view which is already
familiar to us, but which it is necessary to take up again.
Coming from the southeast and cruising along the African coast, the Semites perceived only one column in the strait,
the Column, the Pillar. For, on the African coast, Ceuta is just a slender cape, but without height, which is distinguished
by nothing from the other African capes (their ships come from rounding, to the west of the mouths of the Molouia, a
promontory and a small peninsula of rocks, completely similar to Ceuta: the Big Head, as they say, ‫רוש אדיר‬, Rous Addir,
which the Greeks have translated as Μεγάλη Άκρα, the Big Cape). On the coast of Europe, Gibralter does not appear

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much higher to them: it is also just a promontory, very little distinct before the horizon and clinging to the screen of the
highlands: the distance further diminishes its absolute height, which is not great: “At a certain distance,” say our
Instructions, “the mountain is sometimes confounded with the highlands which surround the bay of Algesiras.”Thus, for
the African coastal cruisers, only the Mount of Apes, eight hundred meters tall, points its head loaded with mists up to the
sky: for them only Abila-Atlas is the Column. Across, the European coast does not have another pillar, but a bowl, Kalpe,
κάλπη, the cup, the round and hollow bowl, as Avienus says, species cavi teretisque visu urcei.
Kalpe is a Greek word. But is the name a Greek original or a translation of a foreign original? Atlas is also a Greek
word: But it is only the translation of a Semitic original. Like Atlas, Kalpe should be a translation. Invented by the Greeks
to describe their view of Gibralter, the name would be paradoxical. The Hellenes arrived here from the northeast, along
the Spanish coasts: they came from Marseille. To such navigators, the hill of Gibralter appears distinctly. It detaches its
straight and long spine, dorso consurgit, says Avienus: “one will be able to see the hill of Gibralter from a great distance,”
say the Instructions. Hill, spine, such is the view of the coasts which the Greeks perceived in arriving at the strait. They
were not able to see “a rounded and hollow cup.” But reverse the point of view: we regard Gibralter from the south, such
as they perceived it from Africa: viewed from the African coast, Gibralter “is confused with the highlands which surround
the bay of Algesiras;” that which strikes the eye of the African navigator is no longer a hill; but it is truly a cup, I wish to
say the circular recess of the bay, of the great mountanous cup, of the cove, which is rounded and hollowed and lost in the
distance, among the capes of Gibralter and of Carnero.
There truly is Kalpe, the round and hollow bowl, kolpos, the gulf: the Hellenes will give a similar name to the gulf of
Naples, the Kratere. When the Greeks succeed the Africans in the Spanish waters, they inherit the place names, which
they will translate; but they will apply their translations of the previous place names to their own view of the coasts and
the misfortune is that their own view of the coasts does not apply to the old place names. It was no longer a gulf which
they perceived but a hill. The rock of Gibralter hid the bay from them. Kalpe was a word well-translated, but henceforth
badly placed… Similar negligencess are frequent, all the times when a people borrow the place names of their neighbor
or predecessors.
In the pitcher, the Hellenes will find an isle and town of Melkart: on the isle of Doves there was a temple of Hercules
or Melkart, and on the Spanish coast, there was a town of Hercules or Melkart, named Karteia, Καρτηια, by the ones,
Herakleia, ‘Ηερακλεια, by the others. The same name of Karteia Herakleia is an indication: ‫קרתא‬,Karta or Kartea is an
emphatic form of ‫קרת‬, Kart, or ‫קריה‬, Karia, the Town. The Semitic Pitcher was thus their town of Hercules or Melkart.
The Greek legend had in the area the Bowl or the Cup over which Hercules had navigated to reach the Ocean river, το
δέπας εν ω διέπλευσεν ‘ο ‘Ηρακλης τον Ωκεανον, or to reach Cadiz, την φιάλην κομίσασθαι τον ‘Ηρακλέα και
διαπλευσαι εις Ερύθειαν. Already related by the oldest poets of the Ionian or insular epics, Pisandros of Kameiros,
Panyasis of Halicarnassis, Pherecydes of Cyros, the crossing of the strait is painted for us on the archaic vases (see in
particular where in the middle of the large amphora, borne on the waves, amid fish and lobsters, Hercules, standing,
wearing the lion skin, holds his bow and club, in Roscher, Lexic. Myth., p.2204). The legend still is just an
anthropomorphic translation of the view which offers itself to the Greek navigators. A temple of Hercules floated in that
spanish bowl; an isle of Hercules occupied a corner of the cup. And the other Herculean legend, the legend of the
colummns, took birth in the same place, at the same time, by the same process.
According to Herodotus, it was the Phoenicians who had at first commercially exploited Etruria, Iberia and Tartessos
among the Hellenes, and who had become the allies of the king of Spain, Arganthonios. The Phoenicians thus had arrived
at the strait by the northeast coast, after having cruised the coast of Italy and Iberia. The Phoenician Marseille had been
one of their stops. On the Spanish coast, near Malaga, Mainake passed for the last of their colonies toward the sunset,
‘υστάτην των Φωκαικων πόλεων προς δύσει κειμένην. Early on, by grace of the Homeric poems which they knew by
heart since school, the Ionians knew “the High Columns,” and here at the entry of the strait a pair of high columns
appeared to them, as they still appear to our sailors who follow the same Spanish coast. At the first view, well-separated
from the mainland by its isthmus of sands, rising from the sea and pointing its four hundred meters of rock to the sky, the
hill of Gibralter offered them a straight and powerful first column. And there below, completely at the bottom, above the

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chaos of the African mountains, the Mount of Apes erected another column, also powerful, also straight and even more
pointed. “The High Columns” of the Odyssey become for the Phocians the two uprights of the Gadiride gate, the one on
the European coast, the other on the coast of Africa. From Atlas, who alone posessed them in the times of Homer, the
High Columns will pass to Hercules, because Hercules-Melkart reigned on the European coast: the European navigators
cruuised no longer along the feet of Atlas, but past the isles and the temple of Hercules.
But, in measure as the more frequented strait came to displace the term of the classical navigators toward the sunset
and the temple of Melkart at Cadiz enjoyed an accordingly greater renown, eclipsing the poor temple of the Doves, there
was good pretext to dispute the exact location of the famous columns.
In the strait, Abila and Kalpe, the Mount of Apes and Gibralter were surely columns, but they were no longer the
Columns of Hercules, because they marked neither the end of the world nor the term of the Herculean expeditions:
Hercules had gone as far as Cadiz chasing the cattle of Geryon and, similarly, in front of Cadiz, the isle of Onoba was a
Herculean isle. The true Columns of Hercules thus were at Cadiz or at Onoba. To relocate them in the isles of the strait, in
the isle of Hera and the isle of the Moon, required a personal knowledge, a view of the area. Only those familiar with the
strait could know the two islets. The rock of the Doves especially had been unknown. The isle of Hera, our Green Isle,
had helded a constant celebrity among the sailors, because of its location in the middle of the gulf, also because of the
conveniences of the harbor and the shelters which it offers between itself and the coast: Algesiras, the Isle, the Arabs said
to designate the entire bay. The islet of the Doves, to the contrary, is without utility, and it is in no way distinguished from
a thousand other larger or smaller rocks which one can point out on all the Spanish coast (cf. Perle or Cabrita a little
farther to the north). Only for the cruisers of the Spanish coast could it furnish a seamark, a milestone indicating the
narrowest point of the passage: leaving the African coast, not far from the isle of Perijil, at point Leona, the Semites,
when they wished to cross the strait, needed to navigate by the isle of Doves to reach the Europen coast and the bay of
Kartei Herakleia. The Semites thus knew and named the isle where they came to recover the shelter of the coasts after
crossing the “great abyss.” But the Hellenes go to cross the abyss between Tarifa and Tangiers: the islet of the Doves is
no longer anything to them: “Artemidora,” says Strabo, “knew the isle of Hera (our Green Isle), but he denies the
existence of the isle of Hercules (our isle of Doves).”
Similarly, the place names of the Columns show us how the Hellenes used the European and African coasts. On the
Spanish coast which they follow, the Hellenes translated the Pitcher, Kalpe. On the African coast, they only transcribed
Abila and they forgot that the Odyssian Atlas there was a doublet.
Perijil also should have been entirely unknown to them. In following their habitual route on the other coast of the
strait, along the Spanish land, they similarly were unable to perceive it. If we cast our eyes on the view of the coasts given
by our Nautical Instructions or in our figures 39 and 40, we will very quickly verify how the Instructions has reason to
say to us: “the isle of Perijil is distinguished with diffficulty in the middle of the highlands with which it is surrounded.”
But if the European sailors ignore it, all the sailors who have explored or posessed the coast of Africa know it. The
Spanish, masters of Ceuta, have imposed their name of Perijil on it. Before them, the Arabs, masters of Tangiers, called it
Taoura. At the beginning of Mediterranean history, the Phoenicians of Carthage or Tyre, cruisers of the African coast,
should also have given it a name. They had as many reasons to know it as the Arabs or the Spaniards had. For their small
boats, the isle had a usefulness which it does not offer to the large modern vessels. In the interior of the strait, it had the
only absolutely safe harbor for them, the only refuge sheltered from all the winds. Let us examine, in effect, with the aid
of the Nautical Instructions, the conditions of establishment in the interior of the strait.
The winds of the east and west are the dominant winds here: “In the strait of Gibralter, one can generally classify the
winds into two series, those of the west and those of the east. The winds blowing from other directions shift at the ends of
the passage to follow the orientation of the coasts, so they arrive in the channels narrowed and limited by the highlands.
One can thus say that the general winds in the strait are those of the east, varying from northeast to southeast, and those of
the west, varying from northwest to southwest.” In all the development of its coasts, Spanish or African, the strait does
not present much shelter, where one is covered at the same time from winds from the east and winds from the west. Most
of the harbors, sheltered on one side, are open on the other. On the Spanish coast, only the port of Algesiras, covered by

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the high ground from winds from the west, is is well sheltered by the Green isle from winds from the east: “the harbor is
very good and very safe with the winds from the west; the bottom there is muddy sand with excellent holding power
(pingue lutum of Avienus); the small ships anchor most frequently at the entrance of the channel which separates the
Green isle from the coast, in order to be sheltered by the isle and by the reefs which surround it, from the winds from the
southeast.” By virtue of the Isle, the Spanish coast today thus offers to large vessels the only harbor in the strait which
may be nearly secure, the harbor of the Isle, Algesiras.
For the small boats of antiquity, the African coast also had, by virtue of Perijil, its port of the Isle; on the coast of
Libya, the port is also the only harbor covered on all sides. If one comes from Ceuta, whose fairground harbor is open to
all the winds, one first encounters, at the foot of the same Mount of Apes, a bay which our sailors call the bay of Benzus:
a high and long point, the Point of the Lioness, protects it from the winds from the west, but still lets gusts pass, and
nothing protects it from winds from the east. The bay nevertheless should have become an important harbor of the Arabs
for its springs: “In the depth of the bay of Benzus, the lands rise up rapidly, forming a series of terraces, on which one
perceives several towers, ruins, they say, of the ancient town of Bullones (springs). A large number of springs empty on
the edge of the sea, in the valley enclosed on all sides by the slopes of the Mount of Apes.” The Arab geographers Edrisi
and Aboul-Feda praise for the fertility of its land the town which they call Beliounesh and which was, they say, a great
port for the gathering of coral: “The cove of Beliounesh otherwise offers all the conditions indespensable to the existence
of a population center of some importance; water, rare enough on the entire coast, flows in abundance there.” Bullones
may be in effect the the site of a native town. But it is on the other coast of the point of the Lioness which is fond the true
African Algesiras, especially the Algesiras of the primitive sailors. To the west of the point, the ridges of the Mount of
Apes border a very enclosed bay holding the isle of Perijil. Between Perijil and the point of the Lioness extends a harbor,
narrow but well sheltered, which the Lioness protects from the winds of the east and which Perijil protects from winds
from the west: “If it was not for the hostility of the Moors,” say the Nautical Instructions, “the small ships would have
had a good shelter from the winds of the east and the west, between the isle and the coast. In case of necessity, one can
take on water ashore, across from the isle; but one needed to defend from a sudden attack.” The well-covered echelle,
provided with a watering place and a small isle, at the mouth of, or across from a strait, is the same type of the primitive
establishments such as we come to describe. And the isle of Perijil is an isle of the cavern: “At the base of the Mount of
Apes, Perijil is a rock of 74 meters covered with undergrowth. Steep on the west coast, it has the two caves of the King
and the Queen toward the east, with a grotto called the Grotto of the Doves or Pigeons, where two hundred people would
be able to take refuge.” There, I believe, is the far isle, the isle of the Nymph, with deep caverns, the daughter of Atlas-
Abila, because it is close to the Mount of Apes. If we hold to the evidences of the Nautical Instructions, we can discover
in this site all of the particulars of the Odyssian description.
It is a sufficiently high isle, with a summit, a navel of 74 meters,

νήσω εν αμφιρύτη, ‘όθι’ τ’ ομφαλός εστι θαλάσσης,

with rocks and steep cliffs, where Ulysses came and seated himself to weep before the barren sea,

ήματα δ’ άμ πέτρησι και ηιόνεσσι καθίζων,

with two docks of debarkation and fields of parsley,

αμφι δε λειμωνες μαλακοι ίον ηδε σελίνου.

The selinos or petroselinos of the Greeks became the petroselinium of the Romans from which we have derived persil
(parsley): the Spanish have derived perijil, with all the meanings of the word petroselinium, that is to say, either the

136
edible and terrestrial plant, or the marine umbellifer, crithmum maritimum, which grows on rocky coasts and which we
call sea fennel (passe-pierre): “sea parsley, perijil da mare,” say the Spanish.
The isle of Perijil has its Cavern, its large cavern,

…‘όφρα μέγα σπέος ‘ίκετο…

Which the seabirds populate, its Grotto of Woodpigeons or Ringdoves’

ένθα δέ τ’ όρνιθες τανυσίπτεροι ευνάζοντο

She is truly the daughter of Atlas, Atlantis, contra montem Atlantem, leaning up against the mountain. Atlas dominates
her with his High Columns and surrounds her with his ridges, to the extent that the isle appears to be one with the
mountain. She is the daughter of the Pernicious Mountain, Άτλαντος ολοόφρονς, from which the gusts descend. Around
her swirl the currents: “Since one navigates the strait with the winds from the east, one must brave the frequently violent
gusts, when one is to the west of the hill of Gibralter, in the vicinity of the Mount of Apes, near point Ciris… With the
winds from the west, the gusts are to be feared, when one is east of the hill of Gibralter, on the borders of the Mount of
Apes, in the bay of Benzus and in that of Ceuta… The raz de maree of the points Ciris, Leona, etc., up to Ceuta, have
little expanse. They are frequently somewhat violent… Near points Ciris and Leona, one has currents of 3 or 4 miles.” It
is truly the isle circled by currents, αμφιρύτη, of the Odyssey.

*
* *

I had wished to check with my own eyes, as I had done for the other sites of the Odyssey, the exactitute of the Nautical
Instructions. Circumstances independent of my wishes did not permit me to pursue my Odyssian voyage all the way to
Perijil. But everything had been prepared for the expedition. M. A. de Gerlache, the commander of the yacht Selika, who
entered from the Levantine seas after a fruitful scientific expedition, had well wished to offer me passage on his ship, on
which my friend M. J. Bonnier, director of the biological laboratory of Wimereaux, had embarked. We were to leave
Naples the 18th of June 1901. Finding myself unable to be at the rendez-vous, I asked M. J. Bonnier to assume the
undertaking. It is to him and to M. Perez, his traveling companion, that I owe the accompanying photographs, and M.
Bonnier has been graciously willing to write for me the the description of the locations which appears here:

S. Y. “Selika” Strait of Gibralter, 26 June 1901.

Y. C. A.

We come to pass four hours at Perijil. We had arrived in view of Gibralter in the morning. The mist filled the strait and was thick
enough to make it impossible to distinguish the coast of Africa; toward ten o’clock it had even rained. It was thus impossible for us
to perceive and photograph the Mount of Apes. We limited ourselves to taking a sufficiently large number of photographs of the
European columns, viewed from the open sea and from the strait: lacking good pictures, we at least have clear silhouettes. After a
slow crossing of the bay of Algesiras, we traversed the strait from north to south; we reached the African coast and set about the
investigation of Perijil. It is a true re-search in effect. The isle is difficult to find, even when the weather is entirely clear. It cannot be
distinguished from the rest of the African coast, the numerous indentations of which it resembles. In the mist, an unwarned eye will
not be able to perceive it. The aid of a chart is needed to discover it under point Leona. The point itself, somewhat prominent, is
discovered quickly enough.

137
 We finally perceive the rounded mass, the navel, of Perijil. It is, they tell us, just at the base of the highest summit of the Mount of
Apes. We would well believe it. But the mist, which which covers everything, cuts the mountains a few meters above our masts.
The island appears to be just a ridge of the coastal mountains, little separated from the African coast by a small narrows, one and one
half cables in width, with reefs and shoals scattered in its middle… The mist lifted somewhat. It no longer filled the strait at sea
level. But it always floated at midslope of the mountains, and during the entire journey we never perceieved the summits of the
Moroccan coast; the mist hid them. In all our photographs, the mass of the mists appeared indistinct, blanching the points of the hills,
abruptly cutting the mass of the mountain, drowning the contours of everything and blurring all the lines of the horizon; but the isle
stands out neatly against the clarifying sea.
The isle, which appeared more distincly to us, is very high and pointed. It is composed of two masses with flattened tops, which a
depression and a somewhat deep indentation on the east coast separate from each other. The northern block is the higher: it reaches
244 feet. It does not present a steep wall to the sea, although it plunges to 22 fathoms below the waves. The block to the south, a
little less high, is steeper: some rocks and reefs border it in the channel which separates it from the land, and render the channel
somewhat dangerous. We debark, the commander de Gerlache, Perez and I, on the northwest coast, which is the most accessible. On
this coast, where the slope of the isle is the least, landing is possible, I do not say easy; for if we had a heavy sea there, it would
undoubtedly be necessary to give it up. We set foot on the ground of the isle. It is a mass of silicacious limestone; the rock is very
fine-grained. The mass has very steep sides, almost completely vertical. The summit is somewhat regularly level. The beds of
limesone, inclined about 60 degrees, decline toward the northwest.At places where the crumbling wall tumbles into the sea, the slope
is covered, here and there, with blocks of conglomerate; in some rather shallow cracks, one finds bony breaks in the stone with
fragments of flint and bones identical to those of prehistoric caves.
The ascent is difficult enough. Among the completely fragmented blocks of limestone grows a very thick if not very high
vegetation, of stunted olives, of holly, of pines and of other trees or bushes among which we should note especially a species of ash.
The blocks of rock are covered with the foliage, which forms an almost impassable thicket. Among the bushes further crowds a very
dense vegetation of herbaceous plants, smilax, acanthus, narcissus, statice, sedum, gladiolus, tamaris. In places, there are large
bouquets of violets, patches of statice in flower: I have cut for your inspection several branches of the pretty violet bouquets, which
press under our steps and in certain places make a veritable carpet. But the dominant plant is crithmum miritimum, our passe-pierre
or crist marine, which in certain parts of France is also called sea fennel, and is used to season the salads: they also combine it with
vinegar to make a condiment. The isle is covered with it. It is truly the isle of Sea Parsley.
The sea birds, seagulls and cormorants, abound. Their very numerous flocks make a deafening din, when one violates their
domocile. A thick layer of guano covers the rocks. In the fissures of the rocks underfoot nest pigeons and a few merles.
We climbed the slope. We arrive at the flat on top. It is a large enough level expanse, a field of stones, somewhat unbroken,
covered with vegetation, with greenery and violet flowers. An old Moroccan flag, blown down by the wind, lay there. The blocks of
limestone piled up there hide some ruins, the walls of which were made of roughly cut, uncemented stones: the English Nautical
Instructions would see ruins of Portuguese cisterns there. We find, under a pile of debris, some tiles from Marseilles, which testify
how recently they wished to install a shelter here. We explored the summit and the slopes of the isle. We discovered a few holes,
grottos or fissures, of mediocre size. None of them can be the grotto of Doves which the Instructions describe. None can hold the
200 people of whom it speaks to us. We are somewhat disappointed with the results. We cannot descend toward the southern face of
the isle which faces the Moroccan coast. The isle presents to the coast only a straight wall. Neither can we descend toward the east
face which faces Gibralter, because the slope is too steep. We come back to our site of embarkation on the northwest coast and we
set out to make the circuit of the isle in a canoe, in spite of the swell, and we hold as close to shore as possible. The south coast, at
the foot, offers only bare flanks. But the east is more broken. A large depression separates the two blocks of the isle, and the
deprssion itself is cut by to small, narrow inlets, like fjords at the foot, which one can enter only by sea: they are the caves of the
King and the Queen, the Instructions say. In the depth of the northern cave, we have seen from the summit of the isle a somewhat
sizeable excavation. But from the top it had not been possible to reach the mouth which is open to the level of the sea, at the base of
the steep wall; it had similarly been impossible for us to see the actual opening and perceive its depth, because were not able to
venture on the flank of the wall near the foot.
Our canoe enters the cave. We need to take some precautions. The sea is calm, but the pass is strewn with rocks. It is a
picturesque fjord with steep sides, with very clear water of a marvelous transparency. The bottom, at several fathoms, appears
littered with multicolored blocks, in sediment, and carpeted in calcarious seaweed, red and violet. At the water level, the entire edge
of the fjord is covered with polyps of a very bright scarlet red (cariophyllea) and the swell pushed a multitude of small violet
medusas into the shelter. The fine décor and pretty ornamentation for the dwelling of a sea goddess!

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 At the end of the inlet, here is the grotto. At first it is a fissure higher than wide. I fear that the photograph gives you only a little
idea of the great opening. In reality the dimensions are very large. If the opening appears narrow to you, it is that it is twenty meters
high and only seven or eight meters wide. Such as it is, it is a large cavern, which can not at first be appreciated, because it is
composed of two chambers which are not on the same axis. Thus at the beginning it appears of little depth; then, at about 10 meters
it makes an abrupt bend, and one passes into another chamber which is 40 or 50 meters long, and which is truly a spacious retreat.
The canoe arrived through the rocks and mist at the mouth of the cavern. We set foot on land, on the exposed rocks, a procedure
which would be totally impossible with a heavy sea. After having jumped from rock to protruding rock, we enter the first chamber.
The floor is formed of large rocks where the sea always breaks, even in calm weather. The slopes of the fallen blocks emerge steeply
from the water. The limestone blocks cover the floor of the first chamber, in a somewhat steep slope. The axis of the second chamber
is almost perpendicular to that of the first. The ramp of the ground continues to climb toward the platform which it reaches at the end
of the room. The slope, also somewhat steep, is covered in the second chamber with a mass of reddish dust, which comes from the
alteration of the shale walls: in the dust, bones of birds and small mammals abound. The end of the room is very dark: some candles
are needed to penetrate it. In the two chambers, the floor is nearly horozontal. It is formed of a conglomeration of large pebbles. The
conglomerate should have originally filled the entire cavern. It has slowly been decomposed by the action of the subterranian waters.
The traces of the action are still neatly visible, such as in the stalactites, few, it is true, on the walls of the grotto.
In the principal grotto, on the left, a partly formed hollow secondary grotto adjoins. It is possible that formerly this cubbyhole was
another chamber of the cavern. It should have been, in effect, much longer. It should have, it appears, occupied the entire marine
passage, which the bottom of the inlet today fills with its waters. The passage, presently uncovered to the sky, had a ceiling which
collapsed: the blocks lie in shallow water; on the edge of the walls, a protruding cornice persists, still indicating the height of the
ceiling. The cavern thus should have extended to the deep sea, or almost, and presented to the sailors a more visible refuge.
Presently, some scraps of net, some floats of cork and wood still strew the ground of the entry; the fishermen should know and
frequent the shelter, which one can reach only from the sea, for, from the coast of the land, it is literally inaccessible: it is for the
sailors a nearly undiscoverable hideout, and an impregnable retreat.
There is no trace of a watering place or stream on the isle. But water is able to be easily procured on the neighboring coast:
numerous creeks fall from the Mount of Apes; the greenery of the creeks appears among the meager crops and pastures where we
perceive some flocks of goats and cattle…
There is all that the expedition did, which produced some fatigue, but no danger, although the Nautical Instructions recommend
prudence, and speak of sudden incursions of Rif pirates. The grotto certainly offered a good place of ambush to the sailors, an
excellent hideout, and the entire isle is truly a hideout in the strait: one needs to know it to find it: from a few miles, we once again
could no longer distinguish it among the ridges of the Mount of Apes.

There, truly, thus is the Isle of the Hideout, the Isle of Calypso (καλύπτω, I hide, I cover), the wooded isle, νησος
δενδρήεσσα, the isle entirely filled with parsley and violet blooms, standing above the waves like a navel on a shield, and
bearing two flats, two extended plains, covered with trees and herbs. We can affirm, a priori, that the first navigators of
the strait had known and frequented the refuge, that the cruisers of the African coast, Tyrian or Carthaginian, had adopted
the marvelous station of fishing, of commerce, and of piracy. With the bay which lies between it and the coast covered
from all the winds; with the cavern accessible only to people of the sea and inaccessible to the natives, easy to discover
when they come from the east, impossible to see from all the other coasts; with its subterranian hideaway with long
mysterious convolutions; with its high lookout dominating the sea of the sunrise and of the sunset at the entrance of the
strait, Perijil is the best ambuscade and the best trading post, the veritable echelle of the primitive boats. The topology
alone will permit us to imagine how the first explorers of the Gadiride Port would have one of their first stops in this
place, then one of their points of support for the discovery and exploration of the western sea: the topology alone tells us
that Perijil was the isle, the Algesiras, of the first sailors. But, in addition to the topological evidences, we have an ancient
text.
The clasical texts no longer mention the African station. The coastal sailors of the Spanish coast, Greeks and Romans,
ignore the hideaway. But Strabo has preserved for us the memory, which a local tradition undoubtedly perpetuates, of the
first Tyrian establishment in these waters. We must only take good note of the text of the geographer, which the copyists
appear to have garbled: “The first Tyrians, sent to explore the strait, τους δε πεμφθέντας κατασκοπης χάριν, will halt at
the pass which dominates Kalpe, επειδη κατά τον πορθμον εγένοντο τον κατά την Κάλπην, in considering the two

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promontories which form the strait as the limits of the world, τα άκρα ποιουντα τον πορθμόν (thus Abila-Atlas and Kalpe-
Gibralter) and they will establish themselves at a certain point in the interior of the passes, κατασχειν εις τι χωρίον εντος
των στενων, in the present territory of the Axitans, εν ω νυν εστιν ‘η Αξιτανων πόλις.” The manuscripts give Axitans,
Αξιτανων. It is an obvious mistake. On the coast or in the waters, there exists no town bearing the name. The editors from
habit correct it into Exitans, Εξιτανων, and think of a town of the Spanish coast which Stabo names, if effect, town of the
Exitans, Εξιτανων πόλις, but to which Ptolomy and the Latins give its true name of Sex, or Six. The Spanish town is
situated to the east of Malaga, near Motril. It is a port of the Mediterranean, which at least 200 kilometers separate from
the strait of Kalpe. It is very far from the exterior of the passes. For, without considering that the Tyrians had to come the
length of Africa, and that their their first establishment should not have been on the coast of Europe, the text of Strabo
tells us formally that the Tyrian settlement is in the strait, in the interior of the passes, εντος των στενων.
It would be necessary to correct the text of Strabo differently, and read Exi[li]tans Αξι[λι]τανων, or Εχι[λι]τανς,
Εξι[λι]τανων. The mistake would explain itself: the scribe is deceived by the iota in copying it; he has skipped from the
first to the second. And on the African coast, in the interior of the passes, at the foot of Abila, Ptolomy mentions an
Exilissa, Εξίλισσα, which would be the town of Strabo:

It is in the bay of Benzus that Exilissa of Ptolomy should be situated, says Tissot. The distances which Ptolomy indicates between
the position and those which precede and follow are exactly recovered. The latitude indicated for Exilissa proves, furthermore, that it
was considered by Ptolomy to be the northernmost point of the coast; for the two points Blanca and Leona, of all the prominences of
the littoral, are those which are the most advanced to the north…. We find further in the bay of Belliounesh the ruins of an Arab
town which should have been flourishing. The remains are only the superposition over the antique debris, the existence of which El-
Bekri still indicated in the eleventh century… The bay of Beliounesh further offers all the conditions indespensable to the existence
of a population center; the water, rare enough on all the coast, gushes there in abundance from the rocky ridges of Djebel Mou ça (the
Mount of Apes); the plateau, which extends between the ridges and the shore, presents rich crops; sheltered from the east and the
west, the bay, of semicircular form, offers a safe and deep harbor.

The bay of Bezus is totally disposed, in effect, for the well-being and prosperity of a town, but of a native town. When
the natives navigate or when the navigators are masters of the land, a great town can be born and prosper on the site. The
safety of the bay and the abundance of flowing springs can acccumulate at the point a great enough population. The
Romans would have their Exilissa here, and the Arabs their Beliounesh.
But, to subsist at the foot of the circle, which the coastal mountaineers dominate from all sides, Exilissa would need
to impose the pax romana on the natives, and Beliounesh, the Muslim faith. In the basin, impossible to defend, a maritime
establishment is at the mercy of the natives: the foreigners cannot hold the coast, if the natives are not their allies or
subjects. And the day when a native realm is formed under the name of the Empire of Morocco, the day especially when
the natives of the coast, the Rifians, no longer know any law but their own good pleasure, Beliounesh of the Arabs ends in
the same manner. It disappears, as Exilissa of the Romans disappeared in the crumbling of the Roman power, and as,
apparently, the first Exilissa of the Semites disappeared. For the tradition related by Strabo is so probable that it imposes
itself on our belief. It appears certain to me that in the bay, in front of the springs, the first Tyrians should have attempted
an establishment. During the first establishment, the Isle of the Hideout, with its safer harbor, its more exposed
observatory and its retreat, could not fail to have a rôle and a renown. It is from the first establishment, in my eyes, that
the renown of Calypso and the Odyssian description would date. The isle itself was deserted, as the poem says: it was the
dwelling only of gods, not of mortals,

…ουδέ τις αυτή

μίσγεται ουτε θεων ούτε θνητων ανθρώπων.

The town of men and the altars of the gods were not there,

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 …ουδέ τις άγχι βροτων πόλις, ο‘ί τε θεοισιν
‘ιερά τε ρέζουσι και εξαίτους ‘εκατόμβας.

The town and the temples of Exilissa were raised on the other coast of the Lioness, near the springs, in the midst of
gardens and arbors, in the bay of Bezus. But the town was the vertable echelle of the halfway mainland town, the Minoa
of the Megara, the port, the refuge, the hiding place, the storehouse, the ambuscade and the lookout… It was, for a
moment, the great retreat of the strait. It undoubtedly will remain so as long as the amity or the submission of the natives
permit the Tyrian town to exist, or as long as the navigators will not find a more convenient station.
There came some day, perhaps, a descent of the Rifians who will sack the town of the foreigners, to pillage the
storerooms and the palaces. Perhaps also - and I think the alternative more likely - there came a discovery of the
navigators which rendered the hideout less useful and less appreciated by them. The Spanish coast, once discovered, and
the famous realm of Tartessos, became the El Dorado of the first sailors, the land of gold, of silver, of copper and of tin.
Across from the Hideout, on the coast of Tartessos, not far from the mouths of the Great River, as the Arabs will say,
Ouad-Al-Kebir, a small double coastal isle offers to the Tyrians its beaches and its spacious harbor. The isle was
somewhat low, it is true; drowned in the marsh, it was at the mercy of the natives, and did not offer the fortified retreat of
Calypso. But the natives were mild, hospitable, friends of commerce and of the people of the sea: up to the times of the
Hellenes, the people of Tartessos retain thir renown for civility and hospitality. It was easy, furthermore, to raise some
entrenchments, to build a perimeter of walls, by virtue of the soft limestone of the land. The Tyrians will transport to the
Isle of the Enclosure or of the Entrechment their principal factory, Gadeira. The Hideaway was somewhat abandoned.
Nevertheless its renown persists for a long time (in another strait, the renown of the mainland post, Aden, does not
prevent the similar isle of the pass, Perim, from remaining celebrated omong the sailors and geographers). The Homeric
Hellenes knew Calypso. But the Romans, without realising it, also know the Hideaway and similarly, in the strait, they at
first knew only the Hideaway, and they always retained the name of the Isle of the Hideaway. In our turn, without
knowing it, we still currently speak of the Isle of the Hideaway or of Calypso, only we have displaced the location and
enlarged the dimensions. A Greco-Semitic doublet will return us to the more exact understanding of the words which we
employ without comprehending them well. We now apply the old name which the first Semitic navigators will give to
Perijil, to the entire Iberian peninsula, or Spain, I-Spania, the Isle of the Hideout.

*
* *

It is under the nameof Iberia, Ιβερία, that the Hellenes always know the extreme western peninsula of Europe. But the
Romans will always employ the name of Ispania. Where do the two names come from? The ancients themselves do not
know, and we can have only some indications. Most of the geographers admit that, with the Romans at first knowing
Spain through the mediation of the Carthaginians, the name Ispania is perhaps Semitic. The treaties of commerce which
Polybius reports to us show us, in the Carthage of the sixth century, the effectual commercial intermediary between the
Italian coast and the western sea: the Carthaginians reserve the monopoly of the sea through the treaties. The word
Hispania or Ispania is additionally presented as one of the names of Mediterranean isles which begins with the Semitic
vowel ‫אי‬, ai, e, or i, the isle: the Greco-Romans also say σπανία and σπάνος, spania and spanus, as if the beginning of the
word can be separated from it without altering the meaning too much. For the second part of the name, most of the
geographers and etymologists resort to the Semitic root ‫עפן‬, sapan, from which they derive ‫עפון‬, sapoun, or ‫עפין‬, sapin,
signifying the treasure. Spain, I-spania, would be the Isle of the treasure. Mineral Spain, producer of all the mineral
riches, merits the name well. The ancients agree in in celebrating the wealth of the El Dorado. Poseidonius praises the

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number and the richness of the spanish mines. He says that one can truly believe the legend of burning forests melting the
minerals, and the soil oozing gold and silver. Each mountain, each hill, is just a mound of treasures. The lands are the
inexhaustible treasures of nature, θησαυρους φύσεως αενάους, the royal treasure chest of eternity, ταμιειον ‘ηγεμονιας
ανέκλειπτον. The land there is not only rich, but, further, “over-rich,” ου γαρ πλουσία μόνον αλλακαι ‘υπόπλουτος, and it
truly is not Hades who dwells below it, but Pluto. The words of Poseidonius, θησαυρούς and ‘υποπλουσία, would
completely explain to us the name of Isle of the Treasure, I-spania, Ι-σπανία, Σπανία.
But if, by this meaning, Spain is truly the isle of the Treasure, I do not see how I-sapoun or I-sapin would give us the
transcription Ispania. According to the similarities of the Scripture, in effect we would have I-saphonus or I-saponum:
‫עפון‬, Sapon, is rendered as Σάφων by the Seventy (in the Spanish mining district, Strabo knew a town Sisapon, Σισάπων,
which which was perhaps derived from the Mine, Al-Maden, of the Arabs). I thus do not accept the transcription of I-
sapoun as I-spania. Resorting rather to the Semitic root sapan, ‫עפן‬, I believe it is necessary to seek another etymology. It
is our isle of Calypso which is going to furnish it to us: the Semitic root ‫עפן‬, sapan, is the exact equivalent of the Greek
καλύπτω, hide, cover, bury; Ispania is truly the isle (i) of Calypso (span’a), νησος Καλυψους, the Isle of the Hideout.
For, from the root ‫עפן‬, sapan, is regularly formed the verbal noun ‫עפנה‬, span’a (like ‫ דאגה‬dag’a, from ‫דאג‬, dag, ‫חלקה‬
halk’a, from ‫ חלק‬halak, ‫ עדקה‬sdak’a, from ‫ עדק‬sadak, etc.), and spania is the most exact transription of it which it would
be possible to imagine: ‫=ע‬s, ‫=פ‬p, ‫=ה‬ε or ει or i.
I thus believe that the Isle of the Hideout originally bore the name of I-spania and that the name passes, later, to the
neighboring continent. At first sight, it may seem strange that the name of the African isle may have been applied by the
Romans to the Spanish peninsula. But let us consider a moment the exchanges of populations and place names which,
from all times, will be effected between the two sides of the channel. The African shore today is marked with Spanish
names, Cala Grande, Perijil, Punta Leona, Punta Blanca: we have imposed on Djebel Mouça of the Arabs our name of
Mount of Apes. Inversely, the Spanish coast is populated with African names, Algesiras, Gibraltar, Guadiana, Tarifa,
etc. Spain today is mistress of the African coast by its protectorates of Ceuta and Melilla. The Spanish Nautical
Instructions have asserted since 1862 that Perijil belongs to Spain, since in 1749 the Spanish engineers prepared the plan
to install a penal colony there. In 1887 Spain tries to revive its rights and construct a lighthouse on the islet: the natives of
the coast and the Moroccan government are opposed to it. In the Middle Ages, it was the reverse: the Africans will govern
the south of Spain. During Roman antiquity, the Romans of Spain traffic especially with the coast of Africa and the
Emperors made exchanges of populations between the two coasts. They take the Africans of Zilis (near Tangier) to found
Iulia Iosa in Spain, which they also call the Passed, Transducta, and Pomponius Mela is born in that town, quam
transvecti ex Africa Phoenices habitant. Inversely, the Emperors install a Roman colony at Zilis, which they join to
Betique, Colonia Augusta Julia Constantia Zilis, regum (Mauritaniae) ditioni exempta et jura Baetica petere jussa.
Before the Romans, the Carthaginians, for their garrisons, had done the same there: Hannibal, at the beginning of his
expedition against Rome, assures the tranquility of the provinces by sending from Spain twelve hundred cavalry and
about thirteen thousand native infantry to hold the garrison at Metagonion and Carthage itself, and by bringing from
Africa into Spain about three thousand cavalry and twelve thousand infantry, with a Moorish contingent, Μαυρουσίων
των παρά τον Ωκεανον.
We would imagine without difficulty that, diverted from one side to the other, transported with the populations
themselves, the African name of Ispania had been able to become the name of the European coast, when the Isle of the
Hideout had lost its clientel and its renown, and when the ownerless name floated in the strait, so to speak. If the natives
or the sailors retained a memory of the exact sense of the name, Calypso “who inhabits the hollow caverns” could be
transported to the Spanish coast, to the caverns which pierce the rock of Gibralter, and which all the travelers still point
out: is murum in modum concavus, ab ea parte qua spectat occasum medium fere latus aperit atque inde ingressis totus
admodum pervius prope quantum patet specus, says the Spanish Pomponius Mela.
At many straits, we find similar exchanges of toponymy. The Romans – if an example is needed – give to the land of
the Hellenes the name of Graecia, Land of the Greeks, which they took from who knows where, and which they applied
to the entire peninsula. The Greeks, Γραικοι, originally were probably a people of Epirus who, perhaps like the Albanians

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of today, had representatives or political and commercial relations on both coasts of the Adriatic strait. Similarly in the
strait of Gibralter, it is possible that the Semites might have done the same. The Semites will not give the name of the Isle
of the Hideout to the Spanish coast; but having called it the Land of Passage, Iberea, they bit by bit apply the name to the
entire peneinsula. Lacking a doublet, it is impossible to confirm the exact sense of the name Iberia. I will nvertheless
believe in a Semitic etymology. The root abar, ‫עבר‬, signifies pass, cross. The Canaanites give the name of ‫עברי‬, Iberi, to
the people who, passing the Euphrates or the Jordan, had come to live with those of the other side of the river: ‘ Εβραιος,
Hebraeus, Hebreu; the Seventy furnish us the doublet ‘Εβραιος-περατης, Hebreu-People of the Passage; the epithet
transducta which the Romans give to the Spanish town Iulia Iosa will exactly translate iber, hebreu. The Scripture
employs the place name ‫עבר‬, eber, to designate the land in front of the river or sea. I believe that the Phoenicians will give
the name of Iber’a, ‫( עברה‬formed from the root abar, ‫עבר‬, like span’a from sapan, etc.) to the coast of the strait. From the
coast, the name was extended to the entire continent, such as has happened for the name of Palestine, which originally
designated the coast of the Philistines, and which today designates the entire land up to the Jordan and beyond. Iberia
proceeds to the north by measure as the Phoenician fleets pursued their discoveries. It passes the Pyranees, which proves,
I believe, its maritime migration. Coming by land, the name would be stopped by the Pyranees, which present an almost
impassable obstacle, and which mark for the landsmen a frontier of the land. But, coming from the sea, it pushes to the
north as far as the fleets whiuch bring it. When the Hellenes will know the name of Iberia, it was extended up to the
Rhone, Ιβηρίαν ‘υπο μεν των προτέρων καλεισθαι πασαν την έξω του ‘Ροδανου. The Hellenes will always relate that it is
not the name of a people who occupied the entire land, but the name of a district which step by step had expanded and
appropriated the vicinity. They would localize the first Iberia on the banks of a river, Ibere, Ίβηρος, our Ebre.
The history of the name Ispania appears analogous to me , but a bit different. Only the Romans have transmitted the
name to us. Up until the Greco-Roman times, the Greeks do not know it. If it had been current among the navigators of
the western Mediterranean in the times when the Greek colonies were installed there, it is probable that the Phoenicians of
Marseilles, the Chalcidians or the Ionians of Greater Greece or of Sicily would have related it in the sea-nation: the
Hellenes themselves also would have known Spain. Therefore by the times when the Greek colonies and navigators had
spread through the seas of the sunset, the Isle of the Hideout had lost its renown: Ispania must come from times before the
Hellenic times. The Italians will know Ispania in the preHellenic times, at the same date when the renown of Calypso
reaches the ears of the Odyssian poet, at the time when Semitic sailors would exploit the Italian coasts, like the Levantine
waters. The Semites should employ the term to vaguely designate the farthest region of the sunset: in the Italian echelles,
they would speak mysteriously of the Hideout, of Ispania, as they would speak of Tarsis in the echelles of Syria, or of
Calypso in the Greek echelles. For a long time, the Romans and Italiots will understand and repeat the name of Ispania
without too much understanding of what the term represented. It was a mysterious land, at the extremities of the sunset,
outside of their traffic and their achievements. The Semites would reserve the exploitation of it: “The Carthaginians,” says
Strabo, “had taken the habit of sinking all foreign ships encountered by them on the route of Sardinia or the Columns:
whence the disbelief in the reality of the western world which prevailed for a long time.” The Italiots would not know the
strait by sight. Their treaties with Carthage will prevent them from navigating there for several centuries. Ispania thus
remained as mythical for them as Calypso had been able to be for the sailors of the Odyssey. The mistrustful Semites
would not care to clarify the semilegendary notions among their clients: they would speak, they also, of the mysterious
hideout with reticence and care…
When the Greek navies in their turn will take the way of the strait, they will implant among their Italiot clients the
name of Iberia which they would apply to the land of the Sunset, and the Italiots will accept the new name entirely while
also retaining the ancient one. They will henceforth speak of Iberia and Spain at the same time. For a long time they will
continue to employ the two terms without knowing too well the veritable position of the two lands. Iberia was the Greek
part, Spain the Semitic part of the Land of the Sunset, of Hesperia. Iberia was located around the Ebre, Spain, around the
strait, near the Columns… When the Carthaginian power fell, when the Roman navies and armies arrived in the waters, it
had been a long time since the prosperity of Cadiz and the cruising along the European coasts would have ruined the
clientel and the reputation of the Hideout, the name of Ispania, which the Romans would bring with them, and thus it

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would be unused among the coastal dwellers of the channel by that time. Who would suspect that the famous Spain was
in reality only a bit of rock, lost in a deserted bay, invisible, unknown to the sailors themselves which, lying off the
opposite coast, could no longer be perceived? On the European coast, certain names, already introduced, would lend to
the confusion: Hispalis was a European town, the present Seville, and they sometimes confused Hispalis and Hispanus;
Andalusia had a town of Sisapon, and Tarragonia a town of Ispinon. The Romans will thus apply their name of Ispania
only to the land which appeared to them worthy of the old renown, to the land of gold and copper, which the Hellenes
named Tartessos: where Iberia ended for them, and Spain begins. The two names of Iberia and Spain would find their use:
Iberia went up to the Columns; Spain began beyond them.
For the transfer of Ispania, we have numerous later examples which will show us better how the navies transport the
name of a coastal islet to a great land: we see the Hellenes give to Corfu the name of Serpent, Drepanon, because of the
rock of the Serpent which they find in the Corfiot strait; we see a similar coastal rock credit to Cerigo its name of
Kythera, the Hat. But we will already perhaps have a very instructive example in the same strait, if we would better
understand the history and the real meaning of the old name Tartessos, which I will soon indicate. The Tartessos of the
Greeks is the Tarsis of the Semites. It is a land near the Columns, and certain geographers relate to the names Tarsis and
Tartessos the names of certain native coastal dwellers, Turdules and Turdetans. I do not see how they can pass from the
ones to the others: the relationship appears to me of little legitimacy. And nevertheless it appears certain to me that the
two names Tarsis and Tartessos should be native. At least they present no sense in either the Semitic or IndoEuropean
families of languages. Now, let us consider that, in the area, certain ideas or certain views of the coast have always been
translated into place names by the successive navies. During antiquity, at least, all the navies which frequented the strait
had their Columns: Romans, Greeks and Semites will have their columnae, στηλαι, κίων, άτλας, abila. Now, before the
Greeks and before the Semites, there were inhabitants on the coast, natives, and there would be the natives, if one believes
Herodotus in this, who, the first, had named our Mount of Apes the Columns of the Sky. The text of Herodotus appears to
be a formula to me: “The natives give to the mountain the name of Column of the Sky, τουτον κίονα του ουρανου λέγουσι
ο‘ι επιχόριοι.” Herodotus knows very well that the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians occupy a part of Africa, but in the
same manner as the Greeks of Cyrene, for example, that is to say that they have come from the sea and they are
foreigners: they are not the natives. Herodotus contrasts the Carthaginians, Καρχηδόνιοι, with the natives, επιχώριοι. He
says: The Carthaginians come outside the Columns of Hercules to unload their merchandise at a certain point of the coast
where they build a fire; the natives, επιχώριοι, perciving the fire, come running…” He knows that there is a Libyan
language, which is not Phoenician: “Zegeries is a Libyan word which signifies mountains, ο‘ι δε ζεγέριες. το δε ούνομα
τουτο εστι μεν Λιβυκόν, δύναται δε κατά ‘Ελλάδα γλωσσαν βουνοί.” Thus, Column of the Sky, Κίων του Ουρανου, is the
Greek translation of a native, Libyan name. The descendants of the Libyans still exist under the name of Berbers. Their
language, poorly studied, is unfamiliar to us: the stay of the Arabs has encumbered it with Arab words which are
frequently difficult to distinguish. In the Berber Dictionary, prepared for the needs of the French government, tarsets
would say the column of rock, in contrast to taquejdits, which signifies the column of wood; but is the term really Berber?

*
* *

I would not wish to insist upon the doubtful etymology, nor upon the legendary history of Tartessos. But, from the
study of the places as from the study of the name, a certain fact appears to me to result: at the foot of the Celestial
Column, which is the Mount of Apes, Perijil is the isle of the Hideaway, and it merits the double name of Ispania and
Calypso, because in reality the two names are identical and form a doublet: the veritable name of the Homeroic Calypso is
I-spania. It is true that, in the Odyssey, the isle had another name, if one wished to believe most of the editors: it would be
the isle of Ogygia. But the supposed proper noun is only an epithet: the isle is ωγυγίν, ogygian, such as the port of Thebes
in Boeotia is ogygian. The epithet, which presents no meaning in Greek, is nevertheless frequent in preHellenic Greece.
Ώγυγος, Ogygos, is, they say, a son of Cadmus, whence the name ogygian, ωγύγιαι, given to one of the ports of Boeotian

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Thebes. Ωγυγία, Ogygia, is a daughter of Amphion and Niobe, and a Nymph, daughter of Tremilos. Ωγυγία, Ogygia, is
still the old name of Kos, of Boeotia, of Attica, and of Egypt. It is impossible to say what the epithet and name could
signify. But it would well appear that ogygian, ωγυγια, may only be the epithet formed from the name Ogygos, Ωγυγος,
which is perhaps a synonym for ωκεανος, Ocean: the ogygian isle, νησος ωγυγια, would thus signify an Oceanic isle, an
isle near the Ocean or surrounded by the Ocean. We have to return to the names of Okeanos and Ogyges or Ogygos later:
perhaps we will see that in fact they are synonyms.
If the isle of Calypso is truly an “oceanic isle”, the new epithet succeeds in proving the justice of our localization:
Perijil, to the west of the Column, is already immersed in the Ocean. But the epithet also completes the resemblance
between the Odyssian and Egyptian cosmography. At the foot of the column which supports the iron firmament, at the
foot of the Celestial Pillar, the Egyptians would have circulate the great river which surrounds the terrestrial mass in an
uninterrupted course: it is the Homeric Ocean. The Odyssian poet apears to have shared the conception of the Egyptians.
Everything else leads us to the conclusion. The isle of Calypso, if legendary in appearance, should have had a tangible
reality, when we admit with Strabo that Semitic sailors were the teachers of Homer, that the Phoenician accounts or,
better, periples were the true source of the Homeric poems, at least of the Odyssey, ο‘ι γαρ Φοινίκες εδήλουν τουτο.
It appears to me that, in order to understand the account, it is necessary to suppose: firstly that a Phoenician navy
existed before or during the composition of the poems; and secondly that written documents relating the Semitic
navigations were in the hands of the Odyssian poet. The second hypothesis is no less necessary than the preceding one.
For the description of the isle of Calypso cannot be the more or less deformed memory of popular accounts, of oral
stories. It is of such an exactitude and such a minuteness that we have been able, at each step, to set it in comparison with
the Nautical Instructions and establish its absolute fidelity. Thus it is a fragment of a periple, and we can only choose
between two hypotheses: either the poet has seen all the sites which he described with his own eyes, and he has described
them in measure as he has seen them; or the poet has followed the indications of a visual testimony and copied the
information of a written periple. I do not believe in the probability of the first alternative: the Homer-Ulysses which some
have imagined, the same man, hero and author of the poem, appears to me a strange fantasy, the impossibilty of which we
soon perceive from other things. I believe that the poet had before his eyes a written periple: he drew from it his
descriptions or his anthropomorphic legends following a process which we are going to easily discover. I similarly
believe that we can prove the existence of the periple in proving the existence of the process. Here is the proof.
Of all the details which characterise the isle of Calypso in the poem, Perijil has rendered to us the greatest number. The
Instructions, descriptions and photographs furnish us all the traits of the Odyssian isle, except two or three. For Perijil
presently has thickets, but does not have large trees. And Perijil does not have vines. And Perijil does not have springs.
But the isle of Calypso is wooded, δενδρήεσσα; it has alders, poplars, firs and cypress,

κλήθρη τ’ αιγειρός τε και θυώδης κυπάρισσος…

… ‘όθι δενδρα μακρα πεφύκειν
κλύθρη τ’ αίγειρος τ’ ελάτη τ’ ήν ουρανομήκης,

and the isle of Kalypso has a marvelous vine, loaded with grapes,

‘ημερις ‘ηβώωσα τεθήλει δε σταφυλησιν,

and the isle of Kalypso has four springs,

κρηναι δ’ ‘εξείης πίσυρες ‘ρέον ‘ύδατι λευκω.

Let us consider the four differences. It is needless to insist upon the first. If Perijil and the neighboring coast are denuded
today, it is not the fault of the soil, but of the Rifian shepherd or of the bargemen. The soil of the isle is suitable to grow

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trees: it is still covered with a thick arborescent vegetation. Before the fires of man, it is possible that the isle and the coast
were completely wooded. It appears almost certain. The Ancients tell us that the territories of the strait were formerly
covered with forests: horrere silvis, said Euctemon in speaking of the isles of the gulf of Algesiras, and Avienus speaks of
the opaque forests covering the mountains of Tartessos,

Tartessiorum mons dehine attollitur

silvis opacus…
monte ab illo quem tibi
horrere silvis dixeram,

and Strabo says: “The coast (Spanis) of the Bastetani and of the Oretani is a long mountanous neck covered with a thick
forest of large trees, δασειαν ‘ύλην έχουσα και μεγαλόδενδρον.” Similarly, Strabo, describing the African coast, speaks of
the large and numerous trees of Mauritania, μεγαλόδενδρος τε και πολύδενδρος ‘υπερβαλλόντως, “land wooded to excess
with very large and very numerous trees,” could resemble the prosaic translation of the Odyssian epithet, “the trees as tall
as the sky, ουρανομήκης.” The Mauritanian forests will become celebrated in the Roman world for the enormous
diameter of their trees. They made tables from a single piece, says Strabo. Among the primitive navigators, the forests
continue to have a similar renown.
The second difference is much more notable. It does not appear that a great vine might be able to easily cover the
mouth of the cavern and find its life among the waves or the rocks of the inlet. But the vines of the region were also
celebrated during Roman antiquity. They would undoubtedly be far earlier than recent antiquity: the name of the
Promontory of Vines dates, we have seen, to the natives, and the Greek sailors did nothing but translate the Kotes of the
Berbers into Ampelousia. The renown of the Mauritanian vines gave birth to a thousand stories: “The Atlantes, the last of
the Libyans at the foot of Atlas, never sow; the wild vines furnish all their needs.” – “They say that on the coast the vine
grows a stock which two men can barely embrace, and grapes a cubit in height.” The moderns add: “The entire region still
produces the most esteemed grapes in Morocco, and they found, some years ago, in excavating the foundations of the
lighthouse at cape Spartel (Ampelousia), enormous vine stocks, plant remains which relate to the words of Pliny: Ibi fama
exstare circa vestigia habitati quondam soli vinearum palmetarumque reliquiae.” The Arabs still have, at the south of
cape Spartel, their Port of the Trellis, El-’Arish. On the Atlantic coast, among the Ethiopians of the west, the Phoenicians
come to load wine in the times of Skylax, “for the Ethiopians make an abundance of wine from their vines.” It is possible
that the first Tyrians may already have exploitated the Mauritanian vines and that, by them, Perijil may have been planted
with vines.
But the third difference remains between Perijil and Calypso: there is no trace, neither in the cavern nor on the isle of
Perijil, of the four springs of the Odyssey. But the difference, for us other landsmen, will perhaps be without great
importance. We know that for the sailors always in quest of fresh water, to the contrary, the presence or absence of the
watering place makes the itinerearies modified, makes the choice or abandonment of refuges. If Perijil does not have
springs, the neighboring coast is provided with them abundantly. The flowing fountains of Beliounesh remain celebrated
among all the navies, and the Instructions additionally indicate that in the same pass of Perijil, on the east face of point
Leona, one would find good sources of water, were it not for the hostility of the Rifians. The Arab geographer Edrisi also
points out the abundant springs of the Spanish coast: “Djebel Tarik (Gibralter) is cut off at the base. From the coast of the
sea one sees a vast cavern where springs of running water well. Near there is a port called Mers-el Chadjra, that is to say,
the Port of Trees.”
We see how the text of Edrisi would be able to resemble a translation of the the same periple which the Odyssian poet
consults. Thus, in this locality, the cavern of springs really exists. It is not an invention of the Odyssian poet. But the
cavern is not on the isle of Perijil, in the realm of Calypso; it is nevertheless, like the springs of Calypso, in a Port of
Trees. In this detail, we can establish for the first time a procedure which we will frequently reëncounter later with the
poet. It is the general procedure which arranges all the episodes of the Odyssian poem. In effect, the poet does not invent
anything: but he arranges, or rather, organizes. Following the ordinary fashion of the Hellenes, he first personifies the

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principal elements of a site or region: the Column becomes Atlas, the Hideout becomes Calypso. Then he joins the
personalities by the ties of dependence or relatedness, again following the ordinary fashion of the Hellenes: Calypso
becomes the daughter of Atlas, as Scylla at Megara is the daughter of Nisos. Finally - and the third operation should be
well noted - he arranges about the personages, as attributes, qualities or property, the secondary elements of the landscape
or the neighboring country. He has given to Atlas the dangerous currents of the strait: Atlas becomes the pernicious,
ολοφρων. He gives to the isle of Calypso the great vine of cape Ampelousia, the great trees of the Mauritanian coast, the
springs of the African or Spanish coast, in brief, all the particularities which his written periple of the Strait pointed out to
him. But the procedure presupposes the existence of a periple, of a precise document, minute and exact, which furnished
the poet with all the elements of his anthropomorphic construction. In this, the Odyssey is a truly Greek work. The part of
fantasy and of imagination is restrained here. Order and logic are the principal contribution of the poet, who borrows his
materials, but who shapes them to the Greek fashion, in giving them an anthropomorphic form, and who, above all, has a
great concern to dress and join them skillfully to make them into a whole. The Hellene is, above all, a wise arranger.
It is by the same procedure that the poet constructs the raft of Ulysses on the isle of Calypso. He does not make an
ordinary vessel here, but one of a special embarkation, a raft which the poet nevertheless has not invented. His periple
should furnish it to him: “The natives of the strait,” says Avienus again, “formerly were served by flat-bottomed rafts,”

mos at allis hic erat

ut planiore texerent fundo rates
quo cumba tergum fusior breviusmaris
praelaberetur.

It is one of the flat-bottomed rafts which Ulysses constructs. We have wished to draw from the text of the Odyssey
information on the construction of the Homeric vessels. It is not a question here of a ship, νηυς. It is a ευρεια σχεδιν, says
the poet, a wide raft, rates planiore fundo:

αλλ’ αγε δούρατα μακρά ταμών ‘αρμόζεο χαλαω

ευρείαν σχεδίην.

And the poet specifies well the difference between the raft and an ordinary boat, for Ulysses says to Calypso: “You know
that I risk myself to cross such an extent of sea on a raft, when the boats do not dare the attempt.”

‘ή με κέλεαι σχεδίν περάαν μέγα λαιτμα θαλάσσης

δεινόν τ’ αργαλέον τε. το δ’ ουδ’ νηες εισαι
ωκύποροι περόωσιν.

In another strait, at the extremity of the Arabic sea (in our strait of Bab-el-Mandeb), at the foot of another column
which the ancients named the Column of Sesostris, φασιν ενταυθα Στήλην ειναι Σεσώστριος του Αιγυπτίου, Strabo and
the Pseudo-Arrian mention the same custom of the natives which is followed by the crossing, διάπλους, not of vessels,
but of rafts, σχεδίαις τα φορτία κομίζουσι δευρο κακεισε, says Strabo; σχεδίαις και σκάφαις εις το αυτό προσερχομένων,
says the Pseudo-Arrian. The Red Sea has already known such embarkations for a long time.

“The first of January, 1616,” says P. de la Valle, “I took a small craft which took sail because there were no others at all and I set
out a way upon the Red Sea to go fishing. The structure of the craft was unusual, because the pieces of wood of its construction,
beyond being rare, thin and delicate, were joined together only by means of certain sticky cords, and all the rest of the equipage, in
place of planks, was of leather, with the sail of reed matting. But I was not surprised, because I had seen similar ones on the Nile,
which which came from very far away, and similar ones in Ethiopia, and which are made of small pieces of wood, which are joined
and attached together solidly only by pegs of the same material, with hardly any nails and bands of iron, which we use in such

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profusion in the structure of our vessels… The fashion of constructing craft without nails, with wooden pegs and pitched cords, were
not invented because of lodestone mountains, as some talkers would have it, but predominantly because of the rarity of iron, which is
extremely expensive, the usage of which is accordingly rare among them.

The raft of Ulysses is constructed in the same fashion. It is composed essentially of a floor of wood, which supports
raised decks at the front and rear, ikria, analogous to the castles of the prow and poop (foc’s’le and quarterdeck) of ships.
A railing borders all. The floor is made, not of planks, but of beams, of five squared trees, peeled, and held together with
cords,

πελέκκησεν δ’ άρα χαλκω,

ξέσσε δ’ επισταμένως και επι στάθμην ίθυνεν,

which are pegged together and joined by bonds,

τέτρηνεν δ’ άρα παντα και ‘ήρμοσεν αλληλοισι.

When the first wave raised by Poseidon overturns the raft, περι δε σχεδίην ελέλιξεν, and throws Ulysses into the sea,
the hero climbs back onto the overturned deck. But this side does not present the castle, the ikrion, where the pilot can
take his place. Ulysses thus goes to seat himself just in the middle of the deck, for, on this side, the raft no longer has a
railing, and he needs to stay in the middle to not be thrown into the sea. In the middle of the overturned raft, Ulysses
remains seated: he plans to stay there as long as the timbers “of the well-tied raft,” πολυδέσμου σχεδίης, will stay
together.

‘όφρ’ αν μέν κεν δούρατ’ εν ‘αρμονίησιν αρήρη,

τόφρ’ αυτου μενέω…

But a new blow of the sea scatters the beams, “as a gust of wind scatters light straws,” ως της δουρατα μακρα
διεσκεδασε. Then Ulysses seizes one of the beams and rides it like a horse. He is mounted on a beam, αμφ’ ενι δουρατι
βαινε: he is not seated or lying on a plank. Nothing makes the difference between his raft and the ordinary boats seen
better than another account of the shipwreck in canto XIV of the Odyssey (v. 305-315). Here, it is a matter of a wreck of a
boat, νηος γλαφυρης, which the lightening bolt of Zeus capsizes and overturns entirely,

‘η δ’ ελελίχθη πασα Διος πληγεισα κεραυνω.

All the men fall out of the boat and are drowned. Only Ulysses is saved because Zeus puts in his hands a floating piece of
the mast,

‘ιστον αμαιμάκετον νηος κυανοπρώροιο

εν χείρεσσιν έθηκεν,

upon which Ulysses manages to raise himself. In an ordinary boat, only the mast can play the rôle of mount for which the
first beam coming from our raft will be suitable… The raft thus is not made of planks like the vessels, but of beams,
δούρατα
On the deck, are fixed the ίκρια, the castles of front and rear,

…αταρ ίκρια πηξαι επ’ αυτης.

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There are two platforms whose walls are made of short planks set upright on the deck, and whose top is made of long
planks serving as the deck,

ίκρια δε στήσας αραρών θαμέσι σταμίνσσιν

ποίει άταρ μακρησιν επηγκενίδεσσι τελεύτα.

The quarterdeck bears a tiller. It is there that Ulysses comes to sit, as the pilot and captain, on the ikria of the vessel.
He stays there so that the storm does not capsize the vessel, and he holds the tiller, his eyes fixed on the stars. The ikrion
of the front bears a mast with a crowsnest

εν δ’ ίιστον ποίει και επίκριον άρμενον αυτω.

I translate as crowsnest the Homeric word epikrion in referring to the Egyptian vessels of the eighteenth dynasty or,
better still, to the vessels of the People of the Sea. The “castle on high,” the epikrion, designates, I believe, the mast-step
in the form of a tub, the crowsnest, which crowns the mast, and in which a lookout is held: “Since the Arabs,” says P.
Lucas, “are not navigators, they always travel only during the day, having one man on the prow and the other on the top
of the mast to watch the sea. They anchor as soon as the sun begins to set, and do not raise the anchor unless they have a
wind from the poop, thus employing two or three months for a navigation of seven or eight days.” The natives of the strait
should have navigated in this way. On their flat rafts, the ikria of little height would not have enabled them to view the
sea nor to have perceived the hazards soon enough to evade them. They needed a higher castle, an epikrion perched at the
top of the mast. The lookout stayed in the epikrion and gave advice to the pilot seated on the castle of the rear. The mast
should have been positioned on the castle of the front. I imagine the raft of Ulysses in accordance with the figured
monument where we see Hercules stretched out on a similar raft, which bears a sail in front and some jars lashed against
the railing: “The goddess,” says the Odyssey, “gives him a skin of wine, a water skin, and a sack of provisions.” (Cf. the
engraving of our title page).
To prevent the waves from pitching the provisions of the voyage and the other gifts from Calypso from the deck,
Ulysses plaits a railing of willow branches’

φράξε δε μιν ‘ρίπεσσι διαμπερες οισυίνησιν

κύματος ειλαρ έμεν.

I ask myself if we should not hold fast to the text of Avienus here as closely as possible and have it say all that it can
say. Texere rates undoubtedly signifies in the poetic language construct vessels. But texere would properly say plait. The
rafts of the Red Sea had their sails made of reed mats. The rafts of the strait should also have some woven parts: if their
sails were linen cloth or canvas furnished by the Phoenicians, the sides should have been a trellis of willow or reeds. The
rafts of Avienus would appear to me to resemble our Homeric raft in all points. Similarly, it is possible that there may be
even more precise resemblances between the Odyssian text and the text of Avienus. The lattice should serve, says the
Odyssey, “to fend the wave,” κύματος ειλαρ έμεν: Avienus says the same thing in a more obscure long verse,

quo cumba tergum fusior brevius maris

praelaberetur.

To see the resemblance, I have come to consider the possibility of a common source, of a same single periple, which
both Avienus and the Odyssian poet had known at a remove of some centuries. Avienus declares his borrowings from the
Carthaginian periple of Himilcon. I do not say that the same periple of Himilcon has served the Odyssian poet. But we
know how, across successive navies or the diverse epochs of the same navy, the authors of periples are copied one for

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another. In the fashion of our Nautical Instructions, in the fashion of the Greek periples or the Italian portulans, the old
Semitic periples may have transmitted the same observations in the same terms: Himilcon repeats for Avienus that which
his predicessors may already have related to the poet of the Odyssey.

*
* *

Thus it is a Semitic periple - or a translation of a Semitic periple - which the Odyssian poet may have before his eyes.
From the contents of the periple alone, we could determine that it was not Greek, because it describes to us regions
unknown to the Greeks of those times: the Achaeans had not gone to the Columns; the Isle of the Hideout was unknown
to them. But, further, the text itself and the Odyssian names give us a more certain argument: Abila-Atlas, Ispania-
Kalypso form couplets so joined that the twins surely have the same origin. It is true that we could still suppose that both
have come from a native original by different routes: each from its own coast, but without communication with each
other, the Semite and the Greek would have translated the Berber place name. There are some indications proving that
things should not have happened that way. First note the resemblance which we have found between the Odyssian
cosmography and the Levantine conceptions of the firmament and the celestial pillars. Consider together certain
expressions of the poet. “The isle of Calypso,” he tells us, “has soft fields of parsley and violets,”

αμφι δε λειμωνες μαλακοι ίου ηδε σελίνου.

Perijil is an isle of Parsley and it is an isle of violets or of violet limoniums. But the block of rocks does not have a
field, in the sense that the Greeks and we ourselves give the term. It is not a soft field where the dense herbs push through
the damp earth. Perijil has only rocky expanses, two tables of limestone covered in arborescent vegetation and brush... it
is to the flat expanses, to the plantings of trees, to its tables of sea parsley and of limoniums that the periple gave the name
of ‫אבל‬, abel, exactly as the Scripture gave to such a plantation of vines or acacias the names of ‫כרמים‬-‫אבל‬, Abel-Keramim,
the abel of the vines - Άβελ Αμπελων, says Eusebe - or ‫השטים‬-‫אבל‬, Abel-as-Sithim, the abel of the Acacias. The Semites
knew little of our grassy and green praries, our plains of soft turf and tall hay. Their abels were only verdant, almost flat
expanses. Translating abel as λείμων, prarie, the poet has only had the fault of imagining a Greek prarie, soft, damp, a
little marshy. He is only deceived in having accorded too much credence to the original text and in having translated the
expressions of his Semitic model too faithfully, word for word.
For the other part, see how the usage and customs of the first navigators have left their traces in the vicinity of the
Columns. The Semites of Carthage or of Tyre, like their cousins of Israel, should have had the number seven as a ritual
number. We have already retrieved the number in the rites of Kithera and in the measures of Boeotian Thebes. Seven
dominates the traditions and the measures of the strait. Atlas, who stands at the extremity of the sunset, Atlas, at the foot
of which the Ethiopians of the west then lived, ‘εσπεριοι, at the foot of which today live the Moors of Maghrib-el-aksa
(of the Extreme West), Atlas-Column of the Evening was the father of the seven Nymphs of the Sunset, the seven
Hesperides. At his feet is the monument of the Seven Brothers. The marvelous reeds there are seven cubits tall. A
marvelous cavern there is seven stades deep. Between the Column of Libya and Carthage there are seven days and seven
nights of navigation; but Skylax, who gives us the distance, adds further, of very fine navigation, του καλλίστου πλου
παράπλουσ. Some maintain that the strait has only seven stades between the Columns,

sed ad Columnas quidquid interfunditur

undae aestuantis stades septem vix ait
Damastus.

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 Between the Columns and Ophioussa, the the passage by land is seven days,

septem dierum tenditur pedit via.

The periple of Iberia, on the word of the same Skylax, also would be of seven days and seven nights. For others, the
minimum width of the strait would be seventy stades. From the Columns to the strait of Sicily, there are seven thousand
stades (the Earth then should have seventy thousand stades), and there are seven thousand stades more from the Columns
to Marseilles. “The isle of Gadir,” says Pliny, “is near the mainland, from which less than seven hundred feet separate it at
the narrower strait, and more than seven thousand at the wider strait.” Herodotus, to the contrary, uses the decimal system
of the Greeks (we come back to this below). He gives ten days of interval between the mounds of salt which mark the
Rampart of Sand across all of Libya, εν τη οφρύη μάλιστα δια δέκα ‘ημερέον ‘οδου ‘αλός εστι τρύφεα... , πρωτοι μεν
απο Θηβέων δια δέκα ‘ημερέων ‘οδου Αμμώνιοι... , etc., and the Rampart goes from Thebes to the Columns of Hercules,
διήκει δ’ ων ‘η οφρύν μέχρι ‘Ηρακλέων Στηλέων και το έξω τούτων. έστι δε ‘αλός τε μέταλλον εν αυτη δια δέκα
‘ημερέων ‘οδου και άνθρωποι οικέοντης. Thus it appears that the Odyssey uses the two systems concurrently. The first
storm, which drives Ulysses from the Greek seas to the isle of Calypso, tosses him for nine days and on the tenth night
casts him on the isle of the Hideout,

εννημαρ φερόμην δεκάτη δε με νυκτι μελαίνη

νησον ες ωγυγίην πέλασαν θεοί...

But on the Semitic isle, Ulysses remains a prisoner for seven years,

ένθα μεν ‘επτάετες ‘εμπεδον...

The eighth year, Zeus orders Calypso to free Ulysses and declares that the hero will arrive the twentyeth (10x2) day
among the Pheacians. Ulysses constructs his raft: he works four days and the fifth all is ready. He embarks: a good wind
pushes him; seventeen days he navigates on the Semitic seas, then on the Greek seas: the eighteenth day he perceives the
land of the Pheacians,

‘επτα δε και δέκα μεν πλέον ‘ήματα ποντοπορεύων.

It well appears that we have in the Odyssey the alternation or combination of two rhythms seven and five, and that the
numeration may be, like the toponymy, Greco-Semitic. Now, like the toponymy, the numeration supposes a written
source, a foreign periple, which computes the approximate distances, not in tens or dozens, but in sevens.

In resumé, the Isle of Calypso at the foot of Atlas cannot be Ispania at the foot of Abila, the Hideout at the foot of the
Pillar, or Perijil at the foot of the Mount of Apes, unless two conditions are fulfilled:
1° It is necessary that the poem be contemporary with a Phoenician thalassocracy or posterior to the thallasocacy, for it
is necessary that in Odyssian times the Semitic navies be, for the first part, in posession of the Columns and, for the other
part, in contact with Homeric Greece.
2° It is necessary that the Greek poet have had before his eyes the original or the translation of a Semitic periple.
If we do not prove that the one and the other of the conditions may be fulfilled, one can always invoke the surprising
encounters and the effects of chance against us. The devotees of Hellenism believe in defending the Homeric poet, saying
that the similarities pointed out by us there between Ispania and Calypso are completely accidental. They declare that
many of the Mediterranean isles present the same fortuitous resemblances among them and that one can conclude nothing
from these accidents or generalities. I have myself recognized that many of the Mediterranean isles can offer the traits of
our Odyssian site: dispersed in the bay or the plain of Megara, the traits can be found to reunite others. I well know that

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the resemblances of the site are not all which unite Perijil and Calypso: there are, further, the resemblances of placement
and of name. In all the Mediterranean, there is but one point where Calypso can be found: it is the vicinity of the Pillar, it
is the Extreme West; now, in the strait of the Pillar, we see that Calypso bears the name of a real land, Spain: alone in all
the Mediterranean, Spain, I-spania, leads us to the name and to the site of Calypso... Nevertheless let us leave off
speaking and seek our double proof.
That the second of the questions - the existence of a Semitic periple - may have been established, it is the same
consequence of our studies which are going to give us the proof. We only have to take the episodes of the Odyssey one
after the other: we immediately see that the example of Calypso-Ispania is not fortuitous, because it is not isolated; to the
contrary, similar Greco-Semitic doublets are the rule and the complete explanation of the entire Odyssey. If one wishes a
typical and brief example in the field, the isle of Circe, νησος Κίρκης, is named Aiaie, Αιαιη. Now, Circe, Κίρκη, is a
Greek word, the feminine of Kirkos, κίρκος, which signifies the sparrowhawk: νησος Κιρκης thus signifies the Isle of the
Sparrowhawk. For the other part, Ai-aie, Αι-αίη, is a Semitic double word, which also would say the Isle of the
Sparrowhawk: in Hebrew ‫איה‬, aie, signifies in effect the sparrowhawk, or especially the female sparrowhawk, (for it is a
feminine of which κίρκη is the rigorous translation) and ‫אי‬, ai or i, signifies isle, as we have seen. Ai-aie, Αιαίη, is thus
the exact translation or the original of νησος Κίρκης. There exists a series of similar couplets in all the accounts of the
Odyssey: one by one, we are going to retrieve them.
But the first condition itself is also realized. The existence of the Phoenician thalassocracy can be proved by the
different passages where the Homeric poems themselves mention the voyages and the commerce of the Sidonians. We
should, before going further, join the passages and explain them to understand the justice of an opinion current among the
Ancients: “The Phoenicians,” says Strabo, “posessed the greater part of Iberia and Lybia before the Homeric times, της
Ιβηρίας και της Λιβύης την αρίστην κάτεσχον προ της ηλικίας της ‘Ομήρου.” See what the Homeric poems tell us of the
Phoenician navigations.

FOURTH BOOK

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 THE PHOENICIAN NAVIGATIONS

ο‘ι δε Φοίνικες της Ιβηρίας και της Λιβύης την αρίστην

κάτεςχον προ της ηλικίας της ‘Ομήρου.

STRAB., III, p. 150

CHAPTER I

THE ISLE SYRIA

ο‘ι δ’ ‘Ομηρικώτεροι τοισ έπεσιν ακολουθουτες.

STRAB, VIII, p. 330

Odyssian poems and Phoenician navigations appear joined by close ties. The topology and toponymy of the Odysseia
or of the Telemachead lead to the hypothesis that a Phoenician thalassocracy preceded the Homeric navies. The place
names, the sites and the legends of primitive Greece guide us to the same hypothesis. To explain the tradition of Pylos and
of Megara, as to explain the legend of Circe and Calypso, it is necessary that before the Odyssian epoch the navies of
Tyre or of Sidon would have frequented, in the Saronic gulf, the Isle of the Peace, Salamis, the Harbor of the Stop,
Minoa, the Town of the Cavern, Karia Megara, the Springs of the Friendship, of the Argument and of Melkart, Ino-
Melikertou, Alope, Sithnides; it is necessary that the Phoenicians had ascended the Stream of Oxen, Alpheios, and the
River of the Purification, Neda, debarked on the sands of the High Town, Samos, and patronized the bazaars of Aliphera
and Phigalia. And it similarly must be that at the end of the world they knew the Pillar of the Sky, Atlas, and the Hideout,
Calypso, his daughter.
Twenty or thirty years ago, before the explosion of archeological history, the conclusions would have been accepted
without difficulty: they are in agreement with those which Herodotus, Thucydides and Strabo indicate to us. But today the
fashion is historians of a different sort. They prefer the doubtful evidence and documents of archeology to the more
critical authors, to the more definite texts of antiquity, and, archeology having still not furnished or recognized the traces
of the Phoenician occupation in Greece, they never accept the occupation:
“Thucydides and Herodotus,” says M. J. Beloch, “deserve no credence in that which concerns the origins of Greek
civilization. The primordial and decisive influence which they attribute to the Phoenician commerce never existed. The
frequentation of the primitive archipelago by the Phoenicians is a legend: one would vainly seek a palpable and authentic
proof.” M. J. Beloch has summarized this opinion in the first chapters of his Greek History. he has imposed it on a large
part of the public by the legitimate popularity of the history. But he has defended it still more forcefully in an article of
the Rheinisches Museum: Die Phoeniker am Aegaeischen Meer. “Herodotus,” he says, “is mistaken, at the beginning of
his histories, when he relates the description of a Phoenician market on the beaches of the Argolide to the centuries long
before the Argian legend. The presence of the Phoenicians in the primitive Aegeian is not proven to us by anything,
neither by the Homeric poems, nor by the history of commerce, nor even by that of the alphabet, nor further by
archeology, toponymy, linguistics or philology.” We have only to retain here the first of the assertions. To refute it, take
the passages of the Homeric poems where the name of the Phoenicians appears. If we arrange the table of the passages,
we have:

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 Sidonians Ζ 290, Ψ 743, δ 84, 618, ο 118.
Phoenicians Ψ 744, ν 272, ξ 288, ο 415, 417, 419, 473.
Sidon and Sidonia Ζ 291, ν 285, ο 425.s
Phonecia δ 83, ξ 281.

seventeen citations in total, with four in the Iliad and thirteen in the Odyssey. In reality, the seventeen citations are
reduced to two passages of the Iliad and to four passages of the Odyssey. Here they are:

- In canto VI of the Iliad (v. 290-292), Hecuba goes down to the room where, among the herbs, the embroidered
peplums are stored, works of Sidonian women, which Alexandros, the divine hero himself, brought back from Sidon
across the wide sea,

ένθ’ έσαν ο‘ι πέπλοι παμποίκιλοι, έργα γυναικων

Σιδονλιων, τας αυτος Αλέξανδρος θεοειδης
ήγαγε Σιδονίηθεν, επιπλως ευρέα πόντον.

- In canto XXIII of the Iliad (v. 740-745), at the funeral of Patroclus, Achilles, as a prize of the race, offers a well-
crafted silver bowl, containing six measures and surpassing all in beauty, since it was from Sidonian craftsmen, who had
fashioned it carefully; Phoenicians had brought it across the misty sea; they had displayed it in the ports, then given it as a
gift to the king, Thoas,

... εστι Σίδονες πολυδαίδαλοι εν ήσκησαν,

Φοίνικες δ’ άγον άνδρες επ’ ηεροειδάα πόντον,
στησαν δ’ εν λιμένεσσι, Θόαντι δε δωρον έδωκαν.

Thus for the Iliad.

- In canto IV of the Odyssey (v. 83-84, v. 618). Menelaus speaks of his voyages to Cyprus, to Phonecia, among the
Egyptians, the Sidonians and the Erembes,

Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε και Αιγυπτίους επαληθεις,

Αιθίοπας θ’ ‘ικόμην και Σιδονίους και Ερεμβους,

and he gives to Telemachus a worked bowl, all of cast silver, with rabbits chased in gold: the bowl comes to him from the
king of the Sidonians, Phaidimos, his host,

δώσω τοι κρητηρα τετυγμένον αργύρεος δε

έστιν ‘άπας, χρυσω δ’ επι χείλεα κεκράανται,
έργον δ’ Ηφαίστοιο. πόρεν δε ‘ε Φαίδιμος ‘ήρως,
Σιδονίων βασιλεύς.

- In canto XIII of the Odyssey (v. 272-285), Ulysses invents the fantasy of a navigation, which he purported to have made
in the company of the renowned Phoenicians. From Crete, they were supposed to taken him to Pylos or Elide; but the
storm throws them onto the coast of Ithaca, where they debark him; then they will return toward their Sidonia of the fine
houses.

αυτίκ’ εγων επι νηα κιών Φοίνικας αγαυους

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 ελλισάμην καί σφιν μενοεικέα ληίδα δωκα...
ο‘ι δ’ ες Σιδονίην ευ ναιομένην αναβάντες
ώχοντο.

- In canto XIV of the Odyssey (v. 272-285), Ulysses makes up another story of shipwreck in the company of the same
Phoenicians. They had taken him with them from Egypt, then took him across the sea from Crete; but Zeus sent them a
terrible storm which cast them on the coast of Thesprote:

δη τότε Φοινιξ ηλθεν ανηρ, απατήλια ειδώς,

τρώκτυς, ‘ός δη πολλα κάκ’ ανθρώποισιν εώργει
‘ός μ’ άγε παρπεπιθών ησι φρέσιν, ‘όφρ’ ‘ικόμεσθα.
Φοινίκην, ‘όθι του γε δόμοι και κτήματ’ έκειτο.

- Finally, in canto XV of the Odyssey (v. 405 and following), Eumea relates her childhood on the isle Syria, her
education by a Phoenician nurse and her abduction by the Phoenicians, who had charmed her maid, and had come to sell
her on the coast of Ithaca. The last passage is by far the longest, the most circumstantial and, I believe, the most
important. All the others are easily related to it. We take it as the center of our study. The philologists have believed to
remark here a certain air of modernity. Kirchoff accords it evidences of the work of revision and correction of the eighth
or even seventh century. Kirchoff gives no good argument for the support of the opinion. I believe that,upon study, the
passage will appear, or at least the facts which it relates to us will apper exactly contemporaneous with the civilization,
the social life, the nautical and commercial habits, in brief with all the mores described by the songs of the Ulyssiad,
properly speaking. But it is necessary to study the passage in the fashion of the Most Homerics, verse by verse, word by
word.

*
* *

Eumea begins her history:

You probably know an isle named Syria, situated outside of and above Ortygia, of the coast where the sun turns. It is not very
populated, but it is a good isle: of cattle, of sheep, many vines and many grains.

νησός τις Συρίν κικλήσκεται, εί που ακούεις,

Ορτυγίης καθύπερθεν, ‘όθι τροπαι ηελίοιο,
ού τι περιπληθής λίην τόσον, αλλ’ αγαθη μεν,
εύβοτος, εύμηλος, οινοπληθης, πολύπυρος.

In the isle of Syria, the Ancients recognized one of the Cyclades, Syros, the present isle of Syria; Ortygia, the Isle of
Quail, was then another name for Delos or Rheneia. Such at least is the opinion of Strabo and the scholiasts, and it is also
the opinion of most of the contemporary critics. Nevertheless, some of the ones or the others have thought of the Sicilian
Ortygia, the small coastal isle which contained the fountain of Arethuse and which, at the base of the high town of
Syriacuse, formed the district of the Isle, Nasos. But this opinion seems little defensible. The Odyssey in effect speaks to
us of two neighboring isles, the one Syria, the other Ortygia. On the Sicilian coast, we find only one isle, which is termed
indifferently Nasos or Ortygia. It is vainly that we have wished to discover a difference between the two names, and
distinguish on the one hand the district of Ortygia and on the other, the district of Nasos: the latter also bears the name of

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Syria. The hypothesis, which which no text legitimizes, is contradictory to the most definite texts. Let us open a map of
the Aegean sea: the respective positions of Syria and Delos accord exactly to the Homeric description. The two isles are
found at the same latitude (around 37 degrees, 25 minutes); but the one, Syria, is at 22 degrees 33 minutes east longitude,
Delos is at 22 degrees 57 minutes. As to the difference between the two names Syria and Syros, Συρίη and Σύρος,
Eustathe already explained it in recounting that another such isle, neighboring Chios, is called, according to the authors,
Psyria or Psyros, Ψυρία or Ψύρος: the moderns have made of it Psyria or Psara. For the rest, Korinthos and Korinthia,
Κόρινθος and Κορινθία, Naxos and Naxia, Νάξος and Ναξία, Rhodos and Rhodia, ‘Ρόδος and ‘Ροδία, and, in Homer,
Sidon and Sidonia, Σίδων and Σιδονίη, show us well enough how Greek place names form from one name of a land,
Naxos, Νάξος, a name of a town, Naxia, Ναξία, where, inversely, from a name of a town, Korinthe, Κόρινθος, a name of
a land, Korinthia, Κορινθία, or Sidon, Sidonia: Syria is the name of the land or of the isle, νησος Συρία, of which Syros is
the town.
Nevertheless, the attribution of Ortygia to Sicily may be defended by a particular interpretation of the words “ of the
coast where the sun turns,” ‘όθι τροπαι ηλίοιο. The expression does not appear clear to some commentators. The
Ancients have already imagined several explanations for it. For the ones, the place where the sun turns designates the
east-west direction which the sun takes every day in its daily tour. Others knew that at Delos, on the slope of Cynthe, a
cavern was consacrated to the Sun: the cavern, they said, had formerly been a sort of natural sundial, on the walls of
which turned the shade and the light of the star. Among the moderns, some have thought of the annual march of the sun
to the north and its return toward the south: the poet may have wished to say that Ortygia was under the tropic. False for
the Ortygia of the archipelago, the position would not be much less, a little less nevertheless, for the Sicilian Ortygia:
Sicily is still some fifteen hundred kilometers from the tropic; the remove is a bit much. The most reasonable expanation
and that most generally adopted is that which the commentators of antiquity have already given. The situation “toward the
turnings of the sun,” προς τροπας ‘ηλίου, says Eustathe, signifies προς τα δυτικα μέρη, toward the sunset. In the Iliad and
the Odyssey, as in the Levantine cosmographies, the sun rises from the earth, ‘υπερέχειν γαίης, penetrates and climbs in
the sky, ουρανον εισανιέναι, εσ ουρανον ιέναι ανορούειν, reaches the iron platform, on which it travels or navigates,
μεσον ουρανον αμφιβαίνει, and returns from the sky toward the earth, άψ επι γαιαν απ’ ουρανόθεν προτρέπεται, to lay
itself in the ocean. It is the movement of return, προτρέπεται, which designates the turning of the sun, τροπαι ηλίοιο: the
words, we see, are the same in either sense. The context, on the other hand, is in favor of this interpretation. Syros, says
the poet, is outside of Ortygia, Ορτυγίης καθύπερθεν. The Ionian speaks as an inhabitant of Asia Minor. He employs the
terms of his compatriot navigators who, in their passages toward Greece, at first encounter Ortygia, then, beyond, toward
the west, Syros: “We did not forget before our departure from Syria,” says Tournefort, “to make the observations of
geography there: the great Delos is between the east and southeast:” it is the exact translation of Ορτυγίας καθύπερθεν,
‘όθι τροπαι ηελίοιο, which is given us in this way by the French voyager. Syria is outside of Delos for the Ionian sailors,
the same way that Eubea is, for them, the last, the farthest of the isles, “in the words of those who have seen it,”

εί περ και μάλα πολλον ‘εκατέρω έστ’ Ευβοίης

τήν περ τηλοτάτω φάσ’ έμμεναι, ο‘ί μιν ίδοντο.

Another explanation, however, will present itself in the course of our study; I believe this more likely.
“But the isle Syria,” say some, “never existed.” W. Helbig himself, in spite of his knowledge of the Homeric realism,
believes it “somewat mythical.” The word has made fortune. The archeologists currently speak “of the mythical isle of
Syros.” It is difficult for me to follow Helbig in this. A long and minute study of the Odyssian geography has already
shown us and will presently show us still better that the geography in sum contains very little of legends. Its descriptions
always correspond to some tangible reality. Thus if the description of Syria appears, at first reading, mythical, we need to
take care. In discussing all the words of the text, the basis of reality does not hesitate to appear. It suffices to take up again
the account of Eumea:

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 V. 405-411. It is not very populated, but it is a good isle: cattle, sheep, lots of vines and lots of wheat. The lack of people is never
felt; no other malady afflicts the poor mortals there; but when, inside the town, the chiefs of the men have arrived at old age, Apollo
of the silver bow comes with Artemis to hit them with their arrows without violence.

Eustathe already relates the Homeric verses to the verses where the poet of Works and Days depicts the age of gold.
He concludes with a legend from some source or the other. The similarities can strike a reader. But it is only superficially
precise. From all times, in effect, the navigators have made two parts of the isles of the archipelago: they have always
distinguished between the isles of the south and the isles of the north. The volcanic isles of the south, Milos, Santorini,
etc., with their sulfurous emanations, hot springs which flow into marshes and their lack of fresh water, are feverish,
unhealthy, and of an untenable stay: “The air of Milos,” says Tournefort, “is unhealthy; the town is intolerably dirty; the
filth, joined by the vapors of of the unclean marshes which are on the seacoast, with the exhalations of the minerals with
which the isle is infested, with the lack of good water, poison the air of Milos and cause dangerous illnesses there... ” And
Choiseul-Gouffier adds: “Of the five thousand inhabitants which Tournefort found in the sole town of Milos, hardly two
hundred remain today, threatened with shortly being victims of the unhealthiness of the climate. These unfortunates are
yellow and swollen; their enormous belly and their horribly inflated legs barely allow them to drag themselves through
the ruins of their town... The origin of the pestilential influence appears to me to originate precisely with the epoch of the
new volcano, which opens itself across from Santorini... ”
The granite or limestone isles of the north, to the contrary, are fanned by the mistral and refreshed by the current from
the Dardanelles: they are renowned for their salubrity. The contrast between the two groups of isles is all the more
striking, as the passage is barely a few hours. It was also carefully noted by all the travelers: “The isle of Siphanto,- the
ancient Siphnos where one arrives after leaving Milos”, Tournefort continues, “- is under a beautiful sky; one finds it still
more charming when one arrives from Milos, where the air is infected with sulfurous vapors. One sees on Siphanto old
people of a hundred years; the air, the waters, the fruits, the game, the fowl, all are excellent there; the grapes there are
marvelous. Although the isle may be covered in marble and granite, it is nevertheless one of the most fertile and best
cultivated isles of the archipelago; it furnishes enough grain for the inhabitants of the land, who are today of very good
stock.” It is quite evident that Tournefort did not have, either before his eyes or in memory, our passage from the
Odyssey: he simply reports what he has seen. Nevertheless, for the similitude of the terms and the details, one could
believe that he had only paraphrased the Homeric description. The other voyagers speak like him: “The climate of
Siphanto,” says Choiseul-Gouffier, “inspires regret upon leaving: the sky there is always pure and serene, and the happy
fertility of the land would permit the inhabitants to ignore the neighboring isles, if the desire for some superfluities would
not engage them to have recourse there.” - We are going to discover the same superfluities, αθύρματα, in the Homeric
text. It is for superfluities, amber necklaces, embroideries, jewels, trinkets, utensils of copper and silver, that the
cultivators of Syria traffic with the foreigner.
Since the eighteenth century up until our days, the navigators have transmitted the sentiments of Tournefort and
Choiseul-Gouffier. Our Nautical Instructions still indicate today that Siphnos “is renowned for its salubrity and for the
fertility of its soil... ; the land is well-cultivated, extremely fertile and abounds with springs of excellent water.” Syria
merits the same praises: “It is also,” says Tournefort, “of the best cultivations, and produces excellent wheat, although in
small quantity, lots of barley, lots of wine and figs, a sufficiency of cotton and olives... It is cooler than most of the isles
of the archipelago.” Tournefort visited Syria; he speaks of it as an eyewitness. Before him, Thevenot, who had not come
to the isle, had borrowed a description from a “memoir” of navigators, he tells us: “The isle of Syria, which in common
Greek would say madam or mistress, is called thusly because by its height it commands all the other isles. Its territory has
few trees and is dry. Nevertheless, it abounds in everything, having there the means to live - it is the Homeric βιοτος - as
much in meat of venison as in fish. Water is obtained at a spring a little removed from the village: but also it is very
beautiful. There are no villages at all in the field from here to there. They are almost all Latins, and there are several
churches, the cathedral of which is at the summit of the town, dedicated to St. George and served by several priests who
have for their superior a Latin bishop.” Our Nautical Instructions appear to recopy the memoir of Thevenot: “The isle is
well-cultivated and produces barley, figs, olives, wheat, wine, etc. They ship a great quantity of vegetables to Athens and

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Constantinople. The population is 34,000 inhabitants... Its central position makes it the market of the archipelago and its
port is a port of loading for the ships, especially for the steamers from almost all the nations. The climate is remarkably
healthy; the extreme cold and freezes are unknown; in summer one sometimes feels a suffocating heat; nevertheless the
predominating winds blow from the north and maintain a cool temperature.”
Syria is today the capitol of the Greek archipelago. Center of resupplying, of loading and unloading for all the foreign
navies, it is like the landing stage where the natives of the isles and the neighboring lands come to trafic with the sailors
from abroad, Russians, Egyptians, French, Italians, Germans and English. It is the foreign commerce, the commerce of
transit, which makes the prosperity of Syria. Furthermore, the prosperity is entirely recent and already it is in the process
of disappearing. Two centuries ago, in the time of Tournefort, Syria had no rôle. It remains without great importance up
to the Greek revolution. But then it became a sort of neutral port, by virtue of the religion of its inhabitants: “It is,” said
Tournefort, “the most Catholic isle of the entire archipelago; for seven or eight families of the Greek rite, they count there
over six thousand souls of the Latin rite.” The Latins descended from Genoese or Venetian conquerors, or they may be
mixed from French corsairs and native women: The Provençals had then established a household in the archipelago,
without counting their passing liaisons with the slaves taken from the Turks, Christians delivered from harems, etc. “The
Christian corsairs, who previously came to infest the archipelago, passed their winter quarters at Argentiere. There they
consumed the profit of their seizures and left the riches which they made, to pay in truth very dearly to the inhabitants for
all their vexations. They had established a custom there, by which the navigators of Madagascar still benefit, that of
solomnly marrying for the time of their stay, of such sort that they awaited the departure of a captain with impatience in
order to marry his wife the moment that he had taken sail... ” The Latins of Syria had grouped around the church of the
Capuchins, under the Catholic cross and under the French protection. They took no part in the Greek insurrection. Their
port was, from 1820 to 1830, the only place where foreigners and belligerants could stay and trade in perfect security.
When the wars finished, the habit was set: Syria, in the course of the century, remains that which its neighbor Mykonos
had been in the preceding centuries, that which its other neighbor Delos was in the times of Rome and of Ionia, the great
port of call and the great trading post of foreigners in the archipelago.
The traffic of the Aegean sea appears ruled by a constant law across the centuries. All the times when a foreign
commerce is master of the archipelago, it is at the center of the sea, in one of three isles, Syria, Delos or Mykonos, that it
needs a “repository,” as the sailors of the seventeenth century said, a landing stage and some docks, the sailors of today
would say. When, to the contrary, it is the natives of the mainland, on the European or Asiatic coast, which control the
traffic, the rôle of the central isles disappears. They cede its benefits to the ports of the continental periphery, Corinth,
Athens, Salonica, Smyrne, Ephesis or Milet. With the renaissance of the Greek and Levantine commerce, we wait today
for the decline of Syria and the rise of Piraeus and Smyrna... A glance at a map of the archipelago and the reading of the
Nautical Instructions easily explain the law.
We can represent the archipelago as a closed field. Four regions border it, Greece to the west, Thrace to the north,
Anatolia to the east, Crete and the neighboring isles to the south. The continental or insular regions are almost
uninterrupted. They leave only four entries or exits at the four corners. At the northeast corner, a mouth leads to the
Dardanelles and toward the sea of Marmara. At the southeast corner, a great door between Rhodes and Crete opens itself
towards the far east; but the door serves the navigators much less than the narrow strait between Rhodes and the Asiatic
continent. Similarly, at the southwest angle, at the foot of the European continent, is the channel of Kythera, and all the
more the great door between Kythera and Crete, which the boats coming from the west have always frequented... In the
interior, the rectangular field is divided as into two rooms by the almost continuous wall which the chain of isles forms:
Eubea, Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Icara and Samos extend almost without interruption from west to east; some narrow
straits leave only a few posterns of communication between the isles. For the sailors of sailing ships, the wall of isles has
had a great importance from all times because of the system of winds: “The predominant winds of the archipelago,” say
the Nautical Instructions, “are the winds from the north. From the end of September to the end of May, the winds from
the north alternate with those from the southwest quarter, which are more frequent when the winter is mild.” We can, in
our studies of ancient geography, hold no great account of the winds from the southwest: they blow during the winter, in

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the season when all antique navigation was almost suspended. In reality, the winds from the north are the true masters of
our closed field.

The summer winds, according to the Instructions, which are called meltems by the Turks, are the most frequent during the fair
season; they begin almost invariably toward the end of March and last up until the end of August: they blow from the north to the
northeast... The navigation of the archipelago, although it is easy, requires a constant attention, and one always needs to keep a port
of shelter in view, which, in case of a threatening wind, one can reach before dark, for the weather can become very obscure -
ηεροειδης ποντος, the misty sea, says the Odyssey - in the middle of the labyrinth of isles, so that one cannot see the land soon
enough to evade it... With the winds from the north, a ship should always anchor under the shelter of an island, for although the
winds sometimes blow with an extreme violence, they never shift quickly to the south, and one always has time to leave the
anchorage. To the contrary, with winds from the south, a sailing ship should never anchor on the north coast of an isle, for the winds
shift quickly, with showers, to the north and northwest, and they blow with such violence that a ship cannot be rigged.

These considerations explain to us the rôle that the wall of islands between Samos and Eubea play for the navigators.
In their passages from east to west or the reverse, the sailors of the archipelago always stay under the lee of the islands,
that is to say, to the south: the isles will serve them as screens against the violence of the winds from the north. The
Persian fleet of Darius, who came to attack Greece, do not make the tour of the coast of Asia and Europe, because of the
terror which its sailors had of Athos. It traverses the archipelago at the level of Samos, in cruising along Ikaria, then the
isles, ου παρα την έπειρον, αλλ’ εκ Σάμου ‘ορμώμενοι παρά τε Ικαρίαν και δια νήσων τον πλόον εποίευντο. Similarly,
after the battle of Salamine, when the Ionian deputies come to demand the help of united Greece, the Greeks, anchored at
Egine, were frightened of this distant undertaking; they still have so little familiarity of the sea, that they imagine Samos
to be as far removed from them as the Columns of Hercules, την δε Σάμον επιστέατο δόξη και ‘Ηερακλέας Στύλας ‘ίσον
απέχειν. They nevertheless are pursuaded to come as far as Delos... On the great maritime route, between the Asiatic and
European coasts, our three isles of Mykonos, Delos and Syria present themselves just midway in the crossing, and in the
middle of the bridge of islands: they are the nearly obligate stopping places. Also, when the Ionians, masters of the two
coasts, want a market place, a meeting place, and a common cult, it is Delos which will see the great panagyrics of the
Homeric hymn and the first assemblies of the Athenian Empire.
Second rôle. The wall of islands has a certain number of openings, which the sailing ships were necessarily obliged to
utilize in order to pass from one room to the other, from the northern archipelago to the southern, or the inverse. These
openings are six in number: between Eubea and Andros opens the Doro channel; between Andros and Tinos, the Steno
pass; then the three channels between Tinos and Mykonos, between Mykonos and Icaria, between Icaria and Samos; and
finally, the strait of Samos. All the openings can serve for passage; but they are more or less convenient. Coming from the
channel of Rhodes and climbing to the Dardanelles, the Oriental sailors who wish to arrive at the sea of Marmara will
quite naturally use the strait of Samos: by virtue of the line of the Sporades, the strait is for them the continuation of the
channel of Rhodes. But, coming from the channel of Kythera, the western navigators can vacillate. In the times of
Tournefort, the ordinary route of the Dutch and the English is between Negrepont and Macronisi, that is to say between
Eubea and Andros, by the Doro channel; the French, to the contrary, “bound for Smyrna and for Constantinople pass
through the channel of Tine at Mykonos.” The habit of the English and the Dutch can appear strange; the route of the
French is much more convenient, because of the currents of the archipelago: “Because the winds are from between
norheast and east,” say the Nautical Instructions, “the rapid current from the Bosphorus leaves the Dardanelles, passes the
two ends of the isle of Lemnos, and proceeds to the west part of the archipelago, taking a considerable velocity in the
channel of Doro. It also cuts with great force through the pass of Steno, and similarly through the large channel which
separates Icaria from Mykonos; but it is less rapid in the channel between Mykonos and Tinos.”
For the navigators from north to south, from Asia to Europe, from Troy to Greece or from Byzance to Corinth, the
Ancients utilize the current and, leaving with it from the Dardanelles, they come with it to take the Doro channel. They
use it this way in the pass between Eubea and Andros; the Geraistos promontory, to the south of Eubea, is one of their
stops; Sounion to the south of Attica is another. It is the route which the Greco-Roman commerce of the times of Strabo

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follows: Γεραιστος τοις διαίρουσιν εκ της Ασίας εις την Αττικην επικαιρίως κειται τω Σουνίω πλησίαζον. Also, the
Geraistos has a great sanctuary of Poseidon for the sailors. From the Homeric times, the same route is still followed:
Nestor, on the return from Troy, sails along the Asiatic coast up to Lesbos, then cuts across the high sea toward Eubea,
ηνώφει πέλαγος μέσον εις Εύβοιαν τέμνειν. By virtue of the wind from astern, he arrives at night at Geraistos; he makes a
great sacrifice there and thanks Poseidon for such a long passage,

... ες δε Φεραιστόν
εννύχιαι κατάγοντο Ποσειδάωνι δε ταύρων
πόλλ’ επι μηρ’ έθεμεν πέλαγος μέγα μετρήσαντες.

Then he takes his leave of Sounion and its temple for the passage, and he reënters with it along the Peloponnesian coasts.
But when one inversely goes from south to north, from Europe to Asia, the Doro channel. with its adverse current, is
consequently no longer practicable. It can even become dangerous with wind storms from the north.

“The navigation of the Doro channel,” say the Nautical Instructions, “is one of the most difficult of the Levant for sailing vessels,
because of the strong winds of the north which so predominte during the summer months that one may say that they blow almost
without interruption. This pattern of winds lasts from may to the end of August or the middle of September, and, when it ends after
the autumn equinox, the gusts from that direction are as still frequent as those from any other rumb. It is imposssible for a sailing
vessel to ascend the Doro channel because the wind blows briskly from the north and a violent south current dominates; it will be
preferable in this case to employ the channel of Mykonos where the current is less strong.

For the small sailing vessels, the pass of Mykonos, without a violent current, is thus the most sure and rapid route: it is
the route of the French in the times of Tournefort. On the more frequented route, before quitting the archipelago of the
south and its numerous points of refuge, to enter the near-isleless desert of the archipelago of the north, our three isles of
Syria, of Delos and of Mykonos still furnish the stopping place, the repository of the middle just at mid-journey between
Kythere and the Dardanelles... And it is still here that the transverse routes pass, which lead from the southeast to the
northwest, from the channel of Rhodes to the channel of Eubea or to the ports of Thessaly and of Macedonia (Delos was
one of the great ports of call of Alexandrian commerce), and the direct routes which come from the south to the north,
from the ports of Crete to the ports of Thrace: in brief, all the diagonals of the archipelago cross in this place.
Also, during the season of the winds from the north, that is to say, during the navigating season, one or the other of the
three isles necessarily becomes the rendez-vous of foreign boats. Still today our Nautical Instructions recommend, “if
there is the least appearance of a gale from the north, do not hesitate an instant to seek a temporary shelter in the closest
harbor, for for there is nothing to gain by remaining at sea.” The Greeks have always followed this prudent habit. Today,
as in the times of Tournefort, they needed short navigations and frequent layovers. The sailors of the primitive Aegean on
their poorly decked boats should have been no more audacious: one or the other of the three isles, Syria, Delos or
Mykonos was certainly one of their habitual repositories. But between Syria, Delos and Mykonos, it appears that their
choice was able to vacillate. In fact, across the centuries, we see the traffic be moved from one to the other of the three
isles, without any apparent motive other than the caprice of the navigators: Delos is preferred by the Ionians and the
Romans, Mykonos by the French of the seventeenth century and Syria by the modern navies. If we examine things more
closely, we promptly perceive that in these matters the part of chance and human caprice is minimal. Some natural
necessities, across the centuries and the changing humanities, have strictly determined the choice of the sailors.
Of our three isles, Delos is the most central: the ancients said that it leads the chorus of the cyclades. On the route
between the east and the west, it is just at an equal distance from Corinth and Milet. On the route between the south and
the north, it is directly across from the channel of Mykonos. Additionally, it posesses a good watering place, “one of the
finest springs in the entire archipelago: it is a sort of well; it had 24 feet of water in October and more than 30 in January
and February... The Turkish and Venetian armies came there to take on water.” We have already studied the importance
of the insular watering place. Here are the good reasons why the sailing ships put into the port. But Delos is entirely

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small, without possibilty of cultivations, without resources. Situated on the strait which separates it from Rheneia, its port
is buffeted by the winds and the currents from the north: it required the work of man in Hellenistic and Roman times to
make an almost safe shelter there, and the shelter crumbled, becoming untenable. Thus Delos was not able to serve all the
navigators. The vessels coming from afar found neither wood for their repairs nor provisions for their crews, nor complete
safety of anchorage for a long layover. Thus from the first, Delos was able to be only a watering place resembling the
Strophades isles or the islet of Lampadouze. The people of the sea came there to fill their skins, invoke the divinity and
interrogate the oracle of the spring. They left their pious offerings there. But they only remained there a few hours.
The Ionians, who succeeded the foreigners, came from the same archipelago: they brought their provisions of food
with them; they had further need only of drinking water; otherwise they only remained there a few days and then returned
to their base port. The Ionian Delos was also only an intermittent port, a field for annual fairs. While it was the rendez-
vous for a numerous crowd on certain days, it was deserted the rest of the year. In the Hellenistic and Roman times, if
Delos became a great establishment and a permanent trading post for foreign navies, it was to its temple and its religious
priviliges that it owed the renewal of prosperity, like the modern Syria in the times of the Independence owed its security
and its fortune to its church of the Capuchins. And it required the enormous works of engineers at Delos to adapt it to the
rôle for which nature had not prepared it. Still, it was not truly a great market except on certain days. The arrivals cast
dozens of thousands of slaves on the quais, to be sold in a few hours: “Debark, negotiate, show the merchandise, all are
sold!” said the proverb reported by Strabo. One comes there. One does not stay there. The ruin of the temple was also the
ruin of the commerce. Paganism having fallen, Delos immediately became again the desert which we know today.
Let us pass to Mykonos. Almost as central as Delos, Mykonos is placed, like Delos, at the entrance of a convenient
pass. It has over Delos the advantage of size, of some fields of wheat, of some pastures for sheep and of a vast well-
sheltered bay; but it lacks springs: “The isle of Mykonos is very arid... ; they grow enough barley for the inhabitants there,
lots of figs; rains there are somewhat rare in summer; a large well furnishes the entire town.” Finally Syros, a bit less
central and farther from the pass, has all the advantages of Mykonos and none of the inconveniences. Large enough and
fertile enough, it has a good port and a good watering place. “The principal fountain of the isle springs at the very bottom
of a valley, close enough to the town; the people of the land believe, I know not by what tradition, that people came there
formerly to purify themselves before going to Delos.” Its bay is even more secure than that of Mykonos, to which it is
symmetrically opposite. Situated on the east coast of the isle, the bay of Syros is open to the east; the bay of Mykonos, to
the contrary, situated on the western coast of the isle, has its entrance to the west. The difference in orientation has
determined the history of the two isles.
For there is no need for a great effort to establish, as we have already done, that, following the direction of the
commercial currents, the points of layover on a coast or on a sea are displaced and replaced. The French sailors, coming
from the west, go straightaway to the bay of Mykonos, which had its two promontories for them. It is there where, by
habit, they will come to provision themselves, to furnish themselves with pilots, and winter during the foul season: “In
bad weather, they ordinarily lay over at Mykonos and come there to gather intelligence during the war; French boats
come there frequently to load grain, silk, cotton and other merchandise from the neighboring isles...; the sojourn of
Mykonos is agreeable enough for foreigners; they set a good table there; the partridge are abundant and cheap there, the
same for quail, woodcock and turtledoves, etc.; they eat excellent grapes and very good figs there; the soft cheese which
they prepare there is delicious.” Tournefort came back from Tinos to Mykonos to pass the four months of winter, from
December 1700 to March 1701.
Conversely, the bay of Syros, open toward the east, offers itself to the Oriental sailors. It is a harbor entirely similar to
the old ports which we have studied in the isles of Rhodes, Kos, Salamine, Thera, etc., an anchorage open to the
southeast, turning, as Strabo says, toward Syria and Egypt, and closed to arrivals from Greece. For Syros turns its back on
the west, on Greece. Its western coasts, facing Hellenic lands, have no shelter, no place of debarkation: “The only port of
the isle,” Say the Nautical Instructions, “is found on its east coast.” Also, during all of Greek history, Syros has no rôle,
and its account would be made early from the Greek or Latin texts in which we read of it. The ancient geographers did no
more than point it out, adding that the isle has a town of the same name. A scholiast relates to us the colonization there by

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the Ionians, under a certain Hippomedon. Another scholiast, copying poorly, without doubt, a passage of Theopompe,
relates to us the conquest by the Samians: a certain Killikon would have sold his homeland to foreigners. The fact of a
Samian conquest in itself is not unlikely: the port of Syros could have been of a great usefulness to Samian navigators,
coming from the east. The fact is nevertheless more than doubtful: Killilon, whose treason has become legendary, had
sold, according to others, Milet or Priene, and not Syros... In brief, the only fame of Syros came to it from its philosopher,
Pherecyde, who is counted among the Seven sages. Pherecydes, teacher of Pythagoras, had no teacher. He had been, they
say, informed solely by reading the mysterious writings of the Phoenicians. It was from the Phoenician theogonies that he
borrowed such and other of his myths. The father of Pythagoras, who also knew the Phoenicians, did not hesitate to
confide it to his son. Pherecyde wrote a cosmogeny and set up, also on Syros, a sundial, σώζεται δε και ‘ελιοτρόπειον εν
Σύρω τε νησω. Should we relate the heliotrope, ‘ηλιοτρόπιον, with the Homeric turnings of the sun [tropes du soleil],
τροπαι ‘ηλίοιο? In the public renown, was the Odyssian Syros the isle of the Dial? Or is it, to the contrary, the Homeric
text, poorly interpreted, which has given birth to the story of the sundial?... Except for some meager details, the authors
say nothing of Syros.
The inscriptions do not teach us any more things of importance: they are all from the Roman epoch. Under the empire,
they only make mention of the public festivities and of parties when the wealthy citizens invite their compatriots and their
friends from the neighboring isles: it is always the good isle of the Odyssey. Syros had nevertheless known some sad days
a little while before the establishment of the Empire. An inscription, which Boeckh attributes to the time of Pompey,
relates the attacks of pirates - Cilicians, Karians, Oriental navigators - who wished to take the town to ransom it and who
made raids for slaves against the villas of the coast. To the contrary, the prosperity of Syros appears to have grown after
the official establishment of Christianity, that is to say, in the epoch when the great ports of the far east and the Asiatic
towns, from Constantinople to Alexandria and from Ephesis to Antioch became again the seat of Mediterranean
commerce. The rocks of its bay are covered with Christian inscriptions: Lord, aid the ship of Philalithios! Christ, help
your servant Eulimenios! The names are Greek, authentically Greek, Φιλαλήθιος, Ευλιμένιος, Λεόντιος, Διότιμα, etc. But
the navigators have come from all parts of the Hellinic world. The people of the Cyclades, Andrians, Parians, Naxians,
Therians, conduct Ephesians, Milesians, Egyptians from Peluse, Lycians from Pinara - Orientals from all of the Levant
there.
If the Phoenicians ever exploited the archipelago, Syros thus could have, should have been one of their ports, I would
even say one of their principal ports of call, so completely does the port of the isle conform to all that we know of the
Phoenician establishments. We are familiar with their trading posts, perched on a promontory which extends into the sea,
or isolated on a small isle which faces the great coast. We have insisted on the rôle of the coastal islets. The bay of Syros
contains one of the islets, which the moderns call Gaidaro-Nisi, the Isle of Asses: “The isle is a half mile in length, a third
of a mile in width and about 30 meters in height; its distance from the coast is about a half mile; the intervening space
offers a adequate mooring, with the bottom at 22 or 23 meters; it is sheltered from the wind from the north which
sometimes blow with violence... ; the ships will make anchorage well under the lee of Gaidaro, against gales from the
northeast.” By its dimensions, by its harbor, by its proximity to the large isle, the islet appears most especially fitted to be
one of the trading posts, convenient to reach and convenint to leave, easy to survey and easy to defend against the
pirogues of the natives. “We arrived,” says the periple of Hannon, “in a bay where we discovered a small isle of of five
stades circuit; we established a post of colonies there, and we named it Kerne.” Similarly, the Odyssey relates to us, the
men of Phonecia, able sailors, but crooked, came to Syria,

ένθα δε Φοίνικες ναθσίκλυτοι ήλυθον άνδρες,

τρωκται,

and they will leave there, as at Kerne, a trace of their passage in the name which they give the large isle. The name of
Syros or Syria, which it retains up to our days, appears to me of Semitic origin. The Ancients had searched for the name
of Σύρος a Greek etymology and, aided by a few puns, in their usual fashion, they had found an explanation. They made

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the name come from the verb suro, to draw, to pull out or up: Σύροσ, Συρία, say the lexicographers, δια το συρηναι απο
του κατακλυσμου γενικου, because it was pulled up, saved from the Deluge. The moderns have wished to refer to an
IndoGermanic root, suar or sur, shine, be shining from whiteness: Syros would be the White isle. But all the isles of the
archipelago, with their bare limestone, could have the name. Pape, in his Dictionary of Proper Nouns, relates Syros to
resembling appellations, Hyria, ‘Υρίια, town of Beoptia, of Isauria, of Iapygia, etc. (the initial s having been dropped, as
frequently happens). But Bouchart had already found a Semitic etymology, in reading the passage of the Odyssey which
he cites differently: “Syros is an isle rich, fortunate, itaque per aphaerisim Phoenicibus familiarem, vel, ‫שירה‬, sira, pro
‫עשירה‬, asira, id est dives, vel ‫שורה‬, sura, pro ‫אשורה‬, asura, id est beata.” There, certainly, is one of the worst etymologies
of Buchart, who frequently has bad ones. Bouchart nevertheless had reason to seek a Semitic etymology: Syros belongs to
a class of island names which, frequent in the archipelago, are the most often accomanied by their doublets. The
archipelago is in effect populated by Greco-Semitic doublets.

*
* *

The region of Megara has rendered us familiar with the Greco-Semitic doublets. The names of the archipelago have
furnished us a still greater certitude. For they are not isolated or confined in a district, lost in the midst of Greek seas. We
can be certain of their provenance, because we can trace the route which they take. From isle to isle, from strait to strait,
from cape to cape, we return with them to their places of origin. They begin on the Syrian coasts. All along the Asiatic
coasts, they climb toward the Greek seas, marking the principal stops of the old Phoenician commerce. We take them
from Cyprus. We will leave in this direction from the coasts of Syria, where the doublets originate all the same: the cape
of the Face of God retained its Greek name of Theou Prosopon, Θεου Πρόσωπον, and Semitic of Phanouel, ‫אל‬-‫פנו‬. But in
Syria one cannot date the place name. Its presence is explained by the Hellenistic history much more than by the primitive
history. In Cyprus or Cilicia, to the contrary, the doublets are dated by the Greek legends or traditions which accompany
them: they date back to the preHellenic period.

I. - on the coasts of Cyprus, a town bore the Greek name of Aipeia, Αιπεια, the Steep, and the foreign name of Soloi.
The Greeks maintain that the first name Aipeia was the most ancient and that a colonization from Solon the Athenian had
implanted the new name Soloi. We know what the puns are worth. In reality, Soloi, Σόλοι, would say the Town of the
Mountains or of the Rocks. The Semitic word ‫ סלע‬Salo or Solo would have Σαλο or Σολο for an exact transcription, being
given the equivalences ‫=ס‬σ, ‫=ל‬λ, ‫=ע‬ο: Solos, says Heschius, is the name of the mountain, σόλοσ όνομα βουνου. The
Greek plural Soloi, Σολοι, would correspond to a form of the constructed Semitic plural: ...‫סלעי‬, Soloi... , the Rocks of...
[followed by a determinative which existed in the Semitic original and which has disappeared in the Greek transcription].
It suffices to open the Nautical Instructions to know the reason for the place name.
To the south of Asia Minor, the northern coast of Cyprus borders the first strait which leads from the Far East to the
Hellenic Mediterranean. The Cypriot coast presents two very different aspects to the navigators which come from Syria.
Its eastern extremity, from the high cape of Saint-Andre up to the high cape Kormatiki (the ancient Krommyon), is “a
chain of steep hills which run parallel to the coast” and falls from the peak into the sea. After cape Kormatiki, which is the
last point of it, the coast suddenly hollows itself into a large double bay, which today is called the Bay of Morphou:
during antiquity it was the bay of Soloi. The high coastal hills disappear: “The coast is at first low... ; it is a low beach of
sand and pebbles, going to the south up to the foot of the bay; it does not at first have any secure mooring: the winds from
the west and from the open raise a heavy sea and render all debarkation impossible, save for exceptional weather. Then
the coast becomes rocky: one finds, between the points extended from its cliffs, the small sandy bay of Loutro (under the
small isle situated before cape Limniti) and the bay of Pyrgos, where there are several springs of good water. The bays

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offer good summer harbors, with a botttom of sand and algae: they load firewood there and sometimes wheat provided
from the neighboring plains.”
At the extremity of the bay, at the point where the beaches of sand and pebbles trade places with cliffs, on the first
rocks, Soloi was installed. Its port was useful in the transit of the strait and necessary for the commerce of the natives. For
the foreigners, it watched the great port of the western sea between Cyprus and Asia Minor; it could receive the vessels
thrown on the coast by the wind from the north. It exported wood and native wheat. The wood came to it from the forests
of mount Aous, which rises behind it; the wheat arrives there from the great plain which occupies the center of the isle.
Cyprus in effect is composed of a long ribbon of plain between two rocky bands which border the plains of the north and
south. The plain pierces the isle from end to end and comes to end on the seas of the east and west in two bays, the bay of
the Rocks, Soloi, at the west, and the bay of the Peace, Salamis, Σάλαμις, at the east. Every foreign navy which exploits
the isle should necessarily have the ports of call in the two extremities of the isthmic plain, at the two ends of the
terrestrial route which cuts across it. The Greeks, who succeeded the Phoenicians, translate the Rocks, Soloi, Σόλοι, as
Steep, Αίπεια. But they retain Salamis, Σάλαμισ, which, for them, by virtue of their Salamine of the Saronic gulf, had
already become an Hellenic name: they attribute the foundation of the Cypriot Salamine to Teucer, king of the Greek
Salamine... Soloi, fortress of the natives and port of foreigners, was a double town. It had its acropolis and its old town on
the height, its echelle and its commercial town on the edge of the sea. A legend of pure fantasy later attributes the
foundation of Soloi to the Athenian, Solon. A tradition more worthy of belief attributes it to two Athenians Phaleros and
Akamas. Ακάμας, the Inflexible, is the name of a neighboring promontory. Φάληρος, the White Man, the Frothy
(φάλαρος, white, flecked with white, covered with foam), is possibly the Greek translation of the determinative which we
must suppose of our Phoenician Soloi. We will have here some White Rocks or Rocks of the Foam, like we have on the
Sicilian coast, facing them, some Black Rocks, some Spotted Rocks, Kara-tash, Ποικίλη Πέτρα, as we have in the
archipelago an Isle of the Foam, Άχνη, or, on the Attic coasts, a White Port, Phalere. The complete name of the site was
the White Rocks: The Greeks here translated Αίπεια Φαλήρου, Aipeia of Phaleros, as at Megara they said Skylla of Nisos;
it is always the same anthropomorphic procedure.

II. - The Cilician coast, which borders the channel of Cyprus to the north, also had a town of the Rocks... The other
town of Soloi had been built in a site altogether comparable to the Cypriot Soloi. Along the Cilician coast, in effect, the
sailors coming from Syria could observe two views of very different coasts. When they leave from the last Syrian gulf of
Alexandretta, they at first encounter an ancient rocky islet which, buried in sediments today, forms the cape of the Black
Rock, Kara-tash Bournou, say the Turks, “...table bordered with low white cliffs which surmounts a forst of stunted
oaks.” Then, behind the cape, extends a long, low and mountainous beach of sand, mud and lagoons, whose coast the
rivers and torrents falling from the great Cilician Taurus still fill, overrun and extend every day: “The beach stretches out
in a straight line for 24 miles. The plain which borders the beach is a true desert; flooded in several places, in others it
presents only hills of sand surmounted by some sparse scrub. A saline lake, about 12 miles long, communicates with the
sea. Arid sands surround it in all dirctions and, on the coast, the swans, pelicans and storks, with the fish and turtles,
appear to have the peaceful posession of it.” It is the Cilicia of the Plains, which the navigators need to cruise at some
distance, to avoid the sediments and grounding. Abruptly, at the end of the beach, stand the high cliffs of Rocky Cilicia,
Κιλικία τραχεια, which the Ancients have always distinguished from the Cilicia of the Plains, Κιλικία πεδιάς. On the first
rocks was built the town of Soloi. For the Semites coming from the Orient, the Rocky Cilicia began at this precise spot,
the same as the Plane Cilicia began for the Greeks coming from the Occident, πεδιας δ’ ‘η απο Σόλων και Ταρσου μέχρι
Ισσου... , Σόλοι της άλλης Κιλικίας άρχη της περι τον Ισσον... , εις πεδία αναπέπταται ‘η παραλία απο Σόλων και Ταρσου
αρξαμένη.
The name of Soloi is not only encountered in the Levantine seas. We find it wherever the Phoenician sailors have
penetrated. On the west coast of Africa, Hannon applies it to a promontory: Solo-eis, Σολοεις, the Greeks transcribe. In
the same site as our Soloi of Cyprus or of Clicia, the steep Soloeis stands abruptly at the end of long beaches of sand and
pebbles. It is our cape Cantin. The Nautical Instructions describe its vicinity thusly:

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 In leaving Sale, the coast is formed sometimes by sand, sometimes by rocks: two ranges of superposed hills run parallel to the
beach. The hills end at Ouad-Omer-Biyeh. Beyond, the coast presents only hillocks of 40 or 50 meters height, which continue to
gradually lower up to cape Cantin... Cape Cantin or Ras el-Hadik (cape of Palms) rises almost to a peak 60 meters above the sea. The
coast is formed of white cliffs, bordered at their foot by a narrow beach of sand. The cliffs or bare rocks, surmounted by some hills
of unequal height, gradually rise up to cape Safè.

Similarly, the Solo-eis or Solo-entum of Sicily is a promontory of rocks between two gulfs toward low coasts, the gulf
of Termini to the east, the gulf of Palermo to the west (fig. 32). In the gulf of Termini “some rocks lie a small distance
from the beach, and one sees some raised cliffs; but the coast is united and bordered by a beach of sand... , and [at the foot
of Solanto] a long beach of sand is developed which parallels the railroad.” The gulf of Palermo borders “the valley of
Conca d’Oro (the Golden Shell), which ends in a beach of sand ¾ mile long.” The two gulfs are separated by a large and
long promontory which is, truly speaking, just an archipelago of small mountains joined to the coast by a small plain.
Between the mountains and the hills of the mainland, the plain goes from one gulf to the other, and the railroad which
follows it has no tunnel. The almost rectangular promontory presents three large faces to the sea and points its mountains
of Aspra (357 meters) and Montalfano (374 meters) toward the sky. The capes Mongerbino and Zaffarano are extended
prominently toward the west and the east; they are bordered with rocks:

Cape Mongerbino is an extension which the coast makes at the foot of mount Aspra, whose summit of 357 meters height bears a
tower. About ½ miles from its extremity one sees a rock 3 meters out of the water and another smaller one closer in. Between the
cape and cape Zaffarano, the coast, bordered with cliffs, is solid and precipitous. Cape Zaffarano is a high massif of pyramidal form
and rocky. It is separate from mount Montalfano (374 meters) and, viewed from afar, it presents the appearance of an isle. At a small
distance lies a steep isle, which is separated from it by depths of 6 meters. The cape is of a solid approach. To the south of cape
Zaffarano, the solid but rocky coast forms two small bays; at a small distance some rocky heights rise up, at the foot of which, along
the extension of the shore between the two bays, one perceives the point and the town of Porticello.

Standing between the beaches of the two gulfs and emerging from the plain, the promontory, rocky and bordered with
rocks, merits its name of Soloi, Solo-eis or Solo-entum, the Rocks. The Phoenicians establish their trading post on the east
side, a little south of cape Zaffarano. It was the only harbor sheltered from the winds of the north, which are the most
frequent on the coast. The two bays of Porticello served as echelles and the neighboring heights on their rocks of 300
meters bore the Acropolis: the high town and its echelle bring back to us here the site of Pylos and of the Homeric high
towns, or the site of the Cypriot Soloi. Placed thus, Soloeis is certainly a foreign town: fearing the corsairs, the native
village, Bagheria, is installed in the interior, in the plain, midway between the two gulfs. Soloei was, they say, a
foundation by Hercules.
This is what offered great conveniences to the people of the sea, especially for the exploitation of the gulf of Termini.
In the gulf of Palermo, another semi-insular mountain, mount Pellegrino, Heirkte of the Ancients, had an entirely similar
station in the shelter of a similar rocky promontory: “Mount Pellegrino, 606 meters high, rises above the same coast; it is
remarkable for its isolation.” At the foot of Pellegrino, the harbor of Palermo was well-sheltered: a small cove, today
named Cala Felice, offers an entirely closed port behind a narrow entrance. The Hellenes also, masters of the land,
established as colonies in the plain and not fearing the attacks of the natives, prefer the harbor where one can remain with
any wind: Παν-ορμος, Panorme, Palermo, was the Hellenic town. But we know why the first sailors would avoid the too-
closed harbors and would prefer the free promontories, the Rocks: if Palermo is the Greek place of debarkation,
Soloentum is the Phoenician station. The gulf of Termini, additionally, does not border a fertile plain, a “Golden Shell”
siimilar to the Palerman Conca d’Oro. It is a great semicircle of bare and frequently steep hills, buffeted by all the winds,
east, north and west. The gulf offers no shelter, no natural refuge to navigators, who nevertheless need to traffic there if
they wish to penetrate to the interior of the isle.
For it is here that the land route comes to end, leaving from the southern coast and crossing the isle from south to
north. We have already studied the isthmic route and its southern port, Minoa or Agrigente: Soloeis was its northern port;

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Soloeis and Minoa date from the same thalassocracy. In the town of Rocks, the Phoenicians establish themselves solidly.
In the times of Thucydides, their commerce, driven from the rest of Sicily, is continued on the north coast, at Soloeis and
at Panorme, εκλιπόντες τα πλείω Μοτύην και Σολόεντα και Πάνορμον ξυνοικίσαντες ενέμοντο, and, up to the times of
Denys, Soloeis stays faithful to the Carthaginian alliance... On the same Sicilian coast, one finds today still another
Solanto, which is the rocky extremity of the great gulf of Castellamare. To the east, the gulf is “bordered by a low and
unhealthy coast, most generally sandy.” Westward, to the contrary, in front of point San Vito, a low point, stands a line of
steep promontories, among them point Solanto. It is possible that the Solanto might also be a Phoenician Rock, as the
Solanto which was built at the foot of our old Soloeis.

III. - For the Soloi of Cilicia, we have neither the Greco-Semitic doublet nor the historical and legendary traditions
which render the etymology certain for the Cypriot, Sicilian and Mauritanian Soloi. But Kilix is brother of Phoenix, and,
not far from Soloi, in the middle of a large beach which we have cruised, empties a river which the Greeks name
Koiranos or Saros, Κοιρανος, Σαρος. The first of the names is evidently Greek: koiranos is the equivalent of tyrannos; in
the Homeric poems, koiranos is commonly employed to signify the chief, the king, the master,

‘ηγεμόνες Δαναων και κοίρανοι...

Αιαν διογενες Τελαμώνιε, κοίρανε λαων...

It is the precise equivalent of the Semitic word ‫שר‬, sar, of which Saros, Σάρος, is the very exact Greek transcription.
We can thus pose the Greco-Semitic couplet Saros-Koiranos, Σάρος = Κοίρανος.

IV. - To the west of Soloi, the Cilician coast, very rocky and broken, presents a great number of promontories up to the
delta of Kalykadnos. Between two high hills of rock, the delta extends a small plain of alluvium toward the sea, totally
resembling the appearance, if not the size, of the Cilician plain. Seleukia, at the interior of the country, occupied the head
of the delta. It had a double echelle, on each coast of the plain, on the rocks of the west and of the east. Holmoi, ‘Όλμοι, to
the west, was the Greek port, the point of debarkation of the Occidental sailors, I would say, Greeks and Romans.
Conversely, in the times of the Oriental, Phoenician sailors, the principal echelle should be on the rocks of the east. There,
in effect, on the Spotted Rock, existed a point of debarkation and a route cutting toward the interior. Strabo, who speaks to
us of the Spotted Rock, Ποικίλη Πέτρα, mentions a neighboring cape, Anemurin, Ανεμουριον, which the Stadessimus
Maris Magni did not know of. Ποικίλη Πέτρα, the Spotted Rock, is a Greek name comparable to the Turkish name Kara-
tash, the Black Rock, which we have encountered above. Let us suppose a Semitic original to the Greek name. The Rock,
Πέτρα, could have come from either some ‫סקולה‬, Skula, resembling the Scylla which we have discovered near Megara, or
from some ‫סלע‬, Solo, comparable to our Cypriot and Cilician Soloi: the capitol of the Edomites, Sala or Salo, has become
the Petra of the Greeks and the Romans. As for Spotted, Ποικίλη, the epithet would be exactly rendered by some
derivative of the root ‫נמר‬, namar, which signifies in Arabic spotted, and which in all the Semitic languages has furnished
the name of the panther. The Spotted Rock, Ποικιλη Πετρα, thus would be ‫הסקולה הנמורה‬, As-Skula An-namura, or ‫הסלעים‬
‫הנמורים‬, As-Soloim An-nemurim, the Spotted Rocks, with the specifying term ‫נמור‬, namur, preceded by the article, whence
A-nemurion: Ποικίλη Πέτρα-Ανεμούριον appears to me another Greco-Semitic couplet.

V. - the name of Ανεμουριον is found farther away on the same coast of Cilicia. A little farther to the southwest, the
Syrian boats, at the extremity of the channel of Cyprus, round “cape Anamour, of 150 meters height. It is the
southernmost point of Asia Minor. On its east coast it offers a good harbor to coasters during the strong breeezes from the
west. The neighboring plains contain several towns, where one can obtain livestock, and one can easily take on water at
the mouth of the Direk-Ondessi River.” For its harbor and its watering place, the point already has some value. But the
sailors and especially the corsairs can find other advantages there: “...the capes Anamour and Kizliman, point Cavaliere,
like the Papadoula isles, would offer good harbors for the cruisers in fair weather. They could easily access the highest

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parts of the cliffs, to survey the channel of Cyprus and signal the approach of any ship.” The Provinçal corsairs, who
formerly plundered the strait, will leave the name of Provinçal Island to one of the coastal islands; they made it one of
their homes and refuges. It appears that the Semites similarly may have had a lookout post close by the last cape
Anamour, at the harbor which Skylax describes for us thusly: “Nagidos, town and isle, Νάγιδος πόλις ‘ή και ηνσον έχει.”
The name of Nagidos would say nothing in Greek. It came, according to Hecate, from a pilot named Nagis, αυτο του
Νάγιδος κυβερνήτου. In Hebrew, ‫נגיד‬, nagid, signifies the chief, the driver, the director, ‘ηγούμενος, άρχων, the Seventy
translate, κυβερνήτης, we say in maritime language: it is from the root nagada that the Arabs derive their verb tanaggada,
to be captain of a vessel. Νάγιδος is thus truly the Town of the Pilot, and Movers has already pointed out the Greco-
Semitic doublet. It is possible that the Phoenicians will take aboard pilots at that place before entering the sea of the
Occident which opens before them. All the thalassocracies had their Isles of Pilots: since the time of the corsairs up to our
days, Milo remains the isle where, for the Occidental navies, our ships of war come to take on a pilot, on their entry into
the archipelago. It is also possible that we have a place name without more historic significance than such a promontory
as the Tiller, Πηδάλιον, on the coasts of Cyprus, Karia or the Chersonnese.

VI. - Up to the archipelago, the Asiatic coasts are bordered with foreign names, coming from the sea. Today the Italian
or French names, Occidental, alternate with the Turkish or ancient names. During antiquity, the Greek or Roman names
alternate similarly with the native or Levantine names. The Semites would surely have had their part among the Levantine
names. The doublets are not always there to provide us irrefutable proofs; only certain traces remain: “Some towns retain
names of Semitic appearance, up to the Roman epoch, Kibyra, Masura, Ruskopus, Syleon, Mygdale, Sidyma. No direct
evidence attributes the foundation of the towns to the Phoenicians. But the Semitic origin of the name is certain for most
of them.” It is impossible, in effect, not to relate Rus-Kopus, Rus-Addir, Rus-Gounion, Rus-ibis, etc., Phoenician Heads or
Capes, ‫רוש‬, rus, which mark the Mauritanian sea. We similarly relate a port of Pamphylia, Sidë, to an entire series of
names, Sidon, Sida, etc., which are the Greek transcriptions of Phoenician ‫שידון‬, Sidon, or ‫שידה‬, Sida, Fisheries.
I would like to draw attention to at least one of the names, which two coastal mountains retain during antiquity, one in
Cilicia, the other in Lycia: it is Kragos, Κραγος. Like Anemurion, the double coastal name appears to me of maritime
origin: we will not otherwise understand its double presence with the Lycians and with the Cilicians, who do not speak
the same language. The coast of the two Kragos is similar. In Lycia there are our Seven Capes: “The Seven Capes form
the extremities of several high mountains bordering the coast,” say the Instructions; Strabo said: “Kragos has eight
points.” (I would correct eight to seven, H to Z.) In Cilicia, it is the coast between Alaya and cape Anamur: “The cliffs are
178 meters high. Up to cape Anamur, the coast is generally high and steep.” say the Instructions; Strabo said: “Kragos is
a cliff steep in all directions, Κράγος πέτρα περίκρημνος προς θαλλάτη.” The best translation of cliff, cut rock, steep, etc.
would be provided us by the Hebrew root k.r.g., ‫קרע‬, cut, dig, detach: the plural Kragim, ‫קרעים‬, designates the tails of a
robe torn as a sign of mourning; Kragos would be the crag of cliffs cut into peaks.
Thus we reach the gulf of Adalia and the Solymes mountains, Σολύμα όρη. The high range rises to peaks all along the
west coast of the gulf. When one comes from the east, the wall abruptly limits the horizon and closes the sea up to the
distant Holy promontory, which extends further as the small archipelago of the Hirondelles. We must note well the
importance of the Holy promontory for the first Levantine navigators. The modern navigators coming from the west do
not notice the promontory. Nothing distinguishes it for them from the thousand prominent capes which, for weeks, the
Occidentals come to circumnavigate or perceive along the European and Asiatic coasts: the archipelago of the Hirondelles
for them is just the last island group of the Greek archipelago. In any case, the western ships rarely frequent the area.
Using northern winds for their crossing toward Egypt or Syria, they do not follow the coasts of Asia Minor up to this
point. After Rhodes, they cut straight across the high seas, toward Cyprus or toward Alexandria. The less daring cruise the
coast a bit farther than Rhodes, up to the ports of the Lycian coast, Patara, Aperles, Myra or up to the small Lycian isle
which today retains its Italian name of Red Castle, Castellorizo (Castello-Rosso): “The port is a place frequented by the
ships going to Syria or Cyprus or returning from those localities. Thus one can find pilots there for all the eastern littoral
of the Mediterranean:” on the eastern side of the gulf of Adalia, the Occidentals have their isle of Pilots, as the old

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Oriental navigators had their isle and town of the Pilot, Nagidos, on the east coast of the same gulf. Between Castellorizo
and the coast, the Occidental merchants and pirates of Venice, Genoa or Pisa have always had some station or some
ambuscade barring the channels: when Philippe Auguste returned from Palestine, he came to lay over at Port-Pisan at the
mouth of the Phineka, to the east of Myra in Lycia.
But from Rhodes or Castellorizo, the Occidentals cut straight toward Cyprus or toward the Nile. They leave the Holy
promontory far to their left and quickly turn their back to it, which for them is not even useful as a place of refuge, so
quickly does its narrow point and slight height disappear from their view against the screen of the Lycian mountains.
Currently, further, the promontory has so little importance for the Occidental navies, that it bears neither a lighthouse, a
signal tower, nor any mark of recognition. Consult the chart of our lighthouses: on the extreme points of Crete, of Rhodes
and of Cyprus, the lights of Sidero, of Prasonisi and of Paphos illuminate the great ports of coastal cruising; at the
entrance of the ports and the bays frequented by the coastal cruisers, the lights of Marmaris, of Rhodes, of Adalia, of
Alaya, etc., illuminate the coming and going of the native boats. But neither the harbor of the isles of the Hirondelles nor
the hill of the Holy promontory appear worthy of of illumination.
If one day a native navy is reborn in the Syrian ports for the service of the countries of the Euphrates, it is probable
that the Holy promontory will retrieve its glory: the Oriental navigators, coming along the Asiatic coasts or through the
middle of the channel of Cyprus, navigate from afar by the Holy promontory, a gigantic signal whose high silhouette they
perceive in facing it. The promontory becomes one of the seamarks of their navigations, and it is also a boundary of their
world. For, behind the wall, they will abruptly find a new sea and lands different from theirs. Up to here, the coast which
they followed was truly Asiatic, I would say massive, broken but little, poorly provided with gulfs, bays, estuaries and
isles. Leaving from here, the truly Greek coast begins, entirely dentillated with capes, perforated with straits, embroidered
with isles and rocks. The coast is sewn to the massive continent like a doily sewn to a solid, stiff piece of canvas. The
little archipelago of the Hirondelles is the first festoon of the embroidery. From the Holy cape up to the Bosphorus, the
sailors are going to have the same view of the coasts, the same sea of river Mouths, of Isles and of Estuaries. The bounds
of the promontories and the coastal isles, by a series of straits, makes for them a sort of uniform channel. Along the
channel, the extended capes will alternate with deep gulfs and the isles scattered everywhere on the immense sea will
offer them shelters near or far. The rivers and the shores, behind each cape, will lead some great route of the plain to the
sea, which carries the commerce from the interior. Some great port will correspond to each of the estuaries, Myra, Patara,
Kaunos, Milet, Ephesis, Smyrna, Phocea, etc. Each of the ports, formerly founded on the coastal islets, later transported
onto the first rocks of some large bay, has seen its bay shrink little by little in depth and extent under the advance of
muddy rivers; the extension of deltas into the bays, between the compartments of the promontories, is one of the
phenomena which struck the Ancients most forcefully: Herodotus compares them from the small to the large, the
Egyptian to the Asiatic deltas.
Thus, for the Oriental sailors, the Holy cape truly marks the entrance to the sea of Isles and Estuaries, the door of the
Hellenic seas. Also, for the old Greek geographers, who repeat the theories of the most ancient navigators, the Holy cape
is the southeast door of the archipelago. At the angle of the triangle or trapezoid which forms Asia minor in their eyes,
begins the Taurus. From here, across the entire continent, the Taurus goes from the west to the east, cutting Asia in two,
as a diagonal cuts a rectangle; it leaves Levantine Asia to its right, barbaric Asia, while truly Greek or Grecophile is to the
left, from the coast of the Occident. In placing the entrance of the archipelago at Holy cape, the old Ionian geographers
only reproduce the views of the coast of the Oriental sailors. Strabo has a thousand reasons to maintain that their notions
lack exactitude, and that the southeast angle of Asia Minor is not the Holy cape, across from the isles of the Hirondelles,
but at the Tomb of the Dog across from Rhodes, or at the Promontory of Knide, across from Nisyros: all the cartographers
and geographers felt pleasure in his correction. But we see how the conception of the Most Ancients is justified. It is the
conception which is translated again in politics the day the Greek conquerors prevent the Persian vessels from passing the
isles of the Hirondelles and the Holy promontory: the beginning of the Hellenic seas, the free cities and humanity. The
same conception is already familiar to the poet of the Odyssey: Poseidon, returning from a banquet with the Ethiopians
discovers the Greek seas and the raft of Ulysses, from the top of the Solymes mountains,

168
 τον δ’ εξ Αιθιόπων ανιων κρείων Ενοσίχθων
τηλόθεν εκ Σολύμων ορέων ίδεν...

The path of Poseidon is the same route which we trace of the old Phoenician navigations. The Homeric poems know,
in effect - like Herodotus, Skylax and the ancient periples - two groups of Ethiopians: the ones are at the Sunset, the
others at the Sunrise, the ones near the Columns of Hercules, the others near Egypt,

αλλ’ ‘ο μεν Αιθίοπας μετεκίαθε τηλόθ’ έοντας

Αιθίοπας, τοι διχθα δεδαίαται έσχατοι ανδρων,
ο‘ι μεν δυσομένου ‘Υπερίονος ο‘ι δ’ ανιόντος...

The two Homeric Ethiopias are just the two Black Lands, the two Sudans of the Arabs. The meaning of one or the
other is the same: Belad-es-Sudan is in Arabic that which Ethiopia is in Greek, the Land of the Negroes. The Homeric
world already passes the strait of Gibralter. On the Atlantic ocean, beyond Calypso, it knows an Ethiopia, a Sudan, a
“Blackness” as the old charts said (we will return to the notion of the Odyssian poet): they are the Ethiopians of the West.
Between the two Blacknesses extend the Mediterranean peoples, Egypt and Libya, populated by white races. The two
groups of Ethiopians each has its great god, Zeus and Poseidon. Zeus goes to banquet with the Ethiopians of the Sunset,
on the edge of the Ocean. It is with the Oriental Ethiopians that Poseidon has gone. To come back toward the Greek seas,
he needs to pass the barrier of the Solymes mountains. It is from the top of the Solymes mountains that Poseidon
perceives the Greek seas.
At the foot of the Solymes mountains, the Pamphylian gulf, our gulf of Adalia, has always remained celebrated for its
storms, the “Terrible storms of the gulf of Satalia.” The crusaders who passed there spread the memory through all the
western world. All the French voyagers have been subjected to some blow of the wind in those waters:

“We reached the entry of the gulf of Satalia the sixteenth of January... One cannot understand without having seen it how the sea
was able to be as agitated as it was with so little wind” [says the one ; and the other adds:] “The passage was formerly so dangerous
that many vessels were lost there. But the sea folk say that after St. Helena, returning from Jerusalem, threw in a nail from the cross
of Our Savior there, there was less danger.” [And the tradition is translated into a custom pointed out by a third:] “The gulf is very
dangerous because of sudden winds, which blow there from the high mountains which are situated on the coast of Pamphylia. There
is a current which rules in these waters, by whose rapidity the vessels are carried from the east to the west. The mariners, and
especially the Greeks, begin to throw pieces of biscuit into the sea at that place. When one asks them why they do it, they reply that
it is by a custom established long ago among the sailors, who apparently will begin the practice from superstition, as if they would
appease the sea, which is very dangerous in that location.”

From all times, the sailors have needed to posess refuges along the Pamphylian coast. Adalia, the Ατταλεια of the
Greeks, is the most frequented port today. During remote history, before the foundation of the Greek town, it was
Phaselis. With its three ports and its rocky islet joined by an isthmus of sand, Phaselis was the great repository between
Phonecia and Greece. It is fruitless, I think, to insist on the site and orientation of the old port. A glance at the chart would
suffice. As a half-island, turned toward the east, conforming to all the necessities of primitive commerce and of traffic
coming from Syria, Phaselis surely is no native station. It has no outlet on the coast of the land, and it can have no
dominance. The mountain of Solymes, which surrounds the gulf, overhangs it: we are going to study the same site in the
Venetian Parga and in the town of Alkinoös. The mountain is continuous for a hundred kilometers. Two defiles, the Rose
and the Pipe, as the Turks say, Gullik-Boghaz and Chibuk-Boghaz pierce the barrier toward the west and toward the north,
and can lead from the coast to the interior, into Pisidia or into Lycia. Phaselis is not at the entry of these passes: it is at a
distance from both of them. And it is not between the two passes, halfway from one to the other, at the point where their
two routes join on the beach: it turns its back on them. We similarly see other foreign ports, Parga of the Venetians and

169
the town of Alkinoös, turn their backs to the defiles which can guide the attacks of the natives. We have already studied
the site of Monaco on the coasts of France, posted at a distance from the descent of the Ligures, a little ways from the
opening of the Var. It is similar here, between the Adalia of the Hellenes and the Phaselis of the first thalassocracies,to the
difference between Nice and Monaco. The Hellenes, later, will establish themselves at Adalia, where the two routes from
the interior meet: Adalia is the native or colonial port for the service of the terrestrial routes. Phaselis can only be a
maritime station, a foreign port of call and, given the disposition of its bay turned to the east, it can only be a port of the
Levantines.
Now, the land of Phaselis presents names and legends where the memory of Semitic navies appear to exist. The name
Solyma, Σόλυμα, has frequently been related to ‫סלם‬, sulam or ‫סלםה‬, sulama, the Stairway, from the Hebrew. The coastal
chain closely parallels the steep shore, and leaves only short and rare beaches, when the high promontories do not dive
into the sea. The coastal route - it is by this route that Alexander passed - is but a set of defiles and echelles, of ports,
openings, squeezed between the mountain and the sea, and of stairs or ladders cut in the rock of the promontories. Strabo
admirably described the appearance of the place: “Phaselis comes with its three ports... Mount Solyma overhangs it, ειτα
Φασηλίς, τρεις έχουσα λιμένας... ‘υπέρκειται δ’ αυτης τα Σόλυμα όρος... Around Phaselis are the Defiles above the sea,
through which passes the army of Alexander, περι Φασηλίδα δ’ εστι κατα θάλατταν Στενά, δι’ ων Αλέξανδρος παρήγαγε
την στρατίαν..., and it is the Mount of the Echelle, the Stairway, which leaves only one narrow pass above the shore, έστι
δ’ όρος Κλίμαξ καλούμενον, στενην απολειπον πάροδον επι τω αιγιαλω.” The exact translation of Κλιμαξ, the ladder
(echelle), in Hebrew or Arabic would be Sulama or Sulam: the Ladder of the Tyrians, the Κλίμαξ Τυρίων of Strabo is the
‫סלםה עור‬, Sulama Sor of the Talmud. Along the Syrian coast, in effect, the Ladders of the Tyrians present the same narrow
route, overhanging the sea here, descending there to the foot of the coves, lost in the sands or clinging to the flank of the
promontories: it even has to cut stairs in certain rocks that are too steep. Our Solyma Mountains are thus the Mountains of
the Ladder, and they are also the Mountains of the Ports or of the Defiles, Στενά, said Strabo: for they bear another name
Masikytos, which Bouchart relates with reason to Hebrew ‫מעוקות‬, masukot (plural of ‫מעוקה‬, masuka), the Defiles,
Narrows; Μασίκυτος, Μασσάκυτος, Massicytes, the diverse Greek or Latin transcriptions render account of all the letters
of the original.
In the range of the Solymes, not far from the sea, a volcanic crater, in perpetual activity, spits high flames and burns
silently in the midst of the forest, πυρ πολυ αθτόματον εκ της γης καίεται και ουδέποτε σβέννυται... It is the Lycian
Chimera, Χιμαιρα, which gives birth to such fine fables. The Semitic etymology, generally accepted, would give us good
account of the name of the place. The monster breathes fire, as the Iliad says,

δεινον αποπνείουσα πυρος μένος αιθομένοιο,

is the Boiling, Khimera, from the root ‫חמר‬, kh.m.r, boil, and from a form ‫חימרה‬, khimera (cf. ‫חברה‬, khebera, ‫חזקה‬,
khezequa, ‫חליפה‬, khelipha, etc.). A Greco-Semitic doublet is presently going to give us the assurance of the etymology:
the place name is found in the Occidental seas under the forms Imera or Himera, ‘Ιμερα; we have already given the
examples of the double Greek transcriptions of the Semitic ‫ח‬, sometimes rendered as a χ or a rough breathing (‘), and
sometimes suppressed: Χάβυρας and ‘Αββόρας, Χάβερ and ‘Άβαρ, etc.

VII. - After the Holy Promontory, tortuous Lycia leads the Oriental sailors to the veritable entrance of the archipelago,
to the channel of Rhodes. Here again, the toponymy and the legend appear populated with Phoenician memories. On the
isle of Rhodes, Cadmus has installed the cult of Poseidon; he has dedicated an archaic cauldron with a Phoenician
inscription; he has left a colony whose descendants, mixed with the people of Ialysos, always conserve the priesthood of
the god. In historic times, when the king Amasis wishes to extend his thalassocracy and his commercial relations from the
Far East over the entire Mediterranean, he conquers Cyprus, then he seeks with presents to gain the people of Cyrene,
who hold the routes of the Sunset, and the people of Rhodes and of Samos, who hold the routes of the North: at Lindos he
consacrates two statues of stone and a breastplate of linen in the temple of Athena. The same name of Ialysos, who is also

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called the Happy, Makaria, or the Sounding, Akhaia, will be brought back to us by doublets of a Semitic etymology:
lacking preliminary explanations, we are no longer able to perceive it; but the study of the Odyssey will lead us to the
verification of the doublet Ialysos-Makaria. The Rhodian mythology knows seven children, six sons and one daughter, of
Poseidon, which it calls the Spirits of the Sunrise, Προσηώους Δαίμονας. The seven spirits are truly of the family of ‫קדם‬,
Kadem, Κάδμος, the Man of the Sunrise. They are the children of a nymph Halia who is cast upon the sea, like Ino,
daughter of the Boeotian Cadmus, and who becomes, like Ino, a White Goddess, Λευκοθέα. The Rhodian mythology also
knows the seven sons of the Sun. At the center of the isle stands a highest point, όρος τον ενταυθα ‘υψηλότατον. It is, at
1241 meters above sea level, the high observatory of mount Ataburion, Αταβύριον, where one can view the two straits of
the north and the south, and the Libyan sea, and all the surrounding isles, αναβάς επι το Αταβύριον καλούμενον όρος
εθεάσατο τας πέριξ νήσους. It appears that we have here one of the navels of the sea, όμφαλος θαλάσσης, as the Odyssey
says, ‫הטבור‬, At-tabur, the Phoenician navigators would have said. It appeared to us similarly that the towns prior to the
Greek capitol Rhodes would be, toponymically as topologically, foundations of Oriental sailors. We already know how
the old port of Lindos turns its back to Greece and looks, Strabo says, “toward the southeast and toward Alexandria.” The
names of Lindos, Kamiros and Ialysos would be, like that of Patara, on the other side of the strait, susceptible to Semitic
etymologies. But with the isolated names not entering, for the moment at least, into the category of doublets, we need to
follow our path. We arrive at the archipelago.

*
* *

When we arrange the table of place names of the archipelago, we establish that each of the isles, in Greek antiquity,
had several names and that the different names can be arranged in two classes. The ones, evidently Greek, present at first
sight a very clear sense for a Greek ear: such as the isle of Quail, Ortygia, Ορτυγία, the Howling isle, Keladοussa,
Κελάδουσσα, the isle of Wood, Hyleëssa, ‘Υλήεσσα, Fair Isle, Kalliste, Καλλίστη, etc. The others offer no meaning in
Greek and, from antiquity, the scholiasts and decipherers of logographs cannot explain them except by great help from
puns, such names as Delos, Paros, Samos, Naxos, Thera, Δηλος, Πάρος, Σάμος, Νάξος, Θηρα, Σίφνος, Σέριφος, etc.

Delos, Δηλος is also called Αστερία, Πελασφια, Χλαμυδία, Ορτυγία, that is to say, the isle of the Star, of the Pelasges,
of the Cloak or of Quail. The name of Δηλος remains obscure: the Ancients said that the isle appeared, δηλοι, to receive
Latone in his infancy.
Rheneia, ‘Ρήνεια, is called Κελάδουσσα and also Ορτυγία, the isle of Howls or of Quail.
Tinos, Τηνος, is called ‘Ύδρουσσα, Οφ’ιουσσα, the isle of the Watering Place or of the Hydra, and of Serpents.
Eubea, Εύβοια, the isle of Oxen, is also Μακρίσ, Δολίχη, the Long, but also Βώμω, an incomprehensible name.
Keos, Κέως, is another isle of the Watering Place or of the Hydra, ‘Ύδρουσσα.
Kythnos, Κύθνος, is the isle of the Serpents, Οφίουσσα.
Milo, Μηλος, is the isle of Zephyr, Ζεφυρία, but it also has other incomprehensible names, Βύβλις, Μίμαλλις, Σίφις,
etc.
Sikinos, Σίκινος, is the isle of the Vine, Οινόη.
Kythere, Κύθηρα, is the isle of the Purple Shell, Πορφύρουσσα.
Thera, Θήρα, is the Very Beautiful, Καλλίστη.
Anaphe, Ανάφη, is also Βλίαφος or Μεμβλίαρος.
Ios, Ίος, is the isle of the Phoenicians or the Red isle, Φοινική.
Oliaros, Ωλίαρος (Anti-Paros), or its neighbor, Πάρος, is the isle of Wood, ‘Υλήεσσα.
Paros, Πάρος, is the Flat isle, Πλάτεια, or of Demeter, Δημητρίας, but also Μινώα and Ζάκυνθος.

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 Naxos, Νάξος, is the Round isle, Στρογγύλη, or of Zeus, Δία.
Amorgos, Άμοργος, is the All-Beautiful, Παγκάλη, or the isle of the Breath, Ψυχία.
Lemnos, Λημνος, is Αιθάλη and Σιντηίς, or the isle of Hephaistos, ‘Ηφαιστία.
Thasos, Θάσος, is the isle of Gold, Χρυση, or of the Air, Αερία.
Lesbos, Λέσβος, is Ίσσα, ‘Ιμέρτη, and the Bushy, Λασία, the Happy, Μακαρία.
Syme, Σύμη, is Αίγλη, the Shining.
Ikaros, Ίκαρος, is the Long, Δολίχη.
Chios, Χίος, is Αιθαλία and the isle of the Pines, Πιτύουσσα, and the Long isle, Μάκρις.
Samos, Σάμος, is the isle of the Virgin, Παρθενία, and the isle of Oaks, Δρύουσσα; it is also Ίμβρασος.
Kasos, Κάσος, is the Foam or the Straw, Άχνη.
Etc., etc.

It is to be remarked that, Except for Eubea, Εύβοια, the Isle of Oxen, it is always the incomprehensible names which
predominated. Not only during the Greek period, but up to our days, the successive navies have religiously transmitted the
place names, which they did not comprehend. Across the centuries, they have only lightly adapted them to their Roman,
Arabic, Venetian, Genoese, Turkish, French, Dutch or English throats. Only the Italians of the Renaissance have used
them with a certain liberty. Their translations or their fantastic adaptations have sometimes substituted some fine pun for
the ancient names: “to go toward Euripe,” stonevripon, εις τον Εύριπον, has given us Negroponte, and Eubea has become
Negrepont, and Chalkis has become Egripo. At the beginning of their written history, the Hellenes themselves appear to
have received the deposit of some predecessors. Their ideas on the subject were highly variable. Sometimes they believed
the names to be prior to the names which they comprehended, and sometimes they believed them to be subsequent:
“Homer,” says Strabo, “surely knew the Ionian Samos; if he speaks to us only of two Samos of Thrace and Kephallenia, it
is undoubtedly because the Ionian Samos bore another name: Samos in effect is not the primitive name, but the Dark
Foliage, Μελάμφυλλος, then the Flowered, Άνθεμις, and finally the Virginal, Παρθενία, because of the river Virginal,
Παρθένιοσ, which itself received in turn the name of Imbrasos, Ίμβρασος.” For Strabo, thus, Samos is subsequent to the
Flowered or the Virginal: the Greek names are prior to the foreign names. It is true that in another passage our author
vacillates in his opinion: “Samos,” he says, “was at first named the Virginal, Parthenia, in the times of the Karian
establishments, εκαλειτο δε Παρθενία πρότερον οικουντων Καρων, then Anthemis, then Melamphyllos, and finally
Samos.” If the name of Parthenia harks back to the Karians, it can only be a translation, and not a Greek invention: a
foreign name, Karian, had to precede the Greek name.
These contradictions, or similar ones, are found in all the authors, and still more from one to the other. Nevertheless,
most of the Ancients are in agreement to attribute some of the names to Oriental navigators, to the Karians and
Phoenicians, “Naxos,” relates Diodora, “was at first called, το μεν πρωτον, the Round, Στρογγύλη, and it was occupied at
first, πρωτον, by Thracians, for at that epoch the Cyclades were discovered, the ones completely deserted, the others very
little inhabited. Some conquerors of Phthiodide subjugate the Thracians and will change the name of the isle, which
becomes Dia, Δία. After two centuries and more of domination, the Thracians will disappear; some Karians of Latmos
will colonize the isle: the Karian king, Naxos, son of Poseidon, gives his name to the colony.” - “Theras,” says Herodotus,
“was a descendant of Cadmus, settled at Sparta; allied to the royal families, he was tutor to the young kings; his teaching
finished, not wishing to again become a subject after having been the master, he resolved to leave sparta and return to the
isles, with his relatives. On the isle of Thera, formerly called Beautiful Isle, Καλλιστη, had been established the
descendants of a Phoenician, Membliaros, son of Poikileus, whom Cadmus had left in the place with a Phoenician
Colony. The colonists occupied the isle of Kalliste for eight generations, when Thera occurred (erupted).” Heraclide of
the Bridge recounts similarly in his Treatise on the Isles, that Oliaros was a Sidonian colony, and it is the Phoenicians of
Byblos, say the lexacographers, who had given the name of Byblis to the isle Zephyria, later becoming Melos. We cannot
have a complete confidence, not even a great confidence, in the traditions. It is nevertheless impossible to not take them

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into account, and the study of the double place names promptly reveals to us a series of doublets. I was not able to to
study here all the Greco-Semitic doublets of the archipelago. But here are some of the more certain and easy to recognize.

I. - Kasos, Pliny says, was formerly called Akhne, the Foam, and it was also called Astrabe, the Saddle.
To the east of Crete, Kasos is like the first post of the island bridge which, by way of Karpathos, Saros and Rhodes,
one would go from the last Cretan capes to the promontories advancing from Asia Minor. Along the isles, under the lee of
the isles, a convenient route of navigation, sheltered from the winds of the north, joins the Asiatic and Cretan coasts: the
Rhodian mount Ataburon, the Navel, is the home and at the same time the natural semaphore, which borders the route,
“on an elevated rise, from where one can see Crete, επί τινος ‘υψηλης άκρας, αφ’ης έστιν αφοραν την Κρήτην.” The
straits of Karpathos and of Kasos are, furthermore, “the great passages which lead from the Oriental part of the
Mediterranean into the archipelago. The channel of Kasos is about 25 miles wide between the southwest extremety of the
isle and the Cretan cape of Sidero; the channel is very deep, and the only dangers to be found there are some shallows
which extend in front of cape Sidero; the current generally runs to the south.” The phrase of the Nautical Instructions
shows well in which circumstances the channel will have been followed by the sailing ships. For the ships which, coming
from the southeast, wish to enter the archipelago, the strait between Rhodes and Asia Minor, sheltered from the winds of
the north, is preferable. But when, coming from the north, the sailing ships wish to leave the archipelago, it is the port of
Kasos which the Levantine ships bound for Syria or Egypt take. Kasos itself is very mountainous: “its shores consist
principally of high cliffs of rock bordering great depths:” but, very close by, some islets offer a good harbor sheltered
from the winds of the northwest.
Applied to such an isle, the name of Foam is explained without difficulty. Άχνη, says the Etymologicum Magnum,
πασα λεπτότης ‘υγρου τε και ξηρου, “the word Akhne very specifically designates fine down, moist or dry.” In the Iliad, a
comparison frequently recurs between the dust raised by the wind of fleeing men, and the dust in the air where they
winnow the wheat to separate the grain from the chaff, καρπόν τε και άχνας. Another no less familiar comparison by the
poet of the Odyssey shows us the vessel diving and bounding over the waves, all covered with foam and spray, ‘η δέ τι
πασα άχνη ‘υπεκρύφθη. The high cliffs of kasos, opposed on one coast to the great sea and the swells from the south, and
for the other part, to the current and the gusts from the north, frequently present the spectacle described by the verse from
the Odyssey: “There were steep coasts, rocky and pointed, where the sea broke, and everything was covered by the akhne
of the waves.” Nevertheless, the isolated substantive, taken as a place name, diverts the mind: in place of the isolated
substantive, the Foam, one would instead expect a composed name, like the Isle of the Foam, or an epithet, like the
Foamed, Αχνήεσσα or Άχνουσσα, such as we see all the time, the Wooded, ‘Υληέσσα, and the Howling, Κελάδουσσα.
Such an application thus does not resemble an original, popular word. The French have long given Pyrea the name Port-
Lion or Port-Lyon; Port du Lion would have been more in conformance to their ordinary naming of places. It is just that
they only repeated, in careful translation, the Italian name Porto Leone. We may suspect some similar operation of the
ancient Greeks on the subject of Akhne.
Bochart had already stated that the equivalent of Akhne would be, in Hebrew, ‫קש‬, kas. We would not know how to
insist too much on this equivalence. Homer compares the fleeing soldiers to straw which the wind throws on the sacred
air,

‘ως δ’ άνεμος άχνας φορέει ‘ιερας κατ’ αλωάς,

and the same comparison is found in the Bible: “Like the kas under the wind of the desert, I have dispersed them,” says
the Eternal to Jeremiah. Kasos, Κασος, would be an excellent transcription in Greek of the Semitic kas: we have seen that
the initial ‫ ק‬is ordinarily rendered by a κ, Κάδης Βάρην, Καδμινήλ, Καβεσέηλ, etc.
Kasos-Akhne thus form a Greco-Semitic doublet. Of the two names, which is the original? And which is the
translation? We are able to know nothing more of it. Nevertheless we note that, according to certain evidence, Kasos may
rather be the original, and Akhne the translation. To come back, in effect, to our example of Porto-Leone and Port-Lion,

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we may presume that the Greeks will copy and translate the Semitic name at the same time - while shortening it, without
doubt: Kas should have been preceded by a determinative, like isle or rock, I-Kas, the Isle of the Foam, or Sor-Kas, the
Rock of the Foam.

II. - The closest isle to Delos, that which the present sailors call the Great Delos, was for the Ancients Rheneia and
Keladussa: ‘Ρηνεια quam Anticldes Celadussam vocat, item Artemin Hellanicus. Strabo adds the name of Isle of Quails,
Ορτυγία, which he relates to a previous period, ωνομάζετο δε και Ορτυγία πρότερον. But most of the authors reserve the
last name for the Little Delos... Kelados, κέλαδος, says the Etymologicum Magnum, signifies the tumult and the noise,
σημαίνει τον θόρυβον και την ταράχην. Homer employs the word to designate the brouhaha of the battle, the shock of
arms and the roars of the combatants. He employs the epithet keladon for the roaring torrents and for the winds which
moan over the sea,

ακραη Ζέφυρον, κέλαδον τ’ επι πόντον.

Keladon, the Sounding, has remained the name of a torrent of Arcadia which the Telemachead has made known to us. The
name of Sounding or Howling refers to the Great Delos. Its jagged form, the deep and fissured bays which almost cut it
into pieces, its projecting rocks, its peaks overhanging the sea from 150 meters, tell of the battle of the waves, which the
currents and the winds from the north throw against its flanks all the time. The isle standing without shelter, across the
pass from Mykonos, faces the mistral and the current of the Dardanelles. The roaring of the waves always give birth to
terrible stories of vroucolacas, of revenants. Buondelmonte points out, to the north of Syria, the Rock of Goats where
unclean spirits gather: when a ship comes to pass and to remain for the night, it is such a sabbat, and of such howlings that
the sky and earth seem to wish to collapse, and the spirits cry out the name of the navigators in a clear voice. Hannon the
Carthaginian experiences the same terrors in an isle of the Sunset which his soothsayers counselled him to abandon
because of the nocturnal tumults and cries. In all the Semitic languages, the roots ‫רנה‬, ran’a, and ‫רנן‬, ranna, exist with
their derivatives, to designate all the violent noises, all the clamors, all the murmurs of beings and things, the clash of
arms, vibrations of cords, human cries of joy or pain: the exact equivalent of the Greek κέλαδος is the Hebrew ‫רנה‬, rin’a,
of which Rheneia, ‘ρηνεια, would be the very faithful Greek ttranscription. (of the three consonants of the Semitic root, in
effect, the first two are found without difficulty ‫ = ר‬ρ, ‫ = נ‬ν, and the third is the very soft aspirate ‫ה‬, which the Indo-
Europeans appear to have never rendered and which the Greeks make the vowel ε in their alphabet: here, the diphthong ει
takes its place; we also find the orthography ‘Ρηναία which also accords entirely well, ‫ = ה‬ε or αι.)
At the foot of the Adriatic, the Greeks had another group of Howling isles, Κελάδουσσαι, and on the coasts of Spain a
Sounding river has up to our days retained its name of Celado. Similarly, it is possible that the Phoenicians had known
other Howling islands. Between Sicily and Africa, the present small isle of Pantellaria appears to have borne the Semitic
name of ‫אירנים‬, Iranim, which one reads on the reverse of certain Punic coins. The name, which the editors of the Corpus
Inscriptionum Semiticarum recognize thusly, belongs to the class of Mediterranean island names which (we know it
already) are encountered in the western Mediterranean and which are composed of the word ai or i, ‫ אי‬or ‫י‬, isle (the
Greeks have transcribed αι, ε, ι, and the Latins e, i, ae), followed by a determinative: such as the Isle of the Sparrowhawks
off the coast of Sardinia Ai-nosim, also such as I-spania of Calypso, and agains such as the Odyssian Ai-aie, Αι-Αιη. The
determinative in I-ranim could have been derived from the same root ‫ רנן‬or ‫רנה‬, ranna or ran’a. The Hebrew ‫רנ‬, ran,
howl, would have its regular plural ‫רנים‬, ranim, which we find one time in the Bible under the constructed form ‫רני‬, rane.
Thus we will have the Isle of Howlings, I-ranim: the Palestinian place names furnish us a place called the Sobs, ‫בכים‬,
Bokim - Κλαυθμωνες, translate the Seventy, id est plorationes, adds the Vulgate - and the Bokim relates to the root ‫בכה‬,
bak’a, exactly as ranim would be related to ran’a.

III. - We already know that the isle of Samos is one of the great stops on the route of the coastal straits which border
Asia Minor and which, from Rhodes, lead to Constantinople. The Ancients represented the route as a perfectly straight

174
line oriented from south to north, επ’ ευθείας ‘ο πλους μεχρι της Προποντίδος, ‘ως αν μεσημβρινήν τινα ποιων γραμμην,
so that, from the channel of Rhodes to the Bosphorus, it was like a tube, the right side of which, formed by the Asiatic
coast, would be solid, and the left side of which to the contrary, formed by the isles, would be open. From all times the
route has been followed by the sailing ships and marked with numerous ports of call, at regular intervals:

The port of Ccio (Chios), says Tournefort, is the rendez-vous of all the ships which ascend and descend, that is to say, which go
to Constantiople or which return to go to Syria and Egypt... ; all the ships which descend from Constantinople to Syria and Egypt,
laying over at Scio, are obliged to pass through one of the straits of Samos (the large strait between Icaria and Samos or the small
strait between Samos and the Asiatic coast). It is the same there for those which ascend from Egypt to Constantinople. They find
good ports there, and their route would be too long if they went to pass toward Mycone and toward Naxia. Also the Boghaz (straits)
are the veritable cruising places of corsairs, as they say in the Levant, that is to say that they are the proper places for recognizing the
ships which pass.

The small strait of Samos, because of its small width, has always appeared to be an excellent place of ambush for the
pirates. In the course of the present century (1821), “the sailors never traverse the strait without being seized by fear, for it
is there that the corsairs await their prey; all the shores are bordered by creeks, small coves, ports formed by reefs; the
corsairs come out from them to fall upon the merchant vessels.” It is to say that the commercial exploitation of the
archipelago is almost impossible, when one is not master of the strait and when a fortress or a base there does not
guarantee the free usage and security: The Genoese install their colony of Anaea on the edge of the passage. The
southeast face of Samos, which borders the strait, is an undulating plain, well watered, verdant, which appears the greener
compared to the neighboring isles: the isle is called Μελάμφυλλος, under the dark boughs, because of the quality of the
soil, δια την αρέτην του εδάφους. The flowered plain - the Flowered, Ανθεμους, is another name of Samos - is limited to
the north by a high mountain, whose oaks, in spite of many centuries of deforestation, still furnished loads of value to the
contemporaries of Tournefort: the Oaked, Δρουσσα, is another name for Samos.

Samos, say the Nautical Instructions, is mountanous. Its two principal elevations are the mounts Kerki and Ampelos. The mount
Kerki rises to 1440 meters; the bare peaks of white rock, which form it, and where the sunlight is reflected, cause the belief that the
summit is covereed with snow. It is almost entirely surrounded by precipices of imposing appearance and of excessively difficult
approach.

The peak of 1500 meters, well isolated in the west of the isle, is neatly separated high above the open sea. It appears
from afar, when one approaches the isle from the southeast or the northwest.

“We enter,” relates the English traveler E. Clark, “the strait which separates the low isle of Nicaria from the frightening heights of
Samos. The passage is difficult: a continuous swell rolls heavily there. Is it my being long accustomed to the Russian plains from
which I arrived? Is it just reality? It appears to me that I have never seen mountains so steep and menacing as that peak of Samos,
whose head is lost in the clouds when all the rest of the archipelago is without clouds, under the serene sky. They tell us that the head
of Samos very rarely appears disengaged.”

Samos thus merits its name; for we have seen that Samos is the equivalent of the Greek ‘ύψος, height: Strabo also
knows that in the old Greek language the two words were synonyms, επειδη σάμους εκάλουν τα ‘ύψη. We have already
seen that almost all the Semitic languages have the roots ‫שמה‬, ‫שמם‬, sam’a, samma, with the sense of rise, be high.Arabic
and Aramaic have the epithet sam, high, elevated: Samos thus would be Sama, the high. It is of a feminine form, ‫שמה‬,
sam’a, in effect, that we should think, because of the variants, Samia, Σαμία, and samë, Σάμη, which alternate with the
name of Samos, Σάμος: Samia or samë would be the rigorously exact transcription of ‫שמה‬, sam’a.
In the Ionian sea, the Greeks have another isle of Samë, which made part of the realm of Ulysses. Rocky,
παιπαλόεσσα, says the Odyssey, mountanous, ορεινή, says Strabo, with a high head standing at 1600 meters above the
sea, it received from the Greeks the name of Head, Κεφαλληνία, or of Skull, Κρανία. In the local legend, the heroes

175
Samos and Kranios, Σάμος and Κράνιος, are sons of Headed, Κέφαλος. That is to say that Samos, the Height, truly has
the same meaning as Kephalos, the Head. The isle merits the name entirely: “Mount Nero,” say the Nautical Instructions,
“is the highest mountain of Kephalonia. It is 1590 meters, and the range has altitudes of 700 to 1,000 meters. Mount Nero
is visible from 80 miles: it is ordinarily the first land which one perceives on coming from the west.” It is truly the High
Isle of the sea: the neighboring lands, although also rocky and mountainous, appear to the sailor as low isles, χθαμαλή. At
the foot of the 1600 meters of Kephalonia, Ithaca and its two masses of 630 and 650 meters cut a paltry figure: in spite of
the hills and mountains, and despite its lack of plains and praries,

εν δ’ Ιθάκη ούτ’ αρ δρόμοι ευρέες ουτε τι λειμών,

Ithaca is a low isle, αυτη δε χθαμαλή. The geographers of the land do not very well understand the epithet which the
Nautical Instructions explain clearly: Ithaca is low for the Odyssian poet, because, hidden behind the head of Kephalonia,
it does not appear at a distance to the navigators... In the isle of Samë, a town bears the same name, as frequently occurs in
the Greek isles. It was the old capitol, seated on the strait facing Ithaca, turning its back on the present capitol, Argostoli.
It was a high town in the Homeric style: just at the edge of the sea, it is perched on a peak which exceeds 250 meters; we
will have to describe it further in detail.
The Greeks had a third Samos, the Samos of Thrace, Σαμοθράκη: “the isle of nearly oval form,” say the Nautical
Instructions, “bears mount Fengari (the mount of the Lantern or Signal) near its center. The mountain rises to 1750
meters above sea level: it is the highest mountain of the isles of the archipelago, if one excepts mount Delphi of Eubea
and the Madara Vounas of Candia.” Here again, we understand the name of Samos, the High, Σάμος-’υψήλη, applied to
the isle, and the modern name of Signal, given to its mountain. The portulan of Michelot - which by a fine pun names the
isle Saint-Mandrache - tells us: “it is not large, but very high, so that when one comes from cape Baba, it appears on top
of the isle Imbre.” The Signal guides the sailor and warns of the storm: “when the summit of Samotraki is covered with
clouds, one should [leave the coasts of Thrace and seek the open sea]: the warning is infallible.”

IV. - At the center of the Aegean sea stands a small group of isles which, separated from each other by narrow straits,
form around Paros, the largest of them, a sort of archipelago in the middle of the archipelago (see fig. 47)*. Paros and its
daughter, Antiparos, have an entire cortege of followers, Strongolio, Despotiko, Pandro, Trio, etc. The archipelago
presents its west coast to the Hellenic lands, an unhealthy façade, the sailors say, strewn with rocks and islets, with a vast
enough port, but completely open to the winds from the west: The present and ancient capitol of Paros was installed by
the Greeks in that place; it has also never had great commerce or great importance. The other coasts of the isle, which turn
their back on Greece, have, to the contrary, large well-sheltered bays. They offer very safe ports and abundant watering
places to foreign sailors. The north coast has in the bay of Naoussa “one of the best ports in the Cyclades,” say the
Nautical Instructions, and one of the largest: in 1770, the Russian navy threatening Constantinople came to establish itself
there, just facing the island channels which lead straight to the Dardanelles. The ruins of the Russian establishment still
exist: they sometimes said that the Russian government continued secret negotiations with the Greek government to
obtain the concession to rent the harbor, and that the Russians had to make at Naxos that which the English made at Zea, a
station and a “repository”. On the southeast coast of Paros, the port Trio “is formed by two isles which are in front and
which make three entrances which one can enter indifferently. The isle Trio is found six cables from the shore: the
intervening space offers a good harbor in summer; but it is exposed to the winds from the southwest and from the south,
which produce a considerable swell and which render it of little safety in winter; the watering place can supply a
squadron:” it is in the port of Trio that in the time of the Turks the captain-pasha came each summer to anchor his
squadron. Apparently, between Despotiko and Antiparos, one has a good summer harbor. But it is at the center of our
archipelago, on the south coast of the large islend, that the passage between Paros and Antiparos offers the most vast,
secure, sheltered harbor, the most conforming above all to the necessities of Levantine commerce, by virtue of its

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orientation “toward the southeast and toward Alexandria,” and of primitive commerce, by virtue of the small isles which
enclose or shelter: “in the middle of the channel,” says Tournefort, “the bottom is proper for the largest vessels.”
In resumé, the archipelago, which has no attraction for the sailors coming from the Occident, to the contrary offers
excellent refuges to sailors coming from the east and south. Paros, in the tradition, passed for the point of support of the
Cretan thalassocracy. The tradition also remembered a Sidonian colony which came to be installed at Antiparos in ancient
times called Oliaros, Ωλίαρος, Σιδονίων αποικία, says Heclide of the Bridge. The word Oliaros, Ωλίαρος, has no
meaning in Greek: it would be the exact transcription of the Semitic ‫יער‬-‫על‬, Ol-Iar, the Mount of the Forest. The Scripture
offers us place names of this type: Baal-Iarim,Kiriat-Iarim, the Place of the Forests, the Place of the Forests. The
Forested, ‘Υλήεσσα, is another name for Paros, Nicanor says. I believe that the Forested is is rather Oliaros-Antiparos.
The confusion of Nicanor is not surprising. Paros, the largest isle of the archipelago, was the only one which achieved
popular renown and the knowledge of the erudites. Paros will receive the old names of the small neighboring isles. The
example of Naxos should instruct us: “Naxos, under the Thracians,” related Diodora, “is called the Round, Στρογγύλη;”
the bay of Naxia, open to the northwest, turned toward Thrace, is still dominated by the Round mountain, Strongylo. It is
the particular name of the Thracian harbor which the authors have subsequently applied to the entire island. Similarly,
Paros will receive the name of the old primitive harbor: it is Oliaros which is the Forestry. Among the lexacographers,
Paros still has an entire collection of titles. It is called Minoa, Μινωα: it is a name which is familiar to us. The south coast
of Paros should have seen if effect a Stop of the Oriental sailors. Its islet of Trio, in front of the watering place, or some
other coastal islet could have been a Minoa isle, νησος Μινώα, entirely resembling those which we have studied: here,
Hercules has his place in the legend of the sons of Minos, because another islet very close by was the Isle of Hercules,
‘Ηράκλεια... Paros is also called Δημητρίασ, the isle of Demeter, and, since the priests of Demeter are called Kabarnes,
Κάβαρνοι, it still bears the name of Kabarnis: the two words Κάβαρνοι and Καβαρνίς are inexplicable in Greek.
But Paros has still another name: the Flat, Πλατεια. The Greek name should make us pause. We cannot examine all
the Greco-Semitic doublets of the archipelago here: here perhaps is a simple and short means to test the value of our
procedure for all, for here we can make a countercheck of them.

V. - Paros, says Pliny, is also calleed the Flat, and it is the oldest name, Paros, quam primo Plateam, postea Minoida
vocarunt. Πλατεια, the wide, the flat, the Table, is a strange epithet for the crystal of marble which is Paros. The isle
indeed has some small plains on the northeast and southwest coasts. But, with mount Saint-Elie, which occupies the
center of it and which rises to nearly 800 meters, it appears above the sea as an almost regular cone: to the eye of the
sailors, it is just the opposite of a flat isle. Otherwise, almost all the isles of the archipelago, and similarly all the large
Greek isles present the same appearance. Only one makes an exception: “The isle,” say the Nautical Instructions, “has a
length of nearly 5½ miles, a little less than two miles of width, and a height of 245 meters: its shores, generally elevated,
are formed of white peaked cliffs; in general, the isle is flat and covered with a thick growth of olives.” The Instructions
just repeat the portulans of Buondelmonte: “Paxos, at its center, from the direction of the rising sun, is flat, which permits
the cultivation there of grapes and fruit trees. It is provided with a very secure port.” With its peaked cliffs and its plain at
the summit, there is truly the isle of the Plateau, the isle of the Table: the isle was called and is still called Paxos, Πάξος.
Now, in the great Phoenician inscription of Marseilles, in line 18, the word ‫פס‬, pax, is employed to describe the
inscription itself, the table of marble on which the religious price list is engraved: the editors of the Corpus Inscriptionum
Semiticarum derive the word from the root ‫פסס‬, p.x.x., be extended: pax is thus the extended plate, the board, the table.
The word occurs again with the same sense in line 20 of the inscription and in a similar inscription found at Carthage (l.
11). Pax is thus truly the equivalent of Table, Πλατεια, and Paxos, Πάξος, is an exact transcription of it, since the ‫ ס‬is the
letter of the Phoenician alphabet, between the n and the o, of which the Greeks have made their ξ. Given this, we imagine
without great effort how an error of a copyist or reader has understood or read Paros, Πάροσ, in place of Paxos, Παξοσ,
from Pliny or the Greek author whom Pliny copied. Paxos is the Isle of the Table, Τράπεζα, Τραπεζους, Τραπεζών. The
steep cliffs which border and support the central plane correspond to such a vieew of the coasts “in the form of a high and
abrupt table,” described by Strabo: λόγος τραχύς, ‘υψηλός, τραπεζοειδής.

177
 Paxos is an isle of the Ionian sea, to the southeast of Korkyre, to the north of Samë-Kephallenia, on the coast of the
Thesprotes. In the sea, the Phoenicians navigate, and often, if we believe the Odyssey. We have already catalogued the
texts: “I had gone to find some renowned Phoenicians,” Ulyssses recounts; “I had paid the passage without haggling, and
I had requested them to convey me and and leave me either at Pylos or in the divine Elide.” But the navigation of that
open sea is not convenient: nothing shelters one from the sirocco from the southeast, which blows for several weeks,
sometimes for an entire lunation without cease. Open the Nautical Instructions: “The sirocco, blowing from Africa,
predominates in November and December and, after the interval of a month, makes itself felt anew in February and
March; during the lunation of August and sometimes also during that of July, it alone makes itself felt; it blows partially
during an entire lunation and, after a short period of calm, returns anew with its ordinary force, for fourteen more days.”
As we see, July and August, that is to say, the navigating months, are the months of the sirocco. The Phoenicians - in the
account which is an invention of Ulysses, but which by the same fact should respect the plausibilities even more, to fool
the listener - the Phoenicians would have truly wished to go to Elide. That time, by chance, they would not have the
intention of cheating. But, coming from Crete, the sirocco drives them toward the northwest and casts them on the coast
of Ithaca:

αλλ’ ήτοι σφέας κειθεν απώσατο ‘ίς ανέμοιο

πόλλ’ αεκαζομένους ουδ’ ήθελον εξαπατησαι.

It is a similar fabrication regarding the Phoenicians which Ulysses invents again in the XIVth canto (v. 288-310). They
go from Phonecia to Libya. A good wind, a crossing from the north, leads them up to the level of Crete. But then the great
sea opens, without an isle in view: nothing but the sky and the sea. “It is so dangerouis, “says the good Tournefort, “to
pass from Candia to the isles of the archipelago on the ships of the coast... The course is a hundred miles and the ships
are boats twelve or fifteen feet long, which a slightly violent wind capsizes without difficulty; furthermore, there is no
place at all to rest in midpassage, and it is a great misfortune in making a sea voyage to not know where to put in when
one is threatened by a storm.”

Αλλ’ ‘ότε δη Κρήτην μεν ελείπομεν, ουδέ τις άλλη

φαίνετο γαιάων, αλλ’ ουρανος ηδε θάλασσα,

“When we had left Crete and no land was in view, but only the sky and the sea,” Ulysses resumes, “Zeus caused a
black cloud to rise over the vessel, and all the sea beneath it darkened: claps of thunder, the rigging falls; the ship is
capsized.” - “In summer,” say the Nautical Instructions of the Ionian sea, “gales sometimes occur, but of short duration,
perhaps of a couple of hours; they are very violent, and in the interior channels among the islands they are announced by
large black clouds, which come to burst upon their stretch of the sea in dangerous gusts, accompanied by rain or hail so
thick that all view of the neighboring land is hidden.”

Δή τότε κυανηέν νεφέλην έστησε Κρονίων

νηος ‘υπερ γλαφυρης ήχλυσε δε πόντος ‘υπ’ αυτησ,

“Thus the son of Kronos makes a dark blue cloud rise over the vessel, and the sea under it is darkened,” Ulysses
resumes; “all were drowned; but Zeus put a mast between my hands, and on that flotsam, after ten days, a heavy sea rolls
me to the coast of the Thesprotes.”

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 Ulysses invents the shipwreck and the navigation in the company of the Phoenicians. But all the details in it are
borrowed from daily experience, verifiable. The same presence of Phoenicians in the Ionian sea was thus then an incident
of daily life. Furthermore, the presence will appear as certain upon the first reflection, and the archeologists, who speak
with a smile of the “cliche” of the Oriental influence, might sometimes be able to open their eyes to the reality, to the
primordial necessities of the daily life. The gales from the south, the gusts of the sirocco, which cast the boats from the
Libyan sea toward the north, toward the Greek or Epirote coasts, blew then as they blow now. They rampage in July, in
August, for weeks, for months. In the full navigating season, they are, say the Nautical instructions, “the only ones to
make themselves felt.” The Phoenicians made the commute in the Libyan sea, between their metropolises of the Syrian
coast and their colonies of the Barbary coast. It is impossible that they had navigated for centuries between Tyre and
Carthage, without many of their vessels having had to endure, every year, in the regions of Crete and Africa, some blow
of the sirocco which drove them to the north, up to the foot of the Ionian sea. Also, when M. Oberhümmer wished to
closely study the toponymy of that sea, he immediately retrieved the memory of the Phoenician navigations on the coast
of Acarnania. Our doublets, Paxos-the Table, Παξος-Πλατεια, Samos-the Head, Σαμος-Κεφαλληνια, date from that
epoch.

VI. - Here is a last couplet from the archipelago, which some passages of the Odyssey will better explain to us.
Between the coasts of Asia Minor and the coasts of Greece, the bridge of the Cyclades is interrupted only by the large
channel which separates Icaria from Mykonos, Amorgos from Leros, Astypalea from Kos. The other insular channels are
without breadth. This channel is, to the contrary, an “abyss of the sea,” μέγα λαιτμα θαλάσσης, in the eyes of the prudent
sailors. In the middle, however, between Amorgos and Leros, the transit is rendered less long and more convenient by two
rocky islets which interrupt it and which can serve as shelter for a few moments, the two islets of Kinaros and Lebinthos.
Consequently, to reach the Hellenic isles and coasts, the Oriental sailors choose that crossing by preference. Amorgos
offers them, after a long passage, a safe repository with watering places and good ports (cf. fig. 47)*.

The south coast of Amargo is a succession of enormous cliffs of great height, from which the gusts fall with fury during the gales
from the north, whipping the water into foam. The ships which cruise the coast should maintain a good distance from them; one finds
there neither shelter nor anchorage. But the northeast coast offers two good harbors, Port Vathy and Kakokeraton. Port Vathy (the
Deep Port) is a small safe port, even though the gales from the northeast can be violent there. But the bottom is firm and the ships
can anchor there in safety. There is no reef there to fear in entering the port, for the shore is steep all around. The bay Kakokeraton is
between the coast of Amorgos and the islet Nikiterio, which has 2½ miles of length and a little over ½ mile of greatest width; it rises
steeply to a height of 348 meters. As its orientation to the coast of Amorgos is somewhat oblique, it forms with it a bay in which a
ship can harbor; but it is absolutely necessary to have a dependable wind to enter, for one is subject to calms, to gusts and to shifting
winds... At the northeast extremity of Amorgos, the bay of Santa Anna is ¾ mile deep and nearly ½ mile wide at the base, where
there are a beach of sand and a few isolated houses. It is open to the west and has great depths. Consequently, a ship can anchor in
the northwest in case of necessity. A rivulet of good fresh water flows into the bay.

The Amargos of the Ancients had its two ports at Santa Anna and at Port Vathy. On the beach of sand of Sana Anna
was Aigiale, the Beach, Αιγιάλη. In the deep circle of Port Vathy was Minoa, Μινώα. The entire isle was also called the
All-Beautiful, Παγκαλη: “Heraclide agrees that Amorgos was an isle very fertile in grapes, oil and other sorts of produce.
It is there that Tiberias orders Vibius Serenus be sent into exile: the emporer was of the opinion that, since he allowed
someone to live, he also should accord them the means. The isle is well-cultivated today. It produces enough oil for its
inhabitants and more grapes and grain than they can consume. The fertility draws some ships from Provence there,” says
Tournefort; and the Nautical Instructions add: “The isle is passably well-cultivated and one can find there places of
agreeable appearance in the narrow valleys which run among the hills.” The isle still bears the name of Psychia, ψυχία,
the Isle of the Breath. A text of Herodotus gives us the true value of the term in the language of the navigators: “The fleet
having arrived at the beach, they breathe and they haul the ships onto the dry land, ες τουτου τον αιγιαλον κατασχόντες
τας νεας ανεψυχον ανελκύσαντες.” The Beach, Aigiale, of Amorgos offers a similar shore of beaching ships. Coming

179
from the southeast, the sailors truly catch their breath in the refuge. For they have to traverse the great abyss which
separates the Asiatic isles from Amorgos, then then double the oar strokes when the southeast coast of the isle has
appeared. The terrible coast, “where the gusts fall with fury, whipping the water into foam,” is entirely similar to the
Odyssian coast which stands smoking with mists and lashed by the crashing waves,

ένθεν μεν γαρ πέτραι επηρεφέες, προτι δ’ αυτας

κυμα μεγα ‘ροχθει...

“Attention,” says Ulysses, “that everyone listen well! hold firm on the benches and stroke surely with the oars: the coast
is steep; don’t fear to strike the water strongly; it is a matter of not staying here, but, if God wills it, of us pulling out of
it,”

νυν δ’ αγεθ’, ‘ως αν εγω είπω, πειθώμεθα πάντες.

‘υμεις μεν κώπησιν αλος ‘πηγμινα βαθειαν
τύπτετε κληίδεσσιν εφήμενοι, αί κέ ποθι Ζευς
δώη πόνδε γ’ όλεθρον ‘υπεκφυέειν και αλύξαι.

They double the oarstrokes and pass it; but, on the other coast, they feel the need to breathe, and nothing at that time is as
good as a windy beach where they can ground the vessel and eat or sleep in the fresh air: when Ulysses has passed the
growling rocks, he is forced by the revolt of his crew to put in at the Hollow Port, near a watering place. The Odyssian
description of the Scylla of Sicily can be applied in its entirety to the rocks of Amorgos: “On the south coast,” says
Buondelmonte, “high rocky mountains stand threatening and terrible for the navigators. For the sea, agitated by the
violence of the winds, goes to break itself on the rocks, and differs naught between Charybdis and Scylla. Also, the
frequency of shipwrecks in the waters keeps the sailors as far away as possible, and they relate that the Venetian galleys
were formerly swallowed up there.”
On the northeast coast of Amorgos, once the cliffs have been passed, the Oriental sailors found in the bay of Santa
Anna a beach, a spring, and the cool breaths of the winds from the north. It was truly the Beach of the Breath, αιγιάλη
ψυχία, where they stayed awhile before reaching the Port of the Stop, Minoa. For the Seventy translate by ανάψυξις,
cooler or breather, the Hebrew word ‫מרגו‬, margoa or morgoa, in the passage of Jeremiah here: “The Lord says: stand
above the roads and look, and see which is the good road, and you will find a resting place for your souls (or for your
breath, for the word naphes has the same double sense as the Greek ψύχη and the Latin anima).” The resting place for the
breath or for the soul, ‫מרגוע‬, margoa, is truly the equivalent of the Greek ανάψυξις (Herodotus employs the same word
ανεψυχον) and we understand that the Isle A-margo or Amargos (the sailors call it Morgo or Murgo; we have at the head
either a prosthetic a or the Semitic article; we already know the Navel, At-tabur, Αταβύρον), the Isle of the Breathing or
of the Coolness, would also be the Isle of the Soul or of the Breath, Ψυχία.
It thus appears that the isle of Amorgos, with its port of Minoa, received the Phoenicians. They will implant their
industry of the purple shell there: the materials of Amargos dyed in purple will remain celebrated throughout all antiquity.
The industry, a little changed, remains up to our days: “A species of lichen, very common on the rocks of the isle and on
those of Nicouria, is still sold there at ten ecus per quintal for export to Alexandria and England, where they use it for
dying red, as we similarly use it in Auvergne.”

*
* *

For the name of Syros, antiquity has not transmitted any doublet of the form Kasos-Akhne, Rheneia-Keladussa,
Oliaros-Hyleëssa, Paxos-Plateia, etc. But the name of Syros enters in the column of names of the archipelago which are

180
inexplicable in Greek. If some of the preHellenic names have retained their mark of origin by virtue of their doublet, the
others always present a very valuable Semitic etymology. Since we have posed the strict rule of the doublets, we declare
from the first that the etymology is not completely certain. I do not believe it any less likely. Let us take the example of
the two insular names Siphnos and Seriphos.
The Odyssey and modern navigators have spoken to us of the granite or limestone isles of the archipelago and of their
salubrity. Tournefort and Choiseul-Gouffier especially praise the climate and air of Siphnos. The isle, in antiquity, also
bore the names of Merope or Meropia, Μερόπη, Μεροπία, and of Akis, Άκις, Siphnos ante Meropia et Acis appellata.
The Greek name Akis should be explained by the Greek root ακέω, to treat (the common language employs άκος, remedy,
instead; but Galen designates by άκις a sort of bandage). Akis thus could have signified the recovery, and as a place name,
the sanitorium: the text of Tournefort tells us enough that Siphnos, the healthy and cool Siphanto, merited the name. For,
from the Semitic root ‫רפא‬, rapa, to cure, are regularly formed the words for instrument and place ‫מרפא‬, merapa, and
‫מרופא‬, merop’a, of which μεροπη, μεροπια would be an exact transcription, or at least a barely hellenized adaptation: a
Phoenician inscription cites a god of Health, Baal Sanator, translate the editors of the Corpus Inscript. Semiticarum, ‫מופא‬-
‫בעל‬, Baal-Merape. The doublet thus proves to us that the isle Merape, or one of the harbors of the isle, gave the first name
to the Phoenician sailors. The name Siphnos, which itself offers no doublet, appears to me of the same origin.
The two isles, Siphnos and Seriphos, are very close together. They are not independant from each other. At least, they
can have close commercial relations, in a certain state of navigation. For the Greek sailors, coming from the west,
Seriphos did not have economic importance, like Paros and Naxos. Rocky and bare, the west coast of Seriphos, facing the
Greek ports, offers only steep cliffs, barely interrupted by some open bays. The isle is unboardable from this coast. Its
façades of the east and south, to the contrary, have excelllent ports and fertile fields. Above all, to the southeast opens the
great port of Livadi which “is sunk into the land about three quarters of a mile, with a width of about a third of a mile: one
finds a good harbor there for all weather. The town of Livadi, built on a conical hill at the foot of the port, contains almost
the entire population of the isle: one can obtain a little fresh water from the wells at the foot of the port.” Siphnos is
oriented like Seriphos, also turning its back to Greece, and offering on the west coast only “two or three bays open and
without shelter.” The only frequentable harbors open on the southeast coast: “the small ships can anchor inside the islet
Kitriani, of mediocre solidity; the port of Pharos, practical only for the coasters, has a bottom of better holding; one can
equally anchor in the bay of Platiala during north winds, because they do not blow very hard, for otherwise the gusts
which descend from the high sea are terrible, and a ship under sail cannot endure them.” To the small sailing ships of the
first antiquity, the isle of Kitriani offered an anchorage of choice, facing a town and a spring, Minoa, of which some
lexicographers speak. Buondelmonte still knew, in the harbor near the spring, some antique ruins: Ad meridiem portus
concluditur olim cum urbe diruta, quae num Platialos (across from Kitriani) et in conspectu scopolum Chitriani dictum
videmus: in medio turris erigitur Exambeles dicta, a qua fons emanat usque mare in quo hortus omnium virescit
pomorum. For the Italians coming from the southwest, the harbor is excellent. For the southeast sailors, it was even more
convenient: the pirates in the times of Pompey frequent the islet, συνέβη καταραι επι την επικειμένην απέναντι νησον της
χώμας της Σιφνίων, says one inscription.
I believe it needless to insist further on the rôle, in primitive times, of the parasitic islets. The name of Minoa, Μινώα,
which we rediscover here is familiar to us. We have here again, in the isle and town of Minoa, an old Phoenician Stop,
and the spring Minoa is similar to the Waters of the Stop of which the Psalms speak, Me-Minoha.
But the stop, for the exploitation of the isle, was only secondary; the true port should have been elsewhere. The wealth
of the isle is not on the coast. Siphnos is well-cultivated. Nevertheless, its antique fortune did not come from the fields,
but from mines of gold or silver, which had made the isle the richest of the archipelago, νησιωτέων μάλιστα επλούτεον,
‘ατε εοντων αυτοισα και αργυρέων ματάλλων. The mines disappeared later under an invasion of the sea. They are still
visible on the northeast coast: “their entry, situated at the foot of a cliff, is narrow, low, and cut into the rock; by the
action of the impiety of the sea, a large number of excavations are entirely submerged.” The northeast coast is an abrupt
wall, continuous, which does not have even a temporary port or harbor. The Nautical Instructions have warned us
elsewhere that, in the archipelago, one can never anchor on the north coast of an isle, even when the winds blow from the

181
south. The coastal mines of Siphnos thus would be unexplotable by sea. But just across from the mines of Siphnos, the
south coast of Seriphos offers its fine and deep bay of Livadi, where a navy arriving from the southeast will go
straightaway to put in.
Thus I think that Kiepert has reason to see the Foundry in Seriphos, and in Siphnos the Mine of the Phoenicians. The
root ‫ערף‬, s.r.p., in effect, designates all the changes which one subjects metal to, smelting or purification: ‫ערף‬, sareph, or
‫עריפה‬, seriph’a, would lead us to the transcription Seriphos, Σέριφος. The root ‫עפן‬, s.p.n., is already known to us by I-
spania. We have seen that it signifies hide, bury, dig: the participle sapun or sapin signifies the buried (treasure). To
render account of the transcription Siphnos, we need to suppose a form, also regular, ‫עיפנה‬, siphn’a, which would give us
Siphnia and Siphnos, Σιφνία and Σίφνος, like Samia and Samos, Σαμία and Σάμος have come from sam’a. Lacking a
doublet, the toplogy of the two isles explains to us surely, I think, their toponymy. When the mines of Siphnos were
exploited by the people of the sea, it is to the port of Seriphos, close by, that the navigators came to treat the ore. From the
mine to the foundry, and reciprocally, the voyage is convenient, by virtue of the alternation of the land and sea breezes
which blow morning and evening on all the shores of the mainlands and the isles. We know for the rest that the
Phoenicians were the first exploiters of the insular mines. The gold mines of Thasos, according to Herodotus, had been
discovered and exploited by them: in the times of Herodotus, they still sailed their galleys, and the name of the isle, they
said, had come from a certain Thasos, companion of Cadmus: auri metalla et conflaturam Cadmus Phoenix invenit ad
Pangaeum montem.
Like Siphnos and like Seriphos, I believe with Keipert that Syros is a Semitic name, the Greek transcription of the
Phoenician ‫עור‬, Sor, or Sur, the Rock. The transcription of ‫עור‬, Sur, into Suros is regular: we have already seen that the
Greeks render the ‫ ע‬sometimes as a σ and sometimes as a τ. The word ‫עור‬, Sur, itself is the name of a Phoenician town
which, forgotten today under the hovels of a poor village and under the Arabic disguise of Sur, plays the rôle which we
know when it bore the name of Tyr. Τύρος, Tyr, said the Greek people; but the erudites would write Sor, Soor, Sur, Syr,
etc., Σορ, Σοορ, Σουρ, Συρ. Furthermore, they would know that Syr, Συρ, unused by their companions, was an historic
name, the primitive name of the Phoenician land, το δε Συρ, ου σύνηθες παρα ‘Ήλλησιν αλλ’ ‘ιστορίας εχόμενον. ο‘ύτω
γαρ εκαλειτο πρότερον ‘η Φοινίκη. Homer called the land Σιδονίη, Sidonia: the later Greeks will call it Συρία, Syria.
Between the two names there is undoubtedly the same parallelism as between Tyr and Sidon. Since Sidon was the
principal town and the great trading post of the coast, for the foreign sailors, the entire land was Sidonia. When Tyr or Syr
became the center of business and the metropolis of the new colonies, the sailors will know only Tyria or Syria, Συρία.
The name at first given to the coast later extends to the mountains and plains of the interior: Palestine, originally the land
of the maritime Philistines, became for us all the continental region which borders the Philistine coast.
In the Greek lands, we have already seen the formation of names of a land derived from a name of a town or the
reverse: Νάξος, Ναξία; Πάρος, Παρία΄’Ρόδος, ‘Ροδία. It is no different that Syria, for the Odyssian poet, is the land, the
isle of Syros. For Syros, properly speaking, is a name of a town, the exact translation of which would be The Rock: “In the
sea in front of the town of Sur (Tyr), there are four or five large long rocks, of which some appear a little out of the water
and the others not, which make the port of Sur,” says the traveler Ghillebert de Lannoy, and the Nautical Instructions add:
“The harbor of Sur (ancient Tyr) is sheltered by a group of islets, of rocks and highlands. A certain number of rocks
project from the southwest coast; to the east of the rocks was previously found a port formed by jetties constructed on
them.” The Phoenicians had their little Tyr in the archipelago, Syros, as the Greeks later had their little Chios, Samos, etc.
on the Nile.
All the descriptions of Syria justify the name: The village,” says Tournefort, “is a mile from the port, all around a
somewhat steep hill, on which are located the house of the bishop and the Episcopal church.” - “Syria,” continues
Choiseul-Gouffier, “is just a small town situated on the point of a mountain: all the inhabitants of the isle are assembled
there in the number of four thousand, and one finds in the interior of the land only the ruins of towns which they have
abandoned.” The bay of Syros is, in effect, circled by three high mountains which leave between them and the sea only a
small crescent of undulating plain. At the center of the crescent, a slender hill stands, with an even slope, of a somewhat
large base and a perfectly pointed summit, a cone of rocks, which a circular gorge separates from the neighboring

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mountains, while a narrow beach joins it to the sea. It is around the cone, toward the summit, from the middle of the slope
up to the extremity of the point, that the old Catholic town of Syria was built. At the summit, the house of the bishop and
the church of the Capuchins were protected by the flag of the king. Below, but only down to midway, is suspended the
rowed herd of white squares, not daring to venture to the sea.
In the eighteenth century, in the times of the corsairs, French, Turkish or native, the town perched thusly on the hill, a
mile from the port. After perhaps ten centuries, it did not dare to descend, for fear of attacks. Today Syros has two towns:
at the foot of the old Syria, which remains around its hill, the new town, the town of commerce, Hermopolis, has
populated the edge of the bay and the small intermediary plain with its quays, its storehouses and its bureaus. The antique
ruins, which litter the soil of Hermopolis, and the [archeological] finds, which are made daily, show well that in antiquity
a somewhat large town already rose at the water’s edge. But from when does the maritime town date? The modern history
of Syria can inform us of the antique history. The towns only descended to the sea in times of peace: the ancient coastal
town dates from the Hellenic and Roman Peace. In primitive times, in times of Karian, Phoenician and Cretan piracy,
Syros should have held itself on its pointed rock and protected itself from the corsairs: “The old towns,” says Thucydides,
“in the isles and on the mainland were founded rather far from the sea, because of the pirates who came to take all that
which bordered on the coast; it was the time when piracy employed the islanders, for the most part Karians and
Phoenicians, for it was those peoples who occupied most of the isles, Καρές τε όντες και Φοίνικες. ουτοι γαρ δη τας
πλείστας των νήσων ώκησαν.” In the Odyssey, nevertheless, Syros has two towns, which divide all the territory of the
isle, but the same single king rules over them:

ένθα δύω πόλιες, δίχα δε σφλισι πάντα δέδασται

τησιν δ’ αμφοτέρησι πατηρ εμος εμβασίλευεν.

We would make a mistake, I believe, to think of the double town of today. We should not imagine, for primitive times,
an old town on the rock and a new town at the port: the text of the Odyssey itself does not allow such an interpretation.
The two towns, “which divide all the territory,” should each have its domaine: they are distant from each other. Further,
the entire account which is going to follow will have two theatres, the high town with its palace and streets, and the spring
with its bath: “If you meet me either in the streets, or at the spring,” says the nurse...

... ή εν αγυιν ή που επι κρήνη...

It is in the high town that the father of Eumea has his palace; it is at the spring that the Phoenicians are camped, near
the vessels which they have hauled onto dry land. It is to the high town that the Phoenicians climb to offer their gifts and
other “superfluities:” It is to the spring, to bathe, that the nurse, Eumea, descends. It is there that she lets herself be
seduced by one of the Phoenicians: she gives herself up in the open. Free as the primitive mores were, it still was
necessary that the place was deserted, away from the town; it is true that the hull of the ship hid them somewhat:

πλυνούση τις πρωτα μίγη κοίλη παρα νηί.

The Syria of Tournefort has, similarly, the house of the bishop on the point of the hill and “the principal fountain of
the isle all the way at the foot of a valley, somewhat near the town.” Thus it is the same arrangement of places as in
Homeric times, the town above, the spring below. In the times of Tournefort, about a mile of some sort of terrains extend
between the town and the beach, and the same interval also exists in the Homeric Syros. For, the evening of the
abduction, Eumea and her nurse descend through the dark streets, then, having left the town, they come running toward
the port, where the Phoenicians have guided their ship, which they have set afloat,

‘ημεις δ’ ες λιμένα κλυτον ήλθομεν ωκα κίοντες.

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 It thus appears that the ancient poet has had the same vision of Syros as the modern traveler. He should have known
only one town near the bay, a high town, αιπυ πτολίεθρον, according to the frequent Homeric epithet, and it is perhaps the
similar homeric epithet of Aipeia which would be the best translation of the Semitic Sur, Σύρος. Here, at least, in support
of the translation, are some of the Greco-Semitic doublets, to which it is always necessary to return.

In Cyprus, we have already explained the the origin and the meaning of the doublet Aipeia-Soloi, the Steep Town-the
Rocks or the Stones. The Homeric poems mention another Aipeia in Messenia. It is one of the seven Messenian towns,
very close to the sea, πασαι δ’ εγγυς ‘αλός, that Agamemnon wishes to give to Achilles.
Certain of the Messenian towns will be maintained in the Hellenic Greece: Kardamile, the Watercress Bed, has lasted
to us. But, already in the times of Strabo, many of the Homeric names had not been precisely located. Like Antheia, the
Flowered, like Hirë, the Saint, like Enope (which appears to have no meaning in Greek), like Pedasos, the town of the
Leap (??). Αίπεια, the Steep Rock, disappeared in historic times and, according to the opinion of the geographers, the
name of Korone, of Methone or of Thouria had replaced it. Strabo thinks Thouria, because that town, he says, is built on a
high hill, and thus merits the name Steep: ‘η δ’ Αίπεια νυν Θουρία καλειται ‘ίδρυται δ’ επι λόφου ‘υψηλου, αφ’ ου και το
όνομα. Thouria was built on the left bank of the river Pamisos, at the edge of the marshy plain, eighty-eight stades from
the sea - one hundred eight kilometers: about the distance from Athens to Piraeus - a little to the north of the present port
of Kalamata and on the first ridges of the Taygete. It is the type of the ancient towns, removed from the sea because of the
pirates, inhabited while piracy lasted, then deserted when the pirates disappeared, και μέχρι τουδε έτι ανωκισμένοι εισί.
“The people of Thouria,” says Pausanias, “formerly inhabited their town perched on the height, εν μετεώρω; but, later,
they descended toward the plain, and it is there that they live today. Nevertheless, they have not entirely abandoned their
high town, την ανω πόλιν; they still retain there, among the ruins of their walls, a sanctuary which they name the Temple
of the Syrian Goddess, ‘ιερον ονομαζόμενον Θεου Συρίας.” This - we have seen - the people of Kalymnos still do today.
In the times of the French corsairs and the Turkish or Christian pirates, they lived far from the sea, at the summit of a hill,
in the center of the isle. Today, having descended to the Echelle, they have abandoned the old town, whose churches they
nevertheless continue to maintain: they go back there for the feasts of the Virgin and their other patrons.
In the old Thouria, the cult of the Syrian Goddess appears to have surprised Pausanias himself: “They say that it is a
temple of the Syrian Goddess.” The cult of the Syrian Goddess is nevertheless familiar to him: the Syrian Goddess
conquered the Greco-Roman world. But, having recently come from the sea, it is in the ports and the towns of the times,
that is to say, in the times of the Roman Peace, in the towns of the plain and of the sea, that the Goddess is installed. Here,
we find her in an old town. Should it be thought that the cult harkens back as far as those of the Levantine goddesses
Aphrodite and Isis in the Aipeia-Soloi of Cyprus?... In any case, the name of Thouria appears of the same epoch as Soloi.
‫טור‬, thur, signifies in Aramaic mountain, rock, and in Hebrew standing stone, column. The doublet Aipeia-Soloi would
have its equivalent in Aipeia-Thouria: the Thouria of Pausanias would truly be the Homeric Aipeia. Another doublet
furnishes us the complimentary proof here. We find in Boeotia, in the land of Cadmus, a mountain which the Greeks call
Ορθόπαγος, the Standing Rock, but which also bears the name of Thourion, Θούριον. The rock was near Cheronea, and it
is Plutarch, native of Cheronea, who gives us the information: we should note the minute symmetry of the doublet
Thourion-Orthopagos. (The transcription ‫טור‬, thur, into Θούριον or Θουρία is self-evident, even though the ‫ט‬, especially
initial, may be rendered as τ by the Greeks, and not as θ, as here. The termination ιον, ια, would lead us, I think, to the
plural form ‫טורימ‬, thurim, or ‫טורי‬, thure, if we suppose the constructed form, followed by a determinative which has
disappeared.)
The word thur of the Aramaians leads us back to Syros, for the Aramaic word is the exact equivalent of Hebrew Sor or
Sur. Our Syros was another Aipeia. We should represent it in distant times as entirely resembling the Messenian Thouria,
that is to say, also entirely resembling the Syria of Tournefort or again the Homeric Pylos. It leaves the beach of
debarkation uninhabited: the natives do not descend there except for commercial affairs and for the religious ceremonies;
but the foreigners display their merchandise there, στησαν εν λιμενεσσι, as the Iliad says in speaking of the Phoenician

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bowl of Achilles. A high town rises above the first hills of the interior. But, according to the Odyssian text, the isle should
have a second town. From all times, the isles of the archipelago have had their principal town on the seashore, which the
islanders call by the generic term of chora, χώρα. But, in the interior or on other bays, they have villages, demes,
sometimes more important than the chora itself. Naxos today has two towns. Naxia on the coast, Tragea in the interior.
Keos, in Hellenic times, had four. The classical geographers mention to us only one city on the isle of Syros; but the
inscriptions furnish us the denomination of naxien or naxitais which is certainly applied to the citizens of Syros and
which can only be a demotic. There was on the isle, besides the town of Syros, a deme of Naxos. The deme would
represent for me the other town of the Odyssey.
The urban agglomerations vary greatly in the isles of the archipelago, acccording to the state of the civilization and
especially according to the occupation by which the natives live: “Keos,” says Strabo, “formerly had four towns: there
remain to them only two today, Karthaia and Ioulis, which have absorbed the inhabitants of the two others, εις ‘ας
συνεπολίσθησαν αι λοιπαί.” When the islanders live from their fields, their vines and their olives, they spread over the
entire surface of the island, and their towns “divide all the territory:” it is the state which the Odyssey describes to us for
the Syros of its time. When the islanders live from commerce and navigation, from the sea, they flow toward the shore
and are grouped in the principal port: their small peasant towns come to be merged into a single capitol. The primitive
Syros was in the first of the stages: The Phoenicians have the commerce at that time; the natives farm; Syros can have two
small towns. Later, in Hellenic times, it is the islanders who navigate: Syros has only one chora and its other ancient town
of the Naxians falls to the rank of an unknown deme.
The late archeological discoveries would be able to localize the deme to the place presently termed Chalandriani. In
this place, ##at least, in the only place outside of the present town, the excavations have discovered tombs in great
number: certain archeologists relate the tombs to the “Carian” period; others, to the contrary, would affirm that they are of
the Roman epoch. The excavations of Ch. Tsountas have settled the question: we have here a station of the epoch called
Mycenaean, preHellenic. In the site spoken of, situated at the northern extremity of the isle, is a sort of conical rise, near
the sea and very close to a fountain. The vicinity, says Tsountas, is fertile and with good soil. Two small valleys open to
the sea in accessible harbors. A small town thus would have found a site and resources; a girdle of towers and crumbling
walls still mark it; the natives call it the Castle, Kastri. The name of Naxos, Νάξος, in effect, which we retrieve in a
neighboring isle, and in Sicily, and on the Carthaginian coast of Africa, belongs like Syros to to the class of insular names
which, unintelligible in Greek, have a Semitic explanation: ‫נס‬, nax, signifies in Hebrew the signal, σημειον; the Seventy
translate, signal of war or maritime signal, but especially signal of war, which one raises at the summit of mountains to
assemble the soldiers. Diodora informs us that the isle of the archipelago had received the name of the Carian hero Naxos,
son of the Warrior, Πολέμων: it is always the same Hellenic process, deriving from nax, signal of war, the hero Naxos,
son of the warrior Polemon. The transcription of ‫נס‬, Nax as Naxos, would be as regular as that of ‫פס‬, Pax, as Paxos. And
here, again, we will have as certification a Greco-Semitic doublet: the isle of Naxos, with its spine of mountains with
three points, presents itself above the sea as a gigantic wall whose point today bears the name of Phanarion, Φανάριον,
the mount Lantern, the mount Signal... But we study the doublet regarding the Naxos of Sicily, which is undoubtably a
Phoenician foundation. Situated on the west coast of the Sicilian strait, marking the entry of the strait for the sailors of
Sidon or of Carthage, who come from Africa, the Naxos of Sicily was the same Signal, the same Column, which was later
for the sailors of Rome the Columnia Rhegia standing on the Italian shore to indicate to the Roman boats the most
convenient point of passage. At the entry of the strait toward Rheneia or toward Tinos, our Naxos of Syria would be a
similar Signal.

CHAPTER II

SIDONIANS AND MARSEILLIANS

185
 της τοιαύτης μεθόδου το προηγούμενον εστιν ‘ιστορία περιοδική.

Ptol., Geogr., I. 2.

In our Homeric Syria, the two towns Naxos and Syros hearken back to the epoch when, according to Thucydides,
“Karian and Phoenician pirates inhabited most of the isles.” In those times the daughters of the king, like the little Eumea,
had Phoenician nurses. For on our isle Ktesios Ormenides reigned, resembling the immortals. The little Eumea was his
daughter and, to protect the rascal who had thus far asked only to run the streets,

κερδαλέον δη τοιον άμα τροχόων θύραζε,

Ktesios had a Phoenician nurse: “I raise the daughters of the man in his palace,”

παιδα γαρ ανδρος ‘ενος ενι μεγάροις ατιτάλλω,

says that tall and beautiful woman herself. It is not only today that the British thalassocracy has implanted among the
powerful of the world the fashion of foreign nannies. Under all the thalassocracies we see similar habits: the powerful of
the world borrow or buy from the people of the sea servants, familiars, workers, artisans and artists. In the Homeric
poems, Paris the Trojan goes to seek in Sidonia the embroidresses which he needs, like Roger, nephew of Robert
Guiscard, will go to seek in Byzantine Greece the silk weavers, which he brings back to his towns in Italy by persuasion
or force,

... τας αυτος Αλέξανδρος θεοειδης

ήγαγεν Σιδονίνθεν...

Similarly Ktesios buys the nurse from Sidon, who is at the same time a beautiful woman and a good embroideress, thus
joining the useful with the agreeable,

καλή τε μεγάλη τε και άγλαα έργα ιδυια.

In the times of the French thalassocracy, Tournefort encounters the caravan of a pasha on a route in Asia Minor: “His
physician was from Burgundy and his pharmacist from Provence; where is it that there are no French?” and Paul Lucas
made the acquaintance at Ispahan of “Monsieur Jourde, French, goldsmith of the king (of Persia) with four thousand
livres of pension, presently the only French goldsmith in the country.” The foreigners in Homeric Greece hold the same
occupations. It is Egypt which at that time is the land of remedies, the country of physicians and pharmacists, for down
there each one is a better physician and wiser than other men,

ιητρος δε ‘έκαστος επιστάμενος περι πάντων

ανθρωπών,

and the land produces innumerable drugs, some salutary, some pernicious,

186
 ... πλειστα φέρει ζείδωρος άρουρα
φάρμακα, πολλα μεν εσθλα μεμιγμένα πολλα δε λυγρά.

It is from Egypt that the famous anesthetic of the times comes, the ether or the Homeric morphene, the nepenthes which
suppresses pain, calms excitation and makes all ills forgotten,

νηπενθές τ’ άχολον τε, κακων επίληθον ‘απαντων.

In the times of Diodora, the Egyptians of Thebes still have the recipe for the drug of νηπενθες. The marvelous drug of
nepenthes earned, without doubt, for the physicians and pharmacists of Egypt or for their students, the same renown and
the same clientel as, during the last centuries, and similarly during the past years, our quinquina and our quinine earn for
the “nurselings of Montpelier or of Padua.” In present Asia Minor, the least “French” traveler, provided with quinine and
audacity, can rapidly be made a celebrity of great medicine. In the seventeenth century, it was even easier: the natives
have neither physicians nor surgeons; all the explorers or traders of the epoch held the title and quality of healer: “As soon
as I arrived at Sparta (Isbarta of Asia Minor),” relates Paul Lucas, “a rumor spread that a great foreign physician had
come. The Pasha of the town asked to see me and showed me many courtesies. He will give me, as long as I stay in the
town, bread, salt, candles, even matches, and the supply of meat that they gave me was no different from that of the
pasha.” Each French colony of the Levant has its physicians and pharmacists of the country, some French or Italian,
others students or supposed students of French and Italian universities. Tournefort and P. Lucas meet the Esculapians
everywhere:

The ordinary physicians of the Levant are Jews or Cadiites, educated at Padua, who would dare to purge only those [already]
healing. All the knowledge of the Orientals in treating illness consists in giving no rich foods to those who have a fever..., etc.
Medicine is practiced at Naxos by the (Latin) religious. The Jesuits and Capuchins there have very good apothecaries. The
Cordeliers mingle there also: the superior has been Surgeon Major of the Venetian army during the last war... There are the doctors
who comprise the faculty of medicine of Naxia: they are all three French and are accounted no better for it... M. Chabert, apothecary
from Provence, had been long established in Constantinople, where he was busily employed in his profession. His son was
apothecary of a pasha and gave us great help...
The French colony of Saïda has two physician-surgeon-apothecaries. In 1658 they were Ms. Thibauld and Margas.

The practice of medicine is very useful in commerce: by their relations with the native people, by their influence over
the pashas and officers of the Great Lord, the foreign healers can do much for the development or establishment of the
business of their compatriots. But medicine serves the interests of religion even more: it is so easy to augment the medical
prescription with religious councils! The therapeutic prescriptions lead to prescriptions of ritual. Theatins in Mingrelia or
Georgia, Jesuits, Capuchins and Cordeliers in the archipelago or in Syria, all the French religious orders treat the bodies
to conquer the souls: the Jesuits today still have their Faculty of Medicine in Beirut... In the religious history of Homeric
Greece, we cannot forget the rôle and the influence of Levantine healing.
“The French,” adds Chardin, “are in great number at Smyrna and in the entire Levant. One finds them in all parts of
Turkey, and not only merchants, but in all sorts of occupations. There are few of the mechanical arts where one does not
find some worker among them.” In Homeric Greece, it is also from abroad that the artisans come, δημιοεργοι, “the seers,
the physicians, the builders in wood, the the divine singers who enchant by their voice.” Also, when the chief of the
suitors, Antinoös, wishes to drive the foreigner dressed in rags from the palace of Ithaca, Eumea reprimands him with
bitterness: “Should we not accomodate the foreigners? Don’t we make the voyage (cf. the voyage of Paris to Sidon) to
seek the artisans, physicians, carpenters and musicians from abroad? These are people such as are renowned over the
wide world.” In the times of the Arab thalassocracy, the merchants of Salerno and Amalfi thus called on Arab or
Byzantine artisans and savants for their construction and for their university. In the times of the Byzantine thalassocracy,

187
it is Levantine artisans who settle in the towns of French Gaul, especially Syrians, and Gregory of Tours points out their
presence at Bordeaux, at Orleans - where the foreign population retains its language and salute the king Gontramne in
Syriac, hinc lingua Syrorum, hinc Latinorum, hinc etiam ipsorum Judaeorum - at Paris, where their simonial intrigues
raise a Syrian merchant to the episcopal throne, Eusebius quidam negotiator, genere Syrius, datis multis muneribus, in
locum [episcopi defuncti] subrogatus est: a riot of antiSemites broke out against the election by “sale.”
The Homeric princes or emirs voyage to Egypt and Syria, whence they bring back artisans and workers, as the Druse
emirs of the seventeenth century voyage to French lands: the chevalier of Arvieux furnishes us the best commentary on
the voyage and stay of Menelaus in Egypt. The emir of Sparta relates in the Telemachead that he had not only visited the
Levantine echelles; he goes up to the great town of the interior, to [Egyptian] Thebes. Similarly do the Druse emirs, who
come to Livorno and go up to Florence and likewise up to Rome:

The emir Fekherdin was only six or seven years old when his father died and left him the soverign of all the lands and towns and
fortresses from Carmel to Tripoli in Syria. He remained under the tutelige of his uncle until he was of an age to govern himself. He is
rendered master of numbers of places by the kind manner in which he treated his subjects, and the French more than all the others...
Our French trade with them much, and buy all the silks they make... It was the emir who establishes the French religious orders in
Nazareth and all the pricipal towns of his dominion... [having made arrangements with the Turkish authorities], the emir Fekherdin
embarks on a French vessel. He passes to Malta, from there to Naples, and came to debark at Livorno, from where he will go to
Florence, where the grand duke received him with an extraordinary magnificence.

The Pharaoh of Thebes or his officers received Menelaus with a similar magnificence: they gave him two bathtubs of
silver, two tripods and ten talents of gold; Helen received from the queen Alkandra a distaff of gold and a basket of silver
with a gold clasp. Menelaus remained seven years in the Levantine lands where Ulysses pretends in one of his tales to
have also stayed seven years.

The grand duke of Florence, after some weeks, sent the emir Fekherdin to Rome to pay a visit to Pope Paul V. The emir was
received at Rome as he had been at Florence, lodged, defrayed and treated as a sovereign who could aid the Christian princes greatly.
Fekherdin later returned to Florence, where he will stay five years with four wives, fifty domestics and more than twenty thoiusand
gold marks which he brought with him... At the end of five years the emir will be pursuaded by the desire to again see his land and
his sons and to rule. He leaves Livorno, came back to Seide with a number of engineers, architects and workers of all sorts, of which
he wished to avail himself for the fortification of his places and for the embellishment of his palace.

On returning to his land, the emir Fekherdin was able, by virtue of his foreign architects, to construct vast and solid
palaces and residences. They were not structures of mud and wood like most Turkish or Arab construction, but of strong
walls of cut stone in the European style. The emir has acquired, like the French, the taste for durable construction; even
ruined, his palaces are long recognized among the shabby and crumbling hovels of the natives.

At Sur, the emir Fekherdin had built a palace of great size, whose remains indicate its magnificence. The palace is at present
almost ruined by the negligence that the Turks have to make the necessary repairs. The little which remains there serves to lodge
foreigners who come to the town, and still retains the name of castle... At Seida, the seraglio of the pasha is behind the khan of the
French. It is the emir Fekherdin who has built the best dwelling there, which today is occupied only by his descendants. The seraglio
is vast and built entirely of cut stone. The ground floor is completely vaulted and those above are enriched with arabesque paintings
of flowers and passages from the Koran in gold letters. The palace holds a great number of apartments very well arranged and in a
manner which makes one believe that they were arranged by a French or Italian architect. The seraglio of Beirut, also built by the
emir Fekherdin, is of the same form as that of Seida: it is just smaller.

Compare this page of Helbig:

Among the numerous facts of great importance revealed by the excavations of Tirynth, one comes to be singled out by an entirely
special characteristic. Schliemann has cleared away almost all of the wall of the upper citadel. Thus we can recognize that all along

188
the wall of the subbasement are bult chambers and corridors vaulted in ribs, which appear to have served as magazines. An
analogous arrangement exists only in Phoenician defensive walls, at Byrsa of Carthage, at Thapsos, at Hdrumete, at Utica and at
Thysdros. The coincidence is a new proof of the relations that the populations of the Argolide maintained with the Orient in those
times. One would hardly know how to pretend that the prince of Tyrinth gave subsidies to native artisans for voyages of study in
early Asia. There is only one possible alternative: the walls have been raised either by Oriental architects coming to Tyrinth, or by
native architects trained by the Orientals. Whether one settles on one or the other of the hypotheses, the immigration of Oriental
architects into the Argolide can be considered as an historic fact... That which demonstrates the Oriental relations of the people of
Mycenae is that they know how to work stone better than the Greeks of the time of Homer. In that epoch, it is [less frequently] a
question of citadels built of stone [than] of trenches, of ramparts of earth [and of wood] and of palisades. The Greeks have learned
from Orientals to build with stone. It is a truth which one can hardly deny today. Their legend relates that the walls of Mycenae and
of Tyrinth, like those of the port of Lions, were the work of Cyclops, to which they generally attributed a Lycian origin.

An entire school of Archeology denies the influence of Levantine builders; there are two very serious reasons, they
say:
1° to build the enclosures, required thousands of hands, hard and prolonged efforts under the orders of an undisputed
leader; the Phoenicians, who hardly ventured beyond the beaches, were not able to execute, so far from the sea, in the face
of hostile tribes, such constructions;
2° the palaces of Mycenae and of Tirynth bear throughout, in their plan and in their decor, the imprint of a particular
civilization, which differ by special characteristics from the Levantine constructions.
The history of the emir Fekherdin shows, I believe, the mediocre value of the reasons. There was no need that the
Phoenicians were masters of the land, just that one architect and some construction overseers, coming from Sidon, were
employed by the emir of Tirynth and had at their disposition, under the lash of native drivers, the thousands of hands
furnished to the prince of the land by impressed labor. The French architects worked in this way on Fekherdin’s account.
And the architects should have followed, for the plan and the decor, the preference and the needs of the emir. In the style
of the land, they “enrich their walls with paintings in arabesque of flowers and passages from the Koran in letters of
gold:” the Italians made, not an Italian palace, but a Turkish seraglio with its apartments of the men, the women and the
guests.
“Will we say,” add the archeologists, “that if the Phoenicians were never the masters of the Mycenaean acropoles, they
could have brought to the princes who built them the aid of the skillful (giblites) masons whose services Solomon
secured, when he began to build the temple of Jerusalem? But we have no historic or even mythic evidence which
authorizes us to suppose of such close relationships between the Achaean chiefs of the Peloponnesus and the Syrian
kings.” Nevertheless, we should not forget our Odyssian text. We still do not have in effect the trace of official
correspondence between the emirs of Tirynth or Mycenae and the pharaos of Thebes or the grand dukes of Tyre and
Sidon. But the Odyssian poet tells us that they caused the architects, the builders in wood, τέκτονες δούρων, to come from
abroad, “for you know that among us,” write Solomon to Hiram, “there is noöne who knows how to cut wood like the
Sidonians.” It appears that one of our ordinary proofs, I wish to say a Greco-Semitic couplet, will be able to show us that
the Odyssian text may be worthy of belief. Among the artisans coming from abroad, the Odyssian poet cites the seers,
μαντις. The divination by the flight of birds and the bird-catchers, οιωνοπόλοι, οιωνισταί, holds a great place in the
Homeric poems, particularly in the Odyssey. For the Greek word οιωνος, bird, designates all the winged beings, but more
specifically the birds of prey: we also frequently see them combined with dogs, κύνες, in the formula “the dogs and the
birds eat the corpse,”

αλλ’ άρα τόν γε κύνες τε και οιωνοι κατέδαψαν...

του δ’ ήδη μέλλουσι κύνες ταχέες τ’ οιωνοι
‘ρινον απ’ οστεόφιν ερύσαι...

The Greek word oionos has a constant synonym in the formula: gups, γυψ,

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 ... πολλους δε κύνες και γυπες έδονται...
... τάχα κεν ‘ε κύνες και γυπες έδοιεν...

Oionos and gups alternate indifferently. The first is surely Greek; its relation to avis is indisputable: it is an IndoEuropean
word. Gups, to the contrary, cannot be related to any Greek or IndoEuropean etymology. The philologists and linguists
declare the origin uncertain or unknown. But, if oionos is the Greek word to designate the bird, the winged being in
general - οιωνοι, says Hesychius, πάντα τα όρνεα, πάντα τα πτηνα, δι’ ων οίονται και νοουσι τα μέλλοντα - all the
Semites also have, for the generic term of bird, of to be winged or flying, the word ‫עוף‬, gup. It is under this generic term
that the Scripture understands all the pure and impure birds: “And the Lord made all birds, gup - παν πετεινον, translate
the Seventy: - and to all the birds of the sky, gup - πασι τοις πετεινοις του ουρανου.” The last formula all the birds of the
sky to translate gup repeats endlessly. But like the Greek oionos, the Hebrew gup designates more particularly the birds of
prey, and the same extension of meaning which, has made a synonym of foretell from oionos, which word designates the
instruments of the divination, similarly has given to the Arab verb gaapa the signification of draw auguries, and to
gaipun the meaning of seer. Among the Greco-Romans, it is the gupes, γυπες, says Plutarch, who are the best givers of
prediction, χρωνται μάλιστα προς τους οιωνισμούς.
The transcription of ‫עוף‬, gup, into γυπ-ς is self-evident: we know that the initial ‫ ע‬is frequently rendered by a γ; we see
in the Scripture the proper noun ‫ עיפה‬trtanscribed as Γαιφά, Gaipha, by the Seventy. The gups passed with the Greeks for
a foreign bird, originally from what mysterious country, they did not know: it never nested or reproduced in Greece, but it
came there with armies. The Egyptians related that all birds were female and conceived from the breath of Zephyr. “They
had chosen the gup for the augury,” says Plutarch, “because Hercules had judged it the truest of the birds of prey: it was
Hercules himself who had chosen it.” It is always necessary to be wary of the legends of the Greek Hercules and above all
of their importations. Tyre or Sidon, in more than one case, appear to have been their origin. It is from one of these towns
that gup should have passed to the Greeks. The pursuit of our studies is going to lead us to discover in the Odyssey an
entire series of names of birds, which by likely doublets will conduct us to the likely Semitic etymologies: the Megarian
legend has already furnished us the doublet Nis-the-Sparrowhawk, ‫נע‬, nis-νίσος-‘ιέραξ.

But if we accept the evidence from the Odyssey and if we admit the importation of Levantine artists and artisans, it
would be necessary to envisage certain consequences well. In the state of civilization where the arts and sciences come
from the people of the sea, the admiration and confidence of the barbarians attach themselves without discernment to all
the peoples from overseas, and attribute universal talents, knowledge and ability to them. In Asia Minor of the last
century, in all of Turkey in the XVIIth, a Frenchman, whatever he may be, is for the natives a doctor, a great doctor who
can surpass all the healers of the land. It is what the Odyssian poet tells us of the people of Egypt: “Each one there is a
doctor and surpasses other men in knowledge.” It suffices to arrive from overseas to find clientel and credit. The travelers
of the XVIIth century encounter pretenders in the Peloponnesus, “students from Pisa or Padua” who never studied
elsewhere than in the kitchens or prisons of Zante, of Corfu and of Venice. It is not always the foreigners, the French. It is
sometimes natives, Levantines who, leaving their country, have returned after some years saying that they have made
their studies and passed their courses. All the world believes them on their word until the day when some Frenchman,
having recourse to their services, perceives their complete ignorance: they had, during their absence from the country,
served as domestics in the house of some Venetian from Zante, given some enemas or attended at bleedings of their
master, and they had retained as well as they could some formulas and operations of European medicine.
For the other arts it is the same. In the estimation of the barbarians, the people from overseas know how to do and
make everything, construct palaces and play the flute, repair watches and drive locomotives. Still today, pretended
European engineers are installed turn for turn by the Turkish government in the most diverse services: they make roads
today and they captain ships tomorrow. I have seen the pasha of Rhodes, prefect of the Isles, fly into a rage against the
surveyor of his province who admitted that he could not build him a steam pump in a few weeks’ time. In the heart of the

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palace of the bey at Constantine still exist the frescos executed in 1822 by a Sicilian Cordonner. This unfortunate had
been taken by the corsairs and sold to the bey, who ordered him to decorate his walls: are not all Italians painters? The
bey wanted frescos, Italian in execution but Turkish in conception and taste: he promised freedom to his Cordonner, who
promptly slathered forty meters of mural and made him, in the Turkish style, fleets sailing toward Stamboul, ships firing
cannon, mosques with minarets, domes in the middle of gardens, etc. Looking at the work is sufficient to divine that
before his debut in the art of fresco, our Cordonner had never in his life held a pencil or brush. The bey was nevertheless
enchanted with the results: he will free his slave.
In front of the “grotesque” paintings (as the the guide, Joanne says disrespectfully), I thought, in spite of myself, about
the steles of Mycenae and of their crude conventions: “The sculptor had not known how to find the place of the sword
above the leg of the combatant. He nevertheless wished to evoke the fearful weapon which he knew so well to serve the
hero. With a naive carelessness, he had cast it some distance in the field. It would be the job of the viewer’s imagination
to place it into the hand of the hero.” The chariots and combatants of the Mycenaean steles are worthy of the frescos of
Constantine, like awkward copies of very widespread motifs. The archeologists think that the clumsiness and naivety are
an authentic mark of native manufacture; those same ones who are disposed to recognize an Oriental influence in the
construction of Mycenaean gold vases, poignards and jewels, assert the pure indigenousness of the barbaric steles. I do
not contradict this opinion. But there could, there should have come to be employed as painters sculptors, architects,
foundrymen and stonecutters by the beys of Mycenae some Cordonners from overseas. In the public estimation, the
Sidonians are at that time the universal artisans; they have several skills at hand, πολυδαιδαλοι, and the Sidonian product
is always fine “since it is by the able Sidonians that it was made.” The people of the sea, in all times, have abused the
confident admiration of the landsmen. The pirates of the primitive Aegean should have been even more inclined to lies by
the necessities of their commerce in slaves: the better to sell the captives whom they came to offer, they needed to ascribe
to them all knowledge and talents. The Sidonian artisan made a prime offering: the pirates termed all the slaves they had
taken on the Phoenician or Levantine coasts artisans and Sidonians. Once sold, the slave, in the house of his new master,
had all interest in not revealing the overpricing. To avoid the hard labor of the field or the mill, he was entirely inclined to
undertake the most novel works. The native or foreign piracy thus should have populated the primitive Aegean with
artists or pretended artists whose ingenuity and touching naivete perhaps the archeologists make us admire today: after
four thousand years, we still give the name of painters or sculptors to the Cordonners.
Beyond our posthumous admiration, which they undoubtedly did not await, the artisans enjoyed during their life a less
hard condition, and the hope of deliverence could sustain them. The indulgence of the master and the needs of the work
gave them an unconventional behavior which permitted escape at the first favorable occasion. Reread in Herodotus the
story of the Greek physician Demokedes. In that epoch, “the students of Kroton” pass as the best physicians throughout
the Levant. The tyrant of Damos, Polykrates, took the Krotonite Demokedes in to his service. After Polykrates’
catastrophe, Demokedes is made a slave by the satrap of Sardes, then, upon the downfall of the latter, taken with the other
servants to Sousa, where, Darius, ill for seven days, calls him on the eighth. Demokedes applies some Greek remedies to
the king, which cure him, ‘ελληνικισι ιήμασι χρεώμενος: he received the gift of the entire harem; the king loads him with
riches. An illness of the queen, Atossa, cured by him, puts him at the pinnacle. The queen, at his instigation, convinces the
king to send Demokedes to Kroton on a diplomatic mission. From Sousa Demokedes arrives in Phonecia, in Sidon where
a fleet has been prepared for his use: two triremes and a cargo boat, gaulos, full of various merchandises, γαυλον μέγαν
παντοίων αγαθων. Demokedes escapes...
It is entirely parallel that, in our isle of Syria, our Phoenician embroideress escaped while abducting the little Eumea,
and we cannot read the latter account of escape without thinking of the the other history which Herodotus recounts to us:
the story of Io the Argian who, having become the mistress of a Phoenician captain, took flight on the boat of her lover.
For the story of Io bears in itself the mark of its origin: a Greco-Semitic doublet in the semi-historic legend shows us an
invention entirely resembling that which the legend of Cadmus has revealed to us, and shows us well the foreign
influence upon the ideas and scientific procedures of the first Greeks. The Phoenicians, says Strabo, took the Bear as the
guide to their navigations, and they taught the method to the Hellenes: ο‘ι Φοίνικεσ εσημειώσαντο και εχρωντο προς τον

191
πλουν, παρελθειν και εις ‘Ήελληνας την διάταξιν ταύτην. In the Odyssey, it is Kalypso who shows the procedure to
Ulysses: squatting on the aft castle, near the tiller, Ulysses was to be guided by the Bear “which is also called the Chariot,
and which never sets in the sea.” Kalypso has advised him, to navigate surely toward Ithaca, to always hold the Bear to
the left,

την γαρ δή μιν άνωγε Καλυψω δια θεάων

ποντοπορευέμεναι επ’ αριστερα χειρος έχοντα,

and it is in effect the route which he should follow to enter toward the Greek seas from Espania, land of Kalypso. He
needs to hold the north to his left, neither to steer nor divert toward it, under penalty of wandering in the sea of the
Balearics and landing on the shores of France or Italy: to the right, the African coasts serve as guide and he never risks
going too far to the south. In the Homeric times, as we see, The Bear already had a double name which perhaps supposes
the encounter of two astronomical theories or, at the very least, of two “views of the stars” and of two comparisons. The
Bear will retain the two names during all antiquity and up to our days. It is truly the Bear, but it is also the Chariot, and
its companion is the Bear Herder, Αρκτοφυλαξ, but also the Leader of Oxen, Βοωτες. For the Chariot is an Oxcart, a cart
with Seven Oxen, Septemrio. To the double name were attached two legends. One appears more properly native, being
Arcadian: it relates that the nymph Kallisto, the Very Beautiful, had been changed into a Bear and her son Arkas into a
Bear herder. The other legend was Argian, closer to the sea: for adventures resembling that of Kallisto, Io, Ιω, changed
into a cow, is guarded by Argos, who sees all; she later becomes a star in the head of the Ox. I believe that Io-Kallisto
form a doublet: Kallisto is certainly a Greek word; Io appears to have no meaning for an Hellenic ear. But ‫יאה‬, iaa in
Hebrew, ‫יא‬, ia in Phoenician, signifies beautiful. The example Καλλίστη-Καλλιστώ would explain to us the transcription
Ια-Ιω: we are used to the names of women in ω, Καλυψώ, Ινώ, Κυμώ, etc. Io is a goddess of navigation, a sailing nymph.
As to her guardian, Άργος, there is at least need to show his nominal relationship with the guardian of Kallisto, Άρκας.
Furthermore, the one and the other both descended from a common ancestor, Iasos. Argos, according to some, had, in his
head, a single but enormous eye, and four eyes around his skull; according to others, he had either a hundred eyes or a
thousand eyes to see everything, πανόπτης, μυριωπός. The constellation of the Herdsman is composed in effect of one
very large and very brilliant star and a flock of other smaller and fainter stars: “the Arktophylax, which the old authors
name the Herdsman, is covered by stars in all its parts; on its head burns a solitaire,”

Arktophylax, sive, ut veteres cecinere, Bootes...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .haud tamen unquam
in picturantae plaustrum procurrere matris
fas datur... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nec minis in membris lux olli maxima vibrat
omnibus: ardet apex capiti; micat ignea late
dextera; flammantur humeri; flammam movet instar
inter utrumque femur... etc. .

It is possible that the largest and most brilliant star of the constellation may be the ‫עש‬, or ‫עיש‬, ‘is, of the Hebrews, of
which Iasos would perhaps be the Greek transcription: in the Semitic languages, the root ‫עוש‬, ‘us, or ‫עש‬, ‘ass, signifies
make the nightly round, and the Arabs give the name of ‘aassun to the watchman or guardian (man or dog) who makes
the nocturnal round about the herd; it would be exactly our guardian, Greek φύλαξ. But the Hebrew astronomy is so
poorly known to us that it is better to not rest on that hypothesis. To the contrary, it appears likely to me that an Attic
legend furnishes us the Phoenician original of Boötes. The Herdsman, βούτης, βοώτης, bubulcus, who is the Bear Herder
in Arcadia, among the Athenians is called Ikarios: in all the Semitic languages, ‫אבר‬, ikar, signifies the Driver of the
Chariot. Ikarios is the faithful charioteer of Dionysus. On his chariot, he promenades the skin of the god. Thus he circles,

192
plaustro onerato, with his daughter Erigone. The Greek Boötes is also Philomelos, the inventor of the chariot. It thus
appears to me that the doublets Io-Kallisto and Boötes-Ikarios indicate the double origin of the double legend: the Bear is
Greek and the Hellenes call the constellation the Bear from all times; for the Semites, it was the Chariot; we still say the
Chariot of David. In any case, I believe that Herodotus had reason to have the beautiful Io navigate on the fleets of Tyre
or Sidon. It is the Phoenicians who introduced the astronomical legend into Greece, as they introduced the other
astronomical legend of Cadmus-Telephassa-Europa.

*
* *

We return to the isle Syria and our Phoenician nurse. By virtue of the French sailors, we can complete the account of
Ulysses and better understand the story of the beautiful slave. In regard to her adventures, such as she herself recounts to
her pirate countryman, it suffices to copy the history of a beautiful Maltese woman, such as the French corsair Paul Lucas
relates two or three thousand years later.
In the times when he was a corsair (around 1695), Paul Lucas takes, at the entry of the Dardanelles, a sambukin (type
of vessel) which was taking a Turkish aga to Metelin. There he found the entire harem of the aga, that is to say, three
women and two catamites. The women cried and wept, knowing the fate of women aboard a corsair.

I ordered one of the sailors who spoke Turkish to ask the women why they were crying. The younger, who was only sixteen or
seventeen, tells me in Italian that she was Christian: “You are mistaken,” I tell her, “to cry, because I am delivering you from the
hands of the Turks.” - “It is true, sir,” she responds, “but I am in the hands of a Pirate.” “No, my beauty,” I replied to her, “the
corsairs are not so bad: console yourself.”... When everything was calm and I had set the sails, I asked the young slave of her
homeland and by what adventure she had fallen into the hands of the Turks. She was from Malta, daughter of a somewhat wealthy
physician, named Lorenzo...

- “I have the honor to be from Sidon rich in copper,” says the Phoenician woman in the Odyssey; “I am the daughter of
Arubas, who enjoys a fine opulence there...”

εκ μεν Σιδωνος πολυχάλκου εύχομαι ειναι,

κούρη δ’ είμ’ Αρύβαντος εγω ‘ρυδον αφνειοιο.

Lorenzo in the French text of Paul Lucas is a foreign name. It is possible that Arubas might also be a foreign name in
the Greek text of the Odyssey. At least we have wished to discover a Semitic etymology for it. It is certain that Αρύβας
does not appear Greek: It is found only one time in all the Hellenic period, applied to a king of Epirus. One has related it
to the Hebrew name ‫ערב‬, Oreb: the transcription Oreb-Arubas is impossible on the face of it. But it suffices to make a list
of the Punic names of the form Annibas or Maarbas, Αννίβας, Μαάρβας, Ατάρβας, Ασδρούβας, Σιχ’αρβας, Ι’αρβας,
Ιόβας, Μαστανάβας, etc. to see that Arubas enters in the series of god-bearing names, of which bal, ‫באל‬, furnished the
second member to the Phoenicians. In regards to the Punic ‫הנובעל‬, Hannibal, Αννιβας (the Greek inscriptions say Annobas
or Annubas, Αννωβας), we have the Hebrew ‫הניאל‬, Hanniel, and we know that ‫אל‬, El, is the equivalent of ‫באל‬, Bal.
Similarly, Asdroubal, Ασδρούβας, has as its counterpart ‫עזראל‬, Azriel or Asdriel, as the Seventy write it. Sicharbel, the
husband of Dido, ‫שחרבעל‬, of the Punic inscriptions, leads in the Scripture to ‫שחריה‬, Sichar-ia, and Maarbal, ‫מהרבעל‬, to
‫מהרי‬, Maar-i. The Scripture furnishes us ‫אריאל‬, Ari-el, which we similarly relate to ‫ארובעל‬, Aru-Bal, Αρύβας. Thus we
have here the simple Greek transcription of another royal Semitic name. The king of the Sidonians, who received
Meneleus, is called Phaidimos, that is to say the Shining Hero,

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 πόρεν δέ ‘ε Φαίδιμος ‘ήρως
Σιδονίων βασίλευς.

If they took phaidimos in the sense of clear, shining, luminous, the royal name Phaidimos could be the exact
translation of a royal name that the Phoenician inscriptions and the cuneiform tablets give us among the dynasties of
Gebal, ‫אורמלך‬, Urumilik, Flame or Light of the King: the Semitic root ‫אור‬, ur, is the complete equivalent of the Greek
φαίνω. But phaidimos, like the Latin illustis or clarus, has taken the figurative sense of glorius, illustrious, distinguished.
Now the later historians or mythographers knew that the king of Sidon in Homeric times was a certain Phalis, Φάλις.
Movers appears to me to be right when he relates the Phalis with the Pheles or Phelles cited by Josephus, Eusebe, Ruffin,
etc. among the kings of Tyre. The etymology proposed by Movers similarly appears acceptable to me: under the two
forms, ‫פלא‬, phele, and ‫פליא‬, phali, epithets derived from the root ‫פלא‬, phala, express the properties of height, of
singularity, of beauty, eximius, insignis, mirabilis: θαυμαστός, the Seventy translate. The Scripture has some proper
nouns ‫ פלוא‬,‫פלאיה‬, that the Seventy transcribe as Φάλλος and Φελίας. We have the right, perhaps, to allow the doublet here
Φαιδίμος-Φάλις...

- She was, Paul Lucas continues, daughter of Sir Lorenzo. Her father had made a vow to go to Our Lady of Lampadouze on an
uninhabited isle a hundred thirty miles from Malta. He embarks his wife and his only daughter with him. As his ship rounded a point
of the isle of the Lioness, a Turkish brigantine took control of it. The Turks will sail their prize to Algiers and will sell the physician,
his wife and his daughter to a rich merchant, Sidi Mahomet.

- But some pirates, says the Sidonian of the Odyssey, some people of Taphos, will abduct me one day when we return
from a part of the plain, and they will take me here where they will sell me at a good price in the house of the man.

- At that time, continues Paul Lucas, an aga of the Great Lord come to negotiate some affair with the bey of Algier. To the
misfortune of the young girl, he lodged with Mahomet and he found her very beautiful to his taste...

- Καλή τε μεγάλη τε, says the Odyssey, a “beautiful tall woman,” which, for the poet and his compatriots, is the rare
fruit. Used to their somewhat short and heavy rather than slender women, (such as they still appeared in the sculptures of
the Vth century), the Greeks appreciated the long and fine daughters of Egypt and Syria. Open the Anabase: Xenophon
after Kunaxa fears the choice that his Ten Thousand will make, between returning to their homeland, or abandoning it for
the women, the tall and beautiful Levantine women, καλαις και μεγάλαις γυναιξι και παρθένοις ‘ομιλειν.

- The aga, continues Paul Lucas, says to Mahomet: “I want you to sell me the slave. I have the order of the Great Lord to buy all
who resemble her for his seraglio.” The time arrives. The aga embarks with the slave on a French ship which takes him to
Constantinople. Ill-received on his arrival, he set out to return to Metelin, where he was governer of a fortress. He embarks in the
ship which I came to take and which belonged to the poor Christians whom I took back from him.

Paul Lucas saves the beautiful Maltese and he was compensated for it in almost the same fashion that the Phoenician
corsair was compensated by the beautiful Sidonian, ευνη και φιλότητι. For, having returned her to Malta, he reunited her
with her parents by another voyage, and Sir Lorenzo received him magnificently: a great feast, the father to his right, the
daughter to his left, the mother facing him; a concert; a ball; finally “they lead me to a room where, in spite of what I
would have, the mother and father will wish to see me sleep. I had just extinguished the lamp when sleep imperceptibly
makes me see in a dream that a beautiful person was caressing me. The emotion awoke me with a start and nothing
surprised me more than to feel a cheek against mine and the voice of the beautiful slave telling me: it is I, cor mio, don’t
fear anything. To rescue me from the astonishment I felt from her visit, she adds that, since she knew how little time I
should stay in Malta, she did not want to miss the occasion to converse with me. We talked in this way until the break of
day, when she will retire.”

194
 The archipelago of Paul Lucas and that of the Odyssey are similar in all details. The foreigners, French or Phoenician,
play the same rôle there; turn by turn or at the same time, they are corsairs and transporters, pirates and merchants,
bandits and gallant men. The natives have no great confidence in the rascals - τρωκται, says Eumea - and meanwhile they
depend upon them to transport their goods or even their own persons. For they are able sailors - ναυσίκλυτοι, says Eumea:
on their boats one has little fear of shipwreck. In the times of the Arab thalassocracy, the Christian pilgrims take passage
to the Holy Land on the Muslim boats: Bernard, French monk, embarks at Tarente (around 824-871) on a Saracen ship.
Inversely, the Italians, having become masters of the sea, later serve the passengers between Africa and Muslim Sicily,
between Turkish Asia and Arab Syria: it is a Genoese ship which in 1332 bears Ibn Batuta from Laodicia of Syria to
Alaja. Nevertheless, the Saracens, Venetians and Genoese make raids and even make war among themselves on every
propitious occasion. The Turkish aga of Paul Lucas takes a French boat to return from Algiers to Constantinople. The
same Paul Lucas knew a Turk of quality at Constantinople, who loudly praised the benefits of our nation.

He was called Iusuf-bey. He had been sent to Algiers on behalf of the Great Lord. He had embarked on a French boat which was
to conduct him to Tripoli of Barbary and he had had need to request a passport of the Ambassador. Arriving at Tripoli, he finds a
Turkish vessel; he is put upon it to continue his voyage, but a storm drives them onto the coasts of Sicily. He makes a sad enough
castaway, and they make slaves of all those who are rescued from drowning. Iusuf-bey had saved his passport. He shows it to the
magistrates. They immediately change their conduct toward him; they will clothe them, him and all the rest; they furnish them with
honesty all the things for which they would have need, and they will give him a boat which conveyed him to Algiers. Since he
wished to embark there again, they wished to give him a ship from that country to carry him again; but he does not consider it good
enough to place himself aboard, and the honesty which he remarked among the French determines him to take them for his guides on
his return. He boards a vessel which is returning to Marseille. There he was showered with honors; but that which increased his good
opinion of the French nation was the good welcome they gave him throughout the town and above all the care they took to make his
provisions for the voyage to Constantinople.

Let us replace, in the accounts, Algiers with Egypt and Marseille with Sidon, and we will better understand the stories
of Ulysses, the aga of Ithaca: “We took the idea to go to Egypt. We arrive and set anchor in the river. My companions
debark, pillage the harvests, abduct the women, kill the men and children. The Egyptians come running, with their king
on his war chariot, and massacre our troop. I cast down my weapons and the king spares me. I stay there seven years and I
make a fortune; for the Egyptians shower me with gifts. A Phoenician comes, a rascal, τρώκτης, knowing all the tricks,
απατήλια ειδώς, and who was bound to have already conned other people well. He convinced me to go to Phonecia: there
I stay a year. Then he loads me onto a boat for Libya; we are supposed to be trading as equal partners; he had intention to
sell me, expecting a good profit: I suspected it, but what to do?”

Some Turks, relates Thevenot, will load two French vessels, one under Captain Durbeki and the other under Captain Crivilliers,
and an English vessel with merchandises in Alexandria, in exchange for a good charter. Captain Durbeki, instead of going to
Constantinople as he had promised, takes it to Livorno with the design of profiting from the merchandise which he had on his boat.
Captain Crivilliers and the English captain quickly follow his example. After that the vessels do not dare to come to Egypt from
Christendom, fearing that revenge will be taken on them for the loss. [The pasha of Cairo hides his anger, then has the consuls
apprehended, who] will leave prison only for the large sums of money which the countries will pay.

Another story related by the same Thevenot. The older son of the bey of Tunis, tyrannized by his father and married
against his wishes, flees to Sicily. The Jesuits baptise him and give him the viceroy and his wife for godparents. He is
hencefrorth called don Fillipo. He passes to Rome, where he is well-received by the Pope, who gives him fine presents.
He goes to Spain where the King gives him a pension. He settles in Valencia and marries.

But the mother of don Fillipo was strongly distressed by the loss of her son, whom she loved passionately. Thinking of nothing
but the means to recover him, she prevailed so upon an English captain that he promised to return him to her. This deceiver, to
achieve his plan well, came to Valencia, made acquaintance with the prince and, finding that he was without money, loaned him

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some. Don Fillipo, having money, continued his ways, and soon reached the end of the sum. When the captain asked him for the
money some time later, the prince, much embarassed, offered him a letter to his mother, who would pay all that was loaned to him.
But the English captain did not want this at all, saying that they did not acknowledge him in that place since he was a Christian. He
counseled him to return to Rome, where he had been well-received and where His Holiness would act so well toward him that he
would have the means to pay. At the same time he offered to take him there on his vessel. The prince accepts the offer and, being
embarked on the vessel with his wife and some Christian valets, the captain, instead of taking the route to Rome, took that toward
Tunis, so that the prince was quite astonished when he recognized the harbor.

Ulusses is more cunning than don Fillipo. He distrusts the Phoenician captain. But what to do? He is, like don Fillipo,
in a foreign country. Like don Fillipo, he has perhaps signed some notes, in spite of the pension which the king of Egypt
gave him. Thus he is forced to embark: “And as far as Crete, all goes well. But then a storm causes our shipwreck. Cast
on the shores of the Thesprotes, I was welcomed and clothed by the king, who entrusted and recommended me to a
Thesprote ship. Barely at sea, the crew, who had the intention of selling me, despoil me of my new clothes, throw me the
rags which I still carry, and, in the evening, when we arrive on the coast of Ithaca, tie me to the mast while they debark to
eat. I then manage to untie myself and I flee.” The Thesprote crew conduct themselves no differently than the corsairs of
the XVIIth century. Ashore, these men of worth declare their religion, their loyalty, their obedience to royal edicts. At sea,
they recognize neither God nor king. Paul Lucas, after having been a corsair, becomes a victim in his turn:

The 4th of June 1708, I embarked on a small English vessel that went to Livorno, and I did it all the more willingly as I had there
almost nothing to fear from enemies of the state. I pursuaded myself that, carryng the orders of the king with me, if the English
vessel were attacked by the French, I would be equally in safety, and that neither the people of His Majesty or equally the people of
my own country would care to mistreat me... But arriving at the level of the isle of Cabrare, which is not far from Livorno, we
discovered a vessel which came at us under all sails and all oars. Our captain, having recognized that it was French and seeing it
approach us as a corsair, put his money and the most valuable of what he had into his skiff, and ordered the men which he made to
descend, to reach land at Corsica. By this he saves his goods... Since a calm prevailed on the sea, the corsair, which had many oars,
promptly began to fire the cannon at us. After having suffered five hits, we struck our sails, and the launch of the pirates came to
board us. Then a pillage in all its forms commenced to be made... When they came to me, I say that I was French like them, but
beyond that I had the honor to be of His Majesty and that I was the bearer of his orders and warnings to his subjects and to all others
to wait on me and not do me any harm... I even had [captain Joseph] Bremond brought aboard, to whom I showed the orders of the
King... But he tells me that the orders of the king were a song..., that I was his prisoner, that all I had was his, and that it was all the
same to him if I was French or otherwise... He took my money and my weapons openly, telling me that I belonged to him with all I
posessed... What can one say to a corsair who only breathes for pillage and blood, and is absolute master on his vessel?

*
* *

In their archipelago, the French corsairs had some isles where they deposited their booty. There they relaxed for long
months. There they led, by virtue of the vines and the women of the land, the life which one can imagine: “Argentiere was
their rendez-vous and there they squandered in horrible debauches that which came to them from pillaging the Turks; the
women profit from it. They are neither more cruel nor more poorly formed than any others; all the commerce of the isle
turns on that species of gallantry, without the delicacy which does not suit sailors; the women there worked only on cotton
stockings and making love.” In the times of Pausanias, in the maritime town of Patras, which became one of the trading
posts of Greco-Roman commerce, it is that way: “The women are twice as numerous as the men and, more than any other
women of the world, faithful to the practices of Aphrodite. Most make their living in working the cotton of Elide; they
make hairnets or other clothing.” The Syria of the Odyssey already knew the good spinners or knitters, not badly built,
and the galantry in the open air, without delicacy:

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 πλυνούση τις πρωτα μίγη κοίλη παρα νηι.

“Milos,” Tournefort resumes, “abounded in all sorts of goods in the times that the French corsairs held the sea. They
brought their booty to the isle, like a great fair of the archipelago: the merchandises were given there at a good bargain:
the burghers resell them at a profit and the crews consume the commodities of the land. The women there also find their
advantages; they are no less coquettes than those of Argentiere.”
The last passage would explain, even better than we have done, the description of the Homeric Syria. This isle where
everything abounds, especially the provisions, meats, wines and flour, gave its passing prosperity to the corsairs of Sidon.
They were given a rendez-vous there and made it the fair of the archipelago. The isle plays the same rôle for the
Phoenicians in their times as Mykonos later does for the French; it is their great trading post of the north. The French, in
their archipelago, have three of the great repositories or storehouses. Entering by the southwest portal, they find at first,
just at the mouths of Kythera, the group of Milos, which offers them the first stopping place, the repository of the south.
Symmetrically, entering by the portal of the southeast, the Phoenicians would find just at the mouths of Rhodes or of
Kasos their trading post of the south in the group of Thera and of Anaphe, colonized by them, they say, and whose ports,
in effect, are turned toward the southeast. At the center of the archipelago, the French frequent Io, so populated by their
corsairs that they call it “the Little Malta:” the bay of Io or of Nio, as they say, opens toward the southwest and stretches
out its two promontories to them. For the Phoenicians, it is Oliaros which was the trading post of the center: the large bay,
entirely filled with islets, which include Paros and Antiparos among them, is open to arrivals from the southeast... To the
north, finally, Syria and Mykonos face each other and, symmetrically turned, one toward the west and the other toward
the east, their bays - we have seen - are placed following the Oriental or Occidental direction of the commercial currents:
Syria is the Phoenician trading post, Mykonos the French.
But if the trading posts change place, the commerce remains always the same. We can reconstitute in the smallest
detail the distant Phoenician “merchandise” by virtue of the French merchandise, which is near and familiar to us. The
Phoenicians, like the French of the XVIIth century, come to the archipelago to seek raw materials in exchange for their
manufactured products. These are above all woods and agricultural products, oils, wines, cereals, etc., especially supplies
and meats, which the ones and the others find to load in the isles:

εν νηι γλαφυρη βίοτον πολυν εμπολόωντο.

the Homeric biotos correspond exactly to our words meats or supplies, and it is, in effect, supplies and provisions which
the isles furnish: “Even though Naxos has no proper port at all to draw a great commerce,” says Tournefort, “that does not
keep it from making a considerable traffic in barley, wines, figs, cotton, silk, linen, cheese, salt, cattle, sheep, mules and
oil; wood and charcoal, very rare merchandise in the other isles, are in abundance here... ”
The woods furnish a prime cargo. We have seen, in the waters of Naxos, the Phoenicians already had their Isle of the
Wood or of the Forest, ‘Υλήεσσα-Ωλίαρος, where the Sidonians, the great carpenters of the Scripture, found a colony:
“The isle formerly called Oliaros,” says Thevenot, “is inhabited, not for a great time, by Albanians. Their fields are
fertile: there are woods of oaks and other trees which they cut to sell in diverse places, and particularly in Santorini, which
has great need of them.” Thevenot is mistaken over the exact site of Oliaros, which he places at Nio. But his text sets out
clearly the very great difference between the isles of the south and those of the north: the calcarious or granitic isles are
forested; the volcanic isles are entirely bare. If the unhealthiness of the volcanic isles makes the salubrity of the other isles
worth more, the bareness of the volcanic isles also makes the verdure of Nio or Antiparos worth more.
The ancient navigators are always in great need of forests, whether they themselves have to repair or replace their
boats on site, or whether they load wood for fuel or construction. Ceaselessly dragged over sand and rocks, their boats are
used up and eaten away very quickly. Athens, in the prospective conquest of Sicily, anticipated the acquisition of the
Italian forests which were then intact, and which would give them the empire of the sea. In the same example of the
Athenian fleets, we see with what rapidity the ships become unusable. Thus each ancient thalassocracy needs a large

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number of forested stations to rebuild its fleets. The coastal mountains, covered in woods, especially when the wood
serves in naval construction, are coveted by the navigators. The Caucasus and Ida, during all of antiquity, derived their
renown from that, εύδενδρον ‘ύλη παντοδαπη τη τε άλλη και τη ναυπηγησίμω.
PreHellenic Greece should have been for the Phoenicians what pre-Roman Italy later was for the Athenians: the fir, the
oak, the pine, the poplar, all the essentials abounded, extending from the tops of the mountains to the hollows of the
valleys, furnishing all the materials for the hulls, oars, masts, sides, etc. But the Phoenicians had not only their personal
needs. In their ports they had a market in woods: Egypt has always depended, for its buildings, for its fires and for all the
usages of daily life, upon the insular or continental forests of the Mediterranean. Egypt has no forests except of palms,
and the palm is of too great a profit for them to be set to all the services.

The delta, says Thevenot, is heavily populated and produces almost without cultivation all sorts of fruits, grains and vegetables. It
is true that it absolutely lacks wood, for the fruit trees cannot be counted; they would be a resource of little extent and advantage. The
houses of all the villages are only of earth; they are covered well enough with rice straw, but they have only a ground floor. Only the
mosques are built with bricks of lime and sand, good enough for the towns of Rosetta, Masssur and Damietta. Firewood for the
furnaces and kitchens comes from abroad. It is the saiques that bring it when they come to load wheat, rice, vegetables and other
merchandise. They sell the wood and the charcoal by the pound, and dearly enough, in comparison with other things necessary to
life, which are a good bargain there.

The Cilician ports, or those of the gulf of Adalia, still today, provide the furnaces and building sites of Alexandria, and
the charcoal from the wood of Mersina competes with English charcoal in Egypt. Anthony had already given Cleopatra
certain ports of that coast, so that she might have wood for her fleets. In the middle ages the Genoese carried on the
commerce in wood between the Asiatic ports and Egypt: If Ibn Batuta passes from Laodicia to Alaya on a Genoese boat,
it is that Alaya was always the supplier of wood for the Egyptian and even the Syrian ports; the Arabic voyagers and
geographers Ibn Batuta, Abulfeda and Chehabeddin speak to us at length of the traffic. Before the destruction of the
coastal forests of Ionia and Karia, the gulfs of Kos and Knida also furnished the supply to Egypt. In 1834, Michaud still
finds the commerce in wood in the bays neighboring Boudroun: “They come there only to take shelter from winds of the
south or to load wood, which they transport to Egypt; on the coast one sees only miserable woodcutters and packs of
jackals which make heard their cries resembling groans.” I imagine that before the first Greek colonization the coasts of
Halicarnassis presented the same spectacle. The native or foreign boats came there to load wood for Egypt, for the
innumerable boats of its Nile, for the carpenters of its palaces and of its houses, for the scaffolding and planks of its royal
or private constructions. The woods of the Homeric archipelago found the same clientel there which later brought the
development of the town of Rome from the woods of the Apennines. For the Town, the Rome of the Homeric world was
on the Nile: Thebes was then what Paris is today in the opinion and imagination of most of the Levantines. Tyre and
Sidon were just the echelles from which one “ascended” to the town, as today one “ascends” from Marseilles to Paris.
The papyruses have preserved for us the account of the voyage of an Egyptian, Unu-Amon, sent to Phonecia to purchase
the woods necessary for the construction of a sacred boat: Hir-Hor, king of Egypt and priest of Amon, wished to construct
a new ship dedicated to the feasts of the god on the Nile. Unu-Amon descends from Thebes to the delta, takes to sea, and
comes to land on the Syrian shore. Through the ill will of the native petty kings, it takes two years for him to accomplish
his task. He was upset at the slowness: “‘Don’t you see,’ I replied to him, ‘the quails which redescend towards Egypt for
the second time?’ And I wait there.” This happened during the XXIst dynasty, around a thousand years before our era,
that is to say, I believe, just about in our Homeric times. The Sidonians at that time rented their boats to transport the
products and people to Egypt...
The archipelago furnishes foodstuffs especially. The cereals of the isles remain celebrated in all the navies:

The south part of the isle, the Nautical Instructions still say in speaking of Skyros, is not cultivated. Its high mountains are bare,
except toward their summits, where they are covered by oaks, firs and beeches. The north part is less elevated. Grapes and wheat
grow on the hills, oaks, plane trees and fruit trees in the valleys, wheat, figs and grapes in the plains, of which one is four miles in

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extent. The wheat of Skyros is the most highly valued of the Aegean sea. The wine, the wheat, the wax, honey, oranges, citrons and
madder are exported in great quantity. Skyros is well-watered and furnishes pasturage to some cattle and numerous flocks of sheep
and goats, of which the greater part are exported.
The isle of Amorgos, says Tournefort, is well-cultivated. It produces enough oil for its inhabitants, and more wine and grains than
they would be able to consume. The fertility draws some ships from Provence... There are still enough wines in Sikinos to merit its
ancient name of Οινοη, lots of figs and, although raised into mountains, the isle appeared well-cultivated to us. The wheat which
they harvest there passes for the best of the archipelago: the Provençals do not let it escape them; they will scour all the grains of the
land in 1700 and they will be obliged to continue if they do not reëstablish the commerce of cape Negre. Nevertheless it is not
without difficulty that they load grains to the Levant; they frequently find only a part of a load in one isle; then they must run to
another isle and sometimes content themselves to load part wheat and part barley...

One could find analogous citations for all the isles of the archipelago and set a passage of Tournefort under each word
of the Odysssey. The Phoenicians make the same “scourings” of grains as the Provençals. We have contemporary, or
nearly so, texts concerning it. In the Scripture, the clients of Tyre and Sidon pay for the Phoenician manufactures in raw
materials, especially in foodstuffs, in βίοτος: Solomon asks the king of Tyre, Hiram, for wood, carpenters and artisans;
Hiram in return asks for grains and oils, provisions. The word employed by the Scripture is ‫להם‬, lehem, provisions, which
the Hebrew agriculturalists translate as bread and the Arab pastoralists as meat: it is the exact equivalent of the Greek
biotos.
We should linger on the commerce in grains in the archipelago: the last remark by Tournefort on the subject of
Sikinos especially merits our attention. Tournefort gives here a fundamental condition of the traffic for a foreign navy
exploiting the sea strewn with isles and islets. The isles are small, encumbered with gulfs and rocks, broken up into small
plains, into minuscule fields, small gardens of wheat, of barley or of olives. Each one of them thus can furnish to the
foreign navies only a half or a quarter of their cargo. Only the larger ones, Samos, Chios, Lesbos or Rhodes, furnish an
entire boat of wool and several boats of wines or grains. The foreign commerce, to fill the holds of its ships, is thus
obliged to resort to certain wanderings which, from one century to another, would not be able to change (it is the nature of
the places themselves which imposes them). One is always reduced to two alternatives: either one cruises from isle to isle
and collects from here and there a part of the cargo; or one needs to await in a central port the arrivals from the
neighboring isles and stay in the central port as long as the boats of the natives have not filled the holds of the large
shippers. In the archipelago, ancient and modern, the one or the other of the two alternatives has always been the rule of
the thalassocracies. In the times of Tournefort, ordinarily, they more readily employed the second of these means. They
came to Mykonos or Milo and waited to load the grains, the oil, wines, silks and other merchandise of the entire
archipelago: Mykonos or Milo was the central trading post of the natives; the foreigners at length found complete loads
there. The procedure was, at one safe step, the less dangerous and most economical, in the days when the sea was full of
perils and when time did not have a great value. For the destitution of the ports of most of the isles, and the presence of
corsairs at all the straits, the gusts, and the tyrany of the Turkish agas, and the extortion of the local primates rendered the
cruising from isle to isle perilous and costly... In the entire Mediterranean of the times, they operated in this manner. See
the traffic of cape Negre, of which Tournefort spoke above:

The French have established a commerce with the Moors in a Port of the coast of Africa, near the isle of Tabarque where the
Genoese were established. The French will build a walled enclosure which they will call the Bastion of France. There they will make
some storehouses, some lodgings, and a sort of keep, where they will put some cannon, with a garrison for the safety of their
merchandise and their persons, because the Moors of the vicinity are very malicious and great natural thieves. They will later fortify
another place near the Bastion which they call the Hold, where they will put another garrison capable of preventing anyone from
encroaching on their coral gathering and on their other commerce which principally proceeds in that miserable place. They made the
commerce by gathering, that is to say that they bought what the Moors brought there at a price fixed for the entire territory. They put
it in a storehouse and when the French boats and ships come to load, they begin by placing their funds in the hands of the governor,
who gives them the quantitiy from the country which suits them: in less than four days, they can load their cargo and set sail again.

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The prompt loadings are very useful, because this type of port, if indeed one can honor it with that name, is not good enough that one
can remain there in safety for long.

But to thusly await the good pleasure of the natives in a central port, it is necessary to have plenty of time to lose and
to be armed with patience: the trading post is never full; the arrivals from the neighboring isles are rare, and slow, and not
very considerable. For fear of Pirates, or lack of experience, or of boats, the natives navigate little. Similarly, those who
live off the sea have neither fleet nor port, but only some canoes and a slope to haul them out. Such as the people of
Nicaria:

The isle of Nikaria is long in form. Its territory is dry and all the rocks are very high, in which are the houses of the inhabitants,
who are a good three thousand souls, all very poor and poorly clothed. They are very devoted to swimming, and harvesting sponges
from the bottom of the sea, and similarly the hardware and merchandise from the vessels which perish. They do not marry the boys
who are not able to go at least eight fathoms underwater, and it is necessary that they bring up some piece of evidence. When a
patriarch or some other of the wealthier of the isle wishes to give his daughter in marriage, he chooses a day on which he promises
his daughter to the best swimmer. All the boys promptly strip naked before everyone, the girl being present, and dive into the water;
the one who stays under the longest is he who marries the girl. It appears that they may be more fish than men. They pay their tribute
to the Great Lord in sponges, and it is they who furnish them to all Turkey. The isle has no port at all for the large vessels, but only
for the small boats, with which they go to Chio to sell honey, wax, wines clear as water, and other similar merchandises.

The native boats, which capsize at the least gust of wind, transport only few merchandises. “They are subject to alarms
in the archipelago, where they are not able to pass from one isle to the other except in boats of two or four oars, which go
only in the calm or with a favorable wind; it would be even worse if they were served by large ships; in truth, they would
be protected from bandits by a tartane; but they would lose all the time waiting for the winds.” It thus happened that that
the long wait was impossible or unbearable to our captains of the XVIIth century. Though they were little pressed for time
or the season was not too far advanced, they sought a more rapid loading, especially when the good weather appeared to
allow them to return to France again. With a well-armed crew, they would prefer the risks of cruising from isle to isle to
the ennui of long waits at Milo or Mykonos. From isle to isle, from port to port, they went to fill their hold, at risk of
attack, in taking fruits at Naxos, wheat or barley at Tinos, wine at Santorini, figs or hides at Io. Thus they made a varied
cargo, but rapidly.
Today our commerce has entirely returned to the other system, and Syria serves them as the central trading post: “The
central position of the isle,” say the Instructions, “makes it the market of the archipelago, and its port is a port of loading
for the ships, especially for the steamers.” But the system has been able to prevail only by virtue of a very complete
development of the port of Syria and similarly of the entire archipelago. So that our steamers no longer lose their time
awaiting their loading, it is necessary that the cargos, brought in advance from the entire insular market, and even from
the Greek and Asiatic coasts, be entirely ready to leave: it requires trading posts and storehouses, which the loading of the
steamships empties all at once. In the absence of the storehouses, if our large ships, to fill their hollow hull, εν υνι
γλαφυρη, had only the crumbs brought from time to time by the native boats, each of them would need to anchor from
month to month. In the archipelago of the Odyssey, the storehouses do not exist. The Phoenicians need to remain an entire
year in the port of Syria before completing their loading.

ο‘ι δ’ ενιαυτον ‘άπαντα παρ’ ‘ημιν αυθι μένοντες.

The Odyssian navigations astonish us a bit by the slowness of their passages, by the length of their stays. They
willingly consider dozens of days for them, months and even years, and when the Greeks stay ten years before the walls
of Troy, when Ulysses strays for ten years from Circe to Calypso, we are inclined to see there only a poetic fable, an
entirely verbal exaggeration. The legendary exaggeration definitely exists in certain passages. But the Golenischeff
papyrus just now related the sojourn of Unu-Aman, who remained two years to load his wood in the Syrian ports. Let us
read further, regarding the Odyssey, our travelers of the past centuries, and establish the comparison. The coastal

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navigation, which goes from cape to cape, was rapid enough with a favorable wind, desperately slow in a calm; when bad
weather supervened, it was necessary to wait days and weeks behind the first shelter. Tournefort wishes to pass from
Samos to the Asiatic coast; the passage is a few miles: “February 24, in spite of the bad weather, we retired to Vati, with
the plan to leave for Scalanova and pass to Smyrna: but the continuous rain and the adverse winds arrested us until mid-
March...” Ulysses and Menaleus had to sojourn similarly, Ulyssses an entire month on the isle of Aeolos, Menaleus
twenty days on the isle of Pharos, where they perished of hunger. Ulysses again remains a month on the isle of the Sun:
“The southwest wind did not abate, and the supplies soon gave out; it was necessary to eat that which fell to the hand, fish
and sea birds which we fished and hunted in the recesses of the rocks,” for they at least had fishhooks.

The bad weather, says Tournefort, overtook us at Stenosa, an evil reef without inhabitants, where we find only a sheepfold, a
retreat of five or six poor goatherds, whose fear of falling into the hands of corsairs obliges them to flee into the rocks at the
approach of the smallest boat. Our provisions commenced to lack. We were reduced to making soup with sea snails, for we had
neither lines nor hooks to fish, and the shepherds, taking us for bandits, did not dare descend from their rocks.

We see that the story, word for word, is the same. At the end of their provisions, the companions of Ulysses eat the
herds of the Sun, the sacred beasts: “As long as my companions,” says Ulysses, “had flour and red wine, they will not
touch the heifers. But when all the supplies aboard had run out, they turned to prowling, to hunt the birds and to fish for
what they could get. Euryloque gives them disastrous advice: “Listen a moment to my speech, in spite of the gnawing of
your stomach. All deaths are hard; but it is harder to die of hunger. Let us go hunt the fat heifers of the Sun...” Without
being driven by hunger, the navigators of the XVIIIth century have even less religion:

The sea was so heavy that we had to stay three days on the evil reef of Raclia. The monks of Amorgos, masters of Raclia, pasture
eight or nine hundred goats there: two poor monks take care of them; but they are uneasy all the time about corsairs, who often come
there just to take some goats: it does not even happen that the sailors of the caïque steal only one; in only three days, ours knock off
seven of the animals and, although there are only three men, they eat them all up, down to the bones.

These are such sacriliges as the storm makes. But what is done in a deserted harbor?

During the night, the wind came from the south (it is the Notos of Ulysses), blowing with a great violence. We were in the sea
where Icarus crashed and we could fear the same fate. Our commander resolved to seek asylum in one of the ports in the vicinity.
We entered the bay of Latcheta (Alatsata on the peninsula of Erythria) at 6 in the morning... The port is vast and convenient... We are
there at anchor. The mountains, uncultivated and covered with a dry brush, surround us on all sides. We did not dare to go far from
the beach for fear of losing a favorable occasion to set sail again. We are confined there on a deserted coast for several days. All of
the excursions end in a run back to the shore... All the times the sea calms or the wind appears favorable, we give the signal to
depart. It frequently occurs that we set the large sail. Then everyone was happy. But the wind changed: it was necessary to remain.
Two times we left the port and advanced toward Samos. Always the storm drives us back. The twenty-third day of our stay we made
a new attempt. All the sails were set. The Truite proceeded swiftly. But all at once the calm surprised us and the currents took us
onto the rocks which border the entrance of the bay.

Ulysses, after a week of feasts on the isle of the Sun, also sets sail since the storm appears to calm. Barely afloat, the
ship is taken broadside by a gust of wind, driven by the currents, and cast upon the terrible Charybdis... But the good
weather returns. They set sail again. An hour later, at the first rounding of the isle or a cape, a contrary wind or a sudden
gust forces them into another retreat:

We leave from Patmos with the most beautiful weather in the world, which should be avoided in that season, because it is
ordinarily the warning of a storm, Our plan was to pass to Icaria: the wind from the southeast was so violent that it made us repair to
the small isle of Saint Mimas, where we were only too happy to arrive in the evening. The next day, the wind became even
stronger... An old French boat had run aground there some months ago... Our fear redoubled at the sight of some citrons floating on

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the water, which brought us the announcement that a large caïque had run aground. We had drunk the previous day with five sailors
who sailed it and had been to Stanchio to load the fruit. The sailors counted on the soundness of their vessel, which was brand new;
but as they did not have a compass, no more than we had, and they only dimly saw the cape of Samos, they broke up on the rocks.

Thevenot leaves from Smyrna Wednesday October 11. He arrives at Chio the 12th. He waits there a long time to
attempt a passage toward Egypt. At the end of five weeks, a saïque which went to Rosetta takes him aboard. They leave
from Chio Wednesday November 15: “The saïques are large boats having a completely round body and the tree of the
mast very large and tall. They hold much merchandise, but they hardly go fast at all without having a wind from astern,
for they are unable to sail a reach.” They leave Chio with the Tramontane (north wind). But the 16th of November, the
calm stops them before the isle of Samos, and the 17th, a storm of the Sirocco drives them back to Chio. “We awaited the
good weather with great impatience; the Sirocco lasts up until Tuesday November 28.” The Tramontane returns: they put
to sea again the evening of the 28th: the 29th, after midnight, Samos; the 30th, at noon, Kos, where they take on water.
“The lookout having perceived a sail which came from the coast of Rhodes, we believed that it was a corsair from Malta,
and some time later we knew that we were not mistaken. We turned back with a wind of the Lebesche, or the southwest,
which rises quite brisk, and we went to set anchor at Boudron. We did not wish to anchor at Stanchio, because the vessels
are not sheltered from the Sirocco there.” They stay at Boudron “because the Lebesch continued very strong with heavy
rains.” Monday the 4th of December, they depart from Boudron “with a small Mistral, which lasts only three hours; we lie
in a calm until Tuesday the fifth of December, when a Sirocco arising somewhat strong makes us turn back. We stayed at
Stanchio (Kos), not being able to go to Boudron because the wind was against us.” They wait at Kos until December 10th.
Then they lay over two days at Sanbeki (Symi), because of the Sirocco. Finally the afternoon of Wednesday December
13th they arrive at Rhodes. They stay at Rhodes thirteen days to await a favorable wind. December 25th the wind
becomes a Mistral, or northwest; they leave; they arrive at Alexandria Monday January 1st 1657. In total, eighty-one days
of voyage between Smyrna and Egypt.
In the course of a similar navigation, with such waits and some damages, if one still has the luck to avoid the pirates,
the months run out and the bad season arrives. Then it is necessary to winter for three or four months; Tournefort does
this on the isle of Mykonos. For, during winter, one does not think of traveling: “If you wish to arrive healthy and safe,”
the seer of the Anthology replies to the Navigator, “begin by taking a new boat, then, do not raise anchor in winter, but in
summer; on these two conditions, perhaps you will arrive, if a pirate does not take you on the open sea,”

... καινην έχε την ναυν,

και μη χείμωνος, του δε θέρους ανάγου
τουτο γαρ αν ποίης, ‘ήξεις κακειστε και ωδε
αν μη πειρατης εν πελάγει σε λάβη.”

During at least three months the sea is intolerable, and one gains nothing by ignoring the predictions of wisdom: if one
wishes to raise anchor in spring, one does not delay in paying for the folly. The boat which conducts the apostle Paul to
Rome is cast upon the coast of Crete. Paul, who has experience of voyages, advises to debark and winter there: it is the
end of autumn. But the centurion listens to the pilot and the captain, who predict some more days of good weather. They
take to sea again. A furious storm arises which, at the end of fourteen days, casts the disabled vessel on the coast of Malta,
where it perishes. Paul stays three months on the isle. In spring, he embarks on a vessel from Alexandria, les Castores,
which had wintered in the port, post autem menses tres, navigavimus in navi Alexandrina, quae in insula hiemaverat, cui
erat insigne Castorum. They put in at Syriacuse, where they stay three days, at Rhegium and at Pouzzoles, where the
Christian community keeps the apostle seven days. Finally he arrives at Rome. Thevenot similarly stays five months on
Malta to await M. d’Herbelot and to winter... The entire foreign navy, navigating by sail is thus forced to have, in a
multitude of points, storehouses and retreats. Its boats remain there for days and weeks during the summer, for months
and trimesters during the winter. There are the two conditions which must be realized in our mind if we wish to make
ourselves a true representation of the primitive Aegean. A Phoenician or Karian or Cretan thalassocracy supposes:

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 I° hundreds or thousands of Cretan, Karian or Phoenician establishments;
2° very long stays of foreign ships and crews in the establishments.

We would not know how to insist too much on the two notions. Without having them always present, we can be too
inclined to transport the use and customs of our modern commerce into the primitive Aegean. Today, with two or three
trading posts, the English have the entire Mediterranean... Each strait, each rock, each watering place of the primitive
Aegean had to have seen Phoenician encampments - if it is true that the Phoenicians had the thalassocracy of the sea.
Here again, we can hardly proceed except by comparison: except for the periple of Hannon, there remains to us no
authentic account of the Phoenician navigations. But the single periple speaks to us at length of the great number of
stations, of foundations and of sojourns which it relates to us. Otherwise, on the whole, the Phoenician navigations should
not have sensibly differed from all the other antique navigations. Tyre and Sidon had been the great initiators of the
Mediterranean world for the things of the sea. The same wanderings were retained, since the the procedures of navigation
will not undergo any radical change. In the Oriental Mediterranean, particularly in the archipelago, the old procedures
were transmitted up to our days. With the characteristic of all the navies being the small tonnage of the vessels and the
combined use of sail and oar, I do not imagine a great difference between the navigation of the Argonauts and those of the
Turks of the past century, along the coasts of the Black Sea:

The caïques, which come on the sea, are felouques with oars, which retreat to land every night and return to the sea only during
the calm or with a good wind, by the favor of which they deploy a square sail, moved by the Zephyrs, and which they very wisely
lower when it ceases to blow. To avoid the alarms which the night sometimes gives on the water, the sailors of that land, who like to
sleep at their ease, draw the ship onto the sand and raise a sort of tent with the sail.

The coastal navigation with the retreat every evening, with stops at springs, at capes, on all the occasions of rest,
conducted Tournefort from Constantinople to Trebizonde in forty days (April 12 to May 23). Should it be noted that the
words of Tournefort on “the alarms which the night sometimes gives on the water” are the exact translation of such verses
of the Odyssey? “You want,” says Euriloque to Ulysses, “us to navigate at night, even though from the nights come the
blows of the winds which destroy the boats.”

αλλ’ αύτως δια νύκτα θοην αλάλησθαι άνωγας...

εκ νυκτων δ’ άνεμοι χαλεποι, δηλήματα νηων,
γίγνονται,

All the voyages of the archipelago would be able to supply us with similar examples of the daytime navigation going
prudently from isle to isle, at the mercy of the first blow of the wind: “we have a good departure in the calm; since we
have no compass at all, it is necessary to retire in the first bay, because the wind rises.” Let us again reread the voyage of
Chandler in the Saronic gulf:

The wind being southerly when we left from Piraeus, we entered a small creek... Our men make a tent with the sails and the
rigging, to put us in shelter from the sun, and will gather some brush and dry vegitation to cook our povisions. It was necessary to
await a favorable wind, which did not blow until the following day. Then we put to sail about three in the afternoon... We had a calm
for a half day and rowed to pass a rock or islet... We landed on another islet between Egine and Salamine... Our crew, resting after
the fatigue which they came to undertake, guide the boat to the coast, on which we seated ourselves in the midst of cedars and mastic
trees. The next day we had a favorable breeze, which had a short duration...; entering in a bay of Egina, we dined near some wells of
fresh water, under a wide and tall fig tree. The wind being unfavorable, we passed the night on the rocks near our boat. In the
morning we took sail for Poro. The good brisk wind shortly failed us, and we awaited the land breeze which made the waves foam
before it. Then we perceived the sea breeze at a certain distance, and for some minutes found ourselves retained by the calm between
the two. Each of the winds arrived in turn... But a sweet brisk wind fortunately came to our rescue and we arrived at Poro at noon.

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 From retreat to sojourn, from bay to shelter, one sails at the chance, at the pleasure of the wind and the sea. One can
never say in advance where one will go. One is disposed to pass from one isle to its neighbor, from Anaphe to Astypale:
the winds cast you far from there and force a retreat below Mykonos. Between Amorgos and Ios, it is necessary to wait at
Kaloyero, at Cheiro, at Steinosa, at Raclia: “The navigation between Spain and Italy can be made across the high sea,”
says Strabo, “because of the regular winds which blow there. Posidonios praises the constancy of the winds: by their
grace, it only takes three months to make the passage, after numerous retreats at the Balearic isles, in Sardinia and on the
Libyan coast which faces them.” Three months from Spain to Italy: just think of that figure! And we have there a
particularly fortunate navigation! Nevertheless , for us it resembles racquette play, sending the ship from the Balearics to
Africa and from Africa to Sardinia... Take account of the stations which such passages suppose and calculate together the
consequences for the penetration of races, of languages, ideas and cults.
In our days, the European cottons, drapes, silks and iron goods penetrate all the ports of the Levantine Mediterranean.
But the “Franks” themselves, the Belgians, French, Germans or English, only frequent the great places of commerce: the
languages, coustoms, religions and ideas of the navigator peoples hardly pass outside the great ports of Alexandria,
Smyrna or Salonica... With the innumerable retreats of the old navies, all the points of the coasts were visited, all the
towns, villages and echelles of the shores were under the direct influence of the navigators. It was like a perpetual buzzing
of boats behind all the sheltered promontories. Consequently, when the navigators were Greek, all of the Oriental
Mediterranean was impregnated with Hellenism, and rapidly, and entirely. For the maritime toponymy, that which Strabo
tells us happens: the most used place names henceforth are the Greek names, των ονομάτων, ‘όσα ενδοξότατα, των
πλείστων όντων ‘Ελλενικων, whether the Greeks imposed a new place name or appropriated that of their predecessors, τα
μεν καινα έθεσαν, τα δε παρωνόμασσαν. For the commercial language, all the Levantine world speaks Greek. For the
literature, it was Greece which furnishes the forms, the rules, the models, and, also most frequently, the ideas: Homer
became the Book, the Bible, or the Reader, the Koran, of all the Hellenistic Mediterranean. As for the religion, the native
gods of the Levant and the Couchant will reclothe themselves in Hellenic costumes and names; the native pantheons will
acquire all the divinities of the Greeks. In the Hellenization of the Levantine world, the conquest of Alexander had effects
in depth, so to say, toward the interior of the lands. If the expedition of Alexander had not Hellenized the interior of the
continents, it is probable that only the isles and the coasts, the façade, would have been brushed and polished by the
ceaseless comings and goings of the boats. But it was the incessant navigations which will Hellenize all the coasts and all
the Levantine echelles well before the Macedonian conquest.
To the multiplicity of retreats were added the length of the sojourns. The almost continuous presence of the foreigners
has the same results as the frequency of their passages. Camped on the beach or on the coastal islets, the navigators
remain for weeks and months. To complete their loadings, we know that they neeed long waits; but they do not need any
less time to sell off their merchandise. The word bazarder (sell off), such as the Levantines understand it today, is the
only one which connotes the displaying, the repeated offering, the praising, the sparkling before the eyes of the children
and women, all the all the wiles which the merchants of junk and trinkets - αθύρματα, says Homer, παντοια αγαθά, says
Herodotus - employ to “push” the sale. The Odyssian poet shows us the swindlers in the harems of the high towns,
spreading out trinkets, necklaces and precious stones, tempting the curiosity or the coquetery of the women’

χρύσεον ‘όρμον έχων, μετα δ’ ηλέκτροισιν έερτο

τον μεν άρ εν μεγάρω δμωαι και πότνια μήτηρ
χερσίν τ’ αμφαφόωντο και οφθαλμοισιν ‘ορωντο,
ωνον ‘υπισχόμεναι.

This assortment of jewels and trinkets is a slow conquest. They must offer them five times, and bit by bit excite the
envy, then pretend for a day to relent over the price and consent to a good deal. When the harvest has been abundant and
when, with cellars and caves filled, the life of the household is assured for one or several years, the woman easily obtains
the acquisition which she desires from her husband: It is this way that things still are passed through the towns of Turkish

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Asia, where the Greek and Armenian merchants come to trade the European trinkets against the grain, oils, hides, wool
and wood of the peasants... But when the harvest has been mediocre or bad, the husbands are begged at length. They
somewhad rudely interrupt the requests of the women. The granaries and the purses are shut. The merchant needs to await
better times. In our Homeric Syria, the Phoenicians had not been able to sell their junk, nor to fill their holds before the
bad season arrived: they had to winter. Then, the loading not being complete, they had to await the following harvest.
Nothing hurried them. They had drawn their vessels out at the depths of the bay, far from the waves, at the spot where the
spring came to flow into the sea. On the soft ground of mud, sand and vegetation, they had been able to refit the hull,
repair the sides. They camped on the ground, near the hollow ship, slept, ate and drank to their content. They were given
happy hearts by the grandmothers or the good knitting women whom the Franks of Tournefort knew at Milo and
Argentiere. A Sidonian ashore was even in less of a hurry to leave than the French sailors of whom the voyagers speak to
us: “At Argentiere the sailors also find pleasures which keep them in the bay too long and thus makes them forget their
obligations to the ship owners.”
Let us study the commerce of the fields and small towns of France itself, still at the present time, at least in the regions
which are not penetrated by the railroad: the porters and foreign merchants arrive with their inventory on their backs or in
their caravan; they open a temporary boutique and often end up staying for months or years. I saw, in my childhood,
about 1872, an itinerant photographer arrive at Morez in the Jura, who set up a large studio in the open air and a shop near
his caravan, κοίλη παρα νηι; thirty years later he is still there, camped in his wagon, which serves him as a house. The
vagabonds of the primitive sea do the same, especially when pleasure is joined with business. With Circe, Ulysses stays a
year to eat, to drink, and to forget Penelope; at the end of a year, his companions ask him to leave, but decide only with
great difficulty. For all the navigators, a year of stay is a frequent thing: “I stayed a year in Phoenecia,” Ulysses relates: “I
willingly stayed near you for a year,” Telemachus says to Meneleus: “I would be entirely disposed to stay a year with
you,” say Ulysses to the Pheacians. The English captain Robert is made captive by a squadron of corsairs: “The Sainte
Helene, which I was aboard, had been at sea nine years on her first voyage, and she was then handed over at sea, where
she was for four years when we came aboard... the Annonciation was at sea for six years... The Caravelle was at sea for
nineteen years... there were additionally three corsairs from Malta which can not have been out for less than five years.”
For barely a half-century, we have attached a value to time which men of the past have never given it. One day on the
express or in a boat seems long to us. A voyage of several months appears interminable to us. At the beginning of the
XVIIth century, P. de la Valle took ten years to tour the Levant. In 1674, C. de Bruyn left Haye the 1st of October; he is at
Leipzig the 20th of October, at Vienna the 6th of November, and at Rome the 22nd of December, where he stays for
twenty-seven months. Then two months at Naples, a year at Livorna, five months at Smyrna, eighteen months at
Constantinople, eight more months at Smyrna, eight years at Venice: he returns to Haye, “place of my birth, the 19th of
the month of March 1693, after a voyage of nineteen years, whiuch I have made with such good fortune that I have great
reason to praise God for it and to testify to him my most humble recognition for it.” Ulysses has not put more time into
his expedition and his return from Troy.

*
* *

Long stays and repeated visits have a forcible influence on the natives and a “reciprocal effect” on the foreigners.
During the last centuries, the French and the Italians before them have peopled the archipelago with their Italian and
French communities and with their double or triple households: captains and sailors had double households there in
Genoa, Venice or Marseilles, at home, and at Milo or Mykonos, in the Levant. Choiseul-Gouffier speaks to us above of
the temporary marriages, concluded for the duration of a stay. A mixed and bilingual population had resulted there which
spoke or comprehended the two languages, paternal and maternal, and which translated or mixed the Turkish, Greek,
Italian and French into a sabir of Bourgeois Gentlemen. In the language of the islanders and in the place names of the
isles, it is easy, today, to recover the evidences of the sabir: the Saint-Irene of the Italians has remained Santorini; the

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ancient Sounion is always the cape Colonne and the ancient Kimolos is always Argentiere. Similarly, the Italian or French
family names still populating Naxos, Sommaripa, Dellagrammatis, de Lastic, etc. For the commercial language, it
suffices to open a modern Greek dictionary:

βαρκα, boat καδρο, frame, painting

βαρκαρης, boatman κανον, cannon
βαρκαριζω, embark καπελον, hat
βαρελι, barrel κανουλα, cinnamon
βαρελας, cooper καπιτανος, captain
φουρνος, oven καρινα, hull
καρβουνον, carbon καστελι, castle, etc., etc.

It well appears that in the primitive archipelago and in the Homeric poems, we have the traces of a similar Greco-
Semitic sabir. The place names Kasos-Akhne, Rheneia-Keladoussa, Syria, Siphnos, Samos, Seriphos, etc, have already
revealed to us some examples. But the commercial language furnishes them in greater number.

Among the provisions, βίοτος, which the Phoenicians came to load in the isles, the wine should have figured for a
large portion. The isles have always produced an abundance of heavy wines or more delicate wines. The Greeks before
Troy obtained their wines from Lemnos,

νηες δ’ εκ Λήμνοιο παρέστασαν οινον άκουσαι

πολλαί.

It is from Tenedos or Santorini that the French of Constantinople draw their provisions of wines. During all the XVIIIth
and XIXth century, the monopoly of the isles dominates the commerce of wines in the Levant, up until the entirely recent
days when the liberated Bulgarions and the French settled in Macedonia and in Rhodes replant the famous vines of
Thrace which furnished to Ulysses the marvelous wine of Ismare...
For themselves, the Phoenicians had had need, like the French, of much foreign wine. Lebanon furnished them wines
in a great enough quantity, but deluxe wines. In the taverns of Sidon and Tyre, they had to drink the coarse wines of the
archipelago and Libya, as in Marseille they drink the wines of Algeria or Naples: on the Atlantic coast of Libya, the
Ethiopians who drink milk, γαλακτοπόται, says Skylax, made much wine from grapes, which the Phoenicians come to
load. The Phoenicians additionally furnished their clientel of Egypt, which should have absorbed great provisions. It is
not that Egypt had no vines. The assertion of Herodotus on the subject - ου γαρ σφί εισι εν τη γη άμπελοι - is inexact or,
rather, too general, being able to be applied only to the delta. The Egyptian monuments offer us, in their paintings,
trellises loaded with grapes and harvesters trampling the grapes; the inscriptions mention vintages and wine cellars. But
the wines of Egypt have never been able to suffice for its consumption. The trellises should have been able rather to
furnish ancient Egypt with table grapes and the vintages, deluxe wines. To compete with beer, ζύθος, which the poor
people drank, arrivals of wine at a good price were needed. In all the epochs, the Levantine Mediterranean has furnished
the delta: “I left from Cairo,” relates Paul Lucas, “with the agent of M. the Consul, who went to Cyprus to make the
provision of wine for the nation.” - “Laodicia of Syria has a very fertile region,” says Strabo, “especially in wines; its
mountain is covered in vines up to the summits, and it is this which furnishes the people of Alexandria the greater part of
their wines.” In the times of Herodotus, all of Greece and Phonecia each year send boats loaded with wines toward Egypt.
Our Nautical Instructions still point out the traffic in wines between Cyprus and Egypt; the port of Limassoui owes all its
prosperity to it... The Phoenicians should similarly have furnished wine to the ports of the African coast and the markets
of the interior, for from Egypt to Cyrene, the coast lacks vines.
The “wine jug”, furthermore, is from all the lands and from all times. In the Arabic gulf, the Greco-Romans export
wine from Italy and Laodicia, in great enough quantity, not to sell, but to offer as a gift and gain the goodwill of the

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barbarians, οινός τε ουκ ολίγος ου προς εργασίαν αλλα δαπάνης χάριν εις φιλανθωπίαν των βαρβάρων. In Homeric times,
the navigators use similar means with the Barbarians of the Mediterranean. It is by virtue of a jug of wine of Ismare that
Ulysses appeases the Cyclops for a moment:

Κύκλωψ, τη, πιε οινον επει φάγες ανδρόμεα κρέα

όφρ’ ειδης οιόν τι ποτον τόδε νηυς εκεκεύθειν
‘ημετέρη,

and when the Cyclops has tasted the marvelous wine, he cries, “The land of the Cyclops produces wine, but this is nectar
and ambrosia.”
Today, most of the peoples produce wine: nevertheless the French champagnes, bordeaus and Burgundies have a
clientel all over the world. In the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, Syria was planted with vines, and foreigners found all the
more wine there, since most of the natives are Muslims, and abstain from it; nevertheless, the French there import exotic
vintages: “At Saïda, there are vineyards in quantity. In spite of the abundance of wine, the French do not fail to bring it
from Province, from Italy and from Cyprus, in order to have many sorts there, although without any necessity.” In the
preceding ages, in a France planted with vines, it was the wines of Cyprus and of Malvoisia which were renowned. Before
the wines of the isles, the Syrian wines of Gaza and of Sarepta had been the vogue in Gaul, when the Syrian merchants
directed the better part of Merovingian commerce... At the very beginning of Mediterranean history, it appears that the
same Syrian merchants had spread the word which designates this beverage over the entire perimeter of the Inner Sea:
oinos in Greek, vinum in Latin, ‫יין‬, iin, in Hebrew, oin in Arabic, the word is certainly the same everywhere. (The
similarity is even more apparent when we keep in mind the digamma of the Greek word, which existed even before the
Homeric poems, in Alcea and in the Dorian dialect, and when we keep in mind that the ‫ י‬has replaced the ‫ ו‬of the Hebrew,
as frequently happens, but we find it faithfully conserveed in Arabic: the word uin in Arabic signifies grape; Hesiod has
the word οιην, oine, to designate the vine.)
But there is discussion among philologists to decide which of ther two language families, Indo-European or Semitic,
borrows the word from the other. In favor of the Indo-European origin, the best proof which they have given up until now
was that the word oinos, already found in Homer, can only be authentically Greek. Today we see what that argument is
worth: the Homeric poems are full of words, of formulas, and perhaps of comparisons borrowed from the Semites...
Limited to the word wine, the argument is perhaps unresolvable. But let us set up the list of fermented beverages, wine,
nectar, sikera, massik, etc... The Greek words which designate them appear, for the most part, to have been borrowings.
All the Semites, Arabs, Hebrews, Aramaians and Assyrians, have the word ‫שכר‬, seker, or ‫שכרה‬, sikera, to designate an
inebriating drink, and the constant formula of the Scripture is wine and seker, ‫ יין ושכר‬: the Semitic root ‫שכר‬, sakar,
signifies to drink, to intoxicate, to become intoxicated. Thus when encounter the word σικέρα in Greek, which has no
Indo-European etymology, we can suspect its true origin... “Nectar,” say the commentators, “is a wine of Babylonia or of
Lydia, a sweeet and fragrant wine, mixed with honey and perfumed with flowers”: the niphal participle of the verb ‫קטר‬,
katar, which would be ‫נקטר‬, niktar, and which would signify perfumed, burned in honor of the gods, offered to the gods
(in speaking of all the offereings which they burn on the altar), would render exact account of the Greek word nectar,
which has no valid etymology in Greek. The Homeric poems do not know sikera; but they know nectar, drink of the
gods. And they additionally know a mixed drink, made of wine, of cheese, of honey and of flour, the mixture, κυκεών, to
which Circe adds magical plants. We already know that, in the Odyssey, the isle of Circe is designated by a Greco-Semitic
doublet Ai Aie, the Isle of the Sparrowhawk. We see then that the kukeon of the legend is the exact translation of the
Semitic word ‫מסן‬, messek, which signifies mixed wine: the two Greek and Hebrew roots κυκάω and ‫מסך‬, massak, are
equivalents. The primitive vocalization of messek would be massik. It is from this that the name of the Italian promontory,
Μάσσικος, Massicus comes, neighbor of the Isle of the Sparrowhawk, as we will presently see. It thus appears that
nectar, sikera, massikos, etc. are borrowings made by the Greeks from the merchants of Sidon: oinos enters into the
category and comes from the same source. But it is necessary here to point out a detail to the attention of the

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archeologists. In the times of Herodotus, the wine which came into Egypt from all of Greece and Phonecia travels in jugs
or amphoras of fired earthenware: ες Αιγυπτον εκ της ‘Ελλάδος πάσης και προς εκ Φοινίκης κέραμος εσάγεται πλήρης
οίνου δι’ έτεος. The “Mycenaean” wine traveled no differently, and the natives of Homeric Greece already fabricated, to
convey their wines or oils, jugs which commerce carried to the delta. The abundance in Greece of the plastic clay and the
low cost of labor was able further to assure a clientel in the Levantine Mediterranean for “Mycenaean” jugs and vases of
all forms. We see that all the present Levant is provided with common crockery from the Dardanelles. After the burning
of Canea lit by order of the Sultan in 1879, the European admirals (with all the storerooms of the town, all the furnishings
and all the utensils having been destroyed) brought two caïques loaded with the turkish crockery for the Cretans and for
their own crews. If someday the archeologists at Canea recover some pots and large vases, I hope they will not conclude
from it that, the crockery being Phrygian, the Phrygian civilization then ruled Crete and the European fleets: they declare
today that the fragments of Mycenaean pottery found in Egypt demonstrate irrefutably the preponderant influence of the
Mycenaean civilization over all of the coasts of the Mediterranean.

*
* *

In any case, the similarity of the words iin, oinos, vinum, etc., show the importance of wine in the primitive traffic. The
other products which Greece could furnish were livestock, slaves - especially women - , minerals and metals: the last two
articles still constitute, with grapes and wines, the best cargos of our navies in the Hellenic seas. When the boats from
Lemnos, loaded with wines, arrive at the camp of the Greeks before Troy, they pay in copper, in iron, in hides, in cattle or
in slaves:

ένθεν άρ’ οινίζοντο κάρη κομόωντες Αχαοί,

άλλοι μεν χαλκω, άλλοι δ’ αίθωνι σιδήρω,
άλλοι δε ‘ρινοις, άλλοι δ’ αυτησι βόεσσιν,
άλλοι δ’ ανδραπόδεσσι...

We have already encountered the commerce in cattle on the west coast of the Peloponnese: it has perhaps earned the
Semitic name of Alpheios (the river of Oxen) for the river of the Elide... The slave has remained a common currency of
the Levantine traffic up until the first part of this century, the women especially, or, as Homer said, παλλακίς, πάλλαξ,
πάλληξ, the bought woman, the concubine.

... εμε δ’ ωνητη τέκε μήτηρ

παλλακίς.

The chevalier of Arvieux passes from Smyrna to Alexandria, on an English vessel (Feb, 1658): “The vessel was fine
and large. Some Turkish merchants had chartered it to carry a large number of slaves of both sexes to Egypt, where they
were going to sell them... The oldest of the girls appeared no older than eighteen years. There were Poles, Muscovites and
Circassians which the Tartars had carried off in their rounds, and which had come to be sold at Constantinople or at Caffa.
They were well formed and perfectly beautiful. The Poles and Muscovites were Christian.” To designate the bought
women, the words πάλλαξ, παλλακίς, etc., are Greek: the Latin pellex and the Sanscrit balaka prove them Indo-European
to us. But the primitive commerce transports the words among the Semites of the Mediterranean littoral. Under the forms
‫פלגש‬, pilleges, and ‫פילקתא‬, pilakta, they have been adopted by the Hebrews and Aramaians: they are already found in the
most ancient books of the Bible. By itself, the exchange of the words would show what antiquity and extent the
exchanges of the merchandise had. The example of the French corsairs would also be there for us to explain the multiple

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profits and pleasures. Strabo, during the Greco-Roman period, reveals to us the commodities and benefits all around. The
commerce is the most profitable and convenient of all. They abduct slaves in Greece, whom they sell in Syria, and the
reverse. For, in the unenlightened times, every human being is an object for sale, and the “commerce of bodies” is
absolutely legal. The benefits will diminish a great deal on the day when the Christian prejudice limits the sale to “ebony
wood’. It had already diminished when the Greek prejudice had limited the sale to barbarians or, at least, forbidden the
sale of Greeks to barbarians. In the Odyssey, they do not yet have such refinements. They buy or sell “bodies” among the
Phoenicians without inquiring where the “bodies” come from, or where they go. The daughter of a king of the
archipelago, Eumea, abducted by the Sidonians, is sold on the other coast of Matapan, in Ithaca: there she is a slave or
servant for the rest of her days. In the XVIIth century, the Christians of the Levant are bought by the people of Naples or
Livorno, and in voyaging to Kos, P. de la Valle seeks to see the family of “lady Catherine”, an old servant of his parents,
whom the corsairs had abducted when only a child, and who, sold in Naples, has become, like Eumea, a member of the
family where she serves.
On the boats of the primitive Mediterranean, the young girls made prime cargo, not only because of the services
rendered to the crew - and the navigations which lasted for months and years could not have been made without women
aboard - but especially because of the price which they brought at the bazaars of Sidon or Memphis. The Levantine world
had a great need for women. The men in those happy times were not the only ones to posess fine harems. The gods and
goddesses posessed herds of prostitutes. Herds and harems had to ceaselessly fill a void. Saved from the storm, the
Sidonian captain dedicated a woman of his cargo to Astarte of the Promontories, as the Marseillian captain pledges a
candle to Our Lady of Protection. The pious accomplishment of similar vows was able to be made, without loosening the
purse, by abducting the women and girls enticed aboard on the first beach of debarkation. The Greek legend recounts to
us a thousand examples of similar abductions. But it also speaks to us of girls sold or given by their fathers and their
husbands to foreign navigators, cast upon the sea and thus transported from Greece into the isles, to Cyprus, to Syria and
to Egypt. Augea, daughter of Aleos the Tegeate, is given by her father to the navigator hero Nauplios, who goes to sell
her and her son to Teuthras the king of Mysia: “The daughters of Mycone,” says Dapper, “have nothing of the
disagreeable or repellant. To the contrary, one can say that they are beautiful, and of a fine figure. Several times, a captain
of a Christian vessel having wished to take one with the consent of the father, who had sold her to him, she never resigned
herself to it, which causes a very great disturbance in the isle, all the women being gathered together, who fill the town
with tumult and cries.”
Let us pass to metals and minerals.
For one of them, we have a sure souvenir, for it well appears that gold, so utilized in the Homeric armament and
jewelry, bears a Semitic name in Greek: all the world admits that χρύσος, khrusos, is the exact transcription of ‫הרוץ‬,
khrus. We already know how the Phoenicians, the first, exploit the gold mines of the archipelago: Herodotus saw their
gallies on the coast of Thasos which faces Samothrace; the Semitic name of Siphnos, the Mine, has always remained at
the other isle celebrated by its gold mines. But there are other metals to feed the primitive commerce. The Odyssey speaks
to us of metal-bearing navigations. Athena presents herself to Telemachus as a prince of the Taphians, Mentes, who “goes
over the dark sea, toward Temesa, to seek copper and carry fine iron”,

πλέων επι οίνοπα πόντον επ’ αλλοθρόους ανθρώπους,

ες Τεμέσην μετα χαλκόν. άγω δ’ αίθωνα σίδηρον.

Among the ancients, some locate the Homeric Temesa in the south of Italy. On the gulf of Sainte-Eufemie, a town of
Temesa or Tempsa posessed ancient mining establishments, of copper mines, which the foreign peoples, Ausones,
Etolians, Carthaginians or Romans, incessantly disputed with the native Bruttians. Near the town, a companion of
Ulysses, Πολιτης, had a sanctuary to which the land was for a long time obliged to pay the tithe... It is possible that the
sailors of Taphnos, that is to say, of the Ionian sea, had already known the way to that southern Italy, which later became
the Greater Greece. There they found the copper which their land has always lacked (Greece, so rich in silver and zinc,

209
has no copper). They exchanged it for the iron which they undoubtedly worked in their Catalan forges. But if the iron of
the Taphians finds a clientel in Italy, it is because the Italian iron is not yet exploited: the great isle of iron, the isle of
Elba, has not yet opened its mines. For from the day when those abundant and pure mines will have been opened, their
products will drive all foreign competition from Italian waters. We promptly see, in effect, that it was a time when the isle
of Elba produced, not iron, but copper.
Others among the ancients sought the Homeric Temesa in the Cypriot Tamassos, which itself also had copper mines.
The mines were situated at the center of the isle, in the mountains covered with forests: the abundance of combustibles
rendered them easy to exploit. The Cypriot copper mines have had a deserved renown in all the antique world.
Whether we take the one or the other of the Temesas, it appears difficult to not relate the place name to the Semitic
‫ תמש‬,‫תמס‬, temes, which would say the foundry. It is impossible, in itself, that the king of the Taphians went by sea to the
Cypriot Foundry: Tamassos was in the mountains, at the center of the isle. But similarly as the Mine of the archipelago,
Siphnos, had its Foundry or its Refinery on the coast of the neighboring isle, Seriphos, it appears that the Cypriot
Foundries, Tamassos, had an annex, forge or refinery, in a port of the southwest coast, at Kourion, Κούριον. For all the
Semitic languages, the word ‫כור‬, kur, designates the furnace and the forge of the metallurgists; one of the towns of Juda
bears the name of Kur Asan; Kourion was the place of the invention of bricks, of copper forges, of tongs, of the hammer
and anvil, tegulas invenit Cinyra Agriope filius at metalla aeris, utrumque in insula Cypro; item forcipem, martulum,
vectum, incudem; apud Cyprum mons aeris ferax quem Cypri Corium vocant. Kinyras, according to the Cypriot legend,
was the father of the hero Koureus, founder of Kourion: he himself had come from Syria or Assyria to bring the cult of
Aphrodite to Cyprus. The Homeric poems already know of Kinyras, who made the present of an admirable cuirasse to
Agamemnon. The onomastic and legendary relationships between Mines and Forges, Foundries and Refineries, Siphnos
and Seriphos, Tamassos and Kourion, can best be explained to us by historic or contemporaneous examples. In the times
of Strabo, it is at Populonium, on the Italian coast, across from the present Porto Ferrajo, the Port of Iron of the isle of
Elba, that the mineral imported from the isle is treated; the mining isle has neither forges nor foundries: είδομεν τους
εργαζομένους τον σιδηρον τον εκ της Αιθαλίας κομιζόμενον. ου γαρ δύναται συλλιπαίνεσθαι καμινευόμενας εν τη νήσω.
“Rio Marina”, say our Nautical Instructions, “is the principal port of debarkation for the minerals of iron from that part of
the isle; the minerals are transported to the facing coast of Italy, where they are treated.” Piombino today becomes the
Populonium of Strabo again: natives and foreigners, English, French and Italians, install the foundries there to treat the
minerals of the isle of Elba.

210
 CHAPTER III

FABRICS AND PRODUCTS

μυρι’ άγοντες αθύματα...

Odyss., XV, 416

In exchange for woods, foods, slaves and minerals which they import, the Phoenicians bring their thousands of
athurmata,

... μυρι’ άγοντες αθύρματα νηι μελαινη.

The word athurma signifies all diversion for the children,

... ‘ως ‘ότε τις ψάμαθον παις άγχι θαλάσσης,

‘όστ’ επει ουν ποιήση αθύρματα νηπιέησιν... ,
παιδα δε ‘ώς ατίταλλε δίδου δ’ άρ αθύρματα θυμω... ,

and all ornament for the women, κόσμια φύσει μεν αθύρματα όντα μέντοι γυναιξι σπουδαια. It is finery and jewelry, and
it is toys: in one word, nicknack is the true translation of athurma. The Phoenicians arrived with vessels filled with
nicknacks, that is to say with merchandise for barbarians, with glass beads for negroes: παντοια αγαθα, φόρτια Ασσύρια
και Αιγύπτια, says Herodotus. All nicknacks for the traffic between civilized people and savages is composed essentially
of three or four articles: cottons and fabrics, arms and utensils, glass beads and toys, alcohol and fermented beverages.
The Periple of the Red Sea enumerates the merchandises can be sold to the barbarians of the Red sea: they are diverse
glass beads, ‘υαλη λιθία σύμμικτος, fabrics, ‘ιμάτια, χιτωνες, σάγοι, wine, vases of gold and silver, statues, etc.
It is needless to insist on the wine and the other fermented beverages. The Phoenicians “intoxicated” the savages of the
Inner Sea then as we “intoxicate” the savages of the African or Malay seas today. Only the means and the intensity differ
a bit. The people of Tyre or Sidon did not yet have the alcohols of Hamburg. But we have explained how the wines and
other fermented beverages, oinos, nektar and massikos would without doubt have been made accoding to their style. The
nectar, wine perfumed with aromatic plants, was the equivalent of vermouth, absinthe, byrrh, etc., that we sell today in all
the Levantine ports: the happiness of the Greek gods, who pass their days drinking nectar, very much resemble the happy
mornings of the Marseillian captain seated before his absinthe on the terrace of the great Cafe Glacier; the mixture of
Circe, κυκεων, has with us its equivalents in the numerous mixed drinks, dear to our habitues of the “aperitifs”. Let us see
the other nicknacks.

*
* *

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1. Fabrics. - The long and minute study which Helbig makes of Homeric clothing has not resolved all of the problems.
Some Homeric terms remain always obscure. Certain words have not been conserved in in historic Greece and the
Homeric styles have have disappeared with them. A large number of points nevertheless appear to me to have been
demonstrated. The Homeric clothing is of two sorts, the one of wool, the other of a stiff and shiny material, hemp or
linen.
The clothes of wool, chlaina of men and peplos of women, bear names surely Hellenic, native: “The chlaina,” says
Helbig, “appears to have been made of sheep’s wool: it is worn not only by people of distinction, but also by persons of a
low station, the swineherds and their companions, the domestics of the suitors, etc. The substantive chlaina appears
derived from the radical χλι which signifies to warm up; the verb χλιαίνω also derives from it.” The chliana is the
greatcoat, the cape, which all the Mediterranean peoples put on morning and evening, when they go out into the street, to
avoid the chill of the dawn or the shivering of the fever at sunset. “Peplos,” says Helbig, “designates the principal
clothing of women, but also the coverings which they spread over war chariots and also over the chairs. It thus indicates
at the origin a piece of material not sewn, with which one wraps oneself.” The Greek root πελ, to cover, has given
πέπλωμα to the historic Greeks, πάπλωμα to the modern Greeks, cf. the Latin palla, pallium: from which πέπλος.
Similarly, the other clothing of women, heanos, should be related to the verb έννυμι, to clothe, from the substantive
εσθής, and to the Latin vestis. It thus appears that the cloths and felts of wool are native products; made by the women or
the artisans of the land, they retain their native, Hellenic names.The travelers of the XVIIth century recommend the usage
of mantles, of “capes” of the archipelago, so comfortable for the navigation:

All the mariners have capes, and this garment appears to me so necessary, not only for mariners but for all who go on the sea, that
I do not know how how one could pass on a long voyage without one: one is then in need of mattresses and blankets; with a cape,
you can sit or lie wherever you find yourself, and without placing all your clothes there; if it is raining or blowing, you can take the
air with your cape, and under the cowl you fear neither water nor cold. (The best capes were of goat hair and made at Zia). The capes
of goat hair which they produce on that isle are very comfortable; the water does not easily penetrate them; the material is at first
only a type of very loose canvas, but it thickens and becomes very tight in coming from the workers, who trample it with their feet
on the sea sand to soften it; after it is very soft and supple, they stretch it in the sun with stone weights, to prevent it from wrinkling
too rapidly; the girls slack it bit by bit, and press the pieces against each other, in such a manner that all the material is held evenly.

The natives of the French archipelago make only the heavier materials; the fine woolens come to them from Provence
and Languedoc. At the end of the XVIIth century, the numerous factories of Languedoc produce fine woolens,
comparable to English and Holland woolens; Dauphine and Provence produce the common woolens. The three great
powers, France, England and Holland, which compete for the markets of the Levant, have cloth as the principal article of
exchange. From 1700 to 1705 the French export 61,831 pieces of woolens to the ports, and the exportation is raised to
15,485 pieces for the year 1716 alone... The natives of the Homeric archipelago also buy their fine materials from
foreigners. But they are not woolens, fabric made from wool: the foreigners of the time, coming from hot lands, do not
use such heavy clothing. They are materials, fabrics of hemp or linen. Draw up the list of the Homeric names designating
fabrics: pharos, othone, lita, chiton, none appears Greek. In the middle ages and up until our days, the materials coming
to us from abroad bear foreign names: the silks from Baghdad were bagadel or baldacchino; the Arabic gold brocades,
mahremah or nakh, were maramato, nacco or nacchetto; the materials from Persia, taftah, are still taffetas; the Arabic
plushes, khaml or khamlah, have served as models for our camelots, etc. Egypt figured in the commerce for its linen
fabrics: “The boccassin was a simple linen fabric, but the Egyptian weavers knew how to give it such a fineness and
brilliance that one could take it for silk; they also manufactured it in Cyprus”. The names of the Homeric fabrics, which
present no meaning in Greek, all have equivalents in the Semitic languages.
All the Semitic languages have the word kitinu (Assyrian), kitinou (Arabic), kitana (Aramaic), kutonet or ketonet
(Hebrew), to designate a sort of clothing: the Greek transcription kithon or chiton, κιθών or χιτών renders exact account of
the Semitic ‫כתון‬, kiton. “The garment, in its origin, was of linen, τον λινεον κιθωνα,” says Herodotus; “it was proper to the
peoples of the sea, to the Ionians; to speak truly, it was not Ionian, but Karian,” έστι δε αληθέϊ λόγω χρεωμένοισι ουκ ιας

212
αυτη ‘η εσθης το παλαιον αλλα κάηιρα: formerly, in effect, all of the Greek women’s garments were similar to those
which we term Dorian.” Thucydides explains the last word to us well, in telling us that the Athenians eliminated the long
hair and the chitons of linen of the Ionians to take on the garments (of wool) of the Dorians, χιτωνάς τε λινους επαύσαντο
φορουντες. The chiton is a garment of linen: “the chethon,” says Josephus, “is for us the linen.” In the Homeric poems,
the shining, σιγαλόεις, supple, μαλακός, fine, λεπτός, chiton, like an onion skin, οιόν τε κρομύοιο λοπον, white like the
sun, is truly a fabric of linen, a bocassin, and it is a fabric which should have come originally from Syria, as those fine
and shining bocassins of the middle ages originally came from Egypt. But the very popularity of the bocassins leads to the
counterfeit: they manufacture in the Occident a similar article which quickly had nothing of the original; the new bocassin
was no longer a cloth of linen, but a coarse cotton of the fustian type. Among the Hellenes, spinners and weavers of wool,
the chiton similarly became a garment of wool.
The same epithets, fine, shining, supple, etc., are given by the poet to the othones and to the pharos: λεπταί, αργενναι
οθόναι, αργύφεος, λεπτός, νηγάτεος φαρός, and the pharos is also ευπλυνής, well-washed. In the times of Diodora, Malta
is celebrated for its workshops of all kinds, but especially for the fabrics of its othons which have an entirely special
fineness and suppleness, τεχνίτας τε γαρ έχει παντοδαπους ταις εργασίαις κρατίστους δε τους οθόνια ποιουντας τη τε
λεπτότητι και τη μαλακότητι διαπρεπη. The two epithets of Diodora take us back to the Homeric epithets, χιτων μαλακός,
λεπται οθόναι, and the word othon, conserved here, is the Homeric othone. “Malta,” adds Diodora, “is a Phoenician
colony: it was a trading post and the refuge of Phoenician sailors in their exploitation of the Occidental sea.” Malta plays
the same rôle for the English today: the english cottons replace the Phoenician othones at Malta, for the Greek othon,
οθόνη or οθόνιον, is just the transcription of the word ‫אטון‬, athon, of the Scripture: athon signifies fabric of linen.
The pharos is a sort of garment which men and women wear; but it can also serve as a blanket, shroud or sail. “The
term designates a material which can only have been of fabric; the pharos was a large mantle of linen, a deluxe garment
which only the rich people were able to obtain”, a sort of long shawl which fell in two large bands to cover the chest, but
which one could also draw over the head to cover the head,

πορφύριον μέγα φαρος ‘ελών χερσι στιβαρησιν

κακ κεφαλης είρυσσε κάλυψε δε καλα πρόσωπα.

Certain peoples of the Mediterranean still wear analogous garments, which can serve a double or triple purpose:

Another piece of Sardinian clothing, which is a remnant of the very distant antiquity, a very useful garment, is the saccu da
coperri (sagum to cover). It is still in usage among the farmworkers. It is just a piece of material of black wool half an ell wide and
an all and a half in length, somewhat resembling a long shawl. It has no opening or slit whatever. It is placed on the head, covering at
the same time the shoulders, part of the back, and the front of the body down to part of the legs, and serving as a cape. But the
peasant, already supplied with the latter, simply puts the saccu on the shoulders, in the same manner as an oblong shawl, and then
fastens it over the chest. The garment is very convenient for the traveler. It is a garment just for rain or winter. But on a voyage it
serves for a bed, for a blanket and even for a tablecloth to take one’s repast in the field. I have seen very elegant ones made of quite
fine material, with fringes at the two ends and colored tassels at the four corners. They attach clasps to it, placed in such a way as to
press the two [bands] together in front.

It is thus that we should imagine the Homeric pharos: a cape in the evening or in the rain, blanket, cover, sail, etc., it is
ordinarily worn on the head or the shoulders, so that it does not hinder the arms or the stride, as a sort of shawl, καλύπτα,
κρήδεμνον, or like the flannel belts our colonial troops wear sometimes around the kidneys and chest, and sometimes as a
turban on the head. It is exactly that which the par or phar, ‫פאר‬, designates in the Scripture, of which pharos, φαρος is an
excellent transcription. In the Scripture, the phares of linen are worn by the priests, the fiances and the rich women.
Exodus - after the ketons of Byssos fabric, made for Aaron and for his sons: χιτωνας βυσσίνους, the Seventy translate -
mentions the phares of Byssos. Ezekial contrasted the phares of linen, which the priests redon in the interior of the
temple, with the garments of wool which they can wear outside of it: we will similarly be able, in the Homeric verses, to

213
contrast the phares of linen which the people of circumstance wear, and which is a garment of ceremony, to the chlainai
of wool, to the capes of felt of the poor people, to the hoods and cloaks of ordinary days.
The word liti, lita, is found only in Homer, and only in two instances: the philologists vainly seek a Greek etymology
for it. The scholiasts explain with cause that the Homeric poems mention two sorts of coverings, the ones white, not
colored, which they put underneath (it is our lita), the others colored, crimson, which they put on top, rhegia: των μεν
στρωμάτων, τα μεν κατώτερα λιτα ειναι ήτοι λευκα και μη βεβαμμένα, τα δε περιστρώματα ‘ρήγεα καλα πορφύρεα. The
lites are coverings of the chariot or the seat. They are also flexible shrouds with which they wrap the corpse of Patroclus.
We are correct to conclude, says Helbig, that lite signifies piece of cloth. The Semitic root ‫לוט‬, l.u.th., which signifies to
cover, to hide, has given ‫לוט‬, luth, in Hebrew, which would say sail, cloth - telam, translates the Vulgate - and in Arabic
luthun or lithun which would say cloak. The transcription of luth or lith into λιτος suffers no difficulty: the Semitic ‫ ט‬is
frequently rendered by a Greek τ.
There is another fabric which the Phoenicians should certainly introduce with them. The word ‫סק‬, sak, in the Scripture,
designates the rough and coarse cloth for the packing of solid materials, but which they also employ as clothing of
mortification or mourning - we still say “sackcloth and ashes” - and as blankets at night. The Greeks made it their σάκκος,
our sack and sackcloth. But the word sakos of the Homeric poems does not have this meaning: it would say shield; it is
synonymous with ασπίς.
Sidon in Homeric times thus appears to have been a great workshop of fabrics and a great port of cloths, Manchester
and Liverpool at the same time. The women worked at the craft while the men gave themselves to the navigation: it is the
social condition which the Odyssey describes to us among the Pheacians, the drayers of the sea,

‘όσσον Φαίηκες περι πάντων ίδριες ανδρων

νηα θουν ενι ποντω ελαύνεμεν, ως δε γυναικες
‘ιστων τεχνησσαι.

At Sidon, the weaverwomen are at the same time skillful dyers. By the concordant testimony of all the ancients, it was in
Phoenecia that the deluxe dying, the purple, was to be found. The Homeric poems already know it. They praise the purple
phares to us,

πορφύρεον μέγα φαρος έχων,

the tapestry in purple, the covers of purple, and the purple leathers and ivories. The women of Meonia and of Karia have
the reputation of tinting all objects the best

‘ως δ’ ‘ότε τις ελέφαντα φυνη φοίνικι μιήνη

Μήονις ηε Κάειρα παρήιον έμμεναι ‘ίππων.

The purple tint, coming from abroad, was thus installed among the native populations, on the Asiatic coasts of the
archipelago. That supposes a very ancient frequentation of the Semitic sailors. For such industries are not implanted in a
day or two. Long years are required for the “purpurias” of Meonia or Karia to equal, and then surpass their teachers of
Sidon. The implantation of the industry can be facilitated, it is true, by such habits as we have established above: if Paris
brings embroidresses from Sidon, others have been able to bring dye workers... By whatever means, it is incontestable
that the people of Sidon fished the purple conch in the archipelago, and it appears that the notions of the ancients
concerning the purpura will always remain influenced by the more or less justified opinions of the Semites: the purpura,
says Pliny, is a shell which lives seven years, purpurae vivunt annis plurimum septemis, and which ordinarily has seven
points, aculeis in orbem septenis fere.

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 But it is necesary to well note the the conditions of establishment which all fisheries of purpura imply. The conch
cannot be fished the entire year. At the beginning of summer, they hide themselves for thirty days, latent circa Canis
ortum tricenis diebus, say the ancients. In spring, they are worthless. It is thus before the spring or after midsummer that
they must be taken, at the end of winter or at the beginning of autumn, capi eas post Canis ortum aut ante vernum tempus
utilissimum. Fruitful at the beginning of autumn, very profitable at the end of winter, the purpura fishing does not
coincide with the ordinary season for navigation, which is the summer. The fishing thus cannot be done, or at least it can
only be done with great difficulty, by foreign fishermen, coming from afar, who would not have adopted certain habits of
arrival and departure unusual for their epoch. If the foreign fishermen wish to leave their home ports and take to sea in the
middle of winter, they can reach the banks before the first days of spring. If they prefer the autumn fishing, they can take
to sea in the middle of summer; but they have to stay at the banks up until the bad days and rebark in the full bad weather
of the equinox. We know that these are habits entirely foreign to the ancient navigators. They do not embark in the middle
of winter. They do not return to the sea after the storms of the equinox. The purpura boats do not escape this law: they
should not have taken to sea, like the others, except except during the summer. The purpura fishermen thus needed
wintering palces in the same locations as the fishing. They could not effectively and fruitfully exploit a coast unless they
winter from one campaign to the other and and thus make the two consecutive fishing seasons of autumn and spring:
established from one summer to the next near their boilers, they can then prolong their operations up until the bad days of
winter and recommence from the first good days of the new year... Add that the manipulation of the purpura requires
somewhat complicated and well-equipped establishments. It required saltworks, furnaces with steam heaters. It required
two days of cooking. It required enormous basins and enormous quantities of shellfish, for each mollusk gave barely a
drop, purpurea sanies uti lacrima profluens... All of this supposes tranquility, leisure and well-constructed buildings,
durable and fixed establishments. We then understand the abundance of Semitic place names on the coasts of the purpura
of Laconia, and the frequency of sanctuaries of Hercules on the coasts of purpura on the gulf of Corinth, and the presence
of Greco-Semitic names or doublets on all the bays of purpura of the mainland and of the isles: we need to linger a bit
longer on the purpura stations; their study will make us one more time to establish the veracity of the ancient authors
concerning the Semitic establishments in the Greek seas.

On the coasts of Amorgos, celebrated for its dyed fabrics, we have already encountered a Phoenician Stop, Minoa.
Another Minoa is found on the Laconian coasts which faces the sea of the southeast. The coasts begin at cape Malea and
extend from south to north up to the gulf of Nauplia. Almost everywhere, the mountains fall steeply into the ocean,
leaving between their ridges only small rocky plains for farming, and between their summits only rare passages toward
the interior plain of the Eurotas. The coasts are almost deserted today. They have neither ports nor towns. But in the past
centuries they had an important echelle of the French, the celebrateed Monemvasie or Malvoisie of Romany. It is a rocky
islet, a mile long and barely a quarter of a mile wide, which a peduncle of immersed rocks joins to the mainland. The
Venetians had built the fortress and the town of Malvoisie, which to speak truly reached the mainland only by a bridge
springing from the rocks and equipped with towers. It was a veritable Venetian Gibralter on the flank of the Turkish land
(the comparison is by Frazer), the same type as a foreign establishment on a barbarian coast. After the liberation of
Greece, Monemvasie falls into ruins. Some fine crumbling churches, some isolated high arches, some roofless great
houses still testify to its ancient splendor. The Nautical Instructions tell us:

Monemvasie is found on an islet, nine cables long from west to east, at a right angle to the line of the coast; it is joioned to the
land by a chain of rocks, upon which is a bridge of fourteen small arches, 130 meters long. The castle, situated on the summit of a
hill, and the town, built on the south face of the islet, are surrounded by two walls which descend to the sea. The houses, the ones
overhanging the others, form inextricable streets. A large number of edifices are of Christian construction, but are in ruins today. The
town makes only a small point of commerce.

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 The page of the Nautical Instructions could teach us the entire history of the harbor. During the past five or six
centuries, the Italians or the French, foreign thalassocracies, installed on the circular rock, have fortified it against all
incursions of the landsmen. Today, the natives navigate. They have abandoned the marginally secure harbor:

During the summer, say the Nautical Instructions, one finds a temporary harbor in the north of the bridge, with a bottom of 27 to
33 meters, sand and vegetation. If there were, before cape Malea, a gust from the south or south-west accompanied by a fall of the
barometer, one would find in the harbor a relatively calm sea, even though the gusts pass with a great violence before the low tongue
of land; a ship, at the harbor, should be prepared for a change in the wind passing rapidly to the north from the west, accompanied by
a succession of strong gusts.

The temporary shelter has never been able to suit the Hellenic sailors. But, a few miles farther to the north, the coast
hollows itself into a well-sheltered port.

At 2½ miles to the north of Monemvasia is found the port of Pleo, a small bay offering a harbor to coasters with 7 meters of
water, in shelter from all the winds of the north and the west. It has no town, but about ½ mile to the west, near the shore, lie the
ruins of Paleo Monemvasia, ancient Epidauros Limera.

The port, with its low beach and its deep waters, is on the coast of the land with easy communication with the valley of
the Eurotas: by a somewhat low pass, a route traverses the coastal mountains and leads to Sparta. The Hellenes had their
echelle of Epidaura Limera. Pausanias describes for us the ancient town which Greek sailors, Epidaurians, founded. From
their times, the Hellenic town is in the port; but on the promontory of Monemvasie already exists, as today, ruins of a
fortress. For, before the Hellenes, foreign thalassocracies had exploited the coast and given the promontory the name of
Minoa. We rediscover here a Phoenician Stop completely resembling our Minoa of Megara: Monemvasie is truly an Isle
of Rest, I-Minoha, isle and promontory altogether. The Phoenicians, like the Venetians, established themselves on the
rock. The beach of Epidaura offered them “shells of all forms and of all colors”, αιγιαλος δε ‘ο ταύτη παρέχεται ψεφιδας
σχημα ευρεπεστέρας και χρόας παντοδάπης. The waters should have furnished purple murex of good quality: “The mud
purpura is nurtured in the mire, and the purpura of algae has no value. That of the rock is better, although still too clear
and light. That of the pebbles is most esteemed... The purpuras are not able to live in freshwater; they die everywhere a
river comes to flow into the sea.” The Laconian coast over the archipelago is nothing but an alternation of rocks and
pebble beaches, without a river mouth.
The promontory gave the foreign fishermen full convenience of establishment and defense. It lacked only fresh water:
The Venetians later had to dig cisterns. But the beach at Epidaura has an excellent source, a deep and very remarkable
spring: “it is a hole without great surface,” says Pausanias, “but of a great depth.” The Phoenicians supplied themselves at
the source, and their name for spring, ‫צין‬, in, remains with it, as at the Megarian springs: it is the fountain of Ino, Ινους
καλούμενον ‘ύδωρ. An old rite persisted long after the departure of the Semites: “At the feast of Ino, they throw mazes,
cakes of flour, into the spring; if the spring swallows them, it is of a good augury; if it rejects them, it is a bad sign.”
Frazer remarks with justice that the custom of the cakes, thrown into the spring as an augury, is universal. But here the
word maze appears to date the custom. We have already encountered the word at the nocturnal feasts of Phigalia. On the
banks of the Neda, where the Semitic evidences appear in such great number, the mazes were served in a religious feast
named mazon, μάζων. Bouchart pointed out the relationship of the words with the Hebrew ‫מזון‬, mazon, nourishment, and
‫מצה‬, masa, cake: the small difference of orthography between “masa” and “maza” is negligible. [It is only that, in ‫מצה‬,
masa, the median ‫ ע‬can be rendered other than by a σ or a τ; but it frequently happens that the same Hebrew word
indifferently takes the ‫ז‬, zain, or the ‫צ‬, tsade, and the Greek ζ renders the zain exactly. It would thus be necessary to
suppose a double original ‫מצה‬, masa, and ‫מזה‬, maza, the same as we have ‫זצק‬, zaq, and ‫צעק‬, saq, ‫זהב‬, zab, and ‫צהב‬, sab.
For the double maza and masa, we perhaps have an indication: in chap. XLV, v. 29 of Genesis, the Seventy translate ‫מזון‬,
mazon, as άρτους, breads, as if the text bore ‫מזות‬, mazot, plural of maza].

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 At the south of their Laconian Stop, the Phoenicians have their principal Fishery, ‫צידה‬, Sid’a, Σίδη, Sidë. The Hellenes
remembered that the town had retained the name of its foundress Sidë, daughter of Danaos. It was an old preHellenic
town, whic disappeared like Minoa in Greek times: its inhabitants were transported elsewhere, they say; Boios of
Heraklide leads them to found the town of Boiai on the strait. Sidë occupied, undoubtedly, a little to the north of cape
Malea and near cape Kamili, in a well-covered bay, on a beach of sand and near an abundant spring, the rocky rise,
isolated on all sides, which today bears the chapel of Saint George. Two other old towns, Etis and the Town of Aphrodite,
disappear in the same times as Sidë; they said that they were founded by the peoples of the sea, by Enea in honor of her
mother and of her daughter.
To the north of the Stop and of the port of the Spring, we have already studied the Overflow, Zarax, ‫זרק‬, Zarak, in the
port of Hieraka, which the Nautical Instructions describes to us: “Surrounded by high ground and turned to the north, it is
difficult to enter because of its narrow entrance, which has only 1¾ cables of width. Within the points of the entrance, the
port curves to the west, it narrows into a small arm of the sea having ½ cable of width and 2½ of length, with bottom of
3.6 and 5.5 meters, mud, usable only by small ships. The port ends in a large lagoon, without depth and garnished with
fish weirs. There is no town.” The long fjord is deserted today. The natives have nothing to do with the harbor which is
not accessible to the land routes and which the mountains of 1100 to 1200 meters encircle on all sides. Without a route to
the interior, without a plain for cultivated fields, a town or village would be able to live here only by the sea, and serves
only peoples of the sea. At the entry of the passage, on a steep acropolis which the sea surrounds on three sides and which
a cyclopian wall borders on the land side, still stand the ruins of Zarax, “foundation of a foreigner coming to Laconia”,
says Pausanias. “The walls resemble those of Mycenae,” say the explorers, “with their ports and their vaulted corridors of
Mycenaean style, they certainly date from a very great antiquity.” Some ruins of chapels prove that the refuge was known
and frequented by recent navigators, as by the first thalassocracies. It appears to us that the Semitic etymology of ‫זרק‬,
Zarak, the Current or the Overflow was certified to us by one of the anthropomorphic doublets, to which we are
habituated: Rhoio (‘ρεω, flow, pour) is daughter of Zarax.
The last Laconian town on the coast was Brasiai or Prasiai. They also retained the memory of Ino there: “The natives
related that Cadmus threw into the sea a chest in which he had locked his daughter Semele and his grandson Dionysus.
Carried by the waves, the chest landed among them. They will bury Semele, who was dead; Ino, who wandered on the
sea, came to raise Dionysus in a cavern which they still display.” We have studied at Megara, town of the cavern, of
springs, of Ino, under the rock. The Laconians add that their town formerly was called Oreiates, and that it took its new
name of Brasiai from the chest cast up (βράσσω) by the waves. The legends of double foundation, which serve to explain
why the same town is turn by turn called Aipeia and Soloi, are familiar to us. It is probable that we we have here again a
doublet: Oreiates, Ορείαται, is a Greek name; Brasies or Prasies - for most of the authors say Πρασιαι - is probably
foreign. We find the name again near Marathon, on the Oriental face of Atttica, in the port Raphti, whose importance for
the coastal sailors of Euripe we have seen (cf. p. 69, 70 and fig. 7). The harbor has never had a great value for the natives:
it is deserted today; but the islets which close it should furnish a convenient station for the primitive sailors: “The islet
Raphti (of the Tailor) or of the Statue is less than two cables long; it is 90 meters high. One sees the remains of a colossal
statue there which from a distance appears to have the position of a seated tailor; whence its name. In front of the islet
Raphti lie the smaller islets Praso and Raphtipoulo which greatly diminish the surface of the harbor: there is nevertheless
a considerable space to anchor. One can obtain water in the port. The voyage from Athens lasts five hours.” Pausanias
saw in that place the tomb of Erysichthon, dead in bringing back the theory of Delos. The excavations have proven, by the
abundance of the pottery called Mycenaean, that the Prasiai of Attica had been an important center of the primitive
archipelago. What is the true significance of the foreign name? The doublet, which Pausanias furnishes us, Oreiatai-
Prasiai, appears to me inexplicable by a Semitic etymology. But a very slight correction suffices to very promptly explain
it to us. In place of ’ορείαται, oreiates, with smooth breathing, I would read ‘ορείαται, horeiates, with a rough breathing,
and relate the word, not to oros, ορος, mountain, but to horos, ‘ορός, ‘ορίζω, to limit (cf. ‘ορικός, who limits, in
opposition to ’ορικός, the mountaineer): in the Semitic languages, it is the root ‫ פרצ‬,‫ פרס‬or ‫פרש‬, p.r.s., which would

217
furnish us the translation of ‘ορίζω, to limit, to separate, to cut off, to define, etc.: Prasiai would be the Distict, Limited,
Well-Closed Port, or the Distict, Distinguished, Rare Port.
Sidë, Minoa, Zarax, Brasiai, the Laconian ports are used not only by purpura fishermen. The collection of Odyssian
accounts will show us that they are necessary to all of the Oriental navy which wishes to pass the Malea and pass from the
archipelago by the strait of Kythera into the seas of the Occident. For the Oriental navigators, they replace the harbors
which the Occidentals, French, Venetians or Romans, frequent from the other coast of the Malea, in the gulfs of Messinia
and Gythion.
We already know, on the flanks of the Taygete, the port of Cailles where the Occidentals await the favorable breeze.
Symmetrically placed on the two east and west faces of the triple Peloponnesian peninsula, two groups of ports replace
each other following the direction of the commercial currents. The Occidental navigators had their stations of Coron and
Modon on the west face of the Peloponnesus, which for centuries were independant of the natives: Coron and Modon
were Italian or French places; the foreigners, before entering the Levantine seas, would come there to get information and
seek pilots; it is here that the boats from the Adriatic landed, by the channels of Ithaca and Zante, or the boats from the
western Mediterranean which had made a layover at Malta. Reverse the direction of the double current; imagine an
Oriental thalassocracy at the location in place of the Occidental thalassocracy: replacing Coron and Modon, it is Sidë and
Minoa, on the east face of the Peloponnesus, which will be the landing places and layovers of the Oriental sailors, coming
either from the northern archipelago by the channels of Mykonos an Eubea, or from the Levantine Mediterranean along
the insular bridge between Rhodes and Crete. The sites of Coron and Modon are otherwise similar in all points to Minoa-
Malvoisia: their rocky peninsulas, extended far into the sea, bear the foreign fortress away from the attacks of the natives.
But for the Oriental navigators and especially for the primitive sailors, the most convenient retreat in the Oriental
façade is not on the Peloponnesian mainland, but on the isle of Kythera. All the navies have appreciated the “Lantern of
the archipelago”. Turn by turn, the thalassocracies of all the times have occupied it; it is barely forty years since the
English have returned it to the natives. The orientation of the isle renders it even more precious to the Levantine
thalassocracies. The historic tradition affirms to us that the Phoenicians transplanted the cult of their Aphrodite there. And
the topography of the isle speaks for itself: the island harbor again enters into the category of the old ports, which turn
their back to the Hellenic lands and which are “oriented toward the southeast and toward Alexandria”.
The port and the town of Kythera resemble in effect the preHellenic establishments which we have studied in a great
number of isles, Linos at Rhodes, Astypale at Kos, the old Salamine, etc.: they turn their back to the Hellenic coasts; they
open their bay and their trading posts to the Levantine arrivals. It suffices to open a marine chart and to read about them
in the Nautical Instructions. The isle of Kythera has the form of an irregular trapezoid, of which two sides face the open
ocean and two other sides face the Greek lands. The coast of the northeast in effect parallels the Peloponnesian strait and
faces Malea; the west coast borders the gulf of Laconia and faces Taygete. The sea of Crete and of the archipelago bathes
the two coasts of the south and of the east. The two Greek façades offer no safe anchorage, no site for a town. On the
northeast coast, facing Malea, along the strait, it is with difficulty that the boats could find a poor temporary shelter and a
beach for landing in case of necessity:

The coast cuts in an almost straight line. It is in general an elevated land with a few sandy points; one finds no danger there, and
the bottoms are deep all along it. The coastal sailors can find a shelter between the coast and the islet of Makri, of 12 meters
elevation, below the highest part of Cerigo. Five miles away, one finds the beach and village of Panagia, echelle of the town of
Potamo, which is in the interior. The extremity, cape Spathi, is formed of steep and jutting cliffs and, even though it may be a fine
elevated hill, it is unhealthy all around, and should be avoided.

The west coast, facing the Laconian gulf and some Spartan ports, is an even worse place. Our Occidental navies,
which come directly and end up there, would have great interest in discovering some refuge there; they have vainly
explored it in its minutest details (the minutia themselves prove well the importance of the isle for the sailors):

218
 The west coast is high, sinuous and safe from hidden dangers. From distance to distance one sees small islets beneath the land;
but the nearby bottoms are deep. The ships on the cape under the lee of the island during the strong winds from the northeast should
have reduced sail, for violent cyclones frequently fall from the high land. There is a temporary harbor in the south of cape
Karavougia. On leaving the cape, the steep and abrupt coast, 200 to 250 meters and bordered by scattered rocks, offers few places of
debarkation. About 7 miles to the south lie the two Axini islets. The one to the north is 6 meters high. In the east-southeast is found a
bay which, they say, small ships visit under winds from the south. In the northeast one sees a large ravine, with cliffs 90 meters high,
and a beach of sand with a rock 12 meters high. The islet Lindo, four miles from the Axinis and ½ mile from the shore, is 30 meters
high and almost cut in two toward the middle of its length; in front of its south and west coasts there are some small detached rocks.
From Lindo to the bay of Kapsali, the coast is high, jagged and with cliffs, with numerous caves, and two miles from the bay there is
a cove and a place of debarkation, exposed to the south.

The only ports of Kythera open on the south and southeast coasts, facing Crete. It is always the southern façade of the
isle which has gathered the centers of population and posessed the capitol. The large town (Tzerigo on the map, fig. 54)*
today is in the bay of Kapsali; The ancient capitol, Kythera, was formerly in the bay of San Nikolo:

The bay of Kapsali, at the extreme south of Cerigo, is semicircular; open to the south, it penetrates about seven cables toward the
north. In its northeast part, a slightly extending promontory separates two coves. That of the east, of the shore where the customs is
found, is circular, of shallow and rocky bottoms, with an entrance having only fifty meters of width; the other is much larger and
visited by the coastal sailors. Cape Trakhili, on the west coast of the bay of Kapsali, is the extremity of a tongue of cliffs which is
projected toward the south and southeast and shelters the bay of Kapsili from the southwest. Cape Grosso, whose name expresses its
appearance, forms the east coast of the entrance of the bay; this is surrounded by highlands, with a slightly irregular coast and a
beach of pebbles at its extremity. The bottoms are deep everywhere, and from 45 meters in the middle of the entrance; they gradually
shallow up to the foot of the bay.
The town of Cerigo, built on a hill on the northwest coast of the bay, has a population of 1800 inhabitants. A large fortress of
Venetian architecture, situated at an elevation of 180 meters, is built in front of the town; it commands this and the bay, and is easily
seen from a distance. The Greek packboats and those Austrian ones of Floyd call here every week. The harbor is secure from all the
winds which blow from the land; but it is exposed to those from the south and southeast which make a heavy sea enter and, although
the bottom is of sand and mud, the anchors do not hold. From the winds, the harbor is thus secure only with favorable conditions.

For our large vessels of today, the small inconveniences of the harbor of Kapsali have no great danger. But the boats
and caïques of the ancients would prefer the altogether secure port or the beach of San Nikolo:

Cape Kapela, situated two miles to the east of the bay of Kapsali, is the southeast point of Cerigo. The coast, raised a hundred
meters and bordered by rocks, runs from there toward the north for six miles up to the bay of San Nikolo. The coast is curved to the
east for about 1½ mile and forms the bay of San Nicolo, ½ mile deep and open to the south and southeast. One finds anchorage there
from all the winds which blow from land; but exposed to those from the southeast, the ships roll heavily, and some, surprised by
winds from that direction, have been thrown onto the coast. On the east coast is found a creek open to the southwest, one cable deep
and ½ wide, with ½ cable at the entry. Within, the creek is enlarged and forms an excellent small basin having 7 meters of water. The
ships double anchor there in safety, and the port is the best on the isle.

The closed port serves the Hellenic sailors. The primitive sailors, we know, do not enter, into such a trap. But the bay
of San Nikolo offers them a beach of haulage: it is there that the old echelle of Skandeia is installed on a rocky islet which
the sediments from a small river have joined to the coast. In climbing the valley, one finds, at ten stades from the beach, a
high and strong rise which the river encircles with a moat: it is here where the high town of Kythera is raised. The
Acropolis dominates the bay and the high sea from afar. The Phoenician Aphrodite, the Warrior Astarte, had her temple
founded there by the Phoenicians, Herodotus tells us, and the topolgy of the site fully verifies the tradition. It is always
the same type of preHellenic establishment, such as we have learned to recognize by twenty examples. Above a beach of
sand or mud, appropriate for the landing and beaching of boats, a rocky islet, barely joined to the coast and easy to
defend, offers to foreigners a place of debarkation, a lookout and a fortress: such as Nisaia. Not far from there, on the first

219
hills of the interior, the High Town, αιπυ πτολιεθρον, installs its bazaar where the landsmen meet the peoples of the sea: a
common cult presides at the market, and the cult is ordinarily imported by the sailors. It is the Phoenicians who have
founded the temple of Kythera.
On the borders of the strait, the isle of Kythera is, facing Morea, an excellent station of piracy which the Spartans
occupy and survey with care. In these waters, the passes, the islets and the hidden coves set the natives up for piracy (up
until the middle of the XIXth century, the Maniotes remain incorrigible pirates): thus no commerce is possible without the
posession of the isle. But the commerce of Egypt and especially of Lybia come to land there: Kythera is the point of
debarkation of the Levantine convoys, των τε απο Αιγύπτου και Λιβύης ‘ολκάδων προσβολη. Between the Levantine
world and Morea, a route strewn with isles and repositories leads the fleets here.
On the route, Crete is the main stop: the Levantine coastal traffic follows the Cretan coasts up to the last promontory of
the Occident. Then, from Crete to Cerigo, a line of rocks or islets indicates the passage. Cerigotto, Pori and Poretti,
Kouphonisi and Ovo. The last rock is characteristic: “Its barren surface and its rounded form have the appearance of a
huge egg (whence its name Isle of the Egg, Ovo of the French, Augonisi of the Greeks). It lies a mile and three quarters to
the south of the bay of Kapsali and serves as a mark to reach the harbor.”
The Phoenicians will follow the route and the isle has kept the name which they will give it, Kythera. The ancients say
that Kytheros is a son of Phoenix; a Greco-Semitic doublet verifies the tradition. The echelle of Kythera in effect bears
the Greek name of Skandeia, Σκάνδεια: it is a dialectical word, say the lexicographers, which designates a type of hairdo,
σκάνδεια ειδος περικεφαλαίας. The Semitic words ‫כתר‬, keter, and ‫כתות‬, kuteret or kutera, have the same meaning of
hairdo. From the first, the Greeks have taken their kitaris, κίταρις or κίδαρις, which serves them to designate the Persian
tiara. From the second has come Kythera, κυθήρα, and the second transcription is much more exact than the first. We
know that the Semitic ‫ כ‬is most frequently rendered by a χ, and the ‫ ת‬by a θ: ‫כתוה‬, kuthera, should have given χυθήρα
without the Greek euphony which does not allow two aspirates at the beginning of two consecutive syllables and which
consequently requires either kuthera or khutera, the same as, in an entirely similar case, it requires khiton or kithon, κιθών
or χιτών, in place of khithon, χιθών, which would be more exact, but which is impossible. The Hellenes have turn by turn
said khiton or kithon, and the two words exist, χιτών, κιθών. I believe that similarly we still have Kuthera and Khutera:
for if he large isle is named Kythera, the Isle of the Egg is also called χύτρα, Khutra. The name has a meaning in Greek:
the Pot. But the white, tall (it is 167 meters high) rock does not resemble a pot in any way. To the contrary, it can be
related by the Orientals to their high white tiaras, their kutheres: in the Mouths of Bonifacio, the sailors have long known
“a point of middle height which they call Bonnet of the Jew.” It is the Isle of the Egg, I believe, which at first received the
name of Mitre, and which gave it later to the neighboring harbor. Behind the mitre, the port became the Port of the
Bonnet,
Skandeia-Kuthera; this is the way the navigators proceed: we see an isle take turn by turn the names of Isle of the Vessel
and Isle of the Bill because of the two rocks which the Occidental and Oriental navigators successively find on the two
faces. Here the popular pun works on the incomprehensible Kuthera to draw the Pot, Khutra. Do we want examples of
similar puns? To the south of Matapan, the Port of Quails, Porto Quaglie, of the Venetians and the French, has become
the Most Beautiful Port, Porto Kalion, Καλιον of the modern Greeks. Between Cerigo and Crete, the Romans name
Aegilia, the Isle of Aegilius, the isle of Cerigotto which the Hellenes named Ogylos, Ώγυλος. The last name can have no
sense in Greek. The isle, surrounded by cliffs, presents an inaccessible perimeter. “Its coast of iron,” - we note the
expression of the sailors: we encounter it again in the Odyssey - “rises in steep and inaccessible cliffs, but no sand,” say
the Nautical Instructions: ‫עגולה‬, Ogul’a, in Hebrew signifies the Round, and Ogul’a would give, by an exact
transcription, ώγυλος or ωγυλία, Ogylos and Ogylia, the same as we have Samos and Samia, Syros and Syria, etc.
Kythera is also an Isle of the Purpura, Porphyris or Porphyrussa. The gulf of Laconia, says Pausanias, furnishes the
best purpura shells after those of Phoenicia. In the gulf itself, no doublet exists to certify to us the presence of the
Phoenician fishermen. Only names of sites and somewhat characteristic rites remain. A certain lagoon has its sacred fish,
like the Oriental sanctuaries. Behind the islet of Kranae, Gythion (Marathonisi today) is situated like the old foreign
emporia on a barbarian coast, and the isle of Kranae retains the memory of the Oriental navigator, Paris. Kranae, Κραναη,

220
is Greek, and signifies the Rocky. Gythion, Γύθειον, presents no meaning in Greek. It would be susceptible to a Semitic
etymology. But, lacking a doublet, I gauge that the etymology has no more validity than the etymologies of the same sort
proposed for the names of the two extreme capes, the Tenare and the Malea. I nevertheless believe that Gythion was in
actuality a Phoenician debarkation point: it is there where the trans-Aegean sea routes of the archipelago terminate, and
from there our trans-Peloponnesian land route of the Telemachead leaves toward Sparta, Lykosoura and Pylos.
In the gulf of Messenia, outside of Tenare, we find at the watering places the cult of Ino-the-Spring: “Between
Thalamai and Oitylos, one encounters the temple and the oracle of Ino; a sacred spring furnishes the drinking water, ‘ ρει
δε και ‘ύδωρ εκ πηλης ‘ιερας πιειν ‘ηδύ: it is the spring of Selene.” The Semites had In Semes, Springs of the Sun, entirely
resembling the Ino of the Moon. The Hellenes did not know more exactly the name of the foreign goddess to whom the
spring and the oracle had primitively related: some said Pasiphae, others Kassandra or Daphne or Selene. A little farther
away, on the coast, one again found, at Leuktra, a sanctuary of Ino and of Kassandra; the ancient Leuktra is today Leftro,
near point Stupar: “The point,” say the Nautical Instructions, “is surrounded by a reef, on which there is an undersea
spring.”
Here we arrive at the seven Messenian towns which, in the Iliad, form the heptapole posessed by Agamemnon. When
the Hellenes of the story were installed here, they replace the heptapole with a pentapole: they count by five, where the
Semites count by seven. The king of the Dorians, Kresphontes, divides the land into five districts, Stenykleros, Pylos,
Rhion, Messola and Hyamia. He places his residence at Stenykleros and establishes four kings in the other towns. At the
same time as the political organization, the place names are changed. Pheres, Kardamyle, Enope, Ire, Antheia, Aipeia,
Pedasos, the seven Homeric names are not encountered again in Greek Messenia. The Watercress Bed, Kardamyle, has
existed up to our days on the east coast of the gulf. Pheres is known to us: we have studied its site near Ianitza. The Steep,
Aipeia, has similarly appeared to us under its Semitic doublet of Thuria. It would appear that the seven towns would each
have two names, the one Greek, the other foreign. But the discussions were insoluble later when one of the two names,
fallen out of usage, will wander from town to Messenian town: Pausanias and Strabo do not know where to locate the
Homeric names of Ire, Antheian Enope, Pedasos. Hira, the Healthy, says Pausanias, is the town which later is called Abia;
Strabo, to the contrary, places Hira on the mountain of the same name; others sought it near Messola. To judge it by the
doublet Aipeia-Thuria, it does not appear that Abia can be the Healthy: if Abia, Αβία, which has no meaning in Greek,
should be explained by a Semitic etymology as Thuria, it does not mean the Healthy. The foreign name can nevertheless
have a sense which would translate very exactly one of the views of he coast. The marshy region has always had a Town
of the Reeds, formerly Kalamoi, today Kalamata. The Town of the Reeds has not been displaced through the epochs. I
believe that in the times of the first sailors, it was at Abia: ‫אבה‬, ab’a is the Reed... But, in the uncertainty of the place
name, it is impossible to reconstitute with a sure stroke the doublets of which we nevertheless perceive certain elements...
At the foot of the Messenian beach, on the hills riddled with springs, is a last sanctuary of Ino: at this place, the goddess
took to the sea; she had already taken the name of Leukothea.
In following the periple of the Peloponnesian coasts, we rejoin here the Odyssian route of the Phoenicians between
Crete and “Pylos or the divine Elide.” We have discovered the numerous milestones of the route on the Occidental façade
of the Peloponnesus, at the mouths of the Neda, at the rocks of Pylos, at cape Pheia, along the Alph, etc. The isles of the
Ionian Sea, Paxos-Plateia, Kephallenia-Samë, retaining during antiquity their Greco-Semitic doublets, and the entirety of
the Odyssian account, are going to show us even better the comings and goings over the sea from Corfu, on the coasts of
the Thesprotes and of the Pheacians. M. Clermont-Ganneau has combined the traces which the Semitic influence
appeared to have left among the gods, the cults and the usages of the Occidental Peloponnesus, between the Alph and the
gulf of Corinth. The god Satrape, which the Hellenes proclaimed a foreign god, was worshipped at Samikon, then at Elis,
when the Samikon drowned in the sands was deserted by the sailors: the god Satrape figures in the Syrian pantheon of the
Greco-Roman epoch, and the people of Elis think that Satrape is an epithet of Korybas. At Patras, the holocausts in honor
of Artemis Laphria resemble the Torches of Syria and the Dedales of Kitheron: it is the same pyre of trees, the same
procession of the priestess in her chariot, the same offerings of the towns and of private individuals, the same throwing
into the furnace of living animals, of fruits and offerings: “The rite,” says Pausanias, “is found in Greece only among the

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Patreans, τρόπος επιχώριος θυσίασ.” Still other similarities - human sacrifices, fish and beast cults, etc. - could be pointed
out between the customs of Achaia and the Syrian rites. But, on no part of the coast do we find an indisputable mark of
the Phoenician occupation, that is to say, a Greco-Semitic doublet. Let us return to the purpura fisheries.
In the gulf of Corinth, the coasts of Phocide and of Boeotia retained their purpura fisheries up until the Roman epoch:
at Boulis, half of the population lives on fishing and in the neighboring town, Ambrusos or Ambrossos, is established a
dying industry (cochineal), analogous to that which replaces the purpura in the Amorgos of the French. The northern
coast of the gulf of Corinth is a series of gulfs, of islets and promontories where all of the foreign navies have
successively had their trading posts. We have studied the convenient routes, which lead the caravans to the plains of the
interior or, in front of the Boeotian peninsula, up to the northern sea of Eubea. We know the itineraries of the peoples of
the sea toward the Boeotian basin and toward its towns of Thebes and Livadi. The tradition had Cadmus debark in the bay
of Salona, at the foot of Delphes, and related the foundation of the Delphic oracle to the sailors coming from Crete. The
cult of Hercules was very widespread in the area. The river of Boulis near a purpura fishery is a Herculean river
(Herakleios Potamos). From the sea to Thebes, a series of Herculean sanctuaries mark the route: “The people of Tipha
have a temple and panagyrics of Hercules... At Thisbe, they have a temple, a statue and panagyrics of Hercules.. At
Thespies, the temple of Hercules is much more ancient than the Greek Hercules, son of Amphitryon: here it is the Idian
Hercules which the Ionians of Erythria and the Tyrians worship... At Kabyron, one sees the temple of the Hippodete
Hercules.”
Tipha, Thisbe, Thespias, Kabeiron, we come to trace the same route which leads the most directly from the gulf of
Corinth to Thebes. It is not the shortest route properly speaking; but it is the only possible one. The nearest port on the
gulf to Thebes would be Kreusis on the bay of Livadostro: thirty kilometers of an easy route, across the flat land of Platea,
would lead in a few hours from Thebes to the harbor of the gulf. But “some terrible breezes fall from Kitheron into the
bay, εκ των ορων καταπνέουσιν άνεμοι βίαιοι,” and the coastal route buffeted by the gusts is frequently untenable: a
Lacedemonian army surprised by the storm lost its weapons and nearly perished there. They would have passed
otherwise. Fifty kilometers separate Thebes from the bay of Dombrena on which Tipha is found. The route is a bit more
hilly across the coasts from Thespia and the mountains of Thisbe. But “the magnificent bay of Dombrena,” say the
Nautical Instructions, is absolutely secure, covered from the winds by a complicated system of angled promontories and
islets: “the shores are rocky; the water there is generally deep and without submerged dangers; the entrance, open to the
south, is bordered by three islets which make a veritable basin of the bay; in the middle of the bay lies an islet which has
about a half mile of length from north to south.” It is pointless to emphasize the conveniences which this bay, populated
with isles, offered to the primitive commerce: “Mount Korombili, conical, and 814 meters high, dominates the east part of
the bay and forms a good seamark,” add the Instructions. It is at the foot of the high point of Korombili that Tipha should
be found: “The people of Tipha are praised as being the best sailors of Boeotia since the beginning of time. His
knowledge of the sea, they say, made their fellow-citizen, Tiphys, succeed as pilot of the ship Argo, which he guides to
the port.”
Tipha is the echelle, the town of foreigners on the sea; Thisbe is the high town of the natives, at the foot of the
mountain (the burg of Dombrena, which gives its name to the bay, replaces Thisbe today); Thespias is the median stop
between Thisbe and Thebes. Among the names, Thespias has a Greek etymology. It is the town of inspired singers, of
poets, θέσπις αοιδος: in its small valley of the Muses has flourished the poetic school of Ascra, and the Hesiodic bards
had come there. But Thisbe, Θίσβη, which means nothing in Greek, has its place in the place names of the Scripture:
‫תשבה‬, thisb’a, Θίσβη, transcribe the Seventy, and the name of Tipha present a particularity which perhaps betray their
origin. Pausanias writes Tipha, Τίφα, and the legend of Tiphys, pilot of the Argonauts, shows that it is not a fault of the
text. But most of the ancients, Skylax, Thucydides, Ptolomy, etc., also say Sipha, Σίφα, or Siphe, Σίφη, or Siphai, Σιφαι.
The Greek etymology tiphos, τιφος, the marsh, can in no fashion explain either the alternation of the initial consonant nor
the site of the rocky harbor, in the bay encircled by rocks. Far from any delta or lagoon: no river empties there. We know
on the other hand that the same Semitic word, ‫עור‬, Sur, the Rock, gives Syros and Tyros, Σύρος and Τύρος, turn by turn,
and that the Hellenes, not having retained the ‫ ע‬of the Semites in their alphabet, render it sometimes by a σ and sometimes

222
by a τ: ‫עפה‬, sipha or tipha, the Lookout, is frequent in the place names of the Scripture. At the foot of the lookout, of the
seamark, say the Instructions, of Krombili, Sipha merited the name and it would truly be the town of the lookout, of the
pilot, of the vigil, of tiphys, Τίφος; the Scripture also has the proper nouns ‫עפון‬, Siphon or Tiphon, ‫עפי‬, Siphi or Tiphi.
Along the route between the gulf and Thebes, we would then understand the presence of the Tyrian Hercules, of
Melkart. Pausanias, after having viewed the temple of Thespias, declares that surely that it is not the Greek god here, but
the Tyrian one, which the Erythrians of Ionia also worship. He knew the Tyrian Melkart of the Erythrians, arrived on a
raft. The coins of the Erythrians show us the Melkart, “Phoenician statue of Egyptian style.” It is very different from the
Greek Hercules. It is nude, without the lion skin, its Hellenic emblem. It is standing, the legs together. Its right hand
brandishes the club above the head, as the pharaos of Egypt brandish their arms. In the left hand it holds a scepter or a
rod, like the Egyptian divinities: “It would have to be pure Egyptian,” says Pausaniaas, ακριβως εστιν Αιγύπτιον. Despite
certain archeologists, whom the presence of the foreign statue impedes a little in their great theories, Frazer has reason to
say that the arrival on the raft of the Tyrian Melkart - σχεδία γαρ ξύλων και επ’ αυτη ‘ο θεος εκ Τύρου της Φοινίκης
εξέπλευσε - informs us of the navigations by raft which the Tyrian legend attributed to Melkart and which the scarabs
related to us. After our study of the navigation of Ulysses, the raft of wood, σκεδία ξύλων, takes its full significance: we
find here again our Odyssian raft, and we have other reasons to affirm the arrival of the Phoenicians and of Melkart at
Erythria.
In the strait of Chios, where Erythria is found (fig. 8)*, pass “all the ships which ascend and descend, that is to say,
which go to Constantinople or return to go to Syria and Egypt.” The island coast of Chio offers only poor shelter. The
Asiatic shores are bordered with excellent harbors. Tchesme, one of those, was a great port of the French sailors. But,
sunk in a closed bay, Tchesme could not have accomodated the primitive sailors. The large bay of Erythreas, on the other
hand, well-protected but spacious, offered them a multitude of coastal islets for a parasitic establishment: we find here
once again the type of our primitive ports on a coastal isle. And from Erythria, across a very narrow isthmus, leads a
terrestrial route which passess to the gulf of Smyrna and avoids the long circuit of cape Kara-Bournou. The Phoenicians
were not able to exploit the archipelago without a station in the strait of Chios: for them, it is Erythria which offers all the
conditions of security, convenience and amenity, Ερυθραί, λιμένα έχουσα και νησιδας προκειμένας τέτταρας ‘Ίππους
καλουμένας. In the bogaz of Chios, Erythria was for them that which Samos was in the more southerly bogaz. See what
happens when the strait is not better watched: “At the entrance,” says Strabo, “stands the Korykos promontory, having
become famous for its pirates. The Korykeans had invented a new mode of piracy. Spreading through the ports, they
investigated the armaments, noted the cargos and the departures and, returning, they operated in a confident manner.” We
can thus give some credit to the text of Pausanias: the Hercules of Erythria is Phoenician, and the Hercules of our
Boeotian towns is a Melkart. Lacking a doublet, we have here again a mark of origin which is familiar to us: the
sevenfold rhythm. Hercules, having come to Thespia, lies down, they say, with the daughters of his host. There were fifty,
but he bedded only forty-nine (7 x 7), say some. He lies with the fifty, say others, but the oldest and the youngest, the
most widely separated, had twins, while the others had only one son: from the night of the Sun God, which is Melkart,
thus will be born as many sons as there are weeks in the year, fifty-two. Alongside of Melkart, furthermore, figures a god,
Kabire, whose name is Semitic, and his son. In the interior of Boeotia, the god, worshipped near Hercules, retains his
foreign name of Kabiros; but, in the ports, he hides himself with a Greek name: “The people of Boulis live on the purpura
fishing; their river is called the stream of Hercules; among all the gods, they especially worship that whom they name the
Very Great; it is, I think, an epithet of Zeus.” The god which they name the Very Great, ‘όντινα Μέγιστον ονομάζουσι, is
the same as Kabire, for Greek Megistos is the Greek equivalent of the Semitic ‫כביר‬, Kabir, the Great. The most
antiSemitic archeologists and those the most fanatic regarding the Mycenaean grandeur and independance have not been
able to deny the Semitic origin of the divine name: the Kabires of Samothrace were the Great Gods, Μέγαλοι θεοι, the
same as our Boeotian Kabire is the Very Great, Μεγιστος.
Another route, still more frequented between the Boeotian towns and the gulf of Corinth, leaves - we know it: we have
described it at length on the subject of our Megarian ports (p. 226)* - from the bay of Aspra Spitia and ends at Livadi: the
ancient town of Ambrysos occupied on this route the position of Thisbe on the other. It was, a little above the sea, the first

223
town of the landsmen. Similarly as, in the bay neighboring Salona, the modern natives had up to our days their town and
bazaar of Salona, “at about six miles from la Skala, at the foot of Parnassas,” the antique Ambrysos held itself a little
away from the shore and from the pirates, at the first enlargement of the defiles. It was a town of the Phokideans which
the Iliad does not mention in its Catalog of the Vessels, while it mentions the capitols of the other Phokidean cantons,
Pytho, Krisa, Daulis, Panopea, Anemoria, Hyampolis and Lilaia. But, in addition to the historic towns or burgs, the Iliad
mentions a town of Cypres, Κυπάρισσος, whose name disappeared in the later centuries and whose site, among the
Hellenes themselves, remained unknown or doubtful. The commentators and the voyagers, ancient and modern, have
transported the town from one emplacement to another. A scholiast found it again at Appolonias.
Ottf. Müller discovers it in the present town of Arachova, on the Parnassas, and Bursian, in another Arachova on the
road from Daulis to Delphes. But Pausanias made it a maritime town, and believed that they had substituted Anticyre for
the forgotten name. The gulf of Anticyre is our gulf of Aspra Spitia and, from all times, on the route which leads to the
Boeotian plain, a town and fortress should occupy the site of ancient Ambrysos, of modern Distomo. I believe that the
town of Cypres was there and that Kyparissos and Ambrysos are just a doublet of the same name.
The name of Ambrusos, in effect, with all the variants that geographers and commentators give it, Άμβρυσσος,
Άμφρυσος, Άμβρυσος, appear to me an entirely literal transcription of the Hebrew word which would say cypres, ‫בוש‬,
beros, or ‫ברוש‬, berus, with the prosthetic α so frequent in all the borrowed or transcribed place names. We have altogether
many other examples of the prosthesis in the words borrowed by the Greeks from the Semites. It is possible that it
represents the article. We already have At-taburos, A-τάβυρος, which is perhaps the Navel: ‫המבור‬, Ab-brus would give
Am-brusos. If we have only a prosthetic a, the transcription of ‫ ב‬by μπ or μφ remains in conformance with that which we
still see among the Greeks of today who, pronouncing the B as a V are incapable of rendering our B other than by a
combination of consonants μπ, μβ, etc.: Byron for them is Μπίρων or Μβίρων... Ambrusos thus would be the Cypress, ‘ο
Κυπάρισσος, and the land retained an old memory of the peoples of the sea in the cult of the Artemis of the Net, Άρτεμις
Δικτυνναία, the first origin of which takes us back to the towns of Crete. The purpura fishers were undoubtedly devotees
of Our Lady. The purpura shellfish had to be caught alive, because they lost their color with their life, vivas capere
tendunt quia cum vita succum eum evomunt. They fished them with a net or basket, as we fish for crayfish or lobster.
“Our Lady of the Net” could and should have had her cult among the purpura fishers as “Our Lady of the Factory” today
has her altars among our miners and manufacturers, as “Our Lady of the Bait” or “Our Lady of the Fish” will someday
have her litanies, when the ingenious spirit of our neochristianity spreads its utilitarian devotion among the Breton or
Norman fishermen.

####
*
* *

II. Metals and manufactures. - Two metals are the most frequently named in the Odyssey as common metals: iron,
σίδηρος, and chalkos, χαλκός, copper or bronze.
“In the entire Epic,” says Helbig, “a single weapon is clearly indicated as being of iron, it is the club of the Arcadian
Areithoös (Iliad, VII, 141-144). But it is often a matter of iron utensils.” It appears in effect that iron, sideros, may be of
current usage in domestic life: it has furnished the epithet sidereos to say proverbially “hard as iron” in speaking of a man
or of a port, of a heart or of a rope, σιδήρεον ητορ, κραδιν σιδηρέη, πθλος μένος σιδήρεον, etc. It is the popular metal, I
would almost say: native and rustic. The old Arcadian populations garnished their clubs with it, and Helbig is right to
insist upon a text which also appears very important to me: “At the funeral of Patroclus, Achilles proposes as prize a disc
of iron and says that the winner will have enough metal for his shepherds and his ploughs for five years. The declaration
has good cause to astonish us: in the mouth of the son of Peleus, one would instead expect an allusion to the martial
usages of the metal.” The verses oblige us to reflect, in effect:

224
 εί ο‘ι μάλα πολλον απόπροθι πίονες αγροι
έξει μιν και πέντε περιπλομένους ενιαυτους
χρεώμενος. ου μεν γάρ ο‘ι ατεμβομενός γε σιδήρου
ποιμην ουδ’ αροτηρ εις’ πόλιν αλλα παρέξει.

Iron, as we see, is at that time a common metal, which does not require urban industry: the shepherd and laborer can
produce or work it “withou going to town”. It is that the ferric minerals, which one finds everywhere, can be worked by
the least Catalan forge: ferri metalla, says Pliny, ubique propemodum reperiuntur. For the metal, in the least furnace, can
be heated, forged, worked and quenched: the Odyssey speaks to us of the quenching for the production of axes. But iron
gets rusy and is eaten, and iron is easily broken, especially when it is quenched. With such rustic procedures of
fabrication, it is always impure: it has “flaws” and is “fragile”. It thus can be a metal of peacetime and a material of
utensils: still in our fields, we see the reaper stop and sit down to sharpen his scythe. In war, one needs a material perhaps
less hard, but tougher, less fragile and which does not suddenly break: it is impossible to sit down on the battlefield, as in
the wheatfield, to repair one’s sword or spear. The primitive iron is of a convenient use only for sheathing, covering or
trimming. Sheathing a club or a plowshare of wood, arming the point of a spear or arrow (the case presented in the Iliad)
in a socket, its hardness is very useful and its fragility has less inconvenience: it is supported by its internal mass. But
when the metal whould be elongated into a rigid bar to make a sword, thinned into compact sheets to make a breastplate,
beaten to make a helmet or greaves, the brittle iron is no longer useful: a softer, more ductile, more homogeneous metal is
needed, and one resorts to chalkos.
Chalkos, is it pure copper? Is it bronze, that is to say, an alloy of copper and tin? For that to which the Odyssey refers, I
would think especially of bronze. Here are my reasons.
The Iliad mentions tin, κασσίτερος, among the precious materials, along with gold, silver and kyanos (blue steel?):
Helbig concludes with justice that pure tin, in that epoch, arrived only rarely and in small quantities. They knew how to
extract minerals; but they had undoubtedly not yet found the minerals in abundance anywhere. For an entirely recent
example, we see again, without any effort of the imagination, what the primitive production of tin could have been. The
Bulletin of the Geological Society relates, in 1850, the discovery that they came to remanufacture stannous minerals in
Asturia (I say “remanufacture” because the ancients had exploited the sites). In 1848 or 1849, in the vicinty of Ribadeo,

A blacksmith of the town, believing it possible to extract gold from the pyritic schists, made many attempts in crucibles placed in the
middle of the fire of his forge. He notes that the pyrites of certain pieces gave him a white malleable metal: he continued his
investigations, believing that the white metal was silver. He observes that he obtained more metal with softwood charcoal and little
air. It was then that he consults our friend don Balbino de Torres (of Ribadeo), who shows him that the white metal was an impure
tin. Finally the inventor learned how to extract the aforesaid metal by placing pieces of stanniferous slate to heat in the middle of
charcoal of softwood and half-rotton wood. His process thus consists of heating the schists for a long enough time in the middle of
the fire, gripping the fragments with tongs, and dropping them on the ground. Numerous grains of impure tin then escape which,
combined and melted in a crucible of iron, serve to form a small piece of the metal.

By the reported procedure, the contemporaries of the Iliad also obtained some of the small pieces; but the minerals of
little abundance rendered the metal very precious: for them, tin was a rarer variety of silver, and perhaps more sought-
after, since it never oxidized. In the Odyssey, a radical change: tin, κασσίτερος, no longer appears. We cannot suppose
that it had disappeared in the interval. But it is undoubtedly no longer a precious metal. In the interval of the two poems, it
could, it should have become a common metal, abundant and at a low price. It is that they have, undoubtedly, discovered
large deposits, of which the contemporaries of the Iliad did not know. Now, the deposits, we perceive, can only be those
of the coast of Tarsis: it is from Tarsis that the tin of the Kassiterides still comes in the times of Herodotus. The
contemporaries of the Odyssey know Spain: the isle of Calypso is I-spania. The Odyssey is thus posterior to the discovery
of Tarsis by the sailors of Sidon, and also posterior to the direct or indirect knowledge which the Ionians had of the

225
discovery. It matters little then if the Odyssian chalkos might be copper or bronze: Sidon, which exploits Tarsis, can have
the tin of the Kasserites and manufacture bronze with the copper of Cyprus or other places; Sidon in the times of the
Odyssey can be the great supplier of chalkos:

εκ μεν Σιδωνοσ πολυχάλκου εύχομαι ειναι.

Bronze or copper, the people of the Odyssey had to receive their chalkos from abroad, for the Greeks had no tin mines,
and their copper mines are of minimal production, even if they have them. Neither classical nor present Greece has
exploited copper-bearing minerals. Having today become a great metallurgic center because of its rich deposits of zinc
and silver-bearing lead, studied and scoured by the geologists and minerologists, Greece has not furnished a trace of
copper, except in one place: on the east coast of Morea, near Epidaurus, in the vicinity of Dimaina, “a deposit exploited
by the ancients was reopened without success about 1870”.
Nevertheless Strabo mentions near Chalkis in Eubea a marvelous mine where “copper and iron were formerly found
together, which never happened elsewhere”, και μέταλλον δ’ ‘υπηρχε θαυμαστον χαλκου και σιδήρου κοινόν, ‘όπερ ουχ
‘ιστορουσιν αλλαχου συμβαινον. We should doubt the marvel which Strabo did not see and which, in his times, had no
longer been exploited, νυνι μέντοι αμφότερα εκλέλοιπεν. The name of Chalkis has become, for the ancient geographers,
the Copperworker, τίνες δε Χαλκιδεις φασί κληθηναι δια τα χαλκουργεια, like Minoa has become the port of Minos and
Soloi the port of Solon: Keipert remarks with perfect reason that the region of Chalkis contains no trace of copper mines.
It is thus necessary to have the greatest possible reservations regarding the true meaning of Chalkis. In the first place,
nothing proves that the name might be Greek. It must not be forgotten that the Greeks make a Chalkedon, Καρχηδών,
Καλχηδών, Χαλκηδών, of a Phoenician New Town: the names of the form Chalke, Χάλκη, Χαλκία, Χάλκα, etc., are
found over the entire extent of the Mediterranean, and the isle Chalkia, Χαλκία, on the coast of Asia Minor, has never had
a trace of copper, any more than the Elean region of the river Chalkis; thus it is possible that the names belong to the
preHellenic layer and that they appear together as a term of Greco-Phoenician doublets. In the second place, the names,
even if Greek, would not necessarily signify The Copperworker. For the Odyssey, the artisan who works gold at the court
of Nestor is called chalkeus: any metallurgist is a chalkeus in that civilization of chalkos, as in our civilization of iron he
is a ferronier. Chalkis, if the name is Greek, thus could be the Forge, but the forge does not specify which metal. The
ironworkers, σιδηερουργοί, of Chalkis remain long celebrated: it appears, to see the texts, that iron forges had actually
existed in that place. It is possible that they later invented the legend of copper forges to explain the name which they no
longer understood, when the ironworker was no longer called copperworker, χαλκεύς, but ironworker, σιδηρουργός:
‘ιστορειται δε και σιδέρου και χαλκου μέταλλα ειναι κατα την Ευβοικην Χαλκίδα και ‘ότι άριστοι εκει σιδηρουργοί και
‘ότι ου’ μόνον εκει πρωτον ώφθη χαλκεια αλλα και πρωτοι χαλκον εκει ενεδύσαντο Κούρητες.
(The etymology of Chalkis = the Copperworker [feminine] goes back, says Pliny, to Kallidemos, Euboea antea
vocitata, ut Callidemus, Chalcis, aere ibi primum reperto: Pliny# would undoubtedly have attributed the invention of
leather gloves [gants de peau] to the workers of Pau or of Gand).
Finally, even in conceding that Chalkis would actually say the Forge of the Chalkos, it would still not follow that the
forge worked native chalkos. Entirely to the contrary: Chalkis, the great port of the epoch, would be a Forge of Copper or
of Bronze just as, after it, all the other great Greek ports had been.
The production of bronze, in effect, moving in Greece according to the epochs, was always installed in a port of
transit, beginning in Delos, then at Egine, finally at Corinth or Syriacuse. Pliny, who enumerates the succession to us,
gives us the motive regarding Delos and Egine; antiquissima aeris gloria Deliaco fuit, mercatus in Delo celebrante toto
orbe, et ideo cura officinis; proxima laus Aeginetico fuit, insula et ipsa, nec quod aes gigneretur, sed officinarum
temperatura nobilitata. I believe it is necessary to be careful of the text. The ports which manufacture bronze have no
copper mines, nec quod aes gigneretur; but the commerce of the world which frequents their market, mercatus in Delo
celebrante toto orbe, bring the minerals there: today the copper market is in an English port, Swansea. Greece does not
furnish copper. If it ever exploited its deposits of cupriferous minerals (perhaps some traces of exist in the north and south

226
of Eubea and at Seriphos), it was never sufficient for its consumption, even when the consumption was mediocre. For the
Homeric civilization supposes a very great consumption: chalkos takes the place of our usual metals then. It is the age of
chalkos: all the urban civilization lives on it; except for the crude instruments, all is in chalkos, the arms, the impliments
and even the houses, I mean to say the furniture and decorations,

τοις δ’ ην χάλκεα μεν τεύχεα χάλκεοι δέ τε οικοι

χαλκω δ’ ειργάζοντο.

Thus Homeric Greece needed a foreign supplier: on the word of the Odyssey, the supplier is Sidon, πολύχαλκος Σίδων.
Entirely near by, Sidon has the still-celebrated copper mines of Cyprus, of Cilicia, of Syria, of Palestine: the copper of
Diarbekir always comes down to Alexandretta; the Sarephta of the Scripture is a Refinery, ‫צרפת‬, Saraphat, like our
Seriphos of the archipelago. And Sidon also has the great deposits of the western sea, where tin is found often mixed with
copper or near copper. The collection of periples which is the Odyssey shows us the Phoenician sailors in posession of
trading posts in all the western Mediterranean: the Phoenicians frequent the Italian Circe and the Spanish Calypso. There,
then, is that which simplifies the question of the chalkos, bronze or copper, and of the tin for the Odyssian times.
I do not wish to review here the interminable discussion of the meaning and origin of the word kassiteros. I believe
that, since Homeric times, kasssiteros has signified tin, since tin was already known. If some scholars have wished to give
another meaning to the word, it is because of the idea which they would make for themselves, I believe, of the Homeric
world: taking the world back to the night of times, not otherwise imagining any relationship between the Greek origins
and the other Mediterranean civilizations, they could not understand that Homeric Greece had tin and the word for tin.
But, if our demonstration for the isle of Calypso is valid, it is necessary to envisage the question of Homeric tin and
bronze in an entirely different manner. Certain consequences flow from the fact that in Odyssian times the Levantine
sailors exploit the strait of Gibralter, and I would like to show just a few of them here. On the question of bronze and tin,
the archeologists ordinarily see only two alternatives: tin, they say, came from the Kassiterides, that is to say, from Great
Britain, from the far west, or else it came from the far east, from Indochinese deposits. But between the two extremes,
there are many intermediary deposits.
We no longer know them, or we no longer exploit them. But Strabo knows that tin originates with the Dranges, that is
to say with the present Khorassan: travelers point out, in effect, deposits of tin. Similarly in Europe, in the center of the
continent, in Bohemia and Saxony, some rich deposits of tin were able to supply the Mediterranean consumption since the
first antiquity: the old periple which they attribute to Scymnus of Chio knew two isles at the foot of the Adriatic as the
sources of the best tin,

‘Εενετων έχονται Θρακες Ίστροι λεγόμενοι

δύο δε κατ’ αυτούς εισι νησοι κείμεναι
κασσίτερον α‘ι δοκουσι κάλλιστον φέρειν.

Deposits of tin have never been noted at the foot of the Adriatic. But it does not follow that ports of tin could never
have been established there. We have the example of Marseilles, which never has stanniferous deposits and which
nevertheless becomes the great port of tin the day when the transcontinental route, all the way across Gaul, brings Breton
tin there, πεζη δια της Γαλατίας πορενθέντες ‘ημέρας ‘ως τριάκοντα κατάγουσιν επι των ‘ίππων τα φορτία προς την
εκβόλην του ‘Ροδανου ποταμου. We imagine without difficulty that a parallel route, much less long, can bring the tin
from Bohemia and Saxony to the foot of the Adriatic, through the passes of the Alps: Marseilles or the Adriatic isle, at the
extremity of the two transcontinental routes, the installation of foreign factories, on two coastal isles, would be the same.
And here again, the Odyssey is going to show us the Adriatic sea already exploited by the Phoenician thalassocracies.
But even on the edges of the Mediterranean, tin was found and still is found. If the Greco-Roman antiquity did not
exploit various mines which we exploit today, it is that the arrivals of Breton and Spanish tin, abundant and cheap, caused

227
the poor and costly deposits, of a difficult exploitation, to be ignored. In Greco-Roman times, Spanish copper and British
tin suppressed all competition for the same reasons which, in recent centuries, gave the monopoly of the French market to
the irons and castings of Meurthe-et-Moselle. It has already been thirty years since our our wooded and mountainous
provinces have been fruitfully exploited for minerals of iron, which today are entirely abandoned, “no longer paying”. In
antiquity, for copper and tin, it was the same. We leave aside the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, Muslim, which we
know very poorly geologically, and which our metallurgical industry no longer exploits. But all around the western basin
are so many sites which the most ancients should know! We exploit them, even though they may not be the richest; we
leave them the day when the abundance comes from elsewhere. All the Algerian coast is bordered with minerals of
copper: “Between cape Tenes and Mouzaia, for a distance of about one hundred fifty kilometers, a cuprous zone stretches,
extended to the south from Bougie by another zone between Ait-Abbes and Djebel Babor; the sites are in well-
characterized lines containing cuprous pyrite and gray silver-bearing copper; they have established that the proportion of
copper and silver diminished somewhat rapidly with the depth.” Pliny knew the copper of Africa and the ancient
geographers point out copperworks, χαλκωρυχεια, to us on the coast. Sidon and its colonies thus have a first center of
supply there.
The European coasts offer the same minerals of copper, and two points merit our attention. In the two points the
copper and tin minerals are close, almost mixed: they arrive together at the same foundries of the coast. Consequently, for
the primitive production of bronze, it is not necessary to imagine considered, reasoned attempts, nor procedures even
halfway scientific. The first inventor of bronze probably did not make an alloy of metals in a pure state, that is to say that
he did not make copper, on the one hand, and tin, on the other, and then investigate what the union of the two products
could give. Chance, as always, had to have been the grand master: minerals of copper processed, by neglect or
intentionally, with minerals of tin, gave a harder copper, a different chalkos, but which they then recognized to be a new
metal, an amalgam of copper and tin. It is only after that established fact that they achieved the scientific fabrication, to
say it thusly, of industrial bronze, in mixing Spanish copper and Breton tin in a Phoenician crucible. The production of
bronze then gives rise to a great industry, with distant connections and a navy exploiting the oceanic seas. But before the
great industry, it is necessary to suppose a much more primitive metallurgy at the points where, minerals of copper and tin
being together or confused, the new copper, the new chalkos, sprang up, so to say, on its own, and was produced without
calculation, by chance. Italy and Spain present two of those points.
On the Italian coast, the Odyssey already has pointed out to us the Foundry of copper, Temesa: prospering, it appears,
in Homeric times, it was abandoned in Greco-Roman times, και δείκνυται χαλκουργεια πλησίον, ‘α νυν εκλέλειπται. The
Odyssian legends give us the proof of Phoenician frequentations of the Tyrrhenian coast: we know that the isle of Circe is
called Ai-aie, since ‫אי‬, ai or i, signifies the Isle, and ‫איה‬, aie, means the Sparrowhawk, which is kirke. From the strait of
Messina to the promontory of Circei, the Odyssey, by apparent doublets, will provide us the entire periple of the coast: in
the land of the Sirens, of the Cyclops and the Kimmerians, the plains mines of copper remain celebrated up to the times of
Pliny. To the north of Circei, the Odyssey furnishes no more evidence. But, all along the Italian coast, the same doublets
continue. Our isle of Elba is called at the same time Aithalia and Ilva. Aithalia, Αιθάλεια, the Furnace or the Glow, is a
Greek word: Ilva gives no sense either in Greek or in the Semitic languages: Aithalia-Ilva should be a Greco-Etruscan
doublet. Elsewhere, to the contrary, it appears that we have a Tusco-Semitic doublet: a maritime town perched to the
north of the Tiber on the first hills of the interior, but posessing on the coast the two echelles of Pyrgos and Alsium, is
named Agyla-Kaere; Olshausen has recognized in Agula the Semitic epithet which signifies the Round, ‫אגולה‬, ‘Agula. On
all the coast of Etruria, frequented by tuna which are nourished by the purpura, says Strabo, and marked by tuna lookouts,
which dominate Ports of Hercules and Ports of Venus, the place names appear to still retain other Semitic memories.
(Study, for example, such a promontory as ‘Ρούσελλις, or Rusellis, with a temple of Jupitor Victor at its feet: the African
coast is bordered by similar Heads or Capes, Rus, ‫רוש‬, ‘Ρούσαδιρ, ‘Ρούσιβις, ‘Ρουσίκαρις, etc., and the Syrian coast has
its Phanou-el, Φανούηλ, which is the Face of God, ‫אל‬-‫פנו‬, phanu-el: ‫אל‬-‫רוש‬, the Head, the Cape of God, would explain to
us Rusellis, and in its turn would be explained by the temple of God the Victor). The Semites thus would have come there
before the Greeks. The archeology of the coast furnishes in other ways the proofs of the ancient navigations: the most

228
authentically Phoenician trinkets (From Tyre or Carthage), which might have been obtained by us, are those struck in
silver found in our town of Kaere-the-Round or in its neighbor to the south of the Tiber, Preneste: one of the pieces bears
a Semitic signature and Egyptian heiroglyphics; both present the same mixture of Assyrian and Egyptian borrowings,
which Herodotus pointed out in the cargos of the Phoenician sailors.
Now, the entire region has copperworks. Aithalia, says the Pseudo-Aristotle, presently provides iron, with which the
Etruscan inhabitants of Populonium are provided; but it formerly provided copper. On the Genoese and Tuscan coast
across from the isle of Elba, the copper mines presently climb from Sestri Levante up to Grosseto, some right on the edge
of the sea, others a little in the interior, all at a small distance from maritime or riverine embarkations (present mines of
Sestri Levante, Monte Catini, Monte Calvi, Rocca Tederighi, etc.): the vicinity of Volterrae is riddled with ancient
mineshafts. The same region supplies tin: “near Campaglia Maritima, at Cento Camarelle, there exists a vein of tin which
penetrates the Jurassic terrain under the form of a vertical vein of 20 centimeters. In the deposit, iron oxide predominates,
and it is in wishing to exploit it that they discovered a certain number of lumps of cassiterite. In the vicinity, Blanchard,
starting from the idea that some other ancient excavations might have had the search for tin as their purpose, similarly
found the casserite at mount Valerio, at Cavina: from 1876 to 1880, 134 tons of tin mineral were extracted from the
region.” Tin is also found on the isle of Elba. The tradition of the Pseudo-Aristotle, on the production of bronze objects,
χαλκευομενα, in the region, thus contains a large portion of truth.
In historical times, the minerals of iron from the isle of Elba came to Populonium to be processed. In the primitive
times, Populonium should have also been the great copper forge: Strabo still sees abandoned mines there, και μέταλλα
τινα εν τη χώρα εκλελειμμένα. The town of Populonium is distinguished, adds Strabo, from all the other Etruscan towns,
in that it is on the sea, μόνη των Τυρρηνίδων των παλαιων αυτη πόλεων επ’ αυτη τη θαλάττη ιδρυσθαι. The other
Etruscan towns, for fear of pirates, had fled far from the coast. Populonium passed for the work of the peoples of the sea,
of the navigators coming from Corsica. Its site confirms the tradition. Populonium occupies one of the rocky
promontories which, formerly insular, today are joined to the Tuscan coast by isthmuses or beaches of marsh. It is an
acropolis, or at least it is composed, Strabo tells us, of an acropolis and an echelle at the foot. But it is not a native high
town retreaing to the summits of mountains or hills of the mainland. On its parisitic islet, on its promontory dominating
the sea, it well appears to have been from the beginning only a foreign establishment. Piombino, which succeeds it on the
islet, retains a history and administration independent from the neighboring coast up to our days. But Piombino does not
occupy the exact site of Populonium: it is situated at the southwest point of the islet, facing the open ocean, in the best
location to survey the strait between the isle of Elba and the mainland. Populonium, to the contrary, was on the northeast
face which regards the mainland. Inversely symmetrical with Piombino, Populonium turned its back on the strait to open
its bay to arrivals from the Tuscan coast. The arrivals were the minerals of copper and tin from Campiglia Maritima and
Monte Calvi, or the woods from the Pisan and Lucquoise region, which served in the processing of the minerals.
Populonium was the mining port of which Strabo speaks. It had been frequented, if not founded, by the foreign sailors of
Tyre or Carthage at the beginning, then from Chalkis. For it was the Chalkidians who first of the Greeks exploited the
Italian coasts: they will install their alphabet there. Thus if, at a certain hour of history, Chalkis, before Corinth, Egine and
Delos, was really the port of chalkos for the Greeks, we see at which epoch it was able to play the rôle, and from where its
minerals or its metals, copper, tin and bronze, would have been able to come to it.
But a day had come when Populonium had ceased to be the great port of copper and of bronze, to become the great
port of iron, when the isle of Elba had become that which it has remained up to our days, an iron mine: Porto Ferrajo, the
Italians still say. It is not that the deposits of coppr have disappeared from the isle itself or from the Tuscan coast. But the
deposits “no longer pay”, from the day when the Mediterranean sailors find elsewhere much richer and more convenient
cupriferous and stanniferous minerals to process. The legend of Calypso leads us to the land of Tarsis, which has retained
the monopoly of copper up until our days and which, up until the times of the Roman empire, up until the days when the
pacified Gaul permits the establishment of the great Bologna-Marseilles route, also held the monopoly on tin. For the
Spanish copper, we have a thousand texts and antique legends, summa gloria nunc in Marianumeas conversa quod et
Cordubense dicitur. For tin, Herodotus already knows that it arrives by the Columns of Hercules and that it arrives from

229
the Isles of Tin, the Kassiterides. During ten or twelve centuries, the tin arrives from Great Britain by the ocean, and that
maritime route was not replaced by the terrestrial route until the times of Augustus. Tartessos thus was the port of tin for
many long centuries. The maritime route of tin, along the Atlantic coasts, should have been established slowly, from cape
to cape, estuary to estuary, and other tin mines would have been offered to the navigators before the English Kassiterides.
Scymnus tells us that in his times Tartessos draws its tin from alluvions of the Kelts. The Keltland of Scymnus is the land
which extends from the Atlantic to the sea of Sardinia: it is present France. The Atlantic façade of France presents, in
effect, stanniferous alluvions, at the mouths of the Loire and the Vilaine, at Piriac (lower Loire) and at Villeder
(Morbihan): “The mines of Villeder appear to have been exploited in a very remote antiquity, from the first epoch of
bronze... At Piriac, tin appears in a kaolinized gniess... At the mouth of the Vilaine they exploited stanniferous sands
which perhaps relate to these deposits.” The alluvions of tin are, I believe, “the fluvial tin” of Scymnus, κασσίτερος
ποταμόρρυτος. From the first antiquity up until our days, tin has influenced the history of the Venetan land. At first it
undoubtedly created the renown of the Venetes in the opinion of the oldest Greek authors. Then it caused the
frequentation of its coasts by all the ancient navies. Then Roman establishments installed oriental cults along some
beaches of Carnac, at the entrance of the Morbihan. The statuettes of the Sirian Goddess kourotrophe, which are found in
great number in the region (Museum of Carnac), have finally created the cult of St. Anne and the pilgrimages which, each
year, still bring thousands of pilgrims into the region of Auray. For the good saint caused the miraculous statuette which
depicts her, and which they venerate today, to be discovered by a peasant at the beginning of the XVIIth century: it is
nothing but a statuette of the Syrian Goddess.
Even before the acquisition of the English Kassiterides or the Breton beaches of the Venetes, the first navigators had
encountered many other deposits. Spain was and still is a stanniferous land, γίγνεται δε και κασσίτερος εν πολλοις τόποις
της Ιβηρίας, says Diodora with reason. The Spanish Finistera is another Kassiteride, and Pliny describes for us very
exactly the nature of the site of its deposits: it suffices to set the descriptions of the modern geologists in comparison to
his text. Some ancients attributed the Kassiterides isles to the coasts of Galicia, and tin mines were surely exploited since
antiquity all along the coasts between Oporto and Oviedo. The processing of the Asturian and Galician minerals is easy;
even with the most rudimentary forge, we have seen how the metal can be obtained in an almost pure state. Other deposits
are even closer to Tartessos. The region of Salamanica and of Grenada produce tin and, by the fluvial routes of the
Guadiana and the Guadalquivir, the metals or the minerals descend from all eternity toward the southeast coast. The old
periple, translated by Avienus, locates a great tin station near the mouth of the Guadiana, mount Cassius, which has given
the Greek name of kassiteros:

Cassius inde mons tumet

et Graia ab ipso lingua cassiterum prius
stannum vocavit.

The tradition may contain a nugget of truth. On a map of Spain, trace the routes of the annual migration of the flocks
of sheep. Leaving from the Extremadura, on our coast of Tarsis, the routes ascend in a fan along the Guadiana, the Tage
and the Alagon, up to the heart of the plateau of the north, up to Salamanica and Burgos. During antiquity, the migration
should have followed the same ways. Formerly, as today, the sheep reached the plateaus in summer and, during the
winter, came back to the coast: “at the edge of the sea,” says Strabo, “the sheep burst with fat, if noöne takes care of
them”. The regions of the interior, even the farthest, thus were in permanent relations with the coasts of the Extrtemadura:
the sheep route conducted the tin from the interior to the extreme ports of the coast, to mount Kassios of Avienus... Thus
Tartessos, as soon as it was discovered, should have provided tin in abundance. Now, the Odyssey and its legend of
Calypso are posterior to the discovery: they should even be very posterior. For the Phoenicians, who later carefully
conceal the route of the Kassiterides, should not easily or readily revealed the route of Calypso. Before the formation of
the Odyssian legend, the sailors of Sidon long frequent the region. They bring back the cargos of minerals or metal which
make their town the great market of chalkos, copper and bronze, πολύχαλκος Σίδον.

230
 The Sidonians import to Homeric Greece bulk chalkos. But they also bring worked objects, arms and utensils. The
bowl of silver of Achilles comes from the Sidonians, like the cauldron of Bronze which they kept at the temple of Lindos
and which, worked in the ancient manner, κατεσκευασμένος εις τον αρχαιον ‘ρυθμόν, bore a Phoenician inscription. The
bowl of Menelaus also comes from Sidon, and a basket of silver was given to Helen by the queen of Thebes. For the
utensils, we have a Greco-Semitic doublet. The Odyssey, among the containers where the Cyclops deals with his flocks,
names the skaphides, σκαφίδες, and the gaules, γαυλοι. The first of the words is authentically Greek (root skaph, to
hollow, to cut). The second is borrowed from the Semites. It is not encountered except in the instance of the Homeric
poems, and we see that the entire passage is just a train of Greco-Semitic doublets. The Hebrew word, ‫נול‬, gul, or ‫נולה‬,
gul’a, signifies pitcher; we see how the isle, which the Greeks will name Gaulos, had received the name of Gul from the
Phoenicians; from the word for vessel, the Phoenicians had made a name of vessels, τα Φοινικικα πλοια γαυλοι καλουνται
(cf. in Greek, σκάφις, the pitcher, and σκάφη, the boat): Gaulos, adds Diodora, had been a Phoenician colony like Mala.
The word of gaulos, thus borrowed, shows well that the vessel was for the Phoenicians an article for sale. But the most
important item of exchange between civilized peoples and barbarians or semi-barbarians is always furnished by arms. In
the XVIIIth century, the French provide the peoples and tribes of all the Levant with arms: “The Druses have muskets and
sabers, and handle their arms with great skill. It is the Europeans who provided them with the first muskets which they
have had. They presently make them themselves, and their powder as well. It is not altogether as powerful as ours. They
do not fail to use it; but when they can have ours, and our bullets, they make it a special occasion.” Today, the negroes of
Africa make a similar case of our outmoded bullets and sabers. In Homeric times, the fine arms come from the Levant.
From Cyprus comes the breastplate of Agamemnon, given by the king Kinyras. The Cypriot king, originally from Syria
and founder of the cult of Aphrodite, appears to bear a Phoenician name. Son of Apollo, he was the musician king, who
had introduced the lamentations and the funeral chants into the orgies of Adonis: ‫כנור‬, kinur, is the name of a musical
instrument, of which the Greeks make their kinyra, κινύρα; the Kinyrides at Paphos had the guard and the duties of the
cult of Aphrodite as the Eumolpides at Eleusis had their rôle in the ceremonies of the Goddesses.
Helbig remarked with reason that the Homeric arms often bear names inexplicable by Greek etymology: άορ, ξίφος,
μάχαιρα, σάκος. Ancients and moderns have vainly sought an acceptable etymology for xiphos, ξίφος: whether one seeks
in ξέειν, ξαίνειν, ξύειν or οξύνειν, like the ancients, or σκαπτειν, like certain moderns, it is difficult to firmly believe in
such wordplay. The Aramaians have the word ‫סייפא‬, xiipha, to designate the sword, which the Arabs also have under the
form siphun and which the Egyptians have undoubtedly borrowed under the form sefi. The emphatic Aramaiac form
would lead us to a simple form ‫סייף‬, xiph, from which ξίφος should have come: the transcription of ‫ ס‬by ξ is in
conformance with the equivalence of the two letters in the alphabet. The Homeric word machaira, μάχαιρα, has been
transmitted up to modern Greek with the meaning of knife: the Scripture has ‫מכרה‬, makera, with the same meaning. The
transcription of ‫ כ‬by χ or the inverse is frequent. But the word makera is in the Bible a ‘άπαξ λεγόμενον [one-time
occurence], which is not found in any other Semitic language, and the Greek μάκαραι appears, by the example of μάχομαι
and of makto, to be related to Indo-European origins. Thus if one of the words is a borrowing, it was the Greeks, it
appears, who taught it to the Levatines. With more reason, they have related to the Semitic influence the word quiver,
γωρυτος, which is not found in the Iliad, and which is found only one time in the Odyssey. “Gorulos or chorulos,” says
Heschyus, “designates the box of arrows, the skin”, γορυτός . τοξοθήκη, θύλατος . ο‘ι δε χωρυτός. In the Scripture ‫הריט‬,
kharit, designates the purse, the sack of money, and the transcription as chorutos or gorulos is regular: the initial ‫ ה‬most
frequently gives a χ but also sometimes a γ: another Semitic word ‫הלבנה‬, khalban’a, has given to the Greeks χαλβάνη and
γάλβανον. I would willingly believe as well that the name of the large shield, protecting and covering the entire body,
σάκος, has come from the Semitic root ‫סכך‬, s.k.k., cover, protect, shelter: the word ‫סך‬, sac or ‫סך‬, soc, designates the
shelters of earth, of wood or of rocks, huts and dens; the Scripture appears to employ sokek, ‫סכך‬, to designate the turtle
under which the besiegers who come to undermine the walls are sheltered. In Arabic, the same root s.k.k. has furnished
the word sakkun, the armor, the coat of mail. Our Homeric sakos would be the equivalent of the Arabic sakkun.

231
 *
* *

III. Glass beads and jewelry. - The Glass beads chapter holds an important place in the Phoenician importation. In the
first place, it is a colored glassy paste in blue-green, the kyanos, κύανος, which had a great vogue in Homeric Greece. It is
Egypt, it appears, which first had produced and commonly employed the blue-green glass or the vitreous blue pottery, the
χesbet, with which they enameled their statues and of which they fabricated their bricks and scarabs: the Homeric palaces
were decorated with friezes in kyanos, like the tombs of the kings of Memphis. The Phoenicians, clients and suppliers of
Egypt, had learned how to fabricate the kyanos, and the mines of Cyprus produced for them the blue carbonate of copper,
which they brought to Egypt itself. It is probable - certain archeologists say, it is certain - that kyanos and the use of
kyanos were introduced at Tyrinthe and Orchomene by the Levantine artists. Foreign workers and artisans, like those of
whom the Odyssey speaks to us, will come to place the first friezes. Later, an Homeric epithet, kyanochaitas, with hair of
kyanos, will appear to us as an allusion to a habit which is not Greek: only the Egyptians appear to have had wigs of
χesbet, tresses of kyanos... Ivory, ελέφας, is also of a current usage. Now, antiquity always obtains its ivory from Africa:
the western Ethiopians furnish the market of Kerne with elephant tusks. The eastern Ethiopians supply the market of
Adulis, of which the hunters and eaters of elephants, Ελεφαντοφάγοι, Ελεφαντομάχοι, are neighbors. The Odyssey
already knows the “doubled” [eastern and western] Ethiopians, and the Homeric poems also know the Pigmys, the
dwarves of equatorial Africa: “If the Greeks,” says Helbig, with reason, “admitted the existence in Africa of a population
of men a cubit in height, it is because a race of dwarves lived in the equatorial regions, the descendants of which
Schweinfurth has recently recognized in the Akkas, established to the south of the Monbuttus. It is doubtful that the foot
of a Greek had ever trod the soil of these countries before the reign of the Ptolomies. It is evidently by the comerce of the
ivory, which the Akkas still actively deliver today, that they learned [in the Homeric and Greek world] of the existence of
the nation of dwarves, [and the notion penetrates] in the Ionian towns, perhaps by the intermediary of the Phoenicians”.
The Homeric world thus probably obtains its ivory from the same markets as the Greek and Roman world. Still, for the
commerce, the vessels of Sidon were the almost indispensable intermediaries. Kyanos and ivory, the transport of the two
materials between Phonecia or the lands of production and the Homeric ports presents no difficulty. It is another material,
amber, also commonly employed, also probably imported, which should give us much longer pause, for its commerce
supposes distant routes, knowledge and navigations which at first sight we do not readily attribute to the Phoenician
sailors.
The Phoenician corsair brings to the house of the king of Syria “a necklace of gold strung with amber”,

χρύσεον ‘ορμον έχων μετα ηλέκτροισιν έερτο.

Like the good Phoenician corsairs, Paul Lucas, just in making the voyage, continues his “jewelry trade”... The
necklace, termed hormos, says Helbig, “does not encircle the neck; but, passing from the nape of the neck, it it falls on the
chest and spreads over the bust.” It is a necklace of several rows and not a circle of metal; it is, even better, a cascade of
chains - the poet frequently employs the plural ‘ορμοι - “which from the nape of the neck delicately descend and curve in
parallel down over the silver breast, which they make brilliant.” The uncoiled chains can have up to nine cubits of length.

... μέγαν ‘όρμον

χρύσεον, ηλέκτροισιν εερμένον, εννεάπηχυν

The length is in no way exaggerated. Take a chain of nine cubits and fold it, double, triple or quadruple, to arrange it in a
series of circles from the neck to the chest: one will have four or five parallel circles which, from their graduated rows

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will cover the entire bust, from the neck to the waist. It is precisely the arrangement which the Homeric texts indicate to
us and it is also the arrangement which we also encounter in the necklaces of Chaldean, Cypriot or Spanish statues (bust
of Elche), the same as on the archaic monuments of Greece or Etruria. Historical Greece no longer knows the somewhat
barbaric deluxe display; the Oriental neck chains (I would willingly say “rastaquoueres” [rastracueros]) were in the truly
Greek epoch replaced by the narrow circle, the thin ring of metal which is already, in the Homeric poems, the ίσθμιον.
The hormos, brought by the Phoenicians to Syria, is a chain of gold strung with electres. In the Homeric poems there are
passages where the word electre, in the singular, ήλεκτρον, surely designates a metal, an alloy of gold and silver, and the
verse of the Odyssey describing the palace of Nestor certainly enumerates metals,

χαλκου τε στεροπην καδ δώματα ηχήεντα

χρυσου τ’ ηλέκτρου τε και αργύρου ήδ’ ελέφαντος.

But, elsewhere, electre, ήλεκρον, designates amber as well: Helbig has reason to prefer the second designation when it
pertains to our necklace. The text says, in effect, ηλέκτροισι, electres in the plural: “We have no example of the word for
the metal employed in the plural designating pieces of the metal; on the other hand, the use is very logical when it pertains
to amber, since we find it in pieces. In the second place, the superposition of gold over silvered gold [electrum] would not
have produced any decorative effect, the second being distinguished with difficulty from the first. On the other hand, the
brown or red-brown amber, nuanced, translucent, contrasts marvelously over its setting of gold. Finally, they have found
jewelry for the bust made of gold and amber in the Etruscan tombs.” We imagine without difficulty a chain of gold with
pieces or pendants of amber, and the remark of Helbig on the subject of the plural electres takes still more value if we
compare our Homeric verse with a text of Pliny where the plural ambres, succuna, is employed in the same sense to also
designate pendants of the necklace: hodie Transpadanorum agrestibus feminis monilium vice succina gestantibus,
maxime decoris gratia sed et medicinae; creditur quippe tonsillis resistere et faucium vitiis.
But from where can the amber of the jewelry come? The seas of Greece do not furnish amber. It nevertheless does not
appear that the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had never furnished it. To the contrary, on the shores of Sicily, between
Etna and cape Xiphonion, in the marshy gulf where the small rivers of the Amenanos come to discharge themselves, from
the Symaithos and from the Selinous, they still collect amber: “The river Simeto,” say the Nautical Instructions, flows
into the sea five miles to the south of Catana. They affirm that fine specimens of yellow, red and black amber have been
collected floating at its mouth.” The Phoenicians in the times of the Odyssey - we have the proof from the Odyssey itself -
knew and frequented the coasts of Sicily: in particular, they had trading posts on the east side of the isle, at the entrance of
the strait toward the Italian seas. Their amber could have been Sicilian. Pliny tells us also that amber was collected on the
coast of Tingitane Mauritania, near the town of Lixos. The Phoenician fleets frequented the Libyan waters in the times of
the epic. The Homeric Phoenicians had a second amber market there. It is thus possible that Sicily and Mauritania had
amply supplied the consumption of the primitive world. It is further possible that amber might have been formerly found
on many coasts where we no longer find it: it appears that Strabo and Theophrastis pointed out its presence on the
Ligurian coasts; moderns have indicated it on the Lucanian coasts. But, if we judge by the number and the importance of
the jewelry discovered in the preHellenic tombs, amber should have been very abundant then. Another difficulty:
Schliemann, having chemically analyzed pieces of amber found at Mycenae and Tirynth, believes that he could affirm
that the amber is not of Sicilian origin, but Baltic: the shores of the Baltic, remaining the great market of amber across the
centuries, had already provided that material to the Mycenaean necklaces. Although the hypothesis can cause some
surprise initially, it does not present, in sum, impossibilities or even great difficulties, and upon reflection it appears as
plausible. We just need to take the effort to envisage it with a bit of care and in detail.
Concerning the commerce in Baltic amber in primitive times, we know nothing; but later history offers us some
evidence. Other Semitic peoples, other commerce coming from western Asia have, in the course of history, reached the
European markets and coasts of the extreme north. If the Phoenicians knew the route of the Baltic amber, they have only
preceded their cousins from Arabia by twenty centuries. For, between the Baltic and the Caspian, along the Volga, the

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caches of Arabic coins mark a route of caravans which climbs to the Suedonese coasts and to the Baltic isles (especially
Oeland or Bornholm) from the Caspian and similarly, furthermore, from the Sassanid realms of Samarkand, Bukhara,
Tashkent, etc. Furs were one of the articles of Arab commerce, which lasts several centuries (the coins range from the
year 698 to 1010 of our era). But the amber also should have had its traffickers: the Arabs have always been great
consumers of amber for their jewelry, necklaces, pendants, etc., and since the Arab coins are found all the way into the
regions of amber, on the Pomeranian coasts, they are, I think, good evidence. (Ibn Fosslan, Arabic voyager, who ascended
the Volga about 920, speaks to us of the river markets, particularly of the capitol of the Bulgars situated between Kazan
and Simbirsk: among the objects imported by the Arabs, he points out the pearls of green glass, which the Russians
willingly buy at one dirham apiece; the Homeric kings attached such a price to their kyanos). From the Caspian or the
Sassanide realms, the Arabic commerce then descends toward Persia and Baghdad. Between the Persian gulf and the
Baltic, there is thus a route of amber.
The Greco-Roman Mediterranean may also have routes of amber reaching up to the Baltic. Diodora speaks to us of the
isle of Basileia, which is found across from Scythia to the north (in the Baltic) and which alone produces amber in
abundance; the surf casts amber on its coasts; this phenomenon is not produced anywhere else, αυδαμου δε της
οικουμένης φαινόμενον: it is the only place on earth which provides amber to the Greco-Romans of Diodora. Collected
by the islanders of Basileia, the electron is shipped from the facing coast, from where it descends “among us”, προς του;
καθ ‘ημας τόπους: by the Rhine and the Rhone, it arrives at Marseilles, which thus becomes the double market of Breton
tin and Scythian amber. Before the prosperity, even before the foundation of Marseilles, another route of amber, shorter
and more ancient, should have ended at the foot of the Adriatic, in the Isles of Amber, which the oldest Greek legends
celebrate (legend of Phaeton) and which the later geographers vainly seek near the mouths of the Po. We already know
the Isles of Tin at the foot of the sea. A double market of amber and tin thus would have had, there also, its fairs and its
customers coming from the sea. Like their neighbors the Kassiterides, of whom Scymnus of Chio spoke to us, the
Electrides Isles would only have been the end of comercial routes coming from the north across the defiles of the Alps.
Still long after the foundation of Marseilles, and even during its prosperity, the Adriatic route of amber should have been
frequented: it is by it, I imagine, that in the times of Pliny the women of the Transpadans received the ambers, succina, of
their necklaces.
But in the Far East of the Homeric world, our Arabic route of amber had its exact replacement, its twin, if, leaving
from the Black Sea to the place of separation of the Caspian, they ascended some one of the great rivers of southern
Russia, Tanais or Borysthene, to the point of ascending the Volga. Timea related that the Argonauts had ascended the
Tanais up to its source and then, by means of portages, they reached another river descending to the sea: thus they had
returned, from the north to the south, back to the strait of Cadiz, keeping the European continent to their left. The
exactitude of certain details (the portage of the boats which is always practised in the Russian highlands) proves, I think,
that the supposed route of the Argonauts was actually known and practised by the ancients. And the “Most Ancients”
continue to follow it, or at the very least begin it. For the legend of the Argonauts appears to me to enter, like the Odyssey,
into the collection of traditions or of knowledge which the Hellenes will receive from their predecessors. Let us reflect,
otherwise, on the condition of geographic notions to which the Odyssian legends attest. Navigating all along the African
coasts, the Phoenicians of the Homeric times had already reached the strait of Gibralter. Should it not be admitted, with
more reason, that they had cruised their Asiatic coasts toward the north: from the archipelago where we see them, they
had necessarily passed into the straits, and into the Black Sea. Along the maritime route, from the archipelago up to the
Crimea, there still exist numerous topological and toponymical evidences of the primitive navigations, which similarly
certain passsages of the Homeric poems seem to implicate. When Zeus turned his eyes away from the plain of Troy,
where the combat roars, he looks toward the land of the Thracians, masters of chargers, of the Mysians, attired for hand to
hand combat, of the excellent Hippemolgues, who were nourished on milk, and of the Abians, the most just of men. The
geography of the extreme north is very exact: “The Mysians of Europe,” says Helbig, “are the inhabitants of the country
between the Ilemos and the Istros, which the Romans call Moesia: such is also the opinion of Poseidonios related by
Strabo. The Hippemolges are the Scythians living nomadically to the north of the Istros: mare’s milk is the essential part

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of their nutrition. The legend relating to the just Abians probably rests on the same tradition of Herodotus concerning the
Argipaians; these, living to the north of the Scythians, abstain from all war, mediating the differences between the
neighboring peoples, and passing for holy and inviolable men.” In Herodotus and in the Homeric text the words are
similar: “the Abians, the most just of men”, says the poet,

Αβίων τε δικαιοτάτων ανθρώπων,

“the Argipaians never sufer injustice,” says Herodotus, “τούτους ουδεις αδικέει ανθρώπων, and they never commit it, ‘ός
‘άν φεύγων καταφύγη ες τούτους, ‘υπ’ ουδενος αδικέεται.”
Helbig considers that the geographic knowledge of the extreme north was given, to the Homeric poet as to the
historian, by the relations of comerce established between the Scythians and the Ionian towns. In the times of Herodotus,
the Ionians of Asia Minor had populated the entire Black Sea with their colonies. But I do not think that in Homeric times
they already had: the Ionians had not yet explored the Sea of Storms. It is from other navigators that the first Hellenes will
know the waters. In the same text of Herodotus, there are some details which need to be taken up again. “The Hellenes,
who inhabit the Pont, Ελλήνων δε ο‘ι τον Πόντον οικέοντες,” have furnished our author some of his evidence; but he has
also drawn from other memories. The sevenfold rhythm appears to preside in the calculation of his distances and his
dates: The Scythians remain twenty-eight years (7x4) in Media; the nomadic Scythians spend fourteen days en route
(7x2), the Sauromates fifteen, the Boudines seven; the Argipaian are so far from the coast that one needs seven
interpreters in seven languages to reach them... We shall presently see that the text of Herodotus even contains a Greco-
Semitic doublet. And toward the shores of Scythia, from the archipelago up to the Crimea, we can trace the route of the
first Phoenician navigations. Take up again, in effect, the series of maritime names and sites along the northwest coasts of
Asia Minor: we retrieve the collection of our doublets.
In the archipelago, the last resting place of the Asiatic sailors, before the opening of the straits is, to the south of the
Troad, the gulf of Ida. This gulf is the last shelter the boats find before the great current of air which is always the Strait.
In Homeric times, the gulf is occupied by the Cilicians. Classical antiquity no longer knew the Cilicians of Ida. But in
Homeric times, they are the friends and allies of the Trojans: Andromache is a daughter of the king of the Cilicians; she
has seven brothers. The town of the Cilicians is called Thebes, Θήβη, like the town of Cadmus (and presently a doublet
will prove to us the Semitic origin of the name), and, if the Boeotian Thebes is the town of Seven Ports, ‘Επτάπορος, the
Cilician Thebes has the river of seven mouths, ‘Επτάπορος, which they also call the river of many mouths, Πολύπορος,
which shows well the legendary and ritual allure of the number seven. The gulf of Ida today bears the name of the gulf of
Edmerid, and the Turkish town of that name occupies the location of the old Adramyttion, Αδραμύττιον. Olshausen long
ago recognized the Semitic origin of the names of the form of Atramit or Adramit, Ατραμιται or Αδραμυται, Ατραμύτιον
or ‘Αδραμύτιον, ‘Αδρύμητος or ‘Αδρούμητος, which are found in the Arabian sea and in the entire Mediterranean: the
Arabic place name provides us still today the original in the name of Hadramaut. The Latins will transcribe the last word
under the form Atramitae, and the Greeks under the form Khatramotites, Χατραμωτιται. The diverse transcriptions are
justified without difficulty. The Semitic name is, in effect, composed of two words ‫הער‬, khatar, and ‫מות‬, mut: the Bible
gives them to us with the modern vocalization khatarmauet. The initial letter is the strong aspirate ‫ת‬, het, which the
Greeks, we know, sometimes render as a χ or by a rough breathing, and sometimes ignore entirely. The Arabic
orthography explains to us why, in their transcriptions Adramut, Αδραμύτιον or ‘Αδρύνητος, the Greeks most frequently
ignore the ‫ת‬: the Arabic has here an unpointed, soft ha. Similarly, the Arabic, which has for the second consonant a dad,
explains to us the transcription of ‫ ע‬by a dental, τ or δ, and not by a sibilant, σ: we know that the Greeks always vacillate
between the alternatives of a dental or a sibilant to render the ‫ ת‬in the Semitic names. [As for the other consonants, ,‫ ר‬,‫ מ‬,‫ו‬
‫ת‬, the transcription as ρ,μ,υ or ου, and τ speaks for itself and the vocalization is justified by simple reading.] ‫הערמות‬,
Hadramut, Αδραμύττιον, signifies the Ring or the Hall of Death.
In the Arabic place name, the name is sufficiently explained by the neighboring name of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Port of
Groaning. The coast of Hadramut, at the entry of the great Indian ocean, is the port of storms, of cyclones, of the sea

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without isles and without refuge, the hall of death. But in our archipelago, the gulf of Edrimid is also the last lobby before
the terrible, inhospitable and dark sea of the Pont-Euxin (ποντος ευξεινος, hospitable sea after, ποντος αξεινοσ,
inhospitable sea, before Greek colonization), the Black Sea. The sailing ships ascending to the Dardanelles here leave the
so well sheltered channel of Chios, Samos and Rhodes: they find their last refuge in the gulf. There they can, they should
sojourn. We already know how the Dardanelles, for the ships coming from the south, are inaccessible, when the wind
blows a bit violently from the north. The Bora, frequent during the summer, that is to say during the navigating season,
sometimes persists for several weeeks. Thus the gulf of Edrimid is frequently full of sailing ships awaing a calm. The
natives live off of the layovers of foreigners. They furnish food to the crews. They especially furnish wood for the
damaged ships. The mountainous coast is covered with oaks and firs: from Strabo up to our Nautical Instructions, all the
marine geographers point out to us the forested wealth and the industry of the inhabitants. They also point out the
temptation and ease which the inhabitants have to become brigands and pirates, to profit without too many scruples from
the windfalls of the storms: Homer, near to the Cilicians, already knew the sea pirates whom he calls Leleges.
If the Phoenicians ever undertook the navigation of the Black sea, we can be sure in advance that their boats have
frequented the gulf of Edremid. They have sojourned on the coasts, established the posts for wintering and for the
exploitation of the forests and mines: Strabo points out a copper mine in the vicinity. The gulf of Ida is the symmetrical
appendage of another Asiatic gulf which we have studied at the entrance of the Greek seas. At the point where the
Levantine navigators leave the steep and bare Asiatic shores of Cilicia and Pamphylia, to enter into the fine dentitions of
the Lycian, Karian, and then Ionian coasts, at the door of the Hellenic seas, we have studied the gulf of Adalia and the
station of Phaselis. The gulf of Ida marks the end of the Hellenic seas, as the gulf of Adalia marked their beginning. At
the other extremity of the Sea of Isles and Estuaries, at the new turning of the route toward the north, the bay of the
Homeric Cilicians is a site entirely comparable to the bay of the Solymes. Nothing is more reasonable than that the
brother of Phoenix, Kilix, might come to install himself in this location: mountains, isles and ports, the place names
similarly seem to furnish us a certitude, for Atramut, Αδραμυτιον, is not an isolated name. As in Crete, the coastal
mountain points toward the sky its peak of Ida, Ιδα, Ιδη, which, from its forests and its almost constant snows, dominates
the entire gulf. The name Ida has no meaning in Greek: it is easily explained by a Semitic etymology. The Semites name
‫יד‬, iad, id, or ‫ידא‬, ida, idu, the hand, the finger. The name of the mountain would be the Phoenician equivalent of
Monodactyle, the Single Finger, and Pentadactyle, the Five Fingers, which the ancient Greeks knew in the Arabian sea,
of the Besh-Parmak, five fingers, which the Turks still have at the maritime entrance of the plain of the Meander
(Πεντεδάκτυλος, the modern Greeks translate). The two Idas, both situated at the edge of the sea, point out the coast
which they domionate from afar and serve as seamarks to the navigators. It would thus not be strange that from all times
the peoples of the sea would have noted these points of reference, and it appears that here again, the place name and the
legend may have retained a Greco-Semitic doublet.
At the foot of the Cretan Ida, the legends know the Idean genies, which are thus the Fingers, the Idean Dactyles,
Δάκτυλοι Ιδαιοι. They had for a father the Finger, Δακτυλος, and for the mother Ida: daktylos is the Greek word,
masculine; ida is the Semitic word, ‫ידא‬, ida, feminine. We understand that this household Finger-Hand had given in its
day the Fingers, the Daktyles. The Idean Phrygia has its Daktyles like Crete, and of the one and the other, near the two
mounts Ida, we have the Greek place names of the form dikte, δίκτη. Strabo already noted the similarity of the place
names: in Crete, Dikte is the mountain of the Idaian Daktyles; in the Troad, Dikte is a place of the territory of Skepsis.
Dikte is of a doubtful sense to the ears of the classical Hellenes: they retain only the diminutive dact-ule, δάκτυλος to
designate the finger: but the example of the Latin digitus shows us well enough that dikte, δίκτη, was in reality the exact
translationof the Semitic Ida: The Greek word Dikte was feminine like the Semitic word Ida. The Greek transcription
would be entirely regular: ‫יד‬, id, or ‫ידא‬, ida, being feminine, correspond to the orthography Ίδ-η. For the sense, the
religious legends of Crete or the Troad and the dedication of the high mountains to the greatest of the gods would accord
well with the religious signification that, on their monuments or in their texts, the Semites of Canaan and Carthage give to
the Raised Hand, to the Finger: The Idaian Daktyles were the servants of Zeus.

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 The coasts of Lesbos, which form the other shore of the gulf of Edremid, also appear to retain some Phoenician names.
They have wished to explain by Semitic etymologies the names of Mitylene, Μιτυλήνη, and of Methymna, Μέθυμνα,
principal towns of the isle; but no doublet exists, no indication to support the doubtful etymologies. Before the Greek
colonization, nevertheless, the ancients knew that Lesbos had been occupied by other peoples of the sea. Lesbos
originally was deserted. The Pelasgians had colonized it. Then, seven generations later, Makar or Makareus, the principal
hero of Lesbos, one of the seven Heliades, had come from Rhodes (the Iliad celebrates the seven Lesbians who surpass all
the other women and whom Agamemnon promises to Achilles: Lesbos had the seven Muses or the seven daughters of the
kings or the seven slaves of the king Makea consecrated to the divinitiy or transported among the stars). Makar really
came from the Levantine seas, and, from the first occupation, Lesbos has retained the doublet Issa-Pyrrha. For Issa, Ίσσα,
Strabo and Diodora tell us, is one of the old names of the isle: it is also the name of a Lesbian nymph, daughter of
Makareus, and it is a town of Lesbos. In reality the Town of the Nymph of the Fire, Pyrrha, πύρρα, πυρ, is just the Greek
translation of the Semitic Issa: ‫אש‬, is, or ‫אשה‬, issa, the fire. Another legend of the archipelago has retained for us the same
doublet: Achilles, hidden on the isle of Skyros and disguised as a woman among the daughters of Lykomedes, is called by
the double name of Issa or Pyrrha.
At Lesbos, the ancients had forgotten the exact equivalence of Issa-Pyrrha; but they remembered another doublet
which will explain the first to us even better: Issa, they said, is the same thing as Himera, ‘Ιμέρα, and Himera is an old
Lesbian name designating the entire isle or only one of its towns. We thus again find a place name which we have already
pointed out in the gulf of the Solymes, ‫חמרה‬, Khimera, the Boiling, the name which the Semites had given to the volcanic
mouth of Lycia, to the Chimera, Χιμαίρα, of the Greeks. It is the name which they also give to the Sicilan hot springs,
opened by Hercules, they said, and near the Phoenician town of the Rocks, Soloentum. In Sicily, the Phoenicians, who did
not have their town near the springs, will nevertheless transmit the name to their successors, and the Greeks not far from
there will raise their Thermes of Himera, Θερμαι ‘Ιμραίαι, whose name still exists in the town of Termini. We see that
Thermes-Himera, Θερμαι-‘Ιμέρα, is an excellent doublet, and the transcription of ‫חמרה‬, Khimera, Semitic, as Himera,
‘Ιμερα, Greek, presents nothing abnormal, the initial ‫ ח‬being rendered by a χ in one place, by a rough breathing in the
other... But Lesbos is also an isle ot the Thermes, for it has hot springs in several places, notably a bit to the north of
Mitylene, on the coast of the strait: it is an isle of Hot Springs and of Fire, a Boiler, Himera and a Burner, Issa.
Let us continue our route of amber toward the Pont-Euxin. To the north of Lesbos, the market of Lemnos, in Homeric
times, is frequented by the Phoenicians. They come, as in Syria, to install their bazaar in the echelle and display their
merchandises: it is from them that the king Thoas received as a gift a marvelous bowl of silver,

στησαν δ’ εν λιμένεσσι, Θόαντι δε δωρον έδωκαν.

To the High isle which is the Samos of Thrace, came the Oriental Cadmus (‫קדם‬, Kadem), and they worship him there,
as at Rhodes they worship some oriental demons coming from the sea, from Rhodes, I believe (for the text of Heschius
bears θεοι ο‘ι εκ Δρόμου μετακομισθέντες: it should be corrected εκ ‘Ρόδου). At Thasos, a Greco-Semitic doublet
appears to me to verify the tradition: Thasos the Phoenician, says Herodotus, gave his name to the isle which the Greeks
name the Aerian, Αερία. In Greek, the epithet aerios is applied to everything which lives or ascends in the air, especially
to winged creatures or to rocks which extend into the air: to fly, ascend, hang in the air would be translated by the Semitic
root ‫מוש‬, th.u.s. I believe that Thasos, Θάσος, is the transcription of an original Semitic ‫מש‬, thas, of which αερία would be
the translation, Herodotus already saw the Phoenician mines at Thasos.
At the entrance of the Dardanelles, the town of Priam is a fortuned town, well supplied with gold, with silver, with
slaves, with fabrics and precious objects. Only the commerce of the sea was able to cause this prosperity; we have in
effect rendered account of the conditions of this primitive commerce. The tradition would have it that Troy was a
foundation of the peoples of the sea: Dardanos, the first ancestor of the Trojan dynasty, had come from Samothrace... At
the edge of the Dardanelles, many of the sites and names could arrest our attention. We know that the seamark of the
Tomb of the Dog, Κυνός Σημα, well appears to initially have been nothing but a Skula, a Phoenician Rock. The strait is

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marked, on the Asiatic coast, with names which appear to have the same origin: the gold mines of Astira have perhaps
gained the neighboring town, Abydos, its name. But this etymology and other similar ones, Αστύρα, Λάμψακος, etc., in
themselves carry no proof of authenticity. And similarly, in the Propentide, names, sites and legends appear to derive
from before the Greek colonization; but no doublet provides us with a reliable indication.
On the other hand, it appears certain to me that Kalchedon, at the entrance to the Bosphorus, is topologically and
toponymically a preHellenic town. By the proper Greek meaning, it was a “Town of the Blind”. It was an emporium
isolated on a promontory, across from the best site that a Greek town could dream of: the Hellenic Byzance dethrones the
old Kalchedon. Byzance had all the advantages, deep enclosed harbor in the midst of fertile fields and hills, fishing
grounds, etc. The Greeks could not comprehend that, between Byzance and Kalchedon, their predecessors had chosen the
latter. But we know why the preHellenic sailors flee the enclosed harbors and prefer the retreats on the coastal islets or the
promontories. Kalchedon and Byzance can be chosen as the types of maritime establishments of the two epochs,
preHellenic and Greek. With its spring, with its islet attached to the coast by an easily defended isthmus, Kalchedon is in
effect precisely the type of the primitive or, properly speaking, Phoenician factories, such as Thucydides describes for us
on the circumference of Sicily. Occuped solely by commerce, not seeking, like the Hellenes later, to occupy the fertile
plains or the coasts tumbling down to their deep bays, the Phoenicians wish only the height of a promontory which
surveys the difficult passages and offers to the retreat a debarkation, a fortress, some trading posts and a spring. It is just
these which Kalchedon can offer: littus supinum et planum, lenissimo fluvio irrigatum, in ipsoque Veneris Templum
atque justa ipsum parvus isthmus multam circumscribit cherroneseum in qua urbi Chalcedon, paulum supra fluvium
appellatum Chalcedonem sita, portus utrinque habens in flexibus in isthmum recedentibus, unum quidem ad vesperum
spectantem, alterum ad solis ortum; ipsa quidem effertur colle quidem humilior, plantie vero asperior. It is - we see it
imediately - the site of the Town of the Phoenicians, with a double port on the flanks of a promontory. Kalchedon, like
the town of Alkinoös, can only suit navies solely occupied with conveying merchandise and persons and needing neither
terrestrial domination nor agriculturre. In this regard, Kalchedon had a great advantage over Byzance. The violent current
of the Bosphorus comes to batter the point of Old Serail and renders the station dangerous for arrivals and departures into
the Golden Horn. The current never makes itself felt at Kalchedon. Now, things being so, would it be presumptuous to
relate this same name, Chalkedon, Καλχήδων or Καλκήδων, which has no meaning in Greek, to the transcriptions
Karchedon or Charkedon, Καρχήδων or Χαρκήδων that the Greeks make of the Phoenician words signifying the New
Town?
Like most of the straits of the Mediterranean, the Hellespont passes for having seven stades. It is a Heptastadion, like
the strait of the Columns that we already know. There, the difference was so great between the measure and the reality
that others would say seventy stades instead of seven, το δε στενότατον περι ‘εβδομήκοντα σταδίους λέγεται. The strait of
Messina is a Heptastade. The strait between Pharos and Alexandria is a Heptastade neighboring the delta of seven
mouths. The channel of Otrante has seven hundred stades. The strait of the Ox, which separates the land of Hermione
from the isle Aperopia, has a Heptastade promontory. I believe that the Heptastades relate to the time when the
Mediterranean was the sea of Seven Isles. For the Mediterranean was supposed to have seven large isles which the Greeks
and Romans were obliged to enumerate: which was to say Skylax, Sardinia, Crete, Sicily, Cyprus, Eubea, Corsica and
Lesbos. Others replaced Corsica or Lesbos with the Peloponnesus... We are going to return to the seven numbers.
On the other shore of the Bosphorus, cruising the European coast, I believe that from cape to cape we would find
similar souvenirs up to the Danube - which was suposed to have seven mouths in the legend (cf. the seven mouths of the
Nile and the seven mouths of the Sindh), whereas the Hellenes do not know it to have more than five - then down to the
Cimmerian Bosphorus which, near the town of the Seven Gods, also was seventy stades wide, or to Phase, the stream of
the Golden Fleece, which could be, in effect, the River of Gold: ‫פז‬, phaz, signifies the fine gold. The Asiatic coast is
traversed by the old maritime route which led to the forests and mines of the Tibares and the Moskes. It appears that
Genesis already knew the route between Tyre and Mesesk, by Ionia, Thrace and Tibel: Iavan, Thrax, Tibel and Mesek, it
says. Before the Milesians who, the first of the Greeks, will frequent the shores, Phineus, son of Tyrios the Phoenician,
had established himself there. It was the land of the Seven Towns, whose silver mines and name of Alybe the Iliad knew.

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From the foot of the Black Sea to the sea of Cyprus, was pressed a narrow isthmus, as the ancients say, Asia Minor: it
requires five days of march to cross, Herodotus and Skylax believe; the better informed people knew that it needs seven.
At the other extremity of the Mediterranean, we have the same marches of seven days between two seas, if we believe the
Carthaginian testimonies of Avienus. The sevenfold numeration does not in effect seem to be random. In the Black Sea,
as in the Mediterranean, it should be the souvenir of navigations prior to the Greeks, for they count by five and by ten.
Thus I believe that, before the Greeks, the Phoenicians will frequent the Black Sea, where the amber arrived from the
Baltic, by virtue of the ascent and descent of the great Russian rivers. “The Borysthene,” says the periple of the Black Sea,
“is a river of the utmost utility: it is navagable,” they say, “for a distance of forty-five days.” In the times of the Byzantine
thalassocracy, the Russian chronicles speak of a road from Constantinople to the Baltic, by the Dnieper (Borysthene), the
Levat, lake Ilmen, the course of the Volchov, lake Ladoga and finally the Neva. The Borysthene, for certain ancient
geographers, was already the river of the Amber.

CHAPTER IV

RHYTHMS AND NUMBERS

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη ‘έβδομον ημαρ επι Ζευ; θηκε Κρονίων.

Odyss., XV, 477

To fill their hold with food and wines, or to relieve themselves of their trinkets, our Phoenicians remained an entire
year at Syria. They put off their departure from week to week: true Semites, the Sidonians reckon by weeks and they
taught the native Greeks to count this way. At least, each time the Phoenicians appeared in the Homeric poems or in the
memories and legends of primitive Greece, it is always seven which is the number used, and six to seven the habitual
speech:

‘εξημαρ μεν ‘ομως πλέομεν νυκτας τε και ημαρ,

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη ‘έβδομον ημαρ επι Ζευς θηκε Κρονίων.

continues Eumea, recounting her abduction bythe Phoenicians: “Six days we navigate, day and night, but when Zeus
Chronion sends us the seventh day... ” Ulysses, similarly, relates that he wished to go to Egypt: he had assembled a fleet
of nine vessels and numerous companions; before departing, he had devoted an entire week to sacrifices and feasts; the
seventh day he embarks,

‘εξημαρ μεν έπειτα εμοι ερίηρες ‘εταιροι

δαίνυντο.
‘εβδομάτη δ’ αναβάντες απο Κρήτης ευρείης,...

then he remains seven years in Egypt and it is the eighth year that a Phoenician takes him from there,

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 ένθα μεν ‘επτάετες μένον αυτόθι...

It is again a week that Ulysses and his companions spend in feasts on the isle of the Sun, and we have here again the
same formula as above:

‘εξημαρ μεν έπειτα εμοι ερίηρες εταιροι

δαίνυντ’ ‘Ηελίοιο βοων ελάσαντες αρίστας,
αλλ’ ‘ότε δη ‘έβδομον ημαρ επι Ζευς θηκε Κρονίων.

It is a week that the navigation of Ulysses to the land of the Lestrygons lasts,

‘εξημαρ μεν ‘ονως πλέομεν νύκτας τε και ημαρ,

‘εβδομάτη δε ‘ικόμεσθα Λάμον αιπυ πτολίεθρον...

Menelaus stayed seven years in the seas of Cyprus, of Phonecia, of Egypt, and he returned the eighth year,

ηγαγόμην εν νευσι και ογδοάτω έτει ηλθον

Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε και Αιγυπτίους επαληθείς,
Αιθίοπας θ’ ‘ικόμην και Σιδονίους και Ερεμβους
και Λιβύην...

and during the seven years that Menelaus travels, Egisthe rules in peace; but the eighth year, Orestes comes to avenge his
father,

‘επτάετες δ’ ήνασσε πολυχρύσοιο Μυκήνης...

τω δε ο‘ι ογδοάτω κακον ήλυθε διος Ορέστης.

We already know how Ulysses stays seven years with Calypso (in the seven stades strait, near the Seven Brothers,
etc.),

ένθα μεν ‘επτάετες μένον έμπεδον...

The number seven does not return so frequently and in formulas which appear so ritual by a simple caprice of the poet
or for the convenience of poetry: πεντε would give the same syllables as ‘επτα. But it appears that along with the decimal
system, which was in current use, a sevenfold or twelvefold system is employed, and the systems alternate or are joined in
many passages. Menelaus and Ulysses remain seven years in Egypt; but it is ten years that they remain at the seige of
Troy, and ten years that Ulyssses takes to return home. On the isle of the Sun, with seven herds of fifty cattle, the
companions of Ulusses make six days of feast and leave the seventh, then Ulysses navigates nine days and the tenth
arrives to Calypso, where he stays seven years and from whence he takes seventeen days to return. Maron of Ismaros
gives to Ulysses seven talents and twelve amphoras which each hold twenty measures. Ulysses elsewhere counts the
marvelous presents made by him, he says, to his host: seven talents, twelve capes, twelve carpets, twelve veils, twelve
chitons, twelve lamps, and some women. Telemachus loads as provisions twelve skins of wine and twenty measures of
flour... We see the constant alternation of the two systems. I know fullwell that the same alternation is found in our daily
life: our households count eggs and handkerchiefs by dozens, while paying for them in decimal money; we would be hard
put to explain the origin of the contradiction. But, in the Odyssey, certain facts should put us on alert. It appears that the

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system of five and ten may truly be the Greek system, for αριθμέω, to count, has for a synonym πεμπάζομαι, place by
five:

φωκας μέν τοι πρωτον αριθμήσει και έπεισιν

αυταρ επην πάσας πεμπάσσεται ηδε ίδηται...

The figure seven and the numeration by six, to the contrary, apear at all the times when the Phoneccians appear, also at
all the times where in the context we find a word, a legend, a theory which appears of Phoenician origin. It is with the
Phoenicians that Eumea navigates six days and loses her nurse the seventh; for, on the seventh day sent by Zeus, she falls
into the hold like a seagull, ‘ως εναλίν κήξ (remember the last word: we are going to retrieve it again accompanied by the
figure seven). It is with the Phoenicians or in their waters that Menelaus sojourns seven years. It is in the isles legendary
to the Greeks, real for the Semites, of Calypso-Ispania and of Nearia-Phaethusa that Ulysses passes seven years or knows
the seven herds of the Sun. Similarly, if we take ourselves back to the Greco-Semitic doublet of the Steep town, Αίπεια-
Θουρία, which the Iliad has furnished us, we have in the Messenian region the seven towns which Agamemnon promises
to give to Achilles with seven Lesbian and twenty Trojan women, ten talents and seven cauldrons, twenty saucepans and
twelve sheep; a few verses earlier, there was a matter of seven batallions of a Hundred Guards, come from the same
region,

‘επτ’ έσαν ‘ηγέμονες φυλάκων, ‘εκατον δε ‘εκάστω,

and from the same land Philoctete led seven boats of fifty warriors. The seven maritime towns, πασαι δ’ εγγυς ‘αλός,
forcefully bring back the memory of that old maritime amphictony of preHellenic antiquity, of seven towns grouped
around the sanctuary of Kalauria and of the cult of Poseidon. Historic Greece disputed the name of the titleholders of the
amphictyony, for certain ports, in Hellenic times, had disappeared or lost all their clientel, which had formerly made a
great commerce. But they always knew that the titled towns were seven in number, and I will show without difficulty that
certain of the harbors appear to have Semitic names (Marathon, Brasiai, etc.). If we wish further examples, is it by chance
that in the Iliad the shield of Ajax, made of seven oxhides, should be the work of the Boeotian Tychios, who lives in the
land of Cadmus and of Thebes with seven gates? Is it by chance that the Homeric legend of Hercules has the hero born at
seven months and has him attack Ilion with a flotilla of six boats? Is it again by chance that the silver bowl, work of the
skilled Sidonians, contains six measures? In the legend of Charybdus and Scylla, is the same alternance of two
numerations always by chance? Scylla, horrible monster, has twelve feet, six necks, and crouches in a cavern so high that
a mortal could not reach it with twenty hands and twenty feet. Now, Scylla (we have already seen and will see even
better) has coming from the same Phoenician onomasty as Calypso. Furthermore, if we do not allow the usage of the
week, there are legends of the Odyssey which are impossible to understand. Similarly, in effect, as the Rhodian legend
knew the seven Heliades, sons of the Sun, likewise the Odyssey speaks to us of the seven herds of cattle and the seven
flocks of sheep, of fifty head each (in Leviticus, fifty is also the ritual number, the perfect number, 7x7=49), that the two
nymphs Phaethousa and Lampetia, daughters of Helios and the divine Nearia guard on the isle of the Sun,

‘επτα βοων αγέλαι, τόσα δ’ οιων πώεα καλά.

On the isle of the Sun, the companions of Ulysses make their seven days of feasting. The seven herds of cattle
represent the days (the same Semitic word ‫בקר‬, bakar and boker, signifies ox and morning), and the seven flocks of sheep,
the nights: we will presently see the entire legend of the Sun and of his wife Neaira enter into the series of Calypso-
Ispania and Circe-Aiaia doublets. Dion Cassius, regarding the Jews and their sabbath, tells us that the week was not
introduced into Rome until his time or a little earlier, and that the ancient Greeks never knew it. The Greeks, in effect, in
historic times, did not divide their months into weeks, but into decades. If it is different in Homeric times, it is that the

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Homeric civilization is a mix of native customs and exotic fashions. The phonomenon is not surprising. In the XVIIth and
XVIIIth centuries, the western sailors, of Latin Christianity, impose their holidays and their calendar, along with their
merchandise, upon the Levantine islanders of Orthodx Christianity: into the isles they import Jesuits and their feasts,
Capuchians and their devotions, at the same time as fabrics and arms. Thanks to the French, the Orthodox islanders of the
archipelago thus will know the Latin calendar, and they continue to adopt it for their commercial relations with the
Catholic sailors, while they do not cease using the Orthodox calendar for their daily life and to follow it for their relations
among themselves... In the Homeric poems we similarly have two calendars present, two systems of mensuration of time
and numeration of merchandise.
Historic Greece, no longer having such frequent contact with the Semites, frees herself from the week at the same time
as from the commercial dependance which Tyre and Sidon had held. She counts by five and by ten; but in her popular
legends she retained the memory of a preHellenic period, when the number seven played a ritual rôle. If the Hellade
knows the ten Attic orators, primitive Greece knew the seven sages, two of whom, at the very least, the Greeks would
think to have been students of the Phoenicians: Pherecyde, born on our isle of Syria, and Thales, son of a Milesian of the
Phoenician race. Similarly, if primitive Greece had known the seven isles of the Mediterranean, the historic Hellade knew
the ten isles of the world. “Ptolomy,” says Eustathe, “would find ten ten large isles in the world, Taprobane, Britain,
Chersonnese, Doria, Iberia, Peloponnesus, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Crete and Cyprus. He wished to have ten, and he
needed to count two peninsulas, συναρθμων αυταις και δύο χερρονήσους, ‘ως άν, οιμαι, την δεκάδα σεμνύνη”. It is no
different that we have seen Herodotus sustitute the number ten for the number seven of the Semites in the measures of
Libya, and similarly substititue five days of march for the seven days needed to traverse Asia Minor, and again substitute
only five mouths for the seven mouths of the Nile: “The Nile,” says Strabo, “has seven mouths, or at least seven important
mouths, for there are a great number of them, but secondary, λεπτότερια δε πλείους”. “If Herodotus terms the Nile ‘with
five mouths’“ says Eustathe, “it is that two of the mouths are not natural, but dug by the hands of men.” The Nile has
never had five or seven mouths: “The Greeks,” says G. Maspero, “recognized seven mouths of the Nile, in comparison
with which the others would only be false mouths (duodecim enim reperiuntur superque quatuor quae falsa ora
appellant). In reality there are only three dominant channels, the Canopic, the Pelusiac and the Sebennytic.”
Primitive Greece also had the seven wonders of the world and, in the land of Cadmus, the seven gates of Thebes and
the seven who will march against them. The poets retain the habit of dividing the human life into weeks of years, of
considering as the apogee the end of the seventh week, the fiftieth (7x7=49), and of reckoning all the education and all the
conduct of men following the rhythm of seven years: “nevertheless,” says Aristotle, “it is apparent that the system does
not at all accord with reality”... In Athens, they gave a name to infants only on the eighth day. It is no different than the
things happening in the Thousand and One Nights; in which the infants are circumcised and named on the eighth day:
“Any woman,” says Leviticus, “who will give birth to a male, will be unclean for seven days and, on the eighth , she will
circumcise her son.” The Athenians, who had forgotten the ritual motive for the custom, will invent a reason of
experience and practicality: “during the first week,” they say, “infants have too much chance of dying; it is futile to give
them a name before being sure they will live.” The Greek spirit appears better still in another explanation of the same
number seven. In Samothrace, in one of the High Isles of the Semitic name Σάμος, Σάμη, the Greeks had mysteries which
they believed were of Phoenician importation; the number seven was ritual in them: “it is that Zeus, being born, began
laughing, and he laughed for seven days before resting.” What an amiable difference! The later god of the Semites set
himself to work the first day and rested the seventh; the charming god of the Greeks begins life with outbursts of laughter,
with a week of gaiety. It is Theodore of Samothrace who gives us the explanation: it should have been documented above
the mysteries and dogmas of his country.
The geographic traditions, especially, and the maritime legends will faithfully retain the number seven: seven great
isles, river of the Seven Mouths or of Seven Fords, seven or seventy stades strait, confederations of seven ports, we
alrready have numerous examples, and for the confederated towns, in particular, the choice was as difficult as among the
seven homelands of Homer. It was a tribute of seven boys and seven daughters, for nine years, that Minos demanded of
the Athenians, and Theseus is the first of the seven. The same Theseus, in his fiftieth year (7x7=49), abducts the young

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Helen who is only seven years old. It is the oldest authors, especially Hellanikos, who have transmitted this legends to us.
The polygraphs of the later centuries have conserved similar ones for us. In the historic Hellade, beings and things of the
sea still follow the seven rhythm. Euripe rested all the sevenths of the months. On the isle of Anros, a marvelous fountain
gave wine at certain intervals of seven days, statis diebus septinis. It is by weeks that the gestation of fish should be
measured, for some carry for more than thirty days, others less, but all, a whole number of weeks. Among the seabirds,
the halcyons nested, incubated and raised their young during the two weeks of calm which Zeus had established for them
during the bad season. They were the halcyon days, seven days before and seven days after the winter solstice: thus Zeus
recompensed the faithfulness of the hero Keyx, Κήυξ, and his wife Alkyone, ‘Αλκυώνη, whom he had metamorphosed
into halcyons.
The legend leads us back to our Odyssian verses and to the account of Eumea: the seventh day, the Phoenician nurse
falls to the bottom of the hold like a sea kex,

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη ‘έβδομον ημαρ επι Ζευς θηκε Κρονίων,

άντλω δ’ ενδούπησε πεσουσ’ ‘ως ειναλίη κήξ.

Κήξ, καύαξ, καύηξ, κάFαξ, κήυξ, the name keyx varies frequently in orthography around three fundamental
consonants,k-u-x, κ-υ-ξ. The second of the consonants appears to have originally been a digamma that they later render by
an υ or a β - for we also have κάβαξ - or which they simply suppress. Now, there exist singular resemblances between the
names of birds in the Homeric tongue and in Hebrew. We already have the doublet gup-oionos, γύψ-οιωνός. But there are
many others. The Greek name of the eagle, aetos or aietos, αετός or αιετός, is the exact transcription of ‫עיט‬, ait: we know
how the initial ‫ ע‬frequently drops in the Greek transcriptions (in Arabic, the root has an ain, not a ghain) and how the ‫ ט‬is
ordinarily rendered by a τ. The Hebrew word anopaia, ανοπαια, is a ‘άπαξ λεγόμενον [singularity] which is encountered
only one time in the Odyssey,

‘η μεν άρ’ ως ειπους’ απέβη γλαυκωπις Αθήνη,

όρνις δ’ ‘ως ανοπαια διέπτατο...

The later Greeks appear to no longer know or even understand the word which surely designates a bird, but which one?
“It is a bird,” say some, “resembling a white-tailed eagle.” - Others translate ανα οπην and write αν’ οπαια, through the
window. - Still others say: ανοπαια is αόρατος (α - οπ), δια το ‘ως όρνις ταχέως ‘ορμήσαι... Leviticus and Deuteronomy,
among the unclean water birds, cite ‫ ;אנפה‬anap’a, χαράδριος, translate the Seventy: plover. The transcription as ανοπαια
is rigorously exact, α=‫א‬, ν=‫נ‬, π=‫פ‬, αι=‫ה‬... Another ‘άπαξ λεγόμενον of the Odyssey, σκωπες, baffles the ancient
naturalists and commentators entirely as much. For the Odyssian poet, the skopes are birds with a large wingspan,
τανυσίπτεροι, which populate the trees of Calypso,

ένθα δέ τ’ όρνιθες τανυσίπτεροι ευνάζοντο

σκωπεσ τ’ ίρηκες τε τανύγλωσσοι τε κορωναι.

“These birds do not exist,” said Pliny, neque ipsae jam aves nascuntur. Aristotle placed the skopes among the birds
which one sees only one day a year; he also thought that they did not eat, being immortal. Along with the anap’a, the lists
of Leviticus and Deuteronomy include an unclean bird, which the Seventy translate as λάρος, it appears, the gull: it is ‫שהפ‬,
skhap. The transcription as skopes, σκωπες, would at first sight suffer some difficulty: the ‫ ה‬is ordinarily rendered in
Greek by a χ, or deleted. But the χ in the Greek alphabet is a recent invention, and we would find more than one example
of κ rendering the ‫ה‬: the town of ‫חרה‬, Charra, the Hole, τρωγλαι, is sometimes Κάρρα or Κάρραι, sometimes Χάρρα; the
town of ‫ירחו‬, Iericho, becomes in Strabo, Ιερίκους, etc. The transcription of skhap as σκώψ was undoubtedly influenced

243
by a popular etymology which related the foreign word to the Greek roots σκέπτομαι (cf. κλύψ and κλέπτειν) or σκώπτω,
such as the modern philologists do not fail to do again.
Keux or kex or kavax enters into the same category as exotic names. For it is also an Odyssian ‘άπαξ λεγόμενον, which
is encountered only in our verse of the Odyssey, in the middle of an account of Phoenician navigation, and which only
some poets later retained. The commentators explain the word with difficulty: “It is a gull,” say some. “No,” say the
others; “Homer knew the gull under the names of λάρος or αίθυια: it is instead the seagull, κεπφος.” Still others hold with
the sea lark... Levviticus and Deuteronomy cite the kux, ‫כוס‬, among the unclean seabirds; the diverse Greek transcriptions
καύαξ, κάβαξ, κήυξ, are equally well applied, κ=‫כ‬, υ and β=‫ו‬, ξ=‫ס‬. The Seventy translate as the night crow, νυκτικόραξ,
which seems somewhat distant; for the kux figures in the enumeration of the sea birds, near nis, the seahawk. Now, if the
Megarian legend has, by a doublet, revealed to us the true sense of Nisos-the-Seahawk, another Greek legend also gives
us a Greco-Semitic couplet for kux.
Keyx, friend and parent of Hercules, was a king of the Malians. He lived on the sea of Eubea, near Thermopyle, a place
which is called the Rock, Τράχις, and which later was named the Town of Hercules, ‘Ηρακλεία. Keyx and his wife
Alkyone, perhaps by the benevolence, perhaps by the anger of the gods, were changed into a pair of halcyons, which nest
in seven days: hae aves nidum, ova, pullos, in mari septem deibus faciuint hiberno tempore. The Rock of Keyx, Τράχις
Κέυκος, appears to me the exact counterpart of the Stone of Nisos, Σκύλλα Νίσου: Keyx, Κήυξ, is the transcription of the
Semitic word ‫כוס‬, kux, of which Alkyone, Αλκυώνε, is the Greek translation. But if, for the Megarian Stone of the
Seahawk, we have the two words of the original Phoenician, skula and nis, it appears that, for the Rock of the Halcyon, we
have here only the second of the two Semitic terms, kux, the other having been translated and not transcribed in Greek,
τράχις. We will presently retrieve without difficulty the first word of the original Phoenician. We already know it: it is
Sur, the Rock, which has given us Tyros or Syros and Syria: Sur Kux or Kuss (the equivalence of ξ and σσ being given)
has become the town of Syria-koussa, Συράκουσσαι [Syracuse], founded, said the legend, by the two nymphs Syria,
Σύρα, and Koussa, Κούσσα. The Rock of the Halcyons, facing the Isle of Quails, Ορτυγία, is truly the model of the
Phoenician establishments which Thucydides knew on the circuit of the Sicilian coasts: a coastal islet and a promontory
dominating the sea... But the other Odyssian legends lead us to the coast of Sicily. For the moment, I believe that the
doublet kux-alcyon, κήυξ-αλκυώνη, is acquired by us on the same account as the Megarian doublet, nis-seahawk,
νίσος-‘ίεραξ, on the same account as the Odyssian doublet, aie-seahawk, αίη-κίρκη. We see that the entire family of
Circe, with her brother Aietes and her mother Persa, is just a band of birds perched on a series of promontories which
border the Italian coast, as Nisos and Keyx from their rock or from their stone border the Hellenic coasts.
To the seabirds should be added a companion. The Odyssey knew the seals, φωκας, with swimming feet, νέποδες,
with the round belly, full of nourishment, ζατρεφεις, which live in groups and which taste bad. The word seal is only
encountered in two episodes of the Odyssey. The Phoenicians of our story throw the corpse of the nurse overboard: “It
will serve as food for seals and fish.” Menelaus knew herds of seals of the marvelous Proteus in the waters of Egypt; they
leave the sea and come to lie on the sands of Pharos. The grammarians have sought a Greek etymology for the word φώκη
in vain, the origin of which, they say, is uncertain; but the Hebrew root ‫פוק‬, p.u.k., signifies to limp, wobble. The word
φώκε would be the very exact transcription of ‫פוקה‬, phok’a, which the Hebrews employ to signify stumbling and which
the Phoenicians had applied to the lame animal, whose gait justifies the name a hundred times.

*
* *

Of the sevenfold rhythm, the Scriptures and the Chaldean texts would furnish a thousand examples. The Chaldeans
have their week of the deluge which is ended by the sacrifices where they set up seven and seven vases. Eabani passes a
week in the pleasures of love, as Ulysses does in the pleasures of feasting. In the odyssey of Gilgamesh, the hero sleeps
six days and seven nights. The Chaldean towers have seven floors in honor of the gods. Bel has seven sons, destructive

244
genies. The feasts of dedication comprise a week of rejoicings. The messengers of Anou number seven, the Seven Winds.
Hell is encircled by seven high walls and closed by seven gates, etc., etc.: “The Egyptians,” says G. Maspero, “almost
exclusively employed the decimal system which has prevailed with us; the Chaldeans combined the duodecimal and
decimal systems.” We also should have cited twenty passages from the Thousand and One Nights, beside the Homeric
verses or the old Greek legends, beginning with the seven voyages of Sinbad the sailor, and continuing with Barbar and
his six brothers. If we do not descend to Islam, it suffices to open the authors of classical antiquity: historians and
geographers of antiquity, when they speak of their contemporaries, the Semites, can give us some typical examples of the
numeration by seven.
For in the classical epoch the number seven still plays the same rôle in the place names and in the traditions of the seas
frequented by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Arabs and other Semites. We have explained at length the sevenfold
legends and measures of the Spanish coasts. The Seventh, ‘Έβδομος, is a Carthaginian town: the Scripture has a town of
the same name. Carthage, which had been founded 21 (7x3) years before the capture of Ilion, passed for having had seven
thousand inhabitants. The Archipelagos of the Occidental sea are supposed to have seven isles: “some would have it that
the Balearics would be seven in number... But Strabo mentions only two of them”; the Balearics in reality number four
large isles with a multitude of rocks. The Lipari number eight or ten islets, which does not prevent the ancients from
always speaking of seven Aeolian isles. All antiquity knew that the Balearics were a Phoenician colony, and the Odyssey
will show us an establishment of Semites on the isle of Aeolia.
And similarly, at the other extremity of the ancient world, in other Semitic seas. ‘Επτα Φρέατα, the Seven Wells, are an
Arabic station. Herodotus knew that there should be seven cut stones for the ceremonies of the Arabic oath. The measures
of the Arabic sea and of the routes which lead there appear patterned by the number seven, from the seven mouths of the
Nile to the seven mouths of the Sindh, with the seven neighboring isles. The land routes lead in seven days from Egyptian
Thebes to the different ports of the sea, as they lead in seven days or in fourteen days toward the principal oases of the
desert, as, on the other side of the sea, they lead the spices in seventy days. The Arabs cure the precious stones in honey
for an entire week, septentis diebus noctibusque sine intermissione, which they wish to render more brilliant... When the
same Herodotus describes to us the Phoenician bazaar installed on the beach of the Argolide, it is the same numbers as in
the Odyssey: the market lasts five or six days; the seventh, they close it and embark. Herodotus again, without wishing it,
furnishes us a better argument in his account of the Therian colonization.
The isle of Santorini, previously called the Very beautiful, Καλλίστη, had received the the first name from the
Phoenicians: Cadmus had founded the altars of Poseidon and Athena there, as at Rhodes and, as at Rhodes, he had left a
colony at Santorini. A descendant of Cadmus, coming from Laconia and named Theras, later gives it the name of Thera,
Θήρα: it had retained its first name of Very Beautiful for eight generations. Now, a descendant of Theras, who reigned on
the isle, having gone to consult the oracle, the Pythian instructs him to colonize Libya. But Libya, for the Therians, was
an unknown land; they will neglect the oracle: for seven years it did nothing but rain. The Pithyan, consulted anew,
repeats her instructions. A Cretan from Itanos leads a Therean expedition there and discovers the isle Platea on the
African coast. The Therians take colonists from their seven cantons, απο των χώρων απάντων ‘επτα εόντων, and one of
them founds on the coast facing Platea the town of Aziris, where they stay six years; but the seventh year they abandon
Aziris for Kyrene.
The account is much less legendary than we could believe. It contains an indisputable part of reality. Thera should
have seven cantons, and the number seven should play a great rôle in its institutions, its traditions and its legends: “the
Therians,” says Eustathe, “wept neither for those who died at fifty years nor those who died at seven.” As for the
colonization of Thera by the Phoenicians, nothing permits doubting the testimony of Herodotus, which confirms all the
statements of the ancients and which verifies the study of the places and names. If the Phoenicians ever frequented the
archipelago, Thera should be one of their stations: it plays for them the later rôle Milos plays for the French. In the south
of the archipelago, Thera and Milos are, in effect, in the same relationship as Syria and Mykonos in the center.
Symmetrically placed and opposed, they offer themselves to the debarkation of sailors arriving from opposite directions:
for an Oriental navy, Thera is exactly that which Milos can be for an Occidental navy. They are the two isles which the

245
navigators encounter, after having reached the two ports of the Levant and the Couchant, whether they come from Crete
or if they arrive from farther away. From the day when the French will frequent the archipelago, Milos was one of their
retreats, “and its port, which is one of the best and the largest of the Mediterranean, serves as a retreat to all the ships
which go into the Levant or return from there, for it is situated at the entrance of the archipelago.” For two centuries,
Milos was the great fair of the archipelago; the French were always there in number; they had churches and Capucians
there: The king gave a thousand ecus for the edifice; the French merchants, the captains of the vessels, even the corsairs
contributed according to their means.” The Milotes were put at the service of the foreigner: “for their familiarity and
knowledge of the lands of the archipelago, they serve as pilots on most of the foreign vessels.” Replace the French with
the Phoenicians, and Thera goes to take the place of Milos. In the times of Tournefort, they go from Crete to the Cyclades
by leaving from the western ports of Crete, Sude or Canea, and heading for Milos: Herodotus shows us the same
established relationships between Thera and Itanos, which is the easternmost port of Crete. At the opening of the strait of
Kasos, Thera offers itself to the Orientals like Milos offers itself to the Occidentals after the strai of Kythera; it is toward
the east that Thera presents its harbors, the same that Milos opens its great bay toward the west.
The western part of Thera is, in effect, a collapsed volcano, whose crater below the water makes the center of the bay
boil. The bay is without shores and without anchorages. Cliffs fall from peaks all around, bordering a bottomless sea. At
the summit of the cliffs, the towns dominate the shore from several hundreds of meters. The only possible place of
debarkation, the present echelle, is at sea level on a small natural platform, barely large enough to support a few houses:
on the flank of the steep cliff, a stairway ascends to the town. It is nevertheless to the echelle that the Greek or foreign
commerce is supposed to arrive today: Greek and European Thera should have its port and its capitol on the coast of
Greece and Europe. The ships are moored at the echelle by chains which they attach to bollards cut into the cliff. On the
west face there is no other harbor. The eastern face of Thera is completely different. It is made of the slopes of the ancient
volcano. A long bank of pumice descends to the eastern sea. From the bank to the southeast emerge two high calcarious
massifs, whose extremities plunge into the sea in two steep capes. Between the capes Exomiti and Messavouno fans out a
well-watered and very fertile plain. A single beach, thrusting gently under the waves, cuts in a semicircle from one cape
to the other. Turned to the southeast, the beach offers itself to the debarkation of the Levantines. It is always the same
orientation as in the preHellenic ports “turned toward the southeast and toward Alexandria”: here again it should accord
with the type of Lindos in the isle of Rhodes and with the text of Strabo, πολυ προς μεσημβρίαν ανατείνουσα και προς
Αλεξάνδειαν μάλιστα. It is exactly the same situation in relationship to the rest of the isle, the same shelter from the
winds from the north by virtue of the insular mountains, and the same abundant springs furnishing water. And it is again
the same site of the town itself at the summit of the mountain, πόλις επι όρους ‘ιδρυμένη. On one of the capes, right at the
summit of Messavouno, which overhangs the watering place and the harbor, was perched the old capitol of the isle.
Isolated from the neighboring mountains by deep ravines which allow only an access road, but provided in the plain with
fertile fields which can nourish it, with springs which can water it and with two ports, two echelles, Oia and Eleusis,
where the people of the sea can come “to sell their cargo” and “fill their hollow vessel”, the old town is still a fine
example of the Homeric High Towns: it is the exact copy of Ilion or Pylos. Today, the town having descended to the
plain, it is called The Market, Εμπόριον. Of the old primitive town, it appears that nothing remains: in Hellenistic times, a
large city took its place, and the more recent town still shows in its ruins what was its prosperity in the Hellenistic times,
and to what sort of life it owed its wealth. Its buildings, temples, agora and gymnasium are the work of the Ptolomies. The
Egyptian sailors had chosen the retreat. The Egyptian soldiers had a garrison in the fortress. An Egyptian prefect was “in
charge of affairs” at Thera and, as always, the foreign gods, accompanying their servants, had taken hold on the acropolis:
Isis, Osiris, Anubis and the Ptolomies themselves had their temples here. To judge by the ruins alone, the town is
Egyptian... Thus, if it is of the times of the Greco-Egyptian thalassocracy, the same causes should have produced the
same results during the other Levantine thalassocracies. No preHellenic ruins remain in the place. Nevertheless, the
neighboring rocks of the beach are hollowed by very numerous funeral chambers, which they agree in attributing to the
Phoenicians.

246
 In holding with the topological arguments, the tradition regarding the first Phoenician colonists of Thera is thus
credible to us, also at the same time dignified by the similar tradition regarding the first colonists of Lindos. Levantine
sailors could believe in or have prospered only in # the old establishments which turn their backs on arrivals and
influences from Greece. Thera was the Phoenician Milos. Now, examine the doublet Thera-Kalliste. Καλλίστη, the Very
Beautiful, is certainly a Greek name, although some had wished to find a Hittite etymology for it. The Hebrew word ‫תארת‬
, tar, which designates the form, the stature, is ordinarily joined to an adjective beautiful to form a laudatory epithet; but it
is also found in the locutions of the type ‫תאר‬-‫איש‬, is-tar, vir formae, to say vir formosus (handsome man), and the
locutions can be applied to things: a beautiful fruit will be ‫תאר‬-‫פרי‬, peri-tar. The word ‫תאר‬, is found in the Phoenician
inscriptions, and the editors of the Corpus Inscrpt. Semiticarum render it by decus. The locution ‫תאר‬-‫אי‬, Ai-tar, would
enter into the above series, insula formosa, καλλίστη, Beautiful Isle, the same as, in the Bible, we find ‫הן‬-‫אבנ‬, word-for-
word petra gratiae, to say precious stone. M.R. Dussaud nevertheless suggests to me another explanation. Number 61 of
the Corpus Inscript. Semiticarum is a Cypriot inscription of four words: Teara, uxor Melekiationis architectonis. But the
proper name ‫תארא‬, Teara, baffles them, and they see there a faulty transcription of the Greek Θεοδώρα, with a gross error
of the engraving. This error is unlikely. The only reason which they give for the hypothesis is that the name of a woman,
if it is Phoenician, should have been written ‫ תארה‬and not ‫תארא‬. Names of women are extremely rare in Phoenician
inscriptions. But number 51 of the Corpus furnishes us one, which leaves no doubt; it is that of Sema, ‫שמא‬, daughter of
Azarbaal: it is a form in ‫א‬, exactly like our ‫תארא‬, which thus should be retained in the Phoenician onomasty and translate,
as Schroeder wished, by formosa, the beautiful. On the other hand, entirely independant of the preceding, if from the root
‫תאר‬, tar, we wished to derive a place name, we would again have ‫תארא‬, teara, as ‫ מקן‬has given ‫מקכא‬, melaka, and ‫ קון‬has
given kerana, etc. Choose whichever of the two explanations we wish, Thera should be related to the Semitic root ‫תאר‬,
t-a-r, of which the Greek Θήρα would be the regular transcription; for the initial tav is frequently rendered by the Greeks
as θ, as in Θάμναθα, Θαγλαφάλασσαρ, Θωμας, etc. : for the other part, the medial aleph is here rendered by a long vowel,
η: it is the only means which the Greeks have to render it when they do not omit it.
The toponymic proofs thus would come to be joined to the arguments of topology. Here again we will have a Greco-
Phoenician doublet, Thera-Kalliste. There we understand the entire history of the Phoenician Thera. Go back to the
example of Milos. When the French disappeared from the archipelago, Milos fell again into obscurity. As soon as the
wars of the Revolution succeed in removing the French activity from the Levant, it was the death of the “fair” of the
corsairs, and the citizen G.-A. Olivier, who arrives there Messidor 28th of the IInd year (of the French Revolution),
deplores the miserable condition of the town,

which conceded nothing to any other (town) of the archipelago, but which presents only ruins today. On all sides we were struck by
the sight of crumbling houses, bloated men, bony figures, walking corpses. Barely forty families, mostly foreigners, drag out their
unhappy existence in a town which still counted five thousand inhabitants within its walls at the beginning of the century... We saw
the public baths called Loutra... The Greeks formerly came rushing from all the Cyclades to make use of the waters. The baths have
been almost completely abandoned since the isle has lost its population and the port receives hardly any ships any more.

Milos today no longer has either port or commerce: the isle, which formerly furnished pilots to the entire Levant, now
counts fewer than twenty-seven ships of less than thirty tons. Nevertheless, some French families and some Catholic
priests have have endured up to our times. From father to son, such families have retained their French nationality and
handed down office of consular agent of France. The French squadrons still take aboard pilots from Milos... The history
of Phoenician Thera should have been similar. The Phoenicians having disappeared, Thera also should see its population
and prosperity decrease: its seven towns of the past will sink into the ranks of unknown burgs; even its fertility and
beauty, καλλίστη, disappear: “If M. de Tournefort came back to Milos,” writes Savary in 1788, “he would not again find
the beautiful isle which he has described. He would groan to see the best lands uncultivated and the fertile valleys
changed into swamps. After fifty years, Milos has entirely changed its face.” The Phoenician customs and influence will
nevertheless be maintained at Thera, like the French influence at Milos, long after the disappearance of the foreign fleets.
The relations of Thera with Crete will continue, even when the isle had received new arrivals. For the new colonization

247
does not drive out the ancient posessors, ουδαμως εξελων αυτους: it only fills the voids, as a colonization of Milos would
today. The new arrivals came from the gulf of Laconia: they were pirates of Taygete. After the disappearance of the
French sailors, the same pirates will reappear. When Olivier arrives at l’Argentiere in 1794, he finds the isle half deserted,
which Tournefort had known to be so flourishing by virtue of the commerce of the French:

We were very surprised to find the inhabitants armed, and especially to see them take aim at us to prevent us from advancing. We
were not long in discovering the cause of their alarm. They tell us that twenty Mainotes had surprised them on a feast day and had
carried off their most valuable belongings. The Mainotes inhabit the southern part of the Morea, the vicinity of Sparta, and more
particularly the part which extends up to cape Matapan. Farmers or shepherds, sailors or pirates, according to the needs and the
circumstances, they are always ready to leave the small towns which they occupy on the gulfs of Coron and Colocythia.

It is also Mainotes, Minyens of Taygete, that Theras would have lead to Kalliste, and the descendants of the Mainotes
will adopt and continue the commercial relations of their new homeland. The Cretans of Itanos coming to them; they
come among the Cretans from Oaxos, from where they bring some women: they have among them some of mixed race
from natives and Cretan women. They should not have forgotton what Herodotus has told us, the still more distant routes
of the sailors of Sidon. Herodotus lends them the sentiments of the Hellenes: when the oracle counsels them to go to
Libya, they did not know, says Herodotus, where the land could even be, and they did not dare to thus throw themselves
into the unknown. In effect, their contemporaries of the Hellade reasoned similarly: when, After Salamine, the Ionians
wish to lead the Greek fleet to the Asiatic coast, the conqueror Hellenes wish only to go to Delos; beyond, for them, all
appeared terrible, το γαρ προσωτέρω παν δεινον ην τοισι ‘Έλλησι, and they knew the distances so poorly that they
believed from hearsay that Samos was as far from them as the Columns of Hercules! But the Therians were not there#.
Certainly some memories or some indications of navigations from their ancestors remained with them: when they decide
to colonize Libya, they go straightaway to a Phoenician station. Aziris, in effect, which Herodotus gives us as the first
foundation of the Therians, well appears to have at first been one of the Phoenician stops on the route which Emitic
names mark, along the African coast, between Tyre and Carthage. Azar, ‫אזר‬, in Hebrew and Phoenician, signifies to gird,
to encircle; it is precisely the translation of the Greek enclose, συγκλείω, employed by Herodotus to describe the site of
Aziris: “Aziris, which two valleys with a stream encircle to right and left,” Άζιρις, τον νάπαι τε κάλλισται επ’ αμφότερα
συγκληίουσι.” The Therian tradition thus contains a great part of truth. It is nothing but an historic tradition slightly
simplified and embellished. The sevenfold rhythm which we find there should be a lively memory of the Phoenician
influence, and it is a proof a posteriori that the navigations by the week in the Odyssey, the counting by sixes and sevens
of the Homeric poems is also an indication of the same epoch and the same influence.

*
* *

I would not yet want to pass by the import of the observations. The study of Calypso had led us to the idea that, if we
do not wish to resort to Semitic etymologies and concepts, the Odyssey is inexplicable. And here, for the other part, that a
long study of the Phoenician thalassocracy proves to us that the Odyssey knew the navigations of the Sidonians: it serves
to explain them and, conversely, only the navigations can render us acccount of a thousand facts to which the Odyssey is
surely contemporary. In the seas of the Levant and the archipelago, the same Greco-Semitic couplets are scattered, which
we have recovered in the Odyssey itself: the Isle of the Foam, Κάσος-Άχνε, or the Isle of Groans, ‘Ρήνεια-Κελάδουσσα,
are of the same origin and of the same date as the Isle of the Sparrowhawk, νήσος Κιρκης-Αιαίη, or the Isle of the
Hideout, νήσος Καλυψους-Ισπανία. Now we can come back to our Odyssey. Strabo told us: “If Homer exactly describes
the countries of the Inner Sea as well as those of the Outer Sea, it is that he had the knowledge of the Phoenicians.” We
cannot yet say that the word of Strabo may be the expression of the truth. But we already clearly see that the Odyssian

248
poem was posterior to the Phoenician thalassocracy and that the language, like the habits and the conceptions, of the
Odyssian sailors retains the trace of Levantine influences. Now it remains to prove that the Odyssey altogether is nothing
but a testimony of the Phoenician influence, that the Phoenician periples were the principal source for it, and that the
author of the Greek oeuvre was a student of the Sidonian geographers. Let us thus again take up the Odyssey at the point
where we left it: on his raft, Ulysses leaves the Hideaway and enters the seas of his homeland.

FIFTH BOOK

NAUSIKAA

οικέομεν δ’ απάνευθε πολυκλύστω ενι πόντω

έσχατοι...

Odyss., VI, 204-205

CHAPTER I

THE ISLE OF THE CROSSING

την νυν Κερκύραν καλουμένην πρότερον δε Σχερίην

STRAB., VI. 259

Ulysses has left the isle of Calypso. He comes back toward his Ithaca. From Spain, he enters into the Greek seas.
Seated on the aft castle, he holds the tiller of his raft and, to follow the correct course, to not stray toward the norththern
seas of the Balearics and Sardinia, he keeps watch in meditating on the counsels of the Nymph, in always keeping the
north to his left. For seventeeen days he navigates without the calm stopping him. A warm breeze pushes him; he makes
progress. The favorable and sweet breeze, απήμων, λιαρός, which pushes the raft from the rear, ουρον όπισθεν, is a wind
from the west:

In the waters of Gibralter and along the Algerian coasts, the winds, say the Nautical Instructions, are reduced to two: the winds
from the east and the winds of the west, which in that country they call Levantes and Ponientes. The winds from the East are
announced long before their arrival: a great dampness, a mist in front of the lands, are the almost certain indications of it, which
continue during the entire period of the wind: the Levantes, instead of being dry, are damp... With the winds from the west, the
clouds disappear completely. The atmosphere becomes dryer. The mountains and the the sky become clear.

249
 Pushed by the clear winds of the west, Ulyssses passes the nights in contemplating the constellations. But “on the
coasts of Greece, the winds do not retain the same regularity.” When Ulysses arrives before the Pheacian coasts, a terrible
storm arises. All the winds converge: “the Euros (southeast), the Notos (southwest, the Sirocco), the Zephyros
(northwest), and the Boreas (northwest) which falls from the bare sky and raises high waves.”

συν δ’ Ευρός τε Νότος τ’ έπεσον Ζεφυρός τε δυσαης

και Βορέης αιθρηγενέτης μέγα κυμα κυλίνδων.

The storm lasts several hours. Blowing in cyclones and gusts, the winds overturn the raft, throwing Ulysses into the
sea and ending in scattering the well-joined logs. The Boreas rages. As long as it would battle against the other winds, it is
a terrible outburst. It finally arrives and persists. It lasts two days and nights. Then it falls and the calm arrives. At dawn
of the third day, the good weather returns... We open the Nautical Instructions of the Adriatic:

In the summer, the winds are ordinarily weak and variable; we then find, in this period, frequent calms and sometimes sudden
storms accompanied by winds from the north, but which fortunately do not last long... The winds from the southwest (Notos) and
especially from the southeast (Euros) are ordinarily more frequent toward the mouth of the Adriatic sea. It happens very frequently
that the fresh breezes of the Northeast, Northwest and Southeast blow at the same time and in different parts of the sea. The winds
which blow the most frequently are the winds from the northeast to the east-northeast, and those from the southeast to the south. The
first ones, which they call Bora, are to be feared the most, and require an active and incessant surveillance... The Bora is a very
dangerous wind and greatly feared by the sailors, because it declares itself suddenly with an extreme violence. It is not to be feared
so much from its violence as because it arises instantly and blows in gusts. The gusts instantly raise a quick and agitated sea, the
movement of which in whirlpools [κυμα κυλινδων] would in itself alone suffice to cause damage to ships under sail... The most
furious blows of the Bora are announced by the following symptoms: a black and compact cloud, surmounted by another lighter and
cottony cloud [αιθρηγενετης], the sky suddenly takes on a livid color and, a little before the blow of the wind, one feels calms and
erratic breezes... The Bora habitually begins at sunrise or sunset... Admiral Smith says that the most fearful Bora is that which
blows for three days in gusts, which then falls and which then returns to blow for another three days with the same violence. During
the summer the Bora never lasts more than three days... In march, at the end of May and at the beginning of June, it is very rare that
there should be no blow of the Bora wind. The blows of wind are always very violent, especially in the last part of the year.

We see that all the words of the Odyssian description are explained here for us by the commentary of the Instructions.
It is not the storm of the writers that we have here, but a sailor’s storm, an Adriatic storm. The good versifier who is
Virgil constructs storms following the rules, that is to say, following Homer, and, whatever the place may be, the
Virgilian storms also last three days:

tres adeo incerto caeca caligine sole

erramus pelago, totidem sine sidere nocte

The Odyssian poet or the sources which he consults know the things of the sea differently. For, between the Odyssian
texts and the nautical documents, the comparison can be detailed. Take an Adriatic storm, such as sailor of today, the
English admiral Smith, describes for us, and compare it to the storm of Ulysses:

The 9th of August 1819, I was moored with an anchor in the small closed port of Lossini Piccolo. In the morning, I saw
somewhat inquiet clouds; the evening watch, the weather had been remarkably fine. The wind was from the southwest, the clouds
livid, the atmosphere dark and the general aspect of the sky singular and menacing. In the afternoon, the horizon also became as
black as possible and the color appeared even darker, as it was surmounted by a band of white and cottony clouds... Some minutes
later, a violent gust of wind blew obviously from the northwest, although in the harbor we still felt the winds from the southwest

250
perhaps more strongly than in the morning, for the clouds were all driven right and left. Then the scene became magnificant: masses
of clouds in movement from the zenith to the horizon, leaving visible for moments a bronze sky.

- Poseidon gathers the clouds, drives the waves and raises the gusts of wind in all directions. He covers the land and
the sea in mist: the night rose from the sky and all the winds fell from it at once... With such terrible couds the sky is
covered!

ως ειπων σύναγεν νεφέλας, ετάραξε δε πόντον

χερσι τρίαιναν ‘ελών. πάσας δ’ ορόθυνεν αέλλας
παντοίων ανέμων, συν δε νεφέεσσι κάλυψεν
γαιαν ‘ομου και πόντον. ορώρει δ’ ουρανόθεν νύξ...
ο‘ι‘όισιν νεφέεσσι περιστρέφει ουρανον ευρυν.

- The fishermen, continues the English admiral, ran to the coast, and the sailors, aided by the populace, strove to beach their boats
in the streets. Finally, large drops of rain will begin to fall and the atmosphere appears to change into a black smoke. At this moment
we saw a thick cloud of mist come over us, driven by the north wind. The gust descends quickly, at first in roaring frightfully, with a
violence such that our two cables were snapped like threads. All the boats of the port were submerged or capsized. The rigging, the
tillers, the benches floated on all sides, and all the ships were thrown on the shore, one on top of the other...

- A large wave, falling violenly from above, capsized the raft; Ulysses was thrown from the deck; the tiller escapes his
hands. A terrible gust, made of all the winds, breaks the mast in the middle and throws the sail and the topmast into the
sea.

έλασεν μέγα κυμα κατ’ άκρης

δεινοω επεσσύμενον περι δε σχεδίην ελέλιξεν
τηλε δ’ απο σχεδίης αυτος πέσε, πηδάλιον δε
εκ χειρων προέηκε. μέσον δέ ο‘ι ‘ιστον έαξεν
δεινη μισγομένων ανέμων ελθουσα θύελλα,
τηλου δε σπειρον και επίκριον έμπεσε πόντω.

- Everything would have been destroyed, continues the English admiral, if the blow of the wind had continued longer with such
violence. Fortunately it lasts only a few minutes, and in less than an hour everything had regained its ordinary calm. The damage was
even more considerable on the land than on the sea. A great quantity of trees were uprooted, roofs of houses carried away, windows
and doors broken open, and even floors displaced and dropped on the lower stories...

- Poseidon raises a great wave, terrible, heavy and curved... : as the sudden wind overturns a of straws which it
scatters in all directions, thus the wave dismembers the logs of the deck,

ωρσε δ’ επι μέγα Ποσειδάων ενοσίχθων

δεινόν τ’ αργάλεον τε κατηρεφες ήλασε δ’ αυτον
‘ως δ’ άνεμος ζαης ηίων θυμωντα τιναξη
καρφαλέων. τα μεν άρ τε διεσκέδασ’’ άλλυδις άλλη
ως της δούρατα μακρα διεσκέδασε...

But suddenly Athena intervenes to establish the steady wind from the north which will last three days. The waves calm
a little. There only remains a strong swell. The horizon becomes clear. At the dawn of the third day, Ulysses perceives the
land of the Pheacians from the top of a large wave.

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 - An hour later, concludes the English admiral, the violence of the wind having diminished, large drops of rain fall, and within
two or three hours we have a fresh wind from the north with fair weather.

The storm ended. The fair weather returned. But the waves remain strong. Ulysses has seized a log. He is astride it and
directs his mount. He swims desperately for two days and nights:

ένθα δύω νύκτας δύο τ’ ήματα κύματι πηλω

πλάζετο.

“Two days of swimming without drinking or eating! Two days on a piece of flotsam!,” say the philologists, “What a
story!” We read in the Little Times of Wednesday December 12 1900: “The keeper of the lighthouse of Cartaret has
rescued a shipwreck survivor of English nationality named Whiteway making, as a mechanic, a member of the crew of
the steamer Rosgull, which was wrecked last week between Jersey and Guernesey. It is about eleven o’clock in the
evening that the vessel sinks after the passengers and crew embark in the lifeboats. The one in which Whiteway had taken
a place will capsize and, somewhat injured in the head, he was able to hold on to a spar, on which he is left to float adrift.
He remains there forty-three hours without eating, experiencing violent pains in his legs. He was rescued a mile from the
coast by the keeper of the lighthouse of Carteret, to whom he provides all the things he needs.” Ulysses himself also has
known the violent pains in the arms and legs, and when the Pheacians will invite him to their games, he remains seated,
he is still broken.”

‘ός πριν μεν μάλα πολλα πάθον και πολλα μόγησα.

and the Pheacians understand the excuse: “He is really well-built: what thighs, what calves, and even more, what hands!
Corded neck and large chest, he is still a young man; but he has suffered much and he is not in form. There is nothing like
the sea for you, to break the most vigorous man,”

ου γαρ εγώ γε τί φημι κακώτερον άλλο θαλάσσης

άνδρα γε συγχευαι, ει και μάλα κάρτεροσ ειη.

We see here again that the part of the marvelous in the Odyssian accounts is minimal: Pheacia should not be a land of
dream, and we can seek in the region of the Adriatic the land of the Pheacians, which all antiquity agreed to find in the
isle of Corfu.

*
* *

Location, site, appearance, distances, Pheacia is truly the isle of Corfu: it suffices to read the text in the Most Homeric
fashion.
First, for the location, the Odyssey tells us that the Pheacians live away from civilized men, “far from men who eat
flour”, ‘εκας ανδρων αλφηστάων. The philologists sometimes hesitate over the exact sense of the epithet αλφηστής,
grain-seeking. But the Odyssey itself furnishes the clear explanation of it: “At the bow,” says Ulysses, “I am stronger than
all the mortals who eat grain on the earth.” The bow is an arm of civilized men; the savages, Cyclops or Lestrygonians,
use only stones or spears. Civilized men eat bread; they nourish themselves from the fruit of the fields, αρούρης καρπον
έδοντες. The savages live by another diet, since they do not cultivate the fields. Thus there are two humanities on the face
of the earth, the civilized humanity which eats bread, grain-seeking, αλφηστής, and the other. The geographers of Greek

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and Roman antiquity retain the classification of diverse humanities. For them, that which distinguishes the peoples is not
the race or the language, but the nourishment. Their sailors will know on the shores of the Red sea a collection of savages
who do not eat flour, but who live from hunting and fishing: they catalog them according to the meat, the roots or the
fruits which they devour, into Eaters of Fish, Ιχθυοφάγοι, Eaters of Roots, ‘Ριζοφάγοι, Eaters of Meat, Κρεοφάγοι, Eaters
of Elephants, of Ostriches, of Locusts, of Turtles, etc. These miserable populations live, like the Homeric Cyclops,
without cultivating the earth,

ούτε φυτεύουσιν χερσίν φυτον ούτ’ αρόωσιν.

and, like the Cyclops, they do not resemble civilized men, Eaters of Grain, Σιτοφάγοι,

ουδέ εωκεν
ανδροί γε σιτοφάγω...

“To the southeast of Egypt,” says a periple of the Red sea, “there are four great peoples: the first, which live near the
shores, sow sesame and millet; the second, inhabiting the lagoons, are nourished by roses and tender vegetables; the third
are nomads and live on meat and milk; the fourth, being maritime, live on fish.” In Homeric times, the sailors of the
Mediterranean already established similar distinctions: Homer knew the Cyclops who live on flesh and milk, the
Lotophages “who are nourished by a floral dish”,

... ο‘ί τ’ άνθινον ειδαρ έδουσιν

and the Galactophages who live to the north of Thrace and who milk their mares,

... αγαύων ‘Ιππομολγων

γλακτοφάγων

Far from the grainseekers, the Pheacians thus live among the savages, away from the civilized world. It is that the
civilized world then ended at Ithaca. Ithaca is the last Achaean land to the Occident, “the most distant of the isles toward
the northwest,”

αυτη δε χθαμαλη πανυπερτάτη ειν αλι κειτα

προς ζόφον.

When we arrive at the study of Ithaca, we will see how the verse has provoked commentaries and polemics. I would
legitimize word by word the translation I have given it here: πανυπερτάτη is the exact equivalent of the Latin suprema
with the double sense of height and extremity; ζόφος is the coast of the shadow, the west-northwest part, which the sun
never visits. Ithaca is “the supreme isle toward the northwest”, because the Odyssian poet uses, as always, the language of
sailors, his compatriots, or of the periple which serves him as a framework. Syria was “beyond Delos, toward the
Couchant”; Eubea was “the farthest of the isles [of the archipelago], to speak of that which he has seen”: Ithaca is
similarly the last Achaean retreat at the entrance of the Occidental sea. One goes there by the coastal route which leads
from the Peloponnesus to the Adriatic, in navigating from the southeast toward the northwest. Ithaca is thus truly the last
isle toward the coast of the shadow. Beyond open the mysteries of the Occidental sea, with the horrors of its monsters, the
Barbary of its Cyclops and the cannibalism of the Lestrygonians: Ithaca is the last “grain-seeking” isle.
It should be counted that Pheacia is separated from Ithaca by one night of navigation. To come to the Achaean isles,
the Pheacian vessels take about one night. The navigation of Ulysses on the Pheacian vessel will be similar in all points to

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the navigation of Telemachus to Pylos. All that we have said regarding that is applicable to this. Like the vessel of
Telemachus, the Pheacian vessel of Ulysses will leave at night, to profit from the land breeze which arises three hours
after sunset. In the open sea, it will find the wind from the north, which makes it run, “fly with the speed of a
sparrowhawk.” At dawn, it will reach one of the ports of Ithaca. Let us calculate the maximum one hundred forty
kilometers, since the Pheacian cruisers are better sailing craft than the Achaean boats: Pheacia, to the west of Ithaca,
would be well within the region of Corfu; between the extreme points of the two isles, we have a straight line about one
hundred forty kilometers long.
The Odyssey furnishes another distance. The land of the Pheacians should be seventeen days and nights of navigation
from the columns. Calculate again a navigation of five to six miles per hour: we would have about two thousand or two
thousand five hundred miles. It is about the distance from Gibralter to Corfu, in taking account of the angles of
navigation. But the calculations of Odyssian distances can never be anything but distantly approximate. Other than the
impossibilities which it sometimes signals - such as the navigation of one night which cannot lead from Ithaca to
Messinian Pylos - they furnish only doubtful arguments. In the present case, the calculation is particularly difficult. We
have seen that the number of days between the Semitic land of Calypso and the already Greek seas of the Pheacians
appears the addition of two ritual or customary figures, ten+seven=seventeen. Additionally, the navigation of Ulysses is
made on a raft and not in a vessel, and we can object that the speed of the vehicles is entirely different, very inferior to
that which we take. It is therefore probable that the poet has reproduced in his verses the distance which his periple
indicates to him between Ispania and the Greek seas, and the periple calculated the number of days according to the pace
of the boats... For our calculation of the distance between Pheacia and Ithaca, we can object that the voyage of Ulysses
has a miracle. At the first reading of the text, the Pheacian vessels appear extraordinary: “They have,” it says, “neither
pilots nor tiller; they are endowed with thought and they know the road themselves. They are fantastic beings, and not real
vessels.” The objection is worth our pausing on it, for one is most frequently misled by it, that Pheacia is a fantastic land
and not a real isle: it would be pointless, one says, to seek the site, since it never existed. The example of Syria, the
“mythical isle” of the archeologists, has served as a lesson to us. When the text of the epic appeared full of “teratologies”
it was because we read it poorly or that we do not know how to interpret it. For Pheacia, it is the same. Great navigators,
the Pheacians have better vessels than the Achaeans. Their cruisers are superior in speed and in the number of oars. While
the boats of Ithaca have only twenty rowers, the cruisers of Alkinoös have fifty-two:

αλλ άγε νηα μέλαιναν ερύσσομεν εισ ‘άλα διαν

πρωτόπλοον, κούρω δε δύω και πεντήκοντα
κρινάσθων κατα δημον.

Now we understand the renown of the cruisers among the neighboring islanders. The Achaeans displayed towards the
foreign navy the admiration which the sailors of the Turkish archipelago still retain for our steamships. In April 1888, the
small Turkish station ship of Rhodes was anchored before Iassos, whose crew explored the ruins: the stones and marbles
should serve for the reconstruction of the military quays and arsenal of Constantinople; it is the fashion in which the
Turks understand the conservation of antiqities. The small steamship was commanded by a Turkish ship’s lieutenant who,
very old, knew a little navigation and writing, very poorly, and who, by that double knowledge, had arrived at his
command. Since we request permission to copy the inscriptions of the theater, he permits us to read them, since our
authorization ordered it, but not to copy them, since the authorization did not specify that right. Nevertheless, he invites us
aboard and wished to demonstrate his knowledge. He related to us that he had once seen an English frigate so fast that it
went from Stamboul to Cairo in one day, and so large that, having entered the Mediterranean by the strait of Gibralter, it
could only leave by the same route, the Suez canal being too narrow... In Homeric times, the sailors of Ithaca or of Pylos
spoke thus of the Pheacian cruisers: “They are boats as rapid as thought, or as the birds. They fly so fast that one has no
time to see them. They are invisible. They disappear in the sea and in the wind”; and the bards of Ionia add, “In one day,
they go to the other end of the sea, to Eubea, and return.” It is only the ordinary fashion of sailors’ talk. In our ports, the

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retirees of the navy, seated at the foot of the breakwater, recount similar stories, and each embellishes his memories and
exaggerates his exploits, knowing well that his neighbor will always be too disposed to not believe anything.
Nevertheless, the improbabilities of the Odyssian text are believed too well. On the subject of the vessels of Pheacia, they
pass all the permitted boundaries, and the exaggerations have scandalized the scrupulous philologists: O. Riemann is
similarly a little shocked by them. At first reading, the severity of the philologists appears justified. But perhaps they have
somewhat neglected a second more critical reading of the text and of the context. The passage, where the improbabilities
and exaggerations are united in twenty verses, appears to me an interpolation, pure and simple.
Let us reread the passage, in effect. It is the interminable discourse of Alkinoös at the end of canto VIII. The poem
contains no other discourse - I do not say no account - of this length. Outside of the descriptions and accounts, the
discourses of the Odyssey, in effect, are brief, rapid, without needless phrases, and serve only to stitch together the
accounts and descriptions. Now, Alkinoös speaks here for fifty verses (v. 535-585), and if we wish to analyse his
discourse, we see quite promptly the incoherence and the neat division into two parts. The beginning is perfectly useful
and reasonable. Alkinoös says the things which he needs to say, and which guide the organization of the account: his
sensible speeches coming in their time and their place. For Alkinoös has seen that Ulysses cried during the songs of the
bard: “Silence the musician,” says Alinoos”: it is boring our guest” (v. 535-543). The end of the discourse is no less
useful to lead the organization of the account: “And you, our guest, tell me from where you come and why you weep” (v.
572-586). Ulysses responds: “Valient Akinoös, the music does not bore me. I love the music of the table. But you ask me
my name and my adventures. Here they are.” And Ulysses begins the account of his Nostos (return). From the discourse
received from Alkinoös to the response of Ulysses, there is not the least fault: this corresponds to that, and the discourse
of Alkinoös partakes of the measure and tone of the Odyssian discourses. But from verse 543 to verse 572, I have omitted
thirty verses of insufferable babbling. Of the thirty verses, the ones are platitudes or stupidities (v. 546-554): “He is a
brother rather than a stranger or a supplicant in the eyes of the man who is not lacking in wisdom. Do not evade my
questions with cunning thoughts: it is worth more for you to speak. Tell me the name by which they call you, and your
father and mother and the others who live in the town and who live around. For there is no man who might be entirely
without a name, be he cowardly or brave, once he is born; but to all, when they are set into the day, the parents give a
name.” It should be read in the text to appreciate the clumsy nonsense:

είπ’ όνομ’ ‘όττι σε κειθι κάλεον μήτηρ τε πατήρ τε

άλλοι θ’ ο‘ί κατα άστυ και ο‘ί περιναιετάουσιν
ου μεν γάρ τις πάμπαν ανώνυμος εστ’ ανθρώπων
ου κακος ουδε μεν εσθλός, επην τα πρώτα γένηται,
αλλ’ επι πασι τίθενται, επεί κε τέκωσι, τοκηες.

Some other verses are recopied here from another canto of the poem: Alkinoös says here (v. 565-570) that which he will
repeat in canto XIII (v. 173-178). But in canto XIII the verses are in their place: the Pheacian people coming to see their
vessel petrified in midair by the anger of Poseidon: “My father truly told me,” Alkinoös says, “that Poseidon would
punish them for taking up the trade of ferrymen, that he would petrify one of our vessels and cover our town with a
mountain!” In canto VII, the verses do not fit. They are in fact displaced: if Alkinoös thought in advance of the probable
misfortune, he would not have engaged the Pheacians, and they would not have agreed to take Ulysses back... Finally
there remain the seven verses where all the follies concerning the vessels of Pheacia are piled up: “They have neither pilot
nor tiller as other vessels have. But they know the thoughts and plans of men and they know the towns and the fertile
fields of all men and they very rapidly traverse the abyss of the sea covered by air and clouds, and it is not to be feared
that they might be damaged or lost.” The verses equal the preceding ones as a construct; if we wish to reread well in the
text,

ου γαρ Φαιήκεσσι κυβερνητηρες έασιν,

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 ου δέ τι πηδάλι έστι τα τ’ άλλαι νηες έχουσιν,
αλλ’ αυται ίσασι νοήματα και φρένας ανδρων
και πάντων ίσασι πόλιας και πίονας αγρους
ανθρώπων και λαιτμα τάχισθ’ ‘αλος εκπερόωσιν
ηέρι και νεφέλη κεκαλυμμέναι,

we promptly will perceive that they are, furthermore, copies or paraphrases of another passage of the poem: “Their
vessels,” says Athena to Ulysses, “are as rapid as the wing or the thought,”

των νέες ωκειαι ‘ως ει πτερον ηε ηε νόημα.

The interpolator has reworked the word for thought, νοημα, and he has drawn from it the foolishness that we come to
read of the thoughts, νοηματα, which the vessels know. He has similarly reworked a word of Alkinoös in canto VII (v.
318-320): “Your departure, know well, I set for tomorrow, and while you will be at rest, subdued by sleep, our men will
stroke the calm sea in order that you will return to your homeland”, and the boat leaves, in effect, during the night - we
know why - and it navigates through the darkness until the dawn. The interpolator concludes from this that the Pheacian
vessels never sail other than in the darkness, “surrounded by mist and night.”
From the discourse of Alkinoös, it is thus necessary, I think, to reject the thirty interpolated verses (542-572), and, at
one stroke, the fantastic improbabilities and “teratologies” concerning the vessels of the Pheacians disappear. The cruisers
fly “like the wing or the thought.” But they are real vessels. We can seek their home port.
The isle of Corfu passed among the ancients for the realm of Alkinoös. Already, among the contemporaries of
Thucydides, the opinion was law. It even had a singular influence upon the destiny of the isle, for it was translated into
the politics of the isle: “The Korkyrians somewhat scorn Corinth, their parent homeland, because of their wealth, their
power, and the antique renown which the establishment of the Pheacians earned for their isle, κατα την των Φαιάκων
προενοίκησιν της Κερκύρας κλέος εχόντων τα περι τας ναυς.” The misHomeric school of Eratosthenes rejected, as we
can expect of them, this identification: since all the Homeric geography is nothing but a tissue of fables, Pheacia had no
more real existence than Cyclopia or Lestrygonia. But the misHomerics were never able, during antiquity, to convince the
popular opinion. The modern geographers, philologists and commentators are divided between the two opinions. It is
needless to make the presentation of the debate again here. We will find it summed up in the conscientious book of O.
Riemann, Recherches sur les Iles Ioniennes (Library of the French schools of Rome and Athens, 1879). We will find a
more complete and recent bibliography of it in the fine memoir of Partsch, Die Insel Korfu (Petermann’s Mittheilungen,
Ergänzungsband, XIX, 1887-1888, no. 88). All that which the three or four centuries have produced on the isle is
catalogued in the two works, to which I constantly refer the reader, to not exert myself in recopying the bibligraphic lists.
The isle of the Pheacians is called Sheria, Σχεριη,

ήματι κ’ εικοστω Σχερίην ερίβωλον ‘ίκοιτο

Φαιηκων ες γαιαν...

They have wished to explain the name by a Greek etymology, in relating it to the expressions ενσχερώ, επισχερώ, which
we encounter in the Iliad to designate objects or persons in a series one after another, continuously. I do not see that
which, in all onomasty, the Continuous Isle could mean: The property of an isle is, to the contrary, its separation from the
mainland. But among all the isles, Pheacia merited the name even less, if it could have any meaning: it is placed far from
everything, at a distance... I cite only from memory another etymology which makes χέρσος from σχερος, and Chersia,
the Peninsular, from Scheria. The ancient scholiasts had more good sense in their inventions: Demeter begs Poseidon to
end the deluge, that the isle not be submerged, and the waters are stopped, σχεθέντων ουν των ‘υδάτων, the isle is called
the isle of the Hold, σχερία.” In reality, the name of Scheria enters into the class of island names, which present no

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meaning to Hellenic ears, and which are ordinarily foreign names, doubles of a Greek name. In historic times, the isle had
another name: it was called Korkyre or Kerkyre, Κορκυρα or Κερκυρα. But the name is no more susceptable to a Greek
etymology than the preceeding one: we will presently see that it also enters into the class of foreign names. It is true that
the isle had still another name, that one Greek, Drepanon or Drepane: it was the Isle of the Sickle, δρεπανον. It is not
because, although they may have said it, for the reason that the isle has the form of a sickle. It has that form, in effect, on
our charts: it presents the elongated curve of a billhook or a sickle. But here again we should not judge the ancient names
by our conceptions or our views of the geographers at home: the first navigators did not have our charts before their eyes,
and their gaze did not encompass, on the water, in a cavalier view, the hundred kilometers of Corfiot curvature. On the
sea - and not on the chart - Corfu is not a sickle, but a high and long cut-off wall - the isle is also called Makris the long -
whose height goes crossing from the south to the north. If the first sailors name it the Sickle, it is because they will see the
sickle which had served to emasculate the good father, Kronos, in the vicinity. Zeus had thrown the sickle on the Corfiot
coasts, with the bloody testicles of his father, and Corfu had received the sickle, also red with blood: εκαλειτο Δρεπάην
δια το εκει φυλάττεσθαι την δρεπάνην την τμητικην των του Κρόνου αιδοίων, says the scoliast. The Nautical Instructions
tell us:

Point San Stefano, which is moderately elevated, forms the northeast extremity of Corfu. A half mile to the southwest, one sees
the ruins of a mill on a hill 110 meters high. The Sickle Rocks, which are just at the level of the water, lie about 1/3 of a mile from
the shore of the small cove which is found under the mill. The rocks are steep with large bases on their east coast. They reduce the
width of the channel which separates them from the Albanian coast to a mile. In calm weather, they are perceived by their ruddy
color, which contrasts with the blue color of the sea.

There indeed is the bloody sickle which Corfu posesses. The myth of the emasculated god and the bloody sickle is
very ancient among the Hellenes: Hesiod sings it already. The first Greek navigators will thus find here the sickle which
Zeus threw into the sea of the Couchant: they would have known the sickle since childhood. The rock of the Sickle gives
its name to the neighboring harbor, then to the land which bears the harbor, then to the entire isle. It is as we have seen on
the coast of Cerigo, the Rock of the Mitre or of the Bonnet, Kythera. It is entirely parallel, perhaps, that the Rock of the
Hideout gave its name to the entire continent of Ispania. Even without leaving Corfu, it is similarly that the two summits
of the Venetian harbor, Κορυφοι, Κορυφους, Koryphous, Korphous, furnished the modern town with the name of Corfu,
which the entire isle bears today.
At Cerigo, by the reciprocal situations of the rock and the harbor, we have been able to determine that the sailors,
inventors of the name Kythera, came from the south. For the Rock of the Bonnet should have served them for
reconaissance and a landing place to reach the harbor; it should have, for them, been in front of the insular coast: they first
encountered the rock, then the harbor, and that is why the name passes from the first to the second. And we establish, in
effect, that the navigators came from Phoenicia, along the Cretan coasts, and that they reached Kythera by the southeast.
Make the same comparison for the Rock of the Sickle and for our isle of Korkyre. The rock lies in the strait which
separates Albania from Corfu, at the most narrow point of the channel, on the route of the boats which pass either from
the Albanian coast to the Corfiot coast, or from the interior channel of Corfu to the open sea of the north. Thus, it is either
native navigators coming from Albania, or Greek sailors coming from the Hellenic isles and sailing toward the Adriatic,
who will transport the name from the rock to the insular coast and who will make all of Corfu the isle of the Sickle,
Drepanon or Drepane.
We could imagine a name of the same sort, but a little different, given to the same isle of Corfu by the navigators who
would arrive there on the other façade. The northwest coast of the isle, facing Italian seas and the great strait toward the
Adriatic, also offers a characteristic rock whose very clear profile has always struck the navigators: it is, rising from the
water, a ship in passage, its sails set and its lifeboat moored to the stern. Carved like an import-piece, the rock, without
much thickness, has the same profile on both sides. From all the mountains which occupy the north part of the isle, the
natives can perceive the petrified caïque on the horizon: “Viewed from the pass of Hagios Pandeleimon,” says O
Riemann, “and lighted by the sun, the islet entirely resembles a caïque which is navigating, its triangular sail deployed...

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and a rock emerging at the rear resembles the dinghy towed at the stern of the large ship.” From all the summits, from all
the northern promontories of the isle, the boat is visible and distinct: it can serve as a landmark on all the land routes,
from all the jumble of hills and valleys which occupy the north of Corfu. And from the sea, for the navigators, the Boat is
also distinct. Among the islets and rocks which strew the north façade of the isle, its black mass and its characteristic
profile, which are outlined against the screen of the white cliffs, remain always recognizable:

The northern coast of Corfu is generally low and sandy, bordered by shallows and rocks. It forms an entry comprising the bays of
Sidari and San Georgio. The ships frequently anchor in the two bays, and one communicates easily from Sidari with the town of
Corfu by a fine driveable road. Cape Drasti, to the west, is a limestone projection, white, little elevated, and surrounded by deep
waters which extend four cables to the north; the neighboring coast is formed of limestone cliffs. To the east is found cape Astakari,
recognisable by its white cliffs; at about 1¼ miles toward the north lies the dangerous Astrakari shallows, of rock, and covered by
only 1.8 meters of water.

The Nautical Instructions add a detailed description of all the islets which border the northern coast of Corfu. The
navigators have always had need to know these dangerous waters well, which border two important sea routes. For the
vessels which ascend to or descend from the Adriatic at this place intersect the vessels which pass from Greek lands to
Italian lands or, conversely, from Italian coasts to Albanian coasts. The crossing of the maritime routes is dangerous
because of the terrible Bora. Driven by a blow of the wind from the north, the boats can be thrown into the jumble of isles
and rocks with which are strewn the northern façade of Corfu. To reach the harbors and the beaches of the Corfiot coast,
it is necessary to maneuver prudently: “The current between the islets, like that between them and Corfu, is sometimes
very strong.” Our Rock of the Boat is thus a seamark, a guide of great utility. The modern Greeks call it Karavi, the Boat.
It is the name which they also give to another small isle between Cerigo and Morea, “small islet or barren rock bearing
the name of its appearance, at a distance, of a ship under sail; it is 33 meters tall, steep on all sides and practically
inaccessible; in good weather, it is frequented by the fishermen.” Our Karavi of Corfu has the same height and
appearance: “it is 30 meters tall and steep.”
By its location at the extreme northwest of Corfu, the landmark of the Boat is especially useful to the sailors who come
from the west. On our marine charts, reëstablish the coastal cruising of the old thalassocracies. Leaving from the last
Italian point, the cape of S. Maria di Leuca, their fleets have to traverse the eighty or ninety kilometers, “the great abyss
of the sea,” of our channel of Otrante. On the other side of the strait, the isle Fano will offer them the first refuge; our
sailors still carefully note its form and approaches: “Fano, the largest of the isles which are found to the northwest of
Corfu, is 11¼ miles from it, and 42 miles from cape S. Maria di Leuca. it has a length of 3 miles and a width of 2. It
reaches its greatest height, 408 meters, in its southwest part. It is covered with pines and, viewed from the west, it has the
appearance of a fork.” Right next to Fano, the isle of Samothrace “lies with the islets and the dangers which we have
indicated on a bank of irregular soundings which joins it to the isle of Corfu.” From Leuca to Fano, the Occidentals thus
steer by by the high peak of 408 meters which points from Fano to the southwest; they have a retreat here: “The isle is
bordered by rocks and reefs; but a small bay, on its south coast, shelters the coasters from the heavy northwest breezes of
the summer.” Then, from Fano to Samothrace and from Samothrace to Corfu, the traverse, much shorter but more
dangerous, will need to be guided by the Boat, always recognisable, always distinct. Our large steamers of today no
longer frequent the waters. Since they do not seek the shortest traverses, but the most convenient navigations, they no
longer go from Leuca to Fano: they prefer the much longer but safer route between the more convenient ports of Otrante
or of Brindisi or of the town of Corfu. But that is entirely recent: we see the boats of the XVIIth century cruise the coasts
between Leuca, Fano and Karavi, and it is by the frequentation of the antique galleys that our Boat earned its renown
among the ancient geographers: “across from cape Chauve of Korkyre,” says Pliny, “one sees the Rock of the Boat, so
named because of its form, which causes the petrified vessel of Ulysses to be recognized in the islet, a Phalacro Corcyrae
promontorio, scopulus in quem mutatam Ulyssis navem a simili specie fabula est.”

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 The Odyssian description of the petrified boat would find here, in effect, its exact application. When the Pheacians
have deposited Ulysses on the beach of Ithaca, their cruiser, νηυς θοη, takes them back. They arrive near the Pheacian
land, traveling again with full sails,

... ‘η δε μάλα σχεδον ήλυθε ποντοπόρος νηυς

‘ρίμφα διωκομένη.

It has not yet entered the port; it sails the great misty sea,

εκ πομπης ανιουσαν εν ηεροειδέϊ πόντω.

It has not yet made the habitual maneuver of Homeric boats which, to come into the interior of the harbor, demast or furl
the sail and achieve their return to the beach of debarkation by the oar. The cruiser is still masted; it is still under sail...
Suddenly Poseidon makes a stone of it, which he roots among the waves,

‘ός μιν λααν έθηκε και ερρίζωσεν ένερθεν

And there indeed is our Rock of the Boat with its mast, its triangular sail and its dinghy on the towrope. It is truly, near
the land, a rock resembling a cruiser,

... λίθον εγγύθι γαίνς

νηι θοη ίκελον.

It is truly a whole boat, arrested in mid-passage,

... νηα θοην επέδησ’ ενι πόντω

οίκαδ’ ελαυνομένην, και δη προυφαίνετο πασα.

It is necessary to carefully read the most minute details of the text. For, on the other side of Corfu, in the strait of the
Sickle, our sailors know another rock which is called the Barque or the Barquette: “A small rock, named Barchetta, the
Little Barque, emerging only for a few feet and steep, lies to the east of Tignoso: it should be viewed at mid-distance
between the coast and Barchetta rock, which is no larger than a capsized small boat.” We see the difference between the
shipwrecked barque, overturned, barely visible above the water line, projecting only a few feet, and our masted boat,
decorated with a sail, 30 meters tall, sailing across the channels of the rocks. It thus well appears that we have here the
Odyssian Rock of the Cruiser. The popular legends have never forgotten the miraculous origin of the rock. For the
modern Greeks, it is the successor of Poseidon in the empire of the sea, Saint Nicholas, who wished to punish the
irreverences of a infidel captain and crew: he petrifies their vessel. Others recount a prettier story: “There was formerly a
great town named Pamphlagonia on the Corfiot promontory of Aphonia. It had recived the name of the queen
Pamphlagona, sister of the princess Corcyre. Its king waged a war in a distant land and allows himself to be charmed by
an evil queen, whom he marries. He brought her back to his shores. Pamphlagona, the legitimate queen, knew the betrayal
and watches for their return. When their ship appears on the horizon, she invokes the spell of Saint Nicholas, who
petrifies the ship.”
But if our Karavi, our Boat, is the Homeric Cruiser, νηυς θοη, perhaps we are going to understand the old name of
Corfu, Korkyre or Kerkyre, Κέρκυρα, Κόρκυρα. The kerkoure or kerkyre, κέρκουρος, cercurus; is a sort of vessel whose
name is found for the first time in Herodotus. The fleet of Xerxes comprises around three thousand ships, triremes or
pentaremes as well as kerkoures and vessels for horses: in the fleet, the best sailors are furnished by the Phoenicians and,

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among the Phoenicians, by the Sidonians, τούτων δε άριστα πλεούσας παρείχοντο νέας Φοίνικες και των Φοινίκων
Σιδώνιοι. Pliny attributes the invention of the kerkyre to the Cypriots, and the scholiasts add that it is a vessel of running,
a light vessel and not a heavy cargo vessel. The kerkoure figures in the fleets of Cathage. The Arabs still have kurkura,
“long and large vessel.” The word kerkoure means nothing in Greek or Latin; but it has a clear Semitic etymology. The
Hebrews call ‫כרכרה‬, kerkera, racing camels, the runners: δρομάσ, dromas, say the Hellenes, from which we have made
dromadary. Kerkera-dromas, the Runner, form a Greco-Semitic doublet. The epithet runner became a common name,
which the landsmen applied to their racing steeds: the people of the sea will apply it, I believe, to their cruisers “which are
their horses of the sea,”

νηων ωκυπόρων επιβαίνεμεν α‘ί θ’ ‘αλος ‘ίπποι

ανδράσι γίγνονται.

The Phoenicians had kerkoures in their fleets, as the Hellenes had runners, δρόμων: kerkyra-dromon would be another
very exact doublet. The low Latin cursorius, from which we have made coursaire or corsair, would give a just translation
of it: Similarly as the ancient Greeks had borrowed kerkoure from the Semites, the modern Greeks have borrowed
korsarikon, κορσαρικόν from the French, and they have said armatono eis korsarikon to say fit out a cruiser, αρματωνω
εισ κορσαρικον, up to the day when the purists wished to drive the introduced words from the language and come back to
the classic expressions: today they say katadromikon, καταδρομικον, in place of korsarikon. The Odyssey has similarly
translated kerkoure, and the best translation of the word is still provided for us by it: it is νηυς θοη, a cruiser, which
Poseidon changes into a stone on the coasts of Kerkyra,

λίθον εγγύθι γαίης

νηι θοη ίκελον.

It is not one of the heavy cargo vessels, one of the large carriers, which the Odyssey also knew. I have said that the
cargo vessels are mentioned only two times in the poem (IX, 323; V, 250). The homeric heroes were served for their
cruises and crossings by hardly any vessels other than cruisers. The two words fast vessels became almost inseparable to
designate the Homeric vessels; they come to make a single compound word to which they join the same epithets as to
vessel alone: the poem speaks to us of the “black vessels” and the “black fast-vessels,”

εκ Τροίης ανιόντα θοη συν νηι μελαίνη,

of “nimble vessels” and “nimble fast-vessels”

νηυσι θοησιν τοί γε πεποιθότες ωκείησιν.

and there is what will explain the second name to us, the Homeric name of Corfu, Sheria, Σχερίη. For Sheria is nothing
but an epithet of Kerkyra.
In the Adriatic sea, the ancients knew another Kerkyre or Korkyre, which they call the Black, Korkyra Melaina,
Κόρκυρα Μέλαινα. It is the present isle of Curzola, along the Dalmatian coast, under the peninsula of Sabioncello. The
isle and its neighbor, Meleda, are the first which the navigators coming from the south encounter. Up to these isles, the
Adriatic sea offers only an inhospitable desert to the navigators: here begins the border of Archipelagos which is going to
line the length of the Dalmation coast up to the foot of the Adriatic gulf. Curzola and Meleda, by their location, are
stations of great utility and even of vital necessity for the sailors coming from the south. For the return to the Adriatic sea
can only be achieved along the Oriental coasts. It is impossible to follow the Italian coasts because a terrible Bora, which

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blows from the right, from the northeast, would threaten to throw the sailing ships to the left, onto the Italian coast, and
the lack of harbors is so great on that façade that shipwreck would be inevitable.

“Navigation in the Adriatic sea,” say the Nautical Instructions, “requires a serious attention. It presents great difficulties to sailing
ships especially because of frequent thick mists and bad weather. Prudence counsels, because of the Bora, navigation along the
Dalmatian coast to go from the southeast to the northwest or, inversely, even if one follows the route from northwest to southeast,
one may encounter adverse currents. The Italian coast offering no safe refuge from the bad weather, one would be seriously exposed
to wreck there if one were surprised by a gale. Along the Oriental coast, on the other hand, one finds good ports or good shelter
everywhere. During the summer and in favorable conditions, a well equipped ship can descend from north to south along the
Occidental coast, where the only spot which would offer any security is the harbor of Manfredonia under mount Gargano, with the
harbor of the Tremiti isles; but, excepting these two harbors, all the others [of the Occidental coast] are very bad or very dangerous.”

Entering into the channel of Otrante, the boats coming from the south at first cruise along the muddy beaches of
Albania. Some ancient rocky islets, which the sediments have joined to the marshes, offer only temporary harbors.
Nevertheless, the Hellenes will establish their colonies of Apollonia and Dyrrhachion at two points. Hanging on the
savage land, at the mercy of an attack (the history of Dyrrhachion is nothing but a constant battle against the ferocious
natives), the harbors are untenable when a numerous and permanent garrison does not defend their rock against the
cupidity of the Arnauts. Then, at the foot of the Albanian beaches, the Montenegran coast offers its bays of double and
triple bottoms, its mouths of the Cattaro and Raguse, treacherous nets where the old sailors do not venture. Then Meleda
and Curzola, parallel to the mainland, finally open their channels and their small bays. Elongated from the southeast to the
northwest, the isles have, for all weather, harbors secure against the two dominent winds, the Bora and the Sirocco. Our
Nautical Instructions still minutely describe all the coves and refuges.
It thus appears probable that Curzola, the Dalmatian Korkyra, was able to serve as a refuge to the same navigators
who, coming from the south or southwest, have saluted the Corfiot Rock with the name of Korkyra. Between the two
Korkyras, the ancients already established the relationships of kinship. The Dalmatian Korkyre, said some, had received
its name from the Greek colonists, the Knidians: the name Korkyra, borrowed by them from the large isle, had been
transported here. Others, to the contrary, knew that the Liburnes, the Dalmatians had posessed the Corfiot Korkyra for a
moment, and that the first Greek colonists had driven them from it. I believe that the Korkyras date, in effect, from the
same thalassocracy, for the sailors who frequent the one also frequent the other: “The isle of Corfu,” said the
hydrographographer Belin already in the XVIIIth century, “is situated at the entrance of the gulf of Venice, to which it is
in some sense the key,” and our Instructions still counsel the ships which return from the Mediterranean into the Adriatic
to first recognize Corfu, then follow the Albanian coasts, benefitting from the south-north current which passes along
them.
The same Semitic sailors, who will name the first Korkyra, were carried directly to the second by the current and by
the necessity of a shelter. We have in the local onomasty another indication of their passage: the neighboring island,
Meleda, is an ancient Malta, a Melite, Μελίτη. The name of Melite is frequent in the insular onomasty of the
Mediterranean. The most celebrated of the Melites, our present isle of Malta, was one of the great Phoenician stations
between the metropolises of Syria and the African colonies: “Malta,” says Diodorus, “is a colony of the Phoenicians
which, on the isolated island, and provided with good ports, had a repository for their commerce which expanded up to
the Occidental ocean.” They agree in giving the name of Melite a Semitic etymology, which appears reasonable, but
which nothing verifies: ‫מלט‬, m.l.t., signifies protect, save; ‫מליטה‬, melit’a, would be as Diodora says, the Repository or the
Refuge, καταφυγη. If the etymology is not certain, we at least know that near Malta another isle, Gozzo, bore the
authentically Pohnecian name of Gaulos, γαυλος. “Gaulos,” says Heschius, “is a name of a Phoenician vessel.” We
already know, from the Odyssian poem, the Semitic word ‫גול‬, gul, , which among the landsmen of Canaan signifies vase
or vessel and which, among the sailors of the Syrian coast, comes to designate vessel, ship, τα Φοινικικα πλοια γαυλοι
καλουνται. But, gaulos being of the same origin and of the same meaning as korkyra, it follows that our two groups of
isles, Melita-Gaulos and Melite-Korkyra, are onomastically in perfect symmetry: the two terms melite are the same

261
individually and otherwise, and gaulos is a synonym of korkyra. The resemblance in the onomasty of the two insular
groups proves to us, I think, the arrival of the same Semites in the two areas: The Dalmation Melite and Korkyra were
Phoenician stations with the same title as the Melite and Gaulos of the seas of Sicily.
Now, the Dalmation Korkyra has the epithet of Black, μέλαινα: it is the Black Vessel, the Black Cruiser, or, as the
Odyssey says, in speaking of its ships, naus thoe melaina, ναυς θοη μέλαινα, for the epithet of the Dalmatian Korkyre is
that same one which the Odyssian poet gives most frequently to the cruisers of its heroes,

ο‘ύνεκα δευρ’ ‘ικόμεσθα θοη συν νηι μελαίνη...

The Pheacian cruiser, which Poseidon petrifies, is a black cruiser,

αλλ’ άγε νηα μέλαιναν ερύσσομεν εις ‘άλα διαν.

The Corfiot rock, which represents the vessel, thus could itself be a rock of the Black Cruiser, a Black Kerkyra, Kerkyra
Melaina. And it was in reality. The complete name of the Dalmatian Korkyra Melaina is made from a Greek epithet,
melaina, paired with a Semitic substantive kerkyra. If we wish to rediscover the prototype of the Greek epithet, we need
to resort to the Semitic root ‫שחי‬, s.kh.r., to be black, and to an adjectival form, ‫שחרה‬, skher’a, which would be derived
from it (like ‫לבנה‬, leben’a, the white, from ‫לבן‬, laban; ‫קדשה‬, kedes’a, the holy, from ‫קדש‬, kadas: the roots have also
frurnished epithets in participial form ‫קדושה‬, kados’a, ‫לבגה‬, lebon’a; the Scripture only employs the participial form
‫שחורה‬, skhor’a; but the form ‫שחרה‬, skher’a, is, as we see, also regular). Skhr’a, or skher’a, ‫שחרה‬, has given to the Homeric
poet Σχερίη, Skheria, following the equivalences which we know well σ=‫ש‬, χ=‫ח‬, ρ=‫ר‬, ε, ει or ι=‫ה‬.
‫כרכרה שחרה‬, Kerkura Skher’a, such was primitively the complete name of the Rocks or Isles of the Black Cruser. For
the Liburne station, the Hellenes will translate the second term and transcribe the first: they had Kerkyra Melaina. For the
Corfiot station, they had transcribed the two terms; but the common usage retains only the first Kerkyra or Korkyra, while
the Odyssian poetry had conserved and popularized only the second, Skheria. The different onomastic operations are
frequent for all the toponymies which have passsed through many mouths. That two stations of the primitive Adriatic
should have had the same name of Kerkura-Skher’a could only surprise someone who did not know of the two Iapygian
capes on the entirely nearby Italian coast, the two Kara-tash Burnu of the Turks an the Sicilian coast, the two Soloi of the
Phoenicians on the strait of Cyprus, the innumerable Castel Novo or Castel Vecchio of the French and the Italians in all
the Mediterranean. That the navies readily translate and readily transcribe the foreign names which they borrow, we
already know from twenty examples. But that they also readily combine the translation and transcription, our Nautical
Instructions or the French Portulans could still show us.
Here are a few examples.
At the entry of the gulf of Smyrna, the name of the promontory which the Hellenes name the Black Cape, Άκρα
Μέλαινα, has been exactly translated by the Turks as Kara Burnu; but our Instructions and our travelers promptly say the
Cape Kara Burnu, which makes a pleonasm, soon Cape Kara, which makes a regular translation (Burnu=Cape) and a
transcription, and presently Cape Burnu, which makes nonsense. Of a point which the Italians called Bianco Cavallo, the
White Horse, the French promptly make the Cape of the Horse (Cap du Cheval) or the Cape Cavallo (Cap Cavallo), and
presently the Cape Bianco (Cap Bianco), or White Cape. The same Italians had strewn in the Mediterranean their Castles
of the Pilgrims, Castellum Peregrinorum, Castel Pelegrino: d’Arvieux, Thevenot and the French, who speak to us of the
Syrian station, sometimes say Chateau or Castel Pelegrin and sometimes, briefly, Pelegrin. In the gulf of Athens, the
French distinguished the isle Saint-Georges de l’Arbre, from l’isle Saint-Georges de Milo: the travelers speak sometimes
of l’Isle Saint-Georges and sometimes of l’Isle de l’Arbre. Similarly, to the south of Astypale, , the portulans of the last
century distinguish the Saint Jean de Patmos from the small archipelago of Saint Jean di Serni: our Instructions describe
the islets Serina or Aghios Ioannis, Saint-Jean. We know in the Palestinian onomasty the Plain of the Vines which the
Hebrews call Abel Keramim, ‫כרמים‬-‫אבל‬: the Seventy transcribe Άβελ or Έβελ χαρμείμ; others, translating vines and

262
transcribing plain, say Άβελ Αμπέλων; still others translate the two terms and say κώμη αμπελοφόρος... To take an
example from our same isle of Corfu, the highest mountain in the south of the island is called in Greek the Ten Saints,
Hagioi Deka. The Occidental navies have translated the first term, Hagioi, Saints, and transcribed the second, Deka. They
should have regularly said Saints Deka or Santi Deka; but since they have forgotten the exact sense of the second term,
deka, and since the term had the ending a of the feminine, they will promptly take it into their heads to make the epithet
saint agree with the feminine noun deka, and the last edition of our Nautical Instructions tells us : “On the west coast and
farther to the south, the mount San Giorgio rises to the height of 500 meters on the edge of the sea and, to the southeast of
it, one sees the mount Santa Decca, 560 meters high.”
Thus, to hold to our onomasty, it appears that our isle of Corfu can truly be the Kerkyra of the Hellenes and the Sheria
of the Homeric poet at the same time, since in reality it is Kerkyra Sheria, the Isle of the Corsair or the Black Cruiser. The
topology of the isle and all the descriptions of the Odyssian texts are going to lead us to the same identification.

*
* *

The first view of the coasts which Ulysses perceives before the storm is comprised of high shadowed mountains which
stand in the distance

εφάνη όρεα σκιόεντα

γαίης Φοιήκων.

Then the storm throws Ulysses against this same coast of the isle; then, it is onto cliffs of rocks that the surf throws
clouds of foam with a terrible roaring,

και δη δουντον άκουσε ποτι σπιλάδεσσι θαλάσσης

‘ρόχθει δε μέγα κυμα ποτι ξερον ηπείροιο
δεινον ερευγόμενον είλυτο δε πάνθ’ ‘αλος άχνη.

Neither port nor refuge. All around project promontories, reefs, rocks, and still more jagged reefs around which the
surf roars; behind, a cliff of bare rock against which the the swell goes to hurl the castaway:

ου γαρ έσαν λιμένες νηων όχοι ουο επιωγαί,

αλλ’ ακται προβλητες έσαν σπιλάδες τε πάγοι τε...
έκτοσθεν μεν γαρ πάγοι οξέες αμφι δε κυμα
βέβρυχεν ‘ρόθιον, λισση δ’ αναδ’εδομε πέτρη...
μή πώς μ’ εκβαίνοντα βάλη λίθακι ποτι πέτρη...

A great wave throws Ulysses on a rocky promontory. He only has time in passing to hold on to one of the reefs which
border the coast. He thus avoids being crushed against the cliff. But, in return, the wave takes him again and returns him
to the high sea. Then he swims parallel to the land. His eyes turned to the coast, he looks for a solid beach and a port. The
sea is bottomless: impossible to get a footing,

νηχε παρέξ ες γαιαν ‘ορώμενος εί του εφεύροι

ηιόνας τε παραπληγας λιμένας τε θαλάσσης...

263
 αγχιβάθης δε θάλασσα και ού πως έστι πόδεσσιν
στήμεναι αμφοτέροισι.

Finally he perceives the mouths of a river of flowing water; he approaches it: the location is excellent to get ashore, on
the sandy beach, in the cove protected from the wind,

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη παταμοιο κατα στόμα καλλιρ’οοιο

ιξε νέων, τη δή ο‘ι εείσατο χωρος άριστος,
λειος πετράων και επι σκέπας ην ανέμοιο.

The river is without depth; it slows its flow to receive Ulysses. But the spot is deserted and the valley damp and
feverish. The nearby slopes, covered with trees and shrubs, offer a better refuge for the night:

ει μεν κ’ εν ποταμω δυσκηδέα νύκτα φυλάσσω,

μή μ’ άμαδις στίβη τε κακη και θηλυς εέρση
εξ ολιγηπελίης δαμάση κεκαφηότα θυμόν...
ει δέ κεν ες κλιτων αναβας και δάσκιον ‘ύλην
θάμνοις εν πυκινοισι καταδράθω...

Ulysses climbs to the forest and buries himself in dry leaves... It is there that Nausikaa will find the hero. The town of
the Pheacians is somewhat far from here. When Nausikaa will come to wash her linens at the mouth of the river, she will
take a vehicle to make the journey, and provisions to stay the entire day. Leaving in full morning, she will not return until
the evening. On the way, she will first cross the gardens of the suburb and the sacred grove of Athena, which is very near
the town, then the fields and the cultivated plain, which lead to the river. The town is at the edge of the sea nevertheless:
between the two ports on a narrow inlet, it raises its high hill, which a rampart encircles,

αυταρ επην πόλιοσ επιβείομεν, ‘ήν πέρι πύργος

‘υψηλος, καλος δε λιμην ‘εκάτερθε πόληος
λεππτη δ’ εισίθμη.

At the foot of the acropolis, between the two ports, beside the slips which receive the ships, a public place, paved with
large stones, surrounds a temple of Poseidon,

νηες δ’ ‘οδον αμφιέλισσαι

ειρύαται. πασιν γαρ επίστιñoν εστιν ‘εκάστω.
ένθα δε τέ σφ’ αγορη καλον Ποσιδήιον αμφίς
‘ρυτοισιν λάεσσιν κατωρυχέεσσ’ αραρυια...

All along the Corfiot coasts, the archeologists and the explorers have sought the double port of the Pheacians. Three or
four sites, they say, correspond to the Homeric description: the only difficulty is to choose between them; but the
difficulty, according to the explorers, is practically insoluble. On the strait which separates Corfu from the Albanian coast,
two ports have always been frequented by the navigators, the port of Corfu itself and harbor of Cassopo: both have a
double bay. On he coast of the Occidental sea, two other retreats, Aiphonia and Palaio-Castrizza, each present on the
flanks of their rocky peninsulas a pair of accomplished harbors. Thus there are four locations for our town of Alkinoös.
But the difficulty of the choice is perhaps in reality not so great. Let us at first understand well the value of certain words.

264
 Today we give the name of port, of retreat, of harbor, etc., to stations of our fleets which do not in any fashion accord
with the primitive fleets, and which cannot have truly been Homeric ports. An Homeric port, we know, is not a large bay
sunk into the land: that would present, in arriving or leaving, a too difficult effort of the rowers to gain the high sea or to
return to the harbor. An Homeric port is not even a large basin of deep water: it only has to make a large exposure to the
sea; its boats do not remain afloat. But it needs for them a sufficiently great extent of beach to haul them ashore. A
Homeric “good port” is almost the opposite of our good ports: it has need neither of the same capacity nor the same depth.
Bit it needs to fill certain conditions which are not easily reconciled. It needs to be sheltered from the wind and covered
by the neighboring lands. It should have a number of small beaches, where each vessel will have its place. And especially
it should not lie far within the mainland and give the rowers too long a distance from the entrance to the beach. In brief,
under a promontory which bears the town, a small creek suffices, on the condition that it be well covered from the high
sea and that inside the entry it expands itself and offers on the curve of its beaches the maximum of dentitions, of scallops
and small coves, with sandy slopes to receive the hauled-out vessels. On each coast of its promontory, the Town of
Alkinoös has a “good port” of this sort,

... καλος δε λιμην ‘εκάτερθε πόληος,

two small capes or two fingers of the coast make a narrow entry,

λεπτη δ’ εισίθμη

the ships should watch the route well and carefully maneuver through the entrance to then arrive at the place which each
vessel has, for the interior of the port has spots for each vessel,

νηες δ’ ‘οδον αμφιέλισσαι

ειρύαται. πασιν γαρ επιστιόν εστιν ‘εκάστω.

Our four Corfiot harbors are far from according completely to the description. Study them one after the other.
Perched, between two open bays, on the two summits (Koryphous, Κορύφους, Korphous, Corfu) which will gain it its
name, the present capitol of the isle has, for us, two ports, the harbor of Vito and the bay of Kastradais, but they are in
reality only two fairground moorings:

Built on a promontory which extends from the east, say the Nautical Instructions, the town is bathed by the sea on all sides. It is
elevated on a steep rock whose summit is formed by two peaks which crown sharp ridges. The harbor of Vido extends along the
north face of the town; it is sheltered by the isle of Vido from strong winds of the northeast which blow with great violence during
winter. The anchorage extends for a space 2 miles in length and over ¾ mile in breadth with bottoms of 18 to 29 meters. The isle
Vido, 43 meters high, of triangular shape, a half mile long and wide, is nearly precipitous. The bay of Kastradais, about ¾ mile in
extent, has shallow bottoms, and is visited only by fishermen.

Neither the one nor the other of the harbors in the least resembles the good ports of Alkinoös. Important works, say the
last Nautical Instructions, should be executed for the construction of a port of shelter. It is true that the ancient town of
Korkyre was not on the site. A little farther to the south, it occupied the eastern flank of the long, wide and high peninsula
which projects between the bay of Kastadais and the lagoon of Kallichiopoulo. The peninsula could rigorously represent
for us the rocky promontory of the Pheacians, except especially that it is disproportunately too large: its three or four
square kilometers would contain five or six towns like the capitol of Alkinoös. On east coast opens a harbor, they tell us.
But neither the one nor the other of the bays or lagoons correspond, in disposition or in dimensions, to the good Homeric
ports. The bay of Kastradais, which we already know, is entirely open. The lagoon of Kallichiopoulo is closed, and in
front of the entrance “is found the picturesque islet of Ulysses, twenty meters high, with a chapel; the lake Kallichiopoulo

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is of little depth and filled in; they have established an important fishery there.” The chauvinism of the modern Corfiots
has found the port of Alkinoös here: “There,” say the natives, “is the closed port, and there the rock of the petrified
vessel.” Embedded in mud, bordered by marshes which render the entire perimeter of it inaccessible, the lagoon without
deep water cannot serve our navies. Neither was it able to serve the primitive navies, which did not find here either a
beach of storage or a slope of sand. Their vessels would have been grounded and stuck in the mud of the perimeter.
Furthermore, the old navies would not have seen a port, but a small sea, in the inner bay: two and a half kilometers long
and two wide, the gigantic basin would necessitate hours of rowing for them to go from the entrance to the berths. Add
that the islet of Ulysses never had the form of a ship. The navies which followed here never had the idea of seeing a boat,
a galley or a caïque in it: it has never borne the name of Karavi, Galera or Nave; it is called the isle of Rats, Pondiko-Nisi.
The name itself implies the unlikelihood of the proposed identification, for it supposes an isle populated by rats, thus an
isle provided with water, with vegetation and with life. Now, for an isle to retain over the centuries a characteristic profile
and the name which the profile entails, for an isle to resemble a boat, and, from antiquity up to our days to be called the
isle of the Boat, it is necessary that it be a block of bare rock, without vegetation, without soft soil. The changes of woody
vegetation and crumbling of moving soil would have promptly made a change in the value of the block. Consider the
diverse islets to which the modern Greeks give the name of Karavi, Boat: we already know two of them. The one on the
Corfiot coast is a rock of 30 meters height. The other is near the Malea “a sterile rock of 33 meters which derives its name
from its resemblance to a ship under sail.” Near the Matapan, another islet Karavi “is a rock 12 meters high bordered by
rocks covered with little water.” Near Astypale, some Karavi isles are two bare rocks. Similarly, the Nave near the Italian
caosts is a rock; the islet of La Galera facing Syriacuse “is a flat rock, which the French chart calls the Egg,” and la
Galera of Ponsa is still another high, peaked rock. Now cast your gaze on the charming isle of Rats. It floats at the
entrance of the lagoon like a vase of flowers from which extend the tall trunks of cypress: it is an upright spray of verdure
and large trees whose profile ceaselessly varies at the whim of the wind which blows the plume, at the whim of men, who
respect it or cut it down, at the whim of the seasons, which dry or revive it... We need to look elsewhere for the isle of
Ulysses and the two fine ports of Alkinoös.
Another site. Our recent navies and already the navies of Greco-Roman antiquity, navigating the strait of Corfu, had a
last repository on the edge of the great Adriatic channel. The temple of Zeus Kasios and the church of Our Lady of
Cassopo followed it there. It is the antique station of Kassiope, the modern station of Kassope or Cassopo. The sailing
vessels which leave the Corfiot strait coming to shelter here when the Bora, closing the entry of the Adriatic, prevents
them from going farther north. The sailing ships coming from the Adriatic and navigating toward the south rest there also,
when the Sirocco closes the Corfiot strait to them. Thus from the day when the navigation frequents the strait, Cassopo
and its cults were in great renown among the sailors: the itineraries of the Holy Land and the French voyagers mention the
homages rendered, the cannon salutes to Our Lady of Cassopo. A Venetian fortress still crowns the promontory which,
surrounded on all sides with water, connects with the coast only by a narrow isthmus: “The point Cassopo bears the ruins
of a fine Venetian fortress. The west coast forms the bay of Aprau, where there is a mooring from the wind from the land
with a bottom of 20 to 33 meters, and the small port Cassopo with 7 meters of water. The localities are barely frequented
except by fishermen.” The east coast of the promontory of Cassopo follows another creek into a cul-de-sac, a narrow fjord
which the Instructions do not even mention. In the two moorings of Cassopo they nevertheless have wished to recognize
the fine ports of Alkinoös. Even in neglecting to translate half of the words, the text cannot be applied here: neither of the
two anchorages has, behind a narrow entrance, a basin with numerous berths.
If some writers have, in spite of everything, placed the debarkation of Ulysses in the vicinity of Cassopo, it is because
the neighboring strait provides them with the rock of the Barchetta: for them, it was the petrified vessel. We already know
that the pastry boat has nothing to do with a boat. For the hacks and business men of Degrees, “canoe, barque,
embarkation, boat, vessel and ship” are synonymous terms which they employ indifferently according to the needs of the
verse. But the language of the sailors is of a different precision: a barchetta is never a ship. The name of Barchetta is
Italian. Among the rocks at sea level, the Italians easily see Barcas - “five hundred fifty meters from cape Carbonara lies
a rock of 2 or 3 meters elevation, the head of a small drowned plateau, and at a little distance one finds another small

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group of rocks placed on a plateau of 2½ meters: they are the Barca rocks,” - Barcaccias, Barcas, Brucciatas and
Barchettas - “ the canal is obstructed with reefs covered with 2½ meters of water and with rocks: the Barchetta rock
breaks when there is little swell; one needs to know the locations well to make passage.” Now, the Odyssey speaks the
language of the Instructions and we know that our Barchetta is a rock at sea level, showing the keel of a capsized small
boat. The capsized canoe, with its keel in the air, cannot be our cruiser underway.... The anchorages of Cassopo, without
enclosure, buffeted by the north wind, too vast in their open curves or too narrow in their elongated passage, cannot be
our Fine Ports.
Furthermore, take Corfu, Cassopo or any other anchorage: no site of the east coast is able to offer the other traits of the
Odyssian site. Where are the steep cliffs, the bare rocks, the roaring reefs and the stream at the foot of the inlet? The isle
offers to the navigators of the strait only beaches of sand or mud and long slopes of rocks or gravel. The mountains
dominate the east coast in places, but they never plunge abruptly into the sea:

The isle is mountainous, and covered in all parts with olive plantations. The mount San Salvador or Pantokrator,
culminant point of the chain of the north, forms two remarkable conical peaks; its slopes are steep, thickly wooded and cut by deep
ravines... The cape Santa Katerina, pointed north from Corfu, is a bit low... the point San Stefano, which is moderately elevated,
forms the eastern extremity of Corfu. Then the coast cuts along the abrupt slopes of mount San Salvador; it is high and steep; the
land is well covered in olive trees. About three miles to the northwest of the town of Corfu is found the port of Govino, well-
sheltered, but diminished by the mud accumulated on its shores. It is surrounded by marshes which render it unhealthy. [Then come
the promontory and the beaches and the marshy lagoons which surround the town of Corfu]. At 2½ miles to the south of the islet of
Ulysses is found the pretty town of Benizza, at the foot of the steep peaks of mounts Decca and Santa Croce; the land in the north is
undulating and forested; the coast is a beach where the ships anchor on occasion. The land to the south is raised into hills heavily
wooded up to the steep peaks of the mounts Santa Croce and Decca. [The southern extremity of the strait is bordered by three points
Buccari, Lefkimo and Bianco. Point Buccari is of a rounded form and 85 meters height; the intervening shore is low; there is an
excellent anchorage there in 18 meters of water, in sand. The point Lefkimo is a long tongue of sand; between the points Buccari and
Lefkimo, the low coast is formed with shallow bottoms and salt marshes. Cape Bianco, the southernmost extremity of Corfu, is 6
miles from Lefkimo; the intervening shore is low and bordered by shallow bottoms with scattered rocks. Cape Bianco, formed of
white cliffs and of 70 meters height, is surrounded by deep sandy bottoms.

All along the strait of Corfu, I vainly searched for views of the Odyssian coasts (April 25 - May 1 1901). The sandy
beaches of the south cannot be put to the cause. The wooded slopes of the center acccord no better: they are of steep
banks cut by ravines, with scattered rolling stones and rocks, but clothed with olives, cypress and brush, and never
presenting a precipitous face. Then come the marshes and mud which encircle the promontories of the ancient town and
the new town. Here is the enormous lagoon of Kallichiopoulo and its entrtance so wide that men needed to bar it with a
jetty and a chain: the slopes of olives and vines or the banks of vegetation and aloes descend down to the edge of the mud.
The sea, from the top of the hill, appears only between the trunks and vegetation. Then, to the north of the new town,
extends the beach of marsh which goes up to the foot of Pantokrator. For fifteen kilometers the low and marshy beach is
interrupted from distance to distance only by rocky islets which also sit in the mud. A plain and a level road border the
coast and come to end abruptly at the foot of Pantokrator. At the edge of the gentle praries, from the deep waters or the
hardened mud, emerge the two hooked isles which form the port of Govino, the ancient Venetian arsenal, silted in today.
Between the town of Corfu and Govino leads a sluggish stream, between two banks of high vegetation, its depths filled
with mud. Schliemann recognized here the stream of Nausikaa and even retrieved the two laundry stones. But where are
the cascades and whirlpools, the rocks and the narrow valleys, and the forest immediately nearby, and the cove sheltered
from the wind?.. in the mud of its waters, the linens of Nausikaa would have taken on strange colors... Then Pantokrator
rises abruptly. Across the isle, from the coast of the strait to the coast of the high sea, it raises its elongated wall, which
only two passes cut slightly: one, on the coast of the strait, carries the coastal route, and leads it to the village of Spartila
on the Adriatic face; the other, at the middle of the isle, is the frequented passage of Panteleimon, with the land route
which, from the town of Corfu, goes there by Saint Dimitrio, Castellanais, Abanisio, etc., up to the anchorages of the
extreme north. On the southern façade, the wall of Pantokrator is abrupt: it limits the horizon with its screen without

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secondary ridges; some villages are hanging on the wall, and some old olive trees cling to the rock. The northern façade
is, to the contrary, a long slope, a jumble of enormous rocks and crumbling hills, of valleys and plateaus, which trees of
every type cover and which the rivers cut with their sinuous passages. The fractured stones alternate on the north façade
with drifts of schists. The cultivated terraces, vines, and maize descend from the pass of Panteleimon and from the village
of Castellanais down to the sea of the north: “The north coast is generally low and sandy, comprising the bays of Sidari
and San Giorgio; all the shore is bordered with shallow bottoms and rocks. The slopes of the hills are wooded and well-
cultivated at their base, where one sees small plains. Point Astrakari, recognizable by its white cliffs, separates the two
bays.” Where are the abrupt rocks of the Odyssey?... From the east to the west, across the isle, on the strait and on the
great sea, the chain of Pantokrator presents the same contrast. On the strait, its wall rises gradually from sea level toward
the principal summit, which exceeds nine hundred meters. From the coast, it is like the slope of a pediment, cut with
fissures and crevasses, with pointed rocks and rain channels, but an oblique, regular slope which brush or pebbles cover.
That which the navigators of the strait see are neither abrupt cliffs nor steep rocks, but a cascade of rounded rumps, barely
cut at sea level by a small rocky step and festooned with pebbly inlets of sand and gravel. Toward the west, to the
contrary, on the great sea, the pediment of Pantokrator is broken off. From the principal summit, which occupies almost
half of the isle in its greatest width, the nearly straight wall goes down to the great sea of the west with a moderate slope,
and it suddenly plunges sheer into the savage sea, as the natives say: Agrio-pelagos, the Savage Sea, is the common term
to designate the west coast of Corfu “which rises in high steep cliffs and bears the ruins of the castle Saint-Ange, a
Venetian fortress, on the top of a rock 330 meters tall”. At 330 meters altitude, in front of the town of Krouni, the ruined
towers dominate the roaring waves from the peak, and, since all times, at the foot of the walls, the surf breaks itself on the
belt of pointed reefs. The Odyssey tells us that the Pheacians live “on the savage sea”,

οικέομεν δ’ απάνευθεν πολυκλύστω ενι πόντω.

The Savage Sea of Corfu presents, in effect, all the views of the coasts described by the poet. It is on the west coast
that Ulysses at first will land: from the high sea he perceives “the shadowed mountains” there. The Nautical Instructions
tell us:

The ships which pass from the Mediterranean into the Adriatic always seek to recognize the isle of Corfu, which they perceive at
a distance because of its elevation. If they come from the west (it is the case with Ulysses), they see at the very first the coasts of
Epirus, then Corfu and its isles which form a long chain of regular small mountains. The monastery situated on mount Salvador, in
the north of Corfu, is a good point of recognition... The high mountains of Albania and of Greece are visible from the open sea at a
great distance and, when they come from the west, there is no place where, in good weather, one cannnot see land more than fifty
miles from the coast. The appearance of the country, viewed from the Ionian sea in good weather, is very imposing. The mountains,
of an infinite variety of forms, with beautiful slopes and clearly outlined contours, continually change in aspect with the position of
the navigator.

There are truly, I believe, the shadowy mountains with their infinite forms and their play of shadow and light,

... εφάνη όρεα σκιόεντα

γαιίης Φαιήκων.

But the storm throws Ulysses back toward the high sea, and for two days he sees nothing else. On the third dawn, the
land and its forests reappear, and the heart of Ulysses rejoices at the view of the woods,

ως Οδυσει ασπαστον εείσατο γαια και ‘ύλη.

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 “In general,” resume the Nautical Instructions, “the isle of Corfu is mountainous and covered in all its parts with olive
groves. Mount Pantokrator to the north presents heavily wooded slopes.” Then Ulysses hears the roar of the surf on the
projecting points, the rocks and the reefs,

ακται προβλητες έσαν σπιλάδες τε πάγοι τε.

Viewed from the west, all the façade of Corfu on the Savage Sea is nothing but a steep wall. The contrast with the face
of the strait is striking. Only in the extreme south, between cape Bianco and the Lagoudia isles, does the coast of the great
sea again present pebbly slopes, the banks of rocks or brush and the coves of sand or gravel which we have described on
the other face: “Cape Bianco, formed of white cliffs, is 70 meters high... Point Magakhoro, three miles to the northwest,
is low, unhealthy and rocky like the intervening shore... Four miles to the northwest of Magakhoro, point Khonsia is low
and projects from shallow bottoms. Between point Khonsia and point Kardiki at about two and a half miles to the
northwest, the coast is low and of sand. The ships frequently anchor along the coast up to cape Bianco, in 16 to 18 meters
of water, fine sand, sheltered from the heavy rains of winter from the northeast, which blow with great violence.” But at
point Kardiki, everything changes: “The coast is the base of mounts Paviliana and Garuna, 426 and 466 meters, and near
the shore, and near the Lagoudia islets, the coast, forming a convex curve, becomes extremely dangerous; it is garnished
all along with rocks and blocks of rocks.” From cape Kardiki up to cape Drasti, which forms the northern extremity of the
west coast, the same view of rocky, steep and ragged coasts will continue. A series of abrupt points extends into the sea
bristling with reefs. “The point of mount San Giorgio, at the foot of a high rounded promontory 390 meters high, is
irregular, steep and rocky. At a mile and a half, point Plakka, high and projecting little, has 90 meters of water at a short
distance offshore. The intervening coast, bordered here and there with rocks, is steep and exends into chains of high
mountains. Then the coast, elevated and formed of cliffs, runs to the west up to cape San Angelo, a ragged rock 330
meters high.” At this point, the cliff attains its greatest height. It presents its steepest façade with its sharpest and most
numerous reefs. From here up to cape Drasti, the high coast will be a little less steep. It will sometimes leave a bank of
rocks or a patch of sand at the foot of its cliff: “Cape Arilla is rounded, steep, and 120 meters high, at the extremity of a
tongue of land which is thrown [ακται προβλητες] about a mile towrd the southwest... At two and a half miles, cape
Kephali is a low tongue which is thrown toward the west; the land of the interior rises in hills in the form of peaks... At
3¾ miles from cape Kephali, cape Drasti is a white limestone projection, of little height, and surrounded by deep bottoms.
The coast between the two capes is formed of steep calcarious cliffs.”
In front of the wall which forms the Occidental coast, some rocks, some boulders, some scattered islets extend in steps
from the Lagoudia isles up to our Isle of the Boat, Karavi: “The two islets Lagoudia are flat rocks, and a dangerous reef
extends to the south... The small isle Toleto with a touching rock... The islet of Gordi is steep with bottoms of nine
meters between the coast and it... The islet Koloviri is steep, at about ½ mile from the cliffs of the coast... [The largest of
the islets], the islet Kravia, 66 meters high, has a rock at its northern extremity and a drowned rock touching its southern
extremity.”
Behind the islets, between the cliffs of the wall, open several small beaches of sand, under the hills covered with
forests, and three small bays offer themselves for debarkation: to the south, between point Plakka and point San Giorgio,
the bay of Ermonais; in the center, under the castle Saint-Ange, the bay of Liapadais; to the north, under cape Aphiona,
the bay of Saint-Georges. The bay of Ermonais is nothing but a temporary anchorage: it is sheltered toward the north by
the mass of the isle and by the lookout of mount Plakka; but it is fully open toward the south, and the sirocco rages there;
it at least has the advantage of a long and wide beach of sand and of a constant stream which opens there. The two other
bays of Liapadais and Saint-Georges are much more secure. They have always served the small coastal cruisers. Each
time that the islanders had to fear the arrival of some occidental navy, they make a good watch on the neighboring
promontories. The Venetians, fearing the Barbary pirates, had constructed their castle Saint-Ange, which a French battery
replaces, then English, above the bay of Liapadais. The French of the Empire, successors of the Venetians and fearing the
English of Malta, will additionally raise another battery at the point of Aphiona to cover the bay of Saint-Georges... In

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the two bays of Saint-Georges and Liapadais, they have believed to have found the Town of Alkinoös. Two sites for the
same town are too many: it is necessary to choose.
At the first view of the chart, the bay of Saint-Georges appears to fill all the conditions. A “tongue of land is cast about
a mile to the southwest,” is detached from the coast and covers the bay toward the west and separates it from the high sea.
“At the foot of the bay there is a fine beach of sand and a good summer anchorage of 10 to 15 meters of water, but
exposed to winds from the southwest; also, they rarely use it.” A river, the Great River, Megapotami, comes to empty
here. The rivers of the isle for the most part are only furious torrents in the winter and chains of dry channels in the
summer. The Megapotami is always suppled with water. It takes its source in the chain of Panokrator, at the foot of mount
Arakli (506 meters); it winds at length at the bottom of a narrow valley, between wooded hills whose rivulets always feed
it; it comes, between two slopes of forest, to end at the sands of Saint-Georges. There, they say, is the river of Nausikaa.
And here is the village of Alkinoös. The “long tongue of land which covers the bay” is in reality a double mountain
narrowed in its first tiers by the fissure of Porto Temone. The present village of Aphiona is built on the northern
extremity, which holds largely to the coast. The town of Alkinoös was built, they say, on the southern extremity, which
the sea surrounds on all sides, and which has only a row of rocks to the mass of the promontory. To judge by the chart,
with the eyes of landsmen and the habits of our great navies, the identification can seem acceptable. But go over the
places and bring the Odyssian fleets back here.

CHAPTER III

THE TOWN AND THE RIVER

‘ρεια δ’ αρίγνωτ’ εστι και αν παις ‘ηγήσατο

νήπιος.

Odyss., VI, 300-301

The Odyssey gives such a detailed description of the port and the town of the Pheacians “that even a child could lead
us there; the recognition of it is so easy.”

Monday, May 6/April 23, 1901. - The salutes to Saint-Georges, patron of the king of France, feature the bugles and
dogs of Corfu. At the already bright dawn, we leave in a vehicle toward Aphiona. From the town of Corfu up to
Perlepsimadais where our driveable route ends, the coachmen count five or six hours. It is necessary to cross half of the
isle in its length from south to north, first to pass along the coastal plain of the strait, then to cut across the valleys and the
maze of hills which border the foot of Pantokrator; it is then necessary to cross the the high wall of the chain by the pass
of Panteleimon; it finally is necessary to redescend toward the Adriatic coast... At the beginning, all goes well. Under the
fresh dawn, in the plain of Govino, along marshes and lagoons, then in the olives of Saint-Dimitrio, across the woods of
oak and cypress, our two horses slowly draw their old landau with royal lanterns. But the sun appears over the mountains
of Albania, and the heat suddenly presses down, and here is the harsh mountain of Panteleimon, and the coachman turns a
look of envy toward the dressed-up peasants, the priests, the small donkeys and the participants who, in long lines, trot
along the sides of the route: they turn their backs on us and go to the town to celebrate Saint-Georges; they eat lamb; they
dance under the poplars of the city walls; they discuss politics on the terraces of small cafes; they watch the two hundred
gunners of the garrison march out... It is hard for our driver to turn his back on such fine pleasures.

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 The roses and the flowered houses of the burg of Skriparou have disappeared among their old olive trees. We have
reached the wall of Pantokrator. The route, in interminable twistings, winds up the flank of the mountain, and takes a long
hour to reach the pass. Suddenly the view opens in all directions - we are at the pass of Panteleimon - an admirable view.
The entire isle is at our feet. Behind us, toward the town, the land appears flat, barely valleyed, between the lines of wild
hills. Among the oaks, the olives and the vines shine the bright eyes of some small lakes and the tarnished mirrors of
marshes. The deep verdure of the fields interdigitates with the grey foliage of the poplars. Up to the foot of the mountains
which encircle it to the north and the west, and up to the sea of the strait, which borders it to the east and south, the divine
plain of the center of the island is completely flowered with oleander and cypress... Before us, in the distance to the
north, the Adriatic scintillates and dances between the islets. There is Fano, Samothrace, all the group of isles and, among
the foam, Karavi, the petrified Boat, with its mast set, its sail raised, and its dinghy in tow! Up to the Adriatic coast, the
slopes of the mountains, the jumble of the hills and the network of the valleys disappear under a swell of moving verdure,
which the great wind of the north rolls. From the coast, the chain of Pantokrator is less steep, and the descent toward the
village of Castellanais is not in peaks like in the ravine near the pass. A short series of turns quickly leads the route to
terraces of vines and olives, with tangled edges overhanging valleys and river beds. On the north face, the calcarious
chain of Pantokrator is flanked by a high mass of schists, which the rocks have perforated in places, which the waters
have ravined and jumbled on all sides. In the chaos, the route hangs on protruding rocks, winds around collapsed blocks,
crosses split stones, Schismena Litharia, follows the summit in twisting curves of constructed lines, and surveys deep
valleys which, to right and left, lead their rapid waters to the sea. To the right, the Tiphlopotamos and its tributaries flow
down to the northern coast and discharge on the Adriatic coast, in the bay of Sidari; to the left, the Megapotami goes to
sharply turn to the west to reach the Occidental coast and flow into the bay of Saint-Georges. It is the valley of this last
river which we follow from the top. Castellanais, Arkadadais, Montadais, Aspiotadais, fine villages spread their stone
houses and Italianate churches on the shadowed slopes. Under the old giant trees, the olives are interspersed with ferns.
The cypress and aloes are flowered with roses. The coolness of the Bora tempers the heat of midday.
At Perlepsimadais, after a brief dinner, it is necessary to leave the vehicle and reach by foot the village of Aphiona,
which now appears. To our left, it occupies the summit of a calcarious rock, on the other side of the bay of Saint-Georges.
The driveable route continues toward the north: Aphonia is to the west. On foot, at the ridge of the schist hills, we follow
the windings from the very top to the lower valley of the Megapotami and the foot of the bay of Saint-Georges. In the
yellow, mauve, pink or blue powder of the multicolored schists, the footsteps of generations have worn a wide trail. Up to
the river which flows a hundred meters below our feet, the schist slope is just a jumble of crumbling land and unstable
terraces. Eroded, ravined, gnawed by the rains of the sea, the plateau of the summitis nothing but a confusion of humps
and channels. The powdery schists quickly replace the hard rock: the peninsula of Aphiona is an arm of limestone
implanted in the schist mass. On the rock denuded down to the smallest fissure, not a pocket of loose soil remains. The
bare rock emerges between the open sea and the bay. It rises in two steep slopes which converge and support a terrace of
rock several hundred meters wide. At the highest point, the village of Aphiona and the ruins of the old French battery
survey the two coasts of the sea to the right and the bay to the left. The entire entrance of the Adriatic and the bordering
rocks and the distant islets appear from here: always distinct, Karavi, the Boat of stone, fills its sail and tows its dinghy in
the channel to the northwest.
The peninsula of Aphiona is, at mid-length, cut by a deep fissure which, from top to bottom and from side to side, cuts
it almost into two mountains. Viewed in profile by the sailors from the high sea or by the inhabitants of the mainland, the
calcarious mass in effect presents two unequal blocks. Toward the north, it is an enormous squat dome which holds to the
schists of the terra firma. Toward the south, a fine thread rises, almost entirely lost in the waves. Between the two blocks,
Porto Timone imbeds its inlet, and, separated from the open sea, on the west flank of the peninsula, it appears to pass
across the rock up to the bay on the east flank. To cross the fissure and pass with dry feet from the dome to the thread, a
thin rocky lump maintains the only connection. The dome drops steeply for a fall of a hundred meters into the fissure of
Porto Timone... we arrive at the edge of the fissure. The little port is beneath our feet. Without width (it does not have a
width of a hundred meters), without deepness (it is not two hundred meters long), without an entrance which closes it (it

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is wide open to the winds from the west), without wide beaches (three small boats drawn up onto the broken stones would
fill its rocky foot), the port is just a corridor of sea, a miserable fjord; it is able to offer to the Pheacian fleets neither a
basin for the fleet nor dry berths. And the port is solitary. For the shore of the peninsula on the bay is indented by only the
one minuscule cove where, with difficulty, the smallest of our dinghies might find a refuge. And one could not give the
name of port to the whole bay of Saint-Georges, to the gigantic (I speak like the Homeric sailors) bay, almost circular,
two kilometers wide and long, surrounded by sand toward the land and by the open, widely open to the full sirocco: it is a
bay foreign to the taste of primitive fleets, without the least enclosure; its entry is three kilometers wide. And the town of
Alkinoös, the “high Town” in the style of the times, would assuredly arrange a convenient space for its troops from its
spaces and its fortifications of the acropolis, on the slopes and the summit of the needle of the south. But where to find the
location of the paved agora and of Poseidon between the two ports? The foot of Porto Timone is a hill of rocks which on
the other side plunges into the bay: on the narrow isthmus, steep rocks all around; no level surface, not even a mediocre
space for the stones of the agora. Again, where to find the fields and the gardens of the suburb and the spring in the sacred
grove of Athena? No verdure, not a corner of arable soil; not even a possible terrace to support the garden of the king.
And where to trace the driveable road which, from the town, should conduct Nausikaa to the laundries of the river? There,
surely, a few kilometers from here, is the Megapotami, which comes to end across from us, on the other coast of the bay
of Saint-Georges. And again, surely, at the foot of the bay, is the solid beach of sand and gravel, where the cart runs
easily, where the linen would dry in the sun. But the beach does not encircle the entire bay, and does not come up to near
Port Timone; the mountain Aphonia suddenly interposes the flank of its abrupt, steep, impassable wall: “Porto Timone,”
say the Nautical Instructions, “is accessible by boats.” But it is inaccessible to vehicles. The people of Aphiona
sometimes come if fish or contraband is available there, when by chance a coaster driven by winds puts in or wrecks: to
descend to the sea, the landsmen have had to dig an echelle of stones in the rock, a stairway of artificial steps, where only
their small donkeys can venture: a vehicle, as light as one could imagine, would be broken on the first course, and from
the top of the cliffs the team would roll into the deep sea...
If the Odyssian words would say anything, they surely cannot refer to this site. It is nevertheless a great shame. In
viewing the chart, the the location pleased me. With Karavi close by, the Megapotami on the other coast of the bay, the
beach at its foot, the high town at its tip, the cliffs of the neighboring capes, the islets and rocks of the small group of
Kravia entirely near: to view the chart, from afar, everything appears to agree.
I admit that we return a bit disappointed. We need to painfully climb back up from Porto Timone toward the town of
Aphiona by the long stairway of rocks. Here is the plateau ot the summit and the ruins of the French battery: what a
strange sojourn on the rocks for the peasants from Champaigne or Auvergne forgotten by the emperor!... The town is
deserted. Men, beasts and women left to work the slopes of schists on the island. In leaving Aphiona, we lose our way in
the maze of the hills. We finally find the vehicle again with great difficulty, which takes us back toward the pass of
Pantaleimon and toward the town of Corfu. Behind us, in the setting sun, on the calm, flat sea, in the iridescent shimmer
of great currents like an antique mirror, Karavi, the Boat of stone, continues to sail immobile.

*
* *

It is not necessary to chase so far to seek the ports of Alkinoös. It suffices to open our marine charts. The English
hydrographic service has taken the effort to make a topographic commentary of the entire Odyssian description. The
French hydrographers have copied the English chart. Therefore, take page 3052 of our hydrographic service: the map on
the right will present us the two ports of Alkinoös under the names of Port Alipa and Port San Spiridone. It is the bay of
Liapadais on the Savage Sea, under the castle Saint-Ange and under the point of Arakli, last massif of the chain of
Pantokrator toward the west. The three hundred meters of Saint-Ange and the five hundred meters of Arakli fall from the

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peak into the bay, of which they form the north coast. But in front of their last projections, two rocky isles are connected
to the land by two isthmuses of sands, and a ridge of the mountain points its long sharp lance into the waves. By the isles
and by the lance, two small twin ports are defined. The larger, to the east has the name of Alipa, the smaller, to the west,
has the name of San Spiridione. Take the chart: all the words of the Odyssian text will apply themselves. The exterior isle
or peninsula, at the edge of the high sea, today bears the monastery of Palaio-Castrizza, from which it has received the
name. The inner isle or peninsula, between the two ports which flank it, is the place designed for a high town in the
Homeric style, for a town of navigators on a foreign coast, for an old emporium on a parasitic islet. On either side of the
town, the “two fine ports”, with narrow entrances and numerous berths, come to terminate in sandy beaches at the foot of
the mountains. Port Alippa especially appears designed according to the Odyssian text. Its entrance has only three
hundred meters of width, and the ships need to take care from the sharp rocks which constrict it. But behind the entrance,
a triple bay is hollowed, and its three arms in clover leaves are divided by jetties of rocks into multiple compartments,
which end in slopes of sand. Each vessel can have its dry berth or its hull afloat. Nature has done the work of
compartmentalization here which men have done elsewhere - cf. the Athenian port of Munychia - to set up boxes for the
stalls of their chargers of the sea. At the foot of the high town, on the isthmus between the two ports, a plain extends to
receive the paved agora. If the reality truly corresponds to the chart of our navies, we have here the town and the fine
ports of Alkinoös... But it does not need to be compared to the view of the charts.

April-May 1901. - The trip to Palaio-Castrizza is a tourist excursion which all the guides recommend. From the town
of Corfu, it takes three or four hours by vehicle, and the route, constructed in the time of the English occupation, is
charming. It is at first along the strait, in the green plain or on the hills covered with olive trees, the great route which we
have already followed toward Panteleimon and Aphiona. But presently, leaving the route which continues to the north, we
turn to the west and, at length, we pass along our rugged wall of Pantokrator to the right. A charming valleyed land
borders its foot. With its old olive trees, its enclosed small plains, its small sleeping lakes, its verdant marshes, and its rich
farmlands, the rolling plain fills the entire center of the isle, between the wall of Pantokrator and the coastal chain of the
west. The route is a lane of English park. Without ever forcing the passage through the depressions or embankments, it
winds gently along the hills and hollow valleys. It cuts under the old olive trees which raise their silver plumes high
above. It is reflected on the edge of lakes whose tarnished mirror, veiled with scum and rank vegetation, disappears
behind a stand of cypress. The high barrier of Pantokrator with its overhanging rocks and its clinging villages closes the
horizon to the right. To the left and before us, the chain borders the west coast; a long sierra less high but almost as steep
rises to a peak above the marshy valley of Ropa and hides the Savage Sea from us. Perpendicular to the axis of
Pantokrator, the toothed sierra comes to end against it. Their joined masses would leave no passage, were it not for the
breach of a torrent, which has cut a monumental opening in the rock. It is through this defile, between two gigantic
mountains of split stone, that the route reaches the Savage Sea at the foot of the bay of Liapadais. We enter into the land
of the Pheacians. Here it is before our eyes. The marine chart has not deceived us.
The slopes of the Arakli and of the castle Saint-Ange form at the bay a coast of iron, ragged with rocks. At midslope,
three hundred meters above the sea, the Arakli bears a terrace where the houses of the small town of Lakonais are
grouped: at the edge of the sea, the straight wall is flanked by a bank, and upon this bank, the graded road undulates
among the olive trees. Mount Saint-Ange, steeper, plunges into the bottomless sea. Its dome is recognized from afar by
the ruins which crown it. Here is port Alipa and its triple clover leaf: pretty beaches of sand decorate it all around. From
the sea, facing us, rises the high insular mountain which joins the coast only by the isthmus between the two ports. The
marine charts are inexact on only one point, and slightly. On the isthmus, between the two ports, they indicate by
somewhat dark hatchings an elongated hill which joined the slopes of the insular mountain to the last slopes of Arakli.
This hill does not exist. The isthmus is flat, at sea level, without elevation, without a rise. From the sandy beach of port
Alipa to the sandy bottom of San Spiridione, it passes completely unbroken, bearing a small plain of wheat and olives. In
front of San Spiridione, it continues all the way down to the Savage Sea to join mount Palaio-Castrizza to the coast, with

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the result that the gaze can follow the string of low isthmuses from Port Alipa to San Spiridione and out to the Savage
Sea.
Port Alipa is the great port. San Spiridione is much smaller. But behind an entrance of rocks, here also are spacious
slopes of sand, where an entire primitive flotilla could berth its ships. The monks of the monastery of Palaio-Castrizza
have their two boats beached there. It is their harbor. For the fairground beach which borders the Savage Sea is strewn
with stones and pebbles, garnished on its front with rocks and shoals, ragged on its flanks with reefs and cliffs, and the sea
ceaselessly raises a roaring surf there. On the points and against the iron walls, the least embarkation courts the risk of
being torn open or crushed. The outer cove is not a port. The monastery of Palaio-Castrizza is not between two fine ports.
It does not occupy the position of the Pheacian town. It is Alipa and San Spiridione which are the fine ports and it is the
mountain between them which bears the town of Alkinoös. The bay and small plateau of Palaio-Castrizza would not be
able to bear a town anyway: its steep flanks, greatly fortified with terraces, have only a few gardens and olive trees; on the
uneven summit, the monastery and its small church have found space only by spilling over onto rock ledges on all sides.
This mediocre butte could never offer utility for anything but a native lookout. A post or a fortress would survey the
immensities of the Occidental sea from there to warn of pirates and enemy fleets. The Castle Saint-Ange offers still more
conveniences there. From its 330 meters height, its extended and exposed promontory entirely occupies the vantage and
dominates all the cliffs of the Occidental sea. It is truly at Saint-Ange that the watch and fortress of the natives are.
Palaio-Castrizza, at its feet, is only the extension, the echelle of provisioning for the high place, and it is the refuge for the
sailors in transit...
We have rounded the foot of Port Alipa. We arrive on the isthmus which extends between the two ports, at the foot of
the mount of the Pheacians. The small plain of the isthmus has two hundred fifty to three hundred meters of length, from
one port to the other, and a hundred fifty to two hundred meters of width, between the foot of the two insular and coastal
mountains. From the coast of Port Alipa, the plain is shaded by olives, which come down to the sands. From the coast of
San Spiridione, the sands and the fields of wheat make a large open esplanade.

ένθα δε τε σφ’ αγορη καλον Ποσιδήιον αμφίς

‘ρυτοισιν λάεσσι κατωρυχέεσσ’ αραρυια
ένθα δε νηων ‘όπλα μελαινάων αλέγουσιν
πείσματα και σπειρα και αποξύνουσιν επετμά.

Here truly is “the agora around the good Poseidon, the agora leveled and paved with large stones, where the Pheacians
repair the rigging of their caulked vessels, the cables and the sails, and where they plane the blades of their oars.” The
Pheacians do not have their shipyards here. Their vessels are not drawn up to the agora. The ships remain at anchor or on
the slope of beaching; but they bring the damaged rigging here: here, the crews, seated or squatting on the paving stones,
repair the sail or the mast, the ropes or the oars. It is the scene which the paved quays of our small Mediterranean ports
still offer. Go some summer evening with the fleet of Amalfi (we will presently see why I take the Neopolitan port,
formerly a great maritime city, today a simple harbor of fishermen, for an example). At the foot of the steep mountain, on
the circular beach of sand and pebbles, away from the breaking waves, the boats are drawn up. In front of the row of
houses of the low town extends a paved esplanade which divides the beach into two slopes. On the stones, the squatting
women knit their stockings or pick lice off of their children, and the men mend their sails, repair their nets, braid lines or
nail back together the sections of a broken oar. For the minor labors which the sailors do thusly, they need a paved
esplanade where they can seat themselves. Anchored in the sand or on the pebbles below, they caulk the ship drawn up
out of the water: they replace the pieces of the side or the tiller; they clean the bottom: the standing workers circle around
the hull...
Across our isthmus, it is thus easy to reëstablish in imagination the paving of large stones and the esplanade
resembling the Neopolitan quays or ways. The group of sailors worked seated there, squatting, sprawling: if it had been
unpaved, the trodden ground would promptly have become mud beneath the feet and ropes coming from the sea and

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soaked with water... The good Poseidon no longer exists. It nevertheless remains a memory there. Like similar other
antique Poseidons, it was undoubtedly replaced by a chapel of Saint-Nicolas. But the great saint, in spite of his power, is
not able to last for long on the beach infested with evil pirates. The Turks or the Barbaries will pursue him. He retreats
from the midcoast of the insular mountain, and the marine chart indicates the ruins of his chapel (Ruins on our chart). He
remains there for long centuries. The Christian sailors climbed up to his location and introduced icons and candles. Today
the security of the seas has permitted him to redescend. The neighboring monks, who took care of his altar and who
received his revenues, have brought him back to a more convenient site. At the foot of their monastery, under the rock of
Palaio-Castrizza, on the very edge of their harbor of San Spiridione, they have constructed their new chapel where they
have brought the old icons. It is there where we should seek the Poseidon of the present sailors. The chapel of the mount
is in ruins. The Poseidon of the isthmus is undoubtedly buried.
We ascend to ther town of Alkinoös. The insular mountain tumbles down from the coast of the isthmus in a slope
somewhat steep, but not abrupt. From the coast of San Spiridione especially, the fields of olives ascend in banks up to
midslope; then superimposed terraces supporting small gardens of cereal, step by step, mount up to the summit. At the
very top an esplanade of bare rock bears the ruins of a chapel (Church on the marine chart) of Saint-Georges. From the
coast of port Alipa, the fall is much steeper. Between the sea and the esplanade of the summit, it is almost a straight cliff
with a stairway path which leads to the ruins of Saint-Nicolas (Ruins on the marine chart). Just as it is, the flank of the
mountain lends to the construction of one of the high towns which we have described twenty times, and which the French
corsairs or navigators know up to our times in the Levantine seas. Below, the beach and the vessels border the agora,
where the foreigners display their merchandises, near the sanctuaries where the natives worship their marine gods. On the
slope, the crowded group of squares ascends from terrace to terrace, the flat top of one serving as the center of the next
higher one. At the summit, the palace of the king, of the aga or the bishop dominates. The geographers of the expedition
of Morea has described for us our town of Alkinoös in the Syria of their times:

The town of Syria, on a mountain in the east of the isle, occupies the location of the ancient Syros. It is divided into a high town
and a low town: the high town is the abode of the bourgeoisie and the administrators; the low town is that of the merchants. The
inhabitants, in large part, are refugees or pirates, who were obliged to leave Greece to escape the oppression of the Turks, and the
population, by its industry and commerce, has given the town an importance which it was far from having before the last wars. The
high town is built on a conical mountain, and entirely isolated. One arives there only by a slope which is steep and difficult to climb;
the streets there are very narrow and filthy. At the top is a small Greek Catholic church with a terrace from which one discovers a
part of the nearby isles, and which forms an admirable view.

From the terrace of Alkinoös, which we have climbed, the view is no less admirable. The Savage Sea opens, lapping
the iron coast with its foam on all sides. The steep promontories, the ragged cliffs, the extended points rise from the roar
of the waves. The great swell from the south covers and uncovers the teeth of the reefs. The roar and coolness of the
breaking waves rise everywhere, while the sheet laughing among the rocks of the two ports plays its murmur on the sands
of the coves. In its location, the bay of Liapadais appears walled in by high mountains. All around, it is a continuous
margin of beetling mountains, which begin at the gigantic cliffs of castle Saint-Ange, continue in the wall of Arakli, circle
the entire large isle along the west coast and go down there toward the south, to mount Kurkuli (363 meters), from which
the cliffs of cape Plakka fall into the sea. From cape to cape, this border encircles the sea without leaving a passage. From
here, at least, nothing allows the suspicion of the pass through the rocks at the foot of Pantokrator which is the route that
the landsmen borrow, and which we just passed to enter into Pheacia. The land of the Pheacians “is covered all about with
a high mountain,” as the Odyssey says:

... μέγα δ’ ημιν όποσ πολει αμφικαλύψειν.

The poet understood or read an exact description of this pit and its border, and he has reproduced it in his usual manner:
from minutely exact detail, he has drawn a fine story; in the same way that Poseidon petrified the vessel of the Pheacians

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to explain the presenceof Karavi, of the boat of stone, to the north of the Corfiot coast - in the same way, the god “covers
all around, with a high mountain,” the deep bay, practically inaccessible to the landsmen. And still other words of the
Odyssey assume their value here. The Pheacians “live out of the way, on the savage sea,”

οικέομεν δ’ απάνευθεν πολυκλύστω ενι πόντω.

They are not in the middle of the islanders, in the heart of the isle, but far from men, at the end of the land. No neighbors
bother them because there truly are no neighbors:

έσχατοι, ουδέ τις άμμι βροτων επιμίσγεται άλλος...

ανδρων τηλεδαπων επει ού τινες εγγύθεν εισίν.

From the coast of the sea, their town, defended by the reefs and cliffs, has nothing to fear any more: “The pirate has
not yet been born who will ravage the land of the Pheacians,”

ουκ έσθ’ ουτος ανηρ διερος βροτός, ουδε γένηται,

‘ός κεν Φαιήκων ανδρως ες γαιαν ‘ίκηται
δηιοτητα φέρων.

The steep terrace of Alkinoös falls to right and left above the entrances of the two ports. A sheep would hardly be able to
venture among the broken rocks. But on the other façade, toward the high sea, the descent is less dangerous. Across the
fallen blocks, among the rolling pebbles, a path descends toward the open sea, down to the extreme promontory of the
south, and reaches the edge of the water. On the very same ground, we can follow the goings and comings of the
Odyssian characters. Led by Nausikaa, Ulysses came from the river to the sacred grove of Athena. The grove and its
fountain are no farther from the town than the distance a voice can carry. Ulysses waited there while Nausikaa returned to
the town alone. Then the hero took his way again and advanced toward the town. In order for him to enter it, Athena
showed herself to him in the form of a young girl going to the fountain. She wraps the hero in a mist which hides him
from the eyes of the Pheacians. In this way he is able to traverse the town without impediment. The river; the sacred
grove of Athena; the fountain where the girls go to draw water: we will presently rediscover the three stops of the hero.
But here he is below the town; he enters into the isthmus; he admires the two ports and the vessels hauled onto dry land,
the agora and the high walls of the Pheacians,

θαύμαζεν δ’ Οδυσευς λιμένας και νηας είσας

αυτων θ’ ‘ηρώων αγοραν και τείχεα μακρα
‘υψηλά.

Always wrapped in his mist, Ulysses climbs to the palace of Alkinoös. There he finds hospitality. The following day,
Alkinoös leads him to the agora and to the assembly of the Pheacians, which is held near the vessels,

Φαιήκων αγορην δ’ ‘ή σφιν παρα νηυσι τέτυκτο.

Here are those who come descend to the isthmus and come to seat themselves on the smoothed stones. The assembly is
held there, between the two ports. They decide to launch a vessel and rig it, to take Ulysses back. The crew jumps onto
the sand, pulls the ship into the sea, steps the mast, attaches the sails, sets the oars in the rowlocks, and guides the ship
from the port: they moor it outside the entrance, on the high sea, toward the south,

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 αυταρ επεί ‘ρ’ επι νηα κατήλυθον ηδε θάλασσαν,
νηα μεν ο‘ί γε μέλαιναν ‘αλος βένθοσδε έρυσσαν,
εν δ’ ‘ιστόν τ’ ετίθεντο και ‘ιστία νηι μελαίνη,
ηρτυναντο δ’ ερετμα τροποις εν δερματίνοισιν
[παντα κατα μοιραν. ανά θ’ ‘ιστία λευκα πέτασσαν]
‘υψου δ’ εν νοτίω τήν γ’ ‘ώρμισαν...

I have not translated verse 54, which the editors put in brackets and agree in recognizing as an interpolation. They have
much reason. The clumsy interpolator has not reflected on the habitual maneuver of the Homeric boats. To leave the port,
they never “open the sails” like verse 54 says. Rather, they leave by oar: the port is sheltered from the breeze, and it is
only on the open sea that they can hoist and deploy the sail... In verse 55 the two words εν νοτιω have troubled translators
and commentators. On the chart or on the ground, the meaning of the verse appears clearly. From the depth of port Alipa
or San Spiridione, the rowers guide the rigged, but not loaded, vessel to the entrance of the mouth. It is the maneuver
which we know well: at the departure from Ithaca, the crew of Telemachus makes it. They pass a little ways from the
outlet in order to be ready to open their sail and weigh anchor when the land breeze will arise after the setting of the sun.
Until ten in the evening, they will thus remain anchored in the high sea, ‘υψου, in altum, Virgil would translate. Their
vessel is moored, not to a loop at the quay, but at a hole in the rock,

... πεισμα δ’ έλυσαν απο τρητοιο λίθοιο.

They are at the last promontory, to the south of the ports and the town, εν νοτιω. The commentators will rack their brains
without understanding the words: “Notion,” say some, “signifies damp, because the Notos, the wind from the southeast,
brings rain: εν νοτιω thus means in the damp.” The Pheacians would moor their vessels in the damp sea, as M. de la
Palisse says; but the Odyssian poet does not speak like M. de la Palisse. “ Notion,” say some others (we do not know
why), “designates the place where no violent breeze blows.” Notion never had that signification, and it is precisely the
opposite of the sheltered location which our people would wish to reach in making that maneuver; for they wish to leave
from the sheltered port and come to seek the first blowing of the land breeze at the edge of the open sea... The ancient
scholiast has reason: “Notion is the southeast quarter, the quarter of the Notos, τω προς νοτον μερει.”
Our sailors still speak of the winds of the north quarter, of the south quarter, etc. The sailors of antiquity should have
spoken the same language, and they gave the name of boreion to the quarter of the bora, of zephyron to the quarter of the
zephyr, of notion to the quarter of the notos. In the ancient onomasty, the names lived on in capes and harbors directed
toward this or that point of the compass rose: Cyrene had its Boreion promontory; also its cape Zephyrion; Kolophon had
its port Notion, situated, in effect, in the south of the inland town, and turned toward the south. Herodotus calls notia,
νοτια θαλασση, the Sea of the South which is open to the southeast of Egypt and of the known world, outside of the Red
Sea: it is our Indian Ocean. Εν νοτιω thus signifies purely and simply the southeast quarter. The Pheacians leaving the
port guide their vessel to the extreme promontory, at the edge of the high sea, in the southeast quarter.
Simply take the chart and the Nautical Instructions: “The two ports Alipa and San Spiridione, open to the south, are
accessible only to coastal cruisers and fishing boats.” From the ports open to the south, our sailors thus leave toward the
south, and they moor their boats in the southeast part. Then they leave some men aboard to guard. The others debark and
ascend the very steep path which, leaving the southern extremity of the promontory, climbs up to the town by the
maritime façade. They come into the palace of Alkinoös to take their part in the feast and celebrations... Ulysses and
Alkinoös, during the maneuver, have climbed back up to the palace from the agora, by way of the lanes of the town which
cover the other face of the rock. All of the lords and notable shipowners of Pheacia accompany them. They enter the
palace. There they soon meet up again with crew of the boat, whose men have climbed the path up the cliff. They roast a
dozen sheep, eight pigs and two oxen. They make one of those Pantagruelesque feasts to which the stomachs of sailors
ashore are accustomed. They drink. They sing. Then they redescend, by the lanes of the town, down to the agora. The

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people make a procession. The games commence near the agora, in the plain of the isthmus: “There, behind the hill,
spread a field of tracks, and everyone together flew there, filling the plain with dust”,

τοισι δ’ απο νύσσης τέτατο δρόμος. ο‘ι δ’ ‘άμα πάντες

καρπαλίμως επέτονυο κονίοντες πεδιοιο.

Then they go to look for the lyre, which Demodokos has left here above, in the palace, and they set themselves to
dancing. The nine magistrates who preside over the games level the area [of sand or ground] and enlarge the circle
greatly,

ωρχεισθην δη έπειτα ποτι χθονι πουλυβοτείρη.

Then they climb back up to the palace of Alkinoös where the heralds bear the presents which each of the twelve kings of
Pheacia offer to the noble stranger. They make a new feast, after which Ulysses undertakes the recititaion of his
adventures. The night comes; but the charmed audience does not wish to go to sleep before the end of the account... The
departure is put off to the next day. Alkinoös then decides that each king will give another large tripod and a basin, and all
go to lie down. The next day, each brings his tripod to the vessel; they all stumble down the path of the cliff to the vessel
moored at the extreme promontory. The descent is rapid, and they arrived quickly with their load of bronze,

νηάδ’ επεσσεύοντο φέρον δ’ ευήνορα χαλκόν.

Alkinoös has come in person: it is he who arranges the encumbering objects under the benches of the rowers. Then
everyone, by the same path, climb back up to the palace, where they pass the day in feasts and in music. Ulysses does not
leave until the evening, after the setting of the sun, at the rising of the breeze from the land... When the sun falls to the
horizon, they exchange toasts. Ulysses proposes the health of the queen and the royal family; then he takes note of his
hosts. Without doubt he has requested them not to bother themselves in conducting him back to the boat: the night is
black and the path of the cliff is tiring, especially to climb back up; furthermore, Ulysses knows the way. Thus Alkinoös
and the kings do not accompany him. They just give him a footman who will walk in front and guide his steps in the
descent to the cruiser and the edge of the water,

τω δ’ ‘άμα κήρυκα προιει μένος Αλκινόοιο

‘ηγεισθαι επι νηα θοην και θινα θαλάσσης.

The good queen Arete also sends her three chambermaids, each of whom bears a present. They descend to the cruiser
and the sea, by the rapid path,

αυταρ επεί ‘ρ’ επι νηα κατήλυθον ηδε θάλασσαν

It thus appears that the palace of Αlkinoös occupied the summit of the insular mountain, the platform where we are
seated and where the ruins of the chapel Saint George sill stand. Ulysses touched the rocks of the esplanade on which we
come to seat ourselves. It is here where the two routes or paths come to end which, before and behind us, climb from the
isthmus and the open sea. Coming from the sea, the path of the cliff is presently a somewhat dangerous neck-breaker. We
can still follow it down to the edge of the water. But it requires steady feet and head: the slope is a dazzle of rolling rocks,
and the mirror of the waters gives a bit of vertigo. In the times of Alkinoös, the path was better-maintained: the Pheacians
without doubt had a stairway here, an echelle (ladder) of rocks, entirely resembling the present stairway of the people of
Aphonia to descend toward their Porto Timone: the two sites are exactly similar in this; but the vehicle of Nausikaa could

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have taken another route and did not need to descend the ladder... Coming from the isthmus, the other route is easier: our
marine charts still indicate it. It cuts the landward façade of our mountain in switchbacks. We imagine without effort that
with a little work of embankments and terracing it could become a driveable route tomorrow: it is by this that, from the
palace toward the agora and inversely, the cart of Nausikaa desended and reascended. On the two sides of the route, the
town of the Pheacians ranged its houses and its lanes. The jumble of small terraces and cultivations cover the slope today:
it is impossible to judge whether some location of excavation can be fruitful. neither on the slope nor on the esplanade,
nowhere appears an antique ruin. But, everywhere, small drystone walls, crumbling stones, squares of foundations prove
that still recently the site retains some occupants. In the XVIIth century, when the engineer of the French navy, Bellin,
publishes his Description of the Gulf of Venice and the Morea (1771), the Venetian testimonies with which he is provided
tell him: “The territory of Agiru (it is the Venetian name of the western canton of Corfu), which is toward the Sunset,
furnishes an abundance of all that which is necessary to life. There was formerly a town built on a peninsula, at the spot
where presently is a community of religious who have a church dedicated to the holy Virgin (it is our monastery of Palaio
Castrizza): the town was destroyed by the Africans.” The attacks of the Africans will drive away the inhabitants of the
shore. Their burg of Lakonais goes to perch upon the bordering mountain, on an inaccessible terrace, at the top of the cut
rocks which exceed 200 meters of height. Today, the islanders take confidence again. Some huts have already descended
again to the edge of the bay. In the sands of Port Alippa, right on the edge of the sea, a house of white stones appeared in
the midst of the olive trees: a caïque moored in the port loads olives and wine...
From terrace to terrace, we redescend the slope toward the isthmus. From the ruins of the chapel Saint-Georges we go
first to the ruins of the chapel Saint-Nicolas, which are at midslope. Then we reach the first olive trees of the isthmus, far
below.
The isthmus having been crossed, here we are on the beaches of San Spiridione, which quickly lead us to the foot of
the islet of Palaio-Castrizza. Near the bay, the new chapel of Saint-Nicolas shelters its poor roof under an overhanging
rock. The saint is not very wealthy: only two wrecked smallboats and a staved-in caïque occupy a corner of its harbor.
Some later day, the people of Lakonais will abandon their perch and the saint will know better days... We finally climb
again upon the islet of Palaio-Castrizza which, from the other coast of port San Spiridione, joins to the islet of the
Pheacians and rises abruptly from the sands. In the steep cliff, the route from the monastery has painfully cut its windings:
the stone juts out on all sides, and the rock of Palaio-Castrizza is nevertheless a marvelous garden. Some wells dug by the
monks, some terraces to retain a little earth, some channels to carry the irrigation water and collect the rain from the sea:
and straightaway the rock is covered with luxuriant verdure. Protected from the winds of the north by the high perimeter
of its mountains; open to winds from the west which the traverse of the great sea loads with dampness; refreshed by the
mists which the winds from the southeast frequently convey to it, this corner of the Corfiot Riviera is a bouquet of trees.
The monks, besides their olive groves garnished with cypress, have at the entrance of the monastery a marvelous garden
of almonds, pears, vines, cherries, apples, plums and medlars from Japan. In the foliage of the boughs bending under their
burden shine the golden oranges: the enclosure is made of walls and sharp rocks which the branches of cactus and the fall
of old fig trees screen.
Take up again our Odyssian description: “Outside the palace of Alkinoös was a vast garden of four acres: on two sides,
a hedge enclosed it. High trees raised their branches there, pears, pomegranites, apples with shining fruit, sweet figs and
verdant olives. In winter as in summer, all the length of the year, the trees give their fruits without pause or dead season.
The breeze from the west makes some to bud and others to die; pear ripens after pear, apple after apple, grape after grape,
fig after fig. There is planted a grapevine loaded with fruit: in the open sun, in an uncovered corner, one part is already
bare, while others are in full harvest and they already press the grapes: right next to them the grapes are in flower or
barely beginning to turn. At the foot of the garden, fine beds of shining beans produce the entire year. Two springs are
there: the one is diverted across the entire garden; the other is directed to the gates of the palace, and the people come
there to fill their jugs.”
There again is a passage where one ordinarily sees only a tissue of marvels and improbabilities. And nevertheless, well
examined, it is actually only the true picture of reality. The navigator peoples have always had the taste of knowlegeable

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cultivation. We admire the greenhouses of the English thalassocracy with orchids and grapes. The collections of Dutch
tulips will excite the admiration of the XVIIth century. The Pheacians have collections of fruit which excite the
admiration of the Achaeans. Our horticulturists and nurserymen also have collections of trees with late or early fruit,
which do not all produce at the same time, but which successively give pears or apples from July until December: it is no
differently that the apple and pear trees of Alkinoös give fruits the entire year. In the month of November 1897, I have
seen in the gardens of Gortyne in Crete a trellis loaded with grapes already cooked by the sun, grapes barely ripened, and
branches harvested several weeks ago. It requires some artifice to obtain such results. But under the blessed sky of Corfu
the artifice is simple. The English, on their damp isle, under their misted sun, need to construct and heat greenhouses, and
knowledgeably gradate the temperature so that their vines come one after the other to provide their tables all year long.
The Pheacian sky is loaded with heat, and man has only to regulate it. The sea breezes and mists bring the dew, and the
rivulets of irrigation are quickly installed on its unbroken slopes. With a collection of early and late strains, it suffices to
place the part of the grapevine which should bear first in an uncovered place, inundated with sun, and irrigate it from
spring,

της ‘έτερον μεν θειλόπεδον λευρω ενι χώρω

τέρσεται ηελίω,

to protect it from frost and shade and to cultivate and irrigate only later the stocks which will flower and bear presently.
And without great difficulty one thus obtains a grapevine garnished continually with grapes, with flowers and with bare
branches... The ancient thalassocracies had the same taste and the same science in these matters as the contemporary
thalassocracies: it is from the writers of Carthage and Magon, which had codified them, that the Romans will borrow their
materials for the De Re Rustica of Columelle and Varron.
The monks of Palaio-Castrizza receive strangers on a covered terrace which overlooks the Savage Sea and which the
roaring of the waves fills. We stayed there during the hottest hours of the day. The weather was fine, the sky without a
cloud; a slight sea breeze blew at intervals; but all other wind had fallen. And nevertheless, at the foot of Saint-Ange, on
the teeth of the reefs, on the points of the promontory, midway up the cliffs, the surf came howling to throw its plumes of
foam and then receed and uncover the sharp rocks. Saint-Ange, precipitous, dominates the brutal uproar from its wall. It is
at the foot of this smooth wall, λισση δ’ αναδέδρομε πέτρη, in front of the bottomless sea, αγχιβάθης δε θάλασσα, above
the sharp reefs and ever-roaring waves, πάγοι οξέες αμφι δε κυμα βέβρυχεν ‘ρόθιον, that we have reread the storm and
the shipwreck of Ulysses, and up until the evening we have kept in our ears the incessant murmur rising from the sea.
Ortholotho, Skialuthi, etc., the chart mentions some of the reefs. But there are many others.
We have asked the monks if they retained any antiquities in their monastery. They showed us a trading post clock in a
box of colored fir, which a Smyrniot merchant had made them a present of. They also keep a the remains of a gigantic
whale which the storm casts in 1830 on their rocks, and which the gathered natives will behead. The waters, the monks
say, was visited by troops of sea monsters: “The wave,” says Ulysses, “goes to throw me back into the fishy sea, and
some divinity will cast upon me one of the great monsters which Amphitriton raises in large number,”

πόντον επ’ ιχθυόεντα φέρη βαρέα στενάχοντα

ηέ τί μοι και κητος επισσεύη μέγα δαίμων
εξ αλός, οιά τε πολλα τρέφει κλυτος Αμφιτρίτη.

The ancient navigators noted in their periples the waters populated with monsters, and the versifying geographers did not
forget this important detail: “It is at Cadiz,” they say, “that the largest cetacians appear,”

Γάδειρ’ ‘όπον μέγιστα γίνεσθαι λόγος

κήτη.

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 The monks still keep one of the old cannons, stamped with Muscovite eagles, which will replace the cannons of the
French battery when the Russians, during the wars of the Empire, will occupy the isle of Corfu: the Barbary pirates held
the sea; a permanent battery was needed here...
We redescend from the monastery toward the plain of the isthmus. Near the Town of Alkinoös we stay to find the
three stops, which mark the route of Ulysses and Nausikaa:
1° the mouth of the river;
2° the sacred grove of Athena;
3° the spring of the suburb.
The spring should be very close to the town. For Ulysses went to enter the pleasant town and mix with the Pheacian
people,

... ‘ότε δη ‘άρ έμελλε πόλιν δύσεσθαι εραννήν,

when Athena, fearing for him the questions and abuses of the crowd, presents herself under the form of a young girl
carrying her jug... In the plain of the isthmus, the peasants have dug several wells to water their olives or their bean
fields. In the rocky valleys of Saint-Ange, a few threads of water also ooze. But there is only one abundant source,
constant and pure. It is in the western creek of Port Alipa, on the coast of the island, just at the horn of the isthmus, facing
the rocky cape which bears the ruins of Saint-Nicolas. There, at the foot of the steep cut rock, come two or three very fine
mouths of flowing water all the way to the shore of the beach. The sailors and the monks find fresh water there in
abundance, even on the hottest days of the summer. The sailors of the caïque, moored under the cape, come just to fill
their casks. The site conforms in all points to the Odyssian description. Here surely is the fountain where the girls of the
Pheacians came to fill their jugs. It was very close to the town, which raised its line of walls on the insular mountain, on
the other side of the creek. The agora, the Poseidon and the racing field covered the plain of the peninsula between them,
without obstructing the view. Ulysses stops for a moment near the spring to admire the two ports, the agora and the long
high wall, made of stone, a marvel,

θαύμαζεν δ’ Οδυσευς λιμένας... και τείχεα μακρα

‘υψηλα, σκολόπεσσιν αρηρότα, θαυμα ιδέσθαι.

The town does not have an enclosure of stone. The sea and the cliffs give it an impenetrable defense on three sides.
Across the isthmus, from one port to the other, to prevent any incursion of the natives, a long wall of wood suffices. The
Pheacians dug a ditch and, on the excavated dirt, planted a stong palissade. The archeologists conclude from the text that
the Homeric cities no longer were able to pile up the gigantic stones into walls which we admire at Tirynthn at Mycenae
and in the towns of the “Mycenaean” epoch. We can oject, I believe, that the palissades, of which the Homeric poems
speak to us, are always defenseworks constructed in haste by foreigners or invaders on an enemy coast: such as the
Achaeans before Troy, such as our rampart of the Pheacians. For the Achaean people are foreigners, barely a generation
from debarking. Upon dabarking, they were in haste to constuct the palissade and rampart across the isthmus which are to
protect the only accessible face of their high town. They made the defense of earth and wood in place of walls of stone,
with deep and costly foundations, because in two days, by this rapid process, they found themselves protected, and the
moveable earth or sand of the small plain were exhausted. Behind this provisional defense, the town was constructed and,
since its later expansion was done in the shelter of the entire surrounding dangerous neighborhood, it did not experience
the need for more solid walls. We know from the written history that the Hellenic cities debarking on the coast of Asia,
Phocea among others, remain like this, for several centuries, without stone walls. It is only the day when the Persian
danger threatens the coast from the interior that the Phoceans will construct a wall of cut stone around their town. The
Pheacians, separated from the world and living on the edge, fear noöne: they retain their simple palissade.

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 The rediscovered water source shows us that Ulysses truly came to the foot of port Alipa. Thus, it is also on the coast
that we need to seek the sacred grove of Athena: “At the edge of the road, it is a shining wood of poplars with a spring,
and a meadow all around: there, my father has an enclosure and a garden full of vegetables; the garden is no farther from
the town than a voice would carry,”

δήεις αγλαον άλσος Αθήνης άγχι κελεύθου

αιγείρων. εν δε κρήνη νάει, αμφι δε λειμών
ένθα δε πατρος εμου τέμενος τεθαλυιά τ’ αλωή
τόσσον απο πτόλιος ‘όσσον τε γέγωνε βοήσας

We return to the interior of Corfu, in retracing the tour from port Alipa. At the foot of the port, at the northern creek,
the road crosses the ravine of a small stream whose bright foliage stands out among the more drab foliage of the olive
trees, by a stone bridge. Some peasants, coming from Lakonais, dig their field of beans in one corner. When we ask
whether some spring wells up in the neighborhood, they tell us that, all year long, the stream provides running water,
graced with a fine spring close by: above the bridge, they guide us to the spring. A little way from the road, in a valley
which the olive trees shade, wells an abundant spring. The peasants say that it is the only fountain in the entire foot of the
bay of Liapadais which always provides water. It never dries up. The market gardeners have been able to install
themselves along its stream. The slopes of this same valley, in terraces, which end abruptly against the cliff of Arakli, are
clothed only in a red and pebbly soil, and bear only olives and cypress. But here, in the bottom, walls of dry rock or thorn
hedges protect the plots of beans from the sheep; in the ravine, down to the sea, small canals irrigate the coast and have
caused willows, a few poplars, almonds and figs to grow, with a nook of vines. A house and a few huts shelter two or
three families. Formerly they came down from Lakonais mornings and returned evenings during times of cultivation or
harvest; but they did not live here yearlong for fear of pirates. The habits of the past are beginning to change. It will
require many more years to move the village and fix it here; the pirates have disappeared for two generations, and the
people continue to live as in the times of their attacks... Downstream from the bridge, between the road and the sea, the
two banks of the widened ravine bear small gardens, figs, oleanders and fruit trees enclosed with hedges. Except for the
garden of the monks on the rock of Palaio-Castrizza, here is the only corner of Pheacia presenting “shining” green trees,
green vegetation, beans and leaves. Everywhere else around, under the pale silver of the olives, among the florets of the
black cypress, the reddish soil is sprinkled only with brush and asphodels. But here are the meadow, the sacred grove and
the garden of Alkinoös: all the details of the Odyssian text can be applied here. In a straight line, from the town of the
Pheacians to the foot of port Alipa, the distance is 300 to 350 meters. The voice carries without difficulty to here, and our
peasants call out to the sailors of the caïque moored under the cape. From here, the high town and the palace are
presented to the view of Ulysses: Between the branches of the olives, the high mountain is silhouetted against the gilded
sky of the west and, from the esplanade of the summit, the neatly profiled ruins of Sant-Georges stand out. Thus the
palace of Alkinoös should appear “so easy to recognize that even a child would lead you to it, for it is distinguished from
all the other houses of the Pheacians.” For the people of the town, the branches of the olives and the poplars should have
screened the view of the garden and the road somewhat. Nausikaa wants the stranger to stop here; without him, she
returns to the town. For fear of evil tongues, she does not wish to be seen in the company of someone unknown. It is right
here that Ulysses stayed while Nausikaa and her women preceded him to the town. Thus we have the last two stops of the
Odyssian route, the spring of the suburb and the garden of the king. The river remains.
At the farthest foot of the bay of Liapadais, in the cove of Iophilia, the charts indicate a river which descends from
Arakli. The road crosses, in effect, a high point of stone. But there is no water below. We nevertheless descend the river
down to the sea. It is truly a Greek river, that is to say, a bed of rolling pebbles with a few holes of muddy water. A deep
gorge, between steep cut cliffs, leads us to the sand beach which encircles the cove of Iophilia. Some conditions of the
site correspond to the Odyssian verse. Here is the beach of gravel and small pebbles where the women of Nausikaa spread
out their washing. Higher up, the hills, in a gentle slope, incline the thickets and olives which will cover the sleep of the

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castaway with their dry leaves. At each end of the small cove, straight cliffs, sharp rocks and reefs agitate the surf; the
closed sea, in calm weather, without the least wind, still breaks around pebbles and edges them with foam... But there is
nothing of a river. It is impossible to give that name to the corridor of dry stones which perhaps during the winter or after
the storms of summer conducts furious water here, but which already no longer has a trickle of constant water at the end
of the month of April. It is not the river “with a good current” of the poet. Is it to be said that we need to somewhat
renounce our Most Homeric method and see in the epithet of the river only a poetic ornament, a banality, some padding?
The women of the Pheacians coming here to wash their linens when the river had water... If necessary, year around, they
could have installed a laundry around the waterholes which sprinkle the pebbly bed and are filled with the croaking of
frogs... But, no: this cannot be the Odyssian river and its mouths of running water,

... ποταμοιο κατα στόμα καλλιρόοιο

the river “with permanent laundries”, πλυνοι επηετανοί, “with abundant water,” πολυ δ’ ‘ύδωρ, which drives back the
wave of the surf, ες ποταμον αλιμυρήεντα... We climb back up to the bridge of the road where our vehicle awaits us.
Surely the dried-out torrent is not the river of Nausicaa. But then where to find the river? The perimeter of the bay does
not have another watercourse. It was necessary to round the cliff of Saint-Ange or pass the wall of Arakli to the north to
reach the network of small rivers and the valley of the “Great River,” which comes to end in the sands of Aphiona. From
the top of Saint-Ange, we can perceive the shining course of the rivulets and the constant rivers; from the height there we
survey all the lands of the north and the northwest sea and coast up to Karavi, up to the Boat of the North which always
floats on the horizon. But the straight cliff of Saint-Ange does not offer the least ledge for a path. The steep wall of Arakli
is similarly impassable: by great help of windings and terraces, a driveable trail climbs to the plateau of Lakonais: higher
up, the sheep and their guardians have worn faint trails. A pedestrian can with difficulty reach the border of the edge. A
cart would never be able to venture there... Where to rediscover the river and the route of Nausikaa?
Here we are, having returned to the defile of rocks which leads back from the land of the Pheacians to the interior of
Corfu. We go to pass the edge which encircles the bay of Liapadais. Between the chain of Pantokrator and the sierra of
the west coast, the breach is less than a hundred meters wide, and on each side, the escarpment of bare limestone rises, in
a single jump, to sixty or eighty meters. Pheacia has no other land entrance. Ulysses and Nausikaa were able to come only
through here... On leaving the rocks of the defile, we find again the land of hills and valleys, of small plains, olives,
fields, vines and cypress which covers the center of Corfu down to the sea of the strait. On our left, the wall of
Pantokrator raises its rugged face, without a break. To our right, the wooded slopes of the coastal sierra suddenly take the
place of the long plain of Ropa, which extends to the south between two lines of coasts. Encircled by gentle slopes which
the olives load with their undulating masses, the ancient emptied lake stretches out of view its surface still shining with
marshes and vegetation. There below, toward the south, through a breach in the coastal sierra, a small river discharges the
overflow of the marshes into the sandy bay of Ermonais. Here are “the cultivated fields and the works of men” which the
mules of Nausikaa cross in running.
The river is there below. Ten kilometers of level road, across the plain of Ropa, would quickly take us there. But it is
getting late. The setting sun casts the great shadows of Pantokrator over the plain. Darkness falls slowly from the old
olive trees. All of the noise around the cypresses falls quiet. A mist rises from the plain and outlines the course of the
marshes in the distance. We need to return toward the town. Tomorrow we go to the bay of Ermonais and to the river of
Nausikaa.

*
* *

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 On the western coast of Corfu, on the Savage Sea, the bay of Ermonais occupies the place symmetrical to the two bays
of the present capitol on the coast of the strait. Fifteen or sixteen kilometers lead from one bay to the other, from the
capitol to the deserted bay. The route is nothing but a ride through the park. Through the tall cypresses and the old olive
trees, at the edge of bays flowering with roses, under the slopes loaded with vines, around small flooded plains and lakes,
it goes smoothly in sinuous curves, respecting the old trees and avoiding the rocks. A succession of hills and sodden
valleys cover the country. On the rises lean the white villages in their belt of cypress. At the bottom of the valleys shine
the winter marshes or the perennial lakes. The Venetian administration intentionally allows the marshes to encroach on
the valleys: the isle needed to produce only oil for the Republic, which payed it in grain.
We arrive at the summit of the last hills which border the plain of Ropa. The depression opens before us. Nine
kilometers long, two or three wide, the ancient empty lake is today the largest plain of the isle. But marsh covers three
quarters of it. Bordered on the east by a curving line of hills, which do not allow any river to pass toward the sea of the
strait, the hollow is separated from the Savage Sea by the coastal sierra. Before us, the sharp barrier shuts the horizon; it
raises its points between the two hills of Pantokrator, to the north, and Saint-Georges to the south. The great round head
of Pantokrator appears to turn its gaze over the defile of rocks which, below it, leads to the land of the Pheacians: from
here, the cut of the passage is clearly defined; the two villages of Liapadais and Dukadais dominate it from their olive
trees. The needle of Saint-Georges (392 meters) also falls toward a defile which opens the sierra down to the level of the
plain: it is by it that the river of Ropa escapes to the sea. From the opening of the river to the port of the Pheacians, the
sierra is a continuous sheer wall. Two points emerge from it which, surveying the western sea from afar, will serve turn
by turn as an observation point, as a lookout, for the natives and for the foreigners. Toward the middle of the wall, near
the Greek villages, the point of Skopi retains its Hellenic name, σκοπια; nearer the bay of Ermonais where the peoples of
the sea can debark, the point of Viglia has taken an Italian name. Toward the basin, the sierra descends in somewhat long
slopes, bearing white villages and olive trees. The trees descend down to the plain and end in perfect alignment: in front
of the line of the verdure, some isolated cypresses spring up stiff and straight. The plain is just a checkerboard of muddy
fields and seas of vegetation, which a grid of channels cuts at right angles. A median ditch gathers their combined waters.
From north to south, it extends its straight compass line, then, turning abruptly toward the west, it comes to flow into the
river, to reach the defile and the sea with it. The river comes from elsewhere. We are going to see its sources. We round
the last bank of the hills of the south. The plain extends to our right, without relief, perfectly flat. It extends, solid like the
surface of a lake, up to the wall of Pantokrator. The points of some cypresses, the domes of some walls sprinkle the
monotonous checkerboard. In a dentition of the southern hills, at the edge of the road, well a dozen large springs,
“wellheads,” kephalovrysis, as the Greeks say: they are in effect the emerging heads of subterranian flows, which only
discharge the overflow of solitary lakes, closed plains, marshes without outlets, with which the center of the isle is
covered. By great wellings, by ten or fifteen fountains, the waters reappear here and their joined rivulets promptly form a
stream, a small river, retaining the same abundance all year long. It is properly speaking the only river flowing from the
plain, for one cannot give the term of river to the ditch of reeds and mud which leads from north to south. The river
begins here and, circling the bank of the southern hills, it goes to reach the defile which will lead it to the bay of
Ermonais. Some terraces of vines and olives accompany its meanders on the left bank. The right bank is cut into the black
soil and the reeds of the marsh.
We follow the river and we reach with it the first approaches of the defile between the ridges of the coastal sierra and
mount Saint-Georges. Its defile narrows at first, then widens into an interior valley, where we need to leave our vehicle
and horses. A new narrowing leads the bed to the veritable gate, at the threshold of rocks from where the waters fall on
the beach of Ermonais. Between the sand of the beach and the level of the plain of Ropa, the difference in elevation is
thirty or forty meters: the road ends at the edge of the waterfall; it is necessary to descend by foot. The outflow of the
river is made between two stones and over a bed of rocks, which a crew of workers is in the process of digging and
enlarging. We are told that a rich Corfiot has left a million drachmas to drain the plain of Ropa. The work is easy. It
suffices to increase the outflow of the river where the canals of the marsh come to end, to enlarge and deepen the opening
toward the sea. The lowered threshold and the enlarged bed will provide millions of hectares for agriculture.

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 In a series of rapids and cascades, the turbulent waters descend toward the beach of Ermonais. The narrow gorge is
impeded with blocks and stones at the beginnning. Some ruins of mills, toward which the undulations of the river turn,
are positioned on the two banks. After the last mill, the defile widens a bit and the slowed river spreads out in meanders
among the pebbles and plants, down to the sands of the large beach. It ends in a very thick bank of dry leaves and vegetal
debris. The pressure of the surf which it pushes back forces it into a last large meander to reach the sea, where it finally
flows, not directly, but obliquely. Here is the beach which received Ulysses. Between the two cliffs of cape Plakka and
mount Saint-Georges, the concave half-circle is obstructed with rocks and protected from the wind,

χωρος άριστος
λειος πετράων και επι σκέπας ην ανέμοιο.

But, from each side, the surf howls and breaks at the foot of the cliffs, among the collapsed rocks. The howling sea
drives its foam onto the shore of the beach. To the right, Saint-Georges is a mass of compact limestone. To the left, mount
Viglia is a pliocene conglomerate, an amalgam of cutting crystals and broken stones: the crumbling blocks, which litter
the shore, are bristling with sharp pebbles where the skin of the hands and feet sticks and is torn off,

ως του προς πέτρησι θρασειάων απο χειρων

‘ρινοι απέδρυφθεν.

When one comes from the open ocean, one distinctly sees the cascades and the small delta of the river with a good current
at the foot of the open bay,

... ποταμοιο κατα στόμα καλλιρόοιο.

Among the foaming blocks, Ulysses sets foot on the sediment carried by the river, ες ποταμου προχοας. He casts the veil
of Ino into the meander obstructed by the surf,

και το μεν ες ποταμον ‘αλιμυρήντα μεθηκεν.

Then he emerges from the river and sits for awhile on the shore bordered with reeds; he kisses the nourishing earth,

... ‘ο δ’ εκ ποταμοιο λιασθεις

σχοίνω ‘υπεκλίνθη κύσε δε ζείδωρον άρουραν

But he cannot remain for the night in the cool gorge, all full of bounding waters and foam: the mist of the night and the
dew of the morning would give him the fever:

μή γ’ άμυδις στίβη τε κακη και θηλυς εέρση

εζ ολιγηπελίης δαμάση κεκαφηότα θυμόν

In front of him the slopes covered with olive trees are available; above the beach and the fallen blocks, they overlook the
bay, and their groves, near the river, are visible from everywhere:

βη ‘ρ’ ίμεν εις ‘ύλην. την δε σχεδόν ‘ύδατος ευρεν

εν περιφαινομένω.

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Ulysses climbs there, covers himself with dry leaves, and goes to sleep...
At dawn, Athena awakens Nausikaa: she needs to leave for the laundry at daybreak,

αλλ’ ίομεν πλυνέουσαι ‘άμ’ ηοι φαινομένηφιν,

it is necessary to yoke a cart; the route would be too long by foot, for the laundries are very far from the town,

και δε σοι ώδε αυτη πολυ κάλλιον ηε πόδεσσιν

έρχεσθαι. πολλον γαρ απο πλυνοί εισι απο πόληος.

She leaves. The mules quickly pull the cart across the plain, and Nausikaa has her women ride in the cart, around her.
They arrive at the course of the river, at the place where the laundries are found, always full, where plenty of clear
water falls in cascades suitable for washing:

α‘ι δ’ ‘ότε δη ποταμοιο ‘ρόον περικαλλέ ‘ίκοντο

ένθ’ η τοι πλυνοι ησαν επηετανοί, πολυ δ’ ‘ύδορ
καλόν ‘υπεκρόρεεν μάλα περ ‘ρυπόωντα καθηραι

It is needless, I believe, to show the perfect concordance of all the words with the details of our site. The series of
cascades and basins between the rocks, which the modern mills have used for their diversions, offer, in effect, admirable
washing places always full of running water, constantly replenished vats. The women of Nausikaa, leaving, like us, their
vehicle in the defile above, have loosed the mules in the vegetation, on the edge of the turbulent stream, in the shade of
the olive trees where our driver comes to loose his beasts,

και τας μεν σευαν ποταμον πάρα δινήεντα.

Then they carried their linens to the shallow basins; each harder than the next, they beat and soak them in the clean water;
but the water appears black in the middle of the foaming cascades,

ε‘ίματα χερσιν ‘έλοντο και εσφόρεον μέλαν ‘ύδωρ

στειβον δ’ εν βόθροισι θοως έριδα προφέρουσαι.

They come together to spread their laundry on the beach, in a corner where the surf of the storm washes the small
pebbles,

εξείης πέτασαν παρα θιν’ ‘αλος, ηχι μάλιστα

λαίγγας ποτι χέρσον αποπλύνεσκε θάλασσα.

The beach, in effect, presents two very different aspects. At the very mouths of the river, it is strewn with a great
thickness of vegetation and leaves, which, slowly decomposing in the marshes or drying in the bottom of the canals of the
plain, have been suddenly carried along by the rains of winter. Under mount Saint-Georges, the fallen limestone,
consuming the beach, has strewn the beach only with pebbles or rocks. Under mount Viglia, to the contrary, the surf has
decomposed the conglomerate into its constituent parts, and the cliff is bordered by a slope, not of fine sand, but of gravel
and pebbles, of “small stones” where the linen should in effect dry much more quickly than on damp sand and much more
cleanly than on the debris of the river... Nausikaa and her women eat, then play with a ball: the open beach is a good
terrain for play. But a clumsy blow sends the ball into one of the large water holes of the cascade,

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 αμφιπόλου μεν ‘άμαρτε βαθείν δ’ έμβαλε δίνη.

The women raise a cry. Ulysses wakes up and, leaving the woods, he appears on the slope. The women flee toward the
projecting beaches, επ’ ηιονας προυχουσας. Nausikaa calls them back and sends them to carry a phare, a chiton, and
some linens to the castaway, behind a rock of the river where the hero can wash himself,

καδ δ’ άρ Οδυσση εισαν επι σκέπας...

Ulysses does not take a bath: the river is not deep enough; in the palace of Alkinoös, when the servants of Arete have
prepared the bath, Ulysses will rejoice because, since his departure from the isle of Calypso, he has not known the
pleasure of a bath. But, in one of the basins of the cascade, Ulysses takes a tub: he washes his shoulders, his chest and
limbs,

αυταρ ‘ο εκ ποταμου χρόα νίζετο διος Οδυσσευς

‘άλμην ‘ή ο‘ι νωτα και ευρέας άμπεχεν ώμους
εκ κεφαλης δ’ έσμηχεν αλος χνόον ατρυγέτοιο.

Then he dons the clothes given by Nausikaa and climbs from the beach toward the place where they have left the cart.
They gather the mules. They harness them. The fine white laundry, well-folded, fills the vehicle, and the women can no
longer sit on it on the return, as on the dirty linen which they brought on setting out. They will walk behind the cart with
Ulysses. Only Nausikaa will find a place on the seat...
We have also climbed back toward the vehicle awaiting us above the mills. We take up again the route of Nausikaa
“across the fields and the works of men.” A level road threading the entire valley of Ropa skirts the foot of the coastal
sierra toward the north and leads across the plain, from the defile of the river to the port of Pheacia. From the mills, it
required an hour and a half to reach Palaio-Castrizza and the town of the Pheacians. The present route is a new road,
constructed by the engineers and paved with macadam. But it is duplicated by an old trail, which winds along the bays
and the black earth, and which small old bridges carry over the river and the torrents of the sierra. From all times the
native carts have been able to roll along the edge of the plain, and from all times they went to the river to carry the grain
and seek the flour as in the last century, or carry the dirty linen and bring back the white linen as in the times of Nausikaa.
Under the last branches of the olive trees, right at the edge of the plain, Nausikaa and her women took the trail. The mules
galloped on the hard flat plain,

α‘ι δ’ ε‘υ μεν τρώχων εύ δε πλίσσοντο πόδεσσιν.

They had promptly turned their backs to the course of the river,

... α‘ι δ’ ωκα λίπον ποταμοιο ‘ρέεθρα.

They followed the edge of the marsh up to the foot of Pantokrator...

We leave them to return home and, turning to the right, we leave their route to cross the marsh and return to the town
of Corfu. The carts trace a stream which, from north to south, would cut the marsh and descend to the river in crossing the
entire plain of Ropa. I have already said that the supposed river is only a muddy ditch of stagnant, motionless waters,
which only the floods of storms or winter disperse. A road, which crosses the plain toward the middle of its length and
which goes from the hills of the east to the sierra of the west, allows us to see well the cover of black earth, tiled with
marsh, plated with scum and bristling with reeds, with its median ditch, which is just an almost indiscernable flow of

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thick waters and diluted mud; all around, the fever is breathed out in a terrible smell. This band of marsh, still serving to
cover the beginnings of Pheacia, contributed to the security and isolation of the Pheacians. But it obligated them to certain
habits which the Odyssey faithfully depicts to us. Near their town, The Pheacians have flowing fountains; even in their
town they have cisterns and wells like the monks of Palaio-Castrizza. Thus potable water is not lacking either for
themselves or for their beasts or for their gardens. But they do not have enough running water for their other household
needs, especially for their laundry, which require well-furnished washeries. Like the thalassocracies of all times, the
Pheacians love cleanliness. The Pheacian cleanliness drew the admiration of the Achaeans, as the cleanliness of the Dutch
drew the admiration of the XVIIIth century, and as the cleanliness of the English draws the admiration of our
contemporaries. Once they debark, the people of the sea love the white shirts and the varnished floors, the changes of
linens,

ε‘ίματά τ’ εξημοιβα,...

for they go to the ball only in fresh linens,

ο‘ι δ’ αιει εθέλουσι νεόπλυτα ε‘ίματ’ έχοντες

ες χορον έρχεσθαι...

The landsmen do not have such manners. I depict the Achaeans to myself as the type of splendidly crass Albanians,
loaded with gold, embroideries and grease spots, reeking of rancid oil and sheep butter - such as we still see debarking on
the quays of Corfu or boarding European ships, whose cleanliness amazes them. They are dressed in furs or wool cloth,
which serve all a man’s life. The Pheacians wear white linen, well-washed, starched, ironed, frilled, that must ceaselessly
be sent to the laundry. Now, the washeries are very far from the town. They need to go by vehicle, to leave in the morning
and return only in the evening, bring something to eat, and stay all day. Also, they only do laundry from time to time,
when the dirty linen has accumulated,

... ‘ίνα κλυτα ε‘ίματ’ άγωμαι

ες ποταμον πλυνέουσα τά μοι ‘ρερυπωμένα κειται,

which presupposes a rich wardrobe and closets abundantly stocked with linen. In our towns in Province, where the same
habits still persist, the good household accumulates in its wardrobe dozens of cloths and napkins which are used and
laundered only two or three times a year... The white linen needs to be washed in basins of running water. It is why
Nausikaa needs to go to the river: the dirty water of the marsh would impregnate the covers with an unfortunate color and
odor. Our basins in the cascade and their rapid waters are to the contrary pure vats where the soaking, the fulling (we
would say, the soaping), and the rinsing can be properly and conveniently done... Take all the words of the Odyssian text
and see if the minutest epithets do not have their application here. For the other part, make the calculation of the distances
and the hours and see if Nausikaa’s day is fully occupied by the travel. She rises at first light. She hitches the cart. She
leaves at dawn. She takes two hours to arrive at the river. They wash all morning. They lunch and they play ball while the
clothes dry. They go to return

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη άρ’ έμελλε πάλιν οικόνδε νέεσθαι,

when Ulysses appears, they delay their departure in order that the hero can wash and dress himself. Then they load the
cart and they return a bit more slowly than they had come; the women and Ulysses return on foot. They arrive in Pheacia
only at sunset.

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 δυσετό τ’ ηέλιος και τοι κλυτον άλσος ‘ίκοντο.

Ulysses stays again in the sacred grove of Athena; when he arrives at the palace of Alkinoös, the torches are already lit.

‘έστασαι αιθομένας δαιδας μετα χερσιν έχοντες.

Steep cliffs and sharp rocks, sand beach and river with a good current, welling spring and sacred grove of Athena,
fountain very near the agora and the good Poseidon, high town and fine ports: we now have all the stops of the Odyssian
route. The method of the Most Homerics, the minute explication of the text, has made us retrieve all the sites of our
Pheacia on the coast of the Savage Sea. But by another method we would have been able to preview the same results in
advance. A priori, the topological calculation would have been able to reconstitute for us the site, the location and the
form of our Pheacian town. The life and the civilization of the Pheacians implies a a habitat which we would be able to
describe and calculate in advance. Now, the results of the calculation would exactly accord, as we are going to see, with
the identifications which we are going to discover, and which they are going to confirm to us: we study the mores and
costumes of the Pheacians; we will have the immediate verification of all our topographical labor.

CHAPTER III

THE PHEACIANS

άκρας τε επι τη θαλάσση απολαβόντες και τα επικείμενα νησίδια.

ΤHUC, VI, 2.

The Pheacians are a foreign people and a people of sailors. They have come by sea to establish themselves on a
barbarian coast: “Previously, they lived in Hyperia on vast plains, near the insolent Cyclops, who harassed them, being
the stronger. The divine Nausithoös had them change lands; he installs them in Sheria, constructs the ramparts, lays out
the streets, makes the temples of the gods and partitions the lands.” Alkinoös is the son of Nausithoös. The Pheacians
continue to live from the sea. They have some olive trees and gardens: under the mountain which encloses them, each has
received a corner of the field. But their wealth comes from the sea: they are not an agricultural people, nor pastoral, but of
caravans and commerce. In contrast with the Albanians, their neighbors, who always thought only of arms, “they had no
interest in the bow or quiver. Sails, oars and vessels for crossing the foamy sea, that is what makes their joy,”

ου γαρ Φαιήκεσσι μέλει βιοσ ουδε φαρέτρη,

αλλ’ ‘ιστοι και ερετμα νεων και νηες εισαι,
ησιν αγαλλόμενοι πολιην περόωσι θαλάσσην.

We know that their agora is not a market of herbs, fruits, vegetables or cattle. It is not Apollo or Hermes who presides
there, but Poseidon: one sees there only oars, sails and rigging. The men navigate; they are illustrious sailors,
ναυσικλυτοι, famous rowers, δολιχηρετμοι, φιληρετμοι. The women sew and weave: “as the Pheacians are superior to
other men in the art of guiding a cruiser, so are their women in the art of weaving and sewing,”

‘όσσον Φαίηκες περι πάντων ίδριες ανδρων

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 νηα θοήν ενι πόντω ελαύνεμεν, ως δε γυναικες
‘ιστων τεχνησσαι.

Men and women take their names from things of the sea. Nausikaa, Nauteus, Prumneus, Naubolides, Nausithoös,
Pontonoös, etc. It is a people of caravans, of boatmen, πομπηες. The profession which the Neleids make of the land
routes, the Pheacians make of the seaways. They live on the passage, πομπη. They guide and row the foreigners, and their
fleet suffices for all the requests:

‘ημεις δ’, ‘ως το πάρος περ, εποτρυνώμεθα πομπήν

ουδε γαρ τις άλλος, ‘ότις κ’ εμα δώμαθ’ ‘ίκηται
ενθάδ’ ‘οδυρόμενος δηρον μένει ε‘ίνεκα πομπης.

They are the intermediaries between the Achaean world and the mysterious countries of the Sunset, between “bread-
eating” humanity and the savagery of the cannibalistic Cyclops or Lestrygons, which inhabit the other coast of the
Adriatic channel. In following the already barbaric coasts of Thesprotia and Epirus, one can reach their isle. But beyond,
there is no more coastal navigation! The great sea opens, and one enters into full Barbary. To reach the mysterious land,
which appeared on the other coast of the strait on clear days, it is necessary to confront the Savage Sea, the misty sea, the
great abyss where the Bora rages: “confident in their fast cruisers, the Pheacians cross the great abyss with the permission
of Poseidon,”

νηυσι θοησιν τοί γε πεποιθότες ωκείησιν

λαιτμα μέγ’ εμπερόωσιν επεί σφισι δωκ’ Ενοσίχθων.

All legendary exaggeration apart, the passage of the Otrante channel has always been perilous. The winds there are highly
variable, say the Instructions, and here is what the travelers relate:

The sixth [of March] in the morning, we carry our provisions to the felouque and embarked at nine o’clock. Fifteen miles from
Corfu we passed before the Madonna of Cassope, a place of especially strong veneration to the Greeks. In following our route, we
reached an isle of the Fanua, and the next day we again took to the high sea to cross the channel and reach land in the Pouille. A
great storm which arises at noon made us run the risk of perishing, and without the skill of our mariners we would hardly have saved
ourselves on one of the isles of the Fanau, but deserted. We thanked God for having removed us from the peril that we were in. Since
much water had entered our felouque, we pulled it ashore, and each of us rested from the fatigue which we had. The weather, which
continues to be continually bad, obliges us to remain on the small isle nearly three weeks. The misfortune for us is that all our
provisions will be consumed in a few days; consequently, we saw ourselves forced to eat herbs which we boiled with water from a
small fountain which fortunately was found in the place.
The twenty-third, the weather, becoming fair, the favorable wind and hunger made us make use of oars and sails to reach the
lands of the Pouille. After having traveled all night, the morning of the twenty-fourth we encountered over twenty caïques of
fishermen... We see from place to place on the [Italian] coast, which is beautiful and fertile, somewhat large towers on which there
are cannons with ten or twelve men to guard and protect them in case they see that the Turkish ships will wish to land.
We thought to land near the tower of Saint-Jean; but we were surprised to see more than forty men with firearms who shouted at
us to go back or they would fire on us. We thus had to put to sea again, and after about three hours we landed at another tower whose
more amenable guardians will bring us provisions for money. Thus we stayed there two days to nourish ourselves and furnish
ourselves provisions to continue our voyage. The twenty-sixth we arrived at Gallipoli... The twenty-seventh we went to anchor in
front of a tower, where there is a very fine port; we passed the night there. The twenty-eighth [and the twenty-ninth] the continually
favorable wind let us reach the coasts of Apouille in short order.

The Pheacians have the monopoly of the passage and they defend it jealously, as the thalassocracies since all time have
defended their monopolies. The Carthaginians sink all foreign ships which, to take the route of tin and silver, navigate on

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the Sardinian or Spanish coasts, and they relate to their clients a thousand horrific legends of the dangers of the ocean. It
is by the two means, frightening stories and pitiless scuttlings, that the Portuguese and Spanish defend their monopoly of
the El Dorados of America or Africa. At Venice as at Cadiz, the commercial routes are state secrets, and they violently
punish foreign espionage. The Pheacians behave no differently. The monsters of the western sea which cause such great
fear to the Achaean sailors, Charybdus, Scylla, Cyclops, Circe and the Lestrygons, are of their invention: “Walk in
silence,” says Athena to Ulysses; “don’t look at anyone in the town, don’t question anyone. These people never tolerate
the foreigner, and their reception to those who come from abroad is not friendly,”

αλλ’ ίθι σιγη τοιον, εγω δ’ ‘οδον ‘ηγεμονεύσω,

μηδέ τιν’ ανθρώπων προυιόσσεο μηδ’ ερέεινε.
ου γαρ ξείνους ο‘ίδε μάλ’ ανθρώπους ανέχονται,
ου δ’ αγαπαζόμενοι φιλέους’, ‘ός κ’ άλλοθεν έλθη.

The hostility to the foreigner, from whom they nevertheless enrich themselves, was common to all the maritime towns
up to our days. Athena, word for word, would have addressed the same advice to the French or Flemish merchants
visiting Venice in the XVIth century... Having the monopoly of the “passage”, the Pheacians draw enormous benefits
from it. The wealth of their palaces, their furnishings decorated with gold, enamel and silver, the beauty of their baubles
and their works of art excite the admiration and envy of the Achaeans. Ulysses in Alkinoös’ home opens the big eyes of
an island fisherman from the past suddenly transported into the palace of Venice, or of a Breton sardine fisherman of
today into the home of a shipowner of Liverpool, or of one of the “cotton” or “wheat kings.” It is the same luxury, the
same comfort, the same number of domestics or slaves. In the XVIIth century, “the corsair vessels stay abroad so long
that their owners profit in the long run especially by the slaves they receive.” Don Antonia Paulo, one of the principal
owners of Livourne (it is at that time the great port of the corsairs), “had at least four hundred slaves, who worked every
day in the town, and each of whom he payed so much per week.” The Pheacians make “the raid”, like all the navigators of
the times: their king has fifty female slaves to grind the grain, sew and weave the cloth and make shining othones (linens).
Before the discovery of the Mycenaean palaces, the philologists still ranked the description of the palace of Alkinoös
among the fantastic improbabilities:

“We can ask ourselves,” they say with Riemann, “if the legend of the Pheacians, such as with Homer, relates to Corcyre or
another land actually existing.” But that which, we believe, cannot be the object of doubt, is the marvelous and legendary character
of the description, and it consequently seems positively chimeric to us to seek a geographic exactitude in the details. The Pheacians
are a people altogether extraordinary. They live far from men, at the ends of the earth, in the middle of the sea. They have no relation
with the other peoples and are protected from all enemy incursions because the gods have an entirely particular esteem for them. The
palace of Alkinoös, the interior of which shines like the sun and the moon, and where everything is in gold, silver or copper, has all
the air of a palace from the Thousand and One Nights. The fashion in which the Pheacians navigate has something of magic and the
supernatural. Their vessels have neither helmsman nor tiller. They are almost living beings which know all the lands... There are the
details which noöne dreams of taking literally. Why would we wish that the topographic description of the land should have a
scientific exactitude that the rest of the account lacks entirely?

For the vessels of the Pheacians, we have refuted the chimeric pretensions. For the palace of Alkinoös, the
archeologists have recognized the possibility and the reality of the metallic and enamel decoration, of the applications of
gold, of silver and of kyanos. But the Philologists, even before the excavations of Tirynthe, of Mycenae or of Knossos,
had been able to know an historic text which would have provided for them a literal commentary to all the words of the
Odyssian description. In Hellenistic times, the Sabeans, at the southeast extremity of the known world, have the strait of
the Red Sea and “the benefit of all the commerce between Europe and Asia. There are no richer people in the world, says
the periple of Agatharchides: it is they who have made the Syria of the Ptolomies into a land of gold, and who furnish

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very advantageous markets to the Phoenician industry. Their luxury overflows not only with the marvels of their carved
vases and the variety of their bowls,
[Cf. the Odyssian verse:

καί ο‘ι εγω τοδ’ άλεισον εμον περικαλλεσ οπάσσω

χρύσεον... ]

but further in the grandeur of their couches and their tripods with feet of silver; it passes all measure in their most
common furniture: it is of a royal magnificence. They say that their houses contain a great number of columns gilded, or
of silver with silver capitols. The floors and the doors are ornamented with incrustations of gold and mosaic. The totality
is of a sumptuous decoration; gold, silver, ivory and the most precious stones cover the walls.”
[Cf. the Odyssian verses where the poet describes the floor of bronze, the walls of bronze, the frieze of enamel, the
door of silver and the ring of gold, the statues of gold, etc.: VII, 85-102.]
The Sabeans owe their wealth to the transit of the Oriental commerce. Sitting on the edge of the “great abyss” of the
Indian Ocean, they retain, by virtue of the monsoons, the market in perfumes, in spices and in precious goods from the
Far East. In Homeric times, the Pheacians can similarly retain the market in copper, amber, tin and all of the precious
materials then provided by the Far West. The Pheacians thus only hold the exchanges and the commerce. From their
economic state, we can deduce the site of their town. It will not be in the middle of cultivated fields, at the gates of a
fertile plain or on verdant coasts, a town of rich property-owners, a town of landsmen. On some promontory dominating
the ocean or on a parasitic islet, it is only a commercial trading post. Similarly in the waters of the Ionian Sea, do we not
have the recent model of that which was formerly the town of Alkinoös? Take the Parga of the Venetians on the Albanian
coast.
Parga was a town of navigators: “The Parguinotes exported the products of the Albanians and devoted themselves to
navigation. Their boats were not always very peaceful. They were frequently manned by brigands, who awaited the
occasion to despoil some poorly armed merchant ship, which they sank to the bottom after massacring the crew to hide
their crimes. They returned with their booty, which they shared with those who were supposed to prevent and oppose
them; these pirates thus bought the impunity which they enjoyed.” The port of Parga today is deserted. But it formerly
had some importance for the small sailing fleets. Our Nautical Instructions still describe it and our marine charts give the
plan of it, in a map of the same page, no. 3052, which has already provided us the plan of the Pheacian ports. Here there
are harbors of the same nature and of the same form: in front of the high coastal mountain, a rocky islet, joined by a low
isthmus, divides a sand beach into two small ports; the citadel occcupies the summit of the islet; the houses cover the
slope toward the land:

The territory of Parga has no more than two leagues of circuit and about a half league of indentation into the land. It is limited by
a chain of high mountains, cut by a quantity of hills covered with trees suitable for construction and heating. The coast in the
location forms a semicircle of nearly a league and a half in extent. The beach is divided [into two ports] by an elevated rock which
terminates a league of land extending itself a little into the sea. The rock, which resembles a cone, is covered with houses built on the
slope, beginning at a height to be protected from the force of the sea. The inhabitants appear to be related to each other. The streets
are narrow and steep. On the summit of the rock is built a church of the Virgin: the steeple bears a beacon intended to guide the
navigators during fogs. The mass of houses is surrounded, on the landward side, with a strong enclosure of walls, on which is
stationed a battery of cannons. It is what is named the fortress, and the local situation does not require or permit more extensive
works. On the seaward side, the inhabitants are defended by the form of their rock cut to a point, where one cannot land.
The harbor can receive only boats and ships of moderate size, or those which draw little water. The bottom is sandy, of good
grip... Two torrents arise from the interior of the mountains of Albania and come to discharge themselves in the sea. Their water,
which is of an excellent quality, serves for the provision of the navigators and for the supply of the Parguinotes. It also waters several
food gardens, where they cultivate many citrons and oranges. In the middle of the gardens is built the country house of one of the
primates... The small terrain of the Parguinote is very fertile: it produces wheat, grapes, oil and liqueurs; while the last two [articles
suffice] only for consumption, for the two others, they provide them to the neighbors. The completely cultivated territory cannot

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have pastures nor, consequently, can it nourish flocks or herds. The Parguinotes have only a few oxen employed in labor, and they
obtain their livestock from their neighbors, with which the primates of the land hold relations and communications. Wood is not
lacking; they go to cut it in the least distant forests of Albania. With their own needs satisfied, they can carry it to the neighboring
islanders. The population is about four thousand souls. They live for the most part on the rock. To the right, on the slope of the coast
where the rock rests, is built a sort of town inhabited by the rest of the poopulation.

At the location, I have verified myself the details of the description (April 1901). Our photographs prove the exactitude
of it. I did not wish to change a word of it. Our author, in making it, surely did not dream of the town of Alkinoös.
Nevertheless his least words furnish us a commentary to all the words of the Odyssian text. Town of navigators, station of
foreign sailors, Parga came to be built at the edge of the Albanian land, in a circle of high mountains “which cover it all
around,”

... μέγα δε σφιν όρος πόλει αμφικαλύψειν.

Its insular promontory is made of a steep rock which a low isthmus joins to the land (the marine charts have made the
same error here as for the town of the Pheacians; they indicate by dark hatchings a line of hills which would unite the
citadel of Parga to the bank of the Albanian mountains, but which do not exist: the isthmus is flat; on the copy which I
have given of it here, I have corrected the error of the marine chart). The promontory points between the two ports. Like
our town of Alkinoös, the rock of Parga presents a steep façade to the sea, crowned with the ramparts of the citadel, and
presents to the land a somewhat abrupt slope, and its town has covered the flank in terraces. For centuries, the town,
independant of the landsmen and subject only to the thalassocracies, has known prosperity. It had a reputation for wealth
among the neighboring mountaineers. It needed to defend itself from them, and it is against them that it had raised its only
defense works, its wall across the isthmus: such as our wooden wall of the Pheacians... Abandoned by the
thalassocracies, Parga falls under the yoke of the landsmen. That was the ruin of its fortune. It was no longer anything but
the embarkation or debarkation of the native caïques. Its rock became a land fortress, which the Turks will encircle with a
rampart in front of the sea. The town of Alkinoös is no longer anything but a castle Saint-Ange... Between Parga and the
town of Alkinoös, note some difference nevertheless. The two ports of Parga, poorly covered and sown with reefs, are
untenable with the squalls which fall abruptly from the north:

The port of Parga, say the Instructions, is divided into two bays by the prominence of the coast on which is found the citadel. The
bay of the west, the larger (like one of our Pheacian ports, it could be called the port San Spiridione: a monastery of San Spiridione
covers its extreme promontory), semi-circular, bordered at the bottom by a beach of sand, with three cables of width or of depth, is
open to the south. The other bay (like the other port of the Pheacians, it is under the protection of Saint-Nicolas, whose chapel
occupies one of the islets) to the southeast of the citadel is considered as the port of Parga. It is sheltered by a chain of islets and of
rocks. The two bays can receive only small boats, and the coastal cruisers ordinarily anchor in that of the east. During the good
weather of summer, the ships find a temporary anchorage three cables from the citadel [and the boats come and go between the local
navy and the ships anchored in the open]. The bottom is sandy, of good holding (add the voyagers); but areas of rocks are found
there, which in foul weather cut the cables and put the ships in danger. They are completely exposed to blows of wind from the west,
from the northwest and from the southwest. On the left in entering is a mole which the Parguinotes will make themselves for the
safety of their boats.

By virtue of its “good ports”, the town of Alkinoös can be the capitol of a realm of sailors, a residence of thalassocrats.
The uncertain harbors of Parga have never permitted it to be more than a station, a trading post, a point of support of the
foreign sailors. But, with that difference set aside, the two sites are similar, and notice further that Parga and the town of
Alkinoös are the same distance from the neighboring rivers. In following the Albanian coast, as in following the Corfiot
coast, we we also find, to the north of the town and to the south of the town, at about ten or twelve kilometers, the mouth
of a river. The moderns name the Albanian rivers Gourla and Paramythia. The rivers are also the drainages of a fertile
interior plain, and their tributaries descend by populated valleys, where the natives have their large burgs of Margariti,

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Paramythia, Mazarakia, etc. Across the mountains of Souli, the upper gorges of the rivers and their tributaries trace a
convenient rout toward the large towns or sanctuaries of the highland, Dodone and Jannina. A native emporion thus
would find great advantage in establishing itself in the vicinity of the deltas. Very near the rivers, two harbors especially
are offered which, for a native navy, would become the Marseille or Smyrna of the Albanian plain. Port San Giovanni,
admirably closed by two promontories, surrounded by high hills, is protected from all the winds: “one can approach from
its shores at about the distance of one cable: within the west point of the port rises a remarkable spring of fresh water from
the bottom at 22 meters, and one can also access excellent fresh water on the east shore of the port.” At three miles to the
south of San Giovanni is found the entry of the port of Phanari. “The entry, which has less than one and a half cable of
width, is open to the southwest. The port, which is indented into the north, is of a circular form with a diameter of four or
five cables. A large part of it is silted with mud. A sand beach borders it. The boats of the land winter here, anchoring on
the northeast shore and hauled up to the rocks.” But the emporion of the foreigners, Parga, is installed neither at port
Phanari nor at port San Giovanni, where nevertheless it would find promontories and tongues of land easy to occcupy and
easy to defend. The river was too near.
It is that the fluvial valley, way of commerce, is also the road of war, falling suddenly from bands of native pillagers: it
is necessary to stay away from the river. On a barbarian coast, we know that the thalassocracies, which navigate only for
the commerce, and which are neither colonists nor conquerors, always hold their stations at some distance from the
coastal rivers. On the Albanian coast, the comparison of the Venetian stations and the ancient Hellenic colonies was able
to show us the law well: the Venetians have installed their commercial factories of Preveza, Reniasa, Parga, Gomenitza,
Bucintro at a distance from the rivers; the Hellenes had founded their agricultural colonies of Ambrakia, Pandosia,
Buthroton, etc., in the middle of plains or at the edge of fluvial deltas. On the Asiatic coast, we have already encountered
the old Phaselis which, entirely resembling the town of Alkinoös, has come to be situated between two closed ports, on an
extending peninsula made of a rock and an isthmus of sand: at the foot of the high Solymes mountains which cover it on
all sides, Phaselis is at a distance from the routes and passages leading toward the Lycian or Pisidian hinterland, at a
distance from the small rivers which empty farther north on each side of Adalia, the later town, the station of the
commercial and colonizing Hellenes. On our coasts of Provence, a text of Strabo shows us even better the same essential
difference between Hellenic colonies and Phoenician posts. The Ligurian coast is already familiar to us from the study
which we have made of an old preHellenic post, Monaco, the Melkart of Rest becoming the Herakles Monoikos of the
Greeks. Take up again the site of Monaco and its location in relation to the nearby river. Perched on its parasitic rock, the
site is comparable in all respects to our town of Alkinoös; it is just a mountainous islet bathed on all sides by the sea and
attached to the coastal mountain only by a low isthmus. The Phoenician trading post, closely covered by the mountains, is
distanced from the neighboring river, the Var, which empties four or five leagues from here. The Hellenes will choose
other sites: in the delta of the same Var, on the rocks which border it to east and west, the Marseillais will later install
their colonies of Nice and Antibes. It is that the Hellenes do not only want comerce with the natives; they wish to occupy
and colonize the land, to posess the plain. But the Ligurian pillagers ceaselessly disturb the Hellenic towns. It is a
perpetual battle which Nice and Antibes have to endure. It requires the valor and endurance of the Greek hoplites to
remain in the posts of combat.

The people of Marseille, says Strabo, will give themselves at first only to navigation, and will turn themselves entirely toward the
sea. Then, their forces having been acquired, they will wish to subjugate the coastal plains of the vicinity, and it is then that they will
construct their towns of Agde, Tauroention, Olbia, Antibes and Nice. They were in reality fortresses against the natives, Agde
against the barbarians of the Rhone, Antibes, Nice, and the others against the Ligurians of the Alps. The nearby forests furnished an
abundance of wood not only for naval construction, but also the material for the construction and military machines needed to assure
the resistance against the barbarians, οργάνων των τε προς τας ναυτιλίας χρησιμων και πρός πολιορκιας, αφ ων προς τε τους
Βαρβάρους αντέσχον.

Our Pheacians live far from the river, because they understand well not to live at the foot of war. They are sailors, not
soldiers. As the English people today reject obligatory service, conscription and barracks, which form our contemporary

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armies, the people of Alkinoös reject the violent practices which form the Greek hoplites. Fighting and battle are not
familiar to them,

ου γαρ πυλμάχοι ειμεν αμύμονες ουδε παλαισταί.

They run. They row. They dance. They sing. They play tennis. They change linens. They love the table, the bath, and
love. They do not dream of risking their fine habits and tender skin in bloody fighting. They are a people of sport, but not
of war... The site and location of their town corresponds to their customs and their way of life. In the Odyssian
description, it is all connected. One can close one’s eyes to the reality, tos see in it nothing but poetic inventions, fantasies
and improbabilities. The topological examination shows us, to the contrary, the internal logic of the description and its
deep truth. And the topology would further show us how and why the town of Alkinoös can have only one location,
according to the expression of the sailors, one orientation and one position. For, a priori, it cannot be on the sea of the
strait, as some would have it; it can only be on the Savage Sea, where we have discovered it.

*
* *

On the perimeter of an isle, we know how the towns and the emporia are placed and how they are replaced, one by the
other, following the commercial currents. At Rhodes, at Kos, Samos, Thera, Salamine, in most of ther Greek isles, we
know old ports or “old towns” which turn their backs to the Hellenic lands, to open their harbors to the south and toward
the Far East. The day when the Hellenes, masters of the isles, freely arrange the land and the sea, they abandon the old
towns: the Hellenic towns or ports transport themselves to the insular coasts of the west or north, facing Greece and the
Greek lands. The classic capitol of Corfu was of the same founding or transport by the Greeks on the sea of the strait,
facing the Greek lands and seas, for the needs of commerce and of Hellenic colonization.
Study in effect the site of the town of Korkyre. Situated on the coast of the strait, on the peninsula which separates the
bay of Kastradais and the lagoon of Kallichiopoulo, it occupies almost the same site as modern Corfu. The two towns
correspond to the same state of civilization and to the same needs of traffic. Hellenes and Venetians wished to hold the
strait, great route of their commerce, and they wished to hold the plains of the isle, great field of their colonization. From
the Hellenic times up until our days, the capitol of the isle thus has remained in the strait because the masters of the port
and the sea were at the same time the owners of the fields and farms. But the posession of the acropolis implies the
domination of the land and the subjugation of the natives. Visible from all the points of the plain and all the peaks of the
mountain, the town would not for long be able to escape the envy of the natives. It cannot remain in the hands of the
foreigner unless the founder or occupant, Greek, Roman, Angevin, Venitian, French, English, etc., wielded a recognized
power, a force always ready to hand: Venice held nine regiments of Italians and two of slaves at Corfu, not to mention
artillary and engineers.
And it is not only against the islanders that they need to be on guard. The incursions of the savages of Epirus are
ceaselessly to be feared. The strait provides only a moderate obstacle to the Albanian cupidity and fantasies. A blow of
the wind brings the boats of the pillagers. The peaceful posesssion of Corfu does not last without the occupation or
surveillance of the harbors of the facing coast. Rhodes, in Greek antiquity, is obliged to occupy the ports of the Karian
“Piraeus”, on the other side of the strait, to survey and control the Karian pirates. Korkyre similarly occupies a band of the
Epirote “Piraeus”, and holds a fortress there. As soon as the surveillance is relaxed or the fortresses cease to be held by
the Korkyrians, the Arnauts cross the channel, descend on the isle, ravage the harvest, cut the vines and the olives, and
hold the burgs for ransom. Even with the strictest surveillance, it still requires only a dark night and a flotilla of boats to
throw a band of Epirotes on the coast who raze the land to the ground, rob the peasants, and even force the town to
redeem itself... Masters of Corfu, the Venitians after the Hellenes occupy all the harbors of the strait on the Albanian

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coast, from Butrinto to Preveza, and in the posts, “they always had on guard there, under the cannons of the fort, a galley
or at least a brigantine to hold the respect of the Albanians; the governor additionally had a barque under his command” to
warn the garrison of Corfu at the first alert. In spite of the precautions, it is impossible to count the incursions of the
Albanians or the Turks on Venitian Corfu.
The Pheacians, who care neither for the bow nor the quiver, and who have neither hoplites nor cavalry, are not a
people to defend their walls at the same time from the islanders and the Epirotes. Thus their town is not going to place
itself under the eye of the ones or of the others in the plains of the isle. Furthermore, they are not Greeks, and their
navigations are not made in the strait. Thus they are not going to install their port facing the Hellenic lands or on the edge
of the channel. Like the old ports of Rhodes, of Kos, of Salamine, etc., the preHellenic port of Korkyre should turn its
back to the Hellenic port, and the Pheacian bay of Liapadais and the Greek harbors of Corfu are well-characterized by a
relationship of back-to-back. A priori, we would be able to say that if the Hellenes are installed near the one, it is in the
other that, before the Hellenes, the foreigners had their establishment. To take still another very recent example in the
Ionian sea, compare the Hellenic towns and the Venitian establishments on the perimeter of Kephalonia.
Kephalonia, like Corfu, is at the edge of a strait: its eastern façade borders the channel of Ithaca and Leucadia. The
channel was crossed, from all times, by the boats of Ulysses and Telemachus and by the Hellenic and Roman Galleys, as
today by the small steamers from Patras. From all times, the natives have thus had retreats on the eastern face of
Kephalonia. The small steamers from Patras revived two burgs, in the double bay of Phiscardo, to the northwest, and in
the bay of Pilaros, in the center. The ancient ships had made the fortune of Samë or Samos in the bay very near Pilaros: In
the middle of the strait, Samë was the stop which cut the ascent or descent of that dangerous passage into two equal parts:
Kephalonia, for the ancients, was the isle of Samos or Samë; the sailors knew it under that name... Kephalonia today is
the isle of Argostoli. The strait, populated with pirates (the Odyssey already shows us how the natives can install a
lookout and a cruiser on the isle of Asteris, which bars the channel), was abandoned by the foreign navies. The foreign
influence, Venitian during the last centuries, transported the capitol of the isle to the side opposite the strait, on the west
coast, which borders the Savage Sea. Argostoli, in a great gulf, occupies the flank of a long promontory which would be
easy to defend against the islanders, with the condition, however, that the defenders be in strong numbers and well-armed.
For the isthmus is somewhat large, and the plains of the isle, with the native villages, are very near. Argostoli cannot
accord with a foreign station unless the thalassocrats, by number and force, can impose their law on the islanders. But the
same eastern façade of Kephalonia on the Savage Sea offers, in another gulf, one of the extended promontories barely
attached to the mainland by a low isthmus between two ports, which resembles the town of Alkinoös or Parga of the
Venitians. It is the promontory which still presently bears the Venitian fortress of Asso. Here is how the Nautical
Instructions describe the waters of Kephalonia on the Savage Sea:

Four miles to the east by northeast from cape Kalakata is found the fort of Asso. The coast, between the two points, forms the gulf
of Myrto, about three miles deep, with steep and sharp shores, garnished at intervals with beaches of sand. There is no harbor in the
gulf, and a ship under sail will avoid allowing itself to be becalmed on the coast, for the wind frequently dies under the high ground,
and a strong swell from the northwest drives onto the coast. The port of Asso is formed by an elevated promontory, with a double
peak, crowned by the ruins of a great Venitian fortress and joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus of sand. The port, open to the
north, has two cables of width, three of depth, and offers convenience during the months of summer to small coastal cruisers which
come there to load the produce of the land, which is well-cultivated. During winter it is little frequented, for it is open to winds from
the north, which bring heavy seas there. The outer part of the port, with bottoms of 22 to 31 meters, is sheltered from winds of the
southwest by the promontory. The fortress, passably preserved, is of great extent, 135 meters in elevation, and protected on all sides
by steep cliffs; a ditch dug across the isthmus, presently filled, formerly defended it from the landward side. The village of Asso,
situated to the east of the fort, with a population of about 1500 inhabitants, posesses a customs and a health office, and makes a
considerable commerce in raisins from Corinth, grapes, wine and oil. One can procure some provisions and fresh water there.

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 The fortress, in the times of the Venitian masters, without doubt protected the double harbor below. But it especially
should have furnished the neighboring peasants a refuge against the attacks of the Barbaries: “The Venitians,” says
Grasset Saint-Sauveur, “will build the fortress in 1595. In its fortifications, they were obliged to follow the irregularities
of the terrain; for everything there is unequal, crooked and defective. In spite of all the imperfections, the fortress is more
than sufficient for the purpose which determined its constuction. It was only to serve as a retreat for the inhabitants of the
seacoast, in case of incursions of corsairs against the island. At the foot of the mountain Axo, one finds a small port which
can contain at the most three or four galleys. The interior of the fortress offers nothing which has the possible means to
compensate for the fatigue of the voyage. It encloses the Greek cathedral, a small church modestly decorated. The only
public edifice is the house which the provider inhabited.”
The Venitian Axos on the Savage Sea and the Hellenic Samë on the strait are in the same relation of site and location
as Korkyre of the Hellenes and the town of Alkinoös, and some time ago, in another isle bordered by another strait, at
Rhodes, we have studied the same relationship between the Lindos of Cadmus and the Rhodes of the Greeks. There again,
the foreign navigators had chosen a promontory projecting into the Savage Sea, a rock between two bays, to found their
town and their sanctuaries of Lindos; the Hellenes, to the contrary, will transport their capitol to the strait, into the plain
which borders the entrance to the channel.
Between the old Lindos and the town of the Pheacians, it appears that there may be a resemblance not only of the
situation; there is a parity of date. For Lindos was founded, they say, by the Phoenician commerce, and we see by the
toponymy of the Pheacians that the Semites should have invented it also: Korkyra Sheria, ‫שחרה כרכרה‬, appears of the
same origin and of the same epoch as the doublets of the neighboring isles Paxos-Plateia, Samë-Kephallenia, etc., or as
other Greek isles, Kasos-Akhne, Rheneia-Keladussa, etc. If we take good account of the Odyssian text itself, we can turn
up, it appears, some indication of the Levantine origin.
By certain details of their costumes and their mores, the Pheacians appear to be distinguished from the Achaeans and
related to the nations of the Far East: “The Egyptians,” says Herodotus, “wear clothing of linen which they wish always to
be fresh-washed; they take the greatest care of it, for they prefer cleanliness to elegance, ε‘ίματα δε λίνεα φορέουσι αιει
νεόπλυτα, επιτηδεύοντες τουτο μάλιστα..., προτιμέοντες καθαροι ειναι η ευπρεπέστεροι.” We would believe to
understand Nausikaa: “My brothers always want freshly washed clothes,”

ο‘ι δ’ αιει εθέλουσι νεόπλυτα ε‘ίματ’ έχοντες

ες χορον έρχεσθαι.

The epithet νεοπλυτος is found only in the passage of the Homeric poems: the equivalent epithet ευπλυνης, well-washed
is also found applied only to phares, of which the Pheacians make a present to Ulysses,

εν δ’ αυτη θες φαρος ευπλυνες ηδε χιτωνα.

Another detail. The king and queen of the Pheacians, Alkinoös and Arete, are brother and sister, at the same time husband
and wife,

... εκ δε τοκήων
των αυτων ο‘ί περ τεχον Αλκίνοον βασιληα.

They “were born of the same parents who gave them to the day,” εκ τοκηων των αυτων. The words cannot be open to
ambiguity. Parents, τοκηες, is encountered in the Homeric poems only in the plural to designate the two authors of life,
the father and mother:

βη δ’ ιέναι δια δώμαθ ‘ίν αγγείλειε τοκευσιν,

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 πατρι φίλω και μητρι...

The word cannot have and has never had any other sense: it designates he who engendered and she who gave gave birth.
Alkinoös and Arete, son and daughter of the same parents, thus are brother and sister and nonetheless are husband and
wife. This is what later scandalized the Greek morality: they cannot admit that the poet, source of all wisdom and virtue,
would have written such an enormity. For the Hellenes, in general, have the same ideas as us on marriages between
brother and sister. That the gods, Zeus and Hera, for example, had committed similar unions, the tradition allows and
necessity legitimizes: the divine first family, like the human first family, appears not to have been able to reproduce
otherwise. But that among men, among the personages of the epic, such abominable mores had been able to flourish, and
that the poet had noted them without a word of blame, without astonishment, that is what is inadmissible for the Greek
conscience. The scholiasts thus hasten, by a note, to explain the Odyssian text in their fashion, that is to say, by
misinterpretation: “parents,” they say, “is here for grandparents, το γαρ τοκηων δηλοι και το προγονων.” The Greek
morality would be saved, in effect, if Alkinoös and Arete, descendants of the same ancestors, were only uncle and niece,
or cousin and cousin. Consequently, the note of the scholiasts was quickly welcomed by the editors. But it still did not
suffice. Since the Homeric text was placed in all hands, explained in all the schools, it could not be allowed that the young
spirits be affected by false ideas or improper thoughts. A pious hand intercalates thirteen verses into the primitive text,
which are an obvious interpolation. See especially the passage:

Athena, in the figure of a maiden with a jug, leads Ulysses to the palace and gives him some advice: “Enter the palace. Fear
nothing. With a bit of audacity you will arrange all the affairs well. It is the queen whom you will first encounter in the palace. She is
called by her name, Arete. She is daughter of the same parents who engendered Alkinoös... She has a great influence on the
children, on Alkinoös himself, and on the people, who consider her somewhat as a dIvinity, and who salute her in the streets with
their acclamations. It is that truly she lacks nothing in either a spirit of wisdom or in good intentions: she appeases arguments. If she
ever takes an affection to you, you can be sure of seeing your friends and your palace in the place of your homeland.

The short discourse is very clear, very well ordered and quite useful for the hero to understand what information he
gives. Furthermore, it is complete: nothing is lacking, and it has no need of any commentary. Nevertheless, I have taken
away from it the thirteen verses which, in our present text, go from verse 56 to verse 69. It is there that the piety of the
interpolator is given free rein:

She is daughter of the same parents who engendered Alkinoös. [For Poseidon at first engenders Nausithoös, by Peroboia, the
most beautiful of women, and the older sister of the valient Eurymedon, who reigned over the Giants, and who was lost, he and his
people. Thus Poseidon, joining with Periboia, engenders Nausithoös, who rules over the Pheacians. Nausithoös engenders Rhexinor
and Alkinoös. The former died young, and left only one daughter, Arete, whom Alkinoös made his wife, and he honors her more
than any wife in the world is honored by her husband.] She has a great influence, etc... .

We sense how the prattle is needless and how the geneology intervenes only to legitimize the nonsense of
parents=ancestors, τοκήων=προγόνων. The names of Rhexenor and Periboia do not reappear in the poem, except in one
verse which, being also an interpolation, is removed without difficulty (v. 146 of the same canto). Let us reread the
restored text and say if there is need of the least addition from verse 56 to verse 69.

Αρήτη δ’όνομ’ εστιν επώνυμον, εκ δε τοκήων

των αυτων ο‘ί περ τεκον Αλκίνοον βασιληα. v.55
κείνη [γαρ] περι κηρι τετίμηται τε και έστιν, etc. v.69

The translation parents=ancestors, τοκήων=προγόνων, is not only verbal nonsense: it further appears to me historical
nonsense. If the Hellenes do not allow the marriage between brother and sister, there are people who practice it, and in

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preference to all others. The Odyssian poem itself gives us another example of these scandalous unions: king Aeolos has
six sons and six daughters, which he married two by two, and who all live in his palace,

τον και δώδεκα παιδες ενι μεγάροις γεγάασιν,

‘έξ μεν θυγατέρες, ‘έξ δ’ υιέες ηβώοντες.
ένθ ‘ό γε θυγατέρας πόρεν υ‘ιάσιν ειναι ακοίτις.

The text is not able to raise the slightest doubt: king Aeolos gave his six daughters as wives to his six sons. the Egyptian
pharaos treat them the same way:

At the heart of Egypt, says G. Maspero, the royal family was very numerous. The women were recruited by the high lords of the
court and by the great feudal lords. But there also were found among them many foreigners, daughters or sisters of the minor Libyan,
Nubian or Asiatic petty kings. They came to the arms of the pharao as hostages and guaranteeing the fidelty of their people. They did
not enjoy an identical treatment or a similar consideration, and their basic condition determined their condition in the harem, unless
the amorous caprice of the master decided otherwise. Most remained simple concubines for their life. Others were elevated to the
ranks of royal spouses. At least one received the title and the privilges of the great wife or of queen...

With Alkinoös, Arete is the great lady, the mistress, δέσποινα.

... It was rarely a foreigner, almost always a princess born to the purple, a daughter of Ra, as often as possible a sister of the
pharao; inheriting to the same degree and in equal portions the flesh and blood of the son, she had, more than anyone in the world,
the quality to share the couch and throne of her brother. She posessed her personal house, her train of servants and employees.
Whereas they practically sequestered the secondary women in the palace, she entered or left freely, showed herself in public with or
without her husband...

[δειδέχαται μύθοισιν ‘ότε στείχησ’ ανα άστω.]

The protocol solomnly recognized in her the follower of the living Horus, the consort of the Lord of the Vulture and the [Ureus] ,
the sweetest, the most praiseworthy, she who sees her Horus or Horus and Set face to face. Her union with the god-king makes her a
goddess,

[ο‘ί μίν ‘ρα θεον ‘ώς εισορόωντεσ]

and imposes on her the obligation to perform for him all the functions which the goddesses fulfill at the side of the gods... She walks
behind the husband in the processions, gives audience with him,

[... και ανδράσι νείκεα λύει]

governs for him while he wages wars abroad or travels in his kingdom... The rôle of the princesses increases singularly during the
XIIth dynasty. One distinguishes at least as many queens as kings, among the personages who preside over the destiny of Egypt. The
sons retain their precedence over the daughters, when the ones and the others from the union of a uterine and consanguinous brother
and sister are born at the same time, and consequently find themselves in equal conditions. The sons, in return, lose precedence when
they lack at least a quarter of nobility from the maternal side, and they are distanced from the throne accordingly as their mother had
less proximity to the line of Ra. All their sisters, issuing from the marriages which appear incestuous to us, take a step above them,
and the oldest becomes the legitimate pharao

The Pharao thus is not an absolutely legitimate king unless, son of a brother and sister, he is also the husband of his
own sister. Amenothes had married Ahhotpou, his sister from his father and his mother; the daughter who was born of the
union, Ahmasi, was given in marriage to one of her brothers, Thouthmosis, who was only the son of a concubine. Thus it

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was Ahmasi, queen by any reckoning, who had been able to claim the supreme power; but she left it to her husband and
contented herself with the second rank.
It well appears that, among the Levantine peoples who are subject to the Egyptian influence, the custom of the unions
between brother and sister, like all the other customs of Egypt, is implanted in the royal families. To read certain pages of
the Scripture without prejudice, it appears that the unions appear neither incestuous nor even strange in the harem of
David: “Amnon, the oldest of the sons of David and Akhinoam, he whose age appeared to designate him as the inheritor
of the crown, became passionately enamored of one of his sisters who was very beautiful, Tamar, daughter of David and
Maaka. Instead of asking for her in marriage, he feigns being ill, insists on being cared for by her, and when he has her
alone in his chamber, he rapes her in spite of her cries. The crime having been committed, he was seized with disgust and
hate; he repulses her and, since she begged him to restore her honor by marrying her, he had her driven away by his valets
in disgrace. She goes to her brother by their mother, Absolon, to cry for vengeance. David becomes indignant. But he
loves his firstborn, and could not resign himself to punish him. Absolon hides his anger, but at the end of two years he
kills Amnon... We remark that Tamar asks for Amnon to marry her, and that the only reproach directed at the son of the
king is that, after having raped his sister, he does not make her his wife.” The text of the Scriptures says very clearly that
the unions between brother and sister are possible and legitimate. When Amnon makes the first advances to his sister,
Tamar refuses with the words, “No, things do not happen this way in Israel. But speak to the king: he will not refuse you
me.” Tamar wishes to be regularly wed, on the great day, to her brother, and she foresaw no objection from their common
father. For the rest, the love poetry of the Hebrews, as of the Egyptians, gives to the words brother and sister the
signification lover and mistress. In the language and customs of the Phoenician ports, the Egyptian influence, so
profound, had without doubt had the same results. And it is why, in our Odyssian periple, we need to hold to the strict and
unique sense of parents, τοκηων: father and mother: Arete and Alkinoös are brother and sister, and their royalty appears
only the more divine for it...
We should attach only a minimal importance to the particularities of the customs and mores of the Phoenicians, and we
would legitimately draw no certain indication, if the Odyssian text itself did not make us know the origin of the navigator
people: “They formerly lived in Hyperia on large plains, near the arrogant Cyclops, who harassed them,”

ο‘ί πριν μέν ποτ’ έναιον ‘εν ευρυχόρω ‘Υπερείη

άγχου κυκλώπων άνδρων ‘υπερηνορεόντων,
ο‘ί σφεας σινέσκοντο.

The ancients already were unaware of the site of Hyperia, and they transported the Cyclops from Sicily to Italy and
from Lycia to Morea. The remainder of the Odyssian poem is going to lead us to the land of the Cyclops. We will then
see that the authentically Greek names of Kykl-ope - Round-eye, Κύκλ-ωψ, and Hyperia - the High, ‘Υπερείη, are just the
translation of well-known foreign names. With the Greek names and the foreign names, we are going to again reconstitute
a chain of Greco-Semitic couplets. The Semitic equivalent of eye, ωψ, being ‫עין‬, oin, and that of circle, κύκλος, being
‫עטרה‬, otr’a, the true name of Kyklopia, of the Land of the Round-Eyes is Oin-otr’a, of which the Greeks have made
Οινωτρία, and the Latins Oinotria. Similarly, the equivalent of the High, ‘Υπερείη, is ‫קוטה‬, Kum’a. And we arrive at the
perfectly clear translation: “The Pheacians formerly lived in Kumë of the Plains, ευρύχορος, near the Oinotrians,” and
they were Leukadians or Leukanians, for the name Φαίακες or Φαίηκες, Pheacians, which has no sense in Greek, is also
only the transcription of a Semitic word: the Semitic root ‫בהק‬, b.e.q., signifies to be white, and expresses the qualities of
whiteness and brilliance; its true Greek translation would be λευκαίνω. And the transcription of ‫בהקים‬, Beakim, as
Φαίακες is entirely legitimate. We know that the Semitic ‫ ב‬is not the exact equivalent of the Greek β, but that the Hellenes
render it by a π, a φ, or by a double letter μπ or μφ. As for the other consonants, ‫ ה‬is ε or αι, ‫ ק‬is κ... The Pheacians are
navigators coming from the west who, having been formerly established at Kumë of the Plains, were then driven out by
the Oinotrian mountaineers, and will transport their town to the Corfiot coast.

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 I do not verify here, point for point and letter by letter, the transcriptions or translations of the proper nouns. Ulysses is
going to lead us to the land of the Cyclops. It is there, on site, that we discuss the Greek and preHellenic toponymy of
Neopolitan Italy. For the moment, I request a provisional credit from the reader. I ask him to allow that our Pheacians,
coming from Kumë along the Italian coasts, have landed on the isle of Corfu from the northwest. From the last Italian
cape, Santa Maria de Leuca, they traversed the Adriatic channel, arrived at the isle of Fano, then cruised the isle of
Samothrace. Then passing Karavi, the Boat of Stone, they finally cruise along the west coast of Corfu, landing near cape
Kephali, as the moderns say: Phalakron, said the ancients, the Bald Head. It is the most direct and ordinary route for
sailing ships: “Leaving Brindisi,” says Strabo, “the ships have seventeen hundred stadies to the promontory of Kassiope.
The ships leaving from Tarento have almost the same distance to another Corfiot cape Kassiope to the southeast.”
Coming from the west, it is on the west coast of the isle that the primitive sailors should have placed their
establishment. We know the general rule of the insular ports, turned toward the part of the horizon which leads the fleets
and their traffic to them. In this, the preHellenic Korkyra still resembles other Levantine isles with their capitols prior to
the Hellenes. We need to once more and always come back to the example of Rhodes. Situated on the strait which opens
the Greek seas to the Levantine boats, Rhodes is the Hellenic port of the Levant: on the strait which opens the Occident,
Korkyre is truly the port or the western exit of the Hellenic seas. The two isles symmetrically placed are hanging from the
extremities of the Greek world. At Rhodes, from the Hellenes up to our days, the great port is installed on the very edge
of the strait, in the plain of the isle, for the needs of the insular traffic and of maritime transit. But the great port dates, we
know, only from the fifth century before our era. The first emporion was not there. Turning its back to the strait, Lindos
faced the sea of the southeast which had led the fleets of Danaos and Cadmus to it. Removed from the plain, Lindos was
flanked by a high mountain “which covers it all around”, and its bay offered a double fort on the flanks of a penisular
acropolis. Now compare the history and the topography of Korkyre. Since classical antiquity up to our days, the boats
have frequented only the east coast of Corfu, the coast of the plain and the strait. The periples and the geographers have
only known the stations of that coast. Noöne among the ancients mentions the harbors and the town of our bay of
Liapadais. In the XVIIIth century, Belin still says: “The isle has ten or eleven leagues of length: they count there about
forty thousand souls. It has only two towns, to wit, Cassopo, which is the Cassiope of the ancients, and Corfu, which is
the capitol. To be sure there are about ten villages on the isle... There are a few other ports in the isle, suitable for
mediuim-sized ships. But they are not known to me and they are not frequented anyway, unless by small boats which go
for the little commerce which is made there.” But before the Greek capitol, Corfu had had like Rhodes a Lindos turning
its back to the plain and the strait, supported by the mountain which covers it from the natives, and opening its two ports
to the arrivals of the foreigners, to the fleets of Italy or Africa, of Kumë, of Utica or of Carthage: it is our town of
Alkinoös.
Like Rhodes again, Korkyre is without doubt a Greek isle, but at a bit of a distance, at the extremities of the Greek
world. The Hellenes frequent or posess the two isles. But there are also frequently strangers, peoples of the sea who
occupy them: During three or four centuries Rhodes remains the posession of Latin pirates who are titled Knights of
Rhodes; Corfu remains a Venetian land for six hundred years... The Greek sailors know the routes and the harbors of the
two isles. But, still presently, Rhodes and Corfu are outside the traffic of the Hellenic boats. A multitude of native cargo
boats, sailing or small steam craft, connect the other, Ionian isles to the coast of the Peloponnesus and the port of Patros
by a thousand connections: Corfu has only one or two lines of large boats, of foreign boats, between it and the Hellenic
land. The present relations explain to us the relations of the past.
In Homeric times, the land of the Pheacians is away from the Achaean lands: Ithaca is part of the Achaean world,
Ulysses is a hero of the Achaean army; Alkinoös is a foreigner. Pheacia is nevertheless in communication with the Patras
of their time, I wish to say, with the Pylos of Nestor. For Pylos is at that time the great Achaean port on the western sea.
The Pylian barques and the Pheacian boats shuttle from one to the other: Ithaca, at the midpoint, is their median stop, their
repository and their common bazaar. The Achaean sailors thus know Pheacia. But the remote isle appeared to the
Achaean masses only through the mists of distance. We know well, in reading the text of the Odyssey, that the relations
sometimes give an impression of mistrust: the foreigners in Pheacia do not find an always cordial welcome. It is

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nevertheless impossible to understand anything of the Odyssian text if we do not suppose that prolonged relations or
written periples will give a minute and very exact knowledge of the Pheacian waters to the Achaean sailors.
The study of the Telemachead had already led us to the question: how was the poet able to describe so exactly, so
minutely, the sites, routes and harbors of Pylos? And we have found only one answer: that in the heart of the Neleads, in
the towns of Asia Minor, poems or periples were transmitted, which rendered the sites, routes, cults and waters of the
ancient town of the forefathers familiar to the ears of all. The study of Pheacia leads to a similar question: how does the
poet have such a precise knowledge of the Pheacian land? The philologists reply: “I willingly admitted that the sailors of
Ionia, having gone to Corfu, were able to relate to it the memory of a distant isle, very happy, very fertile, peopled with
excellent sailors, and that the sailors’ stories, transformed by the popular imagination, were able to become a marvelous
legend.” Marvelous legends, popular stories, imagination, fantasy, they are there in the Odyssey, but much less than we
suppose. The Odyssey is a Greek work of art. Now, in a Greek work, whatever it may be, to make the preponderant part
imagination and fantasy; to see in a Greek work anything other than the true picture, the copy of a determined model; to
put on the same footing the Hellenic reason and the Arabic fantasies, the voyages of Ulysses and the voyages of Sinbad; it
is, I repeat, to misunderstand the part taken by the fundamental characters of Helenism. See how the Greeks themselves
judge the Homeric work: “All its myths,” Strabo tells us, “are only accurate histories barely embellished, αει τους μύθους
από τινων ‘ιστρίων ενάγων, for a parade of vain miracles without reality or truth is not Homeric, εκ μηδενος δε αληθους
ανάπτειν κενην τερατολογίαν ουχ ‘ομηρικόν.” The Odyssey is not a teratology; like all the Greek works, “it is only a
poetic picture of authentically true realities, λαβών αληθη ταύτην την ‘υπόθεσιν ποιητικως διεσκεύασε.” What value all
the words of Strabo take after our study of Pheacia! In our Nautical Instructions and in our marine charts, we have found
the literal commentary and the topographic plans of our supposed Odyssian story. Without the marine chart and without
the Instructions, it would be impossible - and the example of the ancient or modern commentators is there to warn us - to
discern under the flimsy poetic embroidery the true framework of the entire history: we saw only the story because we did
not know the reality. But take the charts and descriptions of our navies and, quite promptly, you retrieve the framework of
the poem; under the embroidery appears a compact, tight fabric of rigorously exact and minutely noted geographic facts.
When we have seen, in detail, how each epithet of the poem corresponds to a particularity of the site, how each aspect of
coasts and mountains, each disposition of promontories or ports, and the reciprocal distances of the rivers and the towns,
and the surroundings of the springs and fountains, in brief, all the descriptions are confirmed by the tangible reality, by
the scientific and experimental truth: it is not possible for us to think any longer of sailors’ recollections. We can now
only dream, I believe, of a journal of a navigator, of a periple. In setting out the Odyssian descriptions of Pheacia end to
end, we would reconstiute a page of our Nautical Instructions. And here is that page in its principal form:

The isle of the Pheacians is high; its wooded mountains appear from afar; it presents a steep coast to the Savage Sea, with straight
cliffs and dangerous reefs. But it has several harbors. We first encounter a small cove, covered from the wind, with a beach of gravel,
of thickets of reeds and slopes of olive. One needs to watch out for broken boulders. From the sea, we see the casacades of a river
which falls onto the beach through a series of basins where the women come to wash.

Then we encounter the town of the Pheacians. It is far from the river, but a level road across the plain from the interior can still
lead there. In a circle of high mountains which cover it all around, the town is on a promontory between two good ports whose
narrow entrance is a bit difficult: the palace and the gardens of the king, easy to distinguish, are above; the market is below with a
church of Poseidon and a spring where one can draw water; there is also water at the foot of the large port, beside the road, where
there is another royal garden and the grove sacred to Athena. The Pheacians are shippers who make their living by crossing the abyss
of the Western Sea, from whence they come. For they came from the land of the Round Eyes, where they inhabited Hightown. The
barbarians of the country will force them to flee. Their very rich town is full of gold and precious things... After the town, the cliffs
and the reefs continue. A rock resembles a ship under sail, the natives say that it is a boat which the divine anger changed into a
stone...

Thus reconstructed, the fragment of the periple bears, I think, a mark of its origin. Successively describing the river,
the town and the Boat of stone, it begins the review of the coast from the south and ends with the north: it thus reveals a

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navigation and a navy coming from the southeast to the northwest, from the Achaean lands to the Italian seas, from Pylos
to the Adratic channel. The poet has respected the order of the periple as he has respected its words. The episodes of his
account are just the successive views of the coast which an Achaean vessel had along the Corfiot coasts. The story begins
at the river, is continued through the laundries and on the road which leads to the town, and ends, for the protagonist, at
the town, at the Agora and at the palace of Alkinoös. A last incident comes to stitch on the last view of the coast: once
Ulysses is repatriated, the Pheacian ship comes back for Poseidon to change it into a stone. And here again we find the
procedure which we have already pointed out in the episode of Kalypso. The poet invents nothing. But he arranges and
disposes. He does nothing but set in a work the givens of his periple; but he works them in the Hellenic mode, whether by
the anthropomorphic life which he lends to the inanimate objects, or by the rational order and the esthetic disposition
which he introduces among the diverse elements. From a series of views, he makes a scene. The scene is still an exact
copy of nature. But it is “composed”: it has parts in shade and parts in full light, some personages at the bottom and some
on the top floor. The scene is complete: the poet does not neglect any of the givens with which the periple provides him.
But in order to include all the givens in his frame, he needs to group them, that is to say, subordinate and relate one to the
other, compress some, develop others, and join them all. We already have some examples of his manner: he had given the
isle of Kalypso the forests, vines and springs of the Mauritanian or Spanish coast; around the principal personage which
he had furnished the Isle of the Hideout, he had grouped in secondary episodes or qualities the other particularities of the
strait. It is no differently that he assists the Pheacians here, uniting the petrification of the cruiser which returns from
Ithaca with the port. The petrified boat is not an invention. It exists. And the periple speaks of it like the poet, and the
periple locates it at the edge of the Pheacian sea, as the poet sets it at the end of his Pheacian story. But the periple did not
say that they saw the Rock of the Boat from the Pheacian port: Between the bay of Liapadais turned toward the south and
the rock of Karavi on the northern coast, Saint-Ange and Arakli interpose their gigantic screen; only from the top of their
coastal mountain could the Pheacians perceive the Boat, as the Venitian garrisons of Saint-Ange perceived it, on the
distant horizon... But the poet has entered the Stone Cruiser in his tableau by a very simple artifice, common to all the
works of art, and for the rest, we do not see how he would be able to do otherwise. Probably the periple even specified
that, from the town, the rock is invisible. See with what fidelity the periple depicts all the rest of the country; it is
improbable that, for the site of Karavi, he would have committed this slight omission of detail. And here again, as in all
the rest, the poet has done nothing but present that which the periple gave him, in inventing only personages or incidents
to animate the inert material. If, in this last detail of the Boat, the poem appears somewhat inexact, it is not, I think, that it
was less well rendered by a less explicit periple.
But, in his fashion, the poet introduces a marvelous and moral incident entirely together. Poseidon first petrifies the
Boat, then he encircles and covers the town with a high mountain. Thus, to credit it, before the Boat was petrified,
formerly, the town was uncovered and could survey all the extent of the seas in the distance. The wall of Arakli had not
arisen until after the passage of Ulysses: in previous times, they could perceive the place where the Boat was petrified
from the town; the people of Alkinoös thus could witness the petrification. M. G. Fougeres, to whom I gave this last
remark, well wishes to point out to me further in a letter:

The anger of Poseidon against the Pheacians and the manifestations of that anger are well in conformance with older and dearer
conceptions of the Greeks. The Pheacians are not ordinary sailors, who content themselves to traffic with the bays, the gulfs, and the
seas where the god allows the access by the boats of humans. Their specialty, their glory, is to have mastered the Adriatic and, with a
service of extra-rapid deliveries, overcome the great abyss of the sea. Their pride - and the gods never view human prides with a
favorable eye - is thus made from two sacriliges. The superhuman speed of their cruisers is an affront to Poseidon, whose empire is
in some fashion diminished by it: the god punishes it, and permanently immobilizes one of the overly rapid cruisers. Furthermore,
the overcoming of a great abyss of the sea is a further outrage to the god. Each time that man boasts of forcing or changing nature, he
exceeds his rights: it is a violation of the divine order; the gods prevent Xerxes from crossing Athos, and Nero from opening the
isthmus of Corinth. Poseidon reminds the Phoenicians of the notion of limits, and imposes on their very backs the impassable wall of
Arakli.

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 The entire legend thus is truly Greek in conception and spirit. The elements were without doubt in the periple. But the fashion in
which the poet has placed them in the work is significant: it is always nothing but the altogether logical and moral disposition of the
realities. The petrification needs to have been made under the very gaze of the Pheacians, so that the lesson should be efficacious and
that the people should be moralized by it. Now, the periple undoubtedly said that the Boat is not far from the town; but it added that
a high mountain presently separates them. Consequently, the mountain needs to have arisen only after the petrification of the Boat.

In the first episode of the Odyssey, everything together thus invites us to the hypothesis of a periple, from which the
poet draws the material of his exact and precise descriptions. The Telemachead had led us back from the people and
towns of Ionia to the people and the town of Pylos. Behind the Ionian or Aeolian Odyssey, it had made us glimpse the
previous existence, perhaps of Peloponnesian poems and documents, which the emigres from the Nelean Pylos would
have brought to the coast of Asia, perhaps popular rhapsodies which, in the Asiatic towns, would have been composed
about the Nelean Pylos by authors to whom the Pylian sites and surroundings had been familiar: it is by Pylian poems or
descriptions, it appears to us in the final reckoning, that the author of the Telemachead had made such an exacting
account. We can now suspect that similar Pylian sources also informed the poet of the Odyssey concerning the coasts of
Pheacia and the people of Alkinoös.

*
* *

We will come back eventually, when we have finished the Odyssian adventures, to the problem of origins, homeland,
and composition of the Odyssey. But at the end of the first volume, at the finish of the long first leg of the voyage, we can
already perceive the traveled road and the final destination. Here, from the Asiatic coasts, where the poem probably
received its definitive redaction, we are taken back by the Telemachead to the port of Pylos, where the poem perhaps took
birth and substance. The beginning of the Odysseia now takes us from the port of Pylos to the Corfiot coast. It appears
that, by stages, the probable places of origin, for our poem and for its sources, recede from Levantine Greece and bit by
bit approach the Occidental sea, to where the identification Calypso-Ispania had so abruptly transported us. From Homer
the Smyrniot to the Spanish Calypso, we already have the intermediaries of Nestor the Moreot and Alkinoös the Corfiot.
And here we vaguely perceive a new series in the Hyperia of the Cyclops, in the Kumë of the Plains, where the Hellenic
tradition saw such an old foundation of the thalassocrats. It is now toward Kumë that the combination of the Odyssey and
the method of the Most Homerics are going to conduct us. It is at Kumë that we are going to find the last verification of
all our Pheacian calculations: something plausable which in effect can appear to us to confirm the identification of the
town and the land of the Pheacians with our Corfiot coast of the Savage Sea; otherwise, we will not have a complete
certainty whether the founders of the primitive Parga really came from the western seas, across the Adriatic sea, and
whether they established themselves at the edge of the channel to make a professsion of traverses and to live from the
passage.
But the certainty is going to be furnished by the Odyssey itself, if we explicate it by the mode of the Most Homerics. In
the land of Kumë, we will find the monsters and the giants, the nymphs and the kings, which turn by turn welcome or
harass our hero. Now, the ancients reported the first foundation of Kumë in the year 1049 B.C. The moderns have rejected
the date: it is, they say, very much too old for the establishment of a Greek colony, wherever it may be and whatever it
may be. The Odyssey gives us the explanation of the date. The High Town was actually founded in 1049 - in the XIth
century we say, less precisely - not by Hellenes, but by another people of the sea, who impose on it their Semitic name of
Kumë, and whom the native savages will then drive out, as in historic times they will drive the Hellenes from the plain’s
High Town. Our Odyssian poem is two generations subsequent to the flight of the first Kumeans, who themselves should
not arrive promptly after the foundation of the town. Thus in counting a hundred fifty or two hundred years between the
first foundation of Kumë and the redaction of the Odyssey, we make, I think, a somewhat probable calculation, and we
fall back upon an approximate date, at which we have already arrived by another calculation; for the study of the

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Odyssian sailors had led us to the conclusion that, resembling the Egyptian vessels of the eighteenth dynasty, the Achaean
galleys were entirely different from the vessels of Sennacherib.
But we also fall back upon the date which Herodotus gave us: “Hesiod and Homer are my elders by four hundred
years, no more, “Ησίοδον γαρ και ‘Όμηρον ‘ηλικίην τετρακοσίοισι έτεσι δοκέω μεν πρεσβυτέρους γενέσθαι και ου
πλέοσι.” It is at the earliest about 850 B.C. that we should place, I think, the composition (I do not say the last redaction)
of the Odyssey. The Mediterranean with which the poem makes us acquainted is at the earliest the Mediterranean of the
year one thousand B.C. Will the excavations of Crete and the documents of Knossos supplement the Greek documents,
which do not go back before the first millenium, and the Levantine documents of Egypt or Assyria, which are also silent
about it? When Knossos will have provided us with readable documents, it is possible that we will discover an earlier
Mediterranean, entirely different from our Homeric world; it is also possible that, at a remove of several centuries, the
Mediterranean of Knossos, to give it a name, strangely resembles our Mediterranean of Ulysses.
I do not hide that, from now, I promptly incline toward the second of the hypotheses. The Phoenician Mediterranean of
one thousand B.C. appears to me like the end of Levantine thalassocracies which have lasted several centuries: the
Odyssey marks he beginning of the Greek thalassocracies of Europe or Asia. During numerous generations before the
Odyssey, I believe that the fleets of Egypt or Syria exploited the Hellenic markets, as the Sidonian fleets still exploit them
in Odyssian times. For Crete in particular I think that we could repeat the calculation we have so frequently already made
for the other isles and which constitutes, in sum, our entire theory: topological and toponymical calculation.
Topological calculation. Crete through the centuries has always had two possible capitols. In Hellenistic and Roman
times, when Crete turns toward Egypt and Cyrene, it has its capitol in the plain of Messara, on the sea of the south: it is
Gortyne, with its two ports of Matala and Leben. In Venitian and Turkish times, when Crete turns toward the archipelago
and Europe, its capitol is transported to Candy, on the sea of the north. Now, the tradition tells us that the first capitol of
preHellenic Crete was at Gortyne, and that Europa and her brother Cadmus will come there to debark. Later, when Minos
founds his Aegean thalassocracy, he also transports his capitol to the vicinity of Candy, to Knossos where, on the
archipelago, it had its great port of Herkleion. As at Rhodes, as at Samos, Kos, Thera, Salamine, and as at Korkyre, it thus
appears that the first capitol of Crete had turned its back to the Hellenic seas and lands, and that it had opened its two
ports toward the foreign convoys, toward the arrivals from Egypt or Libya.
Toponymic calculation. The primitive relations with the Levant thus being proved, it is by the toponymic doublets that
we have discovered the nation and the race of the first navigators. The Greco-Semitic doublets show us that the navigators
speak a Semitic language. Now, the doublets can, I believe, be found again in Crete and especially in the legend of Minos.
I have said that Ida-Dikte appeared to me one of the doublets, and that the Daktyles-Idaians are truly the sons of Daktylos
and Ida, because they are the spirits of the finger or of the hand, daktulos in Greek, ida in the Semitic languages. I would
someday establish that the story of Minos, like the adventures of Ulysses, would perhaps be entirely explained by a chain
of apparent doublets: even the name of Knossos appears to me to come from Semitic languages... But it is advisable to
await the results of the excavations undertaken at Knossos and the complete publication of the results. For the moment,
lacking written and deciphered documents, Greek origins end with the Homeric poems, in the first millenium B.C., of
which Thucydides speaks, “when the Phoenicians mixed with Karians occupied most of the isles.”
Rendering entirely recent account of the excavations of M. Evans, M. Salomen Reinach ended his study of Crete
before History with the words:

In sum, the excavations of M. Evans are, in the history of archeology, a capital event; they reveal to us a civilization still richer
and more advanced than that of which the discoveries of Schliemann have informed us; they give the coup de grace to all the
theories which attribute to the Phoenicians a preponderant part in the very old civilizations of the archipelago; but can one say that
they definitively solve the problem of Mycenaean origins? I have already said that I request permission to doubt it.

Some pages above, M. Salomon Reinach said:

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 M. Milchhoefer already pointed out the Cretan influences on the archaic art of Italy: “Several traditions mention ancient relations
between the Peloponnesus and Crete on the one hand, greater Greece and Sicily on the other. The Cretan Aristocles executes an
offertory for Evagoras of Zancle. Dedalus, according to the legend, came from Cumes, from where his reputation extends over a
large part of Italy; the Sicilian towns of Minoa and Engyon passed for having been founded by the Cretans; Athenea and Strabo go
as far as saying that all the people of Iapyges are originally from Crete.” The relations between Crete and southern Italy, attested by
the ancient writers, have been set in further light by M. Ettore Pais in 1892 and 1894. The savant observed that Crete posessed a river
of the name of Messapios (in relation to the Messapiens of southern Italy); that Phalante, the national hero of the Messapians, had
been saved in the gulf of Crissa by a dolphin, as the Cretans had been guided there by Pythian Apollo in the form of the same
animal; that Iapyx, eponym of the Iapygians, was, according to an historian, son af Dedalus and a Cretan woman. In 1896, M.
Patroni cites, in support of the same opinion, archeological arguments which confirm in a striking manner the views of M.
Milchhoefer. A series of archaic vases discovered in Messapian territory present altogether striking analogies with the Mycenaean
ceramics, while the Italian vases are chronologically much later. It thus well appears that the Mycenaean style was introduced into
southern Italy by the Cretans, and that it arrived there, as in Illyria, Cyprus, on the coast of Asia, in southern Russia and doubtlessly
still elsewhere by the industrial revolution produced in Greece proper by the invasion of the Dorian barbarians. We posess
Messapian inscriptions which we do not understand; who knows whether we will discover one day a language pertaining to the
unintelligible inscription of Praesos and of the indecipherable inscriptions of Crete, whose first specimen, as we have said, was
pointed out in 1881 by M. Stillman?

Southern Italy faces our Pheacia. It is on one of the sides of the channel of Otrante, whose other side the town of
Alkinoös occupies. The Pheacians, if they really came from Kumë, should have cruised and known it and, if they truly
left Semitic names of the form Kerkyra and Sheria on our Oriental coast of the strait, it would be strange, improbable, that
on the Occidental coast, from which they came, and where each day they bring back their profession of passage, they
would not have left some similar souvenir.
Now, the onomasty of the Italian coast presents some remarkable particularities. First, it appears to love the
terminations in entum and ant: Tar-entum, say the Latins; Tar-anta, say the Greeks; Ver-entum, Uz-entum, etc. On the
perimeter of the Mediterranean, another land posesses names of similar form: it is Karia, with its Oeno-anda, Alab-anda,
etc. The resemblance appears to me neither accidental nor distant: if Italy has its insular towns of Tar-entum or Tar-anta,
Karia has its isle of Tar-anda. The meaning of the words escapes us. Some nevertheless appear explicable, and the Karian
Labr-anda with its cult of Zeus of the Ax well appears to be the Town of the Ax: labr-us, say the ancients, is a Lydian or
Karian word to designate the ax.
Another particularity: Southern Italy has an entire collection of words to designate only the peninsula which we today
name Pouille, and which, with the ancients, was Messapia, Iapygia, Calabria, Salentin, etc.: Strabo vainly tried to discern
the different words and to give to each a separate domain. It nevertheless well appears that they remain originally having
been applied by different peoples to the different regions, and that they are of diverse origins. Among the names, there are
those which we retrieve elsewhere: Messapios is found in Crete, in Boeotia, in Laconia, in Locria; Iapyge is found on the
same Italian coasts. We should take note of the last name.
Southern Italy has an Iapygian promontory, Ακρα Ιαπυγία, and the Three Capes of the Iapyges, Ακραι Τρεις Ιαπύγων.
The Iapygian promontory is our cape Santa Maria di Leuca: in antiquity, it already sheltered the small harbor of the White
Town, Leuka; in that spot, the Cretan Iapyge, who came from Sicily, had debarked. From the strait of Sicily to the Otrante
channel, from the promontory of the White Stone, Leukopetra, up to the White Town, the southern coast of Italy presents
everywhere the same view of white cliffs, whose shining whiteness is still more striking for those who come from leaving
the black coasts of Sicily, the entirely black lava of Aetna and the black promontories of Catana at Naxos. The Nautical
Instructions, describing the Sicilian region, tell us: “Cape Schiso, low and black, was formed by the most ancient and
largest known torrent of lava... Trizza is constructed entirely of lava, whose black color, contrasting with the white color
of the lintels and uprights of the port, produces a singular effect, etc.” The Italian coast, to the contrary, begins at the
White Rock, which the moderns name cape dell’ Armi, and whose rocks are “remarkable for their whiteness.” The
Hebrew root i.p.g., ‫יפע‬, signifies, burst, gleam, shine, and the Scripture has place names of the form Iapig’a, ‫יפעה‬. I

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believe that the Iapygian capes of the ancients are just the White capes of the moderns: we need to think of a participial
form ‫יפועה‬, iapoug’a, resembling that which we have already encountered, ‫לבונה‬, lebon’a, for example.
Between the strait of Sicily and the channel of Otrante, the first thalassocracies had three of the white capes. The first
was named “the White Stone”: the Hellenes will translate as Leukopetra; the Semitic original was without doubt some
Skoula Iapoug’a. The second was named “the Three White Capes”: the Hellenes will translate part of the Semitic original
and simply transcribe the other part; they will say the Three Capes of Iapyges, Τρεις Άκραι Ιαπύγων, The third finally
would be “the White Point”; the Hellenes will again translate and transcribe by parts as Point Iapygian, Άκρα Ιαπυγία;
but, besides the translation, it has retained for us a fine transcription of the composed word, for the exact equivalent of
their akra would be provided us by the other proper name of the same place, Messapia. The Scripture furnishes us in
effect some common names or place names misep’a or masep’a, ‫מצפה‬, which the Seventy transcribe as Μάσσηφα or
Μασφά and translate as σκοπιά: it is the exact equivalent of our lookout, of the Latin specula, of the Greek σκόπελος, of
the Italian viglia. P. Lucas showed us above that the entire Italian coast bristled with lookouts and towers. Our Nautical
Instructions further describes the innumerable towers which in the previous century surveyed the slightest harbors, and
indicated the great danger of barbarian attack. Our White Lady, Santa Maria di Leuca, was the origin of the White
Lookout, ‫יפועה‬-‫מצפה‬, Messap’a Iapug’a: “Iapygia,” says Strabo, “which the Hellenes also name Messapia, ‘η Ιαπυγία
ταύτην δε και Μεσσαπιαν καλουσιν ο‘ί ‘Έλληνες.”
We will have to return at length to the Greco-Semitic doublets which extend along the Italian coast; the Odysseia is
going to lead us back to them with its accounts of Charybdus and Scylla. It is only a text of Strabo which I wish to take
note of today: “The point which they name the Iapygean promontory, ‘ο σκόπελοσ ‘όν καλουσιν Άκραν Ιαπυγίαν, is
separated from the Keraunian mounains by a strait of seven hundred stades and from the Lakinian cape also by a gulf of
seven hundred stades. The small neighboring town, Leuka, has a spring of fetid water; driven from the Phlegrean Fields of
the Plains by Hercules, the Giants named Leuternes will flee to here and disappear underground; the spring is fed by their
pus, and the neighboring country retains their name of Leuternia.” There, I think, is a recovered stop between our Hyperia
of the Cyclops and our Sheria of the Phoenicians: the Leuternes escaping from Phlegrea of the plains are only, I believe,
the Pheacians fleeing from the Plains, but who previously inhabited Phlegrean Kumë, Κύμη Φλεγρεία, Kumë in the Land
of the Eyes, Κύμη εν Οπικοις, Kumë near the Mountains of White Land, Λευκόγαια Όρη. A tradition, reported by the
Pseudo-Aristotle (Mirabil., 95), tells us that the land of Kumë was formerly under the power of the Whites, τουτον δε τον
τόπον λέγαται κυριεύεσθαι ‘υπο Λευκαδίων: Leukadia or Leuterna is, perhaps, the best Greek translation of Phaiak.
I am thus entirely disposed to believe, like M. Salomon Reinach, that southern Italy sees navigators arriving from
Crete and even farther debark and install themselves - in the times when Crete, like the other isles, had a population of
Phoenicians and Karians mixed, ο‘ι νησιωται Καρές τε όντες και Φοίνικες. When the admirable discoveries of
Schliemann and Evans, when the works, no less productive despite their gaps, of the archeological school (for, if I oppose
their conclusions, I am the first to admire their efforts and certain results), will have brought all their fruits; when a still
more fortunate excavation, on some location of Crete, Syria or Egypt, will have furnished to the archeologists an
indisputable criterion and a certain chronology for their theories: I do not doubt that the ideas of the Henzeys, the Helbigs
and the Pottiers will fail to prevail over the science, and that it will place the “Mycenaean” or “Aegean” fossils in the bed
of the Phoenician Mediterranean, the sediments and principal deposits of which I endeavor to recognize and recover.

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 SECOND BOOK

PREFACE

_______

In the second volume of the work, the reader will find the end of the Adventures of Ulysses and my conclusions on the
origin of the Odyssey.
When, at the beginning of the first volume, I already indicated the general tendancy of the conclusions, I was not able
to hope that, so soon, such illustrious allies would come to me. M. Michel Breal wrote in February 1903:

If we believed the continuers of Wolff, the Homeric epic would be presented in very extraordinary conditions. “It is not a work
which might be conceived and executed: it was born, it grew naturally.” In this way Frederic Schlegel expresses himself. Each of the
words of the phrase is clear in itself; but all together the thought is difficult to grasp. Jacob Grimm goes further: “The true epic is that
which composes itself; it should not be written by any poet.” We see here established in a maxim that which once was previously
given as an established fact. Next comes the great word which lacks nothing when the idea ceases to be clear: “The Greek epic is an
organic production.” And finally (this is from the philosopher Steinthal): “It is dynamic”, that is to say, undoubtedly, that there
should be nothing outside, it has its force of development in itself. German lends itself marvelously to the formulas which, in their
obscurity, have something of the imperious. The books of Lachmann are full of them. The literary history has collected them for us
for fifty years, and has been greatly served by them. After they astonished our fathers, the following generation repeated them
without thinking much about it. The long discussions which they had raised were extinguished little by little, leaving the spirits
partially convinced.

I think, with M. Michel Breal, that the Wolffian theories have had their time, and that we need to come back to a more
human explanation of the Odyssey. Here, the reader will find again the old belief in a conscious poet, writer, author of the
Return of Ulysses.
At the same time, M. P. Jensen declared in the Periodical of Assyriology (XVI, I, pp. 125-133) that the Odyssey
appeared to him a close relation of the Assyrian epics, the Return of Gilgamesh in particular; he promised to promptly
give the detailed proofs of the assertion, of which he only indicated some resemblances. I also believe that the Egyptian
and Chaldean literatures will one day provide us the true sources of the Homeric poetry: in the final account, we need to

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place the same oriental influences at the beginning of Greek literature, as at the beginning of the sciences or the plastic
arts of primitive Greece.

*
* *

The second volume is a little later than I had predicted. I nevertheless encountered collaborators full of zeal, who
simplified the task for me. At the head of the first volume, I already named the principal ones. On each page of the
second, we will find the works of Mme. Victor Bérard.

My colleagues, auditors and students of the School of Advanced Studies, aided me with a devotion that I could never
forget.
MM. Louis Bodin and Paul Mazon, whom all the Hellenists know and who already count among the masters of Greek
philology in France, have taken the pain to read and correct all the proofs line by line: their counsels and their objections
have served me on practically every page. MM. Edmond Esmonin and Louis Rosset have compiled the Index: to this
fastidious undertaking, they have given their time and their meticulous patience; over three years, their faithful devotion
has rendered me a thousand other services. My colleague A. Moret has furnished me all of the Egyptological evidences
which I could have needed.

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 THE PHOENICIANS AND THE ODYSSEY
(VOLUME II)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
_______

SIXTH BOOK
THE SONG OF THE CORSAIRS

Chapter I. - THE COURSE

The Kikones - Pirates and landsmen - Achaeans and Livournese - Straits and deltas - The Mouths of Thasos - The
delta of Egypt - Odyssian Egypt - The wealth of Pharao

Chapter II - THE EGYPTIAN STORIES

The stories from the papyri - Pharao and Proteus - The Egyptian origin of the Nostos of Menelaus - The Homeric
paradise - The Phoenician influence - The Fields of the Blessed - Egypt and Thebes - Protues, Joseph and Moses.

_______

SEVENTH BOOK
THE LOTOPHAGES AND THE CYCLOPS

Chapter I - THE LOTOPHAGES

Syrte - The eaters of the lotos - The “hospitables” - The routes of the Sudan

Chapter II - THE CYCLOPS

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 Kumë and Oinotria - Italian Coasts - Hyperia - The Eyes - Avernus and the Solfatere - Astroni - Nisida - The
Grotto of Polyphemus - Cyclopia - The Opic shepherds - Page of periple.

EIGHTH BOOK
AEOLOS AND THE LESTRYGONS

Chapter I. - THE ISLE AEOLIA

Stromboli - Iron coast and floating isle - Volcanos and navigators - The winds and the rage of Aeolos - The Seven
Isles.

Chapter II. - THE LESTRYGONS

The Spring of the Bear - The Mouths of Bonifacio - Watering places and refuges - The Dovecot Stone and the Well -
The massacres of the Tuna - The Gallura - Telepylos - Bucolics and enigmas - Herdsmen and warriors -
Lestrygonia.
_______

NINTH BOOK
CIRCE AND THE LAND OF THE DEAD

Chapter I. - THE SPARROWHAHWK

The “houses” of the heavens - Aiaie and Mont Circeo - Forests and scrub - Feronia - The goddess of emancipation -
Molu - Sparrowhawk, Vicinity, Eagle and Vulture - The ports of Latium - From Rome to Monte Circeo.

Chapter II. - THE NEKYA

Interpolations - The Land of the Dead - Okeanos - The Kimmereians - Ulysses and Saul - Avernus.
_______

TENTH BOOK
THE SIRENS - CHARYBDIS AND SCYLLA - THE ISLE OF THE SUN

Chapter I. - THE SIRENS

The instructions of Circe - The Mouths of Capri - The Field of the Sirens - The Two Rocks.

Chapter II. - CHARYBDIS AND SCYLLA

The Lighthouse of Messina - The Cut Rock - The Hole of the Loss - The storm of Ulysses.

Chapter III. - THE ISLE OF THE SUN

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 The Hollow Port - The Grotto - The Beach of the Smoker - Naxos and Taormine - Gerra Naxia - Giardini -
Messina - The sleep and the oracle.
_______

ELEVENTH BOOK
ITHACA

Chapter I. - THE REALM OF ULYSSES

The Four Isles and the theory of M. Doerpfeld - Zykanthos and Samë - The Door of the NorthWest - Doulichion -
Leucadia and Santa Maura - The White Stone - The laborers of Doulichion - The Pirates of Taphos.

Chapter II. - PERIPLES AND REALITIES.

Ithaca - The ports and the bays - The Odyssian harbors - The Homeric orthodoxy and the heresiarchs - Thesprotia -
Dodone and Leukas - The Twin Ports - Asteris and the channel of Ithaca - Samos - The Deep Port - The Grotto of the
Nymphs - Arethuse - The pigsheds of Eumeus - The debarkation of Telemachus - The Ithican emigration - The town of
Ulysses.
________

TWELFTH BOOK
THE COMPOSITION OF THE ODYSSEY

Chapter I. - THE SOURCES OF THE POEM

Periples and views of the coasts - The floating isles and lands of the Odyssey - The language of the periples - Greek and
Semitic navigations - The Odyssey and the discoveries of the Hellenes - Odyssian language and nomenclature.

Chapter II. - PROCEDURES AND INVENTIONS

Anthropomorphism - Semitic block and Greek statue - The Seven Mouths of the Sunset and the Ten Mouths of the
Mediterranian.

Chapterr III. - AGE AND PROVENENCE

The opinion of Herodotus - Minimum and maximum dates - Egyptian concordances - The Phoenician thalassocracy and
the scripture - Neleid Ionia - Cadmian Ionia.
_______

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_________________________________________________________________________________________________

BOOK SIX

THE SONG OF THE CORSAIRS

Wine! Beer! We’ll drink,

We’ll play dice on the flagstones,
And we’ll laugh when we die!

V. Hugo, Les Reîtres.

CHAPTER I

THE JOURNEY

The word corsair is well understood in the Mediterranean regions.

P. Belon, The Singularities, II, p. 10.

Ulysses begins the account of his Return, of his Nostos, in the assembly of the Pheacians

I will relate my nostos and the misfortunes which Zeus sends me after the departure from Troy.
In leaving Ilion, the breeze carried me. It brings me to Ismare, among the Kikones. There, I pillaged a town: we killed the men;
we took the women and the valuable objects in great number, and we made the distribution in such equal parts that noöne of my
crew had anything to say. Then, I would wish that we take flight. My crewmen, like big children, will not wish to listen to me. They
set to drinking, in great quantity, and of straight wine. They roasted a great number of sheep on the beach, and great slow oxen with
curved horns. So much so that those fleeing will go to warn the Kikones of the area. More numerous and brave, the people of the
interior send their mounted infantry, who know how to fight afoot or mounted according to the need. At dawn, here they come

313
surging over the plain, like the leaves and flowers of spring. Alas! Poor us! The ill will of Zeus fights through them to overwhelm us
with misfortune. They come to engage the battle down to near the cruisers [drawn up on the beach]. They arrive with attacks of
spears. They were the more numerous. Without flinching, we hold firm all morning as long as the blessed light increases. But when
the sun begins to set toward the west, the Kikones prevail, and make the Achaeans fold. Each of our vessels lost six greaved men.
We others were able to escape death.
From there, we reagain the sea, with sorrowful hearts, pleased to escape death, but weeping for the loss of our comrades.

In the first episode of the Nostos, we can study the life of corsairs of Homeric times close up. Now, we need to study
the course (journey) very closely, if we wish to understand certain customs and certain words which we are going to
encounter in the rest of the Return, if we also wish to discover, along with the influence of the Phoenician commerce
which we have traced at length, another source of Oriental influence on the contemporaries and even on the author of the
Odyssey. This commerce led the barques of the Levant to the coasts and the markets of Greece; the journey casts the
Achaean barques onto the coasts and into the towns of Egypt. Everything which the poet tells us on the subject, we are, by
our usual means, going to verify and complete by more ancient or recent documents, by historic texts. For the page of the
Nostos, with all its details and even its expressions, should take its place in a scientific history of Mediterranean piracy.
Only change some proper nouns: the same account will be able to figure in the “French” relations of the XVIIth century.
Two authors especially would furnish, in regard to to our Odyssian verse, some fine texts for comparison: a Frenchman,
Thevenot, and an Englishman, Robert - without mention of the honest Paul Lucas.
Paul Lucas had made, in Malta, the acquaintance of a corsair captain who “mounted a boat with thirty pieces of cannon
to undertake the course (of piracy) in the Levant; he willingly received me into his service; but when I went to the
archipelago, I embarked on another vessel, whose captain made me his lieutenant.” Having freely chosen the career of
adventures, P. Lucas knew only its joys. He saw only “actions of daring and courage,” the fine killings, the cutlasses, the
seizures of German, English and Turkish ships, the abductions of women and young boys, and the feasts at Milos,
Mycone or Nio. To the contrary, Thevenot is a peaceable voyager, without the least taste for piracy. But twice the corsairs
abduct him on the coast of Syria (1658) and, held prisoner on their ship, he had all the leisure to curse “this miserable life,
as much in accordance with God as in accordance with the world; there is surely nothing which I would not do to free
myself from it if I were able.” Thevenot exaggerates. The life has its pleasures and he himself describes them for us as
well as does the Odyssey.

The corsairs were two vessels, of which the one was commanded by captain Sani, also called Rupierto the Livorno, and the other
by captain Nicolo of Zante. Two vessels were in reserve, and they also had a galiote... One of the corsairs was in the water for thirty
six months, and the other for forty. I was quite astonished to see several slaves on the vessel, men as well as women and children,
and they related to me that they had for the most part been seized at Castel Pelegrin by a surprise which was of this sort. Having
seized a sambequin before Alexandria, it would be a Turk who was seized, and they propose to him that, if he wished them to
promise his liberty, they would take several slaves with his help. This he will promptly promise them. But he, not at all trusting their
word, true Turk that he was, made them swear it before a picture of the Virgin and one of Saint Francis...

We note that similarly, among all the contrasts with the Odyssey, the oath is the rule. When the Phoenician corsair
offers the nurse of Syria to take her back to her parents, that honest daughter, true Phoenician that she is, first requires the
oath from her countrymen: “I would willingly embark,” she replies, “but begin everything by swearing that you will
return me to my family without killing me or selling me en route.” All the Sidonians pretend to the oath which she
requires:

... ο‘ι δ’ άρα παντες επώμνυον ‘ως εκέλευεν.

Ulysses takes the same precautions before the engaging offers of Calypso or Circe: “Let us take to bed,” says Circe,
“joining ourselves in love and friendship, we will take trust in each other.” Affairs are affairs; Ulysses does not forget the

314
counsels of Hermes: “Do not refuse the bed of the goddess. But begin by requiring the great oath by the gods that she will
release your companions.” Circe needed to take the oath:

... ‘η δ’ αυτίκ’ απώμνυεν ‘ως εκέλευεν.

Similarly, Calypso, to return Ulysses to his dear Ithaca: “I would not embark,” replies the prudent Achaean, “unless
you swear me the great oath to contemplate nothing of perfidity against me.” Calypso smiles: she admires the wise
defiance: “You are truly a cunning companion, who knows not to risk your affairs”, and she swears the great oath on the
Styx.
We should not forget the continual custom of the oath in the slightest transaction of the times. Ten times a day, the
oath is taken between natives and Peoples of the sea: the ritual formulas thus pass from the ones to the others. The Turk of
Thevenot requires from the French corsairs an oath binding on them, an oath in the French style, by the Virgin and by
Saint Francis. The Achaeans and their predecessors also should have required from the Semitic corsairs and merchants
some good oath in the Semitic style. That is why, I think, in the Homeric Greek, the very expression take an oath,
establish a contract under oath, is the exact translation of the biblical metaphor cut an oath, cut a treaty, ‫כות בוית‬, karat
berit, ‘ορκια τεμνειν. Among the Hebrews, the metaphor corresponds to a particular rite, which the Bible describes very
exactly. When the Lord wishes to conclude the fundamental act which will hencefrorth unite Israel: “Bring me,” He says
to Abraham, “a heifer, a sheep and a ram of three years, a turtledove and a dove.” Abraham cuts the beasts in the middle
and sets them out, half by half, on each side of the passage; that evening, the Lord, under the form of a ball of smoke and
fire, passes across the cut victims: “in that day the treaty was cut between the Lord and Abraham.”
The Hebrew word itself, ‫ברית‬, berit, treaty, contract, oath, appears derived from the root ‫ברה‬, bar’a, cut, split. A treaty
for the Hebrews is thus a crack, a cut. For the Homeric Greeks, it is a bond, an enclosure, an agreement, , ‘όρκος, ‘έρκω,
or a pouring, a libation, σπονδή. The second expression, already habitual to the Achaean heroes, becomes the current
term of the Greek and Roman antiquity, spondere, sponsa, and the Homeric scholiast explains it with justice: “sponde,”
he says, “is the wine poured over the offerings, then the contract, the oath which follows it.” The Homeric heroes speak
“of the blood of the lamb, of libations of pure wine and the joined hands which join their faith.”

ου μέν πως ‘άλιον πέλει ‘όρκιον αιμά αρνων

σπονδαί τ’ άκρητοι και δεξιαι ης επέπιθμεν.

The veritable translation of the Hebrew formula, ‫כות בוית‬, karat berit, cut an oatht, would thus be (and in reality is)
pour a libation, σπονδάς σπένδεσθαι, as the classical Hellenes say, or pay the items of the pledge, ‘όρκια έχευαν, as the
Homeric poet says. But cut the items of the pledge, ‘όρκια τέμνειν, does not appear to correspond to any precise rite of the
Greek pledge. The scholiasts have explained the metaphore in saying that the victims over which they make the libations
would be sacrificed by cuts, by incisions, ‘ό εστι δι’ εντομων θυσίαν ποιησάμενοι, τουτ έστι θυσιων. The moderns have
related to the old Greek formula the Latin formula foedus ferire, icere, percutire, strike an oath, that is to say, “strike with
the spear, with the knife or with the mace a victim over which one is going to swear.” The Latin formula simply imples a
victim which one bludgeons or exsanginates, but not which one splits in two to arrange in the Hebrew manner on each
side of the passage. We should further note, with the scholiast, that the expression cut a treaty is particular to Homer and
to Herodotus; it appears proper to the maritime cities of Asia Minor. The authors and the peoples of European Greece did
not employ it. Only the letters or versification of the classical epoch have sometimes borrowed the Homeric expression;
but the very fashion in which they use it proves that they did not understand it: cut a libation, says Euripides, σπονδάς
τέμνειν, thus uniting in a monstrous metaphor the Homeric verb to cut and the classical substantive libation.
Nevertheless in the Iliad, two passages would appear at first reading to furnish an explanation of the formula cut the
items of the oath. In canto III (vv. 275-300), Agamemnon concludes an arrangement with Priam and they exchange
solomn oaths: “then, with their pitiless bronze, they eviscerated the sheep and leave the quivering victims on the ground.”

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 η και απο στομάχους άρνων τάμε νηλέϊ χαλκω
και τους μεν κατέθηκεν επι χθονος ασπαίροντας.

In canto XIX (vv. 255-270), Agamemnon swears that he has never shared the bed of Briseis; “then, with his pitiless
bronze, he eviscerated the pig and Talthybios casts the victim into the foaming sea to become the nourishment of the
fish,”

η και απο στόμαχον κάπρου τάμε νηλέϊ χαλκω.

It is the verb cut out (the stomach), αποτέμνειν (στομάχους), that I translate as eviscerate. We get a little closer to cut
and cut oath. I nevertheless believe that there exists a fundamental difference between the Homeric rite of evisceration
and the Hebrew rite of division. The evisceration, which is just a means of killing, implies neither the division in two nor
the arrangement of the two halves on either side of a passage. Now, the Homeric cutting of the items of the oath appears
to me to imply, like the Hebrew karat berit, the rite of division. The Hellenes do not appear to have known the rite; but
the Canaanites posessed it. Our Turk of Thevenot knew neither the cult of the Virgin nor the power of Saint Francis: he
nevertheless knew how to demand of the French an oath on the one and on the other. If the Achaean heroes similarly
speak of cut oaths, it is because, in the isles and maritime towns of Asia Minor, they know how to obtain from the foreign
sailors an oath in the Canaanite fashion.

We return to our Turk and the corsairs of Thevenot:

After the corsairs had sworn to him, continues Thevenot, the Turk had them turn the prow toward Castel Pelegrino, ten miles
below mount Carmel...

From all times, the corsairs have found volunary or forced accomplices among the natives. At Ithaca, the father of the
suitor Antinoös had to take refuge one day in the palace of Ulysses. The people chased him and threatened his death,
because he had led the pirates of Taphos into the lands of the Thesprotes, allies of Ithaca:

δημον ‘υποδεισας. δε γαρ κεχολώατο λιην

ο‘ύνεκα ληιστηρσιν επισπόμενος Ταφίοισιν
ήκαχε Θεσπρωτούς. ο‘ι δ’ ‘ήμιν άρθμιοι ησαν.

It is the rôle which our Turk takes here. He leads the French corsairs among the Arabs of mount Carmel, who are
nevertheless the allies and even the subjects of the Great Lord. Our Turk is a man of his word: having led the corsairs to a
good place, he aids them in their work. When they debark, “he does not dream of escaping, so much did he believe in the
oath of the corsair, that perhaps he might well have had more fear to find the punishment for his treason in his own land.”

The corsairs, Thevenot continues, will take their precautions so well that they are not perceived at all and, as soon as they set foot
on land, they will go without noise up to the dwelling, and, being there, will begin to be heard, bringing out all the living creatures,
men, women and small children, they killed them without having regard for sex or age, and some soldiers tell me that they will kill
some women there who, although they saw others killed just because they did not at all wish to follow, will prefer to have their
throats cut than to be slaves. There was an officer among them whom they will show me, to whom one of the soldiers brings a four
month old child and tells him: “Here is a slave which I give you.” But the barbarian, taking the poor innocent by the foot and saying,
“What do you want me to do with it?” throws it as far as he can on the field, as if it were a stone. On that occasion they make over
fifty slaves, men as well as women and children. They will kill more of them than they take, and will not leave one living creature in
that place. That is why the alarm was so great on all the coast.

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 From the coast, the alarm spreads throughout the entire country, by virtue of the watchtowers, by signals of cries or of
fire:

At sunset - recounted the same Thevenot after having been a prisoner of the corsairs - we passed in front of a tower, from where it
is about twelve miles to Jaffa. When we came close to the tower, they fire several shots at us from small cannon and muskets. Then
our Rais (captain) stations himself on the prow and shouts with all his force that he was one of them, naming some people that he
knew at Jaffa. But they reply to us only Alarga, which was to say for us to leave, and that was following the firing of several cannon
and muskets. After that music had lasted about an hour,... our Rais shouting with all his force was finally heard and recognized by
some Greeks who were at Jaffa. Then instead of Alarga, they shout to us: Taala, which was to say for us to come... We found
everyone armed and ready to flee. The women and children had already run away from Jaffa...

Against the warned-of pirate, foot soldiers and cavalry come running from all areas and border the beach. From tower
to tower, the signals go to the mountains of the interior. The mountaineers are always prepared for a descent to the
flatlands. The presence of a corsair is a very fine pretext for them:

The shore was lined with Arabs who called to us, and we were so near that we easily understood that they cried to us in Arabic:
“Taala, corsar min Malta! Come, it is a corsair from Malta!” The same Arabs fired many musket shots at us. But we did not at all
wish to go ashore, where we would have been flayed by the Arabs, who see to it that our Rais is completely flayed (he had fled the
ship in the smallboat), as soon as he had set foot on the land.

In the Odyssey, the people of the interior similarly coming to bring aid to their neighbors. The Kikones of the beach
have made signals of cries. The “continental” Kikones, the Epirotes, gather. The Epirotes are much more numerous and
much braver, πλέονες και αρείους, than the miserable population of the coast. At the beginning of the XIXth century,
Cousinery still describes for us the ferocity of the mountaineers on the Thracian coast, Epirotes who frequent the
maritime market of Gumurdzina:

I had never encountered in any of the Ottoman provinces men so generally large, so strong, with such a fierce appearance, of such
ferocious attitude, or with more menacing weapons. A long rifle, a pair of pistols, a large knife to which the Turks give the name of
Yagatan, and whose edge they use more than the point, a pouch full of cartridges and balls, and finally a large powder horn, which
holds almost two pounds, comprise the costume of the independant men; none of them dares to appear on the plain unarmed. Noöne
dares to penetrate [their mountains], except the unfortunate Tchinganis (Bohemians) who are useful to them for the fabrication and
repair of iron equipment; the Turkish government has very little influence over the interior administration of the country; only the
chiefs themselves have what is needed to retain some authority.

Spread out (the burgs and towns are a distant “passage” from the sea; all that remains on the beach are huts of
fishermen and isolated farms), always ready to submit without combat (the “course” is for them an inevitable evil, a
human turmoil to which one is resigned in advance, as to other turbulances from the sea), the coastal populations are left
to be pillaged, slaughtered or led away like a flock. Through the centuries, all the travelers and the corsairs themselves
point out the sheepishness of the coastals and islanders, whose laxity encourages the pirate. In the spring of 1825,
Bröndsted is on the isle of Zea; he has finished his excavations and thinks to return to the mainland:

The storms had ended toward the end of February, and the winds from the northwest began to bring back the fine weather, so that
several ships of the pirates will already appear at cape Colonne and under Macronisi. The pirates make an attack on the deserted isle,
which is just a pasturage belonging to the Zeotes. They will slaughter a number of ewes and sheep, and will mistreat the shepherds.
A richer capture followed. A Zeote boat, loaded with oil, coming from Egine and returning to Andros, was captured by one of the
pirates, who brought it back to Zea itself, where he stops it in the small bay of the north, or near the islet a little farther to the east.
From there, he undertakes negotiations for its ransom, and asks for a thousand piasters to produce the prize. Since its cargo was
worth triple, the poor boatman is given all the imaginable pains to collect the amount of the ransom at Zea, asking for the money
only for a few days until he might bring the cargo to Andros. An English ship which found itself in the port of Zea tries to surprise

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the pirate with the aid of a well-armed launch. The brigand, always having some gunboats on the nearby rock, barely saw a large
ship advancing outside the port by oars, so he quickly took flight toward Thermia. Since the English [ship] had to row against the
wind and current to the point, the northernmost of the isle, the pirate gained such a lead by the aid of the better wind from the north
that it was not possible to reach him. The next day, he reappeared in another bay on the east coast of the isle and renewed
negotiations. A generous Zeote finally advances the thousand piasters of the ransom on speculation, in return for the honest interest
of two hundred piasters for eight days, to his compatriot, the poor boatmen. The boat was released and the pirate disappeared. The
affair of the ransom came to our knowledge only later. We had cause to suspect it, it being a mystery to us, for fear of which we did
not lend money to the strapped man, and did not blame the Zeote usurer, or certain people who drew us in... The caïques of the
pirates impede trade, blocking entire isles for months, sometimes abusing their prisoners in the most frightful manner, mutilating and
sometimes even killing them. These scum of the sea easily sell on one isle, assured that they may have safety there, that which they
have stolen on another, and are supplied with provisions.

The laxity of the victims renders the corsairs imprudent. Ulysses vainly points out the danger which they run in not
leaving as soon as the raid ended. They have wine: the wine of Ismare or Maronea is a great vintage of the times. They
have sheep, cattle and women. They settle on the beach and make a feast. We already know the great appetite of stomachs
tired of porridge or dry bread. The Egyptian inscriptions of the XIXth dynasty will promptly tell us of the pillagers from
the sea, who come to the Egyptian land “to fill their bellies.” As witness, here is a scene from the XVIIth century:

We had barely set anchor and reefed the sails when we perceived the isles of the Sapienze all on fire, and a large number of
sailors engaged in roasting sheep, lambs and goats. The odor of the fresh meat so struck my nose that I resolved on the spot to go beg
some morsel to satisfy my voracity. For I had not touched meat for eight days. Here I am ashore, peer and companion to the
gentlemen whom I had never seen or known. I ate so much of the half-cooked meats that I could barely breathe for twenty-four
hours. We made a good meal for two days, thanks to the Maltese corsair which had the temerity to make an incursion into the isle
and ravage the livestock there, right under the cannons of Modon.

The companions of Ulysses similarly gorge themselves on wine, sheep and cattle. We nevertheless note a capital
difference between the Homeric feasts and the revels of the “French”. With the Achaean corsairs, the portions of food and
booty are equal for all. Ulysses never fails to specify that the equal portions cause no miscontent:

δασσάμεθ ‘ως μή τίς μοι ατεμβόμενος κίοι ίσης.

Each one has his fair share. The formula is of the style in all the sharings: “Bringing from the hollow of the vessel the
sheep of the Cyclops, we divide them in a fashion by which everyone, satisfied by me, has an equal part of them,”

μελα δε Κύκλωπος γλαφθρης εκ νηος ‘ελόντες

δασσάμεθ’ ‘ως μή τίς μοι ατεμβόμενος κίοι ίσης.

If sometimes the Achaean captain has a double share, it is by the consent of all; it is not the share of the captain; it is
just the free gift of the crew: “Among the sheep to be shared, my companions will give only me an ewe of my choice,
which I sacrificed to Zeus”,

αρνειον δ’ εμοι οίω ευκνήμιδες ‘εταιροι

μήλων δαιομένων δόσαν έξοχα.

If the Achaean captain wishes to withold from the sharing and appropriate some object of value, the crew has distrust,
and even the quick mutiny. Ulysses received from the king Aeolos a skin tied up with silver: “Woe,” say the crew, “why,

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everywhere we go, is he well-rewarded and pampered? He already brought from Ilium a load of fine booty, and we, who
made the same trip, come back with empty hands, and here Aeolos, as a gift of friendship, has further given him the skin.
Quick, let us see what it contains: let us see what it should have of gold and silver.”
Among the French corsairs, it does not go this way. Booty and provisions, everything belongs to the captain alone, and
his staff. The crew has only the scraps. Robert is an English captain whom the corsairs have abducted at Nio and forcibly
enlisted. He is obliged to serve aboard as a simple sailor for several months. He relates to us at length the privations of the
crewmen:

Although their work may be very hard, they are not well fed. We had a chief valet aboard, who was one-armed, and who stingily
distributed the bread which he gave us three times a day, without accompanying it with anything else. It is true that Sundays and
Thursdays he regaled us with a pot of beans, well-salted, into which he sometimes put a half setier of oil while they cooked... Nearly
all the times we were at sea, we only had dry bread. But when, arriving at the isle of Rhodes or that of Cyprus, we had the good
fortune to carry off some horned beast, that which often befell us was that they left us the entrails, while M. le Capitaine ate the
meat, of which we tasted not a shred, until it became rotten. When they capture some caïque loaded with rice, coffee, sugar, lentils,
etc., perhaps the sailor will have the good fortune to filch one or two measures of lentils or rice, which he puts away like a great
treasure.The poor unfortunates most of the time have only bread to eat and water to drink, unless, forced to row for half a day
chasing some vessel, they might then have a little watered wine to give them courage.

It is the same for them with the booty. The share of the officers and minor officers is fixed by tradition: “The warrant
and petty officers have some portion of the seizures which are made. The lieutenant is declared the master of them, and
the principal cabin belongs to him with everything that is there, except for the money. The first mate has the topgallant
sails and the great anchor. The chief valet, the chaplain, the scribe, the surgeon, the carpenter and the caulker have their
portion from the supply room.” But the captain disposes of all the rest at his pleasure, even when he did not personally
assist in the action:

The captain, who had made me his lieutenant, relates P. Lucas, falls ill during the time that M. de Chateauneuf passed to go to
Constantinople. The ambassador had barely arrived at Milo when he had news that fifteen Barbary vessels had crossed into the seas.
There were several corsairs in the port of the isle of Nio. M. de Chateauneuf sends a felouque with an order to the corsairs, most of
them French, but having a foreign flag, to come to join him. Our captain, being ill, orders me to go with the ambassador. He even
entrusts me, in the presence of the captain who commanded the Jerusalem, with the command of his vessel to make a cruise to the
mouths of Samë (the strait of Samos).

P. Lucas goes there, and it is there that he takes, as he has already related to us, the sambiquin of the Turkish aga and
the beautiful Maltese girl:

When we returned to Nio, the captain there was even more ill. But at the news of the prize I had made, he became more than
halfway recovered. He does not fail to make me many compliments on my good fortune. But in replying to his honesties, “You do
not yet see,” I tell him, “the most valuable of the prize.” The thought that he had, that there might be jewels of consequence, will
give him an impatience and a singular impression. I promptly had the Maltese slave girl coming out from the room where I had put
her, and presented her to him like a great treasure. But the captain regards her with an air of indifference, and sets to caressing the
young boys who were the favorites of the imprisoned aga. After some time without saying anything to me: “Monsieur Paul,” he
replies, “I sought through the prize which you have made for me for that which would be worthy to reward you: since you esteem the
slave so much, I give her to you.”

There is a tone and a gift which the lieutenant, or even the pilot of Ulysses would never accept. For other than the pilot
and captain, it does not appear that the Homeric corsairs had officers. To the Greeks, all aboard are equal. The chief is not
at all a master surrounded by servants. He is only an elected magistrate, whose orders they obey when they approve of
them. But they discuss them from the start. On the French cruisers, the captain decides as absolute master of everything
and everyone. Except for the accounts and rents he owes to his shipowners - he pays them especially in slaves - the

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French captain does on his ship what pleases him. The fate and the life of his sailors belong to him like the rigging of his
ship:

When we wished, says Robert, to plunder some vessel, we came promptly to board it with our chaloupes, and we had all the time
needed to pillage it well. Then we returned aboard with all our booty so that noöne took offense. But three or four days later they
called us all onto the upper deck. Then the lieutenant, the second mate, and the man in charge of the slaves descended to the bottom
of the hold where they emptied all our sacks and baskets (because, as for chests, they had only one for the entire vessel) and carried
to the captain all that they had found. If there was anything of the slightest value, even if it was one ecu, and a poor sailor asked for
it, the captain had the kindness to order the chief valet to guard it for him. But he guarded it so well that the other did not see it again
in his lifetime.

It is that the Homeric and French corsairs recruit their crew in a very different fashion. Aboard Achaean vessels, there
are only volunteers, as the people of the XVIIth century say, and the word itself is found in the Odyssey: “I go,” says
Mentor to Telemachus, “to recruit you a crew of volunteers.”

... εγω δ’ ανα δημον ‘εταίρουσ

αιψ’ εθελθντηρας συλλέξομαι...

At Livourne, where most of the French Corsairs are fitted, they use another means of recruiting. The volunteers are never
numerous enough.

Here is the manner in which a pirate vessel is crewed at Livourne. The captain, by his schemes or by his friends, brings some
villains from prison, others from sweatshops, some fugitive debtors, and several from Corsica. They put them together in the harbor
with the volunteers, who are almost half of his crew. Some of these, who are able to go ashore without great risk, meet there and go
from bar to bar to enlist the novices or the idlers whom they find there, from whatever nation they may be. When they have trapped
one of the pigeons, they present him to the captain, who greets him very politely, gives him a glass of wine with a white napkin to
wipe his lips, brags of the strength of his ship, adds that he wishes to remain at sea only three years at the most, and that he hopes
that by the end of that time there will be 2 or 3,000 piasters of profit for each person. Then he comes to close the deal and, if he
needs false testimony for that purpose, the volunteers are always ready to provide him what he will want. Thereupon, the poor
unfortunate is well satisfied. But it sould not be imagined that he can quietly pull up stakes and renege on his word. If he wishes to
stand up, there are sbirri or sargeants ready, who seize him and put him in prison where he is kept until the departure of the vessel.
Furthermore, if he acts in good faith and two or three days later he comes to ask [for his bonus of enlistment, the captain] says in a
loud voice to the master of the launch that the new crewman can return to the town whenever it will please him, although he would
have secret orders to hold him, and that the poor dupe does not see land again, nor a doubloon of his money.

At Sidon, if we believe an account of Ulysses, the captains also tricked and abducted the poor “pigeons”, of whatever
nation they were. The Phoenicians even went to Egypt to hand-seek men by the head, as the Livournese go to Genoa or
Corsica: “I was in Egypt for seven years,” Ulysses says to Eumea, “when a Phoenician arrived. He was a sly rogue, a
crook who had already conned lots of people. He knew how to cajole me, and to bring me to Phoenicia, where he had
houses and goods. I stayed with him an entire year. Then he convinces me to voyage to Libya, under the promise of
trading, as equal partners: in reality, he wished to sell me there, and get a good price for me. I followed him onto his ship,
in spite of my suspicions, but of necessity.”

τω ‘επόμην επι νηος οιομενός περ ανάγκη.

The last verse lets us understand that at Sidon, as at Livourne, there were sbirri or sergeants to bring back the deserters,
if, by choice or by fraud the agreement had been concluded. Among the Achaeans, there is no need for such a
compulsion: the captain of a corsair being fitted out has only an excess of choice. When he has acquired a reputation of

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bravery and justice, the volunteers are always too numerous. But the Achaean captain also should depend only on his
bravery and justice in handling men to obtain obedience. The French captain is assisted by his lieutenant, his first mate,
his chaplain and his volunteers, who serve him as “flies”, and report to him all that is said and done aboard. He rules by
terror over his crew, whom he tyranizes and exhausts with blows and atrocious punishhments: five hundred blows of the
lash, six weeks chained in the bottom of the hold, strappado, witholding water and food, ears, nose or hand cut off, we
should read in Robert and the other authors of the tortures incurred aboard a French ship for the slightest lapse, for a
groan or for a joke, on the denunciation of the chief valet or for the simple pleasure of the captain and his band. The
Homeric corsairs are already Hellenes. They live under the democratic regime. They are free men who discuss, speak and
obey freely. All are equal, comrades, associates, ‘εταροι. They all navigate an “entire share”. They obey the chief of their
choice, to the extent that he has their confidence. But the government of their squadrons is parliamentary in some fashion.
Besides the established power, which is the chief, there is always a sort of opposition with its leader: in the Odyssey,
Ulysses, chief of the squadron, always has in his face the chief of the malcontents, Euryloque. Apart from the difference
in the discipline, Homeric and French corsairs operate in the same fashion and in the same waters.

*
* *

On the sea, we already know that the corsairs are posted at the straits, at the mouths, to watch the commercial ships.
Ashore, it is the plains which attract them: we easily understand the reasons for the preference.
A large plain, with its cultivated fields, its harvests, its flocks, its rich properties and its peaceful populations, assure in
advance the maximum of benefits and the minimum of risks. It is easier there to accomplish an attack especially well.
Along a rocky coast, the watchtowers survey the sea from afar; the signals by voice or by fire warn the natives: as soon as
one suspicious sail appears on the horizon, the alarm spreads; the towns barricade themselves; the men are armed; the
women and the flocks flee toward the interior. And whoever speaks of rocks and mountains speaks also of pastoral
populations, used to the hunt and the battle, courageous and hardy. In the plain, to the contrary, it is easy for the pirate to
land without being perceived, especially when the plain - and it is always the case with Levantine plains - is the delta of a
stream or river, a marshy expanse, strewn with pools and lagoons, covered or bordered with forests, reeds, brush and
aquatic shrubs, with a façade of high greenery behind which the attack can be hidden and the ambush be held without
giving an alert.
On the shores of Thrace, it is one of the fluvial plains, the plain of Kikones, that Ulysses and his companions have
come to pillage. The land of the Kikones, at the extreme north of the archipelago, on the present coast of Macedonia,
borders the channel of Thasos. Behind a long beach of sands, the land presents to the sea a wide extent of lowlands,
marshy, cut by mouths or estuaries. Between the rocky promontories of Kavala to the west and Marona to the east, over a
hundred or a hundred fifty kilometers long, it is in reality just a great delta. A constant river, a somewhat large river
descending from Rhodope, the Nestos of the ancients, the Kara-Sou of the Turks, advances its meanders and its changing
mouths there. Four or five other rivers flow together there, whose floods of spring or storms of summer make violent
watercourses. The mass of their sediments have already filled half of an ancient gulf, which formerly was advanced far
toward the mountains of the interior; the other half of the ancient gulf is now just a lagoon, separated from the high sea by
a band of sand and mud. Even in front of the delta, the low coast clearly offers some harbors of the type that we have
here: The Nautical Instructions say, “within a breakwater of sand, at the extremity of which advance two clumps of trees,
very close together; sheltered from all directions except the west, the port presents a good point of debarkation for a
village of a dozen houses.” But the harbors are threatened by banks of sediment, and the foreign sailors have always
preferred, here as near all the deltas, the rocky ports in deep water. The great ports - we know them - are not installed in
front of the deltas, but to the left and right, on the flanks of the plain, at the foot of the rocky promontories which frame
them.

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 In the delta of Thrace, our western sailors have gone to the rocks of the west to found Kavala, whose name itself
retains the memory of Italian and French navigations. It is in this place that the Occidentals have their port of call. The
French corsairs crossed to the “mouths of Tasse”, that is to say, in the strait of Thasos, as at the “mouths of Samë”. In the
mouths of Thasos, the piracy was facilitated by one of the islands barring the strait, which we have studied at length; the
Odyssian islet of Asteris has furnished us the best example, in the strait which separates Ithaca from Kephallenia: “In the
channel of Thasos, which a bank of sand renders to large ships when bad weather impedes their manuevering, is found a
deserted islet named Thasopoulo, or the Little Thasos; a hot spring flows on the beach, to lose itself in the sea.”
Cousinery, at the beginning of the XIXth century, describes the life of the Thasians to us thusly:

A Turkish wayvode governs the isle with a guard of seven or eight persons. Powerful enough, in the midst of his troops, to vex the
inhabitants, he is too weak to protect them from the pirates. The danger is always imminent, and the terror is permanent. Some
lookouts, payed by the communities, are standing, night and day, to point out suspicious vessels and sound the alarm in case of
attack. In moments of danger, the woods are the only shelters of the Thasians; all the families run there to take refuge; each takes that
which is the most precious; the women and children go into the forest and the men make an ambuscade with the Turkish guard and
the aga himself. All year long, the produce of the harvests is hidden in caves where the thieves would not dare to search... The
mountains of the isle are the only walls where the Thasians can find any safety.

The French commerce sometimes was risked in the interior of the delta, up to the foot of the largest lagoon: the harbor
was safe, but they were under the hand of the Turk. At the entrance of the ancient lake Bistonis, the French had their
Porto Lagos in the lagoon: “Vessels of five thousand tons stayed there two solid months during the rigors of winter to
load wheat. It is a gulf where there are lots of fish; they load boats with them salted to come and sell them in the
archipelago; they also load tobacco there. At anchor, one sees a large village there which lies to the north northwest, and
whose walls are white; it is in a semicircle of fisheries, in the plain. To go to the capitol town, called Gavergine
(Gumurdzina), takes three hours by road; it is there where the officers of the Great Lord are.”
Our Homeric corsairs find a similar installation of the Kikones: on the coast is a small village without defense, which
they pillage; in the interior, two or three leagues from the sea, is the center of the nation, the town where the officers and
soldiers are, who come running during the night. But, the opposite of the French, the companions of Ulysses come from
the east, since they arrive from Troy. They land in the delta, not on the rocks to the west, but on the rocks of the east. The
mountains, which limit the marshy plain toward the east, offer a harbor symmetrical to, but opposite, Kavala. From the
coast, the plain is ended by a high mountain, “very remarkable”, say the Nautical Instructions, which rises 663 meters to
the edge fo the cliff: our sailors call it Marona. It is in the area that Ulysses encountered Baron, son of Evantheus, priest
of apollo, who watches over Ismare. In one of the clumps of trees, which the Instructions already describe for us in front
of the delta, the priest lives in the sacred grove of the god (the Turks have their ports of the Tree, agatch, Kara-Agatch
and Dede-Agatch, on the coast; the Greeks had their station of the Essarte Grove, Σκαπτη ‘Ύλη there):

... ώκει γαρ εν άλσει δενδρήεντι.

Our corsairs pillage “the habitation”, as Thevenot says, that is to say, the farms or villages of the area; but Ulysses
respects the temple and the man of God. They do not rape either the wife or the daughters of the priest; neither do they
kill them. For they have a good corsair nature; they keep even better the respect of priests and the fear of the Lord.
Among the command of our French corsairs, the chaplain always appears, and we know how the pious bandits revere all
the saints, Catholic and Orthodox, Turkish and Syrian; they donate to the Capuchin monasteries; they build churches.
Among the Greeks, the piety is no less:

There are no pirates, says Choiseul-Gouffier, who did not have with them a priest or father to absolve them of the crime at the
very instant they commit it. The wretches never fail to massacre the crew of the ships which they overtake and, after pillaging them ,
sink them to the bottom to remove all evidence of their offenses. But promptly, prostrated at the feet of the minister, some words

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reconcile them to the divinity, calm their conscience and encourage them to new crimes, in offering them a sure resource against new
remorse. The absolutions are taxed. Each priest has tarrif of sins. [Some] sell in advance the pardon for the atrocities which the
pirates plan. All of Greece is filled with monks, of whom almost none can read. They have subjugated the credulous mob, which
they govern at their whim, and, frequently being accomplices to its crimes, they share in them, they absorb the profit of them.

The philosophical indignation of Choiseul-Gouffier (I have already witheld some eloquent tirades) would have made
the prudent Ulysses smile. He had respected the sacerdotal family. But he had made them give - and from his mouth we
understand what this word can mean - a fine ransom: seven talents of gold and of silver, a silver bowl and a dozen
amphoras of vintage wine. The good priest, to save his life and his family, had to reveal the cellars, of which Cousinery
spoke above, and in which were buried the fortune and provisions: what would the wise Ulysses have gained by killing
the holy man, by committing a sacrilige, without then finding the cave of treasure?... “He offered me rich gifts, seven
talents of well-wrought gold, a massive bowl of silver, a dozen amphoras of sweet wine, pure juice, divine beverage.
Noöne in his house, neither servants nor slaves, knew the place: only he, his wife and their stewardess knew it,”

αλλ’ αυτος άλοχός τε φίλη ταμίν τε μί’ οίν.

The wine of the coast remains celebrated throughout all history, under the name of the wine of Maronea. The Greeks had
a town of Maroneia in the place, which, in reality, said Herodotus, was in the territory of the Kikones, and whose oldest
name, according to tradition, was Ismaros.
We are used to the double onomasties. They most frequently denote the frequentation of a coast or a port by two
navies, who successively name the harbors, the capes, the rivers, etc. Before the Hellenes, it is probable that other Peoples
of the sea had come to exploit the markets of Thrace. We are across from Thasos, whose gold mines were discovered by
the Phoenicians: “The Phoenician Thasos, who gives his name to the isle, established a colony and exploits the mines
which we still see on the east coast between the places called Koinura and Ainura.” Across from their isle, the Hellenes of
Thasos will posess a perea, that is to say, a band of coasts: they exploited the plains and the mines of the Thracian land,
says Herodotus; they had raised towns and fortresses there; on the front of the delta, they frequented the harbor of Abdere.
It is probable that the Phoenicians, their predecessors, had followed the same wanderings. Abdere, Άβδηρα, is one of the
place names without a Greek etymology, which is found again among the Phoenician colonies of Spain. Abderos was,
they say, a follower of Hercules who was killed on the Thracian coast, and in memory of whom Hercules founds the
town. It is that the name enters into the category of the Semitic names Abd-Melik, Abd-Nego, Abd- Iahve, etc., formed
from the substantive ‫עבד‬, abd, which signifies servant, and from a divine name. But no doublet is there to furnish us the
true meaning of the foreign word.
The names of Thasos, to the contrary, present us, like the other insular names of the archipelago, a Greco-Semitic
doublet. The name of Thasos is foreign: The tradition remembered the hero, Thasos, son of Phoenix or of Agenor,
companion of Cadmus. In its true Greek name, the isle is called Aeria, αερία, the airy (f.), and it is here an Hellenic
epithet which the Hellenes apply to all that is elevated, ascended and hanging in the air, to rocks, to the feet of dancers
and especially to all the birds and to winged beings: “The isle of Tasse,” says Michelot, “is very high and black from the
trees which are on it. There is no harbor of the west coast of Tasse. But there is one of the southeast coast, where the
corsairs come to anchor, before a somewhat high island, which they name the isle of the Madonna or the harbor of Kinyra
(in Greek); they moor on the islet, and it is of twelve to fifteen fathoms, good bottom and good holding, sheltered from all
winds and seas.” It is in the anchorage of Kinyra, across from the parasitic islet, that the Phoenicians have had their
establishments, Herodotus tells us. Here again, we verify, by the topology, the veracity of the historian. It is truly on the
east coast of Thasos, across from the islet, that the old capitol of the isle should have been installed by the Oriental
thalassocracies, in the times of Cadmus, the Oriental. When the Hellenes become masters of Thasos, they will transport
the capitol to the strait, across from the Hellenic mainland, in the plain which forms the north coast of the isle. From the
Hellenes up to our days, the principal harbor and the large burg of Thasos has remained there. Our Nautical Instructions
only repeat what Michelot has already told us: “[On the north coast], is the plain with the veritable harbor for all sorts of

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ships; it is six, eight, ten and twelve fathoms, good bottom and good holding; there is no weather which can do any harm
there; it is in front of two villages, which one sees on the mountain.”
It is always, as we see, the same alternation which we have established in the other isles for the sites of the insular
capitols. The preHellenic capitol was on one façade. The Hellenic capitol emigrates to the other. Since we relate the
diverse examples to the characteristic type at Rhodes, we can see that, for Thasos, the old capitol of Kinyra, open to the
southeast and to arrivals from the high sea, turning its back to the plains of the isle and to the harbors of the neighboring
mainland, supported by the mountain which covers it, and provided with a coastal isle, is the equivalent, at Rhodes, of the
old preHellenic port of Lindos. And the new port, the Hellenic capitol, at Thasos as at Rhodes, emigrates to the insular
plain and to the coastal strait. The tradition which spoke to us of a Phoenician establishment at Kinyra thus appears very
plausible.
The tradition adds that Thasos is a Phoenician name. They have nevertheless wished to find a Greek etymology for the
word: “I would present, with all reservations, the conjecture of Hasselbach. He has the word θάσος coming from a
primitive θα, θάω, nourish, which he would rediscover in τιθήνη, nurse, and the isle should have the name for its fertility
formerly so celebrated. It is the same as they have had the name of κάσος derive from καιω, because several of the isles of
the region retain traces of subterranian fires.” Thasos and Kasos are actually part of the same onomastic family, but it is
not the Greek etymology which can explain them to us. The Greco-Semitic doublet Kasos-Akhne has already shown us
that Kasos is the Phoenician name of the Isle of the Foam. In the Canaanite languages, the root ‫טוש‬, thus, signifies rise
into the air, hang, fly. From the root thus, a derivd noun, ‫טוש‬, thauas, has given Thasos, Θάσος, to the Hellenes as Aruad,
‫ארוד‬, has given them Arados, Άραδος, the day when they stopped writing the digamma which exactly transcribed the wav
of the Semites. Thasos is the Semitic original of which Aeria was the Greek translation; the two terms of the doublet have
the same meaning at the root: “Thasos,” say the Instructions, “is mountainous, especially on its east coast (it is there that
the Phoenicians landed), where mount Ipsario, its culminant point, is elevated to 1,044 meters of altitude.” The mount
Hypsarion (to reëstablish the veritable Greek orthography) is the Very High Mountain which points into the air: it is this
which gains the isle its Semitic names Thasos. The three names Thasos, Aeria and Hypsarion are only, in the languages of
the successive navies, the identical translation of the same view of the airy coasts:

The most elevated points of Thasos, says G. Perrot, are Saint-Elie (950 m.) and Ipsario (1030 m.). Nothing is as beautiful as their
sharp and bare peak, dominating vast forests... The mica schist and the gniess appear, in large banks, in the midst of the marble and
compact limestones. It is this which gives to the summits, endlessly washed and polished by the rains, an extraordinary brilliance.
When the sun strikes them, the sequins of mica and the large crystals of white marble compete in splendor and brightness; from that,
the versifier Avienus draws the features with a picturesque exactitude, which renders well the effect of Thasos perceived from the
sea, when one comes to round the point of Atho:

... . juxta Vulcania Lemnos

erigitur, Cererique Thasos dilecta profundo
prosperit albenti se vertice... .

*
* *

A priori, we will have been able to preview the Phoenician souvenirs in these areas. The gold mines of Thasos and
Thrace, the vines of Ismare and the wine of Maronea will always attract the commerce and the industry of the navies. But
even before the foundation of peaceful trading posts and industrial or agricultural enterprises, the strait of Thasos and the
beach of Thrace were highly noted “crossings” for the corsairs. It was in fact the best crossing of the entire archipelago.

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For nowhere else, in all the Aegean sea, could the corsairs find, as here, at the same time the strait where they capture the
vessels and the low plain where they raid the fields and the villages. Make the tour of the archipelago. You will find lots
of straits and “mouths”, either along the European or Asiatic coasts, either in the middle of the isles, or between the isles
and the mainlands But you will search in vain for large open low plains, similar to that which come to be described, and
extending their front of beaches and verdure to the open sea.
All the rivers of Asia Minor, in effect, empty at the foot of closed gulfs, which the high mountains enclose or
dominate, and of which they make veritable culs-de-sac. Today, one of the Asiatic rivers, the Menander, has extended its
delta to the open sea. But in the first antiquity the Menender, like the Caystre or the Hermos, flowed into the very bottom
of a narrow gulf. The Asiatic coast then offered to the corsairs only interior plains, dominated from afar by extending
peninsulas. Perched on the summits of the peninsulas, the sentinels signaled the approach of the smallest ship, and the
promontories, curved and interwoven, appeared arranged by nature as dangerous traps for the pillagers.
On the other shores of the archipelago, along the European coasts, some rivers flow into more open gulfs. In two of the
gulfs, the beaches of Laconia and Argolide present a somewhat extended front so that the raids and profitable abductions
can be made there in safety: the delta of the Eurotas saw the abduction of Helen by the Trojan Paris; the Phoenicians, say
Herodotus, will abduct Io on the beach of Argos. But, on the European coasts, only two rivers coming to make a delta all
the way to the open sea. The two rivers descending from the Thracian or Macedonian highlands end, to the right and the
left of the Chalcidian peninsula, on our coast neighboring Thasos: they are the Axios and the Nestos of the ancients, the
Vardar and the Kara-Sou of the Turks. Still, the delta of the Vardar is, like the Asiatic deltas, sunk into a gulf which the
lookouts of Olympia dominate, and which the distant peninsulas of Chalcidia enclose. Only the delta of the Nestos truly
offers the corsairs a fine open path, convenient and profitable. It is to the delta that the Achaeans of Ulysses come. The
Phoenicians, before them, have come there. The French corsairs, in the times of Michelot, reappear there.
In all the Levantine Mediterranean, only one strait can rival this one. Only one other delta, in effect, but very much
larger and even richer could, in the course of the centuries, attract the same pillagers: the delta of Egypt. Complete the
periple of the Levantine seas. Asiatic coasts and Libyan coasts of the extreme Mediterranean resemble each other: the
corsairs searched there in vain for a bordering plain, accessible from the open sea. All around are only narrow coasts,
cliffs mountains or closed gulfs. It is true that at the angle of the Taurus and the Syrian mountains, Cilicia of the Plains
extends its front of sands and marsh toward the open sea. But its too numerous lagoons and its too soft muds still today
render culture and habitation there almost impossible. All the neighboring coasts of Syria and Anatolia are very bad
terrains for the corsair. On all the points stand signal towers of which the travelers speak: “There are five or six small
towers distributed along the sea in drawing toward the cape of Beirut. On the cape is a guard in a tower, where the
sentinel gives warning by signals when he sees a corsair or when some ship appraoches the coast.” Here, the corsairs do
not rule as masters. They find someone to talk to. Lacking anything better, they negotiate and arrange the affairs.

The corsairs come often enough to anchor in the bay of Caifa. Then all the inhabitants take arms, line the shore, and prevent their
landing. When the corsairs have made some seizure which they do not wish to convey any farther, they try to sell it at Caifa. They
display a white flag then and, if the Subaci is in a mood to deal with them, he displays one of the same color on the wall. It is a
reciprocal reassurance, and they then approach. Without allowing the corsairs to land and without going aboard their ship, they deal
aboard the launches, and each receives his merchandise, and then they fold the flags and become enemies again, as before the trade.

Bu to the south of the Syrian coasts, bristling with towers and defenders, they finally enter the corsairs’ paradise, in the
delta of Egypt, which presents all the guarantees of success and profit. Whoever speaks of voyages of pirates in the
Levantine waters also speaks of the frequentation and knowledge of the Egyptian delta. The “course”, across all the
centuries, has always had the primary effect of putting the corsairs in intimate contact with the successive masters of
Egypt. Thus, a priori, we have been able to say - even if the hieroglyphic and Odyssian texts were not there to testify to
us - that the Achaean corsairs knew Egypt, that they have pillaged the beaches, that they have frequented the towns of the
delta or the markets of the river. But the Odyssey and the Pharaonic monuments furnish us ample testimony to it, and the
contemporary texts show us that the voyages of our “French” pirates of the XVIIth century have only, as in all the others,

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here again renewed the old Achaean voyages: on this point, as on all the others, the accounts of Robert, of Thevenot and
of P. Lucas are just the prosaic repetition of the Odyssian accounts.
The French corsairs, during spring and autumn, operated in the isles of the archipelago, on the coasts of Asia Minor
and Greece. But “in summer,” says Robert, “they went to the coasts of Egypt”; the mouths of the Nile are like their
rendez-vous; the delta is their paradise: “All of the triangle of Egypt, which they call the delta, is just a vast plain, fat and
fertile beyond imagination. The land is extremely populated, and produces, almost without cultivation, all sorts of fruits,
grains and vegetables... We navigate on the river completely at our ease for four days. We have the pleasure to see a very
beautiful land, solid, cultivated, and so filled with villages that it appears that they touch, and make a single village in
several places along each shore of the river. All the land swarms with life.” The rural populations has always lived
without arms, prey to pirates of the sea or of the desert.

If one went from Rosetta to Damietta, crossing the delta at is base, adds d’Arvieux, one would have only about thirty leagues to
travel. But the road is too dangerous be exposed there. Even the Turks do not dare to do it, because of the number of Arab robbers,
with which the delta is filled... Damietta is the town of all the Ottoman empire where the French are the most universally and
mortally hated. The hatred is not without foundation. It is pillaged every year by the Christian corsairs. The coasts are continuously
infested with them. They are for the most part Maltese or Livournese corsairs, who prey indifferently on the Christians of the land
and on the Turks, and when the seized vessels are at Malta or at Livourne and the shipowners reclaim them, whatever proofs they
may have that the ships and merchanise belong to them, they can retrieve nothing of them. This indisposes everyone against the
French, and is frequently the cause of their being mistreated and snubbed.

Across thirty or forty centuries, the history of the delta continues to be the same. Each time that Egypt is not the ruler
of the Levantine coasts and the “isles of the Very Green” (as the hieroglyphic inscriptions say), or inversely, each time
the Peoples of the Sea, Greek, Roman, Arabic, English, etc., do not hold the guard and protection of Egypt, the delta lives
in terror of the corsairs. The inscriptions of Minephtah, for Phraonic Egypt, and the accounts of the French voyagers, for
Turkish Egypt, make us admirably cognizant of the state of affairs with, “the fortified posts, the closed citadels, the
rounds of police, the sentinels shouting in the night: “Halt there! you who come under a false name! away!” and the
stories of each morning: “Last night they stole such-and-such”, and the marauders crossing the river, and the people of the
plain bewailing their stolen livestock”. It is Miephtah who speaks thus in the inscription of Karnak, and such detail of the
description would be amply commented to us by d’Arvieux, Thevenot or the other French voyagers. D’Arvieux knew the
marauders of the delta:

They are the most adroit thieves in the world. They would give lessons to the Spanish. They ordinarily come totally nude, rubbed
well with oil and grease, in order that one cannot hold them. When they see themselves pursued, they jump into the Nile and swim
away, liking better to expose themselves to being devoured by the crocodiles than to fall into the hands of the Turks, who give them
no quarter, impale them and burn them alive.

Thevenot has described to us above the castles garnished with muskets and sentinels crying: “ Away, away!” He
continues:

Thursday the thirtieth of May, we found ourselves before the mouth of the Nile, and the galley of the corsairs goes there to take
on water in spite of the cannon of the fortress. Our vessels wished to do it and to raise the white flag as much to see if they wished to
allow us ashore as to see if would buy back some of the slaves which we had seized. We waited with great impatience for them to set
the white banner on the castle and prepared ourselves to go into Damietta with total safety, when to our misfortune, the sentinel, who
was at the top of the tree - (at the top of the mast: the old Egyptian monuments, which represent the barques of the Peoples of the
sea, always show the sentinel perched this way) - discovered four sails. They promptly will change their white banner for a red one. I
wished to tell them that it was an evil action to chase sails which had perhaps approached because of our white flag. But they replied
to me that since the castle had not flown the white flag, they were not obliged to anything, so that they will give chase to the four

326
sails, and the castle fires several shots at us, but to no effect... Three escape, and the fourth puts in to shore, and all the people who
were in it escaped on land...

*
* *

We open the Odyssey. Two passages of the poem speak to us of Egypt in somewhat great detail. In the Telemachead, it
is Menelaus who recounts to his guests the sojourn which he had to make in the marvelous land. The poet enumerates the
admirable gifts which Menelaus brought back from there. We are going to see the surprising encounter which he made, on
the deserted isle of Pharos, with the Old Man of the Sea, herdsman of seals and fortune-teller of fine adventure. In the
Odyssey, it is Ulysses, arriving to Eumeus, who invents one of the tales whose embroidery is of his fabrication, but whose
framework is just a piece of the daily life. He is, he says, a Cretan, He has never dreamed of anything but traveling and
war. He started with eight or nine “courses” around his isle. Then he went before the walls of Troy, on the Crusade. Then,
returning to Crete, he joined and armed a privateer flotilla against the delta:

We left Crete and, pushed by a fine fresh breeze from Bora, we sailed as on a river of air. Not the least damage to the vessel! Not
the slightest accident or the least illness among the crews! Aboard, we were all seated, letting the wind and the pilots sail. The fifth
day, we arrive in the flowing waters of the Egyptos, and we guide our vessels into the river itself. Then I advised my men to stay
there, near the vessels, and to guard our flotilla, but to send some lookouts on the nearby rises. But, preferring violence, and listening
only to their passions, they rush over the fine field of Egypt, ravage it, abduct women and children, and kill the men. The news of it
comes to the town. At daybreak, the army comes running with great shouts. The plain fills with cavalry, footsoldiers and flashes of
bronze. Thundering Zeus sets flight and weakness in the hearts of my men. None resist. Disaster engulfs us. A large number of my
men are killed... Others, taken alive, are led away to become slaves and men of sorow. As for me, Zeus gives me the idea to throw
away the solid helmet from my head, the shield from my shoulders and the spear from my hand... Then I went to meet the horses of
the King. I embraced his knees. He had pity and gives me my life. He took me on his chariot and leads me all in tears to his
residence. The crowd ran after us with its menacing spears; they wished to massacre me, for they were overflowing with rage. But
the king protects me so as not to fail in the duty to Zeus the Hospitable... I remained for seven years in Egypt, and I amassed great
riches there: everyone gave me gifts. But, the eighth year, a Phoenician crook pursuaded me into accompanying him to Phoenecia.

Take the Odyssian account verse by verse. All of the words should be explained and commented on at length, to gauge
well the minute exactitude of the description: “Ασκηθεες και ανουσοι, no accidents and no illness”, says the poet, and the
French corsairs promptly furnish the commentary. On the boats of the corsairs, infectious diseases rage, among the
passengers and the crew, malnourished and unhygienic, or among the captives and slaves imprisoned aboard. Everyone is
poorly covered. They lack water for drinking and for the least washing. Smallpox is in the endemic condition: “It was a
great pity to see all of the poor women with their babies at the breast, to have nothing but a bit of moistened biscuit every
day. But among others, there were a woman with her husband, her brother, her seven children, and one at the breast. All
of this caused a great difficulty and much filth on the vessel, and there was even a young child with smallpox, which
made me afraid of catching it.” The plague comes to be added. It reigns in the ports and on the vessels. It never ceases, if
it sometimes abates. The voyagers of the time speak of it as we speak of fever today. At Constantiple, at Smyrna, at
Damietta, in all the Levantine ports, the plague is permanently established: “The plague makes strange ravages in the
land. The French are exposed there like others. But they take precautions which diminish the danger, whereas the Turks,
with their ill-considered predestination, throw themselves on the wasted corpse. The French shut themselves in their
houses, after having made provisions for three or four months, or even retire to the country where the air is less subject to
be corrupted than in the towns. There, they have communication with noöne except at the distance that the voice will
carry. They kill without mercy all of the dogs and cats which wish to enter their retreat.”

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 The French vessels also take some precautions. But the plague always ends in coming aboard, and sometimes at the
most unforseen moment. They leave Marseilles in full health, as our Odyssian corsair leaves Crete. The crossing promises
to be fine. The state of sanitation is excellent. But the vessel had acquired some germs of infection from its preceeding
voyages: “We are barely upon the open sea when the plague, with which the vessel was infected, begins to manifest itself.
The foreman, an old man well-experienced in the types of illness, announces the fine news to us... We throw twenty-two
men into the sea in the space of fifteen days.” Before the walls of Troy, the Achaeans were acquainted with similar
slaughters: the plague, sent by Apollo, “at first rapidly reached the mules and dogs, then the men themselves and, without
pause, the pyres consumed the dead.”
Our Cretan corsair had nothing similar. Neither, in their four days of voyage, did the vessels have any accidents. The
Odyssey counts four or five days of travel between Crete and the delta. We should not forget that, in the account, we find
again the double system of numeration by five and by seven which we have already pointed out in other Odyssian
episodes. Before embarking, the Cretans make a week of feasts and leave the seventh day:

‘εβδομάτη δ’ αναβάντες απο Κρήτης εθρείης

επλέομεν...

Later, our hero goes to stay seven years in Egypt. Here, he counts in the Greek manner four or five days of voyage, as he
will remain nine days at sea after his shipwreck, before arriving the tenth day in the land of the Thesprotes. Nevertheless,
four or five days is also about the ordinary interval which the French voyagers reckon between the last Greek isles,
Rhodes or Candia, and the mouths of the Nile. Thevenot took four days to pass from the archipelago to Egypt. He left
Rhodes:

Monday, the wind became a mistral from the northwest, but because the weather was still very heavy, our captain did not wish to
leave that day. Tuesday, the weather being a little clear and the mistral continuing, we left Rhodes after noon, rigging sail only on the
foremast so as to not leave the isle before night, from fear of corsairs. At sunset we set sails on the mainmast. We entered the gulf of
Satalia, where we had a bit of a sea for two or three hours, because the current of the aforementioned gulf meets with that of the gulf
of Venice and other places from the west...

Our Cretan corsair navigates similarly with a fair fresh breeze from the northern quarter, and as if on a current:

επλέομεν Βορέη ανέμω ακραέι καλω

‘ρηιδίως ‘ως εί τε κατα ‘ρόον...

“The currents in the archipelago,” say the Nautical Instructions, “are irregular in force and direction. In general, they
bear to the south; but they are greatly influenced by the winds... We cannot give an exact law of their motion, especially
for the southern part and for the channels which border the isle of Candia. The current bears almost continually in the
direction of the south.”

After that, continues Thevenot, the wind changes in an instant into a northerly mistral so fresh that we estimated that we made a
speed of ten miles per hour, despite having sails only on the mainmast, so as not to leave behind a galleon with which we remained.
The wind lasts all of Wednesday. In the evening it eases a bit, then changes into a gregal or northwester, so weak that we hardly
advanced at all the entire night and the following day, which was Thursday... During the evening of the aforementioned Thursday,
the wind strengthens a bit and in a moment it grows into the same sort as Wednesday; at the break of day we discovered the land of
Egypt. The wind having changed into a mistral, or west-northwest, we turned the prow toward Boukeri. But the wind casts us so low
that a little after we found ourselves under Alexandria.

Let us note well the last phrase of Thevenot; it greatly serves to explain to us a controversial passage of the Odyssian
poem. Thevenot went to Egypt, that is to say, to the mouths of the Nile, for Egypt is the Nile, and coastal Egypt ends, for

328
the sailors, at the easternmost and westernmost mouths of the mouths of the river. The wind from the north has cast
Thevenot “too low”, beyond Egypt, toward Alexandria, for Alexandria, for the navigators, is not in Egypt, since it is
outside of the river: Alexandria is in Africa or in Libya. In the region of the delta, the winds from the northern quarter are
the most frequent. They lend a powerful help to the navigators coming from the isles and traveling toward the river. But
they can inversely be a terrible impediment to the return voyage. Menelaus, coming back from Egypt, that is to say,
leaving the river to reach the sea of Crete, is driven by the winds from the northwest toward the southwest coast, beyond
the delta and the Egyptian waters, up to across from the site where Alexandria will later be raised: “In that place there is a
deserted isle in the savage sea, which they name Pharos; a day of navigation separates it from the Egyptian river”,

νησος έπειτα τις έστι πολυκλύστω επι πόντω

Αιγύπτου προπάροιθε, Φάρον δε κικλήσκουσιν.
τόσσον άνευθ’ ‘όσσον τε πανημερίη γλαφυρη νηυς
ήνυσεν, η λιγυς οθρος επιπηείησιν όπισθεν.

The isle of Pharos in effect exists in front of the African land: it presently forms the two harbors of Alexandria. But the
geographers of the cabinet have measured the distance between the edge of the continent and the insular shore on their
charts. They have seen that an isithmus of sand, a thousand or twelve hundred meters long, has, since antiquity,
transformed the isle into a peninsula. Before the transformation, they have said, the isle was separated from the continent
only by a strait of a thousand or twelve hunderd meters. And they have been astonished by the distance furnished by the
Homeric poet - a day of navigation! Immediately, the archeologiss have cried that the Odyssian isle was in the domain of
fable, like the isle Syria or like the isle of Calypso. Others concluded that, since the remote times up to our days, the Nile
had greatly advanced the continental shore in the direction of Pharos... Here again it is necessary to read the text in the
“Most Homeric” fashion: in explaining the words, all the words of the poet, we immediately see that the isle is no more
“mythic” than the others, and that the coast in that place has not greatly changed. At any rate, the change could not have
been very great. The isle of Pharos, in effect, is not located facing the sediments of the Nile, in the delta, but facing a
rocky mainland, in front of a calcarious range which stands out from the Libyan coast and which comes to point the long
tongue of Abukir into the sea. This rocky tongue, which could not have changed place, is like a screen between the
sediments of the river and the waters of Pharos. Even before the formation of the delta, the rocky promontory existed near
the isle, and it was separated from it, as today, only by some thousand meters. The delta, which is formed under the
shelter of the tongue of rocks, extends only under that shelter. There, “the great coastal current, which goes from Africa to
Asia, seized the muds of the Nile; it will fashion from them the curved cordon whose other extremity goes to end at the
massif of Casios, on the coast of Syria; from there, Egypt grows no farther toward the north, and the coast has remained
essentially that which it has been for thousands of years.”
For us and for the present sailors, the islet of Pharos and the port of Alexandria, which it forms, make an integral
part of the Egyptian land: It is there that we enter the Egyptian land today, and we believe that here is the great Egyptian
emporion for twenty-two centuries. But for the ancient Hellenes, Pharos is in Libya: “Libya begins,” says the old periple
of Skylax, “at the Canopic mouth, with the people of Adurmachides, and up to Pharos, a deserted isle, but provided with
harbors and water sources, it is a hunderd and fifty stades.” Thucydides shows us Inaron the Libyan, king of the Libyans
neighboring Egypt, embarking at Mareia, a coastal town facing Pharos. Similarly, the French navigators of the XVIIth
century know, and Thevenot told us just now, that once at Alexandria, we are no longer in Egypt. The Nile being the only
port of the sailors toward the towns of the interior - and things remaining so up to the construction of the railways - it is
necessary, to go from Alexandria into Egypt, to reach the mouths of the river. It is the maneuver which the Nostos of
Menalaus describes to us; from the isle of Pharos, the Achaean hero returns to anchor his boats in the waters of the river:

άψ δ’ εις Αιγύπτοιο διιπετέος ποταμοιο

στησα νέας.

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Now, from the isle of Pharos to the mouths of the river, it truly is, as the poet tells us, a day of navigation which must be
reckoned, even when one has the chance of a good wind. For take again the accounts of the French voyagers. Alexandria
for the French is just a retreat without great importance: “the true place of commerce is Rosetta, which is assuredly the
most beautiful Egyption town after Cairo.” Rosetta is on the river, some distance from the coast. It is sheltered, by that
same distance, against the incursions of the corsairs. From Alexandria, it is thus necessary to go to Rosetta. Each time that
one can, one makes the route by sea. But the winds from the northwest or northeast, which predominate here, are contrary
to that navigation, and the coast is dangerous. The Instructions say that during the summer the wind ordinarily blows
from the northwest. The navigation from Alexandria toward Rosetta would require those from the southwest. One thus
takes the land route: “I loaded our baggage on camels,” d’Arvieux adds, “and, mounted on mules with my Janissary and
my valet, I left from Alexandria. We passed to Bouquier (Abukir). We arrived in the evening at Maadie, which signifies
passage. We pass the mouth [of a large lake into the sea], and we find a caravanserai where we are lodged and where we
unload our merchandises. We passed the night on my mattresses. The next day we pack or baggage at daybreak. We
arrived at Rosetta at three hours of the afternoon. We figure five leagues from Alexandria to Maadie, and fifteen leagues
from Maadie to Rosetta.” For the caravans, the twenty leagues make a very long day of travel which, ordinarily, they cut
into two stages. By sea, if one has the opportunity of a breeze from astern, the distance is just a little less long: “The 25th
of August,” relates P. Lucas, “we left from Alexandria in the morning by the convenience of a germ. It is a small boat, flat
and uncovered, with a large lateen sail. It makes good way when it has the wind at the poop,

[cf. the Odyssian verse of the nostos of Menelaus:

... η λιγυς ουρος επιπνείησιν όπισθεν]

and it never leaves until it would have a favorable one. We passed before Bekiers (Abukir), and we very fortunately
passed the boucas, which are the entries of the Nile. It was five hours of the evening when we arrived at Rosetta.” In
historic times, the Hellenes will have their Rosetta, their market of the delta, on the same mouth of the river, but a little
higher, at Naukratis: between Pharos and Naukratis, Aristotle alrerady remarked that there was exactly one day of
navigation, of which the Odyssey speaks between Pharos and the port of the river. The Odyssian poet thus has a very
exact knowledge of the vicinity. Here again, its descriptions appear mythical only to inattentive or poorly informed
readers.
But, by virtue of a favorable wind, our Cretan corsair, to reach Egypt, did not have to make such maneuvers. It did not
encounter the changes of wind, the north mistral, the west mistral, the northeast mistral, etc., of Thévenot. It had during
the entire passage a pure “gregal” (northeast), directly from astern, Βορεη ακραέι καλο. In four days and four nights, it
went straight to the river: “from Crete to Egypt,” says Strabo, “there are four days and four nights; some nevertheless
figure only three.” Nothing is more variable than the evaluation and the duration of crossings on the high sea. From Crete
to the delta, we need to count 600 kilometers in a straight line, which would make a speed of five or six kilometers per
hour for our Cretan boats, a very acceptable figure, such as we have made in the preceeding calculation. Our corsairs
make land. The shore is deserted. “The habitation” is removed from the sea: the town is on the river. They enter the Nile.
They moor their flotilla in the river itself, but away from the inhabited places, in the open field. The town is nevertheless
not far. But they do not see it: it is hidden by the thicket of reeds and brush. In the immense marsh of the delta, the view is
obstructed within a few steps; the tall water plants, the mounds of sand or mud hem in the river and border its channels.
Also, the Cretan captain wished to take some precautions, post lookouts on the dunes which dominate the plain, survey
the river to see if they can abandon themselves to pillage in complete safety:

οπτηρας δε κατα σκοπιασ ώτρυσνα νέεσθαι.

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 But the crew does not wish to wait. They have been seated and inactive for four days. They have had time to digest the
feast of fat sheep and cattle that the captain had made for them before their departure from Crete. Four days of gruel or
dry bread have sharpened their appetite. And here are the rich fields, περικαλλέασ αγρούς, of the delta:

Rosetta, says Arvieux, is in a charming location. It is entirely surrounded by gardens full of palms and all sorts of fruit trees. It
has excellent grapevines. The rice, the vegetables, the fruits of all sorts are there in abundance, and at a very good price. The meat is
no more expensive. The beef and mutton there are excellent. The fowl and chickens there are almost for nothing. There are geese and
ducks there without number, and pigeons more than one can imagine... One finds hare, gazelles and river birds of all kinds and in
quantity. The turnips and onions there are very large and sweet yet there is noöne in the country who takes them, who touches them.
It is easy to perceive that one is truly in Egypt. There were some Spaniards there with the vice-consul of France who ate every day
until their shirt buttons popped, and could not satisfy themselves.

How could corsair’s stomach resist a similar temptation? Our Cretans had still other reasons to hasten: they should not
let the alarm be spread; the women and children, with the herds, at the first sign, go to flee into the interior of the land, or
barricade themselves in the houses. It is the women and children which are the wealth of the prize. The men, despite their
cowardice, alway defend themselves somewhat: it is necessary to kill them. The adult man furthermore has no great value
in the eyes of the pirates. They never make anything but a mediocre slave, insubmissive, lazy, without charm. The woman
and the child, to the contrary, for a thousand reasons, are much sought after. They are top on the market. Everywhere, one
finds them sold at a good price: “If you take me from here,” says the Phoenician woman of Syria to the corsairs of her
land, “I would bring you all the gold I could steal from my master, and I would add to it another price for my passage. I
am the nurse of a little boy who has begun to run in the streets. I will try to lead him aboard to you, and you will get a
good price for him, anywhere you will then go”,

τόν κεν άγοιμι επι νηός. ‘ο δ’ ‘ύμιν μυρίον ωνον

άλφοι, ‘όπη περάσητε κατ’ αλλοθρόους ανθρώπους.

Aboard ships, the woman and the little boy, in addition to profit, provide pleasures which our Homeric corsairs, like
the captain of P. Lucas, know how to appreciate: our people are Cretans; their descendants have retained a regrettable
renown for that, throughout all antiquity. Finally, a last very important consideration should not be forgotten: the woman,
even the poorest, is always adorned, loaded with gold and jewelry. The French or Turkish corsairs dream of the windfall
which the abduction of women dressed up for a feast or a pilgrimage would be. Listen to Thévenot:

The women of Chio are very beautiful and of an advantageous form. They have the face white like the finest jasmine; but they
have breasts completely sunburned and black. I cannot help myself from sometimes scolding them, since they do not cover
themselves with any handkerchief or any other linens, because, after that, it would not be possible to see anything more beautiful...
But, if they are pretty, they are full of vanity, which is a vice which always accompanies the sex. They wish to be clothed in the most
beautiful fabrics which they can have, and there is always nothing at the present worth what it was at another time. There were none
so poor, even a cobbler’s wife, who did not wish to have fine velvet shoes, which cost five or six ecus, necklaces and bracelets of
gold in quantity, and their fingers full of rings. But one day they will pay well for all their finery.
The church of St-Jean is outside the town of Chio, a musket shot above the sea. On the eve of Saint Jean, there is a great assembly
in the church. All of the island finds itself there, and the wives and daughters try to adorn themselves the best that they can. The day
having come, they will empty all their chests to seek there the most fine and precious which they have, and those who have no
ornaments at all went to borrow some from their friends. After they were well-arrayed, they will go after dinnner to St-Jean. Now,
there is, near the gate through which they need to exit, a tower, at the top of which was the Captain-Pasha (the Turkish Admiral),
who watched them pass, which greatly increased his arrogance. When the service was finished, they all will come back and stay to
dance in front of the tower where the Pasha was, who witnesses and takes great pleasure. The following day, the Pasha demands a
hundred thousand piasters from the masters of the town, which he needed to deal with the arrival of the Great Lord. They will wish
to excuse themselves, saying that they have nothing at all. But he shuts their mouths, in replying to them that he has found their
wives and daughters well loaded with gold. [They had to] pay fifty thousand piasters. After that, the Greeks as well as the Latins, all

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in common agreement, will warn the women for the [saints’] eves, under pain of excommunication, against wearing any jewelry,
either gold or silver. But, not being able to resign themselves to being deprived of the gems, the women scorn [the threat of]
excommunication, until one is made by the pope. Since that time, they no longer wear them.

The Egyptian woman, in Homeric times, had no less coquettery or jewelry than our Chiotes: “The chains were for
her,” says G. Maspero, “what the band was for her husband, the [indepensible] ornament. They knew of chains in silver
which surpassed a meter and a half in length, and others, in contrast, which measure barely five or six centimeters. There
were those in gold in all models, in double or triple strands, with large or small links, these thick and heavy, those light
and so flexible , that the most shrill will babble of Venice. The least peasant posessed hers like the noble ladies; but a
woman should feel very poor because her box contained nothing more.” When the corsair is sighted, when the land is not
completely safe, the women no longer go out, or they take off their jewels and bury them in some hiding place. Ramses
III rid the delta of incursions of the Peoples of the sea; it is shouted in his triumphal inscriptions: “That the woman now
goes out at her pleasure, her adornment on her! That she bravely walks in the place which will please her!” It is the cry of
Isaiah after the ruin of Tyre: Cross your land, o daughter of Tarsis! You are no longer confined.”
Here is a little information which the honest knight of Arvieux - or the Capuchin who repeats his Mémoires - gives to
the corsairs of his time:

[Outside of Beirut], a cape bears a mosque, which encloses the sepulcher of a Mohammaden saint, to whom all the women have
an extraordinary devotion, either to have children, or to be fortunately delivered when they are on their couch [of childbirth]. The
mosque is served by a strong and powerful dervish who could well stand in for the deficiency of the defunct and impotent saint. The
faithful women come once a year to the venerable tomb, decked out in their most beautiful costumes, in their stones, in their gold
chains, in one word, in everything most precious that they have. Their devotions ordinarily continue for three days... If a corsair of
Malta had a calendar of the feasts or devotions of the Turks, and if he knew a little of the chart of the land, he could do good
business. For he would only need to hide a couple of armed gunboats in the hollows which are under the cape from where, leaving at
night, they could surprise the troop of devotees.

It was during a similar pilgrimage to Our Lady of Lampadouze that the little Maltese friend of Paul Lucas was seized
by the corsairs of Algeria. It is ouside of the town, in the fields, αγρόθεν ερχομένην, that the Sidonian woman sold to the
king of Syria is seized by the Taphian corsairs. The peoples of the Odyssey knew two methods of making slaves: “You
were just a child when you were abducted,” says Ulysses to Eumea. “But did your father and mother then live in a town
with long streets which allowed the seizure and abduction? Or do pirates rather find you alone near the sheep and cattle,
and will take you on their vessels?” Of the two means, we understand why the corsair companies, when they can, choose
the second. To abduct from a town is not always easy, and is always perilous. Our Cretans, in the delta, thus do not go to
the town. They rush into the fields, killing the men, abducting the children and the women. But they did not take note that
the town was very close. The news comes to them suddenly...
The governor of Rosetta, says d’Arvieux, is a subashi. He has under his command a company of Janissaries who guard
the town during the day, and punish severely and on the spot those whom they find lacking. Another company guards the
town at night with continual patrols, to prevent the raids and pillages of the Arabs from the fields, who are always alert to
break in the doors of the houses and pillage them.
The king of the town, in the tale of Ulysses, (the king, translates most exactly: the subashi) comes running at daybreak
with his company of foot soldiers and cavalry. He massacres the pillagers, or reduces them to slavery. The passage of the
Odyssian account conforms again to all that which the king Minephtah relates to us in an inscription of Karnak. First, here
is the discourse which the Pharao held with his subashis before a similar encounter: “You tremble like geese. You do not
know what is good to do. Noöne responds to the enemy, and our desolate land is abandoned to the incursions of all the
nations... The enemies devastate our ports. They penetrate into the fields of Egypt. If there is an arm of the river, they
make a stop, and stay for days or months... They arrive numerous as reptiles, unless we can push them back, these
wretches who love death and who detest life and whose hearts would consummate our ruin...” Minepthtah appears to have
known the discourse of our Achaean pirates: “I have married a wife from a rich family,” says our Cretan, “because of my

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courage. For I have never fled the battle. Ares and Athena gave me audacity and the martial humor. When I had to enlist a
fine band for an ambush or an attack, my boiling heart never took account of death; but, from the very first, I ran at the
enemy with spear in hand. Furthermore, I had no taste for work, for the routine of the household, which perhaps makes
good children. Speak to me of good vessels, of battles, of well-honed lances, of arrows, of all the horrors which give other
men the shivers”,

ού ποτέ μοι θάνατον προτιόσσετο θυμος αγήνωρ.

In the mouth of a Hellene, it is not bragging. At the core, all the Hellenes are of the opinion that death in full youth, in
full action and, especially, in full glory is a hundred times preferable to obscurity, to illness, and to the interminable
boredom of a dismal old age. If death is an evil, there are worse ones, and, in the calculation of happiness which every
man here below must make, it is a reasonable one. The Hellene knows that death is preferable to decrepitude. But this
idea is Hellenic, and the Egyptian, subject of Minephtah, has never had it. Always preoccupied with death and the
mystery around it, always ocupied by his tomb, by his casket and by his future voyage toward the mysteries of the Sunset,
the Egyptian thinks that anything is preferable to the anxieties of that terrible departure. To always draw back from the
fatal expiration; to strive against the snares of destiny and the risks of life; to strive to arrive at the age of a hundred and
ten years, which no mortal, alas!, born of mortal woman, can surpass, but which the wise man strives to attain: such is the
avowed dream, the ambition of every Egyptian of sane spirit. The Pharaonic tales laud Didi, who lives at Didusnofrui. He
is a man of a hundred and ten years age, who still eats his five hundred loaves of bread, with an entire haunch of beef, and
who still still drinks up to the day his hundred jugs of beer. He is stretched on a couch at the door of his house: a slave at
his head fans him, another at his feet gently tickles him. and the son of the Pharao comes to see him and say to him:
“Your condition is that of whoever lives to a fine old age; to grow old, to arrive at the door, to be put into the wrapping of
bandages, then finally return to the earth, stretched out to the sun as you are, without infirmities of the body, without
weakening of the spirit or of the reason, ah!, is truly blessed!” We understand that Menephtah, on encountering the
Achaeans, had only contempt for the fools, for “the wretches who love death and detest life”.
Menephtah continues his discourse: “There they are who arrive with their chief. They pass their time on earth in
fighting, to fill their bellies each day, and it is why they come to the land of Egypt to seek their living. Their intention is to
install themselves here. Mine is to take them like fish on their bellies... Their chief is entirely the portrait of a dog (the
Odyssey would say, κυνώπυς), an ignoble man, a fool. He will never be satisfied with his position.” In spite of the fine
disdain for their chief, Menephtah hesitates to march in person against the wild beasts who fear neither blows nor death. It
is that the bands of Shardanes, of Tourshans, of Sagalashans, of Lycians and of Achaeans represent “the first choice of all
the soldiers and of all the heroes in each land.” It is again exactly that which the corsair of the Odyssey tells us: “I know to
always choose elite warriors for my raids”,

‘οπότε κρίνοιμι λόχονδε

άνορας αριστηας κακα δυσμενέεσσι φυτεύων

It is nevertheless difficult for Menephtah to hold himself back. His absence, far from the field of battle could be badly
interpreted and demoralize his troops. The god Phtah or his priests are charged with arranging everything. The god
appears to the king to forbid him from marching in person against the enemy; he orders him to only send archers and
chariots: “The archers of His Majesty raged for six hours among the barbarians, that they pass to cutting with swords.
Then their chief had fear. His heart weakened. He set to flight with all the speed of his legs to save his life. ” He escapes,
but his bow, his arrows, his treasure, his arms, his wife and his spoils fall into the hands of the Pharao. Our Cretan
corsairs suffered the same defeat: “The entire plain filled with foot soldiers and horses resplendant with bronze; the
Egyptians kill a large number of our companions, on the points of bronze, or lead them alive to force them to work”,

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 ένθι ‘ημέων πολλους μεν απέκτανον οξέι χαλκω,
τους δ’ άναγον ζωους, σφίσιν εργάζεσθαι ανάγκη.

It is the lot of corsairs in all times, when they fall into the hands of the natives. Thévenot, abducted by a French
corsair, is held aboard the pirate [ship], where water and provisions are lacking. When they arrive before the delta, the
captain, knowing that Thévenot is French, and an officer of the king, finds himself encumbered by his prisoner. He would
voluntarily deposit his prisoner on the coast of the delta, “But we did not care to accept the departure, says Thévenot, for
fear of being seized as corsairs and promptly burnt alive. I had too fresh in my memory the stories which I had heard
other Frenchmen relate who, being saved from shipwrecks, having been in their difficulties, are instantly sold at a good
price to be slaves.” The popular furor is only too excusable. The people of the coast, so severely exploited by the corsairs,
would find some sweetness in bleeding all those which fall into their hands. The knight of Arvieux is obliged to leave
Damietta in all haste:

Since we were dressed as French, it was easy to recognize us. Our presence awoke the animosity of the Greeks and the Turks.
Some, who had been seized and pillaged by the Christian corsairs, imagined in their minds that we [also] were ourselves, or that we
serve them as spies. On this prejudice, I would remark that, one day that we go into the town, the people gathered into groups, and
spoke, watching us attentively. Some Turks and Greeks, not doubting that we could understand them, since they saw an interpreter
with me and they spoke Turkish, said that they needed to assure themselves of us and pillage us, to avenge themselves for the evil
that the French corsairs had done them. It will happen that the following morning, at sunrise, they would execute their plan. I
rejoined my company and we did not deliberate for long. I went to find the Aga, and asked him for a passport, which he gives me,
during which my two companions will promptly go to pack the baggages... We embarked and drew ourselves into the open sea.

The crowed similarly wished to massacre our Cretan corsairs, for it is very angry:

η μέν μοι μάλα πολλοι επήισσον μελίησιν

‘ιέμενοι κτειναι. δη γαρ κεχολώατο λίην.

But the aga or the king saves the Cretan captain who casts himself at his knees. He takes him in his chariot. He gives
him his life and even his liberty. The history of ancient Egypt again shows the verity of the detail. The Pharaos seek to
install in their domain colonies of pirates and foreign soldiers. It is a political constant with them. After each great defeat
of Libyans or Peoples of the sea, the Pharao saves the survivors, he recruits them and distributes them in his military posts
along the valley. The prisoners become the best soldiers of the king. Quartered in Thebes and in the provinces, they marry
Egyptian women and are mixed with the population. From the first Theban empire, under the XIIth dynasty, they knew
similar arrivals of Aegean prisoners at Fayum and in the villages of Saïd. Once installed, the bandits become honest
people and even great personages. They achieve honors and wealth. Under the XXth dynasty, Thebes is peopled with
foreign officers and functionaries: half of the dignitaries is comprised of recently acclimatised Syrians or Berbers. Certain
of their names speak of their origin: Pa-khari, Pa-lamnani, P-alasiai, the Syrian, the Labanese, the Alasien, the Negro.
Furthermore, there were at Thebes, at Memphis, in all the large towns, colonies of Phoenician, Amorrheian, Chananean,
etc. merchants, who lived as they pleased, worshipped their gods, propogated their languages and their cults among the
natives, then, at the end of a long stay - our Cretan corsair stays seven years in Egypt - return home with a small fortune
and a great renown. It appears that, among the Achaeans, the man who has seen Egypt has the honor to take a name from
it: he is called the Egyptian, Αιγύπτιος. At Ithaca, the hero Aegyptios is always listened to when he rises to speak to the
people: he was old and very stooped; but he knew a thousand things which he had learned in the course of his voyages.

τοισι δ’ έπειθ’ ‘ήρως Αιγύπτιος ηρχ’ αγορεύειν

‘ος δη γήραϊ κυφος έην και μυρία ήδη.

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 During my childhood, in my little town in the Jura, where everyone lived by commerce with the foreigner, I knew of
“Girod of Portugal’ and “Lamy of California”, to whom their distant voyages had merited similar surnames and similar
renown. In present-day Ithaca, I knew Australians who had formerly been expatriated to Sydney or Melbourne and who,
their fortune made, returning to their country, enjoy their annuities and the public consideration. The Achaean corsairs
brought back from Egypt the jewels, chains, earrings and pendants, taken away from women. The merchants and enriched
colonists brought back the fortune acquired there in gold and in precious objects. The Egyptians will popularize the great
names and riches of Thebes and of Egypt throughout all the Achaean Hellade. All of the Homeric Hellade knew of the
gigantic and marvelous town, Thebes of the hundred gates, where there were such riches in the houses:

... ενι Θήβης

Αιγυπτίης ‘όθι πλειστα δόμοις εν κτήματα κειται.

It is the town of gold and precious metals, the “gilded town” of gold talents, gold spindles, of silver baths and baskets. It
is found that today the real Thebes of the Pharaos, the capitol of the Middle Empire and of the “Greatest” Egypt appears
to us, according to the historic texts, to entirely resemble the gilded town of the Odyssian poet. The inventories drawn up
by G. Maspero only explain the Homeric descriptions to us. Since the centuries when Great Egypt had deborded from all
areas outside the valley of the Nile, the tributes in gold from the kings and the peoples flowed toward it capitol:

The wealth was practically incalculable among the Egyptian barons, especially among those who belonged to the sacerdotal
families. The tributes and the spoils of Asia and Africa, once entering into the valley of the Nile, hardly ever left there. The chiefs of
the troops, the people of the royal entourage, the department of the palace and that of the temples absorbed the bulk of it. But bribes
came down to simple soldiers and down to their parents of the country or the towns. As the infiltration continues for four centuries
and more, one cannot dream of the quantities of gold and of metals which must have penetrated to the shores of the Nile under
twenty diverse forms, without stupefaction... The system of transactions is affected by the influx. They cut rings and plaques in a
predetermined weight of tabonu, and they are used to buying in return for tabonu of gold, silver or copper; similarly they quote, in
invoices, the value in weight of metal. This practice still left enormous masses which they left in ingots or bricks, or which they
fashioned into jewelry and sumptuous vases. The general affluence increased the passion for goldsmithing: the wearing of bracelets,
necklaces, chains will become common among the middle class, where it had previously been rare. One no longer saw a scribe or
merchant so poor that he did not wish to have his seal in gold, silver, in gilded copper... The sculptures of the temples and the
paintings of the tombs show what were the dishes that they piled up on the dressers of the palace. The gold alone, and the silver, into
which especially the bowls, the cut dishes, the amphoras, etc. had been carved, represented, in weight alone, [enormous] sums... The
furniture was pleasing: beds and armchairs in rare woods, heightened with gold or bone, sculptures, gilding, paints in bright and
lively tones, covered with mattresses and multicolored materials... The quantities of gold in ingots or in bands, whose figures have
been conserved in the Annals of Thutmoses III equal 1100 kilograms in weight, and a large part of the inscription has disappeared,
whose registered quantities would be at least equal to those [which we have]. In evaluating at 2000 kilograms the gold which
Thoutmosis received or obtained in twenty years of reign, from the XXIIIrd to the XLIInd year, we will certainly remain within the
probability. But the figures themselves do not count vases or statues or objects of furnishings or arms covered in gold. Silver arrived
in less considerable masses, but still of great value.

The Homeric poems give to three towns the epitheet of “rich in gold”, πολύχρυσος, Thebes of Egypt, Mycenae, and
Orchomene of Boeotia: for the three towns, we see thet the epithet is amply merited. The poems apply the epithet “golden
or gilded”, χρύσεος”, to objects which “ have never in real life, even when the taste for luxury has been the greatest, been
made in solid gold or silver, but have readily been gilded or silvered”, say the archeologists. Here again, it is allowed to
reject the opinion of the archeologists and their summary explanation of the Homeric text. I see no impediment to the
existance of batons, scepters, shuttles, spindles, baskets and chairs of gold, or even of reins, sandals and baldrics of gold:
“Reins,” say the archeologists,”can only be made of an elastic and supple material, such as leather.” But, from all times,
the Orientals have loved and manufactured cords, braids and threads of gold which, braided or plaited, could have
furnished reins. Egypt of the pharaos should have known the same luxury in its harness and trappings for horses as in its

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furnishings and costumes for men. And from Egypt, the petty Achaean kings will be able to have the second-hand harness
of gold, which the pharao or his people would no longer want, as the royal stables of Athens today have the gilded
vehicles and harness which the zeal of the legitimist agents had prepared, in 1873, for the reëntrance of king Henry V into
his good town of Paris.
It also appears that the archeologists have negelected a little to comment on their findings in light of the givens of the
Homeric text. There is a sevenfold rhythm of which we have spoken at length. “The richest of the jewelry found at Troy
is a diadem of purest gold. From a narrow band hang seven chains from each side, which reach the shoulders. Each of
these is comprised of fifty-seven links... Among the ornaments destined to cover the temples, there are fifty shorter small
chains, of which each is composed of twenty-one (7x3) links; the sixty-four small chains are composed of no less than
seventeen hundred fifty links (7x250).” We find here again the same sevenfold and fiftyfold rhythm as in Leviticus or in
certain Odyssian passages. And it does not seem to be a simple effect of chance, for here is another Mycenaean jewelry
where “the influence of the oriental art makes itself felt”. In a band which terminates in two serpent heads, four figures of
animals are grouped, two facing dogs and two monkeys back to back. Around the band, fourteen small chains support
seven small owls and seven flat discs: “all the leaves and plaques have been cut with a punch from a thin plate of gold. As
for threads, one can only obtain them so fine by passing gold through the holes of a drawplate.” If we have such threads
of gold. why deny the possibilty of reins and braids of gold?

*
* *

For seven years, our Cretan corsair remains in Egypt and accumulates much wealth. Everyone, down there, gave him
gifts:

ένθα μεν ‘επτάετες μένον αυτόθι, πολλα δ’ άγειρα

χρήματ’ εν’ Αιγυπτίους άνδρας. δίδοσαν γαρ ‘άπαντες.

Menelaus and Helen also relate the numerous gifts from their Egyptian hosts. Helen first received from Polydamna, wife
of Thon, the famous nepenthes, the anesthetic of the marvelous doctors of Egypt, of which I I have already had the
occasion to speak; but but we should look at it again, if we wish to establish further the exact understanding of Egypt of
which the verse testifies: “Each doctor there is more knowledgeable than all men, for they are from the race of Paion”,

ιητρός δε ‘έκαστος επιστάμενος περι πάντων

ανθρώπων. η γαρ Παιήονός εισι γενέθλης.

Egypt, says G. Maspero, is by nature a very healthy place, and the Egyptians praise themselves as being “the most healthy of all
the mortals”. They showed themselves to be more attentive to caring for their health. “Each month,” says Herodotus, “three days at a
time, they provoke evacuations by means of emetics and purgatives... Medicine among them is specialized: each doctor concerns
himself with one illness and not with several, μιης νούσου ‘έκαστος ιητρός έστι και ου πλεόνων. The doctors abound everywhere:
ones for the eyes, others for the head, others for the teeth, others for the stomach, others for invisible maladies.” The subdivision did
not extend as far as Herodotus well wished to say. One ordinarily distinguished only between the doctor coming from the sacerdotal
schools and as completed by the study of books as by everyday experience, the bonesetter, attached to the cult of Sokhit, and who
attended to the fractures under the intercession of the goddess, and the exorcist who pretended to act only by the virtue of amulets
and magic words. The career physician treated all of the illnesses in general. But, as with us, there were for certain afflictions some
specialists whom they consulted by preference. If the number of them was considerable enough to attract the attention of the
foreigners, it is that the nature of the country required it: where the ophthalmopathies and the afflictions of the intestines are rife,
there will necessarily be lots of oculists and lots of doctors in abdominal maladies... The science was purely exterior and attached

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itself only to common illnesses, and sometimes described them in a precise and picturesque fashion: [as, in the medical papyrus of
Berlin], the beginning of the gastric fevers so frequent in Egypt. The recommended medications comprise almost all those which, in
nature, are able to be used. The vegetable species are counted at about twenty. We note among the mineral substances sea salt, alum,
saltpeter, copper sulfate, twenty sorts of stone, among which the memphis stone is distinguished by its virtues: applied to the
lacerated or diseased parts of the body, it rendered them insensible to pain.

There is something equivalent to our Homeric nepenthes, suppressing the excitation and the pain:

νηπενθές τ’ άχολόν τε, κακων επίληθον ‘απάντων,

but the nepenthes was a remedy for internal usage: Helen uses it for the wound of Telemachus. The medical science of the
Egyptians should have sufficiently astonished the people from abroad that it was unique in the contemporary world:

Chaldea abounded in astrologers, no less in seers and necromancers. It did not posess, as Egypt did, a veritable school of
Medicine where they taught the rational means of diagnosing the maladies and of treating by employing simples. It contented itself,
for treating the bodies, with sorcerers or exorcists, able to detect the demons or spirits whose presence in a living body determines
the disorders to which humanity is subject. The general features of the patient during the crises, the words in the delerium were for
the cunning person enough indication of the nature and sometimes even of the name of the enemy to combat: the god Fever, the god
Plague, the god Headache. The consultations and the treatment thus were of religious offices, of purifications, of offerings, of words
and of mysterious gestures... Remedies accompanied the magic words, baroque remedies of regrettable composition for the most
part: shavings of bitter or rotton trees, raw meat, serpent’s flesh, etc... Egyptian medicine admitted similar remedies; but they appear
there only to be the exception. Chaldean medicine recommended them before all the others, and their strangeness even reassures the
patient of their efficacy; they repelled the spirits and delivered the posessed only by the invincible horror with which they filled the
persecutors.

We understand the admiration of the Achaeans and other peoples for medical Egypt which, alone, furnishes the
remedies and poisons, which, alone, knew the herbs and the simples:

... τη πλειστα φέρει ζείδωρος άρουσα

φάρμακα, πολλα μεν εσθλα μεμιγμένα, πολλα δε λυγρα.

Pills or potions, poltices or ointments, teas or clysters, Egyptian medicine had at its disposal all of the means by which we still are
served to introduce the remedies into the organism. They did not separate their arrt from that of the pharmacist. They gave the
ingredients, put them together or separately, let them soak acccording to the art, boiled them, reduced them in the oven, filtered them
through linen. Many of the remedies have made their way through the world: the Greeks will borrow them from the Egyptians; we
have taken them devoutly from the Greeks, and our contemporaries still avail themselves with resignation of a good number of
abominable mixtures, which were imagined on the shores of the Nile, long before the construction of the pyramids.

Helen and Meneleus have also carried back from Egypt a spindle of gold, a basket of silver, two silver bathtubs, two
tripods and ten talents of gold, which come from Thebes “where the objects of value abound in the houses”. The ten
talents of gold well resemble the “tabonu” of gold which G. Maspero just described to us, in masses, rings or plates of
weighed metal, which they employed for trade or which they kept for later making jewelry and vases. The Golenischeff
papyrus relates to us the voyage and the nostos of the priest Unu-Amon; doyen of the hypostyle room of the temple of
Amon, Unu-Amon was sent from Egypt to Syria to bring back the wood needed for the ship of Amon-Ra, king of the
gods:

The year V, in the third month of the flood, the seventh day, I left for Tanis home of Nisisubanibdadu and his wife (?) Tent-
Amon. I presented him the requests of Amon-Ra, king of the gods. Having read them, he will say, “We will act on the words of
Amon-Ra...” [The mission lasted an entire year. The petty Syrian king retains the messenger and sends the timbers by his servants].

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His envoy left for Egypt and returned to Syria the first month of spring. Smendes and Tent-Amon will send four jars of gold, seven
jars of silver, a piece of cotton of a dozen cubits, 10 pieces of various papyrus, 500 pieces of leather, etc.

Menelaus had some apparent presents from his hosts, Polybos and Alkandra, “who were living at Thebes”. The poet
does not tell us that they were king and queen there. But Polybos should have been a powerful lord, one of the great
barons whose wealth G. Maspero has inventoried for us. It is probable, in effect, that the great barons continue, in their
palace of Thebes, to receive the foreign petty kings who came to pay court to the pharao. Thebes was at that time the
rendez-vous of all the petty kings of the Levant and of the Occident. All of those who pretended, with or without reason,
to hold a scepter or a whip, gathered at the feet of the pharao. Under the pretext of offering some tribute or presenting
some petition, the petty kings of Asia came to claim the pay for their pretended services and the recompense for their
pretended loyalty. The great Egyptian conquerers of the XVIIthe and XIXth dynasties had already imposed a real tribute
and an effective vassalage on the small realms. The obscure Ramses, who will later parade through the streets of Thebes,
will in reality no longer retain the empire of their predecessors. They no longer had anything but the appearances. With
attentiveness they received the embassadors and the presents from all of the “Behanzins” of their times. On their royal
epitaths they listed the poor gifts as so much tribute, and the petty kings as so many vassals. To take their accounts
literally - they copied the formulas and terms of their great predecessors - we would believe that we were still in the times
of “Greater Egypt”, when all of the kings of Africa and Asia, black and white, beseiged the Theban court with letters,
visits and supplicants, denouncing their neighbors, claiming a subsidy or imploring a favor.

Each of the petty kings boasted of his proven zeal, enumerated the services which he had been or would be able to render...
Presents ordinarily accompanied the protestations and produced a double effect: they gained the benevolence and they suggested a
polite response, accompanied by more considerable presents. The etiquette, in all of the Orient, still held that the gift of a less
powerful or wealthy friend imposed upon the receiver the obligation to return more. Each one, small or great, should have measured
his liberality by the opinion which they had or formed of him. A personage as opulent as the king of Egypt was obliged to evidence
an almost limitless generosity, acccording to the most elementary laws of current civility: did he not, in their fantasy, exploit the
mines of the Holy Land and the placers of the upper Nile? “was not gold the dust of his land?” Pharao had not asked for better than
what was shown all around. But the reiterated demands upon his purse had, to the contrary, ended in parsimony. He would have been
ruined without fail, and Egypt as well, if he had given all that they expected of him. The presents which he gave did not always
accord to that which they had imagined, two or three pounds of precious metals, when they had flattered themselves to extort twenty
or thirty. Then the indignation and recriminations of the beggars said: “Since the time that my father and yours had established
amicable relations, they will shower each other mutually with presents, they will never await a request to exchange good actions; and
now my brother sends me the gift of two gold mines. Send me lots of gold, as much as your father, and it should be even more than
your father.” The pretexts never end: this one is beginning to build a temple or a palace in his capitol; that one intends his daughter
for the pharao, and the subsidies would serve to complete the fiancee’s trousseau.

The archives of Tel-el-Amarna have provided us the correspondance and the names of the petty kings of Syria and
Chaldea which were thusly addressed to the pharao. There has not yet come to us any letter from the Achaean petty kings.
I do not doubt that they too recognized the nominal sovereignty of Egypt and claimed the presents from the pharao in
exchange for a more or less fictional tribute. When Thutmes III boasted of having subjugated “the peoples who inhabit
the isles of the Great Sea”, when the god Amon says to Thutmes: “I give you the Tahenhu and the isles of the Danau to
crush”, when finally high Egyptian functionaries are entitled “Messagers of the king in the entire foreign region of the
Lands located in the Most Green”, I readily believe, with P. Foucart and D. Mallet, that we neeed to take the words
literally and “familiarize ourselves with the idea of an Egyptian empire which, established in the basin of the Aegean sea
and on a part of the Mediterranean coasts, lasts from the XVIIth to the XIIIth centuries”. The Greek traditions and the
archeological findings furnish some evidence of the Egyptian thalassocracy. One of the traditions, that of Lelax the
Egyptian established at Megara, has been verified by us in our study of the Megarian topology and toponymy: I believe it
indisputable that a vassal of the pharao established himself on the strait of Salamine; this vassal was not Egyptian but
Phoenician, for the Megarian toponymy is of Semitic origin. It is probable that in a great number of other places the same

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Phoenician thalassocracy represented in reality an Egyptian influence, the kings of Tyre or Sidon being just the vassals
and the functionaries of the pharao. We see in the Odyssey that Egypt and Phonecia are for the Achaeans two almost
indiscernable lands, Sidon being just the echelle of Thebes.
But, to hold only to the Odyssian text, disregarding the Nostos of Menelaus which we are now going to study in still
more detail, I do not believe that we can affirm the voyage, the sojourn and the real presence of the Achaean petty kings
at the Theban court, no more than we can, following the Nostos of Ulysses, affirm the real presence of the Achaeans in
Spain. And it is for this itself that the study of the Nostos of Menelaus is very important for the rest of our enterprise. The
Odyssian episode evidences an indisputable knowledge of Egypt. Here, as elsewhere, the Greek poet has invented
nothing. For the beginning of the adventures of Menelaus, we are going to comment on most of the words only by
comparison to the most authentic monuments of the Egyptian history. In the Nostos of Menelaus lies the marvelous
account of Proteus and of the isle of the Seals. This account can take its place, in the Nostos of Ulysses, beside Calypso,
Circe and the isle of the Cattle of the Sun. Assuredly, this is a tale: Proteus never existed. But it still is not an invention of
the Odyssian poet. Upon minute study, the tale of Proteus appears as an excellent page of Egyptology, which one of our
scholars would have great difficulty to make so exact, and which the homeric bard was not able to produce, I believe,
without faithfully copying some foreign original.

CHAPTER II
THE EGYPTIAN TALES

Pharao caused all of the magicians of Egypt to come.

Genesis, XLI, 8.

Our Achaean corsair, leaving from Crete the seventh day, had remained in Egypt for a week of years. Menelaus, after
a week of years in the “foreign” land, is arrested for three weeks of days on the isle of Pharos. Here is nothing marvelous
or unusual. We know that the wait for a favorable wind can last three weeks and more. In the region of the Nile, the winds
ordinarily blow from the north. The Borea and the Zephyr prevent the return of the boats which come back toward Greece
and which would wish to have winds from the south. The Nautical Instructions calculate that the winds from the north,
northeast and northwest, blow here about 250 days of the year; from May to November, especially, during the navigating
season of the ancients, the winds blow more than 150 days out of 180.

I waited in Alexandria, says Thevenot, for the wind to become good for passing with the saïque to Rosetta. But seeing that the
wind did not change at all and that apparently the saïque could not pass to Rosetta for a month, I unpacked my old clothes and
resolved to go there by land. - I fortunately found, says d’Arvieux, a saïque which went to raise anchor for Saint-Jean of Acre. I
traveled with the captain. We set sail [from Damietta] with a small wind from the south, which carries us to the bogas: this is what
they call the northwest mouth, by which the Nile enters the sea. But we had to wait there for the time to become propitious for
passing out... We were there fourteen entire days at the bogas because of the wind from without, which was so violent that it had
pushed mountains of sand into the mouth... During this long term we ate very poorly. We were reduced to eating only rice, some dry
fruits, onions, and some vegetables which we seasoned with sesame oil, which is a very bad stew.

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 Menelaus and his companions, on their isle of Pharos, are reduced to even worse fare. Their provisions ran out and the
lack made itself felt when, on the twenty-first day, Menelaus meets a divine daughter who is going to deliver them from
suffering, Eidothea, daughter of Proteus. She points out to Menelaus the means to surprise and bind the Old Man of the
Sea, the true seer, Proteus, who came to the seashore every day to pasture his herd of seals. She furnishes Menelaus four
seal skins under which the hero conceals himself with three companions. She also gives him some ambrosia to attenuate
the terrible odor of the oily skins. When the Old Man comes from the sea, the men seize and bind him. No matter that he
struggles and takes twenty terrible or grotesque forms: they do not release him until he has satisfied their curiosity
concerning the future. He thus reveals to them the route to follow for returning to their homeland, the sacrifices to make
to appease the gods, and he brings them up to date with that which has passed in the army of the Achaeans during their
seven years of Return.
An unwarned reader, who would search for a counterpart to the tale, would go straight to the Thousand and One
Nights, and surely he would find similar stories in the seven voyages of Sinbad the sailor. Thus here, Eratosthenes would
have good sport in mocking the “Most Homerics” and in attesting that the poet has cared, not about truth, but uniquely
about teratologies. The sourcerer who changes himself into a lion, a serpent, a panther, a great pig, a tree, a fire, in brief,
into anything he pleases; the shepherd of seals in a deserted isle; the seer who reveals the past and the future; the daughter
of the gods who gives ambrosia to betray her father - what a gallery of unreal beings!... And it is nevertheless one of
historical personages who, in relity, have figured in Egyptian history.
All of the peoples, without doubt, have their stories of magicians. The French corsairs of the XVIIIth century were
acquainted with personages knowing how to calm or raise the tempest at their will: “They spread it everywhere,” relates
d’Arvieux, “that the storm had been caused by a magician whom the Emir Fekherdin had put up to it, and that, without
being well explained, the curse spares only the galleys of the Great Lord, and had effect only on the ships which were in
the port. We saw a great black cloud raise itself from the coast of the north which, in advancing itself, produced raging
winds mixed with lightening and thunder, which will blow all of the ships off course and throw them onto the reefs.” The
folklorists thus would have good sport to find for us, among the white, black and yellow peoples of all the world, a
hundred personages who could superficially resemble the Proteus of Menelaus. But do not forget that the old Egyptians
already had their tales of sourcery, and that these stories have come to us in the written monuments, under thir original
form. Now, if there is anything which sailors willingly borrow from foreign countries or fleets, it is stories: the French
corsairs have brought us the Thousand and One Nights from muslim Egypt. It is that the navigation by sail holds long
hours of inaction for the crews, whether aboard when the well-established wind takes charge of pushing the vessel and
when “the pilot and the breeze hold sway”, or ashore when the bad weather holds the fleets at anchor. To occupy the idle
time, each ship, formerly, had its renowned storyteller who gathered around himself a numerous audience and who, for
hours, invented or repeated interminable fables. The invention, in general, was only mediocre. Before the embarkation,
the storyteller had laid in a supply, ashore and from the other sailors, of tales and adventures, which he later recited
without changing a word of them: from one crew to another, from one generation to the succeeding, the same accounts,
hardly changed, were transmitted. Now, Egypt was a mine of stories for the sailors of all times. At the beginning of
written history, the Hellenes declared to have borrowed their Aesop’s fables and the marvelous animals which speak,
behaving and reasoning like men:

The Egyptians, says G. Maspero, loved to be told stories. Their favorites were adventures where their curiosity was piqued, of
speaking beasts, of disguised gods, of ghosts, of magic... The hero of the Egyptian stories was placed in the midst of these incidents
without appearing to consider them to be strange, or in fact to conflict with the probabilities of everyday life. In each town, they
knew of sourcerers who knew how to transfigure themselves into beasts, or to raise the dead. The most extravagant tales of fantasy
differed from reality only in accumulating in a dozen pages more miracles than [in daily life] they were accustomed to see in years. It
is the multiplicity of prodigies which gave to the narration its color of romantic improbability, and not the the prodigies themselves.
Only the quality of the personages departs from the ordinary. They are sons of kings, Syrian princes, Pharaos, sometimes a vague
Pharao without individuality, whom they designate by a title, Piruiaui, Pruiti, more often a Pharao chosen from among the most
illustrious, Cheops, Sesostris, Amenothes, etc...

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 The mere fact of introducing Pharao imposed a certain style, at least certain formulas of protocol. Pharao being a god
on earth, mortals speak of him only by cover words, with paraphrases which became popular. He is the Double Palace:
parui-aui, said the Egyptians, or paru, ‫פועה‬, φαραώ, pharao, the Semites, the Hellenes and the modern peoples have
transcribed. It is His Majesty, or, His Holiness, the Sun of the Two Worlds, Horus, Master of the Land. He is also the
Sublime Gate: Pruiti, Pruti, the Egyptians said. It is the name of pruiti or pruti that the Homeric poet takes back under the
form of Πρωτεύς, proteus. His Proteus is just the Pharao of the Egyptian stories. As soon as they will encounter the
Homeric Proteus, the Egyptian priests of the classical epoch will recognize their Pharao of the stories. And they put him
back into his true place, in an imaginary dynasty. They will tell Herodotus that Proteus was a king of Memphis, sucessor
to the one-eyed Pharao who was to have recovered his sight when he would encounter a woman having never lain down
except with her husband, and predecessor of the opulent Rampsinit, who was so nimbly robbed by the sons of the
architect.
The story of Rampsinit is known to us only through Herodotus. G. Maspero has nevertheless edited it among the
Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt, under the same title as the veritable Egyptian stories found on papyrus, and he explains
to us very well in good faith how Herodotus and the Hellenes had transported the story in the authentic history.

The interpreters, the priests of lower rank, who guided the foreigners, knew well enough that which was the edifice that they
showed, who had founded it, who had enlarged it, and which part bore the cartouche of the sovereign. But as soon as they were
pressed for details, they knew no more than to spout fables. The Greeks had business with these people, and we have only to read the
second book of Herodotus to see how they gave information about Egypt’s past. Some of the he-says that Herodotus collected still
contain a more-or-less altered ensemble of facts, the history of the XXVIth dynasty, for example, or that of Sesostris. Most of the
accounts anterior to Psammetic Ist are with [Herodotus] veritable romances where fact has no part. His story of Rampsinitos is found
in places other than Egypt. The legendary life of the kings constructing the pyramids has nothing in common with their real life. The
adventure of the one-eyed Pharao is a satyric piece against women. The encounter of Proteus with Helen and Menelaus is at the most
entirely the Egyptian adaptation of a Greek legend. They could have asked themselves formerly if the guides had drawn the fables
from their proper sources. The discovery of the Egyptian stories proved that there, as in other ways, the guides lacked imagination.
They limited themselves to repeating the stories that had passed among the people. The task was even easier for them in that most of
the heroes of the romances bore authentic names or titles. The dynasties [thus forged by the Greek historians] are a mix of proper
names, Minis, Cheops, Khefren, Mykerinos, of royal first names, Miris, of popular sobriquets, Sesusri, Sesostris, of words formed of
contradictory elements (Rhampsinit is the Theban name Ramses and the Saïte title Si-nit, son of Nit), and finally of titles, Phero,
Pruti, of which they have made proper nouns... It is from Pruti that the Greek legend draws the king Proteus who received Paris,
Helen and Menelaus.

The great Egyptologist appears to see here only the legend of Proteus in Herodotus: he inclines to think that the
original mythology of the Hellenes had had, from all times, the personage of Proteus, but that, toward the times of
Herodotus, the Egyptians or the Hellenes will relate the Homeric Proteus to the Egyptian Pruti and adapt the Greek
legend to the stories of Egypt. We should go further, I believe. The story of Proteus in Herodotus is without doubt the
Egyptian readaptation of an Homeric legend; but the Homeric legend itself had been only the Greek adaptation of an
Egyptian story. It is just the Pharao, the Pruti, or, if you will, the khalif, the Harun-al-Rashid, from one of the old
Egyptian Thousand and One Nights. They still deliver us the originals of only a very small number of pharaonic stories. It
nevertheless suffices to study such a small number, to find there all the characteristic traits of our Odyssian romance.

We should not judge the conditions of the Egyptian life by our own. We do not commonly employ apparitions of divinities,
transformation of men into beasts, speaking animals, magical operations, etc., as resorts of romances. Even those [among us] who
firmly believe in miracles of this type, consider them as an occurrence of the most rare sort. It was not thus in Egypt: sorcery had its
place there in the everyday life, as much as war, commerce, literature, professions that they exercised, diversions which they took.
Not everyone had seen the prodigies which sorcery performed; but everyone knew someone who had seen these prodigies
accomplished, who had profited or suffered from them. Magic thus was a science, and of a very high order. To consider things well,
the priest was a magician. The ceremonies which he accomplished, the prayers which he recited were sufficiently of the magical arts

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by which he obliged the god to do this or that act, to afford him this or that favor in this world or in the other. The priest bearer of the
book (khri-habi), who posessed all the secrets of the divinity in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld, could perform all of the
miracles which they asked of him. Pharao always had at his side several of these savants, whom they called khri-habi in chief, and
who were his titled magicians. He consulted them and, when they had created some new marvel for him, he showered them with
presents and honors. One knew how to reattach a freshly severed head to the trunk, another to fabricate a crocodile which devoured
his enemies, a third cut and opened the waters or piled them up at his pleasure. The great ones themselves, initiated in the
supernatural sciences, were convincing decipherers of mystical mumbo-jumbo. A sorcerer prince inspires in us only a mediocre
esteem; in Egypt, magic was not incompatible with royalty, and the sorcerers of Pharao frequently had Pharao for a student.

Here is the beginning of an Egyptian story: “Once upon a time there was a Pharao named Usir-mari, and the king had
two sons by the same mother: Satni-Khamois was the name of the older, Anhathoreroon the name of the second. Satni-
Khamois was well-instructed in all things. He knew how to read the books of sacred scripture and the books of the
Double House of life, and he knew the virtues of amulets and talismans, and he was very good at producing them, and at
composing the powerful spells, for he was a magician who had no equal at all in the land of Egypt.” The beginning has
been reconstructed by G. Maspero; but all of the words in it have been borrowed from the rest of the story, as the papyrus
has preserved for us. And the tale is just the story of a sorcerer prince, of a son of Pruti, future Pruti himself, who was
entirely given to the magical arts. In the tomb of the great Noferkephtah, they find the magic book of Thoth. The book
sets the men who understand it “just below the gods”. Two formulas were written there: “If you recite the first, you will
charm heaven, earth, the world of the night, the mountains, the waters; you will know the birds and the reptiles, all that
there are; you will see the fishes of the abyss,
[cf. the Odyssian Proteus and his knowledge of the abysses of all the sea,

... ‘ός τε θαλάσσης

πάσης βένθεα οιδε... ]

for a divine force will make them come to the surface of the water. If you read the second formula, even though you may
be in the tomb, you take the form again that you had on earth.” Noferkephtah himself was a royal prince, son of the pruti
Minephtah, and he had also searched the marvelous book of Thoth to perfect himself in the magical sciences. He was
party to the discovery of the book with his wife Akhuri, who was, she also, a daughter of pruti, because, in the Egyptian
style, Noferkephtah had married his sister by his mother and father (the daughters of pruti appeared in the Egyptian
stories, like Eidothea, the daughter of Proteus, in the Homeric story, and like the daughter of Pharao in the Hebrew story,
saved from the waters). Noferkephtah fabricates a boat full of his workmen and their tools. He recites the incantation; he
gives it life; he gives it respiration. He launches the boat on the Nile, makes a hole in the waters of the river, discovers the
book of Thoth under a swarm of serpents, scorpions and reptiles. A divine serpent is coiled on the chest which contains
the book. Noferkephtah recites his incantation, attacks the serpent and kills it. But the serpent comes back to life one, two
and three times again. The magician prince finishes by killing it and masters the book. Akhuri, the daughter of pruti, reads
the formulae: “I immediately enchanted heaven, the earth, the world of night, the waters. I knew all that the birds of
heaven, the fish of the abyss and the quadrupeds said... I saw the fish of the water, for there was a divine force which
made them rise to the surface of the water.”
[Cf. the Odyssian Proteus who makes the seals of the foaming sea surface:

αμφι δέ μιν φωκαι νέποδες καλης αλοσύδνης

‘αθρόαι ε‘ύδουσιν πολιης ‘αλος εξαναδυσαι.]

Noferkephtah similarly drew from the Nile a little child who came to be drowned, “for, after the recitation of the
incantation, there was a divine force in the water which pushes the body to the surface”. And Noferkephtah similarly

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makes the corpse of his wife rise. But Thoth complains to Ra of the larceny of Noferkephtah. Ra makes a divine force
descend from heaven which prevents Noferkephtah from reëntering to Memphis safe and sound, him and all his family.
[Cf. the question of Menelaus: which of the gods prevents me from returning home?

‘ός τίσ μ’ αθανάτων πεδάα και έδησε κελεύθου

νόστον θ’ ‘ώς επι πόντον ελεύσομαι ιχθυόεντα΄]

In the story of the King Khufui and the Magicians appears a certain Didi who also knew the books of Thoth and who,
by virtue of it, knew how to make lions follow him across the land, as our Proteus made the seals follow. In all of the
other pharaonic stories, the magical arts allow man to bind or loose the will of the gods and render their power captive:

The religious hymns, says G. Maspero, had to repeat many times in beautiful sonorous strophes: “We do not carve the god at all
in stone or in the statues on which we place the double crown; we do not see him; no service, no offering comes to him; we cannot
summon him in the mysterious ceremonies, we do not find him by the power of sacred books.” It was true that each of the gods were
considered as an ideal, absolute, perfect being. But in the ordinary life they dreamed little of the philosophical gods. Ra, Osiris, Shu
and Amon were not inaccessible. They had retained from their passage on the earth a sort of weakness and imperfection which
ceaselessly restored them on earth. They carved them in stone. They summoned them in sanctuaries and painted shrines. There were
words which, pronounced by a human voice, penetrated to the bottom of the abyss, formulas whose force made an irresistable
attraction. By virtue of the formulas and the words, man set hand on the gods; he enrolled them in his service, sent them or recalled
them, forced them to work and fight for him. Thoth, who had shown evil to men, at the same time signaled the remedy. The magic
arts, of whom he was the repository, made of him the real master of the other gods. He knew their mystical names, their secret
weaknesses, the type of peril which they feared the most, the ceremonies which enslaved them, the prayers which they could not at
all disobey under pain of misfortune or death. His knowledge, transmitted to his servants, assured them the same authority in heaven,
on earth, and in the underworlds. His magicians disposed words and sounds which, emitted at the favorable moment with the right
voice, evoked the most formidable divinities. They enslaved Osiris, Set, Anubis, and Thoth himself, and liberated them at their
pleasure.

It is the operation which Eidothea counsels to Menelaus toward the god Proteus (Pruti- Pharao is a god, son of a god,
and the Egyptians give him the names of son of Ra, flesh of the Sun, Living Horus, etc.): Eidothea says, “You should
ambush him and take him by force”,

τόν γ’ εί πως συ δύναιο λοχησάμενος λελαβέσθαι.

And Menelaus involves himself in the venture, “even though it may be difficult for a mortal to subdue a god”,

αργαλέος γαρ τ’ εστι θεος βροτω ανδρι δαμηναι.

And Proteus, the magician god, employs in effect all the resources of his art to escape: he becomes a lion, a serpent,
boar, panther, water, a great tree, and fire. In a story from the papyrus, we observe the same metamorphoses. Bitiu says to
his brother: “I am going to become a great bull. Sit on my back when the sun rises.” They go in this manner to Pharao,
who kills the bull. Then Bitiu becomes a tree, and even two great trees, which they admired in all the world, and they go
to say to Pruti: “Two great trees have sprouted in a great miracle.”
[Cf. the Odyssian verse: “he became water and a tree with high branches”,

γίγνετο δ’ ‘υγρον ‘ύδωρ και δενδρεον ‘υψιπέτηλον.]

Pruti orders it to be cut. Then Bitiu, under the form of a wood chip, jumps into the mouth of the [Pharao’s] favorite
and, passing into the abdomen, makes himself a little baby, who reappears to the day: declared the royal prince, he

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becomes Pruti in his turn. Another story mentions the metamorphosis of a man into fire. On a desert isle, a great serpent
menaces a shipwrecked man: “If you hesitate to tell me what you have brought to the isle, I will make you know the little
that you are; like a flame, you will become invisible.” He is not as far as the panther, which does not also figure in the
stories, for the habitual metaphor for depicting the anger of Pharao-Pruti is: “he enters in fury like a panther from the
south”.
After all the metamorphoses, our Odyssian Proteus finishes by retaking his ordinary form, which is that of a large old
man, such as accords a man of knowledege, gravity and dignity. It is also the form which Noferkephtah assumes: “He
manifests himself under the form of an old man very advanced in age. Do you not know where Akhuri and Mikhonsu,
your child, are?” - And Noferkephtah gives Satni news of all his family, as Proteus goes to reveal to Menelaus the fate of
all the Greek heroes, whom he has not seen since their departure from Troy.
But, in the Odyssian text, the Old Man of the Sea does not have the distinguished white hair, the silvered curls of an
eternal Father. He is not such as our people would imagine today. He has a black wig bristling from the Zephyr:

πνοιη ‘υπο Ζεφύροιο μελαίνη φρικι καλυφθείς.

If the god was not the Old Man of the Sea, the black hair could without doubt have accorded with the ruler of the
waves, which bristle and darken under the winds from the north: “The winds of the north,” say the Nautical Instructions,
“are most frequently cold, and obscre the horizon. The gales of summer are almost always preceeded by calms, and the
sea, around the horizon, takes a dark hue.” It is exactly that which two Homeric verses describe to us: “The wind from the
northwest, the Zephyr, rises; a bristling runs over the sea, which becomes black”,

ο‘ίη δε Ζεφύροιο εχεύατο πόντον επι φριξ

ορνυμένοιο νέον, μελάνει δέ τε πόντος ‘υπ’ αυτης,

and the Syrian populations know wind from the north which they call the Black Borea, Μελαμβορειον. But the black wig
accords even much better with the pruti of Egypt, Proteus Aigyptios. For Pruti never goes out without a dark wig: “The
hair, braided, curled, oiled, matted with grease, formed an edifice as complicated for men as for women. If it was too
short, he substituted a black or blue wig. Wigs figure from the greatest antiquity in the lists of offerings. The usage of
them is still common in contemporary Africa. The blue wig has been found among certain tribes which descended from
Abyssinia. Specimens have been brought back by J. Borelli to the museum of the Trocadero.” The Egyptian nobles have
wigs tinted blue-black, in true lapis-lazuli, in khesbet, as the inscriptions say, in kyanos, the Homeric poet would say.

An Egyptian scribe describes the mythological figure of Phra in a papyrus: “The bones are of silver, his flesh of gold, his hair of
khesbet, his eyes of two crystals; a beautiful disk of mafek is behind.” For the bones which are of silver, the choice of the metal is
justified by its white color. The flesh is of gold, that is to say, yellow: the shades by which the Egyptians represent the human body
vary between the reddish yellow for men and the pale yellow for women. Sometimes the masks of mummies are completely gilded.
It is nevertheless of black and white paints; but the colors refer to the myth of Osiris dead and resurrected, and have an exceptional
signification. The hair is of khesbet, that is to say blue like lapis, or depicted by true or imitated lapis. We would not expect to find a
similar color for hair. But the monuments are in agreement with the texts. M. Mariette describes the rich mummies of the Greco-
Romen epoch as generally being with a gilded mask, with the hair painted blue. An enameled coiffure, where blue dominates, made
part of the collections of the Louvre... Even the eyebrows have sometimes been represented in blue enamel. In referring to ther texts,
we see that, in the funerary ceremony of Osiris, the statuette should have the hair of khesbet and that the priest wore a wig of true
lapis on his head.

Certain Homeric epithets would furnish us exact translations for the flesh of gold, the bones of silver, and the hair of
khesbet. For the poet knew Aphrodites of gold, χρυσέν Αφροδίτη, Thetises with feet of silver, Θέτις αργυρόπεζα, and
Poseidons with hair of kyanos, κυανοχαιτα Ποσειδάων. It is with the black or blue wig, of khesbet, that the Pruti of the

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Egyptian stories comes to breathe the delicious breath of the winds from the north. The Prutis of reality, that is to say, the
authenic pharaos, had no greater pleasure: In the Egypt burned by the winds from the desert, only the sea wind from the
northwest, the Zephyr of the Hellenes, brings some coolness. The breath of the winds from the northwest is also one of
the sweetnesses, the most praised, of the Egyptian paradise. Proteus goes later to speak with Menelaus.
Between Proteus and Pruti, between the Homeric story and the Egyptian stories, there are, I believe, some notable
resemblances. Nevertheless, the papyruses have still brought us only a dozen pharaonic stories, and some of them in a
pitiful state of fragmentation. Two of the stories have dealt, like our Homeric story, with things of the sea, and almost all
of the others have some scene in distant lands:

I know, says J. Maspero, that I would greatly astonish the people in maintaining that, everything considered, the Egyptians were
above all a voyaging people. We are accustomed to representing them as a stay-at-home people, humdrum, infatuated with the
superiority of their race to the point of not wishing to visit any others, so enamored of their land as to leave only by necessity. The
situation was perhaps true in the Greco-Roman epoch, although the presence of wandering Egyptian priests, necomancers, jongleurs,
sailors, in different points of the empire of the Caesars and as far as the depths Great Britain, prove that at least a part of the
population evidenced no repugnance to travel, when it found profit in doing so. But was that which was perhaps true of the aged and
degenerated Egypt equally true of Pharaonic Egypt?
The armies of the warrior Pharaos drew behind them employees, merchants, pawnbrokers, people of all sorts. The campaigns
being renewed each year, it was almost every year that some thousands of Egyptians left the country following the conquerors... The
idea of travel enters so familiarly into the spirit of the nation that the scribes will not hesitate to take it as a theme for their exercises.
One of them has dedicated twenty pages of beautiful writing to trace the itinerary of an excursion to Syria. The habitual accidents of
a voyage of those times, forests populated with beasts and bandits, broken wagons, pictureque details, etc., easily formed the canvas
of a geographic romance, similar to certain Byzantine romances, to Ethiopics of Heliodorus or to Loves of Clitophon and Leucippa.
The heroes of our stories travel greatly abroad. One of our [imaginary] Ramses marries the daughter of the prince of Bakhtan in
the course of an expedition. The predestined prince goes to search his fortune in Naharaina, in the middle of northern Syria.. It is in
southern Syria, at Joppa, that Thuiti displays his qualities as a cunning soldier. The exile leads Sinuhit into Idumea. The man who
relates the adventures of Sinuhit had either voyaged himself in the desert region which he described, or known people who had
voyaged there: “The thirst fell upon me. I groaned. My throat contracted. I said to myself already: ‘It is the taste of death.’ When I
raised up my heart and rallied my strength, I heard the distant voice of people. A Sitti gives me water and fixes some milk for me.”
Menelaus and his companions knew similar sufferings on the isle of Proteus. They had drinking water. But at the end
of twenty days, the provisions will come to run out, with the courage of the men:

καί νύ κεν ήια πάντα κατέφθιτο και μένε ανδρων.

They had to fish all around the isle, and hunger gnawed at their stomachs:

αιει γαρ περι νησον αλώμενοι ιχθυάασκον

γναμπτοις αγκίστροισιν, έτειρε δε γαστέρα λιμός.

After the experience of this misery, Sinuhit arrives in Idumea; the king gives him his daughter and installs him as
prince of the tribe in a large territory: “It is an excellent region, by name of Aia. There are figs and dates there. The wine
is in greater quantity there than water; honey is abundant, olives and all the fruits are numerous; they have wheat and
flour without limit, and all kinds of beasts. I had daily rations of bread and wine, of cooked meat, of roasted fowl, plus the
game of the land. They made me lots of butter and milk fermented in their manner.”
Facing the Isle of Thirst, Menelaus also knew a land “where the lambs were born with horns, where the flocks bore
three times a year, where neither the prince nor the shepherd ever lacked cheese, meat or sweet milk; but the flocks never
cease to furnish milk all year long.”

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 We are not yet finished, G. Maspero continues, in completing the series of stories of Egyptian voyages, without finding a
maritime story. M. Golenischeff has discovered it in St. Petersburg. The Greek and Latin authors have repeated over and over that
the sea was considered impure by Egyptians, and that none of them ventured there of his free will. The story of St. Petersburg reports
to us from before the XVIIth dynastu. The monuments have already made us cognizant of a maritime expedition to the land of Puanit
under the IVth dynasty. Our story shows us [one of the] sailors to whom Pharao entrusted the task of going to seek the perfumes and
foodstuffs of Arabia... A storm sinks his ship and casts him on an isle, alone of all his comrades. A gigantic serpent inhabits the isle
with its family. The serpent welcomes the castaway with a human voice, entertains him, feeds him, predicts to him a fortunate return
home, and regails him with gifts at the time of leaving. M. Golenischeff has recalled the voyages of Sinbad the sailor to the story,
and undertakes to relate it... I would however conclude from the analogy only that we have here [a first] Egyptian version of the
story of Sinbad. In the mouth of [all the] sailors, the marvelous stories necessarily present common traits: the storm, the castaway
who alone of all the crew survives, the isle inhabited by speaking monsters, etc. The burgers of Cairo, who wrote the Seven voyages
of Sinbad, had no need to adopt the conventions to a preëxisting story: they only had to read the more serious [contemporary]
authors or listen to the sailors and merchants returning from afar.

*
* *

The last remark is in all justice, and they will not fail to turn it against us. It is certain that all of the sailors’ stories
resemble each other in certain points, and it should not at all follow that they all come from a single source. But should it
similarly follow that the same novelty be recognized in them all? We see perfectly well that certain of the stories have
surely passed from one boat to another, from one fleet to its emutators and even to its adversaries, and that France
borrowed Robinson Crusoe from its enemies, the English. It is thus impossible to misunderstand that, among the popular
stories and transmitted legends, there are copies alongside of the originals. It would be as illegitimate to deny this as to
affirm a relationship between the pharaonic stories and our Odyssian story. The one and the other of the hypotheses are
equally groundless and probable. Let us take care nonetheless: among the resemblances which we come to establish, there
are certain similarities too singular. They should furnish, I believe, a presumption in favor of the second hypothesis. For
only the Egyptians had been able to imagine this or that detail, the hair of khesbet, for example. Only the Egyptian life
presented this or that other particular which the Greek appears never to have known, and which nevertheless is found in
our Odyssian story. And we need to look more closely still. It is not even only in the content and material of the account
that the resemblances may appear. I believe that even the text of the poet contains borrowed words and formulae, which
prove almost indisputably the Egyptian provenance of the Homeric story. Of the words and formulae, here, I believe, are
some examples.

I. - It well appears at first that the name of Proteus itself is the transcription of the Egyptian Pruti. The Odyssian
Pharao rules over his seals, as the Pharaos of the Egyptian fables and caricatures rule over rats, lions or cats:

Similarly as Granville illustrates la Fontain with us, in Egypt the caricaturist brings the aid of his calamus to the fabulist. Where
the one has shown in three words how the jackel and the cat have been empowered to impose their services on the animals which
they wish to devour at their ease, the other showed the jackal and the cat in peasants’ gear, a bag on the back and the stick on the
shoulder, leading a horde of gazelles or a band of fine fat geese to graze... The ox leads to the court of the ass a cat who has duped
him... A lion and a gazelle play chess... The artists have pushed the satire as far as possible. Royalty itself has not escaped their
attacks. While the writers mocked soldiers in verse and prose, the caracaturists parodied the combats and triumphal scenes. The
Pharao of all the rats, perched on a chariot drawn by dogs, charges the heart of an army of cats. He scatters them with his strokes, in
the heroic posture of a conqueror and, in front of him, his legions attack a fort defended by tomcats, in the same spirit that the
Egyptian batallions mount the assault of Syrian citadels.

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 Our Pharao of the Seals has retained the human aspect of the real Pharaos and their wig of lapis lazuli. He inhabits an
isle which they name Pharos:

Αιγύπτου προπάροιθε, Φάρον δέ ‘ε κικλήσκουσιν

The name of Pharos would say nothing in Greek. It enters into the category of insular names which we have studied
across the Hellenic seas, Paros, Samos, Rhodos, Naxos, Paxos, etc. The names, which present no meaning in Greek, have,
for the most part, a foreign origin: the Greco-Semitic doublets have given us the veritable signification of Paxos, of
Kasos, of Thasos, of Amorgos, etc. For Pharos we have no doublet. But perhaps the relationship alone of the two words
Proteus and Pharos is a sufficient indication for us. In the chimeric dynasties of Herodotus, we retrieve a similar
relationship between Proteus and Pheron, the one being the predecessor of the other. G. Maspero told us that if Proteus
appears the Greek adaptation of the Egyptian title Pruti, it is another title pirui-aui which has given pheron. Pheron is just
the Greek form pharaon, as we say according to the Hebrew transcription ‫פרעה‬, pherao. It should be noted that, more
exactly rendered, the Hebrew transcription would give in Greek (by virtue of the equivalences ‫=פ‬φ, ‫=ר‬ρ, ‫=ע‬ο, ‫=ה‬ε)
Phero’a or Pharo’a, which would be much nearer to the original pirui. It is, I believe, from the Phero’a or Pharo’a that
the Hellenes have drawn on the one hand the name of the man, Pheron (which resembles a multitude of men’s names by
the termination), and on the other hand the name of the isle Pharos (which similarly resembles the insular names by the
termination). The isle of Proteus, of Pruti, is at the same time the isle of Pharos, of Pharo’a: it was in reality the Isle of the
Pharao, resembling the Isle of the King, Point of the Sultan, Cape of the Emperor, etc., which all of the onomasties
posess. On the road of Sinai, “are in a grotto some hot springs, which the Arabs call Hamam-el-Pharaon, that is to say,
Baths of the Pharao”; on the way to Libya, the Peoples of the Sea formerly had their isle of Pharao or of Pruti.

II. - The sevenfold rhythm rules our Odyssian story. This rhythm also rules the measures which the oldest Hellenic
geographers on the Egyptian coast give us. The Nile was supposed to have seven mouths: Heroditus will correct it and say
“the five mouths of the Nile.” Egypt was supposed to have seven hundred myriads of inhabitants. The delta was to be
advanced seven days of navigation into the sea. Seventy myriads of pilgrims frequented the feasts of Bubaste. Aigyptos
had had seven sons by a Phoenician woman. Bousiris had been the lover of seven Hesperides. We could find many other
examples more. The same rhythm rules the Egyptian magic stories which the Hebrews have brought to us. In Genesis,
Pharao sees in a dream seven thin cows and seven fat ones, seven full ears and seven empty ones. He summons his seers
and sages. But only Joseph can predict the seven years of fertility and seven years of barrenness. In Exodus, Moses, saved
by the daughter of Pharao, is the man with the wand, the magician who changes staffs into serpents, who binds and
unbinds the plagues and calamities, and who rivals in sorcery the readers and sages of Pharao. He begins his exile with
the seven daughters of Iothor, when the Lord promises him the land of the seven peoples. He begins his magic with the
seven days of the river changed into blood. He begins his march with the fourteen days of Easter and the seven days of
unleavened bread, from the first to the fourteenth of the month, and from the fourteenth to the twenty-first. Then, with his
staff, he parts the sea and walks with dry feet, like Noferkephtah or Snofrui of the Egyptian stories part the Nile or the
ponds and walk dry on the bottom open to the air. Moses then arrives at the seventy palms, where the manna falls for six
days, to end on the seventh. Then he chose the seventy elders, climbs Sinai, and the Lord calls him the seventh day.
In the two Hebrew stories, where Pharao appears, the sorcery triumphs: the Pharao of the bible is always surrounded
by his sages and magicians, as in the stories of the papyrus. Now, the stories of the papyrus are themselves ruled by the
sevenfold rhythm. Here are some examples: “I would enchant my heart to leave it at the top of the acacia flower, and, if
someone cuts the acacia, and my heart falls to the ground, you will come to seek it. When you would spend seven years
searching, it does not discourage you.” - “The two say: ‘We make a wife for Bitiu so he does not remain alone. ’ Knumu
made him a companion who was perfect in all her parts, for all of the gods were in her, and the seven Hathors will come
to say... ” - “The wife of Onabuanir sends her majordomo to his house in the country to prepare the villa which is on the
shore of the lake. The villa was provided with all of the good things. The wife came and entertained her lover. But the

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majordomo throws into the pond the crocodile of (enchanted) wax, which changes into a crocodile of seven cubits, which
seized the lover and pulls him under the water. Even when he did not come for seven days, the lover does not stop
breathing...” - “After her childbirth, Ruditdidit, who had brought three sons into the world, purifies herself by a
purification of fourteen days (every woman, says Leviticus (XII, 2-3), who will deliver a son will be impure for seven
days; every woman who will deliver a daughter will be impure for fourteen). - “Zazamonkh recites his incantation, raises
one whole side of the pond, put it on the other, and took the fish on the bottom with a shell. Now, the water was twelve
cubits deep and fourteen cubits wide.” - “They clothed Pharao in [enough] fabric for thirty-five (7x5) days, set aside
[enough] for seventy (7x10) days, then they placed him in the tomb.” - “The prince of Naharaina, having only one
daughter, had a house with seventy windows constructed for her, elevated seventy cubits from the ground, and he said to
all the sons of the price of Kharu: “He who reaches the window of my daughter will have her for a wife.” [But only one
Egyptian prince could reach the window]. Then the seven princes of Kharu will enter a campaign to kill him.”

III. - New similarity: the Odyssian story, like the Egyptian stories, confirms some Semitic words.

At Thebes in Egypt, says G Maspero, after the great conquests (in the same epoch as our stories), the intellectual life, like the
material life, was modified. They did not deviate much from the direction given by the sages and the writers of the Memphian age.
But the literature became more varied, more demanding. They had the classics, which they learned by heart in the schools - fine
works which some believed to understand and enjoy, which others no longer understood. Among the moderns, some consciously
imitated the classics and strove to express recent ideas with the consacrated formulae. But others were obliged to create a new
language and new usages to render their new conceptions. Lacking the creative imagination, lacking sustained eloquence, they found
help among their neighbors. The commercial, diplomatic and military relations had forced the scribes to study the languages and
literature of Phonecia and Chaldea a little. For the official correspondance with the tributary petty kings, they had had to create
bureaus of translation and copying. The petty kings of Syria - we can judge by the discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna - continued in spite
of the Egyptian conquest to employ cuneiform characters and tablets of dried clay. It had thus been necessary to create bureaus of
decipherment for the cuneiform scripture, with translators of Syrian and Chaldean. It was necessary to set up the translators; they had
procured foreign dictionaries and syllabaries, and some collection of easy texts where the beginners familiarized themselves without
difficulty with the form of the signs, the sense of the words and the construction of phrases. Add the direct influence of the
foreigners, living in or passing through Egypt. The people of Thebes borrowed cults, legends, divinities, medical and magical recipes
from them. The scribes with poor brains will provide themselves with words and formulae to embellish and “distinguish” their style.
They will find it “more distinguished” to no longer call call a door rô, but tira, to no longer be accompanied by the bonît (harp), but
by the kinnor, to give the salam in saluting the sovereign in place of hailing aau. They will Semiticize wildly, and noöne could have
been surprised: the presence of Canaanite merchants in the streets, slaves and prisoners, or women and concubines in the families
familiarized all of the Egyptian bourgeoisie and aristocracy with the foreign words and metaphors from childhood.

Let us not forget the example of Egypt and its writers when we find in the Homeric texts expressions, formulae, ideas,
etc., borrowed from the Semites. We see today the English fashion penetrate not only in our customs but in our language
and our literature. There was a time when the Phoenician fashion similarly penetrates in all of the languages and
literatures of the Mediterranean. Two words of our Odyssian story are assuredly of Semitic origin. We have already had
the occasion to study both. The Greek name for gold khrusos, χρυσός, is just the transcription of the Semitic ‫חרוץ‬. The
name of the seal, φώκη, is also just the transcription of ‫פוקה‬, phok’a. The word phoke is found in only two episodes of the
Odyssey, never in the Iliad. We have it here in our magical tale. It is otherwise in the history of the beautiful Phonecien:
aboard the Phoenician vessel where she has brought her, the nurse of Eumea is killed on the seventh day; they throw her
overboard, as prey of the fish and seals.
The Semitic seas know isles frequented by seals. In the Red Sea, at the extremity of the Sinai peninsula, an Isle of
Seals was so named because of the multitude of the beasts which was found there. At the other end of the Red Sea,
another Isle of Seals bordered the coast of the Ichthyophages, beside (in the list) the Isle of the Sparrowhawk and the Isle
of Turtles. On the shore, the men and the seals lived in the most touching harmony: “It appears that an eternal pact of
peace has been signed between them. The men never seek to annoy the seals, who, for their part, never do any ill to the

348
men. Each of the two races respect the hunting territories of the other. They live in a brotherhood which one finds very
rarely between neighboring humanities.” The marvelous seals were known by the geographers of the Hellenistic epoch.
But similar stories should have been transmitted for generations. The first sailors who will come into the waters will
already have heard them. The Isle of Seals is on the route which the fleets of the Pharaos followed to reach the celebrated
land of Puanit. With that land of incense and of gold, the kings of Thebes tell us that they had renewed the relations of the
past: “One day when the queen Haitshopitu had returned to the temple,” relates the inscription of Deir-el-Bahari, “she
heard a command of the god himself, who ordered the exploration of the routes of Puanit and the traveling of the roads
which lead to the Ecehelles of Incense. Noöne of the Egyptians had been to the Echelles. But they understood the
accounts of the people of the past, from mouth to mouth, for the products of the land had been sent to the kings of the
delta, her fathers.”
The Egyptians, from all eternity, had thus been able to know the land of the seals and the sweet familiarity which
united beasts and people there: “accounts of the people of the past”, the privileged seals had passed into the popular
stories and, perhaps someday, the papyri will give us a story of seals submitting to the shepherd’s crook of a magician
pruti, who leads them to pasture on a desert isle, as the Odyssian Proteus leads his seals to our isle of Pharos. Better
perhaps than all of the other animals, the seal lends to these stories because of its resemblance to man, in its face and in its
human hands. Thevenot in the XVIIth century arrives on the coast of Sinai across from the ancient Isles of the Seals:

We bought from the monks several stone mushrooms, which are pulled out of the Red Sea in that place, as also some small stone
shrubs, or branches of rock, which they term white coral, and several large shells, all taken from the Red Sea. But they will not be
able to give me anything of a certain fish which they term sea man: I have nevertheless since recovered a hand. The fish is taken in
the Red Sea, around some small isles which are very near Tor. The fish is large and strong and has nothing of the extraordinary
except two hands, which are effectively like those of a man, with the exception of the fingers being joined by a skin like the foot of a
goose; the skin of the fish resembles that of the chamois.

IV. - But the strongest resemblance, the most typical in my opinion, between the stories of the papyri and the Odyssian
story is still this.
In the Egyptian stories, the preoccupation with death, with the funerary ceremonies and the afterlife, holds, as we
could expect, the same important place as in the Egyptian life and history themselves. When the robbed Peasant comes to
implore the great steward Miruitensi: “My master,” he says to him, “when you will descend to the basin of justice, may
you navigate there with favorable winds!, so that the sail shall not fall from the mast!, may there be no moaning in your
cabin!, May you not be swept away! May you not be cast ashore! May you be able to have no impurity upon the water!”
All this makes allusion to the voyage from the tomb, where the dead navigates upon “the excellent sea of the Sunset”,
where the good find favorable winds, where the evil shipwreck and become the prey of monsters... When Pharao sends to
the exile Sinuhit the order to return to Egypt, he depicts to him the good fortune which awaits him: “You will be master
among the royal Friends! And day by day you will grow older. It is here that you lose the virile power. And it is here that
you have dreamed of the day of your burial. And it is there that you arrive at the state of beatitude. They have given you
the wrappings. They have followed your procession on the day of interrment, girdle gilded, a blue wig on the head, a
canopy of cypress wood, a team of oxen, singers and dancers in the lead, mourners at the entrance of the passage; for you
they perform the statutory liturgies; they kill the victims for you on the table of offerings; your steles of white stone are
set up in the circle of royal Children. You are second to none. No man of the people achieves your elevation. You are not
put in a sheepskin when they bury you. Everyone beats the earth and laments while you go to the tomb.”
Sinouhit cannot resist the description of such felicity. He returns, and Pharao keeps his promise: royal lodging, a
pavilion, mandates over the treasury, silver, fabrics, perfumes, deluxe clothes, a new house, fruits from the royal garden,
the fortunate Sinuhit has nothing to desire: “I adorned myself in fine linen. I inundated myself with perfumes. I lay on a
bed. They begin a pyramid in stone for me in the midst of the funerary pyramids. The chief of the surveyors of His
Majesty has chosen the location there. The chief of the designers made the plan. The chief of the stonecutters sculpts it.
The chief of the funerary contractors has scoured the realm to seek the materials. When they have constructed the

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pyramid itself, I send peasants and make a lake there, a pavilion, fields in the middle of the funerary domain. There also
was a statue of gold given by His Majesty. It is not for a man of the common that they have done such things.”
There is not an Egyptian story where we do not find some analogous passage. The castaway sees the ship arrive which
will take him back. He runs to tell the bearded Great Serpent who has saved him and who has predicted the event to him:
“Here,” the good serpent has told him, “here you will stay four months on the island, then a ship will come from your
land with sailors; you will be able to return with them to your country and you will die in your town. Yes, if you are
strong and patient, you will hold your children to your breast and you will kiss your wife; you will see your home again,
which is worth more than anything; you will reach your land and you will be in the midst of the people of your family.”
And when the castaway sees the vessel arrive, the Great Serpent says to him, “Bon voyage, bon voyage to your home,
little one. Now it is that you will arrive in your land after two months, you will hug your children to your breast and you
will rest in your tomb.”
The last prediction of Proteus to Menelaus is not very different: “Return to offer Zeus and the other gods sacrifices in
the Egyptian river: before (doing that) you will not again see your well-built house and the land of your country... [Your
brother Agamemnon is dead]. But do not lose your time in crying here. See to the means of returning to your country. The
will of fate is not that you die in horse-nourishing Argos. The gods will lead you to the Elysian Plain, at the ends of the
earth, with the golden-haired Rhadamanthes, where the easiest existence is offered to humans: no snow, never the violent
storm or rain, but always the breaths of a light Zephyr, rising from the Ocean to refresh men; the gods compensate you as
the husband of Helen and the offspring of Zeus.”
Assuredly there is a beautiful paradise, and many of the peoples can wish to attain such a life of happiness after death.
Nevertheless, the paradise of tranquility, of coolness and of an easy life is not the one they revered for the horde of
warriors and pirates which is the Achaean race: not the least combat, not the least killing, not even the sporting battles or
the games of strength and skill! And what a singular paradise of silence and peace for the boasters, the orators of the
public place, the great arguers, the eternal politicians! Not the least discourse! Not the least action! Not the least exchange
of mockery or insults!
In the classic epoch, the paradise of the Hellenes was a bit different. When Pindar describes for us the Isles of the
Blessed, it is the eternal sun, the light and the heat - and no longer the coolness of the wind from the north,- it is the
beauty of the flowers and the sweetness of the fruits - and no longer the abundance of fodder - it is the exercises of the
body - and no longer only the soft idleness - which makes the happiness of the just: “For the good, the sun shines for days
which will never be darkened by the shades of the night. In the fields reddened with roses, shaded by the trees which
produce incense, they see the groves loaded with golden fruit. The horses, the exercises of the gymnasium, the dice, the
lyre share their inclinations and their pleasures. Nothing is lacking for the brilliance of their flourishing happiness.”
The good laborer of Egypt did not ask the gods for such a complicated happiness. Bound to the land during all his life,
concerned only with the next harvest, and fearing the stick of the tax collector, he dreamed after the life only of a field
“where the foods would come to men without such effort”, as Proteus says,

τη περ ‘ρηίστη βιοτη πέλει ανθρώποισιν.

Filled by the wind from the desert, at the edge of its dried channels (the Nautical Instructions say further: “when after
the khamsin or simun coming from the south-southeastor south-southwest, the cold winds from the northwest arrive, they
bring an inexpressable relief from the illness which the winds from the south make felt”), the Egyptian also dreamed of a
constant river, never leaving its banks, and of eternal breezes from the northwest, “which arise from the Ocean to refresh
men”, as Proteus says further,

αλλ αιει Ζεφύροιο λιγυ πνείοντος αήτας

Ωκεανος ανίησιν αναψύχειν ανθρώπους.

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 The detail of the Zephyr alone could enlighten us concerning the origin of the Odyssian paradise. The Nautical
Instructions told us straightaway that the wind from the northwest brings coolness and life after the deadly weight of the
khamsin: thus in Egypt it is the blessed wind, and Pruti comes to breathe the Zephyr at the hottest hour of the day, and the
Egyptian dead enjoy the the fresh breath all of the time. For the Greeks, the Zephyr, the wind from the northwest, is
usually disagreeable, δυσαης Ζέφυρος, for it brings rains and storms, and it roars over the sea:

... ακραη Ζέφυρον κελάδοντ’ επι πόντον.

In the Hellenic lands and seas, the Zephyr is in reality as tiresome and enervating as our mistral is on the coasts of
Provence, “the mistral or maestro, so named because it is the most violent and, if one may say so, the most tyrannical of
the Mediterranean.” The Zephyr is the swiftest of all the winds. The Zephyr drives the flock to the shelter, and the
shepherd trembles at its approach. The Zephyr amasses the snow on the mountains. Even the name of Zephyr itself
perhaps indicates its true nature for the sailors of the Levant. Today the Greeks have borrowed the name of the mistral,
μαεστραλί, from the western sailors. It appears that in the first antiquity they will borrow that of Zephyr from the oriental
sailors. For the name would say nothing in Greek: the grammarians have not found the least approximation to explain it
by an Hellenic etymology. The Semitic languages, to the contrary, posess the root z.ph.r., ‫זפר‬, which signifies, in Arabic,
sigh, roar. The root frequently employed by the Arabs is found in the Scripture only in the form of the name of a town
Ziphron, ‫זפרון‬, “Zephrona,” says St. Jerome, “which today they call Zephyrium of Cilicia”. St. Jerome is deceived in his
identification of the two towns: Zephrona is in reality not Zephyrium. But the error itself proves to us the similarity of the
two words: Zephyros, ζέφυρος, would in effect be an excellent transcription of a word ‫זפור‬, zephur or ziphor, drawn from
the root ‫זפר‬, zaphar, as siphor, ‫צפור‬, from the root saphar, ‫צפר‬. As for the meaning, the word accords well with the wind
which howls and moans over the sea, κελάδοντ’ επι πόντον, Ζέφυρον κελαδεινόν: in the Homeric poems, only the Zephyr
among all the winds is the moaning or the roarer. The name of Zephyros would thus perhaps be added to the list of
Semitic words which pepper the story of Egypt. For Zephyros-Keladon is, I believe, just a Greco-Semitic doublet. Note
that the Greek poet renders no account of the reasons which make the Zephyr beloved by the Egyptians. The Egyptian
heat relents before the relative cold which the Zephyr brings. The mountainous Hellade fears the cold of winter, the snow
and the rains which made the happiness of the Egyptians. The Odyssian poet adds to his paradise the absence of snow,
winter and rain:

ου νιφετος ούτ’ άρ χειμων πολυς ούτε ποτ’ όμβρος,

and he does not mention the absence of heat and of the khamsin, which all the same suppose the wished-for arrival of the
Zephyr.
Abundant food, light work, freshnesss of the winds from the north, thusly Egypt imagined the Osirian paradise, and all
of Egypt puts its reason for living to be the attainment of that paradise. Other paradises elsewhere had been formerly
imagined by some other Egyptian towns: the Egyptian dead originally will know sojourns other than the paradise of
Osiris. But that one, being the most conformant with the national ideal, finishes by supplanting all the others:

The Osirian paradise, says G. Maspero, was a great plain, traversed by a river. It was called Sokhit Ialu (or Aaru), the Plain of the
Souchets, Sokhit Hotpu, the Plain of Rest. It was not dark and gloomy like those of other dead gods, Sokharis or Khont-Amenti. The
sun and moon shone. The wind from the north tempered the heat of the day with its steady breeze. The harvests grew abundant and
vigorous there... The wealthy and the nobles, arriving at the Garden of Ialu, were henceforth protected from misfortune and death.
The paradise was a sort of celestial Egypt, of an inexhaustable fertility. The wheat there was seven cubits high, of which two were
the ear. Endless canals filled with water maintined the fecundity and coolness. The dead there passed their time in eating, drinking
and enjoying women. All that was required of them was the cultivation of the fields and the work of harvest. [The laws of Amenti]
ordained that death was not weakened into idleness. But one could be exempted from all labor by procuring replacements for
oneself. The theologians will authorize the masters to place on their servants all of the labor which they were supposed to do

351
themselves; to maintain the canals and the levees, dig the earth, sow, harvest, bring in the wheat, etc., [the dead] have servants. A
dead person, as poor as he might be, did not arrive alone. He brought a group of statuettes, of images to which magic lent an
intelligent and active soul. They were animated by means of a formula, traced on their legs. When the god charged with calling the
dead to the work detail pronounced the name of their owner, they responded and worked in his place: whence their names of
respondants... And while the little laborers of stone or enamel conscienciously dug, labored and sowed, their masters enjoyed all the
felicities of the Osirian paradise in total idleness. They sat at the edge of the water, in the shade of large perpetually green trees and
breathed the fresh breeze from the north. They fished with lines, went in boats, hunted the birds in the brush or retired to their
painted pavilions to read stories, enjoy the women, to find there their wives always young and always beautiful. It is not as the life of
Egypt always is, but sweetened and deprived of all its miseries, under the rule and by the favor of Osiris, the Just of Voice.

For favor alone presides in the distribution of the recompenses. “The ideas of merit and justice have no part in the
admission of souls in the [afterlife]. Privilige of birth and divine favor, gained by presents and mystical formulae, are the
only qualifications considered. The common dead remain underground, either in the tomb itself or in some undetermined
place: they are no longer anything but empty and impalpable forms, without passions, without affections, with no other
reason to act but an insatiable desire for material offering which nourishes them, give them life and prevent them from
ever perishing. Only the Servants of Horus were admitted to enjoy a complete life in the fields of Ialu.” Osiris reserves the
happiness for those whom he has made his own, for those who have become divine beings through him, veritable gods
resembling himself, other Osirises of the Just Voice, gods, sons, friends or “sons-in-law” of the god, as Proteus says to
Menelaus: “You will have the happiness because you have Helen and you are a son-in-law of God,”

ο‘ύνεκ’ έχεις Ελένην καί σφιν γαμβρος Διός εσσι.

The Egyptian gods, who had previously presided at the embalming and at the funerals of the god Osiris, also watched
over the funerals of the just Osirian, then, by their effective aid or their counsels, they guided him, “conveyed” him to the
Fields of happiness, at the occidental extremity of the world. It is again that which Proteus says to Menelaus: “The gods
willl convey you to the end of the world to the Elysian Field.”

αλλα σ’ Ηλύσιον Πεδίον και πείρατα γαίης

αθάνατοι πεμψουσιν.

It is to the extremities of the earth, πείρατα γαίης, that the just Osirian should be embarked toward the Land of
Happiness. The Book of the Dead describes to us the route and its stops. The gods conduct the boat and make a living
from the passers - πομπηες, πέμπουσιν - toward the land of Mystery and the Sunset, the Duat, the Amenti. It is there,
toward the Couchant, toward the Amenti, that the just live in the company, in the suite of Osiris and of Ra, Ra the solitary
god of the brilliant face, the god of gold, the blond god, whom the just salute each day with their acclamations: “Oh Ra,
who comes in peace, homage to you! The gods of the Amenti rejoice in your beauty, and all the inhabitants of the Field
coming to render you homage, o Lord of the sky and governor of the Amenti! You appear full of beauty on your
occidental horizon of the Amenti! You appear full of grandeur, beloved of all those who inhabit the Duat!”
In the Odyssian Field lives the blond Rhadamanthys’

‘όθι ξανθος ‘Ραδάμανθυς.

It well appears that there is a resemblance of name and similarity of rôle between the Rhadamanthys of the Greeks and the
Egyptian gods lords of the Amenti: Plutarch or the author of Of Isis and Osiris transcribes the Egyptian word amenti as
amenthes, αμένθης. Nevertheless none of the so numerous Egyptian texts, which touch on the funeral ritual, appear to
have conserved the original title of which Rhadamanthys would be the Greek transcription. We perceived an entire series
of divine titles which could have served as models: to the word amenti, the setting [couchant], the other world, are joined

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significant substantives prince or governor, and Khont-Amenti is the ordinary title of Osiris, governor of the Amenti. But
the exact title from which Rhadamanthys could be drawn we do not have in Egyptian, and given the enormous quantity of
funeral texts we posess today, it does not appear that the egyptian ritual has ever known it. And there is what perhaps
informs us of the true provenance of the Odyssian story. For I do not doubt that the nostos of Menelaus may be a copy of
the stories from Egypt. But I believe that it has not come directly from the banks of the Nile. To arrive at the river or to
return from it, Menelaus the Cretan pirate had passed through Phonecia. It appears to me that, to arrive in the Homeric
poems, the Egyptian story had to take the same route. Here are at least some indications which appear to me to retain the
mark of that passage.

*
* *

I. - There is to begin with a detail which we never encounter in the stories from Egypt: it is the food of immortality,
ambrosia, αμβροσιν. Eidothea gives Menelaus ambrosia to relieve the terrible odor of the mosters from the sea. Without
the ambrosia, who could remain lying in that way under a sealskin, in the middle of the stinking seals? Without the
ambrosia, the story becomes unbelievable: the Odyssian public would never lend it credence. A public of landsmen, who
did not know the odor of seals from experience, might even allow itself to be taken in by such nonsense. But to come to
tell a public of sailors that one has laid an ambush beneath the skins of freshly skinned seals! From experience, all the
public knew the intolerable stench of the monsters, which the waves throw on the beach, and which taint the coast for two
leagues around: there are isles on which they cannot land because of the stench, infestari eas bellius, quae expellantur
assidue, putrescentibus. A powerful antidote was thus needed, μέγ’ όνειαρ. The ambrosia is not an ornament, but one of
the fundamental elements of the story: without it, there is no possible versimilitude! Now, Egypt has never known of
ambrosia. If the story were purely Egyptian, it is probable that ambrosia would not have figured.
In the Homeric poems, ambrosia is the divine nutrition which gives, as its name indicates, eternal life and immortality.
Nectar and ambrosia are the drink and food of the gods, and it is because they eat ambrosia that the gods live eternally: a
man who tasted ambrosia would promptly participate in divine immportality. Before Ulysses, who did not wish to stay
with Calypso or to become immortal, the nymph places the dishes and drinks of men; but her servants serve her, the
immortal nymph, nectar and ambrosia:

νύμφη δε τίθει πάρα πασαν εδωδην

έσθειν και πίνειν οια βροτοι άνδρες έδουσιν.
αθτη δ’ αντίον ιζεν Οδυσσηος θείοιο,
τη δε παρ’ αμβροςίην δμωαι και νέκταρ έθηκαν.

During the seven years Ulysses stayed with the goddess, she had wished to make him her husband and confer
immortality on him; she had given him immortal clothing, which he accepted to wear; but he always refused the immortal
nourishment, the ambrosia, the only real cause of immortality:

ενδυκέως εφίλει τε και έτρεφεν ηδε έφασκεν

θήσειν αθάνατον και αγήραον ήματα πάντα.
ένθα μεν ‘επταετες μένον έμπεδον, ε‘ίματα δ’ αιει
δάκρυσι δεύεσκον τά μοι άμβροτα δωκε Καλυψώ.

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 Nectar and ambrosia, of the inseparable couple, we have seen that the first is a borrowing made by the Hellenes from
the Semites. Nectar is the ‫יין נקטר‬, iin niktar, the perfumed wine, which the Semites offer to their gods: the Greeks will
never forget that the nectar is a wine from Babylonia. Ambrosia appears to be of the same origin. Read the Chaldean
legend of Adapa, which we know by the Egyptial library of Tell-el-Amarna. It strangely resembles the story of Ulysses
with Calypso. Adapa is son of the god Ae. But he is not a god, he does not have the gift of immortality. He does not have
the right to penetrate into the heaven of Anou. He is nevertheless strong like a god, and when the terrible wind from the
south, Shutu, comes to attack him, he is able to break its wings. For seven days Shutu ceases blowing. Anou becomes
uneasy, and threatens to punish the guilty. But, by grace of the counsels of Ea, Adapta is able to enter heaven. Great
scandal! A mortal man among the gods! It is necessary to punish him severely or render him immortal by giving him the
“nourishment of life”. Anou takes the latter course. He gives Adapta a bowl and says: “The nourishment of life, may he
eat of it”. But Adapta refuses to eat of it. They offer him the water of life, but he refuses to drink it. They offer him
clothing, and he puts it on. They offer him oil, and he anoints himself. Then Anou shouts at him: “Adapta, why haven’t
you eaten? Why haven’t you eaten? Now you will no longer have eternal life?” Then he sends Adapta back to his land, as
the goddess sends back Ulysses, with the immortal clothing he put on.” The Semites, like the Greeks, thus knew of the
nourishment of life, akaal balati, and the water of life, me-e balati, which confer immortality, ανβροσίη: that which Egypt
could not furnish to the Odyssian poet, he found in the stories and accounts of the people of Syria or Chaldea.

II. - By our usual method, it is in the facts of geography, I believe, that we should seek the most important indication.
Let us first take the topological facts.
Consider in what place our Odyssian tale takes place. Study the location of Pharos on the coast of Libya. The Egyptian
stories of the papyri locate their marvelous isles - such as the Isle of the Double, where the Castaway lands - in the distant
oceans, half unknown, where the Egyptian fleets have undoubtedly penetrated and sometimes frequented, but which are
still mysterious enough to lend themselves to the fable. Thus all of the sailors’ stories use them. It was especially toward
the south, toward the Red Sea, that the real navigations led the Egyptians toward Puanit, toward the Land of Gold and
Incense; it is also toward the south that they directed the navigations of their stories: a seagoing people always localize
their marvelous accounts in the Eldorado or on the road to the Eldorado that their real fleets exploit.
Our isle of Pharos is entirely too close to Egypt and too useless to the Egyptian sailors to have become the theatre of
pharaonic stories. It is a few meters from the mainland coast, facing a native town, Rhakotis, which the town of
foreigners, Alexandria, will later replace. Rocky, dangerous, infertile, the isle is of no attraction for the native sailors: in
the river itself, in its innumerable lagoons, mouths or channels, the natives find a thousand preferable refuges, with
harbors provided with drinkable water and food. For the natives, Pharos resembled the thousand rises of sand or rocks
which the sediments of the river have mired little by little in the muds of the delta and which, formerly sea isles, stand
today as hills in the fluvial plain. But for the foreign sailors, in particular for the sailors of Phonecia, see if the isle of
Pharos, at the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean, is not the exact match of our isle of Calypso, at the western
extremity, the indispensable retreat, the necesssary refuge.
On the route which leads from Syria to the Barbary coasts, from the Phoenician metropolises to their great markets of
Libya, Pharos is in effect an indispensable station. The ancient periples, like our Nautical Instructions, warn the
navigators of the Far East against the dangers of the Egyptian waters. The southeast angle of the extreme Mediterranean is
of a very difficult navigation. The nature of the coasts and the imperfection or lack of harbors increase the perils. In
descending the Syrian coast, all goes well up to Jaffa: the coastal mountains offer good points of orientation and the coast
is sprinkled with shelters. But Jaffa marks the entrance to a new sea which extends to the first town of Libya, Paraitonion:
Fifty thousand stades of coasts extend there, with no refuge other than our isle of Pharos, which marks the median stop,
απο γαρ Παραιτονίου της Λιβύης ‘έως Ιόπης της εν τη Κοίλη Συρία όντος του παράπλου σταδίων σχεδον πεντακισχιλίων,
ουκ έστιν εύρειν ασφαλη λιμένα πλην του Φάρου. “All of the shore,” adds Diodorus, “is of a very difficult access. On the
front of Egypt, the band of land is invisible when one has no experience of the waters: if one does not take care, one risks
sinking or shipwreck on open desert coast.”

354
 The Syrian and African coasts, which frame the delta, are in effect very inhospitable. After Jaffa, no port is accessible,
no town is even visible from the sea. “During the months of summer, the ships can anchor before Ascalon, by being
prepared for the appearance of the least indication of bad weather... Gaza [is not built on the sea], but at about three miles
from the shore from which it is separated by sand dunes of sixty meters height (the Greek periples know that Gaza is
seven stades from the sea)... The coast is then, over a development of 74 miles, extremely low, and offers serious dangers
to navigators, together with banks, which extend a great distance from the beach, and the lack of remarkable objects
permitting the location of the position of the ship; one should thus navigate there with the greatest prudence. The sound
will be the only guide”. On the coast, the Greek periples point out the terrible mirings of lake Sirbon. Then comes the
delta with the dangers pointed out by Diodora and Strabo: αλιμένου και τεμεινης της ‘εκτέρωθεν παραλίας, εχούσης και
χοιράδας και βράχη. Then at the rocky cape of Abukir begins the Libyan coast, deserted, rocky, entirely strewn with reefs
and poorly provided with fresh water. Mysterious Libya appears to turn its back to the sea. It presents almost everywhere
the view described by our Instructions: “a beach of sand, bordered behind by low hills, and defended, for almost all of its
length, by numerous reefs and shallows.”
Syrian sands, muds of the Nile, reefs of Libya, one avoids the ones only to confront the others. The French voyagers of
the XVIIth century describe, each more than the preceeding, the dangers of the Egyptian gulf: “The night of August 23,”
says P. Lucas, “I was seized by inquietude. I set to regarding the sea attentatively; the waters of it will appear to be
completely white to me. In my fright, I ran to warn the pilot. Since he gave no credence to what I told him, I woke the
captain and made lots of noise. We drew up a pail of water, which the light revealed to be turbid and white and, the sound
having been cast into the sea, we found only six fathoms of water, which alarmed everyone. We tacked and sailed a good
half hour with six fathoms of water. That which made us run such a great danger was that the pilot and all aboard who
were assigned to set the course were mistaken by a hundred miles.” Other accounts: “Twenty-two days after our departure
from Smyrna, we observed that the water of the sea was white, which was a mark that we were near land. The shore is so
low and even that, without the palms which are on the edge, we were not able to perceive it from a distance of two
leagues.” The winds there blow in gusts, and the most solid anchors do not suffice to keep the boats in the harbor; all the
more reason we should fear sinking, when a long navigation has somewhat rotted the cordage: Fifteen days before, a large
galley had been lost in the port of Alexandria, which was held with fourteen anchors, the cables of which all parted at the
same time.”
Add, if one wishes to enter the Nile, the difficulties of the bar and the dangers of the current: “We spent fifteen days at
the bougas of Damietta because of the wind, which was so violent that it had pushed mountains of sand into the mouth,
which rendered the passaage of it impracticable. On these occcasions, it is necessary to wait until it would end, and the
waters of the Nile, which the sea pushed back, again take their ordinary course and by their force and their weight they
carry away the sands and a clear channel is opened. We were not the only ones waiting. there were nearly forty saiques
stopped with us, which awaited the opening with impatience.” The accounts make us better understand the dread when
Proteus directs him to reënter the river to make sacrifices to the gods: “My heart breaks at the thought of that interminable
and perilous navigation”,

Αίγυπτον δ’ ιέναι δολιχην ‘οδον αργαλέην τε.

It is here a savage sea, πολυκλύστω ενι πόντω, says the poet. Between the high sea, windy and pulsing from the open,
and the tranquil harbors of the river, it is again the same comparison as above, with the Pheacians, between the calm sea
of the strait and the ocean agitated from the open, and Strabo employs the same words as our Odyssian poet: he speaks of
the rocky promontories of Pharos which exasperate the fleets coming from the open in all seasons, τραχύνουσαι πασαν
‘ώραν το προσπιπτον εκ του πελάγους πλυδώνιον. In this savage sea, one finds only one absolutely safe anchorage with a
watering place always accessible. It is our isle of Pharos, “small elongated isle, stuck to the mainland with which it forms
an anchorage with a double entry: the jagged shore projects two points toward the isle which, in front of it, appears
constructed to close the bay”, Strabo again says. On the coast of the terra firma and on the shore of the isle, the primitive

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boats found numerous creeks and fine slopes of haulage: “There is a port with good slipways. They put the vessels back
to sea, after they have taken on the black water”,

εν δε λιμην εύορμος ‘όθεν τ’ απο νηας είσας

ες πόντον βάλλουσιν αφυσσάμενοι μέλαν ‘ύδωρ.

“Pharos,” says the old Greek periple of Skylax, “is a small desert isle in Libya, provided with numerous ports; they go
to take on water at lake Mareia, which is across from it; the water is potable; the crossing from the isle is very short.” The
dike which later joins the isle to the mainland takes the name of ‘Επταστάδιον, Seven Stades because of the distance
which, they said, formerly separated the two lands. In the text of Skylax, λιμένες πολλοί, the numerous ports, are an exact
equivalent of our port of good harbors, λιμην ευορμος, and the water of lake Mareia is truly the black water, μέλαν
‘ύδωρ, of the poet. We know the difference between the “black waters” of cisterns, lakes, of water holes of dormant water
above the bottom of mud, and the white waters of superficial springs, running over sand or rock. Here lake Mareia
appears even more black to the navigators who, coming from Syria, pass along the mouths of the Nile, whose white
waters are recognized from afar.
I have too often and too lengthily insisted on the rôle of the small coastal islets to repeat again of what utility Pharos,
that parasitic isle, provided with good harbors and with a water source, can be to the coasters from Sidon. After Egypt,
which is to them a familiar and loved land, here for the Sidonian vessels is the stop for the first night in a land new,
mysterious, barbaric. Here begins inhospitable Libya and the long dangerous coast which from retreat to retreat, from
refuges behind islets to refuges behind islets, καταφυγαι ‘υπο νεσιδίοις, as Skylax says, will roll on for weeks to the great
trading posts of the Occident, up to the land where later the great New Town, Carthage, will be raised. To go toward the
trading posts, Pharos is a very useful stop. But, to return from there, it is an indispensable station. The pattern of the
winds, in the extreme Mediterranean, is disposed in such a way that the navigators, coming back from Libya toward
Sidon, like Menelaus have to sojourn here several weeks before finally encountering the favorable breeze. Here, their
route is bent at almost a right angle. Up to here they proceed from west to east; Then they have to go toward the north or
northeast. Now, consult the table of the winds which the Nautical Instructions give for the port of Alexandria:

In summer, the winds ordinarily blow from the northwest, making the sea break on the reefs. The breeze from the sea slacks after
three in the afternoon, and is replaced in the evening by the breeze from the land. In this season, the morning and the evening are
thus the most favorable moments for the entrance and exit of ships. In autumn and spring, the winds are variable and moderate. The
following table, which comprises a series of observations made from 1875 to 1883, gives the number of days per month when the
wind blows from a certain direction:
North. N.-E. N.W. East. West S.-W. S.-E. South. Calm

April. . . . . . 9 4 7 3 2 1 2 1 1
May. . . . . . . 13 3 8 2 1 1 1 1 1
June. . . . . . . 13 2 8 1 1 0 0 1 1
July. . . . . . . 12 1 16 0 2 0 0 0 0
August. . . . . 13 1 14 0 2 0 0 0 1
September. . 15 2 8 1 1 0 0 0 3
October. . . . 12 5 5 3 1 1 1 1 2

During the six or seven months of the navigation season, we see how the winds from the north or the west
predominate: out of about two hundred ten days, more than a hundred eighty are occupied by winds that are absolutely
contrary or strongly disadvantageous to navigation toward the ports of Syria, Each year, perhaps for centuries, the isle of
Pharos should have served as a sojourn of Sidonian boats, which returned toward Syria and which vainly awaited “one of
the favorable breaths, guides of vessels over the vast sea”, as Menelaus says,

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 ... ουδε ποτ’ ουροι
πνείοντες φαίνονθ’ ‘αλιάεες, ο‘ί ‘ρά τε νηων
πομπηες γίγνονται επ’ ευρέα νωταα θαλάσσης.

In the accounts of Sidonian sailors, as in their real life, Pharos should thus hold a great place. But the poor rock would
truly serve only the navies of Sidon: and only they could give it a renown. The Hellenes will frequent the markets of the
delta for three or four centuries before founding their town of Alexandria in that location. It is that, coming from the
north, exploiting only Egypt there, the Hellenes of the VIIth to the IVth centuries land directly in the river, like our Cretan
corsair, and like the French corsairs or navigators. On the river itself, Naukratis is the Rosetta of the time, the great
Hellenic emporion and bazaar. If Alexandria is founded later, it is that Hellenes of the IVth century no longer trade solely
from the north to the south between the archipelago and the Nile, but also from the east to the west, between Syria and
Hellenistic Cyrene, and as far as Carthage. Greek Alexandria is then installed at the crossroads of the two routes and, near
the islet of Pharos, the port of Alexandria replaces the old retreat of the Sidonians: between the mainland town of
Alexandria and the insular station of Pharos subsists only the difference that we have pointed out between the Hellenic
establishments, which are on terra firma, for the conquest and colonization, and the Phoenician establishments, which
were on protruding rocks or on an islet, for the needs only of commerce and coastal cruising. Apart from that difference,
Pharos and Alexandria can be nothing but foreign establishments. It thus appears to me that the Odyssian renown of
Pharos, like the renown of Calypso, could only have been made by the fleets of Sidon: we know that in Homeric times the
Phoenicians already exploited the coast of Libya; from stop to stop, they have already followed it out to the distant
Columns.

III. - The toponymy and the study of the proper names would confirm the topological facts. For even the name of Pharos
supposes, I believe, a Semitic intermediary between the Greek transcription and the Egyptian original. The isle of Pruti is
thus also truly the isle of Pirui-aui; but only the Semitic transcription, ‫פרעה‬, pharo’a truly gives us the account of the
changing of pirui-aui into pharos. From the Egyptian to Greek, from pirui-aui to pharos, the distance would be
enormous; from the Semitic to Greek, it is to the contrary practically nil, and ‫פרעה‬, paro’a would give us φάρος, pharos,
exactly in the same fashion that ‫מרגעה‬, margo’a, for example, has given us Morgos or A-morgos, Άμοργος. The
disappearance of the final ‫ ה‬is explained by the similarity of termination that habit promptly established between diverse
insular names: the popular euphony more and more related pharos to paros, samos, naxos, etc. The Odyssian story
furnishes us another Semitic place name which, I think, is even more easy to recognize.
The Odyssian paradise already bears the name the Hellenes will retain for their Land of the Blessed: it is the Elysian
Field, Ηλύσιον πεδίον. The name can have no meaning in Greek: the explanation in the fashion of the Ancients by the
place where they come, the position, etc., ελευσίς, ήλυσις, etc., is to explain Soloi by Solon, Minoa by Minos, Caiffa by
Kaiphe, and Jaffa by Japhet. The sailors of all times have accepted the pretty puns; but it is impossible to repeat them
with confidence. We have, on the other hand, a doublet which gives us the true meaning of elysian, ηλυσιον, for the
Elysian Field was for the Hellenes the Land or the Isles of the Blessed, ο‘ι νεώτεροι Μακάρων Νήσους ειρήκασι. Under
the three forms ‫עלם‬, alax, ‫עלז‬, alaz, and ‫עלץ‬, alas, the Hebrews have an identical verbal root which signifies to be joyous,
to be happy. The participial form alus, ‫עלוץ‬, which would be the exact translation of the Greek μάκαρ, happy joyous,
would give in the plural ‫עלוצים‬, elusim: from which the Field or the Plain of the Joyous, Abel or Padan Elusim, ‫פדן עלוצים‬,
or ‫אבל‬, from which the Hellenes have drawn, partly by transcription, partly by translation, their Elysian Field or Plain,
Ηλύσιον πεδίον. The transcription of elusim as elusion, ηλύσιον, is in conformance with the rules which we know: the
initial ‫ ע‬drops, as in Ezer, ‫עזר‬, Εζερ, or in Hebrew, ‫עברי‬, ‘Ηβραιος, or in Er, ‫ער‬, ‘Ηρ, etc., and the termination im of the
plural is rendered by ιον as Thourim has given us Thourion, ‫טורים‬, Θούριον. The Elysian Field and the study of the real
geography do not hesitate to verify the value of the doublet.
For the Fields of the Joyous, for the most ancient Egyptians, was a piece of our earth, a land as real as the regions
inhabited by the living. Its location was perfectly determined. The Fields were placed at the extremities of the earth and

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they will always remain there. But in measure as the explorations of the merchants and the discoveries of the navigators
had pushed back the extremities of the earth for the Egyptians, they had seen the Fields of the Joyous be deplaced and,
following the progress of the geographic knowledge, distance themselves toward the north and toward the west. In the
first times of Egypt, they could say that the land of the living ended at the still fluid marshes of the delta; it was for the
Egyptians the end of the land and the extremity of the terrestrial world; beyond extended the deserted immensities of the
Very Green. The Field of the Blessed was then in the delta: the first Egyptians localized the Fields of Ialu in a northern
canton which, even in historic times, retains the name of Ialu:

M. Lauth, says G. Maspero, had great reason to recognize, in the canton of Ialu (or Aarou) of the civil geography of Egypt, the
primitive site of the Fields of Ialu which Osiris inhabited. The marshes of the delta, situated at the extremity of the land, encumbered
by reeds and gigantic plants, strewn with isles which one sees from afar but which are inaccessible, was truly the place which related
to the dead. It was there that the corpse of Osiris was transported by the Nile, there that Isis conceived and that Horus was born, there
that the dead devotees of Osiris and of his son, the Servants of Horus, will go to rejoin their master. We have no direct evidence of
that which was the [primitive] paradise. But the description and the vignettes of the Book of the Dead are so characteristic, that I do
not doubt that they have conserved for us, in the collection more or less, the topography of the first Fields of Ialu. It is a group of
isles separated one from the other by channels more or less narrow and lakes more or less deep. They each have a name which has
been retained for us, the meaning of which is not always easy to comprehend. According to some, they were surrounded by a wall
which rendered them inaccessible to the enemies of Osiris.

The Greeks, on their side, will repeat that the Isles of the Blessed, the Elysian Field, was originally in the delta, in the
vicinity of Canope, says Appian: Fields of Ialu with their isles and the Elysian Plain with the Isles of the Blessed are but a
single and same thing. ‫עלוצים‬, Elusim, they are the Praising, the Jubilant, the Happy, who attest to their joy by
acclamations: for the proper meaning of ‫עלץ‬, alas, is to shout one’s joy, to acclaim, attesting one’s happiness by the
shouts to which are brought all of the crowds. And the Happy of Ialu are truly Acclamants, elusim. They present
themselves every day on the banks of the paradisical river, to acclaim the dying Sun, Ra of the Sunset, Ra of the Amenti,
who passes on his boat. They shout from joy at his coming and sing his praises: Oh Ra, the gods of the Amenti (Sunset)
rejoice in your beauty and the mysterious fields celebrate your praises. All come to render you homage in crying: “Arrive
in peace! Arrive!” It is an explosion of cries of welcome, and all the shades of the Douat cry: Homage to you who... etc.!
Homage to you who... etc.!” Let us read again the description of the Fields of Repose in the Book of the Dead and better
comprehend the justice of the name Plain of the Acclaimants, Abel Elusim, Ηλύσιον Πεδίον.
Thus, at the origin, Sokhet Ialu, that is to say, the Field of the Souchets (the Odyssian poet says: the Plain of the
Asphodels), and Sokhet Hotpu, that is to say, the Plain of Repose, hiding itself in the middle of the delta, in small
Archipelagos of sandy islands. It was the first realm of Osiris. But the realm deplaces itself when they understood to
better know the delta and the real geography of the world. The Osirian paradise crosses the sea. For a time, it is installed
on the newly discovered coasts of Syria. Several traits of the Osirian myth show that one of the stops was the Phoenician
coast. It is to Byblos that the current takes the corpse of the God, they say. It is to Bylos that Isis takes refuge. It is at
Bylos that the papyrus head that the preists throw into the Nile lands each year. “I do not know,” adds G. Maspero,
“whether from Phonecia the Fields of Ialu pass to a more distant coast.” The toponymy of the Hellenic archipelago proves
that in reality, the Fields of Ialu are transported there. Two isles were, turn by turn, the Elysian Field or the Blessed Isle;
The two isles of Rhodes and of Lesbos have retained the doublet for us: both are at the same time the Elysian Field,
Ηυλύσιον Πεδίον, and the Isle Makaria, the Isle of the Blessed, Μακαρία.
Rhodes, where Danaos and Cadmus came to land, is at first called Makaria. Its hero, Makar, the Blessed Man, was one
of the seven sons of the Sun, who were great astrologers and great navigators, and who found a town, named Achaia by
the Hellenes, in a canton of the isle is always called Ielisia or Ialysia. Achaia-Ialysia gives us again a Greco-Semitic
doublet. The Blessed Isle, νησος Μακαρία, was, for the Phoenicians, I-elusia or I-alusia, ‫עלוצה‬-‫אי‬: the two terms are
identical. The isle always keeps its town of I-alysos or I-elysos, Ι-ήλυσος, Ι-άλυσος: in the Dorian style, I-alysos
prevailed. The Rhodians will never forget the colonization and the long sojourn of the Phoenicians in the town. The

358
Sidonians had installed themselves in residence there and mixed with the natives. Cadmus had established them around a
temple of Poseidon, the protection of which the Phoenician families will always maintain. Masters of the cult, these
foreigners will transmit the priesthood from father to son. Masters of the town, they were supposed to posess it, according
to the oracle, as long as the crows would remain black and as long as the springs would not pour fish into the bowls.
Topologically, the station of Ialysos, over the sea of the strait, was a dependant and a necessary compliment of the great
station of Lindos over the open sea. Coming from the southeast from the home sea, the Phoenician fleets would arrive
directly at lindos. But when they came back again from the northwest, to the contrary, from the markets of the archipelago
and from the Greek mainland, they needed a retreat on the north coast of the isle: at the foot of their high hills, Kamyros
and Ialysos offer them their beaches of sand. When the Dorians will arrive, Ialysos was in the hands of the Phoenician
king Phalantos, whose name under that form is Greek, and signifies the Bald (the Scripture would give us the original of
the translated name, ‫קרה‬, Karcha, the Bald). As a ruse, the Dorians, advised of the oracle, will bleach some crows and
deposit some fish in the amphoras. Phalantos, seeing the oracle fulfilled, gave up his town and took to the sea. The
Dorians will be installed in the Phoenician town, whose name they will translate: the town of the Land of the
Acclaimants, I-alysos, is henceforth called the Ringing, the Resounding, Achaia, αχαια, from the Dorian αχος for ηχος,
αχώ for ηχώ, αχά for ηχή, etc.: the new doublet verifies very exactly the meaning which we have found for alas and
elusim, acclaimer, and acclaimants. the two names Ialysos and Achaia will persist. But little by little the Hellenes will
forget the equivalence of the two terms designating a single and same thing. The following generations will seek an
application for each of these terms: they made of Akhaia a town of the Ialysia, εν τη Ιαλυσία πόλιν Αχαίαν, or a citadel of
Ialysos, εν τη Ιαλύσω πόλιν ασχυροτάτην την Αχαίαν καλουμένην, as at Megara, Town of the Cavern, Karia Megara,
they had by the same procedure made the town of Megara, and the acropolis of Karia.
The Elysian Field does not remain for long at Rhodes. Pushing farther toward the north, the Phoenician navigators will
transport it to Lesbos, one of the seven Heliades. Makar, the Blessed Man, came from Rhodes to install himself and found
the cult of the seven Lesbian Muses or Nymphs which the Homeric poems already know. Lesbos is altogether the Blessed
Isle, Makaria, and the Elysian Field, thus retaining for us the doublet which we already have for Rhodes, νησος Μακαρία-
Ηλύσιον Πεδίον.
But, at the same time as toward the North, the Egyptian world was enlarging itself toward the west. Formerly limited
by the valley of the Nile, Egypt had little by little expanded over the desert, and from the shore the Fields of the Joyous
also removes itself toward the extremities of the earth. “Among the Egyptians,” says G Maspero, “there were two theories
on the site of the other world. The ones, believers in Osiris, sent their dead to the north; the others, believers in the god
Sokaris, sent theirs toward the west. There were two contradictory givens which nevertheless needed to agree. The
conciliation is effected by the intervention of a third god, Khontamentit, he who presides in the region of the west. The
addition of Khotamenti to the Sokar-Osiris duality reconciles the contradictory givens which Sokaris and Osiris bring
with them. A sun is born each morning in the Orient, dies each evening in the Occident, in the domain of Sokaris. Its soul
goes to the northwest to rejoin the domain of Osiris at the Fields of Ialu. The human souls follow the same path: they go
to the Occident, to the domain of Sokaris, like Khontamentit, and come back, like him, to the northwest, in the fields of
Osiris.” Thus toward the west they seek the domain of the Blessed. The Egyptians themselves will first find it in the
western desert, at seven days from Thebes, in the oasis which “the Hellenes,” says Herodotus, “call in their language the
Isle of the Blessed”, ονομάζεται δε ‘ο χωρος ουτοσ κατα ‘Ελλήνων γλωσσαν Μακάρων Νησος. “The name of Isle of the
Blessed, which Herodotus throws out in passing, shows that a legend, already popular in the Saitic epoch, made of the
Oases a domain of the dead, where the souls lived in abundance and happiness. The legend was very ancient, and Brugsch
has related very justly that the area of the Oasis named Zoszes is indicated in the hieroglyphic texts as serving as the
sojourn of the shades. Brugsch remarks further that Zoszes appears to have been, at the origin, a sort of mythical land,
whose position they later fixed precisely. Perhaps the name of Aït-Khôu, Isle of the Shades, which one of the Elysian
sojourns bears in chapters CXLIX-CL of the Book of the Dead, designates the Theban Oasis which is the original of the
Greek expression Μακάρων Νησος, Isle of the Blessed. In any case, the Oases of the Libyan desert were considered up to
the last times as a retreat of the dead.”

359
 But, toward the west, by sea, the fleets of Sidon had pushed back the limits of the world very far. Step by step, they
drove the Land of the Blessed before them. The Elysian Field finished by leaving the Mediterranean: outside the Columns
of the Sunset, farther than the Pillar of Atlas and the Isle of the Hideout, farther than Ispania-Calypso, the paradise finally
disappeared in the depth of the western Ocean. It is there that the Greeks and Latins had their Isles of the Blessed. It is
there that the Homeric poems already site their Elysian Field: “it is because the Poet,” says Strabo, “knew of the
navigations of the Phoenicians toward Spain, that they localize the Elysian Plain on its coast.” We see that we must take
the literal meaning of the text of Strabo: the episode of Calypso has proved to us that the Phoenicians, before the Homeric
epoch, had already advanced up to the Column of the Sunset.

IV. - The other proper names of the Odyssian story would lead us in the last analysis to the same Greco-Semitic
doublets, or further, if you would permit me the neologism, even to Egypto-Semitic-Greek triplets. Two proper names
especially would be taken by that study: the Odyssey knew of the two judges of the dead, Minos and Rhadamanthys. We
already have the feeling that the latter is not without analogy with the Governors, Princes or Lords of the Amenthes. But,
to give some proofs in support of that feeling, it would be necessary to undertake a very long discussion of the Cretan
origins to which the two names are connected, of the Cretan myth of Minos, of the thalassocracy of Minos of Crete. I
refer that too long discussion to another work. I would someday show how, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, has
sprung the Cretan legend, how Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon are, all three, Grandsons of Phoenix and sons of the
occidental Europa, and how that Beautiful Lady of the Sunset, ‘η καλη Ευρώπη, is just the Phoenician translation of the
Beautiful Amentet, Amentet nefert, of the Egyptians. All the names and all the details of the Cretan myth are explained to
us by the Book of the Dead. Crete had been, it also, the sojourn of the Amenti, the Land of the Blessed, Makaron insulam
nonnulli a temperie coeli existimavere. The Minotaur is just a bullheaded god of the Amenti. The bull of the Beautiful
Europa is just the bull of the Beautiful Amentet. Everywhere the Goddess of the Sunset, Amentet-Europa successively
debarks, the Isles of the Blessed will be installed: in Boeotia, the citadel of Thebes is also the Isle of the Blessed,
Μακάρον νησοι ‘η ακρόπολις των εν Βοιωτία Θηβων. But here is not the place to enter into that marvelous history: we
need to return to our Odyssian onomasty.
The word Egypt, Αιγύπτος, is ordinarily explained by the Egyptian name of Memphis, Haikuphtah or Hakaphtah, the
Castle of the Doubles of the god Phtah. That the name of the capitol had served in the foreign languages to designate the
entire country and even the river, the thing in itself presents nothing unlikely. We will find numerous examples of a
parallel operation in the diverse onomasties: Cambodia, for us, has long designated a people, a land, and a river. But the
operation also implies a certain state of the land. If it is Memphis which represented to the eyes of the foreigners the entire
realm, it is that the Haikuphtah, the Castle of Doubles, was then the political capitol or the great emporium, the principal
town in the opinion of the foreigners. Now all the Homeric texts and realities lead us to an epoch when the old supremacy
of Memphis has long disappeared: the Odyssey makes us descend to the period of history when it is Thebes which is the
great town of Egypt and of the world; the Homeric poets do not even know the name of Memphis. Among the Phoenician
sailors, to the contrary, the name should have been popular: on the one hand, the memory of the Memphitic grandeur
could persist in the stories or the legends of Sidon, and, on the other hand, the Phoenicians retained a quarter - a camp,
στρατόπεδον, in the diminished Memphis: the French, Venetians and old Genoese employ the same word of camp for
their closed quarters in the Levantine towns - with a temple of their Astarte, whom Herodotus calls the foreign
Aphrodite. Memphis, at the head of the delta, thus remained for the Phoenician commerce that which the bazaars of Cairo
always remain for the French commerce. Also, I would readily believe that only the Phoenicians were able to apply to the
entire country the name of their camp, of their great place of traffic.
When the Greek commerce appears in Egypt, it is not Memphis which is the Hellenic camp: it is Naukratis, and the
appearance of Greek commerce is much later than the Homeric poems. The Achaean pirates still know only the coast of
the delta, where they raid, and the capitol where the king resides, Thebes. The name of Thebes is not Egyptian: The town
has the names of Uisit and Apitu for the Egyptians. The name of Thebes could have a meaning in Egyptian. But it presents
no meaning in Greek. It is nevertheless a name spread in the Hellenic lands or seas. Boeotia and the coast of Asia Minor

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each has its Thebes, Θηβαι or Θήβη. No Indo-European etymology can give an account of the name. The Thebes in
Hellenic lands are of foreign foundation. The one is the Thebes of the Cilicians of Ida, neighbor of the river of Seven
Fords, “Επταπορος, and of the port of Adramyttion, which itself bears a Semitic name:

εκ δε πόλιν πέρσεν Κιλίκων ευ ναιετόωσαν

Θήβην ‘υψίπυλον...

The other is the Thebes of Boeotia, the town of Seven Gates, founded by the Phoenician Cadmus:

ο‘ί πρωτοι Θήβης ‘έδος έκτισαν ‘επταπύλοιο.

The names very surely maintain that the story of Cadmus is not a legend: a Phoenician station really existed at the
crossroads of routes, in the heart of eastern Boeotia, at an equal distance from all the Boeotian seas. Now, the Scripture
employs the word ‫תבה‬, teba or especially theba, to designate a chest, a box, an ark, like the ark of Noah or the basket of
Moses on the Nile. The Seventy translate theba as κίβωτος, chest, or transcribe it as θίβη, θήβη: we know in effect that
the initial ‫ ת‬ordinarily gives a θ. We imagine for the Boeotian Thebes a possible reason for the appellation: if theba is the
ark in which Noah is saved from the deluge, Thebes is the town founded by Ogygos who himself also escaped the flood...
Bu we have a doublet to confirm the veracity of the etymology to us, because one of the names of the Egyptian Thebes,
Apitu, signifies the chests. I believe that Thebai Apitu forms an Egypto-Semitic couplet. Thebes is a Semitic translation of
Apitu which the Hellens will transcribe or adopt: the Chests, Apitu, have thus given the Thebes, α‘ι Θήβαι of the Odyssian
poem.
It is thus by the intermediary of the Semites that the names of the region have arrived to the Homeric poet or to the
Achaean peoples. It is somewhat remarkable that the poet does not yet know the name of the Nile: for him, the river is
named Aigyptos like the land, πόταμος Αίγυπτος, the river Aigyptos. - “The word Nile,” says G. Maspero, “is of
undecided origin: it comes to us from the Greeks, who have borrowed it from a foreign people, Phoenicians or Khiti,
tribes of Libya or Asia Minor. When the Egyptian natives do not wish to treat of their river as a god, as hâpi, they called it
the sea or the river, iatur-au, iaur-au or iauma, ioma.” The Hebrews knew of the Iaor or Iaur Misraïm, ‫מצרים‬-‫יאר‬, the
lake of Egypt, Misraim being for them the name of Egypt. But they also knew of the Nahal or Nehal, which is another
river, entirely different from the Nile. ‫נהל‬, nahal, which the Seventy transcribe as neel, is a common name to designate the
watercourses, rivers, torrents or streams: the Scripture knew the nahal of Ascalon, of Gad, or Arnon, etc. The variable
forms of the Greek nam Neilos, Nilos, Neel, Nel, ect., were adopted from the word ‫נהל‬, nahal or nehel (with the dropping
of the median ‫ה‬, such as ordinarily occurs). In supposing a Phoenician name “Nehel Haikuptah”, the River of Memphis,
we rendered an account at the same time of the classic Nilos, which would be just an abridged transcription, and of the
Homeric Potamos Aigyptos, which would be partly a translation (potamos=neel, πόταμος=‫ )בהל‬and partly as a
transcription (Haikuptah=Aigyptos).

*
* *

From this collection of facts, I believe that a conclusion emerges. It seems to me that the Odyssian poet furnishes us
some very exact and precise evidences. It appears to me certain that the Achaean corsairs frequented the coasts of the
delta: for the reason alone that they were corsairs, they were attracted to the maritime plain like a swarm of bees to a pot
of honey. It is thus possible that the Odyssian poet had known of Egypt by its Achaean renown and by the accounts of the
pirates of the archipelago. But it appears to me no less possible that he knew it especially by another fashion, by written
texts, by stories of magic and sorcery where the Pharaos, the Pruti and their sons held the premier rôle. Throughout the

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imitation which the Odyssian poet made of them, the stories appeared entirely similar to the Pharaonic stories which the
papyri have given us - with one single difference: it is that, by certain words and certain essential elements, the Greek
imitation betrays a Semitic intermediary.
The Nostos of Menelaus is presented to us as a melange of Egyptian and Semitic items, which is properly the character
of Phoenician productions. Herodotus tells us that the Phoenician vessels carried into Greece cargos half Egyptian and
half Assyrian, φορτία Αιγύπτια τε και Ασσύρια. We see a similar mixture in the style of the monuments which the
archeologists relate to the Phoenicians in general agreement. The Homeric poems themselves perhaps furnish us a fine
example in the scenes of the shield of Achilles. We should read the dissertation of M. A. Moret: Some scenes of the shield
of Achilles and the tableaus of the Egyptian tombs. We will find there the indisputable proof, I believe, that such scenes
from the Homeric shield are just the reproduction “of tableaus sculpted or painted in thousands of examples, on the walls
of the Memphitic mastabas or Theban hypogea.” M. Moret concludes:

It would remain to know how the influence of the Egyptian tableaus were able to influence the imagination of the Homeric
rhapsodies. Is it by the intermediary of Phoenician works?
Helbig has said, regarding the shield of Achilles, that “the descriptions of certain scenes are inspired by plastic models. The
models are especially from the vases in metal of Phoenician importation, or from the Greek imitations of them.” We have proofs
enough of the influence of Egypt on the Phoenician art not to reject the hypothesis. But, for the other part, was it impossible for the
Ionians to see the originals of Egypt with their own eyes? Assuredly not; we know that the tombs of the ancient necropolises,
Memphitic or otherwise, were visited with curiosity: the Greeks, who had free access, should not have been the least avid to
penetrate the secret of the tombs. Thus nothing is opposed that the Homeric rhapsodies knew, either directly or indirectly, of the
funerary Egyptian paintings or bas-reliefs. But the delicate question of the routes of penetration of the Egyptian influence is not at all
that which we wished to broach: we content ourselves to point out that same inflence. We definitely do not flatter ourselves at all [to
think] that we have retrieved, in the mass of Egyptian funerary scenes, the originals themselves of the plastic models by which the
Homeric rhapsodies could have been inspired; but at least we can conclude that, in certain scenes of the shield of Achilles, certain
decorative motifs which were utilized in Egypt since the first dynasties are implimented with a remarkable fidelity.

Similarly as the funerary paintings of Egypt have served, directly or indirectly, as a model to the Homeric artists, so
the literary texts of Egypt should also have served the Odyssian poets. But, with Helbig, I believe that between Egypt and
primitive Greece, there was a Phoenician intermediary. As they copied, on their metal bowls or on their shields, such and
other Egyptian paintings, the Phoenicians, in their books and accounts, copied such and other literary works, periples or
tales of magic. For the tales of magic, in particular, it appears that the Bible can furnish us a weighty argument. Why
would the Phoenicians, who lived in permanent contact with Egypt, not have done that which their cousins and neighbors
of Judea did, each time they came in contact with Egypt? For there are two stories truly in the Egyptian mode, two stories
of Pruti and of magicians, which the Scripture has transmitted to us in the story of Joseph and of Moses. It is by a story of
astrologers and of magicians, by the seven lean cows and the seven fat cows, by the seven full ears and the seven empty
ears, by the prophecies and divinations of Joseph, that the Scripture explains to us the arrival of Israel in Egypt, and it is
by another story of magicians that the Scripture explains to us the Return of Israel - the Nostos, the Greeks would say -
the leaving from Egypt with the man of the staff, Moses. It would be easy to show in detail the multiple resemblances that
the Hebrew stories present with the Egyptian stories: the magicians of Pharao, in the stories from the papyri, perform
most of the miracles which the Scripture attributes to Moses and to his brother Aaron.
There were Phoenician stories which attributed similar marvels to some Pruti of fantasy. It is by one of these accounts
that they explained the marvelous return to Sidon of fleets lost in the Libyan sea, the rescue of navigators shipwrecked on
the isle of Pharos. It is from such a Phoenician story that the Homeric poet draws the Nostos, the return of Menelaus. And
that is of a capital importance also for explaining to us the Nostos, the return of Ulysses. For, Nostos of Menelaus and
Nostos of Ulysses, it is possible that the two episodes of our Odyssey may not be from the same hand: they are surely
from the same epoch, from the time when the literary fashion was for Nostoi, for Returns, that is to say, for poems of
marvelous navigations, as it had been or as it was again for Erides and for Menides, for Rages and for Arguments, that is
to say for poems of war and of combats, as it was later, among the classic Hellenes, for lyric or tragic poems, and as, with

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us, it was for the tragedy during the XVIIth century, for the romance during the XIXth. Now, the Nostos of Ulysses has
already appeared to us, in its two episodes of Calypso and of the Pheacians, as a transposition, in Greek and in verse, of
foreign periples, probably Phoenician. And here it is that the Nostos of Menelaus appeared to us in its turn as the faithful
copy of Phoenicianized Egyptian story. If the Phoenicians had borrowed from Egypt the literary fashion of magical
stories, they should have had a stronger reason to borrow from them another fashion of accounts much more useful to
their population of navigators. The Egyptians already had their periples, their detailed accounts of real navigations, with
views of the coasts to support them. On the sides of the monument of Deir-el-Bahari, the queen Haïtshopitu, daughter of
Thuthmosis Ist, had caused to be engraved the account and the figures of her commercial expedition toward the Lands of
Incense.

The preserved portions, says G. Maspero, does not indicate to us either the port from which the fleet left, nor the number of days
which it spent at sea. [The first tableau] shows us only the arival of the Egyptians, their debarkation and their interviews with the
natives; it is accompanied by the inscription: “Cruiser of the Great Green; departure on the fine route which leads to the Land of
Puanit; landing in peace”. One ship is already anchored. A second ship, sails lowered, but still under oars, maneuvers to come
alongside the first. The last three make way with sails and oars to join the others. [second tableau]: The royal messenger has come
ashore under the protection of eight soldiers and an officer. He has begun to display gifts of various sorts, five bracelets and two
necklaces, probably of gold, a poignard equipped with its belt and straps, an ax resembling those with which the soldiers are armed,
and eleven necklaces of glass beads. The natives, lured by the view of such precious objects, are gathered with their chief Parihu, his
wife, and their children. And the inscription relates: “Arrival of chiefs, the backs bent and heads down, to receive the soldiers of her
majesty”, etc...
The queen Haïtshoptu had had the entire story carved under the porticos which bordered the second terrace of her funerary
chapel. There we see the small squadron coursing under full sails, the happy arrival, the meeting of the natives, the emphatic
discussions, the barter freely agreed and, by virtue of the minutiae with which the slightest circumstance of the action have been
detailed, we can attend, as if there, to the diverse operations of which the maritime life is composed, not only of the Egyptians, but of
the other Oriental nations. It is such a manner, of a certainty, that the Phoenicians equip and handle their ships, when they adventured
in the distant waters of the Mediterranean. The decor of the points of the Asiatic or Greek coast upon which they debark is not the
same as that of Puanit, but the navigators are provided with the same objects of exchange and, in the practice of negotiations, act no
differently with the tribes of Europe than do the Egyptians with the Barbarians of the Red Sea.

All of the previous studies have showed us the justice of the last remarks. We know that the Odyssian cruiser is just
the Egyptian vessel, with double castle fore and aft, such as that which is represented to us on the monument of Deir-el-
Bahari. The processes and the objects of traffic are the same; the Phoenicians also displayed gold necklaces, arms and
manufactures in the Greek ports, στησαν εν λιμένεσσι: “How have you reached this country unknown to the people of
Egypt?” say the people of Puanit, “Have you come down by the road from the sky or have you navigated by water upon
the sea of Tonutri?” - “Who are you, then?” asks Eumea of the old man, “On what ship have you arrived?. How have the
sailors brought you to Ithaca? For I do not suppose that you might have come here afoot.” It is the same question that
Telemachus poses to the supposed Mentes, king of the Taphians, and to the beggar who Ulysses first is, then to his father
himself, when he has recognized him. It is the question which all the landsmen ask in the times of the navigators.
The maritime or continental explorations of the Egyptians toward the south had put certain very exact geographic, or
especially ethnographic understandings in circulation, which we retrieve in our Homeric poems. The Homeric world is
populated at the center only by the white faces, white populations; but at its two extremities, Oriental and Occidental,
appear the black faces, the negroes, Αιθίοπες. The negroes inhabit the ends of the earth, separated into two groups:
negroes of the Sunset and negroes of the Sunrise,

Αιθίοπας τοι διχθά δεδαίαται έσχατοι ανδρων,

ο‘ι μεν δυσομένου ‘Υπερίονος, ο‘ι δ’ ανιόντος.

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 The Ancients have sought twenty preposterous explanations of the very clear text. We have today two lands of the
Negroes, or, as we say with the Arabs, two Sudans: the Arab word sudan [sawada, it was black or green], the blacks, the
negroes, is the exact translation of the black faces, Aithiopians, Αιθί-οπες. One of our Sudans is to the south of Egypt,
near the Red Sea, at the oriental extremity of the African continent; the other is on the Atlantic, at the occidental extremity
of the same continent. Between the two, our maps still bear, as the denomination for all the interior continent: Sudan or
Nigeria, the two names forming a doublet. In the Homeric times, we know that the Phoenician navigators have already
reached the negroes of the sunset, who live on the shores of the Atlantic, and whom the earlier periples describe to us.
Toward the negroes of the sunset, towards the Sudan of Senegal, we have studied the routes of the Sidonians and the
different peoples who, from Sidon, succeed each other up to the Extreme West. On the entire Mediterranean coast of
Africa, between Egypt and the Columns, live Berbers, Libyans, of the white race with blond hair, ξανθοι Λίβυες. The
Berbers, beyond the Columns, extend farther on the ocean up to the port of Lixos. But beyond commence the Negroes,
the Aithiopians of Skylax and of the periple of Hannon. Until he had left Libyan waters, Hannon, accustomed to the
Berber languages, was able to navigate without an interpreter; at Lixos began languages unknown to him: he takes on
interpreters who serve up to the Horn of the Sunset, during the twelve days when he cruised the Nigerian coast, την γην
παραλεγόμενοι ‘ην πασαν κατόκουν Αιθίοπες. The Aithiopians of the Sunset pass their nights dancing the bambula
around large fires, with great cries, to the sound of flutes and tamborines: they are truly negroes. Thus, through the
Phoenicians, the negroes of the sunset have been known by the Homeric world at the same time as Calypso. But the
Egyptian explorations had long ago discovered the oriental negroes, the blacks of Puanit, as the hieroglyphics say. Also
the Nostos of Menelaus gives us, as a short cut, an exact enough ethnographic chart of the southeast extremity of the
world: Menelaus has gone to Cyprus, to Phonecia, to Egypt, among the Ethiopians, the Sidonians, the Arabs and the
Libyans. From Cyprus to Libya alternate, in effect, on the coast or in the interior of the continent, the Phoenicians, the
Sidonians, the Arabs, the negroes of Sudan and the Egyptians. All of the names are easily explained: only the term
Ερεμβοί, which I translate as Arabs, could lend itself to discussion, if the Semitic languages had not furnished us ‫ערבים‬,
Arabim or Erabim, as the name of the people whom we call Arab. The transcription as Erembes, Ερεμβοί, is regular: we
know that the initial ‫ ע‬frequently drops and that the Semitic ‫ ב‬is frequently rendered by the Greeks, as is our b, as μπ, μβ,
μ, etc.

*
* *

Let us thus take up the Nostos of Ulysses with the double certitude, that the Odyssian poems have been subjected to
the influence of the Levantine literatures, in particular of the Phoenician writings, and that the literatures already knew the
genre of the periple:

Allow me to point out here, says G. Maspero, in a few words an hypothesis which the study of the monument of Deir-el-Bahari
has suggested to me. The periple of Hannon, which they had displayed in the temple of Cronos in Carthage, δε και ανεθηκεν εν τω
Κρονου τεμενει, was probably a text analogous to the text of queen Haïtshopitu. We know that the Phoenicians and, accordingly, the
Carthaginians, have for centuries been subject to the Egyptian influence: that which we knew of their temples and of their
monuments shows that they had pushed the imitation of Egypt to the extreme. It is very possible that the magistrates of Carthage had
decided to do, for the exploration of the occidental coast of Africa, that which queen Haïtshopitu decided was appropriate for the
exploration of the oriental coast. Tableaus, accompanied by legends, could also have depicted the different scenes of the
Carthaginian voyage, or perhaps the account was preceded by a single illustration, as is the case for the Egyptian Steles, dedicated in
the temples one after another for the great events of a reign.

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 Before the exploration of the Atlantic seas, the Phoenicians had discovered and exploited the Mediterranean coasts; it
is not presumptuous to suppose that they had similarly written the periples and mapped the coasts. It is one of the periples
of the Phoenician Mediterranean that our Odyssian poet should have known, directly or indirectly. It is from the periple
that he drew the episodes of the Odyssian Nostos. The study of Calypso has shown us that one of the sections of the
periple dealt with Spain and the strait of Gibralter. For the other part, the study of Pheacia has reported to us of the
Cyclops who should, if our hypothesis is true, inhabit the Italian coasts. Between Italy and Spain, we seek the other lands
of the Nostos.
But we should take guard straightaway of an important detail: we do not expect to discover in the Nostos the faithful
and continuous copy of a periple. It is pieces of periple which the Greek poet appears to have stitched end to end, relying
on them for the two verses which terminate our Song of the Corsairs and which are going to come back, like a refrain
after each episode of the Nostos: “From there we navigate most promptly, hearts grieved, happy to have escaped death,
but weeping for our dear comrades”,

ένθεν δε προτέρω πλέομεν ακαχήμενοι ητορ,

άσμενοι εκ θανάτοιο, φίλους ολέσαντες ‘εταίρους.

Textually or with variations, this moaning refrain is going to emphasize the couplets of the Return and give a tone of
lamentation and dread to the entire poem. Virgil, faithful imitator, will not fail to make the pious Aenas groan at each new
adventure. That is not, certainly, the tone of a periple. It is still less the tone of a song or of a sailors’ story. Listen to the
“They-done-me-wrongs”, as the popular irony says, of the retirees of the fleet seated at the bench on the quays of Toulon,
because of the refrain which ends all their stories: “They did not give me justice; they did me wrong”. Here is master
Marius, ancient captain of arms or topmaster aboard the Desiree. He has navigated on all the seas, endured the tempests
and cyclones, encountered the savages and the English, known the landings and shipwrecks, he has seen everything, done
everything, and his bravery or his competence alone has pulled frigates, admirals and entire fleets from peril. He is a
prodigy. But they have not recognized his merit, here he is retired without a medal: “They did me wrong”.
Between this refrain and that of the Odyssey, there is a great difference. The self-satisfaction, a just estimate of one’s
own qualities, the confidence in one’s personal ability and the final triumph of that ability always shines, in the course or
the outcome of history, in the memories and the stories of our fleets. In the hearing, the dangers and the misfortunes, the
deceits of men and the violences of the elements are assuredly fearful. But everything ends by yielding to master Marius,
who always pulls his world, all his world, out of the worst strait. The wind, the sea, the English! It is a terrible thing, but
at a distance only for the landlubbers who fear it, or up close for the incompetents who do not know how to set about it.
Master Marius, he is posessed of elation:

The thirty-first of August,

We saw, beneath our wind,
A frigate out of England,
Which cut the sea and waves:
It was bound for Bordeaux.
The captain, in an instant,
Called to his lieutenant:
“Lieutenant, feel you able,
Tell me, do you feel strong
Enough to go attack her?”

The lieutenant, brave and hardy,

Him answered, “Yes, my captain!”

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 And the song continues its cheerful tone: in no time at all, the frigate is captured, and

Drink a cup, drink another

To the health of the lovers.

If master Marius complains of anything, it is not of the sea and its rages, nor of the winds or currents, or even the
savages or English, but of the Admiral, the Staff and the Minister, who have not given him a medal. What a contrast to the
Odysean terrors and lamentations! Nevertheless, the Cretan corsair just now gave us the true refrain of the “sailors’” song:
“My fearless heart never weakened before death”, and the people of Egypt had noted the refrain of the Achaean songs:

ού ποτε θάνατον προτιόσσετο θυμος αγήνωρ.

And, in the end, what a further contrast between the Odyssian adventures and the stories of our sailors! All the
adventures of Ulysses end badly. Each landing costs the lives of part of the crew. No unmixed happiness! No triumph or
even success! Always flights, defeats and imprisonments! From the Cyclops to the Lestrygonians, from Circe to Calypso,
from Charybdis to Scylla, the fall from bad to worse is endless. Even with Circe, where they will stay a year in
banqueting and lovemaking, the death of Elpinor and the necessity to sail to the Underworld comes to spoil all the joy.
They leave Troy an entire fleet, and only Ulysses sees Ithaca again:

In leaving the gulf of Otrante,

There were thirty of us;
On reaching Cadiz,
Ten were left.

From Otrante to Cadiz, our corsairs only lose twenty men today; most have even deserted of their own free will:

At Gaete, Ascagne took his leave

To meet Michellema.
Love opens the parentheses:
Marriage closes them.
Then three of us whom nothing impedes,
Nor law nor God nor sovereign,
Will leave for prince Eugene,
As well as for Mazarin,
To aid Fuentes to take Genoa,
Or Harcourt to take Turin.

At Palma, to follow Pescaire,

Eight will leave us turn by turn,
But that hardly bothers us.

In the Odyssey, at each new loss, “that bothers them” severely: only in the land of the Lotus Eaters does an adventure
of deserters end without too many tears. Now, it does not appear that uninterrupted misfortune had been the rule in all of

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the Achaean Nostoi, “in the literary genre of Returns”, as we say today: the Nostos of Menelaus is, to the contrary, an
adventure which ends well and which, in spite of some perils, was not cruel to its navigators... In the periple which it
imitates, would the Odyssian poet thus have chosen the dangerous waters and ferocious peoples? Is it by design that he
wished to show only the terrors of the great Occidental Sea to his listeners? Reconstitute in imagination the public of the
times and the knowledge which they can have of the world: their geographic knowledge toward the sunset ends at Ithaca,
last Achaean isle. Then see if a clear lesson does not come from our entire Nostos: “One cannot navigate beyond the
Achaean lands, beyond Ithaca, far from the ‘flour-making’ men (that is to say, bread-eaters, civilized); Ulysses alone, by
miracle and by the special protection of Athena, was able to come back there”... But before before seeking how and why
the poet chose this or that bit of the original periple by preference, we at first need to reconstitute each of the pieces and
put them in place. We return to the Nostos of Ulysses.

SEVENTH BOOK

THE LOTUS-EATERS AND THE CYCLOPS

ταυτα ου ποιητων πλάσματά εστιν ουδε συγγραφέων...

STRAB., I, 23

CHAPTER I

THE LOTUS-EATERS

‘ο δε Ποιητης δίδωσιν αφορμας ‘ως ουδε τούτων ανήκοός εστι των τόπων.

STRAB., III, 148

After the “cruise” against the Kikones, Ulysses takes up his navigation again:

From there we navigate most promptly, the heart distressed, content to escape death but weeping for the lost comrades.
Nevertheless, the vessels do not get under way before we might hail three times each of the unfortunates who came to perish on the
plain, under the blows of the Kikones. But, upon our vessels, Zeus the gatherer of clouds precipitates the wind Bora with terrible
roarings. The mist covers the land and sea altogether; the night falls from the sky and, listing, our vessels are put to flight before the

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wind. The gale rips the sails in three or four places. We have to lower the mast for danger of foundering, then pull on the oars to
reach land. There, for two days and two nights without stopping, we remain stretched out, digesting our fatigue and our grief. When
the curly Aurora returns the third day, we leave and, mast stepped, sails set, there we are, tranquilly seated, letting the wind and the
pilot work. We go without mishap to return to our native land. But the swell, the current and the Bora throw us off our course, at the
rounding of Malea, and we miss Kythera as well.

It appears needless to me to insist once again over the details of the navigation and the exactitude of the views of the
sea. The Nautical Instructions have spoken to us at length of the blows of the Bora “which predominates during the good
season, sometimes blowing fresh with a misted horizon which obscures the land at a great distance... They ordinarily
blow with great force; they are most often cold and obscure the horizon... It is prudent to always have a sheltered harbor
where one can retreat if a gale arises quickly. The atmosphere in this case becomes so obscure,

συν δε νεφέεσσι κάλυψεν

γαιαν ‘ομου και πόντον. ορώρει δ’ ουρανόθεν νύξ.

that in the middle of a labyrinth of isles, it is often impossible to avoid the land before finding the distance dangerous.”
We also know that the storms of the Bora ordinarily last three days, and blow down, upend and shred everything. It is
necessary either to take refuge in a port and haul the boats ashore, or to abandon oneself to the will of fate in the open sea.
On the oriental and occidental façades of the Peloponnesus, the storms rampage entirely similarly during the summer. Among
twenty or thirty accounts of modern voyagers, I would only take the one which accords the most with our Odyssian text:

The following day, relates Du Fresne-Canaye, the mistral strengthened so much that all the nautical ability was too weak against
the fury of ther storm. Therefore we turned back and set anchor (August 3) in the port of Modon... We stayed at Modon awaiting a
favorable wind... Finally, tired of the long wait and seeing the obstinate persistance of the pitiless mistral, in the hope of finding
another wind on the high sea, we raised the sails on the 20th of August and ran tacks with great efforts and storms up to the 23rd,
when we arrived at Prodano, a desert isle 20 miles from Modon, called Prote by the Ancients. The next day, we raised anchor with a
good enough wind. But all at once the sky clouds over; fearful currents and thick rain will fly to the west, of such manner that we ran
four days and four nights before anchoring at Zante. The 7th of September we weighed anchor with a breeze from the poop. But in
the middle of the channel of Cephalonia, the wind changes itself, and we ran tacks for three days on end in the channel... After much
effort we left the channel. We had a favorable wind so well that in a few hours we arrived at the isle of Paxo, neighboring Corfu...
But here in just a moment a storm arises with gusts so dark that we could barely see the prow from the poop, and the rain fell in such
fury that the sailors will completely lose control of the ship. They reef all the sails; they fasten the boards over the sides and let the
ship go at the mercy of the waves. Finally the rain ends in less than a half hour, but the wind had turned to the west in such a way
that, in spite of ourselves, we returned to the isle of Nicolas.

On each face of the Peloponnesus, the tempests rage. They are particularly fearful at the approaches to the advanced
points, for the boats which round the peninsula to the south and pass from the gulf of Venice, as the French sailors say
(their gulf of Venice goes up to the extreme points of the Peloponnesus), into the archipelago, or inversely. To the south
of Malea, the strait of Kythera, which is the great route of sailing ships, is the most frequently obstructed by the gales of
the Bora. Coming from the gulf of Venice, the occidental navigators abruptly encounter, when they thread the strait of
Kythera, a violent current of air which closes the route to them: they have to reverse course and come to await a calm in
some harbor of the gulfs of Laconia or of Messenia, at Port-aux-Cailles in the south of Taygete, at Coron or at Modon in
the south of Ithome. Coming from the archipelago, the oriental navigators encounter even more difficulties: the Bora,
which drives them from the poop, is at times so violent that it is impossible for them to do anything but flee straight
before it; the least maneuver which would put the ship in the traverse, the least turn of the tiller, to right or left, could lay
down the mast or capsize the boat. Du Fresne-Canaye similarly sets out, like Ulysses, toward his homeland; he descends
from the archipelago to reach the straight of Kythera:

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 Violently pushed by the incredible force of the transmontane, we left Macronisi, Helena, Serifo and Sifano. We crossed the gulf
of Napoli and toward evening we had Antimilo and Milo to our right. We discovered Cerigo somewhat close by. But since the pilot
was not too experienced, the owner and the helmsman decided not to go farther that night. We continued to run tacks toward
Bellopoulo until morning. The following day, since the wind did not cease, we made for Malvoisie. Then we came alongside cape
Saint Ange... We had a hard time getting above the point, for, wishing to enter the gulf of Venice, we no longer had the wind from
the poop; but it pushed the ship to such a list that the main yard was more than four hands under water, and the water entered under
the cover.

[C. the Odyssian verse: “the vessels fled listing”,

α‘ι μεν έπειτ’ εφεροντ’ επικάρσιαι... ]

At the eastern end of the strait of Kythera, the Levantine thalassocracies found some refuges along the Peloponnesus
which we have studied at length. Zarax, Minoa, Side, etc. We have reconized some Phoenician memories on the coasts of
the purpura. But, beyond the fisheries, some harbors of refuge were indispensable to navigation: on the eastern façade of
the Peloponnesus, the harbors were for the Phoenicians that which Coron and Modon were on the other façade for the
Venetians and the French. To the south of Malea and the strait, we have also studied the bays and ports of Kythera.
Ulysses, having missed the strait, could still take refuge in the insular ports. But he needed to be able to turn to the west,
and the wind from the north is so violent that all maneuvering becomes impossible. Ulysses thus also misses the entrance
of Kythera, and there he is thrown, by the wind and the current, toward the great Occidental sea: “The current in the
vicinity of cape Malea,” say the Instructions, “in general bears to the west with the speed of one mile per hour.”
Beyond Malea and Kythera opens the sea without islands. The sailing ships can reach Crete when the Zephyr, the wind
from the northwest, sets to blow. But the Bora, the wind from the northeast, carries them only toward Malta or toward
Africa, and it is toward Africa that the current also bears them:

The currents in the archipelago are irregular in force and direction. In general, they bear to the south. But they are greatly
influenced by the winds, especially in the western part of the sea. As a general rule, the currents are always stronger during and after
the winds from the northeast than with the winds from the south. When the winds are between the northeast and the east, the rapid
current from the Bosphorus passes by the two coasts of the isle of Lemnos and advances into the west part of the archipelago, taking
a considerable speed in the channels of the isles. We cannot give an exact law for the flow of the currents, especially for the part
south of the archipelago and for the channels which border the isle of Candia. The current carries almost continuously toward the
south. But it is sometimes irregular and depends heavily (as everywhere else) on the force and the direction of the winds, whether
they may be local or may blow afar with violence. In the waters of Crete, the current which descends from the Dardanelles and that
which, coming from the coast of Egypt, passes along the coasts of Syria and Caramania, are combined, in absorbing the local
influences, and thus give rise to a southerly current dominating in the archipelago, or southwesterly a little lower, with a speed from
½ to 1½ miles per hour.

By the wind which comes from the northeast, and by the current which bears to the southwest, κυμα ‘ροος τε, Ulysses
is carried far from the Greek seas, far from Crete also, across the desert without isles which extends from the Cretan
coasts up to the African shores. In that part of the Mediterranean, the system of winds is more uncertain: “On the African
coasts, the breezes from land and from the open are irregular, from the month of April up until the month of October.
Nevertheless, one feels the violent breezes from the north and from the northeast, which produce a very heavy sea. In the
gulf of Syrte, the dominant winds are the northwest and the northeast, becoming northerly in the depths of the gulf. The
breezes from the north rarely penetrate as far as the foot of the gulf; but they raise a heavy swell which breaks on the low
and sandy beaches.” It is onto these beaches that Ulysses is carried by the disastrous winds: “For nine days the pernicious
winds carry us over the fishy sea; on the tenth, we land in the country of the Lotu Eaters, who are nourished by flowering
dishes.”

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 *
* *

To find the land of the Lotus Eaters, should we make a great computation of the distance given by the poet? We will
say that nine or ten days of navigation from his mouth can only be a current expression indicating just a somewhat long
period: a ten of days, we would say. We know that the Hellenes counted their days by tens: we have here an Hellenic ten,
as elsewhere we have the Semitic week (from the isle of Aeolos to the land of the Lestrygones, Ulysses navigates six days
and arrives the seventh), and as elsewhere further we have the Hellenic ten and the Semitic week combined (from the isle
of Calypso to the land of the Pheacians, Ulysses navigates seventeen days. Nevertheless the distance of nine days would
correspond fairly well to the twelve or thirteen hundred kilometers which separates the Malea from the land of the Lotus
Eaters, the Peloponnesus from the Tunisian coasts. It is in the south of present Tunisia, near the isle of Djerba, that the
Ancients in effect located the people of the Lotus Eaters. It appears that early on the blows of the wind have cast the
Peloponnesian boats on the African shore. In the times of Herodotus, they related of Jason that which the Odyssian poet
here relates to us of Ulysses. Jason wished to round the Peloponnesus, περιπλέειν Πελοπόννησον, to go to offer a bronze
tripod to the god of Delphi. But below the Malea, κατα Μαλέην, a blow of the Bora drives him into Libya, ‘υπολαβειν
άνεμον Βορέην και αποφέρειν προσ την Λιβύην, in the region of lake Triton, very near the Lotus Eaters. By virtue of the
winds from the north, the Libyan land already appeared to the contemporaries of Herodotus as a future dependancy of the
Peloponnesus, in the same fashion and for the same reason that Cyrene had become a dependancy of the Cretan or
Aegean islanders: the oracle, they said, had ordered the Lacedemonians to go colonize the isle Phla, in the neighborhood
of the Lotus Eaters.
The people of the Lotus Eaters really exosted. We know how the antique navigators distinguish peoples, according to
their customary nourishment, into Fish eaters, Elephant eaters, Monkey eaters, etc. The classification makes us smile,
because we are not willing to see either the profound philosophy or the real usefulness of it. But for the Ancients, in the
state of their understanding, it was the only convenient and rational manner of classifying the humanities of the same
color into different groups. Let us reflect a moment on that which we do ourselves. When we have divided the human
species into whites, blacks, yellows, etc., according to the color of the skin, we need another means of classification: we
take the difference of language. Our knowledge of general grammar and comparative philology has made us recognize
families of languages: we have concluded from that the existence of families of peoples, and we divide white humanity
into “-phones”, Slavophones, Grecophones, Latinophones, etc. The Ancients divide it into “-phages”. Perhaps the
geographers of the future will find that, of the two processes, ours is neither the less pleasant nor the less false.
“To the south of Egypt, on the Red Sea,” says the periple of Agatharchide, “there are four great races. The first, near
the streams, sow sesame and millet. The second, near the lagoons, harvest roses and other tender shoots. The third,
nomadic, live on milk and meat. The fourth, maritime, live on fish. This is by far the most numerous, for from the foot of
the Arabic gulf, it extends to India, Gedrosia, Caramania and Persia.” The immense people of the Ichthyophages was
discovered by the Hellenes when, on the one hand, they navigated on the Red Sea, and, on the other, Alexander
conquered the plain of the Indus. In the two places, the explorers will find Fish Eaters. The later geographers will unite all
the Fish Eaters into a single race, into a “Greater” Ichthyophagia and a “Pan-Ichthyophagism”, which, for my part, I find
less ridiculous than our “pan-Latinism”, “pan-Slavism”, “pan-Germanisn”, “pan-Britonism”, etc.: the community of
nourishment creates as much and more resemblances among humans than the community of language.
On the Red Sea, near the Ichthyophages, live the Hylophages (wood-eaters), the Spermatophages (seed-eaters), the
Elephantophages, etyc. Each navigator notes carefully the type of nourishment of the peoples discovered by him. In
arriving at a new coast, the first need of Ulysses, once the crew rests, is to ask himself where are the “Bread Eaters”
which live there:

ο‘ί τινες ανέρες ειεν επι χθονι σιτον έδοντες.

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 “The natives,” relates Diodora in his description of Corsica, “are nourished on milk, honey, and meats, ο‘ι δ’ εγχώριοι
τροφαις μεν χρωνται γάλακτι και μέλιτι και κρέασι”, and, in speaking of Sardinia, the same Diodora tells us that “the
Sardinians live on milk, cheese and meats”. Diodora here summarizes some old geographer, who himself had copied
some old periple. Herodotus should have put to similar use some periple of the Libyan coasts: “After Egypt come the
Adurmachides, who live in the Egyptian style, then the Giligames... then the Asbystes... then the Nasamons, who live, in
winter, off of their flocks and, in summer, climbing from the sea toward the interior, harvest dates, and who also eat
locusts. Then the Lotophages, who live only on the fruit of the lotus, then the Machlytes, who also live on lotus, but who
have other provisions, etc.” Later, Herodotus speaks to us of the Gyzantes Eaters of Apes, Pithekophages.
The Lotophages, we see, are not a legendary people. The later literature seizes upon them and enters them in the cycle
of heroes and demigods. In reality, for the first navigators, they were ordinary men, honest Berbers installed on the edge
of the Mediterranean and living from their plantations. If they lived only from their fruits, it is that to speak truly their isle
furnishes nothing else. Their too sandy or dry terrain bears neither abundant harvests nor verdant pastures. The grains and
the flocks cannot prosper there. The natives thus will be neither Eaters of Bread nor Eaters of Meat:

Gerba is an isle near terra firma, entirely flat and sandy, moreover scattered with an infinitude of holdings of vines, dates, figs,
olives and other fruits. In each of the holdings is built a house, and there lives a family apart, such that one finds many hamlets there,
but few which have several houses together. The land is meager, to see that with such great labor and care they can make a harvest
with the water from some deep wells, with great difficulty are they able to grow a little barley, which always causes a great dearth of
grain there, a setier of which is ordinarily sold for six ducats, and sometimes more, and meat also is at a hardly better price.

Lacking harvests and pastures, the islanders can only nourish themselves on fruits. The Djerba of the modern
navigators well appears to be the Lotophagia of the Ancients. The Ancients knew that the true name of the Lotophage
people was Machlyes or Erebides. They had their domocile in the Great Syrte, according to some, in the Small Syrte,
according to others. They inhabited a peninsula, says Herodotus, ακτην προέχουσαν εις τον πόντον, an isle, according to
others: Djerba, joined to the coast by some rocks and shallows, is an isle, but also a peninsula entirely resembling the
neighboring peninsulas of Zarzis and Tarf-el-Djorf: “The isle of Djerba,” say the Nautical Instructions, is the insula
Meninx or isle of the Lotophages of the Ancients. It is somewhat flat. Relatively well-populated, it counts 45,000
inhabitants. The houses, surrounded by gardens, are grouped into a great number of small centers bearing in general the
name of humt. The gardens are well-cutivated and provided with water by cisters or wells. The inhabitants of Djerba pass
for being a particular race, of Berber origin; they are very hospitable; numerous marabouts and minarets stand out from
the verdure of palms and olives which cover the isle.”
It is just so that we imagine the shore where Ulysses comes to land. Our Achaeans debark on the beach, draw water
and prepare the meal; then they send a squad for food toward the gardens which enclose the horizon. It is not a question
of a town: the Lotophages live without doubt κατα κωμας, in hamlets, in separate humts. The “lotus” for the oldest Greek
periples is a tree and a fruit of the coast. Skylax describes for us one of the Berber oases: “It is a garden shaded by tangled
and dense trees: the trees are the lotus, apples of all species, pomegranite, pears, blackberries, vines, laurels, etc.” - “On
the northeast coast of the isle of Djerba,” say the Instructions, opens a small creek where one can debark in all weather,
which the fishermen affirm. The point of landing is called by the inhabitants Marsa el-Tiffa, the Port of Apples.” What
exactly was the lotus? Herodotus, who without doubt copies some old periple, and Polybius, who saw the lotus with his
own eyes, compare the fruit to figs or dates, but attribute a finer taste and a better perfume to them, τη δ’ ευωδια βέλτιον.
Pliny, who copies Theophrastus, recognizes the jujube there: “Africa produces a remarkable tree, the lotus, which they
name celtis and which they have acclimated in Italy. The finest lotus are around Syrtes and among the Nasomons. It is of
the shape of the pear. Its leaf is very incised like that of the ilex. There are several species of lotus, discernable by their
fruits. The fruit is large as a fava, of a saffron color, but varies in tint, like grapes, between the first growth and maturity;
it comes in bunches like bay myrtle; and, there, it is a dish so sweet that a nation and a country have taken their name

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from it... The armies which cross Africa are nourished by it.” Skylax knew that the natives obtained from the lotus, as
from dates, a dish and a drink: ουτοι λωτω χρωνται σίτω και ποτω.
In all that is here, it is not possible to be doubtful that the lotus was the name of a real tree and fruit which made the
celebrity of the coast in the times of the first navigations, as the mastic made the celebrity of Chios during all the Italian
and French navigations, up to our days. When the levantine fashion of chewing the gum of mastic and drinking the eau-
de-vie of mastic - σίτω και ποτω χρωνται - will have disappeared, the geographers and botanists of the future will be at
great pains to determine exactly the tree or shrub from which it is made, if the voyagers of the last four centuries had not
left us some twenty minute descriptions. Even the name lotus does not appear Greek: the word λωτος, for the Hellenes,
deignates an herb of the plain, a sort of clover, which the sheep eat: “You can have sheep,” says Telemachus to Menelaus,
“for you reign over a vast plain where the lotus abounds”,

συ γαρ πεδίοιο ανάσσεις

ευρέος, ω ένι μεν λωτος πολύς.

It is evident that the Greek word was not able to be applied to the fruit of a tree: the Hellenic geographers knew of
other Lotophages, which really nourish themselves with the Greek lotus, that is to say, with a certain herb and its roots;
the Lotophages live on the Atlantic shore, in the desert, ο‘ι την άνυδρον νέμοιντο, σιτοιντο δε λωτον, πόαν τινα ‘ρίζαν.
But the Lotophages have nothing in common with our eaters of fruits; their Lotus is not the Homeric lotus. They wished
to recognize in the name of the lotus (fruit) a Semitic word ‫לוט‬, lot, of which λωτός would be in effect the exact
transcription (‫=ל‬λ, ‫=ו‬ω, ‫=ט‬τ): the perfume of the fruit - βοτάνη εύοδμος, says the scholiast: ευωδία, says Polybius - has it
ranked by Theophraste among the spices and aromatics; in the Scripture ‫לוט‬, lot designates a type of perfume, which is
very poorly known to us.
The Odyssian poet has made of the foreign word one of the popular puns to which we are acccustomed in the language
and onomasty of the navigator peoples: the lotus for him has become the fruit of forgetting, λήθω, λήθη, as the Lethe was
the river of forgetting in the Greek mythology; the lotus made those who eat it forget everything:

λωτον ερεπτόμενοι μενέμεν νόστου τε λαθέσθαι... ,

μή πώς τις λωτοιο φαγων νόστοιο λάθηται,

and from the pun, lotus, lethe, letho, λήθω, λαθάνω, has sprung the entire adventure of the deserting sailors, who forget
the vessel, duty and homeland from continuous eating of the delicious fruit. We see the other adventures of the Nostos
similarly coming from the text itself and from the words of the periple: in the episode of the Pheacians, it is the reef of the
Rock of the Cruiser which makes the poet imagine the petrification of the Pheacian vessel. Here the periple should not
have furnished much to our author, and his description of Lotophagia is affected a little by that. Even the description is
remarkable for its lack of precision. In this, it is in striking contrast with all the other Odyssian descriptions; it makes a
blotch in the poem. We remember, in effect, of what minute exactitude were the descriptions of Pheacia or the isle of
Calypso. We go to find the same abundance and the same precision of details when it is a matter of the isle of the Cyclops
or the land of the Lestrygons: for all the continental or insular shores which the Nostos goes to cruise, views of the coast
and counsels of piloting, our Nautical Instructions are no more complete than the Odyssian poem. In Lotophagia there is
nothing similar: no characteristic detail; no precise silhouette of mountains or beaches. And neverrtheless it is the
Instructions themselves which perhaps would give the reason for this surprising anomaly. The Instructions tell us:

The coasts of Tripolitania extend for nearly 1,000 miles. we find in no part of the world such a length of coast so deprived of
remarkable points or accidents of terrain able to serve to orient the navigator. With the exception of the environs of Tripoli which are
fertile and cultivated, the greater part of the territory is just a vast and unproductive desert. There exist only very few watercourses
and the coast is low everywhere, except at the mountainous promontory of Derads, in the environs of Khoms and in certain parts of
the gulf of Syrte where some hills stand. [all the harbors resemble each other; the view of the coasts is everywhere te same.] One

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anchors before Zouara and one debarks easily in good weather. There is a village in the middle of the date palms of the oasis... The
environs of Tripoli are flat; in the interior and in the east one finds many palms and gardens; but in the west of the town, the land is
uncultivated and sandy. The coast is hollowed into a bay of about four miles depth. A stream, called Oued-el-Romel, empties toward
the middle. At its mouth one notes a bouquet of verdure, the first one encounters on coming from Tadjoura... On leaving Ras-el-
Hamrah, the land is well-cultivated and populated with numerous villages surrounded by bouquets of olives and dates; it is watered
by several watercourses, some of which are just torrents coming down from the mountains during the rainy season... etc.

Along the African coast, between the cliffs of Cyrene and the cliffs of Tunisia, it is the same monotiny, the same sands
alternating with the same bouquets of trees, the same dry ravines alternating with the same meager wadis. Before a land
without relief, without great undulations, the harbors cannot be distinguished from each other except by their different
names. The Greeks give to them all the generic name of Emporion: the Arabs give them the generic name of Marsa: in
the two languages, the two words signify simply harbor. For the Greeks, the coast is called the Emporia, τα Εμπόρια, and
each of the harbors without doubt had its Greek qualicative, as it has its Arab qualicative today: Marsa Talfan, Marsa
Djida (New Port), Marsa Susah, Marsa Tebruk, Marsa el-Tiffa (Port of Apples). The last harbor is on the same isle of
Djerba: its name can explain to us, I believe, the “Port of the Lotus” which our first navigators frequented. Among the
ports, nevertheless, the sailors of all the times had made some differences. Some harbors have fresh water: “Aghir is a
large village. One finds provisions there, of fresh water provided by a well and cisterns... One finds at Adjim some
supplies of food. One can also obtain good water there. A cistern near the shore always contains thirty to forty tons of it...
Guallala, on the south coast of Djerba, is an important center where one can find cistern water and some supplies of food:
it is frequented by the Mahonnes, who come to fill potteries there, etc.” The other harbors have no water: “One finds at
Sfax abundant supplies of fresh food. Drinking water was formerly rare. It was furnished by cisterns, wells or feskias,
reservoirs arranged to capture the water of the wadis during the winter season. The wells of Shabuny were reserved for
the French garrison. Today a conduit brings water captured in the nearby mountains down to the quays... S’rira is an
important trading post of Alfa. But the land provides no resource; drinking water is of small amount and bad quality...
The islet is inhabited by a few fishermen. There would be fresh water there if the cisterns of the fort were not completely
dilapidated... etc.” Our Marsa of the Lotus has a water source:

ένθα δ’ επ’ ηπείρπυ βημεν και αφυσσάμεθ’ ‘ύδωο

*
* *

But, for the first navigators, the diverse harbors have still more differences between them: the old periples never forgot to
specify what is the attitude of the natives in the face of foreign commerce. Are the natives agreeable or hostile, friends or
enemies of the foreigner, φιλοζεινοι? Do they respect contracts and human rights, are they just, δικαιοι? Are they, to the
contrary, savages without laws or police, ‘υβρισταί τε και άγριοι? Do they respect sermons and the divine right, do they
have the religious spirit, νόος θεοδής? Do they, to the contrary, respect neither divine nor human law? Such are the first
questions which are posed to the merchant or corsair captains, debarking on an unknown coast: “Listen to me,” says
Ulysses to his companions: “I am going to see whether they are violent or pacific people, savages and without respect for
the right, or hospitable and religious.” The formula returns two or three times in the Odyssey:

ελθων τωνδ’ ανδρων πειρήσομαι, ο‘ι τινές εισιν,

ή ‘ρ ο‘ί γ’ ‘υβρισταί τε και άγριοι ουδε δίκαιοι,
ηε φιλόζεινοι καί σφιν νόος εστι θεουδής.

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 The old periples never fail to answer, in advance, the grave questions: “The Corsicans, among all the Barbarians, are
distinguished by their relationships of equity and sweetness; the honeycombs (Corsica produces much of them) belong to
the first who find them; the flocks graze without shepherds and the mark of the owner is by itself sufficient to protect
them; in all the other details of Corsican life, it is the same care and the same respect of the right, θαυμαστως προτιμωσι
το δικαιοπραγειν.” Thus speaks Diodorus who should, here again, summarize, in copying them, the experience of the
earlier periples. We see how, in the description of the Arabian gulf, he copies the periple of Agatharchide: “The
Ichthyophage negroes pay no attention to the debarkation or actions of the foreigner; they look and are silent; blows
neither injure them nor can even make them abandon this apathy... Fortunate people!, adds the author of the periple (he
lives in a philosophical epoch when it is the fashion to praise the virtues of the savage life and the happiness of man in the
state of nature). They torment themselves neither in seeking honors nor for the worry of lawsuits. They have no laws or
trials, νομοις δε ου δικαιουνται. They live in happy ignorance of the written letter, τί γαρ δει προστάγματι δουλεύειν τον
χωρις γράμματος ευγνωμονειν δυνάμενον. They do not navigate: they know to prefer the business life, ουδε
ναυτιλλόμενοι κέρδους ‘ένεκα το ζην ‘υπερτείναντες. In brief, they have few needs, they also have few sorrows.” We see
that the author has been to class and that, twenty centuries before J.-J. Rousseau, he knows to appreciate the misfortunes
of civilization and the happiness of the anthropoids who live without courts, without laws, without commerce, without
towns, without provinces, without artificial classifications - τουτο δε το γένος έχει μεν ούτε πόλεις ουτε χώμας ούτ’ άλλης
εντέχνου κατασκευης ‘υπογραφήν - with no notion of good or evil - αισχρων δε καλων ουδε την ελαχίστην εισφερόμενοι
έννοιαν.
The Odyssian periple, which is not from a professional orator, but from a navigator and a practical man, does not
partake of this admiration for the human brutes. He goes to promptly describe to us without enthusiasm the life of the
savages of Campania who, also, ignorant of right, courts, assemblies,

τοισιν δ’ ο‘ύτ’ αγοραι βουληφόροι ούτε θέμιστες,

who live in isolated clans or families, each arranging his children and his women according to his liking,

θεμιστεύει δε ‘έκαστος
παίδων ηδ’ αλόχων ουδ’ αλλήλων αλέγουσιν,

who neither navigate nor cruise the coast,

ου γαρ Κυκλώπεσσι νέεσ πάρα μιλτοπάρηοι,

and who, lacking vessels, know neither how to make of their little Isle a great place of commerce, a well-built town, nor
how to bring the products of the world to themselves,

οιά τε πολλα
άνδρες επ’ αλλήλους νηυσιν περόωσι θάλασσαν
ο‘ί κέ σφιν και νησον εθκτιμένην εκάμοντο.

Between the orator and the poet, the tone is different; but the material is the same. For the part of each, it is the
testimony of navigators, of the Nautical Instructions, which has furnished the theme. If the orator draws from it a
ridiculous declamation, the poet, as always, has here respected and faithfully copied his models; he has only made an
exact description, no part legendary, no part embellished, of the savage life in the Italian seas of his times. The
Lotophages are precisely the opposite of the Cyclops. They are, to be sure, not of the civilization of the “Eaters of Bread”.
But they are just men, who never threaten either the life or the goods of the navigators. Their “flowering nourishment”

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gives them a sweet soul and a life so happy that they have no hatred in their heart. They give the lotus to the sailors who
visit them; they treat them so well that the crew deserts to them:

ουδ’ άρα Λωτοφάγοι μήδονθ’ ‘ετάροισιν όλεθρον

‘ημετέροις, αλλά σφι δόσαν λοτοιο πάσασθαι.

Up to our days, the navigators have transmitted the testimony; in describing to us the isle of the Lotophages, the
Nautical Instructions still tells us: “the inhabitants of Djerba are very hospitable”. For the first navigators, for the
Phoenicians especially, that hospitality should have had a great value. Consider in effect what place the isle held on their
great routes of Phoenician commerce.
Whether it had cruised along the Libyan coasts; whether it had cut straight, following the route of Europa and of her
bull, following also the route of Ulysses and his Cretan story, and after having reached the coasts of Crete, it had, at the
pleasure of the winds from the northeast, drifted toward the African coast: the Phoenician commerce found in the land of
the Lotophages its absolutely safe premier repository, the only wintering station where the vessels and the crews can,
without danger, pass the bad season. For the Libyan coasts up to there offer them only bad temporary shelter, with sharp
rocks weakening the hulls and sudden gusts fatiguing the crews. On the two thousand kilometers of the Libyan coasts,
“Tripoli and Tobruk are the only ports where a ship of some little elevated tonnage can find a safe harbor. The second of
these points is the only one able to receive a battleship and offer it a safe harbor in all weather.” The primitive commerce
also knew of two or three points of temporary refuge, “refuges under islets”, καταφυγαι ‘υπο νησιδίοις. But after Egypt,
after Pharos, Djerba was in reality the first isle which offered between it and the Libyan mainland a veritable shelter from
“the savage sea”.

The isle of Djerba, say the Nautical Instructions, is separated from the mainland by a vast basin, of more than 500 square
kilometers’ area, whose edges are almost everywhere blocked by shallows, but which presents in its middle a fine interior bay,
admirably sheltered: it is the sea of Bu-Grara, called by the Arabs Bahiret (Small Sea) of Bu-Grara. The basin communicates with
the high sea the the west and east... The sea of Bu-Grara is very rich in fish and in sponges. We estimate at 500 the number of boats
employed in diverse sorts of fishing. The important ruins which one finds on the perimeter of the basin show how it was frequented
in the Roman epoch.
The west entry of the Bahiret to the high sea bears the name of channel of Adjim: one can anchor before the coast in all winds
except the violent winds from the northeast and from the west; if , after having anchored, one were surprised by winds from that
quarter and blocked from the sea, one would have an assured refuge before Humt-Suk.
The channel of the east of the Bahiret is practicable only for the boats of shallow draught. [But, from the coast], the harbor of
Aghir is perhaps the best that the coast of Djerba offers. It is sheltered by the island from the winds from the west and the north; with
winds from the east quarter, the swell dies in the shallows and the vegetation, The harbor is further protected by a bank of 8 or 9
meters, which extends parallel to the coast for a distance of 4 miles. One anchors as close to Aghir as the depth permits. Aghir is a
large town. One finds provisions of fresh water there furnished by a well and cisterns. A driveable road 19 kilometers in length joins
the port to Humt-Suk.

In comparison to the Instructions, set the account of Ulysses, and see if the Odyssian adventure did not come to pass in
a place entirely resembling the harbor of Aghir, in a landing provided with fresh water, but removed from the principal
burg which the Lotophages inhabit. Ulysses, installed at the harbor, sends two men and a herald on the road to the market.
Since they do not return aboard, he goes to seek them and bring them back by force:

We land in the country of the Lotophages. We descend to the land, we take on water and, without delay, my crew takes their meal
near the cruisers. Then, when they had satisfied their hunger and thirst, I sent two men, with a herald to escort them, to discover the
ways of the natives, to see if they were Eaters of Bread. My men, having left, will mix promptly with a people Eaters of Lotus. The
Lotophages were without murderous thoughts toward my men. They will give them a dish of lotus, and as soon as my hen had tasted
the fruit sweet as honey, not a one any longer dreams of giving us news or returning: they wished only to remain among the

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Lotophages, to be gorged on lotus and not dream of returning. I had to bring them back to the vessels myself, by force, in spite of
their cries. I made them lie and bound them in the bottom of the cruiser, beneath the benches, and in all haste I had the rest of my
crews embark, for fear that, eating the lotus, some others of them would not dream of retrurning.

In all the story, the Lotophages treat the navigators with a hospitality and tolerance without limits: Ulysses brings back
his deserters by force, without the natives intervening. Between the Lotopahges and the Peoples of the sea, it would truly
appear that there exist some conventions, some traits of police and extradition or, at the very least, precedents of good
intents and of perfect harmony. The commerce alone and its benefits should have given the Lotophages a similar
benevolence toward the foreigners, and we see, in effect, either from the actual habits or from the accounts of the Most
Ancients, that the primitive commerce should have found in the isle of Djerba an important market of reprovisioning and
of transit.
Masters of island springs and owners of flourishing gardens, the Lotophages should have sold provisions to foreigners.
Additionally, the island is given to industry: “The local industries,” say the Nautical Instructions, are the production of
linen fabric and potteries. The hills furnish a plastic clay, which serves for the production of common jars; numerous kilns
are signaled from afar by their smoke... Guallala, on the south coast of Djerba, is an important center where one finds
cistern water and some sources of food; it is frequented by the Mahonnes, who come there to fill their potteries.” I read
the text reflecting on the archeologists who have pointed out the curious resemblances between the Berber potteries and
the potteries called “Mycenaean”.
But it is the transit above all which should have enriched this Lotophagia. The coast of Syrtes has always been the end
point of the great continental routes which, across the Sahara, join the Lands of the Negroes - Ethiopia, said the Ancients;
Sudan or Nigeria, we say today - to the Mediterranean ports. Cyrene, during classical antiquity, and Tripoli, during
modern times, have been the great ports from Sudan toward Europe, and reciprocally. But Cyrene and Tripoli suppose a
commerce installed on the continent, and foreigners, Greek or Arab, conquerors or colonists on terra firma. We know that,
to the continental emporia, our thalassocracies of the primitive Mediterranean preferred the insular harbors, and that they
had no colonies, properly speaking, but temporary or permanent stations “on an islet or on a promontory”. In this state of
navigation, Lotophagia was for them the most favorable seat of commerce toward Sudan, and, in fact, the oldest periples,
copied by Herodotus, point out the arrival at that point of one of the great Sudanese routes.
Herodotus enumerates for us, in effect, the three great routes which come from Sudan: the one, by the oasis of
Ammon, leads to Egypt; the second, by Augila and the land of Nasamons, ends at the foot of Great Syrta (the caravans
from eastern Sudan today still borrow the route from Audjila toward Benghazi); the third finally, by the inermediary of
Garamantes, arrives in Lotophagia. The third route today is a little diverted from Djerba: after the land of Garamantes,
which we call the oasis of Ghadames today, it bends to the east and comes to end by a longer route at Tripoli, where the
Arabs, then the Turks have, by force, brought all the exchanges. But, in a straight line, the route of Ghadames should have
arrived at Djerba, and Herodotus has reason to say that Lotophagia is its most direct end, συντομώτατον δ’ εστι ες τους
Λωτοφάγους.
Garamantes, in the times of Herodus, already and without doubt from all eternity, waged against the Sudanese, against
the Negroes of the Caverns, “the troglodyte Ethiopians”, raids and hunts of men which have lasted up to our days. Thus
the Garamantes furnish slaves to the markets of Lotophagia. They also sell there the products which Sudan has never
failed to furnish to the Mediterranean world, ivory, hides, natron, salt, especially the powder of gold and the plumes and
eggs of the ostrich. It is here that the Peoples of the sea come to provision themselves with Sudanese commodities and it
is here that they come to unload their fabrics and manufactures destined for Ethiopia: Lotophagia is one of their great
markets.
It further appears that in Homeric times the Sidonian or Tyian thalassocracies had not yet marked the African coast
with their New Burgs, Makon-Hades, and New Towns, Karth-Hadast, which later will play such a great rôle and become
the seat of a new maritime empire around the greatest of the New Towns, Carthage. The authors of antiquity are, in
general, in agreement on the year 813-814 B.C. for the foundation of Carthage: I believe that our Odyssian Mediterranean
is perhaps one or two centuries anterior to that foundation. Before the establishment of the Punic colonies it is among the

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natives that the Phoenicians had their correspondents and commissioners. In Odyssian times, the Lotophages hold the rôle
and the benefits which later will fall to Carthage. The Lotophages have, among the navies, the renown which Carthage
will enjoy in all the later Mediterranean. Among the thalassocracies, the accounts, legends and popular representations of
the maritime world should have imagined Lotophagia as the veritable port of the great western seas.
And in fact, minding all the differences, the Lotophages are in a situation there analogous to that of the Phoenicians:
they, also, open the entrance of a strait toward the distant seas. The fleets coming from the Orient have navigated toward
the Sunset up to there with the winds from the east or the north. To leave from Lotophagia, they need to turn at a right
angle to to cruise the Tunisian coast and pass through the strait between Sicily and Africa (it is the route which Ulysses
presently goes to take). For the change of route, the sailors find a precious aid in the currents of the gulf: “It is in the gulf
of Gabes,” say the Nautical Instructions, “that the tides present the greatest amplitude observed in the Mediterranean. The
flood tide, coming from the east, passes along the north coast of Djerba, with a speed which exceeds one knot. Then, in
penetrating the gulf, the tide increases. Before Gabes itself, the flood appears to carry to the north; the flow of the ebb tide
would be opposite.” The sailors, who wish to go toward the north, can thus profit from the current of the tide. But the
system of winds is less favorable to them. The winds from the open sea are altogether preponderant here. For the
navigation, only winds of a certain force are of interest. If one takes no count of coastal breezes of 4 and below (following
a scale of 0 to 10), one finds for 100 winds:

North Northeast Northwest East West South Southeast Southwest

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
9 42 11 19 2 1 12 4

In the system, the winds from the north quarter form, we see, 62 out of 100; the winds from the south quarter, to the
contrary, of which navigators toward the Sicilian strait have need, form only 17 of 100. Lotophagia thus becomes a forced
stop, a sojourn of waiting where the captains can lack, during the long weeks, the favorable breezes from the south. Like
Menelaus on the isle of Pharos, the primitive thalassocracies had to sojourn here. But Pharos, deserted and rocky, was
without convenience and without resources. Djerba, populous and fertile, offers to the crews all the pleasures of the table
and of hospitality. The Libyans have an affectionate tolerance for the relations between men and women. The primitive
periples should have already praised the hospitable Libya, as it decried the ferocity of certain other populaces: τούτων δε
καθύπερθεν Αιθίοπες ώκουν άξενοι, says the periple of Hannon. The crews thus asked only for an interminable sojourn
here and “a forgetting to return”. We know of the “French” isles of the archipelago where “the sailors find such pleasures
that they keep them too long in the port and make them forget their duty, against the interest of the shipowners”. Hannon,
having found friends on the occidental coast, similarly sojourns there: παρ’ οις εμείναμεν άχρι τινος φίλομενόμενοι.

CHAPTER II

THE CYCLOPS

. . . . . . . . . . . . ουδε εώκειν
ανδρί γε σιτοφάγω, αλλα ‘ρίω ‘υλήεντι
‘υψηλων ορέων ‘ό τε φαίνεαται οιον απ’ άλλων.

Odyss., IX, 189-191

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 Ulysses leaves the land of the Lotophages:
“From there, we sail most quickly, the heart sad. We go to the land of the Cyclops... ”
The poem does not give us any indication of the distance, no orientation of sailing or of the wind. We will be able to
search for Cyclopia in all the Mediterranean, if from our previous studies a hypothesis had not already emerged,
concerning the exact location of the Cyclopian land. We know that the Pheacians previously inhabited Hyperia of the vast
plains: they were driven from there by the Cyclops, who harassed them in that vicinity. I have said how we need to
translate, in geographic language, the phrase of the Odyssey. We have retrieved, from the poetic text, a series of Greco-
Phoenician doublets. Here we have only the first terms of the doublets, but the seconds are easy to reëstablish. The
original word, foreign, of which Hyperia is the Greek translation, is in reality Kumë: the doublet would be Hyperia-Kumë,
‘Υπερείη-Κύμη. The original word, of which Cyclopia is the Greek translation, is Oinotria: the complete doublet would
be Cyclopia-Oinotria. We need to examine the different terms.
Hyperia, ‘Υπερείη, signifies in Greek the Town of the Height, the Perched Town, the Raised Town, the Top Town,
ύπέρ. In the Semitic languages, it is the verb ‫קום‬, kum, which renders the most exaqctly the ideas of rise up, be upright
and above; the substantive ‫קוטה‬, kum’a, designates the stature and the height: Kumë, Κύμη, would be a perfect Greek
transcription of the substantive kum’a or, better, of the identical participial form ‫קוטה‬, kum’a (feminine of the participle
‫קום‬, kum), and, from the participle, the epithet Hyperia, ‘υπερειν, would be a still more exact equivalent. We will
presently see if, by its site, the town of Kumë really merits the appellation. For the moment, we only examine the
onomasty, verbal transcriptions or translations. But it is already well certain that, by its most habitual name, Kumë of the
Plains, Kumë of Campania, Κύμη της Καμπανίας, merits the epithet ευρύχορος, of the vast countrysides, which the
Odyssian poet gives to his Hyperia.
Hyperia is neighbor to the Cyclops and Kumë is neighbor to the Oinotrians. The two terms merit each other: ‫עין‬, oin, in
all the Semitic languages, signifies the eye and, by extension, the spring, the waterhole; ‫עטר‬, otar, signifies surround,
encircle, and ‫עטרה‬, otar’a, signifies the circle, the crown. The Spring or the Eye of the Circle, ‫עטרה‬-‫עין‬, Oin-Otar’a, has
given the Greeks the name of Oinotria, Οινωτρία, which they apply to the southwest façade of Italy. Not understanding
the foreign word, the Greeks make an easy pun: Oino-tria, they said, is the land of the oinos, of the wine, οινος: the
misfortune is that the suffix τρια does not exist in any other Greek word. Along with the sense, the Greeks also forget the
exact site of the place name. Their Oinotria wanders, somewhat at random, from the Tiber up to the strait of Rhegium,
and their geographers dispute each other over the location of the outdated word. Oinotros, according to some, was a hero
arriving from the sea, a son of Lykaon, king of the Arcadians. He was, according to others, a native king of the Sabines.
The Oinotrians had, they say, occupied diverse Italian regions, before disappearing under the attacks of the natives: the
Leucanians had finished by conquering primitive Oinotria. In relity, it is by another doublet that we can determine the real
location which the Oinotrians occupied at the arrival of the first Hellenes in their land: Kumë was, for the first Italiot
Greeks, “in the land of the People of the Eye”, εν τοις Οπικοις Kumë of the Opics is the name which alternates with Kumë
of Campania. The Country of the Eyes, Οπικία or Οπική, Opikia or the Opics (for the name Opics, Οπικοί or Οπικά is
employed to designate the same land), is just Cyclopia, the Country of the Round Eyes or the primitive Oinotria. Thus the
old Semitic name has furnished to the Greeks a double translation: the Achaean poets said Cyclopia, and the historic
Greeks say Opikia. Kumë, says Thucydides, is a town situated in Opikia, Κύμης της εν Οπικία πόλεως: Hyperia, said the
Odyssey, is neighbor to the Cyclops.
In the times of the Hellenic colonization, Kumë became a colony of the Chalcidians. But the local tradition, conserved
by Aristotle, remembered a time when the Whites, Leucadians or Lucanians (the text of Aristotle is doubtful: some give
Leucadians, Λευκαδίων, others Leucanians, Λευκανων), occupied their territory, τουτον δε τον τόπον λέγεται
κυριεύεσθαι ‘υπο Λευκαδίων [or Λευκανων]. The Semitic root ‫בהק‬, b.e.k., designates the whiteness (in particular the
whiteness of leprosy, which the Greeks call leuke, λευκή): the Pheacians, Φαίακες, of the Odyssey are the Whites,
Leukadians or Lucanians, who formerly had colonized Kumë, (the equivalence of the two terms Beak and Pheak is
familiar to us: we know that the Semitic ‫ ב‬is frequently rendered in Greek by a φ).

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 The first Greek periples give the name of Lucania, Λευκανία, to all the land between the gulf of Naples and the gulf of
Tarente. Near Campania where one finds the two Greek towns of Kumë and Naples, Skylax says that the Samnites have a
section of coasts of a half-day’s navigation. Then come the Leukanians who occupy the entire peninsula between the two
seas: the periple of their coasts is of six days and six nights. Then come the Iapyges, who occupy the other peninsula
between the gulf of Tarente and the Adriatic sea: the periple of their coasts is similarly of six days and six nights. The
later geographers will attempt to make the political or ethnographic categories which they have before their eyes agree
with the divisions which the ancient periples furnished them: they will give themselves a very meritorious effort to
distinguish the Leucanians, the Bruttians, the Iapyges, the Messapians. Strabo comes back to them five or six times:
“Before the arival of the Hellenes, there were no Lucanians in the area, but Chones and Oinotrians. The Samnites, having
grown, drive off the Oinotrians and Chones and will install one of their clans which took the name of Lucanians.”
In reality, we have there only a series of geographic names, from different epochs, invented or repeated by the
successive navigators. The sailors will transmit them, sometimes in explaining them, sometimes in neglecting to
recognize the true meaning. For certain of the names, the Odyssey gives us, I believe, the real signification and location.
The Opics, the Cyclops, the Oinotrians are just a single and same people, the inhabitants of the “Eyes” which we are
going to study around the Neopolitan gulf. I have already shown how Messapians and Iapyges are just the inhabitants of
the White Watch, Messap’a Iapug’a: the names date from the same thalassocracy as the names of Kumë and Oinotria. I
believe that it is the same for the name of the Chones which Strabo always joins to the Oinotrians.
The Chones inhabited the peninsula of Bruttium. In the land, on the projection “pointed, steep, and surrounded by
great depths”, which we name Capo Alice, the first Hellenic colonies will occupy the point which they will call Hanging,
κρίμισσα, and, above, was the town Chone, και Χώνην πόλιν ‘υπερ αυτης, from which the Chones will take their name: it
was the time when the towns fled the plains and took refuge on the heights. Later, in the cultivated plain, on a round hill
which dominates the fields and the woods, is built the Spread-out Town, Petelia, πετηλια. I believe that the two names
Krimisa and Chone are in the same relationship as Cyclopia and Oinotria, in the relationship of translation to original. For
if Krimisa is for the Greeks the Hanging (κρεμαστή, κρήμισος, κρεμάσ, κρεμάννυμι), I believe that for the Semites Chone
had the same meaning. All the Semitic languages have the root ‫כון‬, k-u-n, with the meaning of to stand upright, to rise up,
to be raised; the participial form ‫כונה‬, kon’a or khon’a, would give us the original of Chone, Χώνη, the initial ‫ כ‬being
frequently rendered as a χ: Khon, ‫כון‬, is the name of a Phoenician town. On a marine chart, we understand the renown
which the promontory had among the navigators. Just across from the White Watch (Messap’a Iapug’a), the Hanging
Promontory rises on the other side of the gulf of Tarente: it is one of the markers of the Italian navigation, one of the
lookouts or indispensable points of reference of the first thalassocracies. It is thus not surprising that Chone and
Oinotrians date from the same epoch.
Oinotrians, Chones, Messapians, Iapygens, all the names were imposed or translated by the thalassocracies of the XIth
or XIIth centuries B.C. The predecessors of the Hellenes, the Semites also will denominate the High Town and found
Hyperia. We have said that the foundation of Hyperia dates from the XIth century B.C. The date of the first foundation of
Kumë has raised interminable discussions. Helbig has summarized them in an appendix of his Homeric Epoch (Trawinski
translation, p. 553 and following):

Eusebius, he says, places the foundation of Kumë in the year 1049 B.C.. Strabo proclaims the town as one of the most ancient
colonies founded by the Greeks in the Occcident and Velleius Paterculus says that it was founded before the colonization of Asia
Minor by the Aeolians... But the historian critic has the right and even the duty to reject dates so artificially fixed. It is not necessary
to consider the town of Kumë as a precursor in the Hellenic colonization of the Occident. It should simply be assigned a place in the
general movement of migration. The most ancient establishments of the Greeks on the east coast of Sicily date from the VIIIth
century B.C. Thucydides, who has drawn his information concerning Sicily and Italy from the best sources, considers Naxos of
Sicily as the first establishment of the Greeks in the Occident. The geographic position of Kumë indicates to us that the town is, not
moe ancient, but more recent.

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 The reasoning of Helbig is perfect, and I also believe that the Greeks did not colonize Kumë until some years after
Naxos of Sicily. But, at Naxos of Sicily (we will promptly see) as at Kumë of Campania, the Hellenes had had
predecessors, and nothing contradicts that for Kumë the traditional date of the first foundation might be acceptable. It is in
1049 that Hyperia was founded by the Whites in the land of the Cyclops; but the Barbary of the Oinotrians drives the
Pheacians from Kumë and throws them to the sea from which they had come. The later history of Kumë is going to show
us twenty examples of similar hostilities... The exodus of the Pheacians is thus later than 1049 B.C., and it is prior to the
Chalcidian colonization in 750 or 700. The new colonies found the remains of the first town, some descendants perhaps of
the first colonization, and souvenirs or monuments (list of priests, for example), which retained the date of the first
foundation. They affirm that, ten generations before them (about ten generations; at three generations per century, the
figure would give the three centuries which separate the two arrivals of the Peoples from the sea), the first Kumë had been
founded. The Kumeans will henceforth brag of being the most ancient town of the occidental seas. The ten generations
are an Hellenic style of counting: at Thera, we have seen the Phoenician population remember that seven or eight
generations separated the first Phoenician colonization from the second Greek colonization. We thus do not need to
accept as rigorously exact the date of 1049 B.C. which Eusebius gives us. The date appears to me only approximate. But,
with that reservation, we should, I believe, take it into account. I have already taken a great count to establish the date of
the Odyssian periple. Our poem of Return is later than the XIth century and earlier than the VIIIth. I have said that I
believed it to be of the IXth century at the earliest, and that I accepted the affirmation of Herodotus: “Homer lived four
centuries before me, no more.”
With the toponymic data, let us seek on the Italian coast the exact location and the different sites of our Cyclopia. The
poet furnishes us a series of minute descriptions which we have to verify it. Even the onomasty of the Round Eyes and of
the High Town imply certain views of the coasts and the land. We need to reconstruct the three scenes where the
successive episodes of the Odyssian story unfold: the town of Hyperia at first and the original land of the Pheacians; then
the Small Isle where Ulysses debarks across from Cyclopia; finally the land of the Cyclops itself, with its port and its cave
where the hero almost lost the day.

*
* *

From the rocky promontory of Gaete to the rocky cape of Misene, the coast of Italy on the Tyrrhenian sea “is low,
sandy, with a beach of sand separating from the sea a flat and marshy region”. A line of lagoons or of marshes borders the
beach toward the interior, with the result that between the waves of the sea and the stagnant waters of the marsh, the coast
is most often just a thin sandy line. Extending from the south to the north, the sixty or eighty kilometers of shore borders
three regions or, if you wish, three very diverse hinterlands. To the north, between the rocks of Gaete and the slopes of
the Massic, is hollowed the narrow valley of the Garigliano (ancient Liris) which is just a muddy delta, an ancient filled-
in gulf, where Minturnes still soaks in the marsh. At the center, the vast, long and broad plain of Campania, the Floor of
Campania, the Land of Labour extends up to the feet of the Appenines, on the two banks of the Vulturne and the Clanius.
Finally, to the south, between the plain of Campania and the gulf of Naples, rise the Fields or especially the Phlegrean
Mounts, which are a plateau, if not very elevated, at least very compact and abrupt. The series of Odyssian adventures are
going to conduct us to the mouths of the Vulturne and of the Garigliano: today we will leave aside the first two of the
natural regions. It is the third alone, the region of the Phlegrian Fields, which we should reattempt.
The Phlegrian Fields, as their Greek name, τα φλεγραια πεδία, indicates, are an incandescent region, worked and
traversed by subterranian fires: φλεγω, to burn, to flame, cf. the Latin flagro. Over ten or twelve kilometers from west to
east and five or six kilometers from south to north, they cover a great rectangle with their volcanic tuffs, some of marine
origin, others of terrestrial, which, all, present themselves under the color of a dazzling white: the Hills of White Earth,

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Leucogaei Colles, say the Greco-Latins. In the mass of tuff, the volcanic rocks, lavas and trachytes have injected their
ridges and blocks from here and there. In its ensemble, the plateau is somewhat high: its highest point, at the convent of
the Camaldules, exceeds 450 meters. At its exterior - we will later penetrate to ther interior and find there the great craters
or circular depressions which, for the first navigators, make of the rregion the Land of the Round Eyes - the plateau falls
on all sides in a bank of a hundred to a hundred fifty meters. The maritime or continental depressions which enclose it
make of it a veritable isle. To the north, the Campanian land, to the west, the open sea and its inundated beach, to the
south, the gulf of Naples surround it with their immense plains; to the east, it is the less wide but equally deep valley of
the river Sebethos (today the Sebeto), which separates it entirely from Vesuvius and which, by a channel of muddy fields,
forms as a strait between the Campanian Plain and the Neopolitan gulf.
Thus beached on the edge of fertile Campania, the volcanic island was always for the Peoples from the sea an
admirable station of commerce or colonization. Here, as as in the other Mediterranean isles, the topological traces remain,
which we show, in the alternation of the insular capitol, the difference of the successive occupations. Accordingly, in
effect, as the Peoples from the sea were Hellenic colonizers or Semitic merchants, the capitol of our Phlegrean isle
oscillates from one façade to the other. The Hellenes who wished to exploit all together the waters of the gulf and the
fields of “vast Campania” will found their colony of Neapolis on the strait of the Sebethos, at the entry of the Campanian
plain, on the slopes of the insular hills which regard the mainland: Naples has always remined on the eastern façade.
Before the Hellenes, it is on the western façade, regarding the open sea and turning its back to the continental plains, that
the Semites had installed their trading post of Kumë. A simple debarkation and fortified trading post, Kumë labored only
in the “wet fields”: it bought from the Barbarians of the plain their agricultural and pastoral produce; it sold them the
manufactures of the distant industrial lands. But, with no other domain but the gardens and plantations of its suburbs,
Kumë in truth did not live at all on the land. Like the Pheacians, “on the edge, on the savage sea”, it was above all a
conveyor and trader. For the service of the commerce, εμπορίας ‘ένεκεν, it had taken, also, one of the promontories or
parasitic isles, of which Thucydides speaks. In front of the Phlegrian isle, Kumë is perched on an independant islet, on a
block of trachyte which is connected to the Phlegrian hills only by the deep strait of a verdant valley.

*
* *

April 20, 1901. - From Naples, by the tunnel of Fuorigrotta, then along the gulf of Pouzzoles, we have come to the
beach of the great sea which the sailors still name the Beach of Cuma. To the south, the Lago del Fusaro and its inundated
shores, to the north, the Lago di Licola and its thickets of reeds would border the shore of a continuous marsh if, to
separate the one from the other, Kumë did not raise between the two lakes its mound and its dry territory: “The lagoon of
Licola,” say the Instructions, “is a narrow band of water of 1 ½ miles length, which communicates by its south part with
the sea. At the southern extrmity of the lagoon, one sees the ruins of an ancient Greek town of Cumes, which has given its
name to the beach today called the beach of Cuma. At about 3 miles to the south of Cumes is raised the tower Alta or
Gavetta, on a rocky point, at the extremity of the beach of low and muddy sand, which borders the lagoon of Fusaro,
whose extremity was formerly a small distance to the south of the tower.” Astride the lagoons and sea, a long band of
sands and pines extends its almost straight strand. Barely bent by a regular curve, the line of dunes goes from the rocks
which bear the tower Alta or Gavetta, in the south, up to the distant rocks which, there below in the north, mark the mouth
of the Vulturne.
Our sailors give the name of high, alta, to the tower of the south which, perched completely at the foot of the lagoon
Fusaro, on the first ridges of the mountains of Procida, guards the outlet of the lagoon. With greater reason, the first
Peoples from the sea could have named high, perched, raised, ‘υπερερίη, hyperia, the town of Kumë, which would be for
us the finest example of “high town”, αιπυ πτολίεθρον, in the Homeic style, if we had not already studied the Nelean

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Pylos. Below, a beach of fine sands, where the waves come to to die, still serves for embarkation: a small jetty of rocks
and a customs bureau indicate that to that spot the boats and small sailing craft sometimes bring their merchandise. The
beach has a few hundred meters of width. It goes up to the foot of the trachytic butte, which rises to 84 meters of height,
and whose black rocks, planted in the sand, offer a pedestal to the town. With its glistening rocks, of a metallic shine, and
its steeply cut flanks, the butte gives no foothold to the ascent of the sailors. It presents them only a smooth wall. At the
very foot of the barrier, an enclosure of white walls and a solid gate protect the spring where the customs officers coming
to take their supply. At the summit, in another white house, the customs officials have their lookout, which surveys the
sea afar, and their summer residence. To reach their house on the summit, they had to dig a steep stairway cut into the
solid rock. All of the steps there are made by the hand of man. On the flank of the butte, in proportion to the elevation, the
bare rock gives way, bit by bit, to the more friable lands which the shrubs have invaded. On the top, the house of the
customs officials is surrrounded by small gardens, vines and thickets.
The summit of the butte is covered with ruins: the successive towns which will come to raise their acropoles here have
left their foundations of stones or bricks. What an admirable location for an observatory of sailors! The lookout dominates
an almost limitless extent of ocean and shores. Before us, the high sea, calm and flat, shines without a wave to the
Pandataria and Pontiae isles.
To our right, toward the north, the long beach rimmed with foam spreads its regular curve which goes up to the misty
mountains of Gaete and to the delta. Neatly outlined by its edge of golden sand, the coast from the north borders the blue
depth of the sea and the dark verdure of the pines. Up to Gaete, the marine pines interpose their wide line between the sea
and the plain, the vast masty plain. In the dark frame of the pines or bushes, a rectangular plaque of marbled pewter, a
great square of hard clay and some lines of silver designate the location of the two lagoons Licola and Patria, the one
flooded, the other dry, and the sinuous corse of the shores and streams. At regular intervals, the shore is marked by
lookout towers, still relating to the sad days of barbaric attacks. The distant promontory of Gaete does not obscure the
horizon. Beyond, a new curve of sand spreads irregularly up to the rocky points of Circeo, the ancient isle of Circe. And,
entirely at the edge, above Circeo and Gaete, the pointed barrier of the Alban mountains makes the last stroke of this
admirable decor.
To our left, toward the south, the same beach edged with foam, the same sand and the same line of pines framing the
lagoon of Fusaro and also stretching their regular curve; but the nearby horizon is abruptly closed by the mountains of
Procida, by the low isle of Procida and the high isle of Ischia. Perpendicular to the continental edge, which they appear to
continue, the two isles form with the coast a large open bay, at the foot of which the outlet of Torre Alta discharges the
shining waters of lake Fusaro:

Neither too far nor too near to the land of the Cyclops, a little ways out from the port, extends a small isle, covered with woods...
It has a port with a good harbor, where there is no need of cable, nor anchors to cast, nor cordage to secure; but once landing, the
vessels can remain there as long as the navigators please, or as long as the wind is not favorable,

νησος έπειτα λάχεια παρεκ λιμένος τετάνυσται

γαίης Κυκλώπων ούτε σχεδον ούτ’ αποτηλου
‘υλήεσσα...
εν δε λιμην εύορμος, ‘ίν’ ου χρεω πείσματος εστιν
ούτ’ ευνας βαλέειν ούτε πρυμνήσι’ ανάψαι,
αλλ’ επικέλσαντας μειναι χρόνον, εις ‘ό κε ναυτέων
θυμος εποτρύνη και επιπνεσωσιν αηται.

Neither Procida nor Ischia corresponds to the description. Ischia is not a small isle: it is a large isle which “has 5 ¼
miles of length and a width of 3 to 4 miles; the coasts are generally rocky and, in some places, steep and very pointed”.
Ischia is not a desert isle; in spite of the volcanic temblors, it has always been inhabited: “The town is built on the east
coast of the isle (facing the mainland) with a citadel placed on an insular rock, which is elevated 113 meters and joined to

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the town by a road of 370 meters. The boats are secured to the rock, with an anchor on the bottom, on one side or the
other, according to the winds. “ This fairground harbor can in no way be our good Odyssian port. Not far from there, our
Instructions describe a “Port del Bagno, situated at 1 ½ miles to the west-northwest of the citadel: it is a small basin
whose entry is very narrow and open to the northeast; its entry is defended to the northwest by a curved jetty of 270
meters length.” Before the construction of the jetty, the basin open to the swells from the north could also not have been
the quiet harbor where the vessels have no need of anchor or mooring. The isle has no other port: “The north coast is
rocky, and should not be approached more closely than three cables. The two points, Vico and Cornacchia, are high, steep
and bordered with cliffs. Between point Vico and point della Scrofa is a small beach [entirely covered toward the north].”
The other coasts of the isle are just rocks, projecting points, and steep cliffs, without mooring.
As for Procida, it is a small isle, little elevated (from 40 to 75 meters), covered in gardens and vineyards. It has some
coves on the eastern façade. But it in no way has a closed harbor. Very near the isle, to the southwest, the small islet
Vivara, 109 meters high, “forms with it a bay of three cables width, in which the coasters have a good shelter from all the
winds, except against those from the southeast”.
Furthermore, neither Procida nor Ischia are “near the port of the Cyclops”. Lake Fusaro surely was not the port of our
old Hyperia. It is possible that the Hellenic Kumë had had, in the basin as in the other harbors around cape Misene, its
arsenals and its hulls for refitting. But the High Town of the first navigators had no need of the closed harbors. For its
boats, which they hauled onto dry land, it had no need of a port, of a limen, to speak properly: as at Nelean Pylos, it
contented itself with the beach at the foot of its rock. The solid shore indents gently before the surf. Primitive Kumë
hauled its boats out and kept them on dry land. We need to seek the port and the small isle of the Cyclops elsewhere.

We have made the tour of the acropolis. From all directions, towrds the land as toward the sea, the butte of Kumë falls
almost from a peak. For the sailors, Hyperia is accessible only by the ladder of stone, the artificial stairway which we just
climbed. To landsmen, the suburb offers a less steep access. But to the north and east, the butte falls again into a small
deep plain which encircles it and serves it as a moat: brush, vines climbing arbors, plantations, green oaks and pear trees
in flower make at its foot as another sea of greenery. Entirely isolated, the butte is a veritable isle. From the mainland, it is
with the silhouette of an islet that its block of trachite appears: its black and sharp rocks, mired in the sea sand, are
entirely distinct from the white hills which make the edge of the Phlegrian plateau. Between the white hills and our black
butte, is hollowed a long depression, entirely filled with vines and cultivation - an aulon, a channel, the antique historians
promptly tell us - whose most elevated point is not 25 meters above the sea, while the summit of the butte is 84, and the
Phlegrian hills exceed 100 or 150.
Nevertheless, from the landward side, in spite of the protection, the High Town needs always be provided with
ramparts to complete its natural fortress. The flank of the butte, which faces the land, still bears the walls in ruins which
the successive occupants will raise against the cupidity or the just anger of the landsmen. For during the twenty or thirty
centuries of its written history, the butte sees the same wars constantly renew themselves. Kumë, across the ages, was
always a town of foreigners. Place of commerce or nest of pirates, it was for the landsmen a perpetual subject of fears and
alarms, a constant object of cupidity and envy. Sometimes by its wealth, sometimes by its misdeeds, all of the foreigners
who will come to occupy the site will attract the attacks of the natives against its walls. Kumë was deserted since 1207:
the Neopolitans will come then to destroy it because of the support it gave to the pirates. Already in the IXth century, the
Neopolitans had dislodged the Saracen corsairs from it. Two centuries earlier, the same Neopolitans had come to burn it
to expel the Lombards from it (740). Before the Lombards, it was the Goths of Totila who had made the impregnable
fortress the center of their raids and the strongbox of their thefts. The Byzantine historian, Agathias, relates to us at length
the operations of Narses against the place (554):

Kumë is a town of Italy, very strong and such that taking it is very difficult. For it is built on a butte with a difficult and very steep
edge: it is like the lookout of the entire Tyrrhenian sea. On the shore, in effect, the butte rises; at its feet, the wave comes to break
and roar; above, a band of towers and ramparts crown it with very solid works. The Goth kings, Totila and Teias, had the habit of

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depositing in the fortress, as in a place of complete safety, that which they posesseed of wealth and works of art. Narses, after his
arrival in Campania, had the heart to most quickly take the town and the treasure, in order to deprive the Goths of the port of refuge.

Narses comes with his entire army. He orders the ascent. Arriving at the foot of the rampart, the soldiers make fury
with their javelins, their arrows, their slings and all the siege engines. The Goths respond by the same weapons with equal
vigor. After several days of useless assaults, Narsis should resort to a ruse: by virtue of abandoned quarries, which they
name the Cave of the Sibyl, he reaches the foot of the rampart and saps it; the breach is open. But, on the inaccessible
butte, the town always resists. it takes a long blockade to reduce it.
In classical times, during the first antiquity, before the establishment of the pax romana, the foreign Hellenes, having
been rendered masters of Kumë, undergo similar attacks from the natives. In the year 524 B.C., “Under the archonate of
Miltiades, Kumë, Greek town in the Opics, Κύμη την Οπικοις ‘ελληνίδα πόλιν, is attacked by the Etruscans, the
Umbrians, the Daunians and still other Barbarians, which have no other motive of hate against it except its prosperity,
ουδεμίαν έχοντες ειπειν του μίσους δικαίαν πρόφασιν, ‘ότι μη την ευδαιμονίαν της πόλεως. Kumë was at that time
renowned across Italy for its wealth, its grandeur and its other advantages, and as much for its posession of the most
fertile corner of Campania as for its admirable harbors around cape Misene.” Attracted by its riches, 500,000 Barbarians,
supported by 18,000 cavalry, march against it. The Kumeans, after having assured the guarding of their ramparts and their
fleet, had only 4,500 foot soldiers and 600 horses to put into the line. They nevertheless offer battle in the narrow valley,
in “the channel”, the aulon, which separates the town from the Phlegrian hills and which, by its ditch, appears to continue
the lagoon of Licola up to the lake of Fusaro, προ της πόλεως χωρίον, αυλων στενος όρεσι και λ’ιμναις πρεικλει’ομενος.
With the aid of thunder and of the gods, the Kumeans set the multitude of barbarians to flight. But a century later, the
Samnites, having seized Campania, defeat the army of the Kumeans and overcome the ramparts of the town, which they
pillage (421). All of the inhabitants who will not be able to flee to Naples were sold as slaves. The barbarians take the
Kumean women as wives. Subsequently, all that was left was some memories of its Hellenism. Kumë was no longer
anything but a Campanian burg, still speaking Greek, but living in the manner of the Oscans.
Before the arrival of the Hellenes, Kumë of the first navigators, Hyperia of the Pheacians, should, if we believe the
Odyssian poem regarding it, have have passed a similar adventure: “In Hyperia of the Vast Fields, lived the Pheacians in
the vicinity of the Cyclops, arrogant men, who harassed them, being materially the stronger. Nausithoös transplants the
Phoenicians to Scheria.” Between the people of the Round Eyes, who thus harass the Pheacian town, and the Opics, who
later harass the Greek town, I do not see a great difference. From the height of their hills, the Barbarians of the continent
always turn their envious gaze toward that foreign town, whose market they frequent, of whose riches they know. They
come there to sell their dairy products, their hides, their sheep. Each morning, one sees their butchers or carcoal sellers
arrive, who furnish the daily provisions to the households. The gate of the rampart is open to them. But, prudently, one
watches them, one searches them, one takes their weapons and one guards against admitting too great a number at one
time.
Denys of Halicarnassis relates the seizure of Kumë by the exiles which the tyrant Aristodemes drove from the town.
The exiles had resembled a band of barbarians, slaves and mercenaries, who had hidden around Averne, on the Phlegrian
plateau. By a trick, they drew the army of Aristodeme outside the town, in the marsh and woods of the Campanian plain.
Once the lookouts have signaled the departure, sixty conspirators come running from Averne, clothed in hides like
shepherds; each carries a bundle of vines, in which a sword is hidden, διφθέρας έχοντας και φακέλλους φρογάνων
κομίζοντας. At dusk, our men enter the town by different gates. They excite no suspicion: they have the appearance of
actions which occur every day, ‘ως χερνηται. Night having come, they draw their weapons from the bundles and seize the
gate which faces Averne. Then the entire band of exiles enter. It is by the ruse of the bundles that the conspirators and
their Barbarians become masters of Kumë. The Odyssian Cyclops are similar bearer of bundles.: when Polyphemus
appears, it is with “an enormous load of dead wood”.

... φέρε δ’ όβριμον άχθος

‘ύλης αζαλέης.

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 Before the arrival of the Hellenes, the people of the Round Eyes alraedy carried their loads of sticks to Hyperia. The
Cyclops sold their wood and their charcoal to the People from the sea that the tradition names Leucanians or Thespiades:
“Hercules having had numerous children by fifty daughters of Thespios, sends them to colonize Sardinia with a large
mixed band of Hellenes and Barbarians. The nephew of Hercules, Iolaos, commanded them. The Iolians will found
numerous towns in Sardinia [and stay there several centuries]. Then, the Carthaginians having arrived, the Iolians remain
to flee into the mountains of the isle. But, after the Sardinian colonization, Iolaos had returned to Greece, and the
Thespiades, chiefs of the isle for several generations, will also leave it to definitively establish themselves in Italy, in the
land of Kumë.”

*
* *

Hyperia of the Vast Plains was in the neighborhood of Cyclopia; Kumë of Campania is a few hundred meters from the
land of the Round Eyes. The land of the Eyes extends from Kumë to Naples, over the entire Phlegrian plateau. For the
plateau, in the interior, is just a checkerboard of volcanic craters or depressions. Ancient mouths of eruption or circles of
subsidence, all of the “eyes” resemble each other. On a relief map (fig. 11), we can see neatly the high fold which
encloses each eye, the black hole which fills it and, at times, the center pupil which rises from the bottom of the hole.
Thus is presented, in all the volcanic regions, the circular cups which were formerly, whether by active eruption, veritable
craters, or simple zones of subsidence, “caused by the fall of the exterior envelope after the exit of lavas, without the least
sign of independant activity”.
For our Phlegrian region, I give (fig. 12)* the photographic reproduction of an obliquely lighted relief map: I owe the
photography to M. Velain, professor of physical geography at the University of Paris. Between the Kumean sea, which is
to the left of the viewer, and the great eye of Vesuvius, which occupies the right, we can discern the fifteen or twenty
scattered circles on the continent and in the sea (the port of Nisida and the harbors of Misene are just circles invaded by
the wave). Each raising on the map the ring of its “eyebrows”, as the Ancients say, the Eyes are entirely independent from
their neighbors. On the pedestal of the plateau, the rounds of the eyebrows make hollowed crests around the isolated
peaks, “hollow mountains”: Monte Cavo, say the Italians in speaking of another region, completely resembling this one,
the region of the Alban Mountains. “Mount Alban,” says Strabo, “dominates Artemesia of Nemi and the eyebrows of
mountains which enclose the lake; the eyebrows themselves are already very high and straight, ‘υπερκυπτον του
Αρτεμισίον και των περι αυτο οφρύων, καίπερ ‘υψηων ουσων και ορθίων ‘ικανως... The lake of Neemi, large as a sea, is
encircled by a mountainous eyebrow, which, with its very high and continuous edge, encloses in a deep hollow the
sanctuary and the sheet of water: one can see the springs which maintain the lake, λίμεν πελαγίζουσα, κύκλω δ’ορεινη
συνεχης οφρυς περίκειται και λίαν ‘υψηλη και το Η‘ιερον και το ‘ύδωρ απολλαμβάνουσα εν κοίλω τόπω και βαθει. τας
μεν ουν πηλάς ‘οραν εστιν εξ ων ‘η λίμην πληρουσται.” The same Strabo goes to again take the word eyebrows to
describe to us the Phlegian eyes: in truth nothing is more similar to an eye than the circular cavities, at the bottom of
which a lake frequently shines, Averne or Nemi. The lakes and their springs, hot or cold, have always been an object of
cult for the natives, of admiration and astonishment for foreigners. The first navigators from Sidon will have imagined the
more easily the name of Eye of the Circle, Oin-otr’a, since, in the Semitic idioms, it is the same word, oin, ‫עין‬, which
designates at the same time the eye and the spring, the water hole.
In regard to our relief map, it is from the verses of the Odyssey that they take their true signification:
“The Cyclops did not resemble a man, eater of bread, but a shaggy peak of the high mountains, which appears alone at
a distance from the others”,

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 ... ουδε εώκειν
ανδρί γε σιτοφάγω, αλλα ‘ρίω ‘υλήεντι
‘υψηων ορέων ‘ό τε φαίνεται οιον απ’ άλλων.

I do not believe one can give a more scientific definition of the volcanic buttes which cover the Phlegrian plain. From
its culminant point, from the monastery of the Camaldules (our figure 13* reproduces the view taken from the spot by sir
William Hamilton for his great work Campi Phlegraei; I borrow the engraving with the French translation or E. Seuss, la
Face de la Terre, II, fig. 110), the plateau appeared completely bristling with Hollow Mountains. On the continent or in
the sea, it is a seed bed of isolated peaks, of “burst pustules”, say the geologists. It is probable that a gigantic crater caused
the hidden subsidence of the entire region; on the plateau or in the gulf, the peaks are perhaps only the outbreaks of a
single and same origin, buried under the tuff and under the waters. But all of the “eyes” have risen side by side, and we do
not see how they relate to each other. Each is independant of its brother, οιον απ’ αλλων. Each one lives his own life,
without enquiring of his neighbor:

οιος ποιμαίνεσκεν απόπροθεν. ουδε μετ’ άλλους

πώλειτ’, αλλ’ απάνευθεν εων αθεμίστια ήδη.

They are not bound by common laws; they do not act or rest together; each has no rule except his own caprice.

... ουδ’ αλλήλων αλέγουσιν.

Most of the peaks, on their internal or external slopes, have been or still are clothed in forest. The most ancient,
especially, whose volcanic rocks have for a long time been disintegrated and decomposed by the exterior agents, are just a
mass of verdure. Our fig. 19 reproduces the view of Monte Barbaro, taken by sir William Hamilton in the middle of the
XVIIIth century: Kumë and its rock point at the bottom, between the lagoon of Licola and the lagoon of Fusaro, on the
edge of the sea; to the right, monte Barbaro and its round eye raise “its head loaded with forest”.

*
* *

April 20 and 22, 1901. - Between Kumë and Naples, the crossing of the Phlegrian Plateau is not convenient: the
Cyclops bar the road, and it is necessary to climb them or follow the outline of them.
In leaving the butte of Kumë, we first traversed the narrow valley which leads to the Phlegrian hills. In the aulon, in
the ditch entirely filled with vines and arbors in flowers, the elms, arranged in staggered rows or in rectangles, frame the
worked fields and the staked vines. Some large vinestocks grip the elms and, from one tree to another, in regular cordons,
the trellises swing their pliant garlands: in the antique style, the Neopolitan of today, like the Neopolitan of Virgil already
did, “joins the elms by the cordons of trellises”. I still hear the voice of my professor of rhetoric in my ears: “ Jungere
vitibus ulmos, join the elms with vines! Observe well, sirs, the boldness and elegance of the phrase? It should be, for the
meaning, jungere ulmis vites, because, as one makes the vine climb around the elm, one joins the vines to the elms. But
how much more poetic is the expression! Join the elms with vines! There is how one makes beautiful Latin verse!” The
cordons of vines, which really unite the elms, make me lose all the fruit of the fine lessons in an instant: I no longer see a

386
turn, boldness or elegance in the purpose of the verse, which simply, honestly, has the merit only of describing in three
words one of the characteristic aspects of the Italian fields: the garlands of vines swinging from elm to elm.
Through the sweet morning of flowering spring, on the paved roadway which descends from the hills, the guardians of
the sheep push their flocks toward the ruins of Kumë. The People of the Eyes continue to harass Hyperia, of whom they
are the masters today, and whose vines and orchards their sheep graze. The paved road, which ends at the foot of Kumë,
at the customs house on the shore, comes from Naples across the Phlegrian plateau. We ascend the slope again, on the
flank of the hills, to reach the land of Averne, in passing under the Arco Felice. The paving stones of black lava outline
their beds in the whiteness of the tuff. On the flank as on the summit, the Phlegrian hills are of a candid whiteness, and we
adjust with discomfort to the glare of the sun from their white flour dust. At the top of the slope, the Arco Felice is an
enormous gate of brick, under which, at the foot of a cut, the route crosses the “eyebrow” of Monte Grillo. Up to here, the
coolness of the marine breezes and the murmur of the shore still came to moderate the atmosphere. But beyond the Arco
Felice, we enter into the first shallow “eye”. On the slopes and in the bottom of the first basin, the white ground and fields
of vines without shade spread under a hot mist of dust. Here is the eye of Monte Grillo. But behind the enclosure of
eyebrows which have no great height, another eye is abruptly hollowed: the ground falls away and the lake of Averne
appears in the bottom of another ring, at the base of a bank with a peak of 200 meters.
“Averne,” says Strabo, “is enclosed all around by steep eyebrows, which dominate it from all directions, in allowing
no exit toward the sea or toward lake Lucrin. Its slopes today are cleared and subject to cultivation. Formerly, a savage
forest of great trees and impenetrable thickets shaded them. Agrippa had the forest cut and the lake opened.” Under our
feet, the eye, the great eye of Averne, spreads its dark sheet. On the slopes, three superimposed crowns succeed each other
from the edge of the water up to the summit: below, squares of stakes section the white earth; higher up flourish bushes
spangled wih buds and completely gilded with broom in flower: finally, higher still, some great trees, chestnuts, oaks and
parasol pines, outline, with their spaced masses against the sky, the florets of the diadem.
By the outer slope which views the gulf, we descended toward Lucrin and Pouzzoles (the Odyssian Nekuia is going to
bring us back to the land of the Sybil and the Dead; we will then study it in the minutest details). Then we leave the route
of Pouzzoles to reach, across the vines and the white hills, another round eye, even more closely related to the Homeric
Cyclops: “Above Pouzzoles,” says Strabo, “is the Agora of Hephaistos, a plain encircled by eyebrows of fire, from which,
here and there, escape breaths of flame with loud groans: the plain is covered in pale sulfur.”
The agora of Hephaistos, the eye of sulfur at the bottom of eyebrows on fire, is today called la Solfatare. The guides
say: “La Solfatare, crater of a half-extinguished volcano, is an oval basin surrounded by hills of pumice stone, whose
numerous vents, called fumaroli, continuously release smoke and sulfurous emanations. The terrain is hollow all around.
One finds [on the surface] sulfurous ground in a condition of white powder, which the guides mistakenly designate as
saltpeter. The Ancients called the crater Forum Vulcani, and believed it to be in communication with the crater of Ischia:
we have knowledge only of a single great eruption in 1198.” At the foot of the slopes covered with brush, where, among
the gold of the broom, the fumaroles arise everywhere, the bottom of la Solfatare is a plaque of sulfurous ground whose
shining whiteness makes one think of a lake of milk. Between the eyebrows on fire, it is truly an eye with a burning pupil:

πάντα δε ο‘ι βλέφαρ’ αμφι και οφρύας ηυσεν αυτμη

γλήνης καιομένης, σφαραγευντο δε ο‘ι πυρι ‘ρίζαι.

“All around the eyelids and eyebrows rose the vapor from the burning pupil, whose roots murmured from the fire.”
The round eye of la Solfatare, in still other regards, resembles the Odyssian Cyclops. Like Polyphemus, it sometimes
sleeps and snores, and sometimes, fully asleep, it vomits liquid and denser pieces. It burps also and sometimes,
awakening, it enters into terrible rages, screams, groans, and throws rocks as large as mountains. Here is a page of
geology, which seems to me to comment faithfully enough on certain Odyssian verses:

The normal type of volcanic activity is a successions of paroxysms or eruptions, separated from each other by periods of more or
less complete repose:

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 αυταρ επει Κύκλωψ μεγάλην εμπλήσατο νηδον,
κειτ’ έντοσθ’ άνροιο τανυσσάμενος δια μήλων...
. . . . . . . . . . . ‘ο δ’ έπειτα χαλώσατο κηρόθι μαλλον...
η και ανακλινθεις πέδεν ‘ύπτιος, αυταρ έπειτα
κειτ’ αποδοχμώσας παχυν αυχένα, καδ δέ μιν ‘ύπνος
ήρει πανδαμάτωρ.

Each paroxysm sets in evidence, on the one hand, of the elastic force of interior gases, capable of provoking violent explosions,

σμερδαλέον δε μέγ’ ώμωξεν, περι δ’ ίαχε πέτρη,

on the other hand, the tendency of the ascension of fluid materials under the crust. The two sorts of manifestations are sometimes
produced one without the other. But, ordinarily, both take place, the explosive phenomenon always preceeding the ascension of the
lava. The precursive signs of an eruption consist of the increase of emissions of vapor and in the production of shaking of the
ground, with subterranian noises:

Κύκλωψ δε στενάχων τε και ωδίνων...

The capital act of an eruption is the emission of the lava. The word lava designates simply a rock in fusion, and can be applied to
products very different in their texture, their density, their appearance, and their composition. The lava is always characterized by the
presence of vitreous, that is to say, amorphous materials, and crystals, which ooze out with the liquid mass in sometimes losing, by
the effect of the temperature, the distinction of their solidity. At Vesuvius, in 1885, a current of lava had at its surface a remarkably
fluid vitrious layer, where were found numerous well-developed crystals of leucite:

. . . . . . . . . φάρυγος δ’εξέσσυτο οινος

φυμοί τ’ ανδρόμεοι.

[But, before the emissions of lava, there are preliminaries, explosions, emissions of vapors, of rocks, of cinders and of debris.] The
eruption properly speaking, begins with cracks in the crater, the inner wall of which crumbles in part. Their fragments, mixed with
masses of incondescent lava, form the bombs and the lapilli or rapilli. The noise of the eruption is sometimes intermittent,

. . . . . . . . . . .’ο δ’ ερεύγετο οινοβαρείων,

sometimes continuous like the rolling of a barrel. The chimney of the volcano, during the eruption, can be considered like a mine in a
continuous explosion (cf. the stomach of the Cyclops after the meal). The explosions produced by the water vapor project into the air
the lava of the surface and the foams which cover it. The elements, becoming solids during their aerial course, and mixed with the
fragments which the explosions raise to the walls of the crater, fall partly back into the chimney to become new projectiles; but most
of it comes to fall outside the crater. The size of the ejected blocks habitually vary from the size of a human head to that of a fist. But
one can see ones much larger. Thus, in 1533, Cotopaxi ejected masses of 3 meters, and in 1823 Vesuvius threw pieces of a
conglomerate of scoria up to 2 ½ meters in diameter. The force of the ejection of the volcanos is enormous. The masses thrown by
Aetna can go up to 2,000 meters. The ejection of solid material is not always linked directly to the central chimney. We have seen
lateral fissures give issue to horizontal jets of stone and cinders.
In arriving on the isle of Stromboli, relates Spallazani, I had chosen my lodging in a small house situated two miles from the
volcano. The vent of the southwest breathed with impetuosity. The sky, which was serene, and which the moon did not light, shone
above the volcano. They had spoken of an aurora Borealis, which, from time to time, became redder and more resplendant. Then the
jets of flaming rocks raised themselves higher, the edges being much thicker and the noise which followed them more resounding.
The inhabitants told me that those eruptions were a small thing in comparison with several others which, in a few hours, had thrown
rocks over the entire isle, to the great damage of the vineyards and the woods near the volcano... The volcano erupts: an enormous
jet of burning lava, colored a dark red and enveloped in smoke suddenly leaves the summit of the side and is thrown into the air. A

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part of the materials falls back on the slope and rolls in debris. The larger part escapes in large bounds, falling into the sea and at the
moment of its immersion, producing a sharp sound resembling that of red iron when the blacksmith plunges it into water...

The same comparison is found in the Odyssey; the eye of Cyclops cries like an ax of iron that a blacksmith tempers:

‘ως δ’ ‘ότ ανηρ χαλκευς πέλεκυν μέγαν ηε σκέπαρνον

ειν ‘ύδατι ψυχρω βάπτη μεγάλα ιάχοντα.

And the Cyclops at first uproots the summit of a high mountain which he throws before the ship painted in kyanos:

ηκε δ’ απορρήξας κορυφην όρεος μεγάλοιο

καδ δ’ έβαλε προπάροιθε νεος κυανοπρώροιο.

Then he picks up another rock, even larger, which he throws, in making it turn:

αυταρ ‘ό γ’ εξαυτις πολυ μείζονα λααν αείρας

ηκ επιδινήσας, επέρεισε δε ιν’ απέλεθρον.

“When the ejections of the volcano,” say the geologists, “have been animated in a gyratory movement (επιδινήσας) in
their fall, they give rise to the volcanic bombs, or tears of Vesuvius of the Neopolitans. “On the Neopolitan coast, it is
Vesuvius today which snores, belches, roars, vomits and throws. But the Solfatare had its period of activity, and the
geologists estimate that a sort of compensatory balance perhaps joins the Phlegrian craters to the crater of Vesuvius: when
the subterranian pressures find an escape in the latter, the others are in repose; inversely, formerly, when Vesuvius was
quiet, the Phlegrian craters should have been more active. There was a period of modern times, when the almost inactive
Vesuvius appears to cede the rule to our Phlegrian region. The period was marked especially by the sudden eruption of
1538 which, in the plain of Averne, made Monte Nuovo spring up. Before the eruption, a great plain extended between
the shore of the gulf of Pouzzoles and the foot of the eyebrows of Averne and of Monte Barbaro. Suddenly, at the end of
September 1538, the gigantic molehill of Monte Nuovo came to rise in the middle of the plain. E Seuss, after the
descriptions and contemporary accounts, remade the tableau of the event:
“Already in 1488, it had produced a violent trembling of the ground which had cost the life of many people. At the
beginning of the XVIth century, the shocks will be multiplied. In 1537 and 1538 they will become more and more
frequent and violent. The 27th and 28th of September, they continued without interruption. Then, says Porzio, the sea
recedes about 200 feet, and springs of fresh water will well up. Then the band of terrain which extends from Monte
Barbaro toward lake Averne appears all at once rise up and take the form of a mountain which suddenly swelled up. The
following night, the mass of ground begins to vomit with a great tumult, like a gaping mouth, great masses of fire, of
pumice, of stones and cinders, so much that all the land around finds itself covered... Snows of an opaque black and
others of blinding white were exhaled from the crater. The sea, covered in pumice. resembled a plowed field; there were
cinders transported as far as Calabre.”
Vesuvius or Phlegrian crater, the movements of the volcanic regions always have the flux or reflux of the gulf as
corollaries: the Homeric poems consider the god of the waves, Poseidon, as the great agitator of the continents, the shaker
of terra firma, and the Cyclops are the sons of Poseidon. It is probable that in Odyssian times the history or the tradition
still recalled the eruption of some Monte Nuovo and the furors of one of the cyclops which we now see slumbering.
Perhaps the Solfatare was in full activity.

In leaving the Sufatare, we go to visit still two more great “eyes”, Astroni and Agnano. The royal park of Astroni is the
largest circle of the Phlegrian land. “It is,” say the guides, “a crater of subsidence which has more than one place of
change, and in which has grown a thick woods of green oaks and poplars. It encloses a small lake and an eminence

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composed of trachytic lava.” In 1452, Alphonse the Magnanimous gives, in the crater, a great feast in honor of the
marriage of his niece, Eleonore of Aragon, with the emperor Frederic III: more than thirty thousand people can attend.
The crater of Astroni is a royal hunting ground: an enclosing wall crowns the ring of the eyebrow. On the outside, the
slopes of white earth are cleared, covered with vines and agriculture. The admirable soils produce all that man asks of it,
when he furnishes it a little water. The garlands of vines fastened to the elms, the figs and chestnuts border the large
squares of beanpoles, of crops or of vegetables. All comes from “the land of wheat”, the Odyssian poet is going to tell us.
In the ending month of April, the wheat is already the height of a man. The beans, the peas in flower, the little gardens
of onions, leeks and salads surround each of the farms perched on the edge of a hill. All of the trees, cultivated or wild,
nuts, apples, pears, oranges, citrons, Japanese medlars, mix their European and exotic fruits: “The land of the Cyclops is
far from being bad; cultivated, it bears the crops in each season; it has, on the edge of the foaming sea, damp and lush
praries; the vine especially grew there with vigor; the work was easy and the harvest would be heavy in its season, for the
undersoil is excellent... The Cyclops do not plant or labor: nevertheless everything comes to them without seeds or labor,
wheat or barley, and the vines give them a wine of coarse grapes, and it is the rain of Zeus which makes all that grow.” -
“The fields of Campania,” says Strabo, “has always been disputed between the peoples, because of their fertility. The best
indication of the fertility is the quality of their wheat, which surpasses all the cereals of the world. They claim that certain
Campanian lands are sown the year around, twice in wheat, once in millet; vegetables take the rest of the time. The vine
and olive cover the slopes of the hills; Rome obtains its best wines from here.” - “To what land of crops irrigated, not by
fluvial inundations, but by the waters from the sky, is Campania inferior?” asks Denys of Halicarnassus. “I have seen
three harvests per year, the sowing of winter bromptly replaced by the sowing of summer, which was succeeded by the
sowing of autumn.” In the text of Denys should be well noted the first rank which the geographers give to Campania, not
among the inundated lands, but among the rain-watered lands, σιτοφόρου μη ποταμοις, αλλα τοις ουρανίοις ‘ύδασιν
αρδομένης. The classical geographers know, in effect, that nothing equals the fertility of deltas and plains of inundation:
they know Egypt and Mesopotamia. The primitive periple, which our Odyssian poet should have drawn from, appears
already to have had the same information: he does not put Cyclopia in the same rank as the marvelous Egypt; but,
excepting the deltas, he knew no better terrain for cereals or vines among the lands watered by rain:

και γαρ Κυκλώπεσσι φέρει ζείδωρος άρουσα

οινον εριστάφυλον, καί σφιν Διος όμβρος αέξει.

We dine in one of the farms which hand their small terraces on the outer flanks of Astroni, nearly at the summit of the
ring. Under the canopy of roses, which four columns of trunks support, a large pot of milk cooks over a fire of dry
branches. The sky veiled with mist; the vines sated with heat; the sea which extends before us without a wave up to thte
distant mountains of Sorrente; behind us, the forest of Astroni bordering the crest of its wall: everything in the flowering
morning appears be sleeping off the joy of spring. Only, at times, the snorting and flights of the royal game, across the
forest of Astroni, coming to disturb the great silence.
The Odyssey knew of a small isle of the Cyclops - we are going to recover it presently - which is at the middle, not of
the sea, but of a hunting ground entirely similar to that of Astroni: “It is a wooded isle where wild goats live by the
thousands; The arrival of men does not come to trouble them; they are never pursued by the hunters who fatigue
themselves across the forest to run the summits of the mountains. The isle is no longer inhabited by shepherds or laborers.
Without labor, without seeds, all year long, it remains deserted and nourishes only bleating goats... In the morning, we
take the curved bows and long-handled spears and, divided into three bands, we set ourselves to hunt. I had twelve
vessels: each had nine goats for its share; only mine had ten.” To be offered a similar outing today, one would need to be
invited by king Victor-Emmanuel. Closed by walls, Astroni has only one entry by a breach of its eyebrow. “Without
shepherds and without laborers”, the deserted circle is filled only by great trees and beasts. The inner slopes are an
admirable forest of oaks and poplars. The bottom is not uniform, but garnished with high rocks and sprinkled with small

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lakes, which the verdure of century-old trees similarly shades. A royal residence appeared under the shadows. Its white
façade sits like a clear pupil in the bottom of the dark eye.
At the foot of Astroni, here is the other “eye”, the circle of Agnano, which was long a lake resembling Averne (the
marine charts still indicate the lacustrian surface), except for the depth. Waters covered the entire bottom, but it was,
properly speaking, only an unhealthy swamp. Without much thought, man could drain it. The eyebrows of Agnano today
are covered in vines, pines and chestnuts. The pupil is a checkerboard of cultivations which the canals cut at right angles,
which the large roads cross, planted with poplars, acacias and plane trees. The ring of the eyebrows is not entirely
enclosed: a large breach opens it down to the bottom and makes the interior plain of Agnano communicate with the
maritime plain of Bagnoli; it is by this that the waters of the circle are conducted to the sea. The Cyclops is thus blind
today: the men have punctured his pupil. The antiquity already knew of an empty “eye”: Gaurus inanis, says Juvenal. The
Gauris or Gauros of the Ancients is Monte Gaudo or Barbaro of the moderns. Its hollow peak dominates all of its brothers
of the plateau. It serves as a guide to sailors of the gulf and of the high sea: only the monastery of the Camaldules is more
elevated. Through a large breach, the Gauros has always been able to discharge the waters from its interior plain: even the
name of Gauros proves, I believe, that it was thus since the first antiquity. For the word, gauros, γαυρος, would present a
meaning in Greek: it is the haughty, proud peak, the arrogant Cyclops of the poet, Κυκλώπων ‘υπερφιάλων,
‘υπερηνορεόντων. But I would more willingly set the place name in the same onomastic layer as Oinotria, Kumë, etc.: the
first navigators had needed to name the peak, which from afar served to orient them. Now, all the Semitic languages have
the root ‫עור‬, g.u.r., which signifies dig, gouge, and, in particular, gouge the eye, blind: Hebrews, Arabs, Aramaians and
Ethiopians have derived from the root their word blind, ‫עור‬, gauer or giuer. I believe that Gauros is just the Greek
transcription of the Semitic name: the Gauros was the blind eye, the empty eye, Gaurus inanis. Ulysses relates to us at
length what means one should take to blind a Cyclops.
By the breach of thre eyebrow, the waters of Agnano go to the sea, across the plain of Bagnoli. The plain of alluvions,
which borders the beach between the hills of Astroni and the hills of Pausilippe, is an ancient filled-in gulf, a damp and
deep plain, great prarie ending at the shore and the foam of the sea:

εν μεν γαρ λειμωνες αλος πολιοιο παρ’ όχθας

‘υδρηλοι μαλακοί.

At the edge of the plain and continuing the cliff of Pusilippe in the ocean, here is “neither too for nor too near the land
of the Cyclops, in front of their port, the Small Isle”, where Ulysses came to debark.

*
* *

A little outside the port, neither too close nor too far from the land of the Cyclops, the Little Ilse presents itself, covered with
woods, peopled by wild goats, empty of humans and traces of humans... It has a port of good harbors, where one has no need of any
mooring; without casting anchors, without putting lines ashore, one can stay there completely at leisure; once one has landed, one
can stay as long as one pleases not to leave, or as long as the winds are not favorable.

The translation of the text presents, I believe, no obscurity. Only the verse,

Νησος έπειτα Λάχεια παρεκ λιμένος τετανύσται,

could impede the “Least Homerics”, who who see all around nothing but simple poetic epithets. Small Isle, Νησος
Λαχεια, is, in reality, a proper name; it is not a matter of a small isle, but of the Small Isle: the modern Greeks have on the

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Asiatic coasts Mikronisi, as the Italians have elsewhere Isola Grande, and as the French have Ile Grande. To legitimize
the translation of Nesos Lahheia as a proper name, we have already encountered the “Pointed Isles” on the route of
Telemachus, in the sea of Zante: the Nesoi Thoai, the Pointed Isles that the hero needs to avoid between Pylos and Ithaca,
are the Montague Rocks, say the navigators today.
But to verify our translation entirely, here is another example: “At the extremity of Gortyne,” relates Nestor to
Telemachus, “there is in the gloomy sea a Bare Stone, cut to a peak above the wave. The wind from the south throws the
great swell against the promontory of the west and against Phaistos; but the great swell is broken by the small stone”,

έστι δέ τις λισση αιπειά τε εις ‘άλα πέτρη

εσχατιη Γόρτυνος εν ηερειδέι πόντω.
ένθα Νότος μέγα κυμα ποτι σκαιον ‘ρίον ωθει
ες Φαιστόν. μικρος δε λίθος μέγα κυμ’ αποέργει.

The scholiasts have reason that we have here a proper name, Λισση Πέτρη, ο‘ύτω λεγομένη κατα το κύριον όνομα. On
the southern coast of Crete, in effect, it is a rocky promontory which ponts toward the west and which forms the extremity
of Gortinia: behind it is hollowed the gulf where one of the ports of Gortyne, Phaistos, had been built. The great swell
from the south comes to beat against the corner, which forms a mole of defense for the entire gulf: “The cape, say the
Nautical Instructions, is the last ridge of the coastal mountains. It forms the extremity of the grat bay of Messara or of
Dibaki. It is a steep cape, perfectly outlined and recognizable by an elevated cliff in form of a corner, the cape forming the
sharp angle of the coin.” The bay of Messara is the western façade of Gortynia. Between two chains of parallel
mountains, which stand to the south and north, Gortynia is in effect just a long plain or especially the long valley of a
small river which the Ancients named Lethaios. In the middle of the plain, Gortyne is the “high town”, with two ports, the
one on the sea of the south behind the coastal mountains, the other on the sea of the west, in the bay of Messara. Our cape
protects the latter port, which was named Phaistos. In all the epochs, the cape was celebrated among the sailors: the
southern coast of Crete offers no other refuge. The Nautical Instructions add: “The sea, raised by the breeze from the
open or by the winds from the west, renders the communications with the land frequently difficult in the open bays.
Furthermore, the gusts which fall from Mount Ida by the wind storms from the north, very frequent from June to October,
blow into the bay with a great violence. Their approach or persistance is always announced by a layer or band of white
mists which envelop mount Ida and the neighboring peaks. During winter, the wind storms from the north are more
violent, and consequently the gusts more dangerous”.
The Odyssian poet knew very well the wind storms. Menelaus, driven from the north by gusts, cannot round Malea.
Waves, as high as mountains, throw their fleet toward Crete. Five of the vessels are carried all the way to Egypt. The
others come to be driven against the cliffs of our cape: the crews escape death, but the vessels are broken:

αι μεν άρ ένθ’ ηλθον, σπουδη δ’ ήλυξαν όλεθρον

άνδρες, αταρ νηάς γε ποτι σπιλάδεσσιν έαξαν
κύματα.

The cape is named Littino; it is the Italian transcription of the Greek word Λισσή, Bare (Stone). The Odyssian poem
gives us the proper name of the promontory, but in commenting on it by another epithet Λισσή [αιπεια τε εις ‘άλλα]
Πετρη. For the Small Isle of the Cyclops, the Homeric name Νησος Λάχεια is a transcription similarly developed. For the
isle, through the centuries, has retained its appellation up to our days. Today it is still the Small Isle. But one single word
suffices to designate it. The Italians name it Nisida or Nisita. The Greeks named it Nesis, Νησίς, the diminutive of Νησος,
“the islet”. The isle of Nisidda corresponds in all points to the Odyssian description: it presents them to us in the smallest
details. It suffices to transport the description to the marine charts, from which I give an exerpt here.

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 *
* *

In the gulf, Nisida rises before the Italian coast, a thousand meters from the shore;

γαίης Κυκλώπων ούτε σχεδον ουτ’ αποτηλου.

It is the projecting summit of a volcano, into the crater of which the sea has penetrated through a narrow breach. The
isle is just a ring od land, or, particularly, an almost closed crescent, which contains a basin, an “eye” of sea, entirely
resembling the Round Eyes of the neighboring coast. The sailors today give to the basin the name of Porta Pavone or
Paone (peacock). If one regards the similar form of the round eye, one will see thet the “Port of Paon” is a translation as
colorful as the “Port of the Cyclops”. Circled by white or verdant lands, the eye of the sea shines like the eyes of the
peacock on the spread tail of the bird. One enters the basin only by an outlet of barely fifty meters width. The entrance is
additionally obstructed by a rock. Is it necessary to comment further on the Odyssian verse: “At the interior of the isle,
there is a port well-provided with harbors, where one has no need of anchors or moorings”?

εν δε λιμην εύορμος, ‘ίνα ου χρεω πείσματος εστιν.

Without difficulty, we imagine the arrival of Ulysses, piloted by a god through the outlet; he needs the piloting of a
god to enter here without hindrance:

ένθα κατεπλέομεν καί τις θεος ‘ηγεμόνευεν.

For the night was dark, the moon covered with clouds and the port entirely full of thick mists:

νύκτα δι’ ορφναίην ουδε προφαίνετ’ ιδέσθαι.

αηρ γαρ περι νηυσι βαθει ην, ουδε σελήνη
ουρανόθεν προύφαινε, κατείχετο δε νεφέεσσιν.

In the black hole, which the steep slopes of the crater encircle all around, one can see nothing of the isle except the
circular wall, shaded by forests:

ένθ ού τις νησον ενέδρακεν οφθαλμοισιν.

And the wall also intercepting the view and the sounds from the open, one neither saw nor herd the breaking of the
surf:

ούτ’ ουν κύματα κυλινδόμενα προτι χέρσον

εισίδομεν.

Admirable station for the primitive navies! Harbor, spring, wood, game, they found all here. The inner and outer
slopes of the crater were covered with woods, ‘υλήεσσα, as the slopes of Astroni are. The Romans still saw “the forest
which crowns Nisida in the middle of the waves”,

silvaque quae fixam pelago Nesida coronat.

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 “The isle of Nisita,” says the Portulan of Michelot, is very high and filled with trees. From the southwest coast, there
is a small cove in the form of a crescent: at the point at the left on entering, there is a large reef where one sees above the
calenque a large, very ancient house.”
On the volacnic slopes, fertile and easy to work, everything could grow marvelously, and the vines especially would
come there in profusion, for the earth is deep, soft and the undersoil damp. It is not a bad infertile rock: “Nothing
surpasses the asparagus which grow without cultivation on the isle of Nisida”, says Pliny, quod in Neside Campaniae
insula sponte nascitur, longe optimum existimatur. Our dictionaries of geography stll praise the grapes, the olives and the
vegetables of Nisida.
With its admirable harbor, the isle offers to the first navigators the site of a great emporium, of the type of theirs which
we have studied for the preHellenic period. What a Tyre, Milet, Syriacuse or Marseilles one could found there! what a
“well-built town” the navigators could have made of the isle!

ο‘ί κε σφιν και νησον ευκτιμένην εκάμοντο.

But the natives do not appear to appreciate the advantages of the location: in all times they ignored it. In the Odyssian
times, the isle is deserted, abandoned to the woods and wild goats:

‘υλήεσσ. εν δ’ αιγες απειρέσιαι γεγάασιν

άγριαι.

It is just an isle of Goats: another isle of the same Neopolitan gulf retains, to our days, among the sailors and the natives
the name of Capraia, Καπρέα, Capri. The Isles of Goats are similar to the isle of the Sardinian coast which the
contemporary voyagers describe for us: “The isle of Tavolara is just an immense block of carbonate lime. Its name comes
from its shape: its flanks are cut to a peak, which renders the isle inaccessible from the greater part of its circumference. It
is inhabited only by wild goats or, to better speak, goats having gone wild, which they sometimes hunt, not without
running great dangers, because of the precipices which one finds there at every step... The goats are in no way a different
species from those which live in domesticity. Having made two consecutive voyages to the small isle to examine the
animals up close, I have succeeded, not without plenty of pains and perils, in obtaining some. I was then convinced that
they are of the same species as the domesticated goats. There are ones completely white, black, brown, red, black and
white, etc. The variety and the nature of the pelt leave me no doubt concerning the true origins of the goats, which
descend from domestic animals, abandoned in the small island in the past. They are remarkable by the measured length of
their horns.” The hunt of Ulysses on the Little Isle is much less difficult. A god promptly gives him an abundant prey: in
one day, the crews kill eighty-nine goats, and they then make one of the Pantagrueleque meals, of which the French
voyagers have apprised us of from full familiarity.
During the classical antiquity, Nisida is just a hunting ground, a vacation spot, where some rich Romans have their
country houses, a place of retreat and of mystery. Brutus, the murderer of Caesar, has a villa there - fui apud Brutum
multas horas in Neside, writes Cicero, ... Brutus erat in Neside,... In Neside VII idus, ibi Brutus. It is there that the
murder of Caesar was resolved. It is there that Portia comes to be murdered by the girlfriend of Phillipes. In the last
centuries, our isle of the Goats had become an isle of Rabbits: they had been brought there, and had ended all agriculture
there. Today, another prey has taken their place: the isle has become a quarantine, then a prison. Porto Pavone is always
deserted. The foreign navigators no longer come there. The natives of the gulf did not know how, or at least they do not
wish to make a “well-built town” there”. It is not that today the Opics still ignore the things of the sea, and do not have, as
in the Odyssian times, either rowers or painted boats:

ου γαρ Κυκλώπεσσι νέες πάρα μιλτοπάρηοι.

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 But the Port of Nisida is not able to give them any service: it opens only to arrivals from the great sea; it turns its back
to the shores of the continent. Nisida is still a fine example of the isles which we know well and which, oriented for the
service of the foreigners, are closed to the approaches of the natives. Today, the foreigners have nothing to do with the
station: Kumë, Pouzzoles or Naples offer them more convenient trading posts and better-stocked markets. When the fish
or minor coastal cruising leads the boats of the vicinity toward Nisida, the native sailors are not going to turn from the
stretch of the crossing to reach the narrow outlet of the inner port. They content themselves with a temporary anchorage,
on which promontory it does not matter, facing the mainland. For the service of the prison and the quarantine, they have a
coming and going of small boats which supply and populate the isle. The boats come to berth at the nearest point facing
the mainland, on the northeast coast of the isle: there, ignoring the natural port of Pavone, they have constructed at great
expense an artificial debarkation. “The port, on the northeast of the isle, is formed by a mole with a double angle,
extending about 180 meters to the north. A quai, near which there are 2 to 4 meters of depth, surrounds the coast. The
ships anchor to the east or northeast of the west jetty or are moored to the quay, well shelterd from all the winds from the
open.”
Thus the very orientation of Port Pavone distances the native boats and the contemporary fleets. But we understand
that it inversely attracts the first fleets of the thalassocracies. We need to always come back to the text of Skylax
regarding the African isle of Kerne: “The Phoenicians have made of Kerne their emporium. They debark there; they moor
their vessels there; they install themselves their under tents; from there, they pass to the neighboring continent and go by
boat to sell their merchandises”. Similarly, Ulysses installs his fleet in Porto Pavone: our Achaeans debark there and camp
at the edge of the sea:

δη τότε κοιμήθημεν επι ‘ρηγηινι θαλάσσης.

They eat, they drink, they sleep to their content. Then Ulysses gathers the company: “You others,” he says to the mass
of the fleet, “are going to stay here; I am going to take my vessel and crew, to go and see on land what sort of people are
there”,

άλλοι μεν νυν μίμνετ’, εμοι ερίηρες ‘εταιροι.

αυταρ εγω σθν ηνί τ’ εμη και εμοις ‘ετάροιστιν
ελθων τωνδ’ ανδρων πειρήσομαι ο‘ίτινές εισιν.

Ulysses leaves on his boat, of which he does not even bother to raise the mast: in a few strokes of the oars, they reach
the nearby land:

‘εξης δ’ ‘εζόμενοι πολιην ‘άλα τύπτον ‘ερετμοις.

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη τον χωρον αφικόμεθ’ εγγυς εόντα...

From the isle, they already heard the bleatings of the flocks and perceived the smoke and the voice of the Cyclops:

καπνόν τ’ αυτων τε φλογγην οίων τε και αιγων.

The entire gulf of Pouzzoles is, in effect, filled with the volcanic fumes and vapors. The Roman authors speak to us of
the dark and mephitic atmosphere which reigns around Nisida:

inde malignum
aera respirat pelago circumflua Nesis.

395
 It appears that formerly the isle itself exhaled, like Solfatare, vapors and fumaroles:

tali spiramine Nesis

emittit stygium nebulosis aera saxis.

and the “stygian air of the misty rocks” would be a literal commentary of the Odyssian verse: “around our vessel, the too-
thick cloud” prevented anything from being seen,

αηρ γαρ περι νηυσι βαθει’ ην.

The fumes and fumaroles, spread over the perimeter of the gulf, are particularly abundant on the coasts of the
northwest and the west, around Pouzzoles and cape Misene. There, as we could have expected, they have attracted the
attention of the sailors. Our Nautical Instructions knew of the Point of the Smoke, Punta del Fumo, and the Smoking
Rock, Secca Fumosa. The Point of the Smoke makes part of the large promontory which the Ancients name Misene,
Μισηνόν or Μισηνοί, Misenus or Misenum. The name appears to have never had any sense to the ears of the natives: the
legend related it to foreign navigators. According to the tradition, Misenos, who gave his name to the promontory, was a
companion of Ulysses (and Polybius cites the same name as a proof of Ulysses’ stay in this place); Virgil makes of
Misenus the bugler of Aeneas. In all the Semitic languages, the root ‫עשן‬, asan, designates the smoke, the steam. The verb
‫עשן‬, asan, to smoke, had an iterative form to depict more exactly the volcanic fumes and fumaroles which continually
smoke: the piel form, isen, would render this idea completely, and the piel participle ‫טעשן‬, misen, would be a good
equivalent for our Smoking Rock. I believe that Misenos comes from that.

*
* *

April 22 and 23, 1901. - On the beach of Bagnoli, we have taken a boat “with the red flank”, μιλτοπάρηος, one of the
Neopolitan boats painted in mirliton. Nisida rises across from us. It presents to the mainland a high and steep wall of
white cliffs and lines of verdure. On the right crest, a round keep pierced with embrasures; across the slope, a route in
switchbacks; at midslope, a line of terraces and houses; at the water level, some buildings, a mole and a lighthouse: the
entire isle is nothing but a prison. In the strait, halfway between the land and the isle, a group of reefs support the ancient
quarantine. One cannot visit or even round the isle without the permission of the penitentiary authorities.
The strait is without great width. In the passage, the wind from the north curls the waves and thumps the boats. The
strait is without much depth. Nisida is in truth just a part of Pausilippe: same internal composition; same appearance;
same height. The isle, like the continental cliff, rests on a pedestal of black lavas, which appears a few meters below the
surface: 150 or 200 meters of white tuff overlie it. The lava is hard, compact, insoluble. The tuff, friable and fissured,
hollows or crumbles under the blows of the wave. The break, which makes the strait between Pausilippe and Nisida,
appears to have for its cause a dive or a flexion of the inferior lavas. In the location, the bed of lavas, being less high, or
being downwardly flexed, does not continuously exceed the sea level; the tuff was thus without defense against the
waves, which have leveled it: the sea covers the base of lavas. But we have barely left the beach when the base of black
lavas appeared a few feet under the water. Several prominences domiante it, emerging in reefs or in plateaus of rocks: the
largest have served as foundations for the quarantine. On each flank, east and west of Nisida, one of the prominences of
protruding lava still bears a high needle of balancing tuff: Needle of the Levant, Needle of the Couchant, say the Italian
charts. Our nailors justly compare the two rocks to two obelisks:

396
 Nisida, say the Nautical Instructions, is steep, and situated a half mile from the coast, to which it is joined by a bank over which
there are 2 to 4 meters of water. In the southwest part is found a small basin, named Port-Paone, which belongs only to fishing boats.
At the summit, situated in the northwest part, is an ancient palace converted into a prison. In the east, between Nisida and the coast,
is found a steep and flat islet where they have established a quarantine, and which is joined to nisida by a causeway. Between the
islet and the shore of the mainland, the channel, with two meters of mater has about 150 meters of width. Near the coast of the isle,
on the northwest and southeast coasts, are two conical rocks, named the Obelisks.

Having rounded the Quarantine, we discover the Needle of the Levant. On the flank of Nisida, it is like a tower of white
rocks, which a narrow passage passage obstructed by rocks separates from the isle. Viewed from here, the Needle is just a
stone without much size. But by measure as our boat, rocked by the waves, comes to cruise the high cliffs of Nisida, the
surf of the swell makes more roaring around pointed rocks. The sharply cut rock, half-teetering, with its poorly seated
bed, is disquieting to the sight. It is necessary to round it at a distance, in avoiding being grounded on the reefs in the
vicinty. Its height appears enormous and its stability unsure. It would appear that, under the blows of the waves, it is
going to lean and crush everything in falling. It is less a rock protruding from the water than a fallen piece of terra firma
or, as the Odyssey says, some wountain peak thrown into the sea by a furious Cyclops.
Standing on the cliff of Pausilippe (where we are going to find his cave presently), the blinded Polyphemus throws two
enormous rocks at the boat of Ulysses, which returns to Nisida: “He rips up the head of a high mountain and throws it in
front of our ship: the backwash of the sea carries us back toward the land and almost threw us on the coast [of terra
firma]... Uprooting a much larger gock anew, he makes it spin and throws it behind our ship. The driven sea pushes us
before it and throws us almost to the coast [of Nisida].” It suffices to take note of some words of the account to perceive
how the episode was derived by the poet, in his usual manner, from the very onomasty of his periple. The first stone falls
before the vessel:

καδ’ δ’ έβαλε προπάροιθε νεος κυανοπρώποιο,

the second falls behind the vessel:

καδ’ δ’ έβαλεν μετόπισθε νεοσ κυανοπρώροιο

For the first thalassocracies, near by Nisida, which was already the Small Isle, the two obelisks were already the
needles of the Levant [sunrise], and of the Couchant [sunset]. But, in the Semitic languages, levant and before, couchant
and behind are synonyms. The Semites “orient” themselves, as we do, facing the Levant, with their back to the Couchant:
the Levant for them is thus that which is before, kedem, ‫קדם‬, and the Couchant is that which is behind, akhur, ‫אהור‬. The
Bible knows of a “Mount of Before”, a mountain of the east, ‫אר הקדם‬, Or Akedem. The Semitic periple furnished to the
Odyssian poet a Stone of Before and a Stone of Behind: the poet, imagining in his usual manner an incident to set this fact
in his work, only translated with a minute exactitude Πέτρη Προπάροιθε, Πέτρη Μετόπισθε. In another passage, he will
show us that he nevertheless knew the true meaning of the Semitic words before and behind. When Ulysses seeks to
orient himself, he wishes to know “which are the men who live on the coast of the aurora and the sun, and which are those
who live behind, toward the gloomy sunset”,

ημεν ‘όσοι ναίουσι προς ηω τ’ ηελιόν τε

ηδ’ ‘όσσοι μετόπισθε ποτι ζόφον ηερόεντα.

It is possible that the poet has not even had to invent the the throwing of the stones by the Cyclops: he has already
found it in the text of his periple. The “Eyes” are, by nature, throwers of stones: I believe that, in their Oinotria, the first
thalassocracies already had “thrown” isles, rocks fallen or thrown from the neighboring continent. The classical

397
geography knew of several of the isles uprooted from terra firma and thrown into the ocean by some giant or by some
god. An isle of the archipelago, Nisyros, is a volcano in activity: the Ancients saw it as just a oiece of the neighboring
isle, Kos, την Νίσυρον απόθραυσμα ειναι της Κω, which Poseidon had thrown on the giant Polybotes to bury him. At the
entry of the gulf of Naples, facing cape Misene, the isle “Proversee”, Προχύτη (Procida today), also passed for being
nothing but a fragment of the Pithecus Isles, that is to say, of Ischia, του Μισηνου πρόκειται νησος ‘η Προχύτη,
Πιθηκουσσων απόσπασμα, or of cape misene itself: Strabo gives us the two versions, which are not contradictory, for the
Pithecuses themselves were, to the taste of the Ancients, just a fragment of cape Misene, as Capri, the Sirens and the
Oenotrides were fragments of the Sorrentine land, και γαρ ‘η Προχύτη και Πιθηκουσσαι αποσπάσματα της ηπείρου και
α‘ι Καπρίαι και ‘η Λευκωσία και Σειρηνες και α‘ι Οινωτρίδες. For Prochyta and Ischia, the legend should have gone back
very far. It was without doubt anterior to the Greeks. At least the onomasty of the isles merits our attention. It is presented
to us under the form of doublets: it has names surely Greek, Προχύτη, the Turned-out, the Projected, Πιθηκουσσαι, the
Isle of Apes (πίθηκος) or of the Barrels (πίθος); it also has other names which have no meaning in Greek, Aenaria,
Inarime, and which should not have offered any clearer meaning to the ears of the natives. One of the names was even
invented for the sole purpose of explaining the other. For Aenaria is truly a geographic name, a real name; but Inarime is
an invention by men of letters:

Inarimen Prochytamque legit sterilque locatas

colle Pithecusas, habitantium nomine dictas.

The word Inarime is the deformed and sophisticated copy of a verse from the Iliad: “The soil groans like a stroke of
thunder, which lashes the ground around Typhon in the Arima”,

... ‘ότε τ’ αμφι Τυφωέι γαιαν ‘ιμάσση

ειν Αρίμοις.

The Homeric Ειν-Αρίμοισ has given the isle I-narime which they assimilate to Ae-naria. The name of Aenaria would,
to the contrary, enter into a category which is familiar to us, for we already know of the insular names of the western
Mediterranean, beginning with e, i, ai: E-nosim, Ai-aie, I-spanis, etc. We know that the prefix e or i is the Greco-Latin
transcription of the Semitic word ‫אי‬, ai, or ‫י‬, i, which would say isle: Ae-naria is the Isle Naria. In all the Semitic
languages, the root ‫נהר‬, na’ar, exists with the meaning of to flow, pour, and the word ‫נהר‬, na’ar, with the sense of a flow,
river. I believe that ‫נהרה‬-‫אי‬, Ai-naria, is the Poured Island: provolutis montibus insulam exstitisse, says Pliny. I believe
that Ae-naria is the Semitic original of which Prochyta. Προχύτη, is just the Greek translation. The name of Aenaria was
attributed to the entire group of Pithecuses: Ischia is the great isle, the mother, and Prochyta is the youngest or the
daughter: Prochyta non ab Aeneae nutrice dicta, sed quia profusa ab Aenaria erat; Aenaria ipsa a statione navium
Aeneae.

Our boat has rounded the southern cliff of Nisida, at a good distance, to avoid the reefs and the surf: here we are before
Porto Pavone. Suddenly the demolished “eyebrow” allows us to see the inner slopes of the crater, with the terraces of
vines and olives which climb from the sea to the keep of the summit. The entrance to Porto Pavone is very narrow. With
the wind from the north, it offers us some difficulty, because of the half-submerged rock which bars it. We need to watch
the channel well. It would truly require the piloting of a god to risk such a passage in full night and to make an entrance
with a flotilla under sail:

ένθα καταπλέομεν καί τις θεος ‘ηγεμόνευεν.

398
 The expression which retrieve in the Odysseyis just the poetic translation of a common formula among the sailors of
Ionia. Herodotus relates to us the admirable fortune of a Samian boat which, thrown by the storm on the shores of
Tartessos, brought back infinite riches from there: “it had truly enjoyed the escort of the gods”, θείη πομπη χρεώμενοι.
At the mouth of the port, on the two bordering rocks, the swell breaks, and we see only too well, along our gunwhale,
the large waves which crash against the isle:

... κύματα μακρά κυλινδόμενα προτί χέρσον

εισιδομεν.

But, once entering, we are at rest. Promptly there is no longer even any need for maneuvers to control our boat. It rests
without moving in the middle of the port. We have obtained permission to take photographs, but not to debark. To our
left, below the keep, the slope of the crater, completely striped with vines in terraces, is barred with switchbacks of a wide
road, which descends from the keep to the convicts’ hospital. To our right, the slope, covered with trees and brush, is
crossed by another route which joins the hospital to the cemetary: at the summit are the beautiful remains of an old olive
tree. Right before us, all the way at the base of the port, at the only point of the circumpherence where the circular bank
projects a shelf (the marine chart indicates very neatly the indentation of the port, επι κρατος λιμένος), the slopes
converge in a narrow valley, which should have formerly ended at the sea in a short beach. Today, to prevent any escape
of prisoners, a wall pierced with gunslits fronts the bottom. Only two small arched gates allow drawing water from the
spring, which flows, the sailors tell us, under the foot of the cliff: a stairway and some flat stones are arranged for the
convenience of launderers.
In Odyssian times, it is here that the navigators established their camp; the small shore offered them a water source and
the shade of its poplars:

αυταρ επι κρατος λιμένος ‘ρέει αγλαον ‘ύδωρ,

κρήνη ‘υπο σπείους. περι δ’ αίγειροι πεφύασιν

It is in the camp that Ulysses orders the bulk of the fleet to await him, while he goes to the Cyclops of the mainland
with a single boat. Under the shade, our corsair companions thus remain to banquet during the absence of the hero: the
isle of game is a good resting place.
But Ulysses leaves the port of the Small Isle. Without even taking the effort to hoist the mast, he has the oars manned
to propel the ship from Porto Pavone. They leave the crater. In a few strokes of the oars, they land at the shore of the
mainland “entirely near”,

‘εξης δ’ έζομενοι πολιην ‘άλα τύπτον ερετμοις.

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη τον χωρον αφικόμεθ’ εγγυς εόντα...

It is the maneuver which the sailors repent. On leaving Porto Pavone, we again find the great swells, the roars of the
foamy wave, the menacing cliff and the Needle torn by the wind, ravaged by the surf: under the whiteness of its tuff, it
resembles some enormous floating iceberg bobbing along. Before us, the façade of Pausilippe is a straight and white wall,
entirely similar to the cliff of Nisida, but even higher and steeper. In the crumbly rock, the men or the waves have
hollowed high caverns, whose mouths gape on the sea, just at the waterline. At the summit of the wall, plantations and a
few villas hang over the abyss. At the foot, falls of pebbles and land show what danger the embarcation can run in
approaching the crumbling cliffs too closely.

The beach of sand of Bagnoli, say the Nautical Instructions, separates a large, well-cultivated valley from the sea: the town is on
the coast, near some hot springs... [at the back of the beach], the point of Gaiola, which limits the bay of Pouzzoles to the east, is
rocky, with cliffs of 150 meters height; near its southern extremity lies the small islet of Gaiola.

399
 Perpendicular to the wall of the cliff, a long spine of rocks points into the open and delineates two small ports, Cala
Badessa and Cala de Trentaremi, where the surf dies across the reefs. The boats can find calmer waters there. But the
veritable refuge is offered them only by the small bay, which opens farther away, between terra firma and the rocks of
Gaiola. The Cala Badessa and the Cala Trentaremi, circled by sharp lava and dominated by crumbling cliffs, cannot, in
effect, serve for debarkation. The small bay of Gaiola offers, to the contrary, on all its perimeter, long slopes of tuff
which, with their staged grades, cut the cliff down to the edge of the water: the stairway leads easily to the cave which is
found entirely nearby. It is here that Ulysses was able to debark. It is near here, “at the extremity of the land, very near the
sea, that he saw a high cave, shaded by laurels”.

ένθα δ’ επ’ εσχατιν σπέος είδομεν άγχι θαλάσσης

‘υψηλον δάφνησι κατηρεφές.

Nevertheless, the most convenient road and the true point of debarkation is still not here at all. It is necessary to round
the east point of the small bay of Gaiola and penetrate into the cove of St. Basilio: there, two parallel torrents which, in
the wall of tuff, have cut their deep gorges, coming to end in a minuscule delta. Between two caps of lava, a beach of sand
and mud can receive the hauled-out boats. The points of the coast and the barrier of the reefs shelter the cove from the
least blow of the swell. Here is the best harbor for the first navigators. Without being seen by the natives, they can stay
here and hide the boats aground, under the overhang of the cliff. It is here that will leave a part of his crew near his vessel
hauled aground; he himself will climb to the cave with twelve of his companions:

δη τότε τους άλλους κελόμην επίηρας ‘εταίρους

αυτου παρ ηνί τε μένειν και νηα έρυσθαι.
αυταρ εγω κρίνας ‘ετάρων δυοκαίδεκ’ αρίστους
βην...
καρπαλίμως δ’ εις άντρον αφικόμεθα...

“We arrive promptly at the cave.” In ascending the torrents of St. Basilio, we soon arrive at a large cavern which, from
detail to detail, corresponds to the Odyssian description. It is the cavern which, since the XVIth century, the guides and
the natives call, without any reason, Grotto of Sejan. Our marine charts, under the same disposition of the name Grotto of
Sejan, mark the plane of it, and the depth unde the cliff of 154 meters (see fig. 21)*: in fromt of the grotto, properly
speaking, by a double dotted line, they also indicate the cut in the open ceiling which, from the torrent of St. Basilio, leads
to the east mouth of the cave. The road, to ascend from the sea up to there, at first uses the corridor of the torrent: between
two walls of tuff, at the bottom of the narrow gorge, it is just a path in stairs, cut in steps, impeded by rolling pebbles.
Then, at 300 or 400 meters from the beach, the gorge opens suddenly into a circular valley, which a high margin of white
tuff dominates from all around. An acre of vines, enclosed by large stones, oaks and parasol pines, occupies the flat floor.
The margin is hollowed with caverns, some artificial (an entire semi-troglodyte village lives in the shelters; there are
caves, silos and stables), the others natural and, among them, one enormous, high, deep, gigantic grotto, to the foot of
which leads a path in a cut. It is not, as the locals say, the Grotto of Sejan: it is the Grotto of Polyphemus. It suffices to set
the photographs of the valley in relationship the verse of the Odyssey, not only to establish the agreement of all the verse
to all the details of the reality, but further to understand certain words of the Odyssian text which, without the
photographs, would remain inexplicable: “The grotto was imprisoned in the circle, περιδέδμητο, of a deep courtyard,
αυλη ‘υωηλή, βαθείν αυλή, made of stones planted in the ground, of soaring pines and of oaks with high foliage”,

... περι δ’ αυλη

‘υψηλη δέδμητο κατωρυχέεσσι λίθοισιν
μακρησίν τε πίυυσσιν ιδε δρυσιν ‘υψικόμοισιν.

400
 I doubt whether, without the view of the places or the photographs, the description would be intelligible. If we only knew
of the stunted pines and the live oaks of the Hellenic lands, I doubt that we would translate “soaring pines” with the single
word which applies here, “parasol pines”. Our photographs show clearly, I believe, the round of parasol pines and oaks, at
the foot of the pit of tuff, into which the grotto opens.
The grotto of Polyphemus should be high, ‘υψηλον, θυράων ‘υψηλάων. Numerous flocks, sheep and goats, find a
shelter there... The vast cavern, ευρυ σπέος, has need, to be closed, of a rock which twenty-two yoked carts barely move.
In the depths of the cavern - it is so spacious - Ulysses and his companions can stay unperceived long enough for
Polyphemus to light a fire to light the darkness. The cavern is so deep that the blinded Polyphemus cannot lay his hands
on his prisoners: he asks his ram to show him the place where the miserable Nobody escapes his grasp.
The mouth of our cavern has 9 or 10 meters of height, 6 or 7 meters of width; at its inhospitable door, a guardian
charges a fee of the tourists. In the interior, the cavern continues with the same height to a depth of 55 meters: beyond, it
is an artificial tunnel which continues it for another 850 meters, across the entire hill of Pausilippe, up to the slope which
dominates the valley of Bagnoli. From the primitive cavern to the prolonged tunnel, it is easy to determine the abrupt
difference: the height and the width suddenly shrink; the vault falls to 3 meters; the walls have no more than 2 meters of
separation.they did not know at what date the tunnel was dug by the hand of man: an inscription informs us the alteration
was in the times of Honorius. It should be some folly of one of the rich owners of Pausilippe (very near the cavern, some
important ruins cover the slopes which view the gulf), who wished to have a direct passage between the villa and
Pouzzoles. It can be an imitation of the other tunnel of Pausilippe which, pieced by Augustus for the route of Pouzzoles,
led in a straight line from the plain of Naples to the bottom of the valley of Bagnoli, This latter tunnel, near the large town
of Naples, was very useful for communications with Baies and Pouzzoles. But here, at the extremity of the cliff which
never bears anything but pleasure villas, we do not see what public utility might have engaged the expenses of our tunnel:
in reality, it leads to nothing. If the cavern had not prëexisted, noöne would ever have dreamed of boring the mountain.
The mouth of the cavern is no longer shaded by laurels; some thickets of broom, growing in the interstices of the rock,
makes a floral accent for it. But the neighboring slopes are covered with laurels, and the laurels planted by Petrarch or
Casimir Delavigne always shade the Tomb of Virgil. The cavern is deserted today: the government exploits it and makes
the tourists pay for entry. The artificial grottos which surround it show which services it could have formerly rendered to
the natives for their supplies and for their flocks. They keep their lambs dry, their wine or dairy products cool. Debarking
in the cove of St. Basilio, the first navigators climbed up here to buy livestock, milk and cheeses. I do not doubt that in its
fashion the Odyssian poem gives us knowledge of a certain state of commerce which really existed in the land. In
primitive times, the grotto really served as a retreat for the native shepherds and their flocks. The land of the Cyclops was
inhabited. Such a number of traits in the Odyssian legend are related to the Round Eyes themselves, that is to say, to the
Phlegrian Mountains and their craters, it is entirely a category of evidence, also very numerous, which describe very
exactly for us, I believe, the ways and the life of the Opics, of the Oeilians or Oeillets, of the People of the Round Eyes,
of the Oinotrians.

*
* *

The Opics are shepherds of the mountains. At the foot of their mountains extend the rich plains of the “vast
Campania”. But they have not yet arrived at an agricultural civilization. They are shepherds. Confident in the bounty of
God, without sowing or planting anything, they harvest that which the earth gives them:

ο‘ί ‘ρα θεοισι πεποιθότες αθανάτοισιν

401
 ούτε φυτεύουσιν χερσιν φυτον ούτ’ αρόωσιν.

Their vines give them wine:

και γαρ Κθκλώπεσσα φέρει ζείδωρος άρουσα

οινον αριστάφυλον... ,

but the wine is thin in comparison with the nectar which the wine of the navigators is, to their palate:

αλλα τόδ’ αμβροσίης και νέκταρος εστιν απορρώξ.

They have remained in the pastoral life. They live off of their sheep, on meat and milk. They live neither on farms nor
in villages. They do not even have houses. The caverns suffice to shelter them at night, with their ewes and lambs.
It is the same state of civilization which the geographers and periples of the classical epoch describe to us on certain
coasts: “The mountaineers of Sardinia,” relates Strabo, “inhabit caverns. Some of them posess in their territories good
arable lands. But they neglect to sow them, and attack to ravage the lands of cultivators,their neighbors: εν σπηλαίοις
οικουντες, ει δέ τινα έχουσι γην σπόριμον, ουδε ταύτην επιμελως σπείροντες, αλλα τας των εργαζομένων
καθαρπάζοντες.” - “The people,” Says Agatharchide, in speaking of certain negroes, “do not have towns. They live not
far from the sea, on the flank of cliffs, either in the deep hollows or in the twisting valleys and narrow passages which
offers them sheltered nooks and crannies... Some of them inhabit caverns which they choose by preference turned toward
the north; from that direction, they have coolness, by virtue of the depth of the shade and of the winds. The caverns turned
to the south have the temperature of an oven which renders them uninhabitable under the extreme heat of the climate.”
The Cyclops also seek the large caverns, ευρυ σπέος, refreshed by the wind from the sea:

ώκεων εν σπήεσσι δι’ άκριας ηνεμοέσσας.

But, on the Italian coast, the caverns turned toward the north would be untenable during the cold of winter, or from the
blows of the mistral. To have only the coolness of the wind from the open sea, it is necessary to choose the caverns turned
toward the west. On the coasts of the Tyrrhenian sea, up to the times of the Romen Empire, the coastal caverns will be the
sought-after locations. Strabo speaks to us again of the spacious and comfortably located caverns which open in the cliffs
between Gaete and Terracine, ανεωγέ τ’ εναυθα σπήλαια ‘υπερμεγέθη κατοικίας μεγάλας και πολυτελεις δεδεγμένα. The
spacious and luxurious apartments offered an agreeable and healthy “vacation” in the summer to “bathers” coming from
Rome, even to the Emporers. On the coast of cliffs, ventilated by the breezes from the sea, δι’ άκριας ηνεμοέσσας,
malaria was not to be feared, as it was near the marshes and muddy beaches, which go from Ostia up to Naples, and
which the wind of the fever still desolate today: “Up to the village of Sperlonga,” say the Nautical Instructions, “the coast
is low, sandy, and the land marshy; in the east of Sperlonga, it is formed by a succession of steep and rocky points, and
sandy beaches separate lands, elevated and in some parts well-wooded, from the sea.” The present name Sperlonga is the
deformation of the name which the Ancients gave the harbor, Spelunca, the Cavern. In the small Pontiaean isles, which
face the Italian coast, the Nautical Instructions tell us further: “The poorer part of the population live in excavations and
grottos; those which are within the Madonna islets are named Grotto of Pilate.”
In the gulf of Naples, the first navigators thus had their harbor of the Cavern. We have already encountered a Town of
the Cavern, ‫טעוה‬, Karia Megara, from which the Hellenes make Megara, Μέγαρα: near Nisida, the Hellenes and the
Romans will know of an Isle of the Cavern, Μεγαρίς, Megaris. The isle, which since the Normans is called the Castle of
the Egg, is covered with fortifications today. Lucullus had built a sumptuous villa on the rock, the swimming pools of
which, introduced into the caverns, gained him the nickname of Xerxes in Toga, Xerxes togatus: he had perforated

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Megaris as Xerxes had Athos; but before Lucullus it is probable that the isle, like all of the neoghboring cliffs, had
already been pierced with grottos.
In front of their grottos, the Opics of the Odyssey will construct onclosures of trees and rocks to confine their flocks.
Only the ewes with their little ones, the delicate beasts, are admitted to the interior of the cavern. the males pass the night
in the open air, in the enclosure. Each morning, the females and males go to the pasturage. But the little ones remain in
the coolness, or in the warmth, according to the season, and in the dry, within the cavern. When Ulysses enters
Poyphemus’ place, he does not find the owner at home; Polyphemus is in the fields with his flock:

ουδέ μιν ένδον

ε‘ύρομεν αλλ’ ενόμενε νομον κατα πίονα μηλα.

But the cavern is full of kids and lambs closed in stalls. Each evening, the flock returns with the shepherd. He drives
the beasts to be milked into the interior of the cavern:

αυταρ ‘ό εις ευρυ σπέος ήλασε πίονα μηλα

πάντα μάλ ‘όσσ’ ήμελγε.

But he leaves the males outside, in the enclosure:

τα δ’ άρσενα λειπε θύρηφιν

αρνειούς τε τράγους τε βαθείης έντοθεν αυλης.

On the flank of Aetna, the voyagers already know of a completely similar grotto: “After having traversed the forest,
which forms a belt of shining green around the mountain, one arrives at the Grotto of Goats, where the animals come to
shelter themselves in bad weather. It is a cavern formed by an antique lava. It offers aid to voyagers. They build a fire at
the entry. Notified by the light of the flames or by the plume of smoke, the shepherds, who roam the forest night and day
during the good season, coming to see them and bring dairy goods. The men do not at all have the ferocity which has been
attributed to them by some voyagers. Like the inhabitants of all the high mountains, they have remained very close to
nature: their ways are rustic, crude if you wish, but there is among them a simplicity, a frankness, a cordiality.”
Our Odyssian verse thus contains a description of the pastoral life, such as is still followed today in the mountains of
Pinde or of Creten and in a number of Mediterranean countries. Still today, on the flanks of Ida or of Dikte, one can see
stations of shepherds altogether resembling the dwelling of the Cyclops: in front of a more or less deep grotto which
serves as a refuge and shelter, a storage for his provisions or cheeses and as a stable for his newborns, the shepherd
encloses a more or less large space with piled-up rocks, where the flock, during the night, has nothing to fear from thieves
or wild beasts. The enclosure is called by the Greeks a mandra, μάνδρα. It is frequently a question of mandrais in the
popular songs. One encounters them at each step in the Greek mountains. On the slopes of eastern Pinde, which are not
entirely deforested, the shepherd ordinarily chooses, to establish his mandra, a grove of large trees: the high crowns serve
as a roof; the large trunks serve as pillars and as supporting columns; from one trunk to the other, the piled-up rocks and
clods form a circular wall; the flock is well-sheltered from the heat of the days and the cold of the nights. It is in exactly
this way that the mandra, the enclosure, the αυλή, of Polyphemus is arranged.
To depict the pastoral life of the Opics, it is possible that the Greek poet had borrowed some traits of the daily scenes
of the Hellenic life. It is possible that a page of wholly Achaean bucolism might have been inserted into the original
periple. But it is also possible that the original periple might have already contained the description. In the periples or
copies of the periples which we posess, we would easily find entirely similar texts: “In Sardinia, the Iolians will never be
willing to submit to the laws of the foreign fleets. They will take refuge on the heights of the mountains, hollow out their
subterranian habitations, and lived from raising their numerous flocks. The flocks furnished them a nourishment in

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abundance with which they contented themselves, milk, cheese and meats: καταφυγόντες εις την ορεινην και καταγείους
οικήσεις κατασκευάσαντες έτρεφον πολλάς αγέλας βοσκημάτων, ων παρεχομένων δαψιλεις τροφας ηρκουντο
προσφερόμενοι γάλα και τυρον και κρέα. Abandoning the fields of the plain, the Ioleans thus will free themselves from
all the duties of agricultural work, και της μεν πεδιάδος γης εκχωρήσαντες την εκ της εργασίας κακοπάθειαν εξέκλιναν.
In their mountain, they lead a life of idleness, by virtue of the revenue of their flocks. The Carthaginians will frequently
send powerful armies against them. But the difficulties of the roads and the turns and detours of their subterranian hidouts
will always save them from slavery... Iolaos, the founder of the people, and the Thespiades, whom he had set at the head
of the isle, will remain the masters for a long time. But, after numerous generations, they were driven out and will take
refuge in Italy, where they will establish themselves in the vicinity of Kumë.” Diodora copies some old periple. I would
be inclined to think that the Homeric poet had a similar description before his eyes. For we should take good note of a
detail of our Odyssian text. “In the grotto, we find jars, gauloi, full of whey, and some bowls serving for milking”.

... ναιον δ’ ορω άγγεα πάντα,

γαυλοί τε σκαφίδες τε, τετυγμένα, τοις ενάμελγεν.

The word of gauloi, γαυλοί, is an ‘άπαξ ειρημένον: we do not find it in any other part of the Homeric poems. We have
already seen that is is a Semitic term: ‫גול‬, g-u-l, designating for the Hebrews a sort of jug; among the Phoenicians, it
should have designated additionally a type of ship (cf. vessel, vase); it is the word that Skylax employs in the phrase cited
above: “The Phoenicians come to unload their cargo boats at Kerne, τους μεν γαύλος καθορμίζουσιν.” Here pehaps is a
word that the Greek poet merely transcribed from his original periple. It is thus possible that the periple already describes
the life of the natives, their pastoral occupations and the instruments, the gaules, by which they were served.
In the Odyssian epoch, the Opics lead the life already led in the last century by the Valaques of Pinde. Descending
each autumn with their flocks, the Valaques came to winter on the shores of the Greek peninsula, from Durazzo and
Salonika to Matapan. Reclimbing each spring toward the valleys and the high pasturages of the interior, they passed the
summer in their inaccessible retreats. They did not plant or cultivate. They lived almost exclusively from their flocks. In
all the modern domains of the Greeks, “Valaque”, βλάχος, has thus become the usual word to say shepherd. The free
pastoral life has never accomodated itself to the constraints, justice, habits or laws of our sedentary societies. The always
armed Valaque has always been a trouble-maker of sedition, a contemptor of propriety. Benjamin of Tudele alredy knew
it thusly: “There begins Valachia, whose inhabitants live in the mountains. The Valaques, who run as fast as the deer,
come down from their mountains to steal some booty from the Greeks. [The Greeks] have not so far mastered them,
because of the difficulty of their inaccessible places where they retreat, and the secrets of which only they know.They are
neither Christians nor Jews, although there are among them who take the same names as the latter, and who brag to have
formerly been Jews, whom they call their brothers. If on occasion they encounter them, they content themselves in
despoiling them without killing them, as they do the the Greeks.
In Odyssian times, the mountaineers of Campania, the Opic shepherds, treat them no differently. They have no more
religion; they mock God and all of the divine persons:

ου γαρ Κύκλωπες Διος αιγιόχου αλέγουσιν

ουδε Θεων μακάρων.

The navigators of the times complain of their violences,, of their lack of justice:

... ‘υβριοσταί τε και άγριοι ουδε δίκαιοι.

During the historic period, the same complaints continue. The Peoples of the Sea having founded Kumë among the Opics,
Κύμη εν Οπικοις, we have seen that the history of that town is just an interminable martyrdom: Denys of Halicarnassis

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has related to us the battles of the Kumeans against the ferocious Barbarians, των αγριοτάτων Βαρβάρων, without rivals
in the joys of war, τα πολέμια μακρω των άλλων αμείνους. Peace is never established with such brutes. Injustice reigns in
the region up to the day when the Greek force deludes itself in inaugurating the “reign of justice” in the Opic land, in
founding, on the site of present Pouzzoles, the town of Sovereign Justice, Δικαιάρχεια, Dicearchia, quod ea civitas
justissime regebatur. The Greek hoplite was capable of imposing its just laws. But, from our study of Phonecia, we have
seen how little the Semitic negociant cared for violent exercises and the risks of war: they preferred to hold themselves
away from battle and blows, or even to flee them. Thus, in the region, Hyperia and the peaceful traders were not able to
subsist for long. In the times of the Odyssian periple, the fortune of Hyperia, it appears, no longer exists except in the
memory of men. The navigators have for awhile left the mainland butte and the shore of fine sand. It is on the deserted
Small Isle that they come to moor their fleets and install their temporary tradiong posts. From there, they pass to the
neighboring mainland, taking care at the Needle of the Sunrise against protruding reefs, coastal rocks and the swell which
throws the boats against the teeth of the cliff, when the wind blows from the open sea:

νέα μέν μοι κατέαξε Ποσειδάων ενοσίχθων

προς πέτρησι βαλων ‘υμης επι πείρασι γαίης
άκρη προσπελάσας. άνεμος δ’ εκ πόντου ένεικεν.

They climb to the grotto to obtain provisions. They find the same cargos there which the Neopolitan boats seek today in
the small ports of the Sardinian coast: “The ships come to Orosei the take the products of the land, consisting principally
of wheat and cheese... The land produces lots of grain, of cheese, of fruits, similarly tobacco and wines: they make a
somewhat active coastal cruising of Arbatax.” But beware of the natives! The Odyssian poem presents them as
anthropophages, dining on human flesh. In reality, did the opics of that generation still have the habit of cannibalism?
There should have existed a time when the coastal peoples of the Mediterranean ate human flesh. It could be that the
Opics had retained the venerable tradition for a long time. But I would more readily believe it an exaggeration of the
sailors or a fiction of the poet. It is nevertheless possible that the periple had furnished him an authentic testimony. The
classical periples would give us twenty passages of our Odyssian verse to regard. The Cyclops are giants who live each to
himself, each ruling his children and his women:

... θεμιστεύει δε ‘έκαστος

παίδων ηδ’ αλόχων.

The classical periples describe for us “species of giants, which live one away from the other, each being his own king and
lord”. μέγιστοι δε σώμασι περι ταύτην την χώραν άνθρωποι σποράδην κατοικουσι και κατα τόπον ‘έκαστοσ ‘ομοίως
τιθέμενοι τυράννοις. To consiliate the humor of the Barbarians, the Greek or Roman navigators carry excellent wines
(today we bring our alcohols and absinths to the negroes), and the wines serve not as trade goods, but simply as gifts, ου
προς εργασίαν, αλλα δαπάνης χάριν εις φιλανθρωπίαν των Βαρβάρων. Ulysses uses it completely similarly with
Polyphemus:

Κύκλωψ, τη, πίε οινον, επει φάγες ανδρόμεα κρέα,

όφρ’ ειδης οιόν τι ποτον τόδε νηυς εκεκεύθειν
‘ημετέρη.

If the Cyclops is a savage who does not know laws or justice,

άγριον, ούτε δίκας ευ ειδότα ούτε θέμιστας,

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the Barbarians of the classical periples appear similarly to have no notion of good and bad, αισχρων δε και καλων ουδε
την ελαχίστην εισφερόμενοι έννοιαν.

*
* *

It thus appears that in the story of the Cyclops, the part of imaginaton may be minimal. The Greek poet has invented
practically nothing. Here again, he has only put exact and precise testimony to work. In leafing through the periples of the
Ancients or through our Nautical Instructions, it appears that we can without difficulty reconstitute the original, where the
poet goes to draw all the evidences on the disposition of the place, on the form and resources of the shores, on the nature
of the land and the ways of the natives. A.-L. Castellan, who voyaged in Greece in 1797, describes to us thusly the
habitations and ways of the Moraïte shepherds, on the Laconian coast of the archipelago:

We visited numerous grottos which are found in the steep mountains with which the coast is bordered. They serve as habitation to
the shepherds, and to their flocks, which pass the night there, and which they lead to the higher mountains. The shepherds have
retained the antique costume; the mildness of the climate permits them to go practically nude; a simple cotton shirt, which falls only
to above their knees, gathered with a crude belt or strap, forms all of their clothing. The inhabitants of the higher mountains wear the
hides of their lambs, cut in the same manner. In the summer, they wear the fleece outside and, in the winter, they turn it toward their
skin.
The grottos where they retire are closed only by piles of rocks or simply with hedges of thorns, which suffice to prevent the flock
from escaping during the night. One of the grottos is found at the foot of the bay. The opening, halfway up the rocks, is little visible.
It is inhabited by several families of shepherds. They had come out of it when we entered there. There had still remained a crowd of
young lambs at the entry, guarded by a dog... Some earthen vases for preparing the food were near the fire, as were some wooden
vessels for collecting the milk from their flocks, and some baskets for their cheeses. We did not move anything, and we left after
having satisfied our curiosity, leaving them some small Turkish coins to encourage their confidence; which was successful for us:
for, later, they came regularly each morning to our shore, brought milk and cheeses, and even sold us some lambs.
One can barely be convinced that there exist so close to the civilized world beings so savage and ignorant. And are they less
fortunate? Guarding their flocks, the fabrication of their matting and baskets, the preparation of the hides for their clothing, the
harvesting of wild fruits (for they cultivate nothing) form their occupations and their pleasures.

The primitive periple contained, without doubt, some entirely similar information. But, from its scattered information,
the poet, in his accustomed manner, made a tableau which he arranges, orders, composes with skill, and which he
animates, always in his accustomed manner, in loaning things the personality, the voice and the deeds of man. As he had
made the Hideout, Spania, an amorous and jealous nymph, Calypso, he made the Round Eye a terrible Cyclops: the
volcano became a thrower of rocks and a crusher of men, to whom the poet lends the mores and ferocity of the Opic
shepherds. And as around Calypso, the principal personage of his first tableau, he had known how to group in minor
incidents or in secondary personages all the items of his periple, similarly, around the Cyclops, he groups the information
on the appearances of the terrain and on the life of the natives; but the information in his verse become personages or
marvelous occurences.
And perhaps, in the story of the Cyclops, better than in the story of Calypso, we can know from life, in full work, his
ordinary procedure. For it appears that we can see here the successive stages at which the figures would arrive between
the geography of the periple and the anthropomorphism of his verses. The Round Eye, in the periple, was just “the
summit of an isolated peak, which rises at a distance from the others”: the Cyclops of the poet, in taking on totally the
human form and being disengaged from the mountai, is still “resembling less a man, eater of wheat, than a shaggy summit
of high mountains”: Polyphemus thus remains half engaged in prosaic and real truth, like the half-imprisoned statues
which our sculptors show still immersed in the block of marble from which their fantasy draws them. Without the block

406
of marble, all the fantasy of the sculptor would have been powerless to realize before our eyes their statues and their
human gestures. Without the block of the periple, which furnished him the material, I believe that the anthropomorphism
of the poet would also not have succeeded in raising the unforgettable figures of Polyphemus and of Calypso.

*
* *

Ulysses, entering into the cavern, finds himself a prisoner of the Cyclops. Polyphemus devoured six brave
companions. But the Achaean ruse overcomes the savage brute. Polyphemus, dead drunk, is blinded. The Achaeans,
attached under the bellies of the sheep, are able to escape him. They drive the flock toward the small bay of San Basilio.
They retrieve their beached boat. They pack the beasts in. Then they hasten to leave the baleful beach. They fall to rowing
toward the Small Isle. The first rock, thrown before the boat by Polyphemus, throws them back to the shore. The second
rock from Polyphemus falls behind the boat, which it pushed toward the Small Isle. “We land at the isle where we have
left the bulk of our fleet. We debark. We bring the flock of the Cyclops from the hull and we pass all the day in feas ting.
When the aurora returns, we take again to the sea.”

BOOK EIGHT

AEOLOS AND THE LESTRYGONS

αυταις τε ταύταις ‘ιστορίαις πιστεύσαντες και τη πολυμαθία του Ποιητου

STRAB, III, 149

CHAPTER I

THE ISLE AEOLIA

γράφω δε ταυτα πολλοις εντυχών περίπλιος.

MARC. HERACL., GOG. GRAEC. MIN. I, p. 565

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 From there we navigate most readily, the heart heavy, happy to escape death, but weeping for our dear companions.
We arrive at the isle Aeolia. There lived Aeolos Hippotades, dear to the immortal gods, on a floating isle, which a wall of
unbreakable bronze circled all around; a bare rock sprang from it toward the sky:

Αιολίην δ’ ες νησον αφικόμεθ’. ένθα δ’ έναιεν

Αίολος ‘Ιπποτάδης, φίλος αθανάτοισι θεοισιν,
πλωτη ενι νήσω. πασαν δέ τε μιν πέρι τειχος
χάλκεον άρρηκτον. λισση δ’ αναδέδρομε πέτρη.

Fo the voyage between the Cyclops and the isle Aeolia, the poem again gives us no precise indication of time,
distance, wind or passage. But the Ancients agreed on finding the isle Aeolia in the most eastern of the Lipari, in the
Round Isle which the Greeks will name Strongule: the Italians have made Stromboli of it. We open the Nautical
Instructions:

The isle, the most northeast of the group of Lipari isles, is high, in the form of a cone 940 meters above the sea. Everything in its
entirety indicates that it is the product of subterranian fires. The crater, which faces the northwest, is almost a third of the mountain,
from the summit. It is continually active, with frequent explosions, and it constantly vomits burning material. According to what the
islanders say, the atmospheric perturbations would have a great influence on the volcano; thus the storms, especially those coming
from the south, are preceeded by thick masses of smoke. In spite of the existence of the volcano, Stromboli is very fertile, and
produces one of the best wines in the Mediterranian, wheat, barley, cotton, grapes, figs, etc. The fields are beautiful, and extend
fairly high on the mountain.
The principal burg, defended by a battery, is on the east coast of the isle. It is divided into two parts, forming the parishes of San
Vicenzo and San Bartolomes. The houses are low and terraced. Some have two floors. One still sees traces of ancient edifices and
tombs. In San Vicenzo, there is a fountain fed by a small spring from the mountain. The beach, placed below the houses, is of
shining black sand, and ends in the rocky point of della Scaro, where there is a great cavern called Grotto dei Bovi Marini, or Grotto
of the Sea Calves. The cavern has 25 meters of depth, 10 meters of width at the entry, and 2 meters of height. The northern extremity
of the isle is composed of ridged lava. The northwest coast forms a small bay, which is found immediately below the crater, and the
volcano frequently projects a rain of incandescent stones there. The west coast of the isle is similarly composed of ridged lava. The
southern extremity is a low point of pebbles. Along the coast, from the point at San Vicenzo, there are several excavations. The one
in the hill, a little above the Punta del Uomo, is remarkable because one finds there the beautiful and brilliant iron mineral called
specular iron.

The page from the Nautical Instructions offers us anew, in brevity, all of the factual history of the Cyclops, which
groans, vomits, and throws rocks: it is apparently some Instruction on the volcanos of Campania which served as the
modes for the Odyssian poet. But the page also offers us the faithful picture of the isle Aeolia. Stromboli, which rises
from the sea, to the north of the strait of Messina, is a volcanic cone. Viewed from the summit or the slopes of the
mountain itself, the isle presents itself to the islanders as being made as a tower, completely round in a circle of water: we
understand the name the Greek colonists will give it, Strongule, the Round. But, if the islanders can see it thusly, the
navigators perceive it differently: before seeing it as round, they see it as high, very high. It attains almost a thousand
meters of height and, from its crater, sends a column of smoke during the day, a glow of intermittent fire during the night,
so much so that they see the isle from all of the neighboring shores:

Having left Naples the 24th of August to arrive in Sicily, and having passed, at the beginning of the night, the mouths of Capri [it
is the exit of the gulf of the Cyclops], I began to discover the phenomenon although was a hundred miles away. It appeared as a light
flash of flames which, unexpectedly but weakly, struck the eyes, lasted two or three seconds, and suddenly disappeared. At the end
of ten or twelve minutes, the flame reappeared, then was extinguished anew. The sailors regarded the fires with pleasure; they told
me that, without them, they frequently ran the risk, in the dark and stormy nights, either to be shipwrecked in the open sea or to be
broken on the neighboring coasts of Calabria. When the day had come, I found myself very near the volcanic isle. The clear

408
brightness of the sun had made the light of the volcano disappear. In place of the flames I saw only smoke... I had Stromboli before
me. Its summit was covered with a very thich smoke.

The high isle offers the navigators only a single beach of pebbles. Everywhere else all around, it is a steep bank, an
almost straight wall, with lava flows, similar to trails of metal melted, then solidified: the flows truly give it the metallic
appearence of which the poet speaks, “a wall of unbreakable bronze”,

πασαν δέ τέ μιν πέρι τειχος

χάλκεος άρρηκτον.

The Nautical Instructions say, in speaking of the steep coasts of Sardinia: “A coast of iron, of a desolate aspect, cut by
some coves open to the northwest, extends between the islet Rossa and point Vignola”. In the mouth or under the pen of
our sailors, the expression “coast of iron” comes back endlessly when they wish to depict for us a façade of smooth rocks,
a steep shore, rocky and without shelter. For Stromboli, the expression would be the more just, as the wall is truly
metallic:

The fifth and last of the volcanic products of Stromboli is specular iron. It is found, in the south, more than a mile from the
habitations, in a rock of lava cut to a peak at the edge of the sea. The islanders have collected some isolated samples at the foot of a
rock. The metal is crystalline in vertical seams in the rock, which serves it as a matrix... The seams are so brilliant, so polished that
the finest steel [the Odyssian periple knew steel poorly, and can only compare the brilliant walls to the most usual metal among its
contemporaries: it is a wall of bronze, χαλκεον] is not superior to them in that regard. They reflect the light like a flawless mirror...
One never sees a seam placed in isolation. They are always assembled with several together. They thus form groups twenty inches
and more in circumference. In general, the color of the seams, with the exception of some tinted violet, is similar to that of the finest
steel. They shine within their frames as at their surface. In spite of their hardness (άρρηκτον, says the poet), they have the fragility of
glass.

In a neighboring isle, Spallanzani has seen a mountain which resembles our Odyssian isle even better:

The mountain della Castagna can have a mile of width on the edge of the sea. Who could believe that it is entirely formed of
enamel and glass? I know that the isle abounds in vitrifications. I had read the account of Dolomieu, who had added to the idea I had
of their profusion. But could I expect to see them piled up in a single place, to the point of rising up in a mountain? Imagine a torrent
which, falling from a high place and rolling from cascade to cascade, is all at once seized and fixed by a sharp cold. On the slope
where its rapid waters poured, one sees only an immobile ice. Such is the appearance under which is shown the vitrified materials at
the summit and on the slope of the mountain of Castagna. But at its base the appearance is different; one sees there, under the upper
layer, other vitreous layers denuded by the blows of the waves of the sea.

Coast of iron, wall of bronze or mountain of enamel and glass, the comparison differs a little in following the
literatures. But, in the mouth of the Homeric poet, the comparison has nothing more of the marvelous than in the mouth of
our sailors or of the knowledgeable Spallanzani. The coast of bronze really exists in the isle Aeolia, as the coast of iron
does in the isle of Sardinia. Another marvel: Aeolia is floating.

[Near mount della Castagna], Campo bianco is a mountain which rises almost perpendicularly at the edge of the sea. It is denuded
of plants, with the exception of the barren vegetations which attach themselves to the most arid rocks. It is formed only of entirely
white pumice rocks. From afar one would say it is covered with snow from its summit to its base, an immense quarry from which
they derive all the pumice employed in Europe for diverse uses. There are sent the French, Italian and other vessels destined to traffic
in the volcanic production. The pumice rock, although universally regarded as a product of fire, is one of the substances whose origin
has excited the most arguments among the chemists and naturalists. The beach of Campo Bianco first offered me a quantity of the
stones which float on the water.

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 A number of volcanos eject pumice. It is under a rain of pumice that Pompey was buried. Stromboli has had the
eruptions:

I come to the fourth type of volcanic products of Stromboli: the pumice rocks. One finds them at about one third of the height of
the isle, in the eastern part, on the edge of the paths which cross the vines, and in the excavations formed by waterfalls. They are not
in masses, but dispersed in small pieces of little abundance. One easily recognizes that they have been unearthed by the hand of man
or by the effect of rains, and if one follows their traces at the depth of several feet in the sand, one finds them clear-scattered and in
their primitive state. Stromboli thus has formerly vomited them, and no longer vomits them today. Vesuvius gives the example, but
on a larger scale, of similar alternations.

The eruptions of pumice have surprising effects for the navigation. The sailors who would not be used to it would
excitedly cry of a miracle:

That which happened in the port is no less astonishing, relates Thevenot on the subject of Santorini. I would report it here as
diverse persons have apprised me of it in several locations. It was about eighteen years ago that, during the night of a certain Sunday,
a very great noise began in the port of Santorini, which was heard as far as Chio, which is more than two hundred miles away, but of
such a sort that they believed at Chio that it was the Venetian army which fought against that of the Turks... There was a fire which
took place in the gound at the bottom of the port of Santorini and made such an effect there that, from morning until evening, there
came from the bottom of the sea a quantity of stones of pumice, which rose up with such abrupness and such noise that they said that
it made as much noise as cannon shots. This infected the air such that, in the aforesaid isle of Santorini, a number of people died.
This infection spread as far as the noise which preceeded it. For not only in the isle but even at Chio and Smyrna, all of the silver
became red. The pumice stone, which will come from there, so covered the sea of the archipelago that in some weathers, when
certain winds prevailed, there were ports which were blocked, so that no boat could leave, no matter how small it was, and those in
them made their way across the pumice stones with some poles.

Still today, Thera, covered in pumice, is belted with the floating stones, which the waves throw and take back at the
whim of the breeze, on the shores of the east and the south. Stromboli had a similar belt when it appeared as “a floating
isle” to the first navigators:

πλωτη ενι νήσω.

The geographers of the following ages, who had not viewed the phenomenon - Stromboli no longer ejects pumice in the
classic epochs - will seek and discover twenty explanations of the three words so clear: “πλωτή, they say, is not intended
to say navigating, but navigated, because they navigated all around it, or because it furnished the navigators indications
on the weather which they should encounter in the sea”, etc. But the poet truly said that the island was floating, and he
said it with reason for, here again, he did nothing but reproduce a “view of the coasts”, according to the sailors whose
periple he followed.
Above a belt of pumice stones, the floating isle raised its high denuded stone:

λισση δ’ αναδέδρομε πέτρη.

The hemistich also does nothing but translate or paraphrase the name which the primitive sailors had given the High Isle,
Ai-olie, Αι-ολίη. The name enters, in effect, into the series which is familiar to us. Alonside of I-spania, E-nosim, Ae-
naria, Ai-aie, etc., the name takes its place among the insular names commencing with ai, e, or i, ‫אי‬, ai, or ‫י‬, i, the isle.
The second term ολίη, is the Greek transcription of the determinative which the Semites had given to the isle, ai. All the
Semitic languages have the root ‫עלה‬, ol’a, with the double sense of the transitive mount, climb, and intransitive rise,
spring up. The Arabs have derived from the root all of the forms, verbs, substantives, adjectives, participals, etc., to
signify to be high, to be prominent,the height, the greatness, the high place, etc. The last substantive designates the stair,

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the ramp, the slope; its exact transcription would give us in Greek olia, ολίη: the isle Olia, Αι-ολίη, would be the Isle of
the Ramp. But the principal form, identical, ol’a, would relate even more to our Odyssian text: the isle Olia would be the
Mounting isle. The Seventy translate the Semitic verb ‫ עלה‬by the Greek verb αναβαίνειν: the Odyssian poet employs
αναδέδρομε, which is exactly the same thing. Ai-olia is thus the Isle which Points.
Between the Round Isle of the Hellenes and the Pointing Isle of the Semites, we perceive without difficulty the reasons
which will create the difference in the onomasty:

One arrives with difficulty at the exact knowledge of the interior arrangement of a mountainous and volcanic land, if one does not
begin by a just idea of its entirety being formed. For that, one needs to place oneself at the summit of the highest mountain... After
having made the tour of the isle Lipari and studied its shores, I transported myself on mount San Angelo, which is the most eminent
plateau of the isle. In considering it from the height, I did not find it at all the conical figure which is proper to the isles of Stromboli
and Vulcano, it appeared to me on the contrary very irregular... I employed a day to make a tour of the bases of Stromboli by foot. I
discovered there all about the same solidity of structure, except in a corner to the north where the tuff exists and extends into the sea.
Everywhere the sand extends, it forms, to say thus, only the crust of the soil. One finds beneath it the frame of the isle, composed of
solid lavas. That is especially manifest in certain swift coasts, denuded by the removal by rainwater or by the action of the winds...
One can enjoy the aspect of the crater either from the sea, in taking a favorable position, of from the land, in reaching the summit of
the mountain. I wished to observe it from the two points of view, and I initially decided on the first, in order to profit from a calm
which is so rarely offered on a sea almost always raised by storms. I thus took a boat and, after having run alongside of the isle for
the distance of 3 ½ miles to the north, I arrived offshore of a place where the materials thrown by the volcano coming to fall in the
sea. It is a coast whose inclination deviates little from the vertical; measured by foot, it has about 1/2 bile of width; its depth is a
good mile. It goes to end itself at a point, and represents an isosceles triangle whose base is bathed by the sea.

There is the aspect under which the sailors have always perceived and noted the volcanic cones pointing to their
horizon: that which they at first see is the height; that which they describe and denote is above all the height. The height
alone can be useful for them to know, when they navigate in the waters where the volcano should serve them to orient.
Take, for comparison, the accounts of the first explorers of Teneriffe:

Among the remarkable things of the isles, says the one, there are two, among others: the one is that in the middle of Teneriffe
there is a very high mountain, in the point of a diamond, which throws fire like mount Gibel of Sicily, and there are a good fifteen
leagues to climb, which one can only do in three days. The mountain is called the Peak of Teneriffe or of Terregra, and from there
one sees more than 50 or 60 leagues distance, and one easily notes all the other isles. One can go to the highest only from mid-May
until mid-August, because of the excessive cold of the snows, which has given the Ancients occasion to name the isle Nivaria or
Neigeuse (Snowy)... The isle, says another, is upturned in form from the coasts, and at the middle of it is seen a greatly vertical and
round mountain, which they call the Peak of Teithe, and whose situation is thus: its point is very straight and fifteen large leagues of
height.It frequently shoots fire and sulfur, and is in the form of a cauldron. About two miles [from thee summit] you see only cinders
and pumice stones. Two miles lower, it is a land which is covered with snow the year around. Lower are encountered a quantity of
large and powerful trees. Below, you find great quantities of laurel, etc... Teneriffe, says a third, has been called Nivaria or Neigeuse.
The name of Teneriffe has been imposed on it by the inhabitants of the isle of Palma, for tener in the Palmerian language signifies
snow, and iffe, mountain. It is of triangular form. As for the large mountain of Teyda, I do not know whether it gives the greatest
admiration when you approach it or when you regard it from afar: it takes two and a half days of travel to the top... etc.

See again, in the Levantine Mediterranean, how the Nautical Instructionsdescribe to us the volcano of Nisyros: “It is
an isle formed by mountains of volcanic rock. An irregular crater occupies the large part of its center. The great crater,
whose edges attain the altitude of 410 to 570 meters, enclose a smaller crater which is the highest point of the isle, and
reaches 692 meters. The coasts are very steep, and rise up to their summit in terraces which hold the soil carried down in
the rainy season.” The Hellenes, who colonized the isle of Nisyros, have described it from their point of view as
landsmen: “It is an isle, round and high, of broken stone, with a town, a port, some thermal springs and a temple of
Poseidon: it has eighty stades of circumference, στρογγύλη δε και ‘υψηλη και πετρώδης του μυλίου λίθου.” But the name
which the isle had retained for the Hellenes and still retains for us, Nisyros, implies another view of the coasts. For the

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name enters into the column of the insular names which, presenting no sense in Greek, are explained by a Semitic
etymology. We do not have a doublet here to guarantee the validity of such an etymology. But it well appears that
Nisyros, Νίσυρος, should have been a close relative of Syros, Σύρος. We know that Syros is the transcription of the
Semitic term ‫צור‬, sur, the Rock. I believe that Nisuros is similarly the Greek transcription of ‫נצורה‬, nisura, the Guard of
the Phoenicians. The term of nisura serves, in the Bible, to designate all the posts and towers of watch, mounted in the
vines or on the routes of the desert. Applied to our pointed isle, and to its isolated tower in the sea, the name is understood
by itself. If we wish to better explain it, it suffices to consider the onomasty of certain other similar isles. Among the
Lipari isles,

Felicuda and Alicuda present themselves as the last to the west. The houses of Felicuda are scattered in diverse points of the isle;
they contain about 600 inhabitants. Those of Alicuda, where the population is less, occupy only the east and southeast parts. The rest
of the isle presents only rocks, ruins and precipices. The houses or, to speak more properly, the cabins of the two isles, in the manner
of the elders, are built, not at the foot of ther mountain, which would appear more natural, but toward the middle of the summit. I
cannot understand the preference given to the sites so rugged and steep, while gently sloping plains, which should have invited the
inhabitants to establish themselves there, predominate toward the shores of the sea, in the one or the other isle. But they informed me
that Felicuda and Alicuda find, by their distancing far from the protection of their capitol, the isle of Lipari, that they were anciently
infested by Turkish, and especially Tunisian pirates, who would debark there with the advantage of the mists, surprising in sleep
those individuals who inhabited the sea shores, and lead them away as captives, after having taken all that they posessed. The
nocturnal attacks were renewed, even up to our days (1788), on the two coasts of Gênes. The inhabitants of Felicuda and Alicuda
thus will see themselves obliged to relocate their dwellings onto the heights, where the danger was less great. Even though the
Aeolian isles might still be exposed to the invasion of the pirates, they sometimes realized [the relocation] so as to take away their
desire to return. It is always prudent to place the habitations in the high locations from where they can observe their movements.
There is the reason they have on the mountain della Guardia, at Lipari, a sentinel who watches night and day.

The Guard of Lipari and the Guard of Nisyros are similar in all points. The two volcanic cones, which dominate the
entire isle, the seas and the neighboring isles, are admirable lookouts for scrutinizing the coastal gulfs and the insular
straits. Similar Guards are frequent in the onomasty of the Aeolian isles: Ustica has its Guard of Turchi, which bears a
semaphore today; Lipari has its mount of the Guard. Similarly, the name of Nisyros has been spread in all the Sporades
isles, in the vicinity of our isle of Nisyros. Nisyros is still a town of Kalymnos, and a town of Karpathos; on the coast
facing Nisyros, another Greek lookout, Σκοπιή, surveys the strait of Myndos.
In the isle of Nisyros, which, for the insular Hellenes, is first round, and later high, στρογγύλη δε και ‘θψηλή, had
been, for the Semitic sailors, first high, and later round: it was first a Guard. Entirely similarly, our round isle of the
Hellenes, Στρογγύλη, Stromboli, had been the High Isle of the same Semitic sailors, Ai-olia, Αι-ολίη: “Stromboli,” says
the pilot Michelot, “has about eighteen miles of circuit; it is almost round, and very high.” The Odyssian poet describes
for us very exactly the elevation and the roundness together. Here again, we need only take literally his epithets, called
poetic, and we very promptly perceive, behind the verses of the poet, the High-Rising Stone, enclosed with a circular wall
of metallic lavas, and floating over a belt of pumice.

*
* *

In Ai-olia, reigns the master of the winds, who binds or looses them. Zeus has made Aeolos the distributer of the
winds:

κεινον γαρ ταμίην ανέμων ποίησε Κρονίων.

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 On the subject of Stromboli, the Nautical Instructions still say today: “According to what the islanders say, the
atmospheric perturbations would have a great influence over the volcano: especially the storms, particularly those coming
from the south, are preceeded by thick masses of smoke”. The speech of the islanders has long found the most complete
credence among the navigators. Native or foreign, all the sailors hold the volcano as the best prophet of the winds and
storms. It is with the study of the phenomenon that Spallanzani begins his enquiry concerning the isle:

When I touched land, it was nine o’clock in the morning. Animated by curiosity, I climbed at the same instant on the flanks of the
volcano. The sulfurous acid manifested itself in such a stinging and uncomfortable manner that I was obliged on that day to return to
the plain. I employed the rest of the day to interrogate the islanders, who, having [the volcano] constantly before their eyes, answer
me as better instructors than anyone else. Herer is the information they will give me. When the wind blows from the north or the
northwest, the smoke is little, white, and the detonations very moderate. If a wind arises from the southwest, southeast or south, the
smoke extends farther; it is black, or at least dark, and the detonations stronger and more frequent. If one of the three winds blows
with violence, it frequently happens that the smoke spreads over the entire island and darken it like a mist of rain... The thick,
abundant smoke which ordinarily corresponds to the most violent and frequent eruptions, does not only accompany the winds from
the southwest, southeast or south; but they precede them by several days. It is by their apparition that the inhabitants of the isle
announce the favorable or adverse weather for navigation. “We frequently see,” they told me, “boats, wintering at Stromboli,
prepared to raise anchor, because the sea appears favorable; but fortunately for them, our predictions keep them in port, and never
deceive them.” Furthermore, the predictions, true or false, are not the result of modern observations of the islanders; they recover
them from the earliest history. It is easy to imagine how, from generation to generation, they were transmitted to the present
inhabitants, who will pass them to their descendants. Eolus, who made his home on Stromboli, has been called in the fable the king
of the winds, probably because he had the ability, according to certain writers, to predict the wind which was going to blow, by the
diversity of the smoke and eruptions.
Permit me to report here the observations which I made myself on the relationship of the phenomena of the atmosphere with those
of the volcano, during a stay of thirty-five days in the Lipari isles. For there is no place in the archipelago and the sea which
surrounds it, where one cannot discover the daily smoke and the nightly flames of Stromboli. In that length of time, the wind from
the southwest blows with violence on September 13th and October 1st. The first time, I perceived no sensible modification in the
volcano which, in that circumstance, should have, acccording to popular opinion, exhaled more smoke and made stronger
detonations heard. But, the second time, the symptoms will arrive according to the indication of the islanders. The southeast wind
blows the 21st and 26th of September and the 7th of October. The wind, if we believe them, has the same correlations with the
volcano as the preceeding one. In effect, twice, the jets of fire appeared more considerably, and the smoke emerged in greater
abundance; but the augury failed the third time. The wind from the north, to the contrary, which, according to the islanders, leaves
the volcano tranquil, blows with impetuosity the 11th and 12th of October. It was preceeded and accompanied by explosions, which
will be heard in the other isles, and by a smoke which covers half of Stromboli. I would add that during the times of perfect calm, the
volcano nevertheless appeared very active. The remarks would motivate me to not adopt entirely the aphorisms of the inhabitants of
Stromboli, all the more so as the other islanders think differently. Finding myself one day at Felicuda, I saw by a distinct view,
during the night, the eruptions of Stromboli which, in spite of the tranquility of the air, were very strong at that time, almost
continuous, and each followed by a detonation which made itself heard perfectly at that distance. I asked a sailor from that place
what he thought of the prediction of the volcano; he gives me the brief and wise reply: “Stromboli does not make the sailor”.
Nevertheless, to decide whether there exists direct and immediate relationships between the vicissitudes of the atmosphere and
those of the volcano, and to know the nature of the relationships, one would have needed that which we completely lack, a long
series of observations made on the spot by a physicist as clear as he is impartial.

When an observer as knowledgeable, when a sage as critical as Spallanzini still uses such a language in the XVIIIth
century, one can imagine the general belief which has always been encountered, among the Achaeans and among the
moderns, of “the sayings of the islanders”. It would have been necessary to cite twenty passages of the Moderns and of
the Ancients, going back from citation to citation, across the Middle Ages and Roman antiquity, back to the most remote
Greek origins; we would have found in each generation the same credence: “The flames and smokes of Stromboli permit
the prediction of what wind will be; still today - it is a certain fact - the islanders announce the blows of the wind in
advance”, says Martianus Capella (book VI, 648). The periple which served the Odyssian poem already related the

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sayings of the islanders. The Odyssey repeats it in its fashion, that is to say, in working it into an adventure of its hero. For
if we pay some attention to the details of the adventure, we will readily see that, to explain them, we need to refer to the
opinions related above by Spallanzini.
The islanders maintain that, following the winds, the volcano is angered or appeased, exasperated or calm: the winds
from the north quarter put it in a good mood and at peace; the winds from the south quarter anger it and make it roar.
Now, Ulysses, arriving in the land of the Cyclops - pushed there by the breezes from the north quarter - finds at first a
charming Aeolos, who welcomes and chooses him, who caresses and keeps him, who has for him only beautiful words
and presents of friendship, who “loves him for an entire month”,

μηνα δε πάντα φίλει με...

and once Ulysses states his desire, Aeolos lets him set sail and gives him the favorable winds:

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη και εγων όδον ήτεον ηδε κέλευον

πεμπέμεν, ουδέ τι κεινος ανήνατο, τευχε δε πομπήν.

Ulysses embarks. Aeolos, always charming, procures him a good wind from the north quarter, a breeze from the
northwest, a Zephyr which should push the fleet toward the native land:

αυταρ εμοι πνοιην Ζεφύρου προέηκεν αηναι

όφρα φέροι νηάς τε και αυτούς.

Ulysses travels nine days and nine nights: the tenth day, he already perceives the land of his home... By the decimal
numeration alone, we can divine that this is an invention of the Greek poet, a fanatasy added to the Semitic periple, which
should have counted especially by weeks. But we again find the very lively features of the periple... the tenth day, the
companions of Ulyssses open the sack of winds given by Aeolos: immediately, the winds reverse themselves and the fleet
is blown back to Aeolos. They had left by a wind from the northwest: thus, it is a wind from the southeast which brings
them back. Also, they find Aeolos and his sons in a full rage: “I tried to move them with sweet words, but they weary
themselves and reply to me, ‘ leave my isle as fast as you can, oh most vile of men. I do not have the right to welcome
and transport an individual whom the fortunate gods detest. Decamp! you will bring the curses of the gods upon us! ’ And,
upon these words, he drives me from his palace, in spite of my heavy sobs”,

ως ειπων απέπεμπε δόμων βαρέα στενάχοντα.

“The observations demonstrate that the winds exasperate the flames of the volcano, and that the calms appease them.
That has nothing of the absurd. For the wind takes birth and growth from the breaths of the sea; it is entirely natural that
the same material and the same cause lights the fire of the furnace and the flames of the volcanos. Polybius says that the
Notos is announced by a black cloud which covers the entire isle and prevents the Sicilian coasts from being seen. The
Borea makes the flame brighter and higher, and the noise to rumble. The Zephyr produces effects in between. But, by
virtue of the phenomena, one can predict the wind which will blow three days in advance.” It is Strabo who gives us the
details regarding another crater of the Lipari isles, concerning the isle Heira or Thermesia. The isle resembles Stromboli:
it is also a volcano in full activity; our sailors call it Vulcano: “Mount Vulcano announces the change in the weather
twenty-four hours before its arrival, by an extraordinary noise resembling that of a distant barrel. If one pays attention to
the smoke which issues then with greater abundance, one will know from what side the wind should blow, by the more of
less great density of the smoke, by its color more or less dark. When the wind should shift to the south or southeast (the
Notos of Ulysses), the smoke is thick and black. It rises to such a great height that it spreds terror everywhere; then they

414
hear rumblings (cf. the anger of Aeolos and his irritated discourse), sometimes accopanied by explosions capable of
frightening even those who are used to them. When the wind passes to the north, to the northeast or northwest (the
Zephyros of Ulysses), the smoke rises gently; it is less dense and perfectly white; the rumblings are not as strong and the
explosions do not take place (cf. the welcoming sweetness of Aeolos), etc.”.
Vulcano thus posesses the same properties as Stromboli. In the estimation of the natives, the two volcanos make an
agreement for the prediction of the storms and for the knowledge of the weather. Following the epics, the followers of the
one increase at the expense of the other. In Odyssian times as today, the periples and the Nautical Instructions speak only
of Stromboli. In the Greco-Roman times, Polybius and Strabo speak only of Vulcano. The alternation is explained to us
by the politacal changes of the archipelago, which turn by turn is called the archipelago of the Lipari or the archipelago of
the Aeolian isles, accordingly as the capitol, turn by turn, is installed at Lipari or at our isle of Aeolis. Across history, in
effect, it is easy to see how and why the political and commercial center of the Seven Isles is displaced.
Today, it is Lipari which is “the principal of the group”. It posesses the cathedral, the college and the bath. “Its
commerce is active with the other isles, as well as with Messina, Palermo, Naples, etc.” In the past century, it was the
same for it: “Lipari, the largest of the isles, is also the most populated: they count nine to ten thousand inhabitants there.
its civil system is composed of a criminal judge, a fiscal officer, a military governor who is ordinarily an old invalid, and
a civil judge. A bishop, eighteen canons of the first order, fourteen of the second, a hundred twenty to a hundred thirty
priests form the ecclesiastical organization. The Liparites are pursuaded that their [isle was the fatherland of Eolia] and
their town the seat of their small empire... One counts three edifices there a little noticeable: the lodging of the bishop,
that of the governor, and the cathedral church, which holds precious furniture, vessels, and a beautiful statue in silver of
its patron Saint Barthelemy. The sailors are involved in a small outside commerce: several among them make a traffic in
galanteries, as they say, at the fair of Sinigaglia; they buy linens, muslins, veils or other merchandises of the same type,
and sell them at Messina, Catana, Palermo and other places of Sicily.” Already in Greco-Roman times, only Lipari
attracts the attention of the historians and geographers: it posesses the town, the popular cults and the commerce. The
reign of Lipari dates back to the first times of the Greek colonization. From the day when the Knidians and the Rhodians,
driven from the Sicilan coast by the Phoenicians and the Elymes, will come to colonize the depopulated or almost
deserted archipelago, it was lipari which would be the capitol and the great port, and we see well the topological reasons,
which make of Lipari the capitol necessary for the first colonies.
Lipari is by far the largest of the isles, the best cultivable, the most fertile. In reality, it is the only capable of
nourishing a numerouis population. The other isles of the archipelago are just points or volcanic chaos. Only Lipari has
plains: “Two large plains, but of different dimensions, are well-cultivated, and produce good fruits, cotton, olives,
vegetables and the quantity of wheat necessary to the inhabitants for three months; the wine of Malvoisie of the plains is
renowned.” Additionally, the central location of Lipari, in the middle of the archipelago, makes it, for the islanders, the
place completely indicated for political, religious or commercial reunions. It is near the Sicilian coast, from where the
islanders need to obtain the wheat and meats which their archipelgo does not provide them in large enough quantity, and
where, on the other hand, they come to sell their wine, their fruits, and the other products of their orchards. The relative
safety of its deep-water port makes of Lipari the great trading post of the local commerce.

The character of the islanders of Stromboli is that of all the men who live far from the large towns and in isolation. Their heart is
not corrupted at all and, in their simplicity, they do not seek to at all increase the small number of attainments which they have
acquired and which suffice for their happiness. Their longest voyage is to Lipari: the town, as small as it is, appears very large to
them, and becomes the subject of their admiration... Their greatest profit is in selling their malvoisie [wine], which they bring to the
capitol isle, where they find it easy to vend.

Finally Lipari can have much more extensive relations of commerce with other nations, even distant ones, by virtue of
the products of its volcanos, in pumice, lava, hot waters, etc. The Romans will construct a town of baths and an industrial
town at Lipari. Diodorus describes to us the splendors of the town, which was the Luchon or Aix-les-Bains of its time:

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 I should say a word concerning the reasons which have led to the development and made not only the fortune but also the renown
of the town of Lipari. Nature has given it food ports and hot waters. It became a place of cures for its baths, but also a very
frequented town of pleasure and repose. The illnesses circulate in the crowds of the Sicilian coast; the baths give them a marvelous
health. But the isle additionally posessess celebrated mines of alum which makes the fortune of the islanders and the Romans: that
material, so useful, is produced only by Lipari and, a little, by Melos, which can suffice only for a small clientel. In reality, Lipari
enjoys a monopoly and sets the price, from which the incredible profits which the exploiters derive. The isle, without being very
large, is sufficiently fertile, and particularly agreeable to inhabit. The sea provides fish in abundance... , etc.

Lipari is thus the leader of the six other isles: it posesses the entire archipelago; it cultivates their slopes; it surveys and
defends the ports. When the pirates, Etruscan in antiquity or Turks in our days, attack the isles, it is Lipari which serves as
guard, fortress and refuge. Against the Etruscans, ipari arms a fleet, which finishes by defeating the pirates: the tithes
which it offers at the temple of Delphi propagate its renown there among all the Greeks. It is thus that the archipelago
becomes “the Liparian Isles”, Λιπαραιαι Νησοι. The Lipariand inhabit their town, but they go in their boats to cultivate
and explore the other isles, Λιπάραν μεν κτίσαντες πόλιν ενταυθα οικουσιν. ‘Ιεράν δε και Στρογγύλην και Διδύμας
γεωργουσιν, διαβαίνοντες ναυσιν ες αυτάσ, says Pausanias. In this state of affairs, it is Vulcano, just across from the port
of Lipari, which becomes the great indicator of winds: Stromboli is farther away from the capitol, and the view of its
volcano is masked by the high promontory of Monte Rosa, which closes the port of Lipari to the northeast.
But is is easy to coceive of and reconstitute a social and political condition of the archipelago where Stromboli takes
its revenge, where Lipari falls to the second rank. We see across all of antiquity that, in spite of the wealth and primacy of
Lipari, the Seven Isles always retain the name given by the first navigators: they are not the archipelago of the Liparians,
but, at first, the archipelago of Aeolos, the Aeolian Isles, Αιολίδες Νησοι. The sailors of antiquity always retain the old
name. It is that for the natives and the colonists Lipari can be the center, the capitol, the most celebrated town of the
archipelago. But for the navigators, for the foreign sailors who only labor in the “damp fields”, it is Strombli which is the
most remarkable point.
Stromboli, for the navigators, is the head, the chief of the archipelago. Of the Seven Isles, Stromboli is , if not the
highest, at least the most distantly visible: toward its point of 940 meters, toward its plume of smoke during the day,
toward its lamp of fire during the night, converge the gaze of all the surrounding seas and lands. Its peak is the mark and,
altogether, the lighthouse of all the routes of navigation which go to the straits of Messina and of Boifacio or who come
from there. Whatever may be the international traffic established in the Tyrrhenian sea, Stromboli necessarily becomes
one of the marks there, and the most important, the easiest to identify. The isle of Stromboli is much less large than that of
Lipari. But the sailors do not concern themselves with the size of the isles. To direct the route, it is the height and the form
which matters the most to them, and the primitive navigators even prefer, we know, the small, almost deserted isles to the
large, too-populated isles. On a small islet, they feel more at ease for their layover, more protected from the caprice or the
violence of the natives. We know that they only ask for the small isles to have a port, a water supply and, if it can be
managed, a cavern.
Let us go back to the description of Stromboli in our Nautical Instructions: “The principal burg of Stromboli is on the
east coast of the isle. At San Vicenzo there is a fountain fed by a small spring from the mountain. The beach placed below
the houses is of shining black sand, and ends with the rocky point della Scaro, where there is a large cavern called the
Grotto of the Sea Calves; it has 25 meters of depth, 10 meters of width and 2 meters of height. “ The situation and nature
of the harbor should make it an excellent “point of support” for the first Levantine thalassocracies. Today, our occidental
fleets take the most occidental of the isles, Ustica, for a guide and point of orientation: “The isle of Ustica,” say the
Nautical Instructions, “forms an excellent mark for the ships which, coming from the north, go to Palermo or the north
coast of Sicily. The isle is entirely formed of volcanic materials, but its fertility is extreme, and it is well-cultivated.” In
the Odyssian times, the cone of Stromboli is the best mark for the boats which come from the south and, turned toward
the east, its beach is offered to the coasters who come from the mainland or from the strait. Aeolia is found on the route of
all the boats which ascend from the mouths of Messina to the Italian coassts and to the mouths of Sardinia, and all those
which, inversely, descend towads the mouths of Messina: “The shore,” says Spallanzani, “has neither port nor cove to

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serve as refuge to large ships. They seek a shelter under the wind of the isle and run risk of sinking to the bottom when
they wish to avoid running aground on the sand. But the felouques of the isle being light, one easily pulls them ashore,
and puts them back to sea with the same facility.” By the ease of hauling out and refloating, our Odyssian vessels
resemble the felouques: for them, the beach of Stromboli will thus have the same utility.
The water source, in the volcanic isles, is of a particular importance: “The climate of the isles,” say the Instructions,
“is generally salubrious, and the weather generally mild and cool. Fresh water is generally lacking, although one finds
some small springs on most of the isles: the inhabitants are, consequently, obliged to construct vast cisterns.” The
Instructions and the voyagers never fail to point out the slightest springs of the archipelago: “On Didyma, a little distance
from the sea, near Sainte-Marie, is a fountain of fresh water, which flows continuously. Formerly it sank almost to the
level of the sea, which frequently mixed with its waters and rendered its usage impossible. Today, they have made a
vertical cut in the shore, and the spring flows fifteen feet higher. Such is its abundance that it furnishes five fountains,
each one an inch in diameter, an extraordinary thing in a small volcanic isle... One does not see a single rivulet of running
and potable water flow in the two isles of Felicuda and Alicuda. The inhabitants have recourse to cisterns and are exposed
to suffer much if the rains go lacking for several months.” Stromboli is the best supplied of the isles: “On the slope of the
mountain, at little elevation, one finds a small spring of fresh water which would be far from sufficing for the needs of the
inhabitants if, at some distance from it, there did not spring another, more plentiful, which never fails. Without this help,
the land could not survive, for the cisterns dry out during the heat of summer.
Now if we go back to our Odyssian description of Aeolia, it appears that the original periple had given exactly the
same evidences to our poet that our Instructions give us today. The periple described “the beach below the houses” and
the spring in the vicinity of “the habitation”: “We debark on the shore where we take on water. The crews, in their haste,
take their repast near the cruisers (hauled ashore). When we have assuaged our thirst and hunger, I leave with a herald and
one of my men toward the houses of Aeolos”,

ένθα δ’ επ’ ηπείρου βημεν και αφυσσάμεθ’ ‘ύδωρ.

αιψα δε δειπνον ‘έλοντο θοης παρα νηυσιν ‘εταιροι.
Αυταρ επει σίτοιο τ’ επασσάμεθ’ ηδε ποτητος,
δη τότ’ εγω κήρυκά τ’ οπασσάμενος και ‘εταιρον
βην εις Αιόλου κλυτα δώματα.

For the first thalassocracies, Stromboli is thus the most important isle, because it is the most useful for their layovers.
It is at that time the capitol of the Seven Isles. The archipelago in reality counts six large isles and four or five islets and
rocks; but since the most ancient times, it is spoken of only as the Seven Liparian or Aeolian Isles: α‘ι δε Αιολίδεσ νησοί
εισι τον μεν αριθμον ‘επτά (we are used to the enumeration by seven). In the Odyssian times, Stromboli being the layover
of foreigners, was also the great market of the natives. The islanders from the neighboring isles should have come there
on their boats as they come today to Lipari, to supply themselves with exotic commodities, fabrics and manufactured
articles. Here, as in their other retreats, the foreigners sojourned: Ulysses stays there an entire month. Here, as in the other
ports, the foreigners display their cheap goods, στησαν εν λιμένεσσι, and the islanders bring their fruits, cheeses,
provisions and agricultural products. The six other isles depended then on Aeolia for their commerce and their
provisioning, The Odyssian poet, translating the facts in his habitual manner, relates to us that Ulysses finds Aeolos
surrounded with six households of his children, “who come every day to take their repaqst with their dear father and
venerable mother, and near them there were heaps of precious things. During the day, the house is full of the smoke of
meats and the sound of flutes. In the evenings, they retire and go to sleep near their wives, on their blankets and carved
couches.” Aeolos has six sons, who had married his six daughters:

του και δώδεκαπαιδες ενι μεγάροις γεγάασιν,

‘εξ μεν θυγατέρες, ‘έξ δ’ υ‘ιέες ‘ηβώντες.

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 ένθ ‘ό γε θυγατέρας πόρεν υ‘ιάσιν ειναι ακοίτις.

We have already encountered the fraternal marriages among the Pheacians, in the family of Alkinoös. The king of the
High Island - he who, master of Aeolia, is called Aeolos, as the master of the Round Eyes, of Cyclopia, is called Cyclops
- the king Aeolos thus has married his six daughters to his six sons, whom he has installed as viceroys on the six other
isles of the archipelago. By virtue of the fraternal marriages, the entire royal family lives in the most complete unity,
without the rivalries and intrigues which too frequently divide the harems and descendants of the Levantine petty kings.
They are happy. They are rich. They pass all their days banqueting and their nights in making love: “All those who do not
leave the isle at all,” relates Thevenot, in speaking of Santorini, “live the life of cowards, for they do nothing but drink,
eat, sleep and play cards.” The Odyssian periple does not have the disapproval of Thevenot for “the life of cowards”.
What better to do, when one posesses the land of the volcanic isles where everything grows without much work by man,
and when the nearby sea additionally supplies the abundance of fish of which Diodorus and all the voyagers speak?

The isle of Lipari produces cotton, vegetables, olives, in small quantity. The wheat there is excellent. But the wealth of the island
consists of its vineyards, which furnish wines of different qualities. The most common, that which the inhabitants make their
ordinary drink, is so abundant that they can export two to three thousand barrels a year, without the land suffereing. The famous
malvoisie of Lipari, whose name alone calls forth eulogies, is a wine of amber color, generous and soft at the same time, which
floods the mouth with a delicious taste and leaves an aftertaste of no less agreeable sweetness... At Lipari and in all the Aeolian
isles, the fig prospers marvelously, and rises to ten or even fifteen feet of height. Its trunk acquires a foot of diameter and sometimes
more. Its fruits, the larger of which equal an egg of a fowl of India, are sweet, agreeable and easily digested... The winter at
Stromboli is not at all severe; never a freeze; if a day of snow falls, which happens rarely, it melts the next day... The fish are
abundant, large, especially the conger and moray. I stayed there a few days, but I saw cuts of fillets larger than whole fish from other
isles during the time I stayed there. The fish are excellent. Living in a temperature mild and proper to the reproduction of the species,
it should not be surprising that they multiply more.

ο‘ι δ’ αιει παρα πατρι φίλω και μητέρι κεδνη

δαίνυνται. παρα δέ σφιν ονείατα μυρία κειται

The kings of Aeolia have there all the galanteries, ονελιατα μυρία, that the most recent voyagers point out in Lipari.

*
* *

April 17, 1901. - On the little steamer, which leaves Messina, I made the tour of the isles. Messina is not the true port
of the isles: that is at Milazzo, which each day receives the steamers from Lipari. But, every fifteenth, from Messina to
Lipari, from Lipari to Salina, from Salina to Panaria, then to Stromboli and then back to Lipari, The Corsica, from one
port of call to the next, serves the four eastern isles. Leaving Messina during the night, we perceive, after exiting Phare,
the trembling glows and intermittant flashes of Stromboli. The volcano is nevertheless in a period of calm and, the wind
blowing from the north, our captain declares that the volcano will remain tranquil. Our captain has always been convinced
that the rumblings and silences, the smoke and the glows of Stromboli are the best of barometers for the knowledge of the
weather.
At dawn, we are at the coast of Lipari. To our right, above the sea agitated by the wind from the north, the cone of
Stromboli stands out, neat and regular. All day long, our navigation will seem to turn its passes in the field of that
observatory. The port and the capitol of Lipari will barely be visible in the first rays of the dawn. The still too-feeble light
makes the hollows and projections of the inhospitable coast stand out poorly. What strange mountains in shining colors,
bound in vines, green from grey, sprinkled with verdure or white pumice! And what metallic unbreakable walls around

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the isles in geometric forms, in domes or in regular cones! They speak today of the seven isles of Lipari: in reality,
without counting the rocks and simple reefs, it is ten or twelve isles and islets which strew the horizon, of which at least
eight are large isles. Stromboli, Basiluzzo, Panaria, Salina, Lipari, Vulcano, Alicuri, Filicuri, etc., all the isles, neatly
distinct, are truly independant lands, and nevertheless similar, in the eyes of the navigator. Our captain speaks to me of
the “ten isles”; for the sailors of today estimate by “tens” the number of the Aeolian lands: the “seven” of the Seven Isles
is surely a ritual figure.
After a shor stopover in the port of Lipari, we take up again our periple toward Salina, by which we make our tour
complete. The isle of Salina merits its ancient name, the Twins. It is a double isle which, completely sprinkled with green
and pumice, astonishes the sight by its fractures bound with vines and by its glittering walls of vitrified rocks. Between
the two domes is hollowed a smiling valley which falls in donkey backs above the sea of the south to the port of Arenella,
and above the sea of the north to the port of Malfa. It is in that valley, the richest and most open, that the isle should have
its principal burg. But for the convenience of trade, for the relations with the capitol of Lipari, it is on the east coast that
the natives have established their little town of Salina. Salina, Arenella, Malfa, we have lost long hours in awaiting,
before each of the isles, the boats which brought aboard to us one or two emigrants. The “disease” has killed the vines.
The islanders need to emigrate. Each day, one or two thus go to Milazzo or Messina to reach Naples or Argentina. The
sons of Aeolos have nothing more to banquet on, nor even to nourish themselves. It must also be said that the security of
the seas has overpopulated the isles: in the good times of the Barbary pirates, the islanders could procreate at their
pleasure; the “course” took away, for the markets of Tunis or Algiers, more children than they could provide it. The isles,
depopulated in the last centuries, have covered themselves with towns since the French conquest of Algeria. Today, one
after the other, the towns empty: poverty, then hunger, have appeared with the phylloxera.
The cone of Stromboli always stands out on the horizon. Along Panaria and Baziluzzo we sail directly toward its point.
From distance to distance, it barely emerges from some gusts. Our captain directs his route to the south and east of the
isle. With the wind which rises from the northwest, it is the most convenient route: the mass of the volcano goes to
interpose itself to protect us from the breeze, and we can cruise very close to the shores of the isle without fearing the
rocks or cinders vomited by the crater: “Nothing to fear,” says the captain, “it is the good weather; with the wind from the
north, the “old man” doesn’t groan or spit. When the wind turns to the south, the “old man” is put into a rage; then, there
is a shaking which strikes the island like a boat in the sea, and look out below! It is a rain all around of pebbles and
roasted chestnuts.” Our geographical dictionaries tell us no differently: “Stromboli is abot 6 km. from east to west and 4
km. from the noethwest to the southeast. It counts six hundred inhabitants. Of an entirely volcanic formation, it is
composed of the Tempone del Bruciato, a mountain of 926 meters, whose center is occupied by the ancient crater. The
new [crater], situated farther north, and having a height of 660 meters, continually spews flames, especially when the
wind blows from the south and the weather is stormy.” And the foreign sailors also think that, with the winds from the
south, the fury of the volcano can be dangerous. The English admiral H. Smyth relates:

I went one day, in my gunboat, from Milazzo to Stromboli, when a furious wind arises from the southeast, which put me into the
impossibility of setting anchor in front of St. Bartholo, where the waves were raised to the height of houses. We were left only with
one means to not be thrown on the coast of Calabria, then occupied by Murat: it was to take refuge under the crater, in a bay of the
point of Scherrazza. We stayed there for a day and two nights, partially shelterd from the winds and the storm, but not without
running greater dangers. The crater vomited an incessant rain of reddened rocks which, driven with rapidity, came to fall very near
us; others exploded in the air with a horrible noise, and their fragments fell around us like the explosions of bombs.

We land on the isle of Stromboli from the south. We round point Lena. Here is the steep and circular which, perfectly
vertical, springs from the water and raises its metallic façade up to the clouds. The vitrified flows and the crumbling rocks
alternate from cape to cape. In places, some spots of whitened pumice and some dusting of verdure still clothe the foot of
the mountain; but at the summit, it is the bald rock, λισσή αναδέδρομε πέτρη, from which, intermittently, surge the
volutes of smoke in thick plumes. We cruise the coast of the isle at a few meters. On its steep slopes, pebbles cascade and
rebound into the sea. The only point of embarkation of the isle is at the northeast point, near the village of St. Vicenzo.

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There, below the cone, long slopes of white ground descend gently down to the beach of black sand. Our steamer remains
at sea: some boats come alongside to take passengers and merchandise.
The beach of debarkation is spacious. For two or three hundred meters, between the slopes of the volcano and the
rocky point della Scaro, extends a shore of pebbles and small black crystals. Six large felouques are drawn ashore there,
by means of rollers, which serve that purpose on all the shores of the volcanic isles, for the sharp sands damage the hulls
of the ships. The burg of San Vicenzo no longer comes down to the sea. In the last centuries, in all the isles, the Barbary
piracy had forced the towns to leave the edge of the sea, to flee to the slopes or even the summit of the mountains. Since
the disappearance of the pirates, in all the isles, the towns redescend slowly toward the echelles. One after the other, the
new houses risk themselves a little closer to the shore.
It is thus that the entire northeast façade of Stromboli is covered with white cabins which, in groups of three or four,
but most frequently isolated, coming to plant their low walls and their terraces in the middle of the figs and vines. Bit by
bit, between the two hamlets of St. Vicenzo and St. Bartholo, all the coast is repopulated. The ancient huts, perched on the
slopes of the mountain, presently serve only poor people and flocks, or as storehouses for oil and winemaking. In
Odyssian times, the flourishing piracy had driven the houses of the burg far from the beach: Ulysses has to climb toward
the “high house” of Aeolos. The peoples of the sea of the last century already know “the habitation” of Stromboli at a
distance from the sea. Today, the church and the old burg still remain on the first slopes of the volcano. In a few years, the
entire burg will have returned to the shore.
From the shore of Stromboli, we perceived very neatly the circle of the mountains of Sicily and Italy which close the
horizon, with the cut of Messina, which can open a passage, and the great triangle of Aetna, whose helmet of snow
sparkles in the blue. For the primitive sailors, it is necessary to measure the importance of the Aeolian station, of its
lookout, of its beach, its cavern and of its fountain. At eighty or a hundred kilometers from the port of Messina - at a short
day of navigation - Stromboli offers the stop of the first evening to the Levantine sailing ships which come from reaching
the port of the Occidental seas. And it is also the stop of the return for the boats which, from the Tyrrhenian sea, wish to
regain, by the strait, the Levantine or African seas. “At Messina,” say the Nautical Instructions, “the dominant winds
during the summer are those of the northeast and southeast.” With the winds of the southeast, the boats, which ascend
from the strait toward the Tyrrhenian sea, arrive very directly to the beach of Stromboli: from there, they can continue,
either toward the coasts of Hyperia and “Vast Campania”, or across the misty sea, up to the doorway of the Extreme
Occident which opens itself between Corsica and Sardinia, and from which six or seven hundred kilometers, six or seven
days of navigation, separate Aeolia: we are going to follow the fleet of Ulysses toward the port of the Lestrygons.
Inversely, with the winds from the Northeast, the boats which descend from the gulf of Naples come straight to the
repository, whose distant signal they perceive upon leaving the “Mouths of Capri”. Stromboli, which our steamships
disdain, thus presented a great usefulness to the sailing ships of the first thalassocracies. On contemplating from here the
panorama of the Italian and Sicilian lands, we comprehend that the place of layover served also as a trading post: from
here, the foreign manufactures had been distributed to all the petty kings of the surrounding coasts.
Before returning to Messina, our boat was loaded with pumice from the coast of Lipari, at the small port of Canneto.
The commercial port of Cannelo opens to the north of the mountain which shelters the bay of Lipari. In the harbor,
everything is pumice, the sea, the beach and the hills. Pumice floats around the boats, powders the mountains, covers the
streets. Across the pumice and the lava, I went up to the capitol of the isle, to the town of Lipari which, formerly perched
on the top of an inaccessible cliff, communicated with its port only by a stairway cut into the rock - and nevertheless the
corsairs from Dragut seized, ruined and depopulated it. Today the town descends to the sea... When I returned to
Canneto, the sun had already fallen behind the horizon. Nothing would be able to depict the strangeness of the little port
of snow, in the twilight of the white evening; the large boats, immoble among the sea of pumice, appeared imprisoned in
the ice floe of the floating island, πλωτη ενι νήσω: Strabo relates, after Posidonios, how one day, in these waters, they saw
a floating mud appear which congeals and , becoming solid, took the appearance of grindstones, ‘ορασθαι πηλόν
επανθουστα τη θαλάττη... ‘ύστερον και γενέσθαι τοις μυλίταις λίθοις εοικότα τον πάγον.

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 CHAPTER II

THE LESTRYGONS

Incipe, Damoeia; tu deinde sequere, Menalca;

alternis dicetis.

VIRG., Eclog., III, v. 58-5

From there we journey at the soonest, the heart sorrowing: the morale of my men had been broken by the hard work of rowing; by
virtue of our folly, the confidence of the return no longer stayed with us.
Six days and six nights, without pause, we navigate. The seventh day, we arrive at the high town of Lamos, Telepyos of
Lestrygonia, where the shepherd questions the shepherd upon entering, and the shepherd leaving answers him. There, a man without
sleep would earn two wages, to make a profession of herdsman and to guard the white sheep, for the roads of the night and the day
are close. We came to a celebrated port, which a border of steep stone encircles: to right and left, projecting cliffs rise face to face,
and are extended to form the mouth: the entrance is very narrow. My entire fleet enters into the hollow port and file in a line: not the
least swell, large or small; but all around the vessels, clear calm. I alone remained outside and, just at the edge of the inlet, I attached
my ship to a rock. Then I climbed upon a steep vantage point, where I stood. Nothing was in view: no trace of humans or livestock;
we perceive only a smoke which rose from the land. therefore, I sent my men to find out who were the eaters of wheat in this land.
Two men, separated with a herld who preceeded them, will debark and, on a flat route by which, from the summit of the mountains,
the carts descended the woods toward the town, they will encounter a young girl, the strong daughter of the Lestrygon Antiphates,
who came to seek water at the gates of the town, and who came down toward the spring of the Bear of the good flow.

Artakia, the Source of the Bear, Αρτακίη, which the later poets and geographers will know, was not situated in the
Occidental seas at all. At the other extremity of the antique world, it sprang on the shore of the sea of Marmara, in the isle
of the Bear, Άρκτων Νησος. The isle of the Bear has become for our present sailors a peninsula, the peninsula Artaki,
since a band of marsh joins it to the immediately neighboring coast of Asia Minor: formerly the Greek town of Kyzique,
built on the isle, was joined to the mainland by two bridges.

The peninsula of Artaki, say the Nautical Instructions, called by the Turks Kapu Dagh, is a considerable mountain mass,
presently joined to the mainland by a low and narrow isthmus a mile in length; but originally it was an isle... Of the two large bays
formed on each coast of the isthmus, that of the west, or the bay of Artaki, is the more utilized for anchorage, for the winds of the
northeast blow strongly in all seasons into that of the east, or the bay of Peramo... The ancient Cyzique is found in the plain, at the
foot of the ridges which come to end at the marshy isthmus. All that remain today are some ruins on the location of that grand and
rich city.

In the bay of Artaki, thus protected from the winds of the northeast, it is a harbor particularly favorable, especially
convenient for the primitive navies: it is even the harbor typical for them, by virtue of a small promontory detached from
the large isle, Murad Baïr, by virtue of two small islets facing it, Towshau Ada and Zeïtun ada, and by virtue of an
abundant spring, which was our spring of the Bear, Artakia. The harbor and the neighboring town were and still are the
town of the Bear, Artake. In the plain which faces the mainland and which borders the strait, Kyzikos was the town of the
Greek colonists. But other navigators had frequented the region before the Hellenes, and Artake had offered them a better
site for a trading post. We need always return to our law of insular capitols and to the characteristic example of Rhodes or

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of Thasos. The town of Rhodes on the strait, facing the mainland, on the insular plain, was the capital establishment of the
Hellenic colonists: Lindos, whose promontory stands against the mountain and points its bay populated with islets toward
the open sea, had been the commercial station of the old navigators. On our isle of the Bear, Kyzikos took the place of
Rhodes; it is probable that Artake had taken the place of Lindos: from whence the renown of the spring Artakia among
the first makers of epics and in the old Argonautic legends.
Erdek or Artaki is today a large village, at the foot of a small cove of sand, “just in the north of the point Murad Baïr. It
occupies the emplacement of the ancient Greek town of Artake, and counts 4,000 to 6,000 inhabitants. The provisions are
abundant; they harvest a very esteemed white wine there. Zeïtun Ada is an islet of rock situated at abou 1 1/3 cables from
the town of Artaki; it is covered with numerous foundations. Murad Baïr, or the hill Saint-Simeon, is a point [or
especially an ancient islet joined to the mainland] of conical form, 103 meters high and formerly fortified, for the remains
of murals and towers still exist on its northeast coast, facing the land. Towshan Ada [is an islet] which forms the Simeon
channel with Murad Baïr... The bay offers a spacious and tranquil harbor for all the weather, except during winds from
the southwest. But the windstorms from the southwest, except in winter, are generally rare, and are announced long in
advance by a drop of the barometer and a menacing appearance of weather in the south. In anchoring in the southeast of
Murad Baïr, one easily communicates with the town of Artaki.” There, I think, is an excellent station for the first
thalassocracies. And here, on the other façade of the isle, the establishment of the Hellenic colonists: “Kyzikos is, in the
Propontide [sea of Marmora] joined to the mainland by two bridges: the town is at the end of the bridges, in the insular
plain, against the mountain. The mountain is the Mount of the Bear, Αρκτων Οροσ, above which rises mount Dindyme,
with a temple of the goddess Dindymene, foundation of the Argonauts... In the same isle of the Kyzikians is mount
Artake, covered with forests, with an islet of the same name which is found before it, and not far from there one
encounters the Melanos promontory... The Milesians will found Artake and Kyzikos... “ Is it to the spring and the station
of the Bear that we should reate our Odyssian adventure?
In the Occidental seas, across from the mouths of Bonifacio there is for the recent navigators another Promontory of
the Bear, almost as renowned:

In the southeast of point Parau, the coast presents some sinuosities without importance up to the cape of Orso [the bear]. The cape
ends a denuded mountain, 130 meters high, and bearing the same name, at the summit of which are some projecting rocks, arranged
in such a way that they represent fairly exactly the form of a bear, from which the name given to the mountain and the cape.
Water source. - In the west angle of the cove of Parau, near the village of that name, there is a spring where one can take on
water. The spring has long provided the archipelago of the Maddalena; nevertheless it sometimes fails.

The Spring of the Bear is, for the navies, as much more important to know accordingly as, in that granitic region, the
springs are widely scattered or much less abundant. Our marine charts and Instructions never forget to point out the least
points of the coast where the navigator can take on water. The coast, very broken, is scattered with isles, with long
peninsulas and with close bays, which very frequently border or bar a passage: it is, in the mouths of Bonifacio, the
Sardinian shore facing the Caprera isles, St. Stefano, Maddalena and Spargi. The enormous fortifications and the arsenal,
which the Italians constructed in the passage, say what rôle it always has had for the communications between the
Oriental sea of the Italians and the Occidental sea of the French or of the Spanish. Here is truly the entrance and exit of
the Italian seas. Whatever the thalassocracies may be which wish to posess or explore the seas, they always need a station
of surveillance in the strait. Today, the Piedmontese, masters of Italy, have aimed their cannon and torpedos here: “The
Italian government has established at Maddalena large stores of provisions and charcoal, distilling machines for water; but
the town would offer few resources to foreign ships.” During the Napoleonic Wars, Nelson and the English thalassocrats,
having set its hand on the doorway of the two seas, will install in permanence a part of their fleet there; under our cape of
the Bear, “the bay with a beach of sand at its foot is still called bay of Azincourt, because of the stay which the English
vessel of that name made there; the bay, sheltered by the isles, is safe and convenient for ships of all dimensions”.

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 Another cause of the sudden great development which la Maddalena took, and of the marked preference of its inhabitants for the
profession of sailing, was the long sojourn which admiral Nelson made with his fleet in the area. “Thus,” says Valery, “the locality
became a vast and rich trading post of English merchandise during the blockade of the continent.” The favorite point for the future
conqueror of Trafalger was the stretch of sea which separates Maddalena and Sardinia, named il Parau or bay of Azincourt. It is
there that the indefatigable navy watched for the passage of French squadrons in the case [when they had attempted] of a second
expedition to Egypt. They relate on the subject that Nelson never went ashore, for he had sworn to not leave ship until he had
defeated his enemies. His continual sojourn on his vessel does not prevent his making generous gifts to the inhabitants of the place,
who show chandeliers and a cross in silver, with a gilded Christ, given to their parish by the protestant admiral.

Before the English, the French or Spanish thalassocracies had made the same attempts on the strait. But, wishing to bar
the passage from Egypt and the Oriental seas, it is in the Oriental bays of the passage that Nelson had established himself.
The bays of the Occidental entry were, to the contrary, the points of attack for the French and the Spanish.

The port of Longon-Sardo is known in the history of the isle in the Middle Ages, because of a castle, the ruins of which one still
sees. The first mention of the fortress dates back to the year 1388; at the peace which was made between princess Eleonore of
Arborea and the king of Aragon, the fortress was ceded to the latter. In 1389, the Aragonians will fortify it and, in 1391, bring new
inhabitants into the burg of Longon-Sardo. In 1392, the Aragonians reinforce the garrison, which was besieged the following year by
the troops of ArBorea. Roger de Moncada had them lift the siege in 1394... The 4th of August 1410, Cassien Doria is seized by
Longon-Sardo. In 1419, it belonged to Doria anew, for it was taken by the royal troops [of Aragon]... In 1422, Longon-Sardo was
besieged and destroyed by a Genoese fleet, which transported a part of the inhabitants to Genoa. Then the king orders the demolition,
which was executed within the year... Since that epoch, the place remains entirely depopulated.
The 18th of June 1802, a fugitive Sardinian priest, named Sanna momentarily [occupies] the tower of Longon-Sarda. Sanna came
from Corsica with other conspirators with the intention of the isle revolting: they will seize the tower by surprise, where they
substitute the French flag for the Sardinian. They were promptly attacked by the royal troops. That clash gave the Sardinian
government the idea of founding a population on the important point where it is easy to reach and leave Corsica. The duke of
Genvois, in March 1803, gives the authorization to build houses near the tower of Longon-Sardo. In 1808, when the population made
the crossing, the king Victor-Emmanuel Ist sanctions the erection of the village, on which he imposes the name of his wife, Marie-
Therese of Autrich. The town of Santa Teresa is pierced with parallel streets, straight as a chalkline, and crossing at right angles.

Today, if the English thalassocrats have made no attempt to establish themselves anew in the passage, it is that the
Italian alliance has always guaranteed them its free usage: in the Italian depot and arsenal of Maddalena, the English
fleets believe themselves assured to find the necessary shelter and support in all weather. During the classical antiquity,
the strait did not have such importance: somewhat neglected by the Greeks and Romans, Corsica and Sardinia remained
on the edge. The great commercial routes of the classical world, either to the north or south, passed along the Provençal or
African coasts. It is along those coasts which at that time passed the great roads of the Orient toward the Sunset, from the
Levantine toward the Occidental seas. But we easily imagine that, in the primitive Mediterranean, the strait already was
what it is in our days. Just across from Hyperia of the vast fields, it was already the route of the fleets toward the seas of
the night, toward the mysterious Calypso. It was also the route which, from the isle Ai-olia, led toward the great gulfs of
the north, toward the stations of Marseilles or of Monaco. In the ancient onomasty of the strait, I believe that a memory of
the first epoch still remains throughout all antiquity. In the passage, the northern extremity of Sardinia always retains the
name of the Cape of the Night, Ερεβάντιον Άκρον.
“Ερεβάντιον άκρον; Cape of the Night; is so named in opposition to the day, that is to say, to the midi [south, midday];
the name corresponds to that old Mezza-Notte [midnight] which the Italians gave it and which could have indicated the
northern cape of the isle. The cape thus cannot be placed anywhere but at the point della Marmorata or del Falcone, which
has the highest latitude of all Sardinia.” It is not only the opposition between the day of midi and the darkness of
midnight, between the south and the north, which here marks the cape of Erebe: in leaving the coasts, Ulysses will turn
his back to tthe sunset and leave it in going, across the eastern sea, to the Italian Circe, which is found just to the east of
our strait, Circe “where the houses of the dawn are, with the choirs and risings of the Sun”,

423
 ... ‘όθι τ’ Ηεους ηριγενείης
οικία και χοροί εισι και αντολαι Ηλίοιο.

We are going to come back to the text and explain it and its detailed menu when we deal with Circe. But it clearly
explains, I think, the name of the cape of Eribe. At the feet of the Sardinian promontory pass the roads of the day toward
the night, from the dawn toward the sunset. In one verse, the Odyssian poem gives us the same thing from the land of the
Lestrygons: “the roads of the night and the day are very close”.

εγγυς γαρ νυκτός τε και ηματός εισι κέλευθοι.

“From Chaos, Erebos and the Night will be born and, from them, Aithir and Hemera”, says Hesiod: Erebe is, as we
see, the immediate relative of the night and the day.

*
* *

The strait of Sardinia abounds in gulfs and convenient harbors. But the establishment of distillation machines on the
isle of Maddalena were rendered necessary by the rarity or the small abundance of the eater sources. The Instructions
point out the slightest springs where one can take on water: “One can take on water in the foot of the port, near Campo
Santo, but that which is found near the tower is of superior quality... One can take on water from the small rivulet which
springs at the foot of the bay... The isle Caprera, more fertile than Maddalena, posesses abundant springs, etc.” The
veritable water sources are all found in the vicinity of the Bear. Just at its feet is the great spring of the region, the spring
of Parau, described above: it furnished water to the isle of Maddalena before the establishment of the distilling machines.
On the isle of St. Stefano, which faces it, the marine charts indicate another spring. In the cove of Trana, “there is an
excellent spring where the ships which anchor in the bay of Mezzo-Schiffo can take on their water”.
Toward all the water sources, it is the Bear which should serve as a guide. For the thousand points, rocks, reefs, islets
and capes of the Sardinian coast and the neighboring isles present to the eye of the pilot only an indiscernable jumble. The
granitic chaos which covers the two sides of the strait would render the watering places unfindable to the stranger. But,
standing at the summit of its mountain, very neatly outlined in the sky and pointing very far into the sea, the Bear presents
to all views its easy-to-recognize silhouette; when one has once discovered it, it is impossible to forget: “The promontory
of the Bear,” says la Marmora, “is so named because of a granite rock which one sees almost at its extermity; viewed
from a certain point, from the coast of Maddalena, it presents the form of a bear, and even of a white bear, such that one
can be assured by the figure that one has reached the point indicated from above.” La Marmora gives in effect the figure
of the promontory: it is a chaos of granite, above which is planted a bear; the round back, the elongated neck, the white
bear appears to wag its head. La Marmora adds: “The rock already offered the singular appearance nearly two thousand
years ago, for Ptolomy, in his geography, indicates the place under the name of Άρκτου Άκρα, Promontory of the Bear;
that makes apparent the length of time in the past that the mass of granite took the form as a result of the decomposition
of the stone, by operation of the agency of the atmosphere, and how short is the space of twenty centuries to produce a

424
noticeable change in the rock, which very probably is still that which they observed in the epoch of Greek geography.”
Ptolomy, in effect, already names the Promontory of the Bear.
The region of the Bear posesses not only springs, but also an entire collection of excellent harbors, some on the
Sardinian coast, others on the neighboring isles, some with open bays, others with interior ports, and even long culs-de-
sac almost entirely closed. The closed harbors are characteristic of the northeaast coast of Sardinia. On the other façades,
the isle is poorly provided with shelters and even, for hundreds of kilometers, is entirely lacking in them. The northeast
coast, to the contrary, is nothing but a series of refuges: from Porto-Longon, which opens itself into the strait itself, facing
Corsica and Bonifacio, up to the gulf of Terra-Nova, which faces the Tyrrhenian sea and receives mail packets from
Civita-Vecchia each day, nine or ten harbors and bays succeed each other, nearly comparable, all penetrating far into the
mass of rocks.

The bay of Arsachena sinks in more than two and a half miles directly to the south, where it terminates in a marsh... The Saline
bay, situated a mile to the south of cape Orso, is open to the east, but it is partly sheltered by point Rossa of the isle Caprera... Pont
Sardegna, steep and solid, forms a bay with a beach of sand at the foot, which was called the bay of Azincourt because of the sojourn
which the English vessel of that name made. Sheltered by the isles, it is safe and convenient for the ships of all dimensions; the sea is
not heavy there, and the holding is good... The Cala di Trana, cove with a sand beach, is open to the north and frequented by the
coasters: it has an excellent spring there.

In measure as they approach from the Mouths and successively pass all the small insular straits, the ships, coming
from the east and the Italian seas encounter harbors which, more and more secure, more and more resemble the “deep
port” of the Lestrygons. Up to here, we have long and large open bays. Now here are half-closed or even completely
closed ports. Porto-Pollo is the first of the harbors deeply interior and circled by a margin of stone, where the sea is
always more tranquil, where sometimes one finds the flat calm:

Porto-Pollo is a bay which is found in the southeast of the Cavalli peninsula; it is of irregular form, about a mile deep and and
nearly seven cables wide at the entrance, between the dangers of point Cavalli and those of point Diego. In the interior part is placed
an islet, and the width of the passage is reduced to a half cable. To the south of the islet, the anchorage is excellent for small ships;
the large ships can anchor within the entrance; they are partly protected against the winds from the north by the neighboring isle.

More frequented than Porto-Pollo, Longon-Sardo is of the same form:

The entrance of Porto-Longo-Sardo is three quarters of a mile from the islet Monica; its width, which is a third of a mile at the
entrance, is reduced to a cable at mid-depth. The port is frequented by the small ships which find an excellent shelter there, where
they are little inconvenienced by the winds from the north.

Our Occidental navies have adopted the harbor of Porto-Longone or Longon-Sardo (we have retraced the history of it):
on the Occidental land of the strait, it was for them the first to offer itself; Santa-Teresa owes its foundation and its
importance to the coming and going of the Occidental fleets, against which the islanders had to defend the echelle. During
antiquity, when Santa-Teresa did not yet exist, it was the neighboring bay of Santa-Reparata which served as port of call
to the foreigners: the Romans had their town of Tibulla there. The bay of Santa-Reparta is open to the occidental exit of
the strait, between a detached peninsula, cape della Testa, and the large isle:

The Sardinian cape della Testa forms, with the Corsican cape of Feno, the west entry of the Mouths of Bonifacio: the two capes
are at a distance of nine miles. Cape della Testa is the extremity of a nearly circular peninsula joined to the land by a tongue of sand,
and about 50 meters high: the west front of the peninsula is formed by cliffs of granite without vegetation. The bay of San-Reparata,
which limits to the south the tongue of sand which ties the promontory to the coast, is nearly circular and of four cables depth. The
small ships can find there a shelter against all the winds; it is only exposed to the swell which comes from the northwest, when the
wind is from that quarter.

425
 Take the chart of the Mouths (fig. 45)* and see how, symmetrical to the bay of St.-Reparata, there is, on the other
coast of the cape of Erebe (point Falcone), on the Oriental land of the strait, an even more secure bay which, for the
sailors coming from the Orient, can have an even greater utility: it is, as the natives say, the Port of the Well, Porto-Pozzo.
The form of the port, surrounded by a high margin, truly earns it the name.

A mile to the southeast of point Marmorata rises near the shore a hill of conical form, named Monte-Rosso, with the point of the
same name, and a mile and a half to the south of point Monte-Rosso, the peninsula delle Vacche [advances into the sea] and is
attached to the land only by a small tongue of sand. Between point Monte-Rosso and the point delle Vacche opens a long arm of
narrow sea, named Porto-Pozzo, the port of the Well. The entrance has only two cables of width. But the arm is enlarged a bit in the
interior and, at the distance of one and a quarter mile, it has a third of a mile between its two shores. It has nearly two miles of depth.
At the foot, there exists a basin with 14 meters of water, but which is not accessible to ships, because of the shallows which separate
it from the arm of the sea. Although the entry of Porto-Pozzo might be open to the north, there is never much of a sea within,,, At the
entrance of the arm of the sea, the Rock or Reef, Colombo, is situated one and a half cables from the neighboring point of land.

The page of the Nautical Instructions is just the prose description of the harbor which the Odyssian poem depicts for
us. There truly are the two points projecting into the sea, and which make a mouth:

ακται δε προβλητες εναντίαι αλλήλησιν

εν στόμαται προύχουσιν.

And here is the narrowed entrance,

... ‘αραιη δ’ είσοδος εστι,

between the two high steep lookouts, upon one of which Ulysses goes to climb, to inspect the land,

έστην δε σκοπιην ες παιπαλόεσσαν ανελθών.

In the strait frequented by ships, formerly infested with Turkish and Moorish cruisers, the natives today still have on
their promontories and islets a number of old Lookouts or Guards, Guardia Vecchia, Guardia del Turco, Guardia Moro,
Guardia Mariori, to which come to be added, against espionage and contraband, the new guards of the customs and
semaphores, Guardia Preposti... And here truly is the margin of stone which, to left and right, borders the well with a
continuous girdle:

... ‘όν πέρι πέτρη

ηλίβατος τετύχηκε διαμπερες αμφοτέρωθεν.

The “steep stone”, πέτρη ηλίβατος, is the granite “deprived of vegetation”, of which the Instructions just spoke to us.
From the two coasts of the port, αμφοτέρωθεν, to the right and left, the wall of granite goes from the entrance down to the
foot, where it abruptly ends. The foot of the well is a marsh, a lagoon with a sand beach, in front of a plain where the easy
route which descends from the mountains comes to end:

ο‘ι δ’ ίσαν εκβάντες λείην ‘οδον, ηπερ άμαξαι

άστυδ’ αφ’ ‘υψηλων ορέων καταγίνεον ‘ύλην.

426
 To the right of the Well, the mural has 80 meters of height: it is the Punta Raja, the Point of the Skate (we will see that
the Lestrigons live from fishing). To the left is the Punta Macchia Mala, the Point of the Maze of Misfortune, about 100
meters high. The two walls, separated by the outlet, make, in facing each other, εναντίαι αλλήλησιν, a symmetrical curve,
whose indentations and projections appear to fit together exactly. Even the name of Porto-Pozzo could serve as a
translation of such Odyssian epithets, “hollow port”, λιμην κοιλος, “port of distant depths”, λιμην πολυβενθής:

αι μεν άρ’ έντοσθεν λιμένος κοίλοιο δέδεντο...

όφρ’ ο‘ι τους όλεκον λιμένος πολθβενθέος εντός.

Along the Sardinian coast, we can find some similar gulfs; but none is so narrow, so closed, such a “well” as this one.
Open on the northeast, from where the terrible Bora blows almost continually; situated on the edge of a strait where the
winds and the currents battle and compete; dominated by mountains from where unforseen and violent gusts fall
suddenly, the gulfs of northern Sardinia, says Pausanias, who exaggerates a bit, offer no harbor to the vessels which cruise
along the coast, ήν παραπλέης ναυσιν ούτε ‘όρμους παρέχεται ‘η νησος, πνεύματα τε άτακτα και ισχυρα αι άκραι των
ορων καταπέμπουσιν ες την θάλασσαν. The ancient periples and geographers make a bad reputation for these waters,
which the poets have exaggerated further: “Turned to the north, the shore is hostile, bristling with rocks, steep, entirely
full of the sound of the sharp blows of the sea; the sailors have condemned the mountains with the name of Mad”,

quae respicit Arcton,

immitis, scopulosa, procax, subitisque sonora
fluctibus: Insanos infamat navita Montes.

The vessels which escape the gusts and which are driven into the coves of the serrated isle,

quos ubi luctatis procul effugere carinis

per diversa ruunt sinuosae littora terrae,

never find there a refuge protected from the swell. We have seen that in the bay of Santa-Reparata “the small ships have a
shelter against all the winds, but that they are exposed there to the swell from the northwest, when the wind is from that
quarter”. Only, in truth, our Port of the Well, “although the entrance may be open to the north, there never is much of a
sea inside”: the narrowness of its mouth and the rock of the Colombo defend it against the wave. Only in the port, the
vessels of Ulysses were able to proceed one after the other, in a group or in a line, without risk of collision, of being
broken or causing each other accidents: over its length of 4 or 5 kilometers, only the Well can contain the entire flotilla;
“no swell large or small: clear calm all around”.

α‘ι μεν άρ’ έντασθεν λιμένος κοίλοιο δέδεντο

πλησίαι. ου μεν γάρ ποτ’ αέξετο κυμά γ’ εν αυτω
ούτε μέγ’ ούτ’ ολίγον. λευκη δ’ ην αμφι γαλήνη.

*
* *

Thus, I believe, is the poprt of Lestrygonia or, rather, there is Lestrygonia. For the natives, who dominate the opening
from the high cliffs, give it the name of “well”; but the first navigators, I believe, will call it the Colombo Rock, the

427
Dovecote Stone, Λαις, Λεύς or Λαας Τρυγόνων or Τρυγονίη, Lais-trugonon or Lais-trugonia because of the Colombo
Rock, which served them to recognize the entrance of the port, as the Rock of the Bear served them to recognize, in the
cove of Parau, the spring Artakia.
During antiquity as during modern times, the names of birds have held a great place in the onomasty of the Sardinian
coasts. Sardinia is, among all the isles, a land of birds. Land birds, emigrating each autumn from Europe to Africa and
returning each spring from Africa to Europe; sea birds, living from fish on the very productive coasts: the fliers of all
sorts populate the marine ponds and lagoons; their innumerable colonies cover the shores and the coastal islets. It suffices
to open an account of a voyage:

Sardinia has numerous ponds which communicate with the sea, either by artificial cuts or by a rivulet or some channel. They are
in general very prolific of fish. In their waters, from the beginning of autumn, innumerable flocks of aquatic birds, among which one
distinguishes thousands of ducks, swans, moorhens, flamingos, egrets and sometimes even pelicans, assemble to winter.
The isle of Mal di Ventre is covered with mastic trees and cistus. It is uninhabited, and only sometimes serves as a refuge for
fishermen. On the other hand, it is populated by rabbits and, during the laying season, serves gulls, seagulls, cormorants and petrels,
which come there to lay their eggs in such great quantity that I had seen, so to say, boatloads of them. I would never forget one night
when I had passed over the isle, and which seemed very long to me: it was impossible for me to close my eyes for the frightful din, a
true sabbat, which a hundred of the crying birds never ceased to make all around me.

In the present onomasty, the birds have given their name to the point, Falcone, very near to Porto-Pozzo, to cape
Falcone of the west coast, to our Colombo Rock, and, facing it, to the Colombo Seche.
The doves and pigeons fill the grottos and the holes in the cliffs, invading the ruins and abandoned buildings: “A
nearby grotto is so populated with pigeons that, more than once, they quickly made a dovecot on our table... The church
is presently open only twice a year; the rest of the time it is inhabited by a multitude of birds such as pigeons, small
crows, swallows and other fliers... The vast grotto of the Palombes, a species of natural dove, is curious to visit. But the
location at the point of cape Saint-Elie does not render the access very easy; even though we take counsel in the boat with
experienced boatmen, the wind, despite prolonged efforts, does not allow us to penetrate there at all. Hunting doves is
more amusing: it is done in a boat with lights: the dazzled birds, dismayed, fall in a mob, or are taken in nets held at the
entrance.” The strait especially, by virtue of its rocky coasts and innumerable grottos, is the rendez-vous of the doves:
near our Colombo Rock, Λαας Τρυγονίη, the Romans will know of the cape of Doves, Columbarium promontorium.
The doves bring with them their habitual enemies, the sparrowhawks, falcons and other birds of prey. The falcons of
Sardinia enjoyed a great renown even outside the isle: the kings of Aragon and Spain brought Sardinian falcons for the
pursuit of their falconry. If we have here our capes of the Falcon, the Ancients had their Isle of the Falcons or of the
Sparrowhawks, Ιεράκων νησος, Accipitrum Insula, and we know that the Greek and Roman names were just the
translation of a Semitic original, ‫נצים‬-‫אי‬, E-nosim, as Pliny transcribes. The E-nosim flanks the southern coast of Sardinia.
If forms a deep bay with the large isle and another coastal isle which joins the Sardinian shore by thin lines of sand.
Between the lines extends one of the marine lagoons which the voyagers showed us, above, covered with aquatic birds,
swans, flamingos and pelicans. By the Ancients, the second isle was named Sulci, Solci, Σόλκοι, Σούλχοι, Σύλκοι: we
encounter the same place name in a harbor of the Oriental coast, facing the marshes and the lagoon of Tortoli. The
Ancients agreed in attributing to the name a Semitic origin: Σόλκοι πόλισ εν Σαρδοι, Καρχηδονίων κτίσμα. In the list of
impure birds which Leviticus gives us, near the sparrowhawk or falcon, nis, nosim, figures another bird of the sea, ‫שלן‬,
s.l.k., which the Seventy and the Vulgate render as diver (loon) or pelican. The assimilation is not certain. But the Hebrew
name name by itself (without speaking of the context where only marine birds and birds of prey figure) indicates
sufficiently that it refers to a diving bird. I believe that the Semitic navigators had in Sardinia, beside their Isle of the
Sparrowhawks, E-nosim, an isle and ports of the Pelicans or Loons, ‫שלכים‬-‫אי‬, E-solkim: Sulci or Solci, the Romans
transcribed exactly; Σόλκοι or Σούλχοι, say the Greeks even more exactly, for we know the alternation of κ and χ to
render the Semitic ‫כ‬. But the ancient geographers have not preserved for us the doublet for the last name, which would

428
render the etymology certain. The Odyssey has not preserved for us either, for the Dovecot Stone, the Semitic original of
which Lais Trugone was the translation.

*
* *

Behind the Stone of the Dove, the harbor of the Well would have been perfect, if one had nothing to fear from the
natives. Unfortunately, the islanders - we are going to learn to recognize them - were ferocious mountaineers, close
cousins or even, perhaps, brothers to the Cyclops, “less men than giants”. The “French” voyagers have related at length to
what terrible dangers one is exposed in a port too well closed, which overhanging rocks and cruel mountaineers dominate:
at the foot of the Taygete, in the Port of Quails, de Saumery almost had the adventure of Ulysses in the Well of the
Lestrygons. But in all the Mediterranean, I do not know if one would find a trap as dangerous as this. Our well has four or
five kilometers of length. Once entered, the boats can only exit by oar: no breath of wind comes to aid them; only the
breezes from the northeast, which penetrate by the narrow outlet, are contrary to leaving. Attacked by the natives,
besieged, overwhelmed by rocks, the foreign ships would be smashed before gaining the open sea: not a boat, not a man
would escape; all would be crushed in the overly deep port.

My two men and the herald will encounter the strong daughter of Antiphates near the spring Arkatia. Stopping her and addressing
their speech to her, they will ask who was the king and who commanded them. She promptly shows them the high dwelling of her
father. They will enter into the noble dwellings. They will find a woman as tall as a mountain and they will remain in rapture. But
she calls the illustrious Antiphates, her husband, from the agora, who prepares a cruel death for them. Taking one of them, he makes
his meal of him. The two others will flee to regain the vessels. Antiphates sends a cry through the town. From all directions, the
strong Lestrygons come running, by the thousands, resembling men less than giants. From the top of the cliffs, they crush us with
enormous stones. Then in the fleet an evil tumult arises, of killed sailors and smashed ships. Then, harpooning my men like fish, the
Lestrygons will bring them in for a disgusting feast.

The first navigators thus should have been on their guard: their periples should have recommended prudence; before
being engaged too forward or even entering the trap, they without doubt counselled exploring the land from the height of
surrounding lookouts. I say “trap”: the comparison is is the most familiar in our language of “landsmen”. We also
sometimes borrow from riverine fishing the comparison of the “net”. To render the same idea, the sailors would consider
especially some metaphor drawn from maritime fishing. Now, on the coasts of Sardinia, there is a celebrated fish which
from all time has made the fortune of the natives and the admiration of foreigners: the tuna. For this fish, the Sardinian
coasts are today bordered with gigantic traps which they call thonnaires, tonnares or madragues. It appears that our
Odyssian poet had the comparison of the thonnaire in mind - at least if his periple had not set it before his eyes - when he
describes the massacre of the Achaeans in the bay of the Lestrygons. Stoned, battered and harpooned by the savages, the
unfortunate Achaeans are brought in “like fish”,

ιχθυς δ’ ‘ώς πείροντες ατερπέα δαιτα φέροντο.

There are some fish of a strong frame: in the Mediterranean, there are few besides the tuna which they harpoon and bring
in in such a manner. When Aeschylus wishes to describe the Persian fleet crushed, smashed, and the Persian soldiers
battered to death, eviscerated, impaled in the strait of Salamine, on the sea covered with debris and cadavers, he will find
no other comparison than that of tuna in the Madrague:

‘Ελληνικαί τε νηες ουκ αφρασμόνως

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 κύκλω πέριξ έθεινον, ‘υπτιουτο δε
σκάφη νεων, θάλασσα δ’ ουκ έτ’ ην ιδειν
ναυαγίων πλήθουσα και φόνου βροτων...
τοι δ’ ‘ώστε θύννους ή τιν ιχθύων βόλον
αγαισι κωπων θραύσμασίν τ’ ερειπίων
έπαιον, ερράχιζον, οιμωγη δ’ ‘ομου
κωκύμασιν κατειχε πελαγίαν ‘άλα.

There is not a voyager to Sardinia who has not devoted a number of pages and pictures to the moving fishing for the
tuna. Spain has its corridas of bulls; Sardinia has its Madragues: the spectacle is, in part and in total, as cruelly barbarous
and bloody. If we set our description of the Odyssey in front of modern or contemporary relations, I believe that the
massacre of the tuna and the massacre of the Achaeans can present numerous points of resemblance:

To favor the fishing, the town maintains two men agreed upon, during the entire season, who stay on two high promontories on
the edge of the sea, to observe when the tunas reach the coast, for they sometimes show in such a great number that one sees them in
schools of two or three thousand at a time...

- The Ancients speak of the θυννοσκοπεια, lookouts of the tuna, which border the shores of the Occidental sea.
Ulysses, just now, climbs one of the high Lookouts:

σκοπιην ες παοπαλόεσσαν ανελθών.

When the weather is good, the lookouts, perceiving the fish which are found at the surface of the water coming from afar, advise
the fishermen and the inhabitants of it by a small white flag. As soon as they perceive the signal, all the children, running the streets
with shouts of joy, announce the fish to the people. Then, down to the last inhabitant, the wealthy, the merchants, the artisans and
even the troops leave their occupations, running to the sea, and the masters receive in their ships as much of the people as they can
contain to help do the great fishing.

The king of the Lestrygons sets himself to cry in the town, and the Lestrygons, by tens of thousands, from here and
from there, come to his voice:

αθταρ ‘ο τευχε βοην δια άστεος. ο‘ι δ’ αίοντες

φοίτων ίφθιμοι Λαιστρυγόνες άλλοθεν άλλος
μυρίοι.

The madrague or thonnaire has been prepared in advance: it is an enclosure of nets folded into several passages and
divided into several “rooms”. The boats encircle the school of tuna and drive them toward the façade, then toward the
entrance of the madrague. They make them enter with blows of the oars, making cries, and throwing stones:

Our mandragues have seven compartments. The first entrance of the tunas is made into that which is called the gran camera,
whose door or foratico always remains open. From there, the tunas enter into the other chambers, which they find similarly open,
and which one closes when their numbers are sufficient. The raïs, when he judges to have enough for his operation, opens the next-
to-the-last chamber, which they call di ponente, or of the sunset, into which he makes pass the number of tunas destined for the
chamber of death, which is the only one in which he should execute the fish, under the Sardinian name of mattanza, the abbatoir.
The next day, if the weather is favorable and the sea calm, the raïs takes himself to the mandrague before the dawn and there, to
convince the tunas to enter the chamber of death, he throws among them a stone wrapped in the skin of a sheep which, in frightening
them like a head of Medusa, obliges them to enter their tomb... Boats, filled with the men necessary for the operation, and other

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boats, which carry the merchants to purchase and the curious to enjoy the spectacle of such a famous fishing, pass rapidly, raising
cries and increasing the speed. Arriving at the mandrague, each takes its place around the chamber of death...
Everything thus being ready, the raïs gives the signal, with the word Sarpa, to begin to draw the chamber of death up from the
bottom of the sea. The chamber of death rises slowly and, in rising, constricts until all the fish finally find themselves almost at the
surface of the water. It is then that the men, aboard the two large boats and armed with sticks which have an iron hook at the end
begin, on the order of Ammazza! (Kill) given by the raïs, to kill the tuna by harpooning them and pulling them into their boats with
the greatest avidity. The agitation of the water, excited by the violence of the tuna which find themselves enclosed and pressed into a
very narrow space, attacked from all sides and wounded to death; the battle which the workers are obliged to give to the great fish to
conquer their resistance; the surface of the sea raised into foam tinted with the blood which the tuna pour into the sea from their
wounds: all that excites the admiration, the exclamations and the cries of joy of the spectators. The fish having been killed, they pull
in the two large filled boats, which they accompany with songs and cries of happiness, up to the mattanza di terra, that is to say, the
land butchery, which is made on the edge of the sea in large covered markets. They cut off the head of the tuna, then each fish,
however enormous its weight may be, is loaded on the shoulders of a single porter, called bastagio, who carries it to the tancato, a
large storeroom where they hang the tunas in a line by the tail.

- “From the top of the rocks, the Lestrygons set to throwing enormous pieces of rock. Among the vessels is raised a
mournful tumult of lost men and broken vessels; then, lancing my men like fish, the Lestrygons haul them in for a
disgusting feast”,

ο‘ί ρ’ απο πετράων ανδράχθεσι χερμαδίοισιν

βάλλον. άφαρ δε κακός κόναβος κατα νηας ορώρειν
ανδρων τ’ ολλυμένων νηων θ’ ‘άμα αγνυμενάων.
ιχθυς δ’ ‘ώς πείροντες ατερπέα δαιτα φέροντο.

In the tancato, the true butcher shop, is presented another spectacle very curious, although a bit disgusting. [But] I will stop here,
for fear of sharing with my reader the disgust with which I had been seized each time I assisted in the operations of the mattanza di
terra, which are always more nauseating in measure as the fishing nears its end. For, by the heat which occurs in this land in June
and July, and by the blood of the tuna with which the ground is strewn, as it is with all the unusable parts of the fish which are cast
aside as refuse, the air ends up by being infected, and the odor becomes unbearable.

The tuna is fished or was fished on all the coasts of Sardinia: “The fishing is very abundant and, during the season
from April to July, the coasts of the isle are frequented by the tuna. The ships, which cruise the coasts during the period of
fishing of these fish, need to be attentive to avoid the madragues: the engines could caused serious accidents and put the
ship itself in danger.” It is a season of the year when, recently still, the entire isle lives only for fishing the tuna:

At the beginning of April each year, all the coasts of Sardinia where they have established mandragues become locations of noise,
of business and of arts, and in the same way, a market of negotiations. Ships arrive there from all parts with considerable sums of
silver to provide themselves with salted tuna. The Sardinians, curious to enjoy the inexpressible pleasure of the fishing, arrive there
in crowds from the interior of the region, and they are received with generosity by the owners of the fish, who give to all the
strangers not only the table very splendidly served, but additionally they make a gift to each, at the time of leaving, of a tuna
proportional to the quality of the person, even if only a peasant or domestic.

But the Oriental coasts of Sardinia, on the Italian sea, are much less prolific of fish than the Occidental coasts on the
Spanish sea. In reality, the madragues and matanzas only function on the Occidental coast, and two areas especially
posess the largest: in the south, it is the isle Piana, in the vicinity of the ancient isle of the Sparrowhawks, E-nosim; to the
north, it is the gulf of Porto-Torres, which extends from the Asinara isles up to the entry of the Mouths, up to the vicinity
of our Well. The Semitic periple, which described the coast, should have also described the fishing. It is probable that the
madragues had not yet been invented at all. It was the bays and gulfs in culs-de-sac which then served as chambers of
death. The pirogues of the natives attempted to drive the schools of tuna there, which should then have been innumerable.

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It well appears that even the name of tuna (thon), θύννος, may just be the Greek transcription of the Semitic ‫תן‬, than, or
‫תון‬, thun. The Scripture employs the latter word under the form of ‫תנין‬, thannin, to describe the monsters of the sea. The
Sardinian are sometimes veritable monsters, as large as whales: “In Sardinia, when the tuna weighs less than a hundred
pounds, they only call it by the name of scampirro, derived from scomber, generic name of the family; from one to three
hundred pounds, it still is only a half-tuna mezzo tonno; those of a thousand pounds are not rare. P. Cetti maintains that
they sometimes caught ones of eighteen hundred pounds.”
The Nautical Instructions counsel our sailors to watch out for madragues, for fear of accidents: the Odyssian periple,
for other reasons, also advised avoiding the chamber of death. We know the prudence of the first navigators and the care
which they take in not at all distancing themselves too far from the open sea. Among the savage peoples especially, they
did not like to enter into the deep ports. Ulysses does not follow the bulk of his fleet into the hollow of the Well: he moors
his boat near the entrance, to a rock:

αυταρ εγων οιος σχέθον έξω νηα μέλαιναν

αυτου επ’ εσχατιη, πέτρης εκ πείσματα δήσας.

The southern point of Corsica, which rises on the other shore of the strait, facing our Well of the Sardinians, is called
the Pierced Rock, Pertsato: “The cliff is eroded in its lower part; the opening which traverses it from part to part
resembles the arch of a bridge.” It is just to the south of the Pierced Rock that a Sardinian port opens, very close to our
Well. We have described it under the name of Porto-Longone or Longo-Sardo. The name which it bears today can relate
to its long and narrow form: the name in reality comes from another cause, and dates from antiquity, for the Itinerary of
Antonin makes mention of the harbor of Longones. Longon, λογγών, was a widespread place name in the Occidental sea,
on the insular coasts, Sicily, Sardinia and the isle of Elba. It was less a proper name than a common noun. Longon
designated, in effect, the harbors which are provided with stones pierced to moor the ships. Syriacuse and Catana had
their longon or longones, λογγωνες, and the scholiasts explain to us that “the longones are at the same time ports and
rocks pierced to receive the moorings, εν Συρακούσσαις λιμένες εισι διττοι λογγωνες. λογγωνες δε καλουνται ο‘ι επι των
λιμένων τρητοι λίθοι, ούς τρύπουσιν ‘ίν’ εξαρτωσιν εξ αυτων τα σχοινία των νεων.” The Longon of Sardinia probably
owes its name to some similarly pierced rock. Near the Well, the Odyssian periple without doubt described the refuge of
the Pierced Rock (the detail of which our poet imagined): it was, behind the cape of Erebe, the first which offers itself to
navigators traveling on the road of the night.

*
* *

Spring of the Bear, Stone of the Dove, Deep Port, Lookout, Chamber of the Massacre, Pierced Rock: it well appears
that our our Sardinian coast of the Mouths gives us all the sites, and at the same time, all the episodes of the Odyssian
adventure. It is in the Well that Ulysses has come to debark: with the chart before our eyes, we can follow him step by
step.
Pushed perhaps by the same winds from the south, which already had brought him to the isle Aeolia and which set
Aeolos in such a fine fury, Ulysses has sailed six days and six nights before reaching Lestrygonia: he arrives on the
seventh day, ‘εβδομάτη δ’ ‘ικόμεσθα. We know what place the week holds in the Semitic measures and periples. It is
possible that the week might here be just a fashion of speech: we say today “an eight of days”, without attaching to the
number the idea of a full eight days. Between the isle Aeolia, which is the exit of the Sicilian strait, and Lestrygonia,
which is the entrance of the Sardinian strait, the Phoenician periples should have counted about a week. In a straight line,

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across the high sea, six hundred kilometers at the most separate the two points. But the first navigators did not follow the
direct route. They went along the Italian coasts, which ascend toward the north up to the isle of Circe and, from there,
cutting toward the west, they arrive at the Mouths, or else, from Stromboli to Didyme to Ustica, they at first follow the
bridge of Aeolian isles to reach the southern end of Sardinia, whose Oriental coast they then cruise. On this course, it is
no longer six hundred kilometers, but eight or nine hundred at the least which must be counted between Stromboli and the
Mouths of Bonifacio. With a good continuous wind, the Homeric boats would not have taken a week to cross the distance.
But, in those waters, the winds from the north rule as master and, to come from the Sicilian seas to the Mouths, they must
fight them, and frequently resort to working the oars:

τείρετο δ’ ανδρων θυμος ‘υπ’ ειρεσίης αλεγεινης.

With contrary or little favorable winds, a week passes quickly: most frequently, six days and nights hardly suffice to
cross the nine hundred kilometers.
The fleet of Ulysses enters into the Well. A single vessel stays on the rocks of the inlet, under the steep Lookout. The
bay and its area are deserted. The natives do not live on the beach. In the mode of the times, their high town is in the
interior. Piracy reigns at that time in the Mouths, as it will reign there up until our days. It will take the Pax Romana to
permit the establishment of maritime towns at Tibula and Tower of Libyson; the English Peace has made the harbors
revive in our days under the names of Santa-Teresa and Porto-Torres. But, in the interval between the two peaces, thirteen
or fourteen centuries of Gothic, Vandal, Arab, Pisan, Genoese, Catalan, Barbary and French piracy drive the inhabitants
toward the high country. Barely a century ago, the corsairs from Tunis and Algiers still arrived each spring. Northern
Sardinia still today has its large towns, Tempio, Nulvi, Osilo, Sassari, etc., far from the coast, at the summit of the hills or
of the mountains.
The town of Sulci had long been maintained on the sea of the south, at the edge of the abundant lagoon which
separates the peninsula of San-Antioco from the island. Sulci was celebrated for its saltworks, its fisheries and its relics of
Saint Antioco. The pirates will make things harder for them. At the beginning of the XVIIth century, the inhabitants of
Sulci have to abandon their territory. They will climb with their relics to Iglesias. But they had need to set up a contract
and to specify that, each year, the corpse of the saint went in a procession to review his ancient domain, and that one day
he would descend again to be established anew, when the disappearance of the pirates would permit Sulci to be reborn.
The French conquest of Algeria and the English thalassocracy having, in the course of the XIXth century, suppressed the
pirates, Sulci has risen again under the name of San-Antioco. The inhabitants of the new town reclaimed their saint then.
But the cannons of the church refused to release him: the relics, surrounded by the popular veneration, were their best
source of revenue. It required a royal decree to make them fulfill the contract and give up the casket. Again in 1812, the
Tunisians ravage the coast of Sardinia: our isles of the Mouths always have their “Guards of the Turks”. During the
centuries of piracy, the shores bear only a few castles, where the thalassocracies install a garrison and which the natives
besiege, such as the Castle of the Sardinians, on the west entrance of the Mouths, which has nothing of Sardinia but the
name: “Castel Sardo, on a rock at the mouth of the Frisono, founded by the Dorians around 1102, has successively been
the Genoese and Aragonese Castle, up until it received, in 1769, the national name of Sardo. The place, very solitary by
its position at the edge of the sea, which, with the exception of a narrow isthmus, surrounds it on all sides, has not been
repaired at all.
In the times of the Phoenician pirates, the town of the Lestrygons thus is not on the coast, But a route leads to it from
the sea. Debarking at the foot of the port, the two men and the herald of Ulysses propmptly find the wagon road, which
brings the wagons of the butchers from the high mountains to the town:

ο‘ι δ’ ίσαν εκβάντες λείην ‘οδον, ηπερ άμαξαι

άστυδ’ αφ’ ‘υψηλων ορέων καταγίνεον ‘ύλην.

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 Today, Sassari is the great town of the Sardinians on the northern façade of their isle. Sitting twenty kilometers from
the coast, at the summit of high hills, Sassari is a High Town with an echelle at its feet, Porto-Torres. The Nautical
Instructions describe the echelle and the town to us: “The small port, of an ancient date, serves as the port of commerce to
Sassari and to the district of that name. The land around Poro-Torres is arid and presents to the view only heather and a
few scattered palms:

[ένθα μεν ούτε βοων ούτ’ ανδρων φαίνετο έργα]

A good macadam road leads to Sassari, 20 kilometers away, and from there to Cagliari, 270 kilometers; the
communications between the towns are regular and constant. A railroad of 20 kilometers joins Port-Torres to Sassari.
Second town of the isle (36,300 inhabitants), the capitol of the province, seat of an archbishopric and of a university,
Sassari is at 220 meters elevation. It is surrounded by walls, posesses an old strong castle, a palace of government and
other public establishments. The famous fountain in marble of Rosello is outside, near the port Macalla, to the northeast
of the town.” The High Town of the Lestrygons, with its high palace and its noble dwellings, ‘υψερεφες δω κλυτα
δώματα, with its fountain outside, where the daughters come for water,

κούρη δε ξύμβληντο προ άς εος ‘υδρευούση,

was in all points similar to Sassari. But, following the law of symmetry which we always find in our topological studies, it
was not on the same coast. Sassari, in the western vicinty of the Mouths, is the great town of the Sardinians only since the
Aragonian times: “The castle of Sassari was built in 1330 by Raymond of Monte Pavone, first governor-general of
Lugodoro under the Aragonese; among the escutcheons on the façade of the edifice, conjoined to the barred armory of the
kings of Aragon, one notes there one where the figure of a peacock [pavone] is found.” It was for the convenience of the
Aragonese, coming from the Occident, that Sassari came to be located in the vicinity of the Occidental sea. In the times of
our first sailors, the thalassocracies arrived from the Levant: the Sardinians thus had their large town on the northeast
façade of the island, at the eastern entry of the Mouths, not far from the Well, which served them as echelle, and not far
from the spring which served them as fountain.
The Sardinian province which borders the Levantine entry of the Mouths is called Gallura. It is a particular region, an
isolated province, which barely belongs to the rest of Sardinia: “The inhabitants of the province pass for the most
intelligent among the Sardinians. They have more facility for certain studies, for poetry and for improvised songs. Their
language is more closely related to Italian than to Sardinian; that is to say, it takes after a Corsican dialect, which is
otherwise entirely natural. For up to this day the Gallura, lacking bridges and roads, communicated more laboriously with
the other provinces of the isle than with Corsica, from which it is separated only by a very narrow strait.” The strait, in
effect, by virtue of a bridge of islets, establishes a permanent intimicy between Corsica and Gallura. But with the rest of
Sardinia, the Gallura until recent years had in reality no communication, because of the impassable barrier of the
Limbarra mountains.
The barrier, cutting northern Sardinia east and west, from the Italian sea to the Spanish sea, from the gulf of Terranova
to the beaches of Castel-Sardo, is a wall of granite whose median height surpasses twelve hundred meters. Toward the
south, toward the rest of Sardinia, the wall falls from peaks into the marshy valley of Terranova or into the gorges of the
Coghinas river, with the result that, from the coast, it is a veritable rampart, and like the continuous front of a fortress,
paralleled by a line of moats: on the flank of the rampart, with great difficulty, the Italians have today laced the
switchbacks of their small railroad to join Gallura to their port of Terranova on the sea of the Levant. Toward the north, to
the contrary, toward the Mouths, the Limbarra mountains descend slowly for for fifty or sixty kilometers in hilltops,
hollow valleys, secondary chains, isolated domes, in massifs and small plains: in brief for the “Arcadia” of Gallura,
whose somewhat important river, Liscia, leads the water to the vicinity of our Well. Like its torrents, Gallura has its

434
natural slope toward the Mouths. Up until recent years, up until the establishment of the little railroad of Terranona, it is
only toward the Mouths that Gallura turned its commerce and its route.
This Arcadia now has its large town at the very foot of the Limbarra mountains, at Tempio: “It is only for about the
last thirty years that the village of Tempio was put in the rank of the villages of Sardinia. It should nevertheless be said
that has been for a very long time the seat of a bishopric, of the governor of the province, of a military commandant and
of a court and that, in spite of its name as a town, for two centuries it has been considered the principal place of all the
large region of Gallura... All the other populations of the province, without counting the neighboring islets, are scattered
in stazzi or sorts of isolated sheep stations, grouped among themselves under the name of cussorgie.” The present capitol
of Gallura is somewhat distant from the coast of the Mouths - at more than forty-five kilometers. It nevertheless has its
two echelles on its coast, Santa-Teresa near Porto-Longone and Palau or Parau at the foot of the Bear, facing la
Maddalena.
Before the railway of Terranova, it is by the two echelles of Santa-Teresa and Palau that Gallura made all its traffic.
By virtue of the valley of the Liscia, a natural route which can only accomadate man, descended toward the echelles: “In
leaving from Tempio to arrive at Santa-Teresa or the isle of Maddalena, one at first follows a single road up to a place
named Luogo Santo, which is found at five hours distance of travel from the town by horse. One finds there some stazzi
grouped together, forming an embryo village. Two roads leave from Luogo Santo, the one to the left which leads to the
town of Santa-Teresa, and that to the right which one travels to arraive at la Maddalena. They both traverse a very uneven
and wooded land, whose soil is granitic. During the two journeys of four long hours by horse, one sees nothing worth
mentioning.” The fork to the left toward Santa-Teresa reaches the coast of the Mouths at the very foot of our Well: in
reality Tempio should have had its embarcadero of the west at Dispenza, on the sandy beach which foots Porto-Pozzo.
The right fork toward la Maddalena reaches the edge of the sea at Palau: “in the cove of Palau, there is a spring where one
can take on water and which has long supplied the archipelago of la Maddalena.” It is our spring of the Bear: the fork to
the right thus leads to the Arkatia fountain, toward which the daughter of the king of the Lestrygons descended.
In the times of the Odyssey, the two forks already exist. At the foot of the Well, the herald and his two men found the
left fork and climbed it. At the bifurcation, they encountered the strong daughter of Antiphates, who descended to the
fountain Artakia, where the townspeople supply themselves. The princess indicates the town to them. They went there...
The town of the Lestrygons was at that time less distant from the coast than Tempio is today. The town of Antiphates
should have been near the bifurcation of the routes, in the vicinity of the spring:

κούρη δε ξύμβληντο προ άστεος ‘υδρευούση.

The Odyssian poet names the town Telepylos, Τηλέπυλος. The commentators and scholiasts have debated much on the
value and meaning of the word. Is it a proper name? Is it just an epithet? I believe for my part that Telepylos, like Nesos
Lakheia or Nesoi Thoai in the same Odyssian poem, is a proper name. The Greek onomasty offers us Pylos and Thermo-
pylae, which we have been informed to understand well: “Tele-pylos,” say the scholiasts, “is the town whose doors are
distant or very wide, or it is well the inhabited Door somewhat distant, ‘η ωκισμένη τηλέ που”. The Greek name is
obscure: perhaps it would become more intelligible if we retrieve the original of which it is just an exact translation. In
the northeast region of Sardinia, the Greco-Roman geographers know of a town of Erycioin or Erycinon, Ερύκινον,
Ερύκιον, Erucium. We do not know its exact emplacement. But we see by the text of Ptolomy that it was not a port: it was
the first of the inland towns, πόλεις μεσόγειοι, in leaving the strait. The editors of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum
have, with reason, I believe, related the Sardinian Eruc-ion or Eruc-inon to Sicilian names such as Eryx, Eryc-e, Eric-ine,
which appear of the same origin. On the western coasts of Sicily. Eryx is a mountain where the Phoenician Astarte
planted her sanctuary and her name of Eruk ‘Aim, ‫הים‬-‫ארכ‬. The name is a divine epithet, which the Phoenician place
names make known to us, and which enters into a catagory of analogous titles, Oz-’Aim, for example. The The meaning
of this divine epithet is: Our Lady ““Length of Life” or “Prolongation of Life”. For the root ‫ארך‬, arak, expresses the ideas
of length, of extension, of elongation; the participial and adjectival forms ‫ארוך‬, eruk, and ‫ארך‬, erek, would be exactly

435
rendered as longus or longinquus in Latin, as makros or telos, μακρός, τηλός, in Greek. The Bible, like the inscriptions of
Eryx, gives us several examples of composed epithets or substantived, made from the adjective eruk or erek and a
compliment: if the Phoenician inscriptions say erek-’aïm, vitae longae, we find in the Bible erek-naphes, long-animis,
erek-iamim, long-aevus, erek-ruah, erek-aphim, etc:
I believe that the Odyssiqn Tele-pylos gives us the veritable complete name of the Sardinian Eryc-ion: it was the town
of wide doors,, eruk’a-sa’arim, ‫אערים‬-‫ארוכה‬. The couplet name is abbreviated in current usage and, especially, from age to
age. When the Phoenicians disappeared, the veritable sense forgotten, the second term drops, such as frequently happens
in the transmitted onomasties. It is even possible that, from the beginning, the second term was most often omitted,
implied: the Bible speaks to us of a town of Erek, completely short, and a Phoenician inscription from Sardinia invoques
Asrarte Erek, also completely short. It is no differently that Eruk’a Sa’arim became completely short Eruk’a, from which
the Greco-Romans made their Eruc-ion or Eryc-inon. The descriptions of present Tempio clearly explain the signification
of the proper noun:

The houses of Tempio are totally constructed of slabs or especially in elongated parallelograms of granite, which they regularly
split with iron wedges. The pieces are set one on the other, and barely held together by a mortar of clay and very rarely of lime, for
that substances costs very dearly, since it is necessary to bring it from afar on horseback: the only places of Gallura where nature has
placed limestone are the promontory Figari and the isle of Tavolara... The constuctions are very solid. The houses of Tempio from
outside a very particular aspect, but a bit massive. - The rich village of Tempio, like most of the other villages of Gallura, is built
entirely of stones of a very hard and shining granite. Some of the high houses, with a bit of architecture, would be worthy palaces of
Venice, Rome or Florence.

All of Gallura is granitic, strewn with enormous stones that, from all times, the men have piled up for their
constructions and their monuments. Raised Stones of six meters height and which bear the name of Perda-Lunga, long
Stone; tombs of giants which bear the name of Perda-Latta, Large Stone; Nouragues “which distinguish cyclopian
constructions, formed of irregular polygons, by the regular and horozontal beddings of the stones which form them”: all
the constructions of primitive Sardinia offer the same aspect of enormous walls or blocks. The door of the nouragues “is
ordinarily very low, of a fashion such that sometimes a man has difficulty entering other than on his stomach; but the
difficulty ends almost always when he has passed the width of the stone of the architrave, which is longer and wider than
all the others”. I imagine our Sardinian town of the Wide Doors as another Mycenae with gigantic entries, low, but very
wide. The Sardinian town has an agora,

‘η δ’ αιψ εξ αγορης εκάλει κλυτον Αντιφατηα,

‘όν πόσιν,

entirely resembling the piazzas of present towns. In the towns of northern Sardinia, “the steep streets are a type of
constructed precipices; at Sassari and in all of Logudoro, the principal street, or particularly the least narrow of the
abysses, is improperly called the Piazza... Sassari has only one long street called somewhat improperly the Piazza, a
name given in Logudoro to the main street, to the Corso: the Piazza of Sassari crosses all of the horribly-built town... In
the Piazza are found the principal shops, the cafes and the richest and most elegant stores.” On the piazza of Telepylos,
Antiphates strolled, the cape on his shoulders, when his wife calls for him.
The exact site of Erycion is still unknown. The antique geography of the Sardinia of the north is very uncertain.
Ptolomy and the Itinerary of Antonin give only imprecise or contradictory testimony. The modern historians and
geographers have marched the town of Erycion through all of Gallura, from the gulf of Arzachena to the beaches of
Castel Sardo. In holding to the text of the Odyssey, it appears to us that Telepylos, in spite of being built in the interior of
the lands, should not have been very distant from the coast: the men of Ulysses appear to reach it rapidly; it should further
be that the spring of the Bear can serve as a suburban fountain: “I admired the ease of the beautiful girls of Tempio, well
draped and barefoot, of slender form, coming to draw water at the fountain and bearing their pails lightly on the head

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without touching them”, relates Valery, as if commenting on the Odyssian verse: “they will meet the strong daughter of
Antiphates before the town, who went there for water; she descended toward the fountain of the Bear, of the fine flow,
where the townspeople come to seek their water”

κούρη δε ξύμβληντο προ άστεος ‘υδρευούση.

‘η μεν άρ ες κρήνην κατεβήσετο καλλιρέεθρον
Αρτακίην. ένθεν γαρ ‘ύδωρ προτι άστυ φέρεσκον.

Valery adds: “The finest viewpoint of Tempio is the chapel Saint-Laurent, mixed view of hills, rocks, valleys and sea...
The salubrity, the lightness of the air of Tempio has produced the health, the freshness, the strength, the beauty, the
courage, the intelligence of the inhabitants: they are, in the opinion of all, the most renowned of the isle.” The Odyssian
periple should also have praised the build, the strength and the beauty of the large and valiant mountaineers, of their
women and of their girls: ίφθιμος, ιφθίμη, the strong [m., f.] are the epithets which come back in the poem for the ones or
the others,

θυγατέρ’ ιφθίμη Λαιστρυγόνος Αντιφάταο...

φοίτων ίφθιμοι Λαιστρυγόνες...

The men are giants:

... ουκ άνδρεσσιν εοικότες, αλλα γίγασιν.

The women are of a frightening figure, “tall as mountains”,

... την δε γυναικα

ευρον ‘όσην τ’ όρεος κορυφην, κατα δ’ έστυγον αυτήν

*
* *

The figures of the mountaineers of the north and their women struck the navigators in Sardinia all the more, as the
sothern plains of the isle are unhealthy, infected with malaria. In the south and the west, the bad weather, the malaria
debased the race and, stunting the individuals, renders them thin and sickly. Gallura, to the contrary, is free of marshes
and fevers. Except for a few beaches at the foot of sandy bays, all the region is remarkably healthful. Land of high
mountains and great winds from the north, of forests and glades, of pastures and flocks, of springs and running waters, it
is a veritable Arcadia, a corner of Mediterranean Switzerland, whose shepherds have up to us retained their free life in the
open air and their ways of yesteryear. The gaity of the mountaineers, their relish for songs and for poetry have always
been praised by voyagers: “The enjoyment is innate among the Sardinians, and especially among the people of the
country, who charm the times of their work and of their travels with continual songs. Very often their songs are
improvised. They roll up in them the recent events of the land or the canton, and even of the voyager whom the
Sardinians accompany, if the singer is a guide or a cavalcante. The women, in Gallura, take part against the men in a
courteous battle of improvised songs, which are remarkable by the fineness of the allegories... In the province of Gallura,
when they come to do the shearing, they peel off the raw wool together. The women and girls sit in a circle and the men

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roam around them. During the work, it is nothing but songs, or a succession of sung strophes. The strophes are sometimes
improvised, and consist of rhymed dialogs on the subject of a flower offered and, frequently, refused, of a declaration [of
love], etc.” The shepherds of Virgil sing no differently:

malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella,

et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.

“The social perfection and the progress of the shepherds of Gallura has not changed their character or their poetic
nature at all. They continue to sing their improvised verses. Sometimes two of the shepherds, in the manner of those of
the Bucolics, set to battle by alternating songs.

alternis igitur contendere versibus ambo

coepere,

and they are given, before the prelude, the same courtesies. The compositions of the Sardinian Corydons and Thyrses are
little circulated, for they have no stenographers whatever. I give to a canon in the region of Tempio the text of several of
the improvisations. Here is the most remarkable

Tell me, Peter of Achena,

What I wish to ask of you;
If, having naught to eat,
I find something to take,
Should I take another’s goods?

If you ask advice,

I well wish to give you it.
If you have naught to eat,
And find something to take,
You’re a fool not to take it, etc.

The poetic facility of the Sardinians appears antique, testifies Tigellius (of Sardinia), improvisator of Caesar and of
Augustus, singer of fashion, depicted by Horace.”
The Sardinian shepherd speaks like the shepherd of the Bucolics:

Dic mihi, Damoeta, cujum pecus?

and, like him, he accompanies himself with a flute of two or three pipes, the launedda. The enjoyment of alternating
songs is very ancient on the shores of the Occidental sea. The Hellenes tell us that their poets had borrowed the bucolic
from the natives of the Sicilian coast: it is at Tyndaris, on the north coast of Sicily, that the literary genre had been
created. The navigators of the Odyssian periple appear to me to have already encountered the poetic tourneys on the
coasts of Sardinia. For “the herdsman who hails the herdsman, the cowherd who cedes his place (or his turn) to a
shepherd, with the result that one enters (the stage) when the other leaves”, has a somewhat remarkable resemblance to
the shepherds of the bucolic. The Odyssian verse: the shepherd hails upon entering the shepherd who replies to him upon
leaving,

‘όθι ποιμένα ποιμην

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 ηπύει εισελάων, ‘ο δέ τ’ εξελάων ‘υπακούει

appears to me to give the best definition of the literary genre. Virgil said:

et cantare pares et respondere parati.

We would find another exact equivalent of it in such a verse of Theocrite: The first, Menalkas, turning toward Daphnis,
speaks thus: Oh herder of lowing cattle!... etc. And Daphnis replies to him: Oh herder of thick-fleeced sheep!...

πρατος δ’ ων ποτι Δάφνιν ιδων αγόρευς Μενάλκας.

μυκηταν επίουρε βοων...
τον δ’ άρα χώ Δάφνις τοιωο απαμείβετο μύθω.
ποιμαν ειροπόκων οίων...

Ordinarily, in the bucolic, it is a herder of cattle and a herder of sheep who are competing: The amiable Daphnis, the
cowherd, meets Menalkas, who pastured the sheep on the high mountains,

Δάφνισι τω χαρίεντι συνήντετο βουκολέοντι

μαλα νέμων, ‘ως φαντί, κατ’ ώρεα μακρα Μενάλκας.

Here again, an Odyssian verse appears to me to be just a resumé of the two verses of Theocrite:

τον μεν βουκολέων, τον δ’ άργυφα μηλα νομεύων.

Furthermore, the passage, from one part to another, is the same; the same high mountains coming to fall into the sea,
and the lookouts for tuna standing on each shore of the bay:

ωπερ τως θύννως σκοπιάζεται Όλπις ‘ο γριπεύς.

And the occasion of the songs is today the same as in the past. Today it is during the shearing and harvesting of the
wool; formerly, it was during the cutting and harvesting of wheat; the tenth bucolic of Theocrite is entitled the Workers or
the Reapers, Εργατίναι η Θερισταί: “the songs belong to men laboring under the sun”,

ταυτα χρη μοχθευντας εν ‘αλίω άνδρας αείδειν.

And the herdsman who does not sleep, the man truly awake (the Odyssian text says άυπνος, as the modern Greek says
έξυπνος: we say awake[ned], intelligent), the most intelligent herdsman wins a double prize:

ένθα κ’ άυπνς ανηρ δοιους εξήρατο μισθούς,

for the alternating songs are competitions and jousts, where each of the rivals needs to place a bet, γέρας, άεθλον, δωρον,

χρήσδεις ων εσιδειν; χρήσδεις καταθειναι άεθλον;

The herdsmen of Virgil similarly require the deposit of the wager, of the pledge:

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 Men. - Vis ergo inter nos quid possit uterque vicissim
experiamur? ego hanc vitulam (ne forte recuses;
bis venit ad muletram; binos alit ubere fetus)
depono: tu, dic mecum quo pignore certes.
Dam. - De grege non ausim quicquam deponere tecum.

The victor at the end touches, “lifts” - the Odyssian poet says εξήρατο - the two pledges: Thyrsis receives the two
recompenses, δοιους μισθούς, the goat and the bowl.
In the poetic battle, enigma and allegory, today as in the past, hold a great place. The voyagers tell us that the
herdsmen of the Gallura pose “riddles” in verse, completely resembling those of Damoetas and Menalkas:

Dic quibus in terris, et eris mihi magnus Apollo,

tres pateat coeli spatium non amplius ulnas?

Perhaps - in case the explanation given above of the “roads of the night” did not seem sufficient - perhaps we need to
examine whether we will have as an echo of the enigmas in the verse of our poet “on the so-near roads of the day and of
the night”,

εγγυς γαρ νυκτός τε και ήματος εισι κέλευθοι.

I believe that the Odyssian poet finds in his periple the description of the Sardinian celebrations and competitions,
perhaps even some model of the songs. It is no different than as the periple of Hannon describes to us the bambulas of the
Sengalese negroes and their nocturnal dances to the sound of flutes, cymbals and tambourines: νυκτος δε πυρά τε πολλα
καιόμενα, και φωνην αυλων ηκούομεν κυμβάλων τε και τυμπάνων πάταγον και κραυγην μθρίαν.
In all of this, our Lestrygons appear as a real people of the Cyclops. Here again, the poet only describes at the same
time the coast and the mores, the harbors and the commerce of the natives.

*
* *

The mountaineers of Sardinia can offer to the Peoples of the sea only the products of their flocks and their mountains:
milk, cheese, wool and wood. We know that wood always has a chance to find a clientel among the navigators, who
always have need of it for their boats and for their towns. Sardinia remained up until the middle of the last century a land
of great forests and beautiful trees. The navies and the maritime towns of Italy, of Provence and of Spain have always
coveted the oaks, the firs and the chestnuts. But the exploitation of the Sardinian forests has always been difficult, nearly
impossible, from lack of convenient roads or trails to bring the wood from the summit of the high mountains to the edge
of the sea:

All the region [from mount Urticu, on the east coast] was covered with a magnificent forest. But for some years it has been
severely damaged by the cuts made on several occasions with little care. They have cut all the oaks there which could serve as wood
for construction, and hardly anything remains but the live oaks. The forest of Scano, which I knew very well, was exploited in 1821
by Genoese speculators, who will not derive a profit from the cut equivalent ot the damage which they have caused. This can be said
of all the cuts which they have made in the other parts of the isle and which they continue to make today. The great difficulty which
the concessionairs of the forest of Scano experienced was to haul the immense pieces of wood to the nearest coast, which is very bad

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for the ships. The owners of the ships got paid an enormous charter fee, for reason of the peril there is in remaining on the coast
while loading. Another heavy expense was that of opening, in the forest and in the entire route to the sea, roads passable by wagons.

The Occidental coast of Sardinia still today furnishes loads of wood to the vessels from Genoa and Livorne: the
Nautical Instructions say “that they export from Bosa woods for construction”. To establish the commerce, it has been
necessary to pierce large roads between the Occidental ports and the mountains of the interior. The piercings were long
and costly to make, the structure and the general slope of the land not lending itself to them. On the northern coast, to the
contrary, the slopes of Gallura and the valley of the Liscia trace a natural route, which the native wagons have always
needed to follow.

The present wagon of the Sardinians is at least as ancient as their plough. It is divided into two parts, which are simply placed one
over the other. The wheels are fixed to the axle, which rolls between two indented pieces. They are solid, and formed of three pieces
of wood joined together. The Sardinian wagon resembles perfectly the plaustrum of the Romans, and even the άμαξα of the Greeks.
The solid wheels, which two crosspieces still unite, and fixed to a mobile axle by a square hole, conform exactly to those which the
Romans called tympana. They harness oxen to the wagon as to the plow... The wagon serves all of the agricultural work: when they
wish to transport straw, dirt, etc., they place against the inside of the walls a type of matting, which forms something like a large
basket. The vehicle moves with some diffficulty: the rubbing of the axle makes a very disagreeable noise,

... montesque per altos

contenta cervice trahunt stridentia plaustra

The companions of Ulysses encounter wagons, the amaxes of the Lestrygons, which, from high in the mountains,
bring the wood to the town:

η περ άμαξαι
άστυδ’ αφ’ ‘υψηλων ορέων καταγίνεον ‘ύλην.

What was the veritable name of the Lestrygons? We have seen that Opics or Oinotrians was the historical name of the
Cyclops. In the north of Sardinia, the oldest names of the native which the Hellenes had known are the name of Balares,
Βάλαροι, and that of Korses, Κόρσοι. Those two alone, on the word of all the geographers and historians, are names of
indigenous peoples. All the other populations of the isle, Sardinians, Iolians, Ilians, Libyans, Iberians, etc., came from the
sea. But the Hellenes also knew that Βάλαροι, Balares, is not, properly speaking, a proper noun: it is, in the language of
the Korses, just an epithet signifying fugitive, exile, escapee, φυγάσ, or, as the present islanders would say, bandit,
banditto. Across all the centuries, we see in effect that Gallura and the neighboring isles are peopled with exiles, with
Corsican bandits: the dialect of Gallura is much more close to Corsican than to Sardinian. Balares being just an epithet,
the name of Korses, already known to the Ηellenes, thus was, from the origin, the only veritable name of the people
established on the two Corsican and Sardinian coasts of the Mouths.

The Maddalena and all the isles which are near to the coast of Sardinia, to the south of the strait, had never been regarded as
dependants of the Sardinian realm before the year 1767. Only then did the viceroy Des Hayes send a naval force there to take
posession of them in the name of the king. The isles were barely inhabited by some families of shepherds originally from Corsica...
These made alliance with the families of shepherds of northern Sardinia, and in a very little time, there was in that place a population
of robust people [ίφθιμοι Λαιστρυγόνες], formed from the blood of the two nations... The Corsican colony, which establishes itself
about a century ago at Magdalena, at first occupies the summit, at the point where the little church of the Trinity is found today. The
colony then acquired refugees fleeing the conscription of the Empire.

In the archipelago of Maddalena, our charts still know of the cape of the Refugees, Punta Banditti: the Greeks and
Romans would have said “the cape of the Balares”. If we wish to seek what could be for the first Semitic navigators the

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exact translation of balaros, banditto, φυγάς, we promptly see it should resort to the root ‫שרד‬, s.r.d., which signifies at the
same time flee, escape, leave one’s home, and evade danger. The Hebrews and the Arabs have the adjective ‫שריד‬, sarid,
to designate the fugitive, the wanderer, one who remains of a tribe or an army after a raid or a defeat. The form ‫שריד‬,
sarid, or equivalent forms, ‫דרוד‬, sarud, ‫שרד‬, sared, etc., thus would translate bandito and balaros. The Hellenes knew that
the hero Sardos, coming from Libya, was a descendant of Hercules. I believe that in effect the name of Sardes came from
Libya: it was only the Phoenician translation of Balares. The first navigators had here their point of the Balares, of the
Sard[inians]: not far from the spring Artakia, they have retained, down to us, the name of Point of Sardinia; it is only, I
think, an antique Point of the Bandits. For the point Sardinia is not, like the cape Cors[ica] on the other isle, the first
extremity of island land which is offered to navigators. But, behind the the shelter of the isles of Maddalena, it should
have been the point of the Sardes, of the Fleers, of the Fugitive Korses, who, from the Phoenician times, came to debark
in the bays of Licia or of Mezzo-Schiffo, as today they come to Porto-Longone and Santa-Teresa.

I arrived at Longo-Sardo by a detestable embarkation. I was received in the house of a Corsican, M. Antoine Peretti, settled in
Sardinia after having been obliged to leave Corsica, as a result of a fight which had broken out on the day of Easter in the church of
Olmeto, his home, a scene from the Middle ages, where two men perish, several were wounded, and which gained Peretti a blow
from a stiletto. After eighteen years of exile, Peretti had been recently acquitted by the royal court of Bastia and he could return to
his native isle. The extraordinary man, whose courage and adventures I knew, and whom I had long wished to know, was in flight at
my arrival in Sardinia and hidden because of an affair between the customs office and the smugglers, in which he was, he said,
accidentally involved, and in which he suffered a bullet in the stomach. Upon my passage to Sardo-Lingo, Peretti had again been
obliged to stay in the countryside after his quarrel with a doctor who accused him of impertinance and who, too sensitive, had
severely bruised his head with the handle of his stiletto.

I believe that the Odyssian poet already had, in his periple, the Cape of Exiles: in his ordinary style, it is from the place
name that he drew the adventure of his story. For we know how he proceeds. We have seen how the periple related to him
the angers and the appeasements of Stromboli, the vacillation of Aeolos, following the direction of the winds, and how
the poet imagined from these the double voyage of Ulysses to Aeolos and the double reception, benevolent with the wind
from the north, angry with the wind from the south. In our Isle of the Sard[inian]s, near the Point of the Exiles, the Poet
imagines only flights. It is at first the flight of the men sent to explore the land:

τω δε δύ’ αίξαντε φυγη επι νηας ‘ικέσθην

It is then the flight of Ulysses himself, who draws his brave sword only to cut his moorings and flee, in abandoning the
bulk of his fleet:

αιψα δ’ εμοις ‘ετάροισιν εποτρύνας εκέλευσα

εμβαλέειν κώπες, ‘ίν ‘υπεκ κακότητα φύγοιμεν.

If the episode of Kalypso is the captivity of Ulysses, if the episode of Charybdis and Scylla is the shipwreck, the episode
of the Lestrygons is the Flight:

ασπασίως δ’ ες πόντον επηρεφέας φύγε πέτρας

νηυς εμή.

In the whole and in the details, the entire episode of the Lestrygons has been arranged for that flight: the bulk of the fleet,
which should not have been able to escape, has gone to anchor in the hollow port; only the boat of Ulysses, which should
flee, remains outside. Neither with the Cyclops, nor with Circe, nor with Scylla, does Ulysses abandon his companions in

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such a manner: ordinarily, when he draws his saber, it is to defend his crews, and not to fail them. But here we are on the
isle of the Flight, in Sardinia.
The periple should also have furnished our poet the name of the Korses. Pausanias (or the author copied by him), after
having given evidence to us on the true sense of the word balaros and on the Libyan origin of the Sardinian heroes, adds
that the isle named Kurnos by the Hellenes had received from the Libyans the name of Korsika. If Korsos is of the same
origin as Sardos, we should relate it to the Semitic root ‫קרצים‬, k.r.s., which signifies to bite, tear off, that is to say,
literally, cut and grind with the teeth, which, figuratively, is to say bite with insults, mockery or criticism. In Arabic, the
verb k.r.s. has all these senses: in Hebrew, for the figurative sense, they especially employ the turn of phrase bite the
piece, Ekal keres, ‫אכל קרץ‬, which the Greek translators of the Bible translate as σφοδρως εσθίω, eat terribly, σφόδρα
κακως λέγω, malign terribly, δυσφημω, decry: the even more exact equivalent would be speak against, αντίφημι. We
understand there why the king of the Lestrygons is a terrible eater, who seizes one of those sent by Ulysses and makes a
meal of him:

αυτίχ’ ‘ένα μάρψας ‘ετάρων ωπλίσσατο δειπνον,

and why, at the same time, he is the accuser, the maligner, the contrdictor, Anti-phates, Λαιστρογόνος Αντιφάταο. The
Odyssian poet knew that the Korses, ‫קרצים‬, Korsim, were the off-tearing, eaters of pieces, ‫אכליםקרץ‬, okelim laham: it can
be that, translating one part as Anti-phates, the poet had transcribed the other as Lamos, and perhaps this is what may
explain to us why Telepylos, town of Antiphates, is also the town of Lamos, as Pylos, the capitol of Nestor, is also the
town of Nelea:

Λάμου αιπυ πτολίεθρον.

At the origin of all these fine things, we should perhaps place just the phrase transmitted from periple to periple up to
Diodorus: “the natives of the isle use milk, honey and meats as nourishment”, ο‘ι δ’ εγχώριοι τροφαις μεν χρωνται
γάλακτι και μέλιτι και κρέασι. They are not Eaters of Bread or Eaters of Lotus: they are Eaters of Meat, Tearers of Flesh,
Korses: “the name of Korses comes from Korsis, a slave woman, cowherd”, In debarking, Ulysses wished to know
“which were the men, eaters of wheat, in the land”, and it is why he detached two men and a herald toward the town:

δη τότ’ εγων ‘εστάρους προίειν πεύθεσθαι ιόντας,

ο‘ί τινες ανέρες ειεν επι χθονι σιστον έδοντες.

In Sardinia, one finds eaters of wheat: the south of the isle “has plains fertile in all things, but especially in wheat”, χώραν
έχου ευδαίμονα τοις πασι, σίτω δε και διαφερόντως. But the herders of the Mouths and of Corsica “are wild animals or
beasts”, ‘όσον εμφαίνεται και το βοσκηματωδες εν αυτοις, “who desert the plains and the labor, and live only on dairy
and flesh”, έφεφον πολλάς αγέλας βοσκημάτων, ων παρεχομένων δαψιλεις τροφας ηρκουντο προσφερόμενοι γάλα και
τυρον και κρέα. To the flesh of their flocks, they add the flesh of the tuna. Another such passage, which Diodorus copies
in the periples of the Red Sea, would furnish us the same text (or an exact equivalent) as the primitive periple which the
Odyssian poet could have had before his eyes, when he imagines the massacre of the Achaeans:

The flow brings an enormous quantity of fish which come to seek their nourishment in the hollows and under the rocks of the
coast, and the outflow leaves them in the hollows. Then the natives in a crowd, with women and children, gather on the rocks and,
divided into bands, with savage cries, they set themselves to hunt. The women and the children take the smaller fish, and those closer
to the coast. The men attack the larger specimens, without other weapons than sharpened horns or pieces of stone.

The Odyssian periple should also have depicted the first inhabitants of the Gallura with the weapons, the costume and
the mores which we know by the later texts and the monuments. The mountaineers of Sardinia appear to have been the

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Swiss of the Phoenician Mediterranean. Always prepared to accept the wage and the harness of war, they appear to us as
veritable soldiers, that is to say, as mercenaries. The bronze statuettes found on the isle represent them “is though the
artist has seen them around him and has depicted them at their best, with the costumes which they wore to war, on the
hunt or in their domestic occupations: the soldiers form the richest and most interesting series”. And the archeologists
describe to us at length the soldiers dressed in metal, helmets and greaves of metal, armed with shield, dagger, bow, saber,
harpoon ar club. The stature of the tall warriors is increased more by the two gigantic horns of the helmet or by other
insignia. Pointing very high behind the man or on his head, the insignia are of long stalks of iron fastened behind the
statuettes and which appear to come from the quiver. Is it an enlarged arrow, indicating the profession and aptitude of the
person? Is it a palm, sign of victory? One of the stalks, ending in two wheels, has all the appearance of a shaft of a chariot,
to which a sort of basket would be attached.. to the valient soldiers, the Scripture would give the title which they always
awarded to the men of war, judges and kings: ‫היל‬-‫גבור‬, gibor-haïl, great of strength, giant of courage. The paraphrase, in
the Scripture, comes to simply signify soldier: ανηρ δυνατός, δυνατός ισχύι, translate the Seventy. I think that the
primitive periple should have applied to the Sardes some similar title; our poet has translated it very exactly by giants of
strength, ίφθιμοι γίγαντες:
φοίτων ίφθιμοι Λαιστρυγόνες άλλοθεν άλλος,
μυρίοι, ουκ άνδρεσσιν εοκόντες, αλλα γίγασιν.

*
* *

May 18, 1901. - Leaving yesterday evening from Civita-Vecchia by the steamer which brings the daily courier into
Sardinia, we arrive in the morning, before the dawn, in the bay of Aranci: it is the advance port of the muddy port of
Terranova. Here we take the small steamer which, two times a week, makes the service to Maddalena: we have four or
five hours to wait. Between the enormous cliffs, whose steep walls bear sheared-off plateaus, the gulf of Terranova sinks
its cloudy passage up to the mists which, there below, all the way at the foot, float over the marsh. Pitted with grottos and
niches, the cliffs are populated by innumerable birds. The bay of Aranci is entirely covered from the open sea by cape
Gigari and by the small islet Fiarello: “it offers to the coastal cruisers an excellent shelter against all the winds, except
those from the southeast; fresh water and wood abound there”.
We finally leave. From Aranci to Maddalena should take three or four hours of transit. But the contrary wind, which
blows with violence from the northwest, retards our progress somewhat, and forces the small sailing craft which follow us
to quickly seek shelter under the promontories of the rugged coast: “The lands of the interior form a continuous chain of
high mountains, which lower, with numerous ravines, toward a very indented coast”. Nothing is more monotonous than
the coast, where the promontories and recesses succeed each other, all similar, indiscernable, in front of a regular sierra.
Only the accustomed eye of the pilots knows how to discover points of orientation: “Mount Congianus has 650 meters of
height and can serve as a seamark in the navigation of the gulf”. Further distant, the Testa di Cane, with its special shape,
and cape Ferro, with “its ferruginous nature and its dark red color”, serve again as guides.
At the detour of cape Ferro, the Bear suddenly appears, between the two summits of its crumbling promontory. Once
they discovered it, the navigators coming from the east always have in view the Bear which will guide them across the
folds and channels of the Mouths. Precise, well-detached against the sky, planted well on the pedestal of its high
peninsula, the silhouette of the rock reproduces in a marvelous fashion the profile of the animal whose name it bears:
craning its neck, already standing on the two forepaws, the line of the rear gathered up and half-sprawling on the ground,
the Bear sets itself to walk in nodding its head. It is impossible to imagine a statue made by the hand of man which would
give at a distance a similar illusion of life. In the jumble of the promontories, of the gulfs, of the reefs, of the crumbling
rocks, in front of the uniform coast which always stretches the same sierra with even teeth against the sky, the navigators

444
are assured of their route as soon as they have made the cape of the Bear. It suffices them to go to it and round its point to
discover the good entrance of the Mouths and to directly thread the road of the sunset. On location, one appreciates the
usefulness of the promontory at its true value, and one understands the renown which the first thalassocracies will give it.
We have crossed the passage between the Bear and Caprera, then the pass between the Bear and San Stefano and
Maddalena. We reach the bay of the latter isle. The insular channels, all bordered by the same granitic chaos, would be a
maze without escape, were it not for the salutary signal of the Bear. Finally here we are in the port of Maddalena: on the
quai is aligned an entire small town, belted with detached forts, cut with streets at right angles. From the steamer itself,
without reaching the quai, we charter a boat, which we will have cross the channel anew, and which will take us into
Sardinian land, in the cove of Parau or Palau, to the spring of the Bear.
In the cove of Parau ends the great route which, from the interior, from the height of the mountains, conducts the
provisions from Gallura to the market of Maddalena. At the edge of the sea and of the spring, some inns have planted
their white houses. In measure as we approach the Sardinian coast, the blocks of granite, which strew the shore, appear
more distinct. The entire façade of Sardinia is littered with enormous blocks. At the echelleof Palau, among the blocks,
rise the domes of large piles of charcoal. Palau has for commerce, other than the provisioning of Maddalena, only the sale
of wood charcoal, which descends here from the forests of Tempio and which the small French and Spanish sailing craft
come to load for Marseilles and Barcelona. In front of the inns, nine enormous piles of charcoal border the sea: two-
wheeled carts, drawn by oxen, arrive, creaking, to discharge their baskets and, in front of the white façades, pour out a
black mist of fine powder.
At the end of a small mole we debark at the echele of Palau. We hope to find a vehicle which will take us from here to
Porto Pozzo. But, in the four inns, there is no vehicle: on the route, only the oxcarts, filled with charcoal or provisions,
descend and reascend in a line. Since the times of la Marmora, who described the vehicles for us above, the Sardinians
have made some progress: their carts no longer have the solid wheels of the past; but, except for the “European” spokes, I
believe that Ulysses would still recognize the amaxes which bring the wood from the mountains to the town”. An
abundant spring wells near the inns; the girls and the boatmen come there to fill their jugs and casks: the strong daughter
of king Antiphates descended to this spring, Arkatia.
Lacking a carriage, we have taken a boat to go to Porto Pozzo. At the moment of leaving the small mole, here arrives a
musician who requests that we take him aboard, with his guitar, his mandolin and his flageolet. He is returning from the
feast of San Pasquale, where he has sung, played and danced two or three hours together. He wished to go to Santa-
Teresa. Being informed that we are going from the coast, he asks us for a place in the bottom of the boat, on the pebbles
which serve us as ballast. Telemachus welcomed the suppliant Theoklymenos: we accepted the musician Antonio. Barely
installed, he goes to sleep and snores with a sonority which delights our two rowers: without ever having read the
Odyssian verse, one of them speaks like the poet: “There is a singer who earns his living twice, with his nose and with his
mouth”.
We leave Palau. An accursed wind from the west opposes our rowers. Slowly, laboriously, we round the bay of
Mezzo-Schiffo, then point Sardinia. The shore is littered with the same granitic blocks, polished, rounded, carved,
hollowed and perforated by the atmospheric agents. Point Sardinia is a pile of the rocks: from the summit down to the
waves, they ride one over the other, rolling and piling up. The first comparison which comes to mind is of a field of
carnage where giants would have been beaten with blows of rocks. For the sailors from Europe, the view of the coast has
nothing surprising: our Atlantic coasts can offer them similar spectacles. But, in the Mediterranean, such granitic chaos is
rare. Especially in the Levantine Mediterranean, one would seek such a specimen in vain. Coming from the Levant, the
first thalassocracies were accustomed only to the sands or walls of their calcarious or marshy coasts; they should be
deeply struck by the entirely new spectacle. It is in the Sardinian strait that they encountered, perhaps for the first time,
the masses of fallen rocks. In sailing along theis coast we better understand, I think, the Odyssian verse “on the tumbled
rocks, the least of which is the weight of a man”,

ο‘ί ‘ρ’ απο πετράων ανδραχθέσι χερμαδίοισιν

445
 βάλλον.

After point Sardinia, which still covered us a little, we are fully exposed to the wind from the west, which is against us.
We have to endlessly haul on the oars. The awakened musician needs to put himself also to hard work rowing. During
three hours we saw and circled the cape over the Scoglio Colombo, the Rock of the Dove, over the Lais-Trigonie, which,
alone, can indicate to us the entrance to the Well. For the entry of the Well is invisible: the Punta delle Vacche covers it;
under its pile of rocks, the Punta resembles all the other points of our passage. The wind from the west, ever stronger,
raises a strong swell which further opposes our efforts. We have spent three or four hours to cover five kilometers.
Finally, rounding Punta delle Vacche, here is the Well. The very narrow “mouth” has, on each side, a sort of natural
mole which, perpendicular to the coast, projects its piled rocks into the passage. Across the inlet, some reefs render the
entry very difficult, ‘αραιν δ’ είσοδος εστιν.
We have stopped our boat outside of the inlet. Sail reefed, oars shipped, we have attached the mooring to the rocks
which, from the point, plunge into the sea. We jump onto the rocks to the left. Behind us, in the sea, above the boat which
rocks at the whim of the swell, appear the reefs of the Colombo Rock. Before us, the Well opens its two walls of tumbled
rocks. The slope is not very steep. But the Odyssian epithet ηλίβατος, “where one cannot walk or climb”, depicts with a
perfect exactitude the slope of chaotic rocks, where the walking is difficult and the ascent a little dangerous, because of
slips and missteps on the rounded, smooth and tortuous surfaces.
From above, from point Macchiamala, the entire bay appears, unbroken, without a wave, without a ripple. The slightly
tarnished mirror contrasts with the great sea spangled with dancing waves, which the wind from the west whips outside
the inlet. At the foot of the bay, a short beach of sand and of marsh borders a small undulating plain. Some houses, at the
hamlet of Dispensa, border the route which, by steps, slowly climbs toward the distant hills. The ribbon of the great route
stands out very cleary. The town of San Pasquale crowns the first heights. Behind, in the distance, the coastal sierra raises
its mural loaded with forests and rain clouds. The “high mountains” close the horizon in a continuous circle; but the deep
valley of the river Liscia cuts a large door there. The ribbon of the great route appears distinctly: its straight line, leaving
the bay, cuts the plain, then its switchbacks zigzag the flank of the hills and the mountains. The point of Macchiamala is
truly a steep lookout, σκοπιη παιπαλόεσσα. Out to Maddalena, the “watch” of Macchiamala, 94 meters high and isolated
on all sides, surveys the channels and isles. On the eastern horizon, above point Sardinia, the Bear profiles its
unforgettable silhouette: the entire sea of the strait is dominated by it.
We have returned to our boat. We have detached the mooring. We will wish to round cape Erebe and go from there on
the roads of the sunset toward Santa Teresa. But the wind from the west, which increases more and more, forces us to
forego the routes of the night and to retake the routes of the day toward la Maddalena. Then, with the great wind from aft,
which strikes the sail fully, we let “the pilot and the breeze drive”: the rowers draw wine from the cask; the musician
retrieves his guitar and, singing and drinking, we run on the back of the swell, which which leaps and sings alongside. In
alternating couplets, the musician and the sailors sing an endless complaint, where it is a question of love and small birds.
The wind builds. We run before the gale. We have made the cape above the bay of la Maddalena. The rain begins to
fall in large fat drops. Suddenly, the strait is filled with cries and whistles. A flotilla of steam launches runs down on us
from all corners of the horizon. They hail us. They shout orders at us and, it appears, threats. At full steam, a launch full
of uniforms arrives alonside us. A chief of Lestrygons - I wish to say, a high officer of the navy - sets a grapnel which
renders us prisoners.
On the order of the chief, two Lestrygons in uniform come to station themselves in our boat to observe our actions and
words. They confiscate our baggage. With whistles of triumph, the flotilla takes us in tow and hauls us into “the hollow
port”, in the military bay. They imprison the crew and even the unfortunate musician. They lead me to the police post: we
are accused of espionage in the strategic waters. Nevertheless, by virtue, perhaps, of our dripping clothes and fatigue - the
chief of the Lestrygons was amiable in the performance of the annoying duty - the following day they will set our
interrogation before the supreme king of the “giants of power”. They even return our baggage. But they extract from us
the promise not to leave our assigned lodging and not speak a word to anyone. An observer follows our steps.

446
 The next day, the Italian admiral who commands the arsenal interrogates us at length. In spite of our denials, he
appears convinced of our guilty motives. Some ill-intentioned accuser will have “chewed our flesh”, for the admiral
contradicts all that we assert to defend ourselves: we are in the hands of Antiphates. At the end of several hours,
nevertheless, “Zeus sends him less cruel thoughts”. The Greek text of the Odyssey, an Atlas antiquus and a Hebrew
dictionary by F. Leopold come to convince him that our studies might not be a threat to the security of the Italian fleet. He
decides to allow us full freedom of motion, for the day, at least: it is Sunday; the next day, Monday, he will telegraph to
Rome and inform our ambassador of us. Thus we are free to remain on la Maddalena, but not to go about in the strait.
What is happening in that closed bay where we have liberty only on our word?.. Should I also admit that Ifelt some
fear, less from the cruelty of the Lestrygons than from the intemperate zeal of our diplomats? Certainly my exploration of
the Mouths was not a suspect or disloyal enterprise. In spite of the photographs which we have taken, I could never have
revealed the least cannon or torpedo. A university man, I had never been, even for a year, a “giant of power”... I
nevertheless feared the perhaps too precise information our ambassador might give on my identity: I sometimes concern
myself with foreign politics and I teach geography at the Naval graduate school. If the king of the Lestrygons came to
know of these qualities of mine, could all the Hebrew dictionaries clean me of the suspicion of esponiage?... During the
day, a boat left for Livourne. With the permission of Antiphates, we took it, ‘ίν’ ‘υπεκ κακότητα φύγοιμεν. And this is
why I have been able to give here only mediocre photographs of the Bear: our boatmen were to take us to the promontory
in conducting us to the gulf or Aranchi. Before fleeing that Lestrygonia, I at least obtained the freedom of our crew.
Perhaps the musician will someday set in couplets the adventure of my Nostos. Hannon the Carthaginian in his periple
relates to us how he also took flight one day, fearing the ferocity of the islanders and following the advice of his seers,
φόβος ουν έλαβεν ‘ημας και ο‘ι μάντεις εκέλευον εκλείπειν την νησον.

BOOK NINE

CIRCE AND THE LAND OF THE DEAD

Nunc age, Averna libi quae sint loca cumque lacusque expediam

Lucret., VI, 739.

CHAPTER I

THE SPARROWHAWK
Haec nemora indigenae Fauni Nymphaeque tenebant.

VIRG., Aen., VIII, 314.

447
 Ulysses, fleeing the Lestrygons, does not take “the roads of the night”. He returns to the day, to the dawn, with Circe.
“on the isle of Aiaia, where are the houses of Aurora, daughter of darkness, and the choirs and the rising of the sun”,

νησόν τ’ Αιαίην ‘όθι τ’ Ηους ηριγενείς

οικία και χοροί εισι και αντολαι Ηελίοιο.

We need to understand well the different terms which the language of the classical Greeks was not adequate to explain
to us.
For the Egyptians, the sky rested on four pillars. To the preservation of each of them was attached a god: “Osiris or
Horus, the sparrowhawk, presided over the southern pillar, Set over the northern pillar, Thoth over that of the west, and
Sapdi, the creator of the zodiacal light, over that of the east. They divided the world into four regions, or particularly, into
four houses, defined by the mountains which border the sky and by the diameters which cross between the pillars. Each of
the houses belonged to only one of them, and neither the three other gods nor even the sun could enter there, stay there or
cross there without having obtained the authorization of the master.” The conception and the nomenclature are also
encountered in the cosmologies of other Oriental peoples: “The same as for the Egyptians, the world, for the Chaldeans, is
a sort of closed chamber balanced in eternal waters. The earth is the low part of it, and like the floor. It has the form of an
overturned boat, hollow above, not one of the narrow canoes in use among other peoples, but a “moses basket”, a type of
round trough of the tribes of the lower Euphrates which serve from antiquity up to our days. It goes to raise itself from the
extremities up to the center, like a huge mountain: the misty regions, where the Euphrates takes its source mark almost the
summit of it. They had at first imagined that it was dividede into seven zones, superposed along its flanks in the manner
of the steps of a temple. They later divide it into four houses, of which each corresponded to one of the four cardinal
points... The astronomical or astrological expression, Kibrat Arbai or Irbiti, the Four-Houses, is applied to the data of
geography and current history. [The petty kings of Chalea], as minor as they were, disguised their weakness under the
name of Kings of the Four-Houses, Kings of the Universe, Kings of Shumir and of Akkad. The names are entered into the
protocol of the kings of Assyria who title themselves shar Kibrat Arbai, prince of the Four-Houses and shar Kishati,
prince of the Universe.”
I believe that the “houses of the morning” of our Odyssian poem are just the translation of an Oriental expression. The
expression is an άπαξ ειρημένον (once only) in the Homeric poems. But it corresponds to a mode of orientation which we
have already pointed out. Like the Semites, our Odyssian sailors, who do not seek the north to determine their position,
always ask themselves where the rising and setting is, where the sun, “which lights the mortals,” φαισίμβροτος (for there
is a sun which lights the dead), rises over the earth, and where it descends. It is this which Ulysses is shortly going to say
to his companions. The phrase comes back without cease:

ου γάρ τ’ ίδμεν ‘όπη ζόφος ουδ’ ‘όπη ηώς

ουδ’ ‘όπη ηέλιος φαεσίμβροτος εις’ ‘υπο γαιαν
ουδ’ ‘όπη αννειται...

The value of the different terms appears clearly if we imagine the earth in the form of a square edifice, whose four
angles would be at the north, east, south and west: the four façades thus would be northeast, southeast, southwest and
northwest. The northeast façade saw the sun at its rising: it is the side, the house of the morning and of the Levant (rising,
east). The southeast façade would receive the rays of the sun almost all of the day: it is the midday [ midi, south], the day,
the house of the sun. The southwest façade saw the sun at its setting: it is the house of the evening, of the setting,
‘έσπερος. Finally, the northwest façade never received the sun: it is the side, the house of the shadow, which the Odyssian
poet calls zophos, ζόφος, and which the classical commentators translate as σκια, the shadow, σκότος, the darkness.
Above the four façades blow the four winds: the Borea comes from the northeast; the Notos comes from the southeast; the
Euros comes from the southwest; and the Zephyros comes from the northwest.

448
 But the four façades and the four winds are always grouped two by two. For, to orient himself, the man turns himself
toward the Levant (rising) and toward the sun: he thus has half of the sky, that is to say, two houses, before him, and the
other half of the sky, two houses, behind. We have seen that the Odyssian poet knows the terms and uses them. For him,
all that which is before is the dawn and the light; all that which is behind is the setting and the shadow. The peoples live
either before, toward the dawn and the sun, or behind, toward the darkness, toward the zophos; the two groups constitute
the entirety of humanity:

ηε προς ηοίων η ‘εσπερίων ανθρώπων.

... ίσασι δέ μιν μάλα πολλοι
ημεν ‘όσοι ναίουσι προς ηω τ’ ηέλιόν τε
ηδ’ ‘όσσοι μετόπισθε ποτι ζόφον ηερόεντα.

Similarly, before and behind, by groups of two, the winds are contrasted: before, it is the Borea and the Notos; behind,
the Euros and the Zephyros. When all the winds blow at the same time, the ship is thrown from the Notos to the Borea,
and from the Euros to the Zephyr:

πάσας δ’ ορόθυνεν αέλλας

παντοιων ανέμων...
συν δ’ Εθρός τε Νότος τ’ έπεσον Ζέφυρός τε δυσαης
και Βορέης...
ως την αμ πέλαγος άνεμοι φέρων ένθα και ένθα.
άλλοτε μέν τε Νότος Βορέη προβάλεσκε φέρεσθαι,
άλλοτε δ’ αυτ’ Εθρος Ζεφύρω είξασκε διώκειν.

Circe lived before, in the house of the dawn and of the rising, toward the daybreak which is the “daughter of
darkness”. The sun, in his daily circuit, passes from the Levant (northeast) to the midday (southeast), then to the setting
(southwest) and from there, during the night, it traverses the shadowy Zophos, ζόφον ηερόεντα, in lighting the dead, from
where it comes back to its rising. The dawn thus comes from darkness; she is daughter of the dark zophos, since she
succeeds him, Ηους ηριγενείης.
The Egyptians had four suns, or particularly four gods symbolizing “the principal phases of the life of the sun during
the day and during the year. Ra symbolized the sun of spring and before its rising; Harma-Khuiti was the sun of summer
and of the morning; Atumu, the sun of autumn and of the afternoon; Khopri, the sun of winter and of the night”. The four
gods in reality were only persons or epithets of Ra, who successively passed through the forms and, each day,
accomplished his circular voyage of the dawn, to midday, to setting and to the night, to return at dawn. I would readily
believe that in our Odyssian poem the turns and returns of the sun, the march or dance in a round, are designated by
χοροί, the choirs. It appears to me that, thus explained, the Odyssian terms “Houses of the dawn, returns and risings of the
sun” become perfectly clear.
Ulysses, in leaving the Lestrygons, thus does not take “the roads of the night”. He sails facing the light, or, more
exactly, to speak like the Semites, “toward the face of the light” ‫אור‬-‫פני‬-‫אל‬, el-pene-or. Turning his back to Sardinia, he
cuts our Tyrrhenian sea from west to east and, just before the Mouths of Bonifacio, he he encounters in front of the Italian
coasts the isle of Circe. From the most ancient thalassocracies up to our days, the isle has always retained the same name.
It is today called Circeo; the Romans said Circei and the Greeks Κίρκειον. By virtue of the Odyssian poem, we see that
the Greek name, νηος Κίρκης, is just the exact translation of an earlier Semitic name, ‫איה‬-‫אי‬, Ai-Aie, the Isle of the
Sparrowhawk.
I have already dealt with the doublet. I have remarkeed on the fidelity of the poet in translating, scrupulously and down
to the slightest nuances, the place names which his original periple furnished him. In Greek, the feminine sparrowhawk,

449
kirke, κίρκη, is almost unused: it is the masculine kirkos, κίρκος, which serves for the two genders: only the article,
masculine or feminine according to the case, serves to distinguish the male and the female. In Hebrew, to the contrary,
only the feminine ai’a, ‫איה‬, is used for the two sexes. The Hebrews employed the word ai’e as a proper noun, even to
designate men: the Seventy have transcribed the Hebrew proper noun as aie, αίε, or aia, αία: two biblical personages, the
sons of Zibeon and the father of Rispa, bear the name. The periple should have said Ai-Ai’a, the isle of the Sparrowhawk,
‫איה‬-‫אי‬: the poet has scrupulously translated isle of Kirke, νησος Κίρκης, in making the bird a sparrowhawk and the nymph
a woman. But he has transcribed it no less scrupulously as Ai-aie, Αιαίη:

Αιαίην δ’ ες νησον αφικόμεθ’. ένθα δ’ έναιεν

Κίρκη ευπλόκαμος, δειην θεος αυδήεσσα.

There, on a point, we guide the vessel silently into a port of good anchorages: a god leads us. Descending to land, we stay two days
and two nights, lying [on the sand], chewing our heart of grief and fatigue. When the curly-haired Aurora brings the third day, I took
my spear and pointed sword and, leaving the vessel, I quickly climbed an observation point to pick out human traces or voices.
arriving at the summit of the steep lookout, I stayed standing: before my eyes, a smoke rose from the palace of Circe, across the
jagged tuff, the forest and the land with large roads. I at first asked myself if I might go to inquire, since the black smoke was in
view. Then, on reflection, it appeared to me more advantageous to return to the cruiser and the seashore, to feed my men, and to send
someone to investigate. I had already descended to not far from the double-horned vessel when a god, taking pity on my
discouragement, sends me, right across my path, a large ten-point stag. From the pastures of the forest, he came down to drink at the
river: the already-high sun made him thirsty. He left the woods. I struck him full in the back below the spine. The bronze of my spear
passes through both sides. He falls bawling in the dust, and his soul expires. Then, climbing on the beast, I pulled the bronze of my
lance from the wound, which I left lying on the ground. Then I cut some shoots and twigs and braided a band from them, well-
twisted at both ends. I tied together the four feet of the enormous beast. I tok the load on my back, and I went toward the black
vessel, supporting myself with the spear... I threw the beast down beside the ship and I awoke all of my men, one after the other.

The episode of Circe goes to unfold on two scenes, the first of which is here: a rocky isle above a port, at the edge of a
river, at the edge of a large forest with game. The other scene, which the poet will describe to us presently, is the palace of
Circe itself, on the other side of the forest.

*
* *

Before the Italian coast, the isle of Circe raises its 541 meters of rocks above the sea. “It is a rocky mass, isolated, very
remarkable, with a summit rising almost sheer from the sea,” say the Nautical Instructions. “On its highest point, which
reaches 541 meters, one sees the ruins of the temple of Circe, a semaphore, and diverse constructions. The tower Paola is
at the northwest point. On the battery Cervia, on the southernmost point of the mount, between the towers Cervia and del
Fico, they burn a permanent white fire, 38 meters above the sea and visible for 11 miles. The fire is located on a round
white tower. A semaphore is established on the point Cristoforo.”
Ulysses goes to climb the “observatory”, on “the steep lookout”,

... ανήιιον ες περιωτήν,

έστην δε σκοπιην ες παιπαλόεσσαν ανελυών.

Mount Circeo, for the sailors, has always been an isle, even though it has the plain of the mainland for one of its
façades: “Situated at the southern extremity of the Pontine marshes, the mountain has the appearance of an isle when one
sees it at a distance”, the Nautical Instructions resume. It is, in effect, truly an isle: the open sea bathes its faces of the

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south and the west; it sinks into the lagoons and swamps, into the sea of the Pontine marshes, to the east and the north:
“The mountain of Circe is truly insular between the sea and the marshes”, says Strabo, το Κιρκαιον όρος νησίζον θαλάττη
τε και έλεσι. One can anchor on the two coasts of mount Circeo,” add the Instructions. “But but it is better in the east part,
below the town of San-Felice, at eleven to eighteen meters, san, at ¾ mile from land, thus well-sheltered from the winds
from the north and west; one should take care not to make landfall on the side of the cape where the bank of the coast,
within the line of five meters depth, extends to a half mile.” The recommendations can relate only to our navies, whose
large vessels anchor in deep waters, far from low shores. The Odyssian sailors, who haul their ships onto the sand, went to
be beached differently. To the harbor of the east coast, which our Nautical Instructions recommend, they preferred the
other façade of the isle: there, a slipway which the marine charts still indicate to us, was formerly the Port of Circei. The
bay offers itself to navigators which arrive from the western high sea. For the small boats of the first thalassocracies, the
beach is much more convenient than the “fairground” bay of San Felice. Below the tower Paola, which crowns the
extreme point of our isle toward the west, a narrow channel leads to the lagoon of Paola, at the foot of which the natives
still have their Port of the Buffalo. The charts and the Nautical Instructions point out to us the ancient Roman port in that
spot.
When the first Romans will found a colony in the frequented waters, it was in effect on the edge of the lagoon that they
will install their trading posts: the ruins of the Roman town remain around the harbor, which today is called Cala dei
Pescatori, the Port of the Fishermen. Enclosed on all sides, the port offers a marvelous refuge to boats which are able to
reach it. But here, as in the Small Isle of the Cyclops, one must maneuver well: the the passage is narrow. Here again, it is
a god which pilots the vessel of Ulysses up to the shores of the foot, where all is quiet, where the wave comes to die in
silence:

ένθα δ’ επ’ ακτης νει κατηγαγόμεσθα σιωπη

ναύλοχον ες λιμένα καί τις θεος ‘ηγεμόνευεν.

On the shore, the sailors find fresh water. In the midst of the sands surges the Fonte della Bagnaja. The isle itself has
springs in great number: at midslope, always well-supplied, wells the Fontana di Mezzo Monte. Another advantage for
our primitive navies: the isle is hollowed by numerous grottos, some at the very level of the water, which penetrates them,
others behind a dry shore, Grotta della Capre, Grotta del Pecipizio, Grotta della Maga. The last grotto of the Magician is
by far the largest: it opens in the face of the sea of the south, below San Felice. Our Odyssian poet knew of the grottos:
“Pull the ship ashore,” Circe will say to the Achaeans, “hide the cargo and the rigging in the caverns”,

νηα μεν αρ πάμπρωτον ερύσσατε ηπειρόνδε,

κτήματα δ’ εν σπήεσσι πελάσσατε ‘όπλα τε πάντα.

The Grotto of the mgician, with its small shore where the surf comes to die, lends itself well to this maneuver.
The vessel of Ulysses has entered the “dock”, ναύλοχον ες λιμένα. Worn out from fatigue, the men debark and lie on
the sand. For two days, wrapped in their cloaks, they wish to know nothing more. But Ulysses cannot rest in this manner,
in ignorance of the unknown land. The third day, he leaves the vessel and climbs to the semaphore:

καρπαλίμως παρα νηος ανήιον ες περιωπήν.

He arrives at the summit of the Guard. He surveys the entire isle, and the sea and the nearby lands. Before him, toward the
south, spreads the limitless ocean. The southern façade of the island plunges steeply into the great sea:

ειδον γαρ σκοπιην ες παιπαλόεσσαν ανελθων

νησον, την πέρι πόντος απείριτος εστεφάνωται.

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 “The isle is encircled by a sea without limit.” In the Homeric text, the verse applies to the isle of Circe itself and to the
adjacent land. It is possible that, in the periple, they were this way: the first navigators, ill-informed on the extent and true
nature of the Italian mainland, were able to make an island of it, as they will make of Spain an Isle of the Hideout, I-
spania. The very name I-talia would enter into the category of insular names which are familiar to us: the etymology
which the Ancients habitually give, italia=vitalia=land of the calves, vitulus, is of the same worth in my eyes as that of
Oinotria=land of wine: it is just a simple pun.
But another explanation appears more likely to me. I believe that in his usual manner our Greek poet here combines
different details of his Semitic periple and that he has applied them to the same isle of Circe, which the periple perhaps
said of the vicinity. In the episode of Calypso and in that of the Pheacians, and in still many others, we have already
encountered or we will encounter a similar process: with the Cyclops, the Little Isle becomes an isle of goats when, in
reality, two isles, Nisida and Capri, exist, of which one is the Little Isle, Nesis, and the other the Isle of Goats, Kapraia.
Here, before Ulysses, rolls the great sea “the infinity of its ocean”, πόντος απείριτος, which nothing limits, except, at the
southern horizon, the Ocenic Isles, the Isles of the Pontos: Ποντιαι, Pontiae, said the Ancients: we say Ponza. I believe
that the Semitic periple also gave the exact description of the isles: but our poet transports one of the traits of Ponza to the
land of Circe. Strabo, who visibly copies some detailed periple for the description of the Italian coast, tells us: “In plain
view are situated two isles of the high sea, Pandataria and Pontia, small but well-populated”, εν όψει μάλιστα πρόκεινται
δύο νησοι πελάγιαι, Πανδαταρία και Ποντία.
Behind Ulysses, toward the east and the north, extends the Italian land. Low, flat, indistinct, cut with woods and
marshes, the Italian shore also spreads, to the mountainous horizon, its sea of forests and scrub, from which in places the
smoke arises from encampments of herdsmen and charcoal-makers.

αυτη δε χθαμαλη κειται. καπνον δ’ ενι μέσση

έδρακον οφθαλμοισι δια ορυμα πυκνα και ‘ύλην.

All along the sea, from Astura to Terracine and even beyond, for more than a hundred kilometers, the Italian land
presents the same appearance. In the space which separates the waves of the open sea and the mountains of the interior, a
chain of dunes borders the sea; a series of lagoons and of marshes borders the dunes; a succession of forests and
impenetrable thickets extends between the lagoons and the foot of the mountains. Sands, forests and marshes, it is another
veritable sea, an extended plain, monotonous and uninhabited. Selva de Terracina, Macchia di Bassiano, Macchia di
Caserta, Macchia del Quarto, Macchia del Piano, the north and east façades of our isle of Circei are encircled by the
selva and by the scrub, which the Odyssian poem describes to us very exactly by the two terms δρυμα πυκνά, thickets,
and ‘ύλη, forest. The Instructions still employ the two words: “a band of scrub borders the beach of sand and, within it,
one sees great masses of trees”. The descriptions of the voyagers just develop the two terms:

The next day, our host decided to lend us some small horses, very mischievous but, at heart, of good character, to make an
excursion into the macchia de Cisterna. He himself, mounted on the most mettlesome of the animals, and holding in his hand a long
pole, with the aid of which he very handily lowered or raised the barriers, put himself at the head of the caravan. It is not easy to
travel in the lands cut by woods and swamps. Without a guide we would be lost and, if our host had not given us the example and
passed first, we would certainly not have crossed certain streams where our horses had water up to the chest. We soon arrived at the
center of a beautiful forest which is just the continuation of that of Fossa Nuova, where oaks, live oaks or cork oaks, and elms of
great beauty grow. In places, great vines run from one tree to the other: we could believe ourselves to be in some great forest of
America. To speak truly, the exploitation is so difficult and the price of wood so low that many trees die standing, and they do not
take the effort to harvest those which the wind blows down. Thus there is little difference between these forests and those of the New
World. From time to time we encounter a stray buffalo, which our guide drove with heavy blows of the pole toward the opening of
the path which we follow. In the least brushy places, we hear grunts and saw, on several occasions, bands of wild boars pass, which
live in the swamp as in the promised land. Eagles and, I believe, pyrargues, flew in the clearings and gave chase to doves and ducks
which, several times, flew up in numerous bands in the midst of the reeds. What a fine hunt we would have been able to make, if we

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had had guns! But I forget that, in the virgin forests of the old world, hunting is reserved!... Of all the animals of Circe, hardly any
remain today except for the wild boars, whose packs inhabit the forests and swamps.
The farm of Campo Morto, the only one which remains to the church of Saint Peter of Rome (1833), is located near the Pontine
Marshes, between Velletri and Nettuno. The farm has 400 horses, several hundred bulls, cows, buffalo, etc. It has, besides, two
thousand pigs, nourished on acorns in the forest, which extends almost without interruption from Toscane up to mount Circe, and
which is full of white oaks. The marsh nourishes the buffalo. The most elevated part of the farm contains four thousand sheep... The
hunt is very considerable in the marsh. They find boars, deer and woodcocks there. They are served by small boats, and they get out,
barefoot or in boots, in the places where the boats cannot go...

From the top of his observatory, Ulysses looks out over the sea of verdure. No trace of human activity. No human
sound:

εί υως εργα ιδοιμι βροτων ενοπήν τε πυθοίμην.

From here, only some smoke of charcoal-burners, some openings which the half-wild livestock would make in the brush
and, scoring the verdure, cutting it section from section, “large routes”,

καί μοι εείσατο καπνος απο χθονος ευρυοδείης.

Nothing is more singular than the macchie, which are neither selva, forest nor bosco, woods. The macchie are the result of the
worst [exploitation]. There are trees, bushes and brush, cut, chopped and broken in all the heights, and the ax of the charcoal-burner
is always in combat there with the most fecund nature which, all around where they cease to torment it, springs up and reclaims its
rights and its beauty... The white pine flourishes everywhere. The universal croaking of frogs replaced the singing of the birds. We
travel on an antique road so perfectly preserved that, on reflection, we were frightened by the absenceof life... Across the thick forest
crossed a thousand paths worn by the half-wild livestock...
All the coast is bordered by a contiguous set of dunes, of twelve or fifteen feet of height, distanced thirty or forty feet from the
sea. Between the sea and the hills is the way of Severus, sometimes covered with sand. Behind the dunes is the forest. Our guides
appeared to fear passing Torre Paterno, the only habitation which there was on the coast. They frequently climbed on the hills of
sand to look, across the forest, for the desired refuge. All at once we see fire on the shore. It was the temporary habitation of twenty-
five Neopolitan fishermen, who made their supper in huts of branches, straw and reeds... Arriving [near them], we were little
reassured to see swarthy men, half savage, all armed with knives or cutlasses at the waist. But fortunately for us, the huts were near
Torre Paterno, at the very end of the path which should have led us to the desired refuge, to the only shelter which there was for us in
the wastelands.

The epithet ευρυοδείν, “with large routes”, applied by the poet to the deserted land, can appear strange. Nevertheless I
would willingly believe that the poet finds the epithet in his periple. Today, on the maps of the Italian administrative staff,
the interior of the land appears completely scored by straight roads which, from the sea, climb to the interior, and upon
which no irregularity of the terrain comes to impose the slightest curve. Route of the Fishermen, Strada dei Pescatori, the
name, which several of the roads bear, sufficiently indicate their usage: it is by them that the people of the sea climb to
sell their fish in the burgs and towns of the interior. The roads today are only paths: they are no longer the “large routes”
of the plain. Since the Roman antiquity, it is no longer across the forest and the scrub, it is no longer toward the western
sea, toward the coast of the open sea and the mountainous islet, that the large roads of the natives descend. Entirely to the
contrary: Via Appia, Linea Pia or Rome-Terracine railroad, from the Romans up to our days, the routes avoid crossing the
Pontine Marshes; they hold themselves away from the marsh, on the last slope of the mountains, and they come to end at
the harbor of Terracine. But in primitive times it went enirely differently: the Roman colony of Circei, said the tradition,
dated from the first times of the Republic, perhaps even from the Kingdom; the existence of the colony and its rôle in the
commerce of the first centuries prove to us that before the establishment of the routes toward Terracine, it is at Circei that
the great roads of the interior end. In that condition of primitive commerce and that civilization, our parasitic isle served

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as as a station to the Peopes of the Sea: it is to the trading post of the foreigners that the “large routes” of the natives
directly descended. The archeologists, furthermore, appear to have retrieved the proofs that before the Roman epoch the
region of the Pontine Lands knew prosperous days and could nourish numerous populations. Before the conquest of the
land by the Romans, in the first centuries of the classic epoch, in the times of the Odyssey, the Pontine Plain was covered
with routes, sectioned with canals and drainage. It is a fact which Moulin de la Blanchere has set in a clear light by his
memoir entitled A Chapter of Pontine History.

On a fine day at the beginning of April, the observer who, turning his back to Valletri and its vines, climbs one of the tombs of
Appia and views the wide field, sees a singular spectacle. The asphodel (Asphodelus ramosus), “porrazzo” of the Romans, dominates
on the latin hills. All around where the soil has not been tilled, where nature has not broken the tuff, the tufts of plants stand, filling
the air with their odor. In this season, in the middle of each one is raised a tall and robust stem, bearing the flowers of a barely pink
white, streaked with a pale violet. Somewhat scattered everywhere, at random, covering with a thicker carpet the slopes where the
rock is covered with only a thin layer of soil, the asphodel prefers certain places in particular. One sees it grow, holding more to
many great lines which run across the plain, sometimes straight, sometimes sinuous; its tall flowers, which are frequently a meter,
allow the eye to follow the traces, which nothing otherwise distinguished in the uniform land. Now, the traces are of routes. Loving
the thin soil under which the stone is almost at the surface of the ground, the asphodel follows the Roman ways. The Appia itself is
covered with it, and one never explores the lines over which the plant grows abunantly without finding under the tufts the lava stones
of a paving: sometimes they are barely hidden, sometimes one sees them bare; other times one saw nothing, but always, in digging a
little, one finds them. when the solitudes were virgin, a hundred, or even fifty years ago, Fabretti, Kircher, Pratilli, Westphal, Gell
and Nibby would have been able, from the top of the monument of which we have only the trace at Sole e Luna, to follow with the
eye an entire network unrolling itself over the green all around, in long [lines] of asphodels... .

The old roads, which only the asphodel still outlines to our eyes, dates well before the Roman epoch. They are anterior
to the classic age. They have been abandoned since the first conquests of the regions by the Romans:

Today, it is only in sections that the old roads appear. In following the antique routes, one encounters two types of them. Some go
to a nearby town, like that of Velitrae at Antium, or like the Antiatina, which joins the same city to the Appia: they were, if not
consular routes, at least important roads, ways of great communication. Others, to the contrary, no less fine, no less well-made in
appearance, although frequently less large and always lacking sidewalks, are directed across the plain toward places sometimes
without name. That one which detaches itself from the Appia after the Ponte di Mieleis is one of the most curious to follow. It
remains almost intact and has more than a mile of length, and 2.4 meters of width. It is composed of a simple road made of blocks of
lava entirely resembling those of the principal route: they come from the same quarry, which is at Pont di Miele. At abou 900 meters
it passes along a magnificent cistern, which they call the Cento Collone. In reality, there are thirty-six arcades and twenty-eight
pillars forming five long vaulted spans of about 3.5 meters height: the capacity of the reservoir appraches 3,000,000 liters. How and
from where it was filled is that of which its state of ruin does not permit the recognition; but one sees the outflow beneath the route.
Perhaps it had a construction there upon the platform. In any case, it is a very beautiful work, which makes one think of the Piscina
Mirabilis of Bauli. The route borders it, follows the crest of the hillock, in which it is recessed, and finally arrives, at its end, at the
place called la Civitana. Situated at 163 meters of elevation, la Civitana dominates the plain afar; only the crests of San Gennaro,
above the spring of la Parata, limit its horizon to the northwest; all around elsewhere, it is without limit. Nature appears to have made
the point to be the center, the principal location of the entire surrounding plain.

The Pontine Plain, in its lowest areas, presents a great number of branchings and bifurcations of ruined routes, which
appear to lead nowhere, or whose directions, more or less, appear to never have accorded with the sites of classic towns.

At nearly the same point where the route of la Civitana detaches, other roads branch off. They call it the Selciatella, although they
find hardly any debris of “selci” on the first three kilometers; but presently the paving appears, intact and with its border, and
continues toward the farm. It is the route of Velitrae to Antium through Campomorto, or perhaps it was Satricum. Westphal, who has
seen all of the less-ruined roads, thinks that there was a bifurcation, one branch running to Antium, the other to Astura. Another way
detaches itself after the Fosso di Civitana; coming from Velletri, it went from there to Conca, where an enclosure resembling that of
Ardea marks the place of an old city, and from there perhaps to Astura. Not far from the monument of Sol et Luna, another route

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extends from Appia in the direction of the southeast; I have uncovered sections of it up to the vicinity of Formal del Bove. The
description of the Appian Way in the first section has made us encounter seven or eight which cut it. In sum, it appears that, although
the indications are less sure, that a way coming from Cora crossed the Appia before Cisterna and went , crossing others, toward
Presciano and beyond. Between the routes and the Appia, other roads existed, viae provatae, analogous to that which leads to
Civitana; and we also find in the same space other indications of human industry. The Selciatelli di Lazzaria is bordered by true
fields of rubble, which mark the place of edifices, of of tombs. A vast cistern, beside the road, presents four great chambers, of which
two are divided by arches; it could hold more than 9,000 liters.

The abundance of routes can be understood only in a populated land, feritle and prosperous. The texts and the
traditions of the primitive epoch tell us that in reality the Pontine Plain knew a period of great prosperity.

There was a time when the Latin plains were populated and fertile, and when the richest of all were those of the Pontine basin.
The most ancient history of Rome contains few positive facts. But some general impressions emerge from it, which good sense
verifys, and which archeological indications sanction. That the Pontine lands were, in the legends, presented as a rich land, as the
most fertile part of Latium, is expressed in numerous texts. In the primitive history of Rome, famine comes at every instant, and it is
then to the Pontine lands that the Romans go to seek wheat. We see them, driven by hunger, make war there to provision themselves.
The land is barely conquered when the people ask for fields there, and the tribunes promise it to them. Finally, since the most antique
age, the legend of the Kings places an extraorinarily flourishing city there; its neighbors are terrified of it; Tarquin finds there, when
he took it, a fabulous plunder. The Suessa Pometia should have been on the eastern edge of the region which we occupy; certainly its
territory extended partly into the basin of Astura.
The study of the viability has been made only crudely in the fields. Westphal himself, whom one cannot praise too much, has
barely viewed the principal ways. He has taken the Appia too much as a point of departure, and has not emphasized the historic
importance of the small streets. The Appian Way passes across all of the local systems, as it passes near or far from the towns,
without taking the least account of them. it is the product of another epoch and of entirely different needs: it has for its purpose
neither to join the ones nor to serve the others. It can teach nothing of the condition of the land. A close network of local ways, to the
contrary, shows what that condition was. The private roads which lead to the villae, the byways, or ones of common interest, the
routes of great or of middling communication are evidence of immense value. I have already said what destruction has effaced most
of the ways, especially those which were not paved or those which were not paved in lava. Nevertheless the presence of tombs, of
monuments ranged in lines, the persistance of passages followed, greater than and as remarkable as that of the inhabited places, the
necessity that these had been joined to neighboring places, all the indices rank above the archeological vestiges, and sometimes even
provide them. One succeeds, by the method, in grasping the laws which preside over the arrangement of the network and which are
rarely violated. From each [pre-Roman] town, routes go in a star in several directions. One should remark that the routes never go to
a distant point; less still do they have Rome as their object, or even the Way, except when it is near. The limit is the neighboring
town, or especially the local system.

If the pontine Lands really knew, before the Roman times, a period of wealth and population, their net of roads should
have been very complete. For, across the waters and the diluted lands, one cannot imagine that man and beast could easily
circulate without a system of artificial roads. To join the pre-Roman towns with the coast required paved “large ways”.
From the top of his observatory, Ulysses would today no longer perceive the “large ways”; we should not conclude from
this that the Odyssian epithet ευροδείν was inexact then. The towns, farms and primitive routes have disappeared; but the
subsoil has retained up to us a pattern of drainage which was prior to the Roman epoch, and which, from the Roman
epoch begins to be neglected. The first Romans themselves appear not to have maintained the network. The ancient
authors have never spoken to us of it. Only the work of archeologists has succeeded in bringing it to light.

The reason is very simple. This is placed in the epoch when the Latin plains are in full decadence: the system corresponds to a
time very different from the literary age. The latifundium (largeholdings) is everywhere, the desert is created, the abandonment
reaches all the lands more and more. Evidently it is not then that a work of assembly was made, more analogous, I have said
elsewhere, “to the instinctive and perfect work of a colony of beavers or of a republic of ants than to the products of human
experience”. Neither is it of the preceeding age, when the crops give way to praries, when the culture diminishes bit by bit with the
free population, when the war devastates, when the conquest depopulates the Latin and Pontine lands, when the arrangement of

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forces permitting even the conception of similar operations no longer exists. It thus needs to date by a single leap to the first
agricultural ages of Rome, of Italy, of Latium. Only the rustic communities of the primitive epoch can give enough hands to a
communal work of this type: each one, setting himself to work, does what is useful to himself, and the land is benefited. It goes
without saying that that the common custom cannot continue in practice in the time when they seek only to give as little as possible,
when the pasture gives a revenue requiring almost no outlay of funds, when the culture perishes, crushed by its costs. That is why the
Roman agronomists, whatever they knew of drainage, whatever they had already forgotton, continued to give it as an example in
their practical manuals.

We thus need to forget the present desolation and conceive that in Odyssian times the lands were inhabited, cultivated:
a little beyond the maritime band, which the corsairs ravaged, towns had been built, between which routes traced their
straight lines. But, under the feet of Ulysses himself, the plain was just an ocean of verdure, crossed by large routes. The
forest still climbs the slopes of mount Circello. As much as the maritime façade of the isle is steep, rocky and bare, so
much is the continental façde verdant and wooded. Myrtles, oranges and dwarf palms are mixed with oaks and yews.
Springs and rivulets are on the flank of the rock hollowed by small cool valleys. Several small streams descending toward
the Rio Torto come from the always-full pit which, on the continental front of our islet, borders the mass of the rock and
conveys the muddy waters into the gulf of Terracine. The Bosco de san Felice is populated with game. It is there, near the
river, that Ulysses will kill his deer: the present onomasty is still a Torre Cervia; the primitive periple perhaps knew of a
Port of the Deer here, as our sailors still know of a Port of the Buffalo there.
At the top of the semaphore, Ulysses pondered. he asked himself whether he should descend straight toward the smoke
which he perceived in the woods. But he thought it would be better to return to the vessel, feed his men, and deliberate
with them. He retraces his steps and here the divine favor makes to cross his route a deer which, from the clearings of the
forest, descended to drink at the river:

‘ο μεν ποαμόνδε κατήιεν εκ νομου ‘ύλης

πιόμενος.

Ulysses kills the deer and carries it to the camp, where the men, always wrapped in their coats, do not open an eye or
deign to shake off their torpor until the announcement of the marvelous game animal. All day they eat and drink their fill.
That evening they lie down again on the sand with a full stomach. Only the next day does Ulysses make his report and
give to the asssembly the results of his exploration: “From the top of the semaphore, I perceived a great land, flat,
wooded, which should be inhabited, since I saw smoke rise from the forest and the scrub... ” The men interrupt him with
their cries of sorrow: “Another adventure of the Cyclops and of the Lestrygons! No! No more such results!” But Ulysses
holds fast: they should go see. They divide into two groups, one under Euryloque and the other under Ulysses. They cast
lots to decide which of the two will remain near the vessel and which climb to the discovery toward the smoke and the
interior of the land. The lot falls to Euyloque, who leaves with his group. they climb toward the palace of Circe. They
distance themselves from the vessel and the sea; Ulysses, after them, follows the same road:

ως ειπον παρα νηος ανήιον ηδε θαλάσσης.

It is not the route which Ulysses took the first day to climb the observatory. The route of the observatory only led away
from the vessel; but it did not turn its back to the sea:

καρπαλίμωσ παρα νηος ανήιον ες περιοπήν.

The palace of Circe is far from the sea, in the interior of the land. One “climbs” there from the sea, as one “climbs” to
the town from the Levantine echelles (lit., ladders). Here is the second theatre where the end of the adventure will unfold.

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 *
* *

Between the “dock” and the palace of Circe stretches the forest and the scrub. Euryloque and his band go across the
thicket:

ήομεν ‘ως εκέλευες, ανα δρυμα, φαίδιμ’ ‘Οδυσσιυ.

Ulysses is similarly going to cross the forested isle, νησον αν’ ‘υλήεσσαν. Beyond the marshy woods, the mountain
offers its valleys, βήσσας, its sacred vales, ‘ιερασ βήσσας. It is there, in an open place, περισκέπτω ενι χώρω, that the
palace of Circe raises its walls of polished stones:

ευρον δ’ εν βήσσησι τετυγμένα δώματα Κίρκης

ξεστοισιν λάεσσι, περισκέπτω ένι χώρω.

In the palace lives the goddess of the game, the nymph of the ferocious beasts. Around her, the wolves of the mountain
and the lions, which she has charmed and which she pets like dogs, present themselves:

αμφι δέ μιν λύκοι ησαν ορέστεροι ηδε λέοντες,

τους αυτη κατέθελξεν...
ως τους αμφι λύκοι κρατερώνυχες ηδε λέοντες
σαινον. τοι δ’ έδεισαν, επει ίδον αινα πέλωπα.

Euryloque and his group arrive at Circe’s. The goddess of game welcomes them, but prepares for them pernicious
potions, kykeons. All of the Achaeans who partake of the potions are transformed into pigs, and are penned by the
goddess. Only Euryloque redescends to the encampment on the coast and relates the terrible adventure. Then Ulysses
climbs, in his turn, “from the vessel and the sea”. Across the forest and the scrub, he arrives in the sacred vale. There, on
the doorstep of the holy residence, Hermes appears to him and gives him a marvelous plant, the molu, by which Ulysses,
protected from the spell, will force Circe to release his companions and return them to their human form. By virtue of the
molu, the hero triumphs over the sorceress. He saves his companions, then, redescending to the coast, he goes to seek
those who stayed near the vessel. All of them return to Circe. She settles them into her well-furnished home: for an entire
year, they make a feast there, eating, drinking and frolicking with the good goddess and her pretty maidens.
Let us transport the Odyssian description to the charts of the Italian shore. They give the name of Pontine Plain or
Pontine Marshes to the widespread flat which, from the dunes of the sea and the rocks of Circe, extends up to the feet of
the feet of the continental mountains. About 20 kilometers from the rocks of Circe, the continental mountins raise their
steep wall which, from south to north, from the promontory of Terracine to the ridges of mount Albain, stretches parallel
to the Latin coast for nearly 100 kilometers. The steep mural is called by the present Italians the Lepini mountains. It is
crowned by summits which exceed 1500 meters. it presents to the Pontine Plain a straight and continuous façade, which
falls from a peak of 600 or 700 meters, so that, at the edge of the verdant sea of the Marshes, it is truly a steep cliff, and
like the true coast of the mountinous peninsula. The Pontine Plain does not, as one could believe, have its slope regularly
inclined from the foot of the mountains toward the shore of the weastern sea: its streams do not descend perpendicularly
to the direction of the Lepini mountains. Entirely to the contrary, it is parallel to the chain of mountains that, slowly, in
winding and oily sheets, the waters flow toward the beach of Terracine. When one climbs from Circe toward the
mountains of the interior, one first needs to cross the selva and the macchie, the forest and the scrub, then three or four
small rivers which, pooorly contined by their uncertain banks, bordered by marshes and pools, cover five to six kilometers
of plain with their floods or their lakes.

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 Facing Circe, the Lepini mountains point the spur of mount Leano. Toward the Punta di Leano (as the charts of the
Italian administrative staff say) was directly pointed, before the establishment of the present route, one of the Strade dei
Pescatori, Routes of the Fishermen, of which we have spoken: our marine charts, at the same time that they indicate the
present great route along the beach between San-Felice and Terracine., also mark the old, entirely straight road between
San-Felice and the Punta di Leano. With its 676 meters of height, mount Leno surveys the beach and the marsh. It is itself
overhung by the much higher mountains: it is just the advanced ridge of the high Mountain of the Enchantresses, Monte
delle Fate, whose 1100 meters dominate the back country. At the foot of Monte Leano opens, in the chain of of the
Lepini, a narrow valley, the Valle de san Benedetto, at the entry of which the Goddess of Game, Fer-onia formerly had a
sanctuary. During all of antiquity, the cult of Feronia endured in the famous temple. It is to the goddess of the ferocious
beasts that our Achaeans go to climb. They first cross the forest and the scrub:

Beyond the marsh of Lauro begin the forests of Borghese, where they make regular cuts every nine years.The wood, cut at the
foot, grows back with an abundance which makes the forest impenetrable. The live oak, the cork oak with grayish and fissured trunk,
the laurel, the olive, interspersed with pears and apples, frequently wound with roses, myrtles, mastics, all laced with ivy, vines or
honeysuckle, form impenetrable masses, between which we discovered here and there dark paths, perhaps originally the work of
boars or wild flocks. Meanwhile, the song of a thousand birds appeared to give life to the night of the thick shadows; their cries and
their sudden flight, when we came to pass, animated the deep solitudes.

Our Achaeans go toward the smoke which, from the top of his observatory, Ulysses perceived toward the interior,
beyond the scrub and the lorest, in the palace of Circe:

καί μοι εείσατο καπνος απο χθονος ευροδείης

Κίρκης εν μεγάροισι δια δυμα και ‘ύλην.

The land appears deserted: neither farms nor villages. From all times, this part of the Pontine Marsh, the lowest and
closest to the sea, has been deserted or uninhabited during the hot season. Even though at that time the elevated parts had
their pre-Roman towns and farms, the too-flooded low land already presented its present appearance. During the summer,
the woodcutters and the migratory flocks abandon it. It awaits autumn to see the herdsmen and charcoal burners come
down here again:

In the month of October, in the Appenines, One feels that the snows approach: in the Pontine Plain, the rains of November go to
revive the dried-out nature and relieve the heat a bit. At this time, the macchia is refilled. From the Roman appenines, from Abbruze,
from all the mountains, a crowd of people come to establish themselves there. Deserted in September, the macchia in December has
the population of a town: about 2,000 souls live there. Bassiano, Anticoli, Veroli, six other “lands” pour themselves out there. Each,
in the mountain, has its habits, its interests, its contracts, which tie it to a Pontine territory where it returns each year. Thus, in the
immense Pontine forest, each goes to retrieve its lestra, that is to say, a clearing made by them or their predecessor, frequently an
ancestor, for families perpetuate themselves for centuries on the clearings. A staccionata, a crude palisade reinforced with brush,
encloses the beasts: cabins, in the form of beehives, enclose the people. On one’s own or another’s account, the occupant practices
one of a thousand occupations of the macchia. Shepherd, cowherd, swineherd, sometimes herdsman, always poacher and prowler,
using the macchia without scruple like a savage of the virgin forest, he lives and, from his industry, makes a revenue for the master
of the land and for his own master, who has entrusted livestock to him, when they are not his own. Six or seven months are passed
thusly. June arrives. The marshes dry. The “seas” have dried. The children shiver with fever. The news from the “country” are good.
In four days, the roads are covered with with people who return to the mountains. Family by family, lestra by lestra, the macchia
empties. One meets its inhabitants only escorting their horses, their asses and their wives, loaded with all they need to bring. Very
rare are those whom July surprises still in the area. The forest is abandoned to twenty species of gadfly and insects which render life
impossible.

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 In the Odyssian story, we are in summeer, in the course or toward the end of the navigation season. For Ulysses and
his companions, since their departurer from Troy, have already spent several months with the Lotophages, the Cyclops,
Aeolos and the Lestrygons. The season is advanced; they are going to winter with Circe where, for an entire year, they
will remain to eat, drink, and make the feast:

ένθα μεν ήματα πάντα τελεσφόρον εις ςνιαυτον

ήμεθα διανύμενοι κρέα τ’ άσπετα και μέθυ ‘ηδύ.

We know of the winterings and we have described the interminable sojourns of the French sailors at Milos, Nio or
Mykonos... We are thus in summer: the forest is deserted. They hear only the the birdsongs in the trees, the cry of eagles
and hawks, the flights of boars or pigs in the clearings:

Κίρκρ δ’ ένδορ άκουον αειδούσην οπι καλη.

Euriloque and his band are not too reassured... Bit the forest thins. They reach the marsh. They approach the
mountains. They perceive traces of human activity. Here is a house of stone:

We were a hundred paces from Torre Paterno. We advance. Our guides precede us across the forest. Our guide tells us to wait,
not at the door - it had none - but at the foot of the stairway: “Why wait? - To see if we are received.” Thus here we are, alone in the
forest, at risk of passing a somewhat cold night, lying on a ground in some places pestilential, near the unknown Neopolitan sailors,
with no refuge other than that of the boars and porcupines or of the wild flocks which we hear milling in the clearing. The greatest
and in truth the only true danger was unknoan to us: the Barbary [pirates] were raiding near us, with a flotilla, and abducting
[everyone] they found on the coast, down to the smallest children... finally, the clinking of the arms weighing down our guards, who
came down the stairs, announced to us the response of the Shepherd. They told us to come up...
Before retiring, I conversed with my hosts, for whom hunting apppeared to be the principal occupation. They will speak to me of
the savage beasts which inhabit the forests of Laurent. There are lots of porcupines on the entire coast. Boars are common, and have
been all summer. It appears that since the time of Pliny, when the population reached its greatest numbers, the neighboring hills have
been covered with woods. The boars frequently mate with the sows, and [our hosts] like the breed of their issue. Virgil speaks of the
boars of Laurente,

multosque palus Laurentia sylva

pastus arundinea.

The wolves are common only in the woods, say the shepherds. The deer, somewhat common in the vicinity of Laurentum, recall
the charming scene of the deer in the seventh book of the Aenead...

Our Achaeans similarly arrive near a tall house of stone, where a beautiful woman sang and worked: “Is she a
goddess? is she a mortal? we cry on seeing her”, and all begin to cry:

ή θεος ηε γυνή. αλλα φθεγγώμεθα θασσον.

‘Ως άρ’ εφώνησεν, τοι δε φθέγγοντο καλευντες.

The house is outside of the marsh, in the first valleys of the mountain, in a separate clearing. It is not a temporary
cabin, a hut of branches, a poor staccionata, as the charcoal-makers and herdsmen make in their lestras. It is a real house,
durable, a large and tall house of worked stones, a palace or a temple, a holy dwelling, ‘ιερα δώματα:

ευρον δ’ εν βήσσησι τετυγμένα δώματα Κίρκης

ξεστοισιν λάεσσι, περισκέπτω ενι χώρω.

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 On the ground of the “sacred vale”, which is now still a blessed vale, the Vallley of San Benedetto,

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη άρ’ έμελλον ιων ‘ιερας ανα βήσσας,

the “sacred dwelling”, populated with wild beasts,

... ‘ιεροις εν δώματασι Κίρκης,

is just the sanctuary of Feronia. Everything accords with the identification. Take the descriptions of the archeologists:
“Feronia had her sanctuary at the entrance of the Valley, at the foot of the Punta di Leano, three miles from Terracine.
There was her sacred grove, her fountain, her temple, whose foundation of large blocks remains up to our days. Her cult is
one of the oldest rustic religions of Italy. Rome received it from the Falisques. We know today that Feronia was not at all
a Juno, as Servius had said, but truly a chthonic divinity, relative of Maia and Tellus, companion of Soranus in the famous
sanctuary of Soracte. They rendered her a barbarous cult in the generally feared woods. One finds Luci Feroniae among
the Sabines and Volsques. But the most celebrated sanctuaries were that of mount Soracte and this one, which some
authors mistakenly place in the Circeian lands. With the Greco-Roman ideas, Feronia was assimilated to Proserpine. They
gave her the Greek epithets of Ανθηφόρος, Φιλοστέφανος: they identified her with the Kore of Syriacuse, with the Virgin,
daughter of Demeter, not yet ravaged by Pluto. The only certain representation which we may have of her is on the
medalions of the gens Petronia, a family of Sabine origin. The head is of a young girl crowned, as Borghesi showed, with
flowers of pomegranite in bud. In the sanctuary, the goddess presided over emancipations. They had the slave sit on a
certain stone in the temple; they covered the head with a hat pileus and pronounced the formula: Bene meriti servi
sedeant, surgant liberi.”
From Circe to Feronia, from the Odyssian story to the rites of the Italian sanctuary, there are many points of
resemblance. Feronia, the goddess of the forests, is the goddess of the Tawny [Game]: the tawny [wild beasts], fer-i, have
Fer-onia, as Bell-um has Bell-ona, Pom-a has Pom-ona, the Bov-es have Bub-ona, etc.; Petr-ona from Petrus, Fid-ona
from Fidus, etc., explain to us Fer-onia from Fer-us. In the Odyssian story, the beasts, lions and wolves from the
mountains, appeared and made a procession to the goddess. But they appeared only for an instant, and it is not into wild
beasts, but into pigs that the companions of Ulysses come to be changed. The apparent anomaly should not surprise us:
the accounts of the voyagers have acquainted us, near the beasts of the mountain, with the herds of boars and wild pigs,
which abound across the marshes, resting in the scrub and living, not on swill, but on fruits, acorns and dogwood berries:

... τοισι δε Κίρκητη

πάρ ρ’ άκυλον βάλανόν τε βάλεν καρπόν τε κρανείης
έδμεναι. οια αύες χαμαιευνάδεσ αιεν έδουσιν.

The onomasty of the land has furnished - we will presently see - the material of our odyssian story: the abundance of
the swine, which the voyagers point out, had already earned, from the first antiquity, the names of Suessa and Setia for
the names of the towns immedately near Feronia.
Feronia, goddess of the game like Circe, is additionally the goddess of emancipation. It suffices to attentively read the
Odyssian text to retrieve from the palace of Circe the same ceremonies and even the same ritual formulas. Feronia
delivers, liberates slaves; Circe will need to deliver, liberate the companions of Ulysses:

όφρα κέ λύση θ’ ‘ετάρους...

πριν λύσασθ’ ‘ετάρους...

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 Delivered from servitude, those emancipated by Feronia change their condition of human brutes for the condition of
true men: “they rise up free”, surgunt liberi. Word for word, it is in a parallel manner that, delivered from their bestial
servitude, the companiions of Ulysses will “rise up”, έστεσαν εναντίοι, when Ulysses has forced the goddess to unbind
them, to open the door of the stable to them, to deliver them from their forms of pigs:

εκ δ’ έλασεν σιάλοισιν εοικότας εννεώροισιν.

ο‘ι μεν έπειτ’ έστησαν εναντίοι...

With Feronia, the resurrection from slavery into freedom is preceeded for the future emancipee by the loss of the hair; he
is to present it to the goddess, the head shorn, bald:

ut ego hodie raso capite calvus capium pileum,

as Plautus says. When the companions of Ulysses rise up before the goddess, they also lose their locks, and they return as
younger men, larger and more handsome:

των δ’ εκ μεν μελέων τρίχες έρρεον...

άνδρες δ’ αψ εγένοντο νεώτεροι, η πάρος ησαν,
και πολυ καλλίονες εισορ.αασθαι.

The episode of the Lestrygons, in the land of the Sards, of the Fugitives, was above all the Flight of Ulysses; our
episode of Circe, in the land of Feronia the Liberatrix, is above all the Emancipation, the Liberation of the crew.
But the resemblance does not stop there. Before the the arrival at Circe-Feronia, Ulysses meets, on the ground of the
holy valley, a young god, whose beard has begun to grow and whose youth is full of charm; it is Hermes of the golden
baton:

ένθα μοι Ερμείας χρυσόρραπις αντεβόλημεν

ερχομένω προς δωμα, νεηνίη ανδρι εοικώς,
πρωτον ‘υπηνήτη, του περ χαριεστάτη ‘ήβη.

Near Feronia, the Italiots adored a god which the Romans will assimilate to their Jupiter, and who bore the epithet of
Axur or Anxur. The Jupiter Anxur was not the father of men and gods; that god had a full and venerable beard: it was a
boyish or youthful Jupiter, Jupiter puer, beardless Jupiter. The epithet Anxur, said the Greco-Romans, came from the first
beard, which barely appeared on his cheeks, and which still passed under the razor, ανευ ξυρου: the same authors of puns
and nonsense had found that Feronia, brought from far away, they said, by navigators, owed her name to the maritime
transport, απο της πελαγίου φορήσεως. The coins of the gens Vibia show us the god Axur with the features of a young
man, still beardless, bearing the sceptre and the whip: his head is crowned with leaves. The Odyssian poet has named the
god Hermes. He is in effect a young god, a son-god, not a father-god. Like Hermes, Jupiter Axur holds the baton: he is
“Ερμείας χρυσόρραπις, Hermes of the golden staff, who who crosses the forests of the isle when he comes down from
distant Olympus:

‘Ερμείας μεν έπειτ’ απέβη προσ μακρον Όλυμπονν

νησον αν ‘υλήεσσαν.

Ulysses meets the neighbor of Feronia at the entrance of the temple. The god, taken with pity, gives the hero a recipe
for avoiding the traps of the sorceress: “He pulls a plant from the ground and acquaints me with its nature. It was black at

461
the root; but it had milky flowers. The gods call it molu and, for mortal men, it is difficult to pull up; but the gods can do
anything”,

εκ γαίης ερύσας καί μοι φύσιν αυτου έδειξεν.

‘ρίζη μεν μέλαν έσκε, γάλακτι δε είκελον άνθος.
μωλυ δέ μιν καλέουσι θεοί. χαλεπόν δε τ’ ορύσσειν
ανδράσι γε θνηστισι, θεοι δέ τε πάντα δύνανται.

The name of molu is not Greek: it is not encountered in any other passage of Greek literature; the Odyssian author
himself takes it, not for a Hellenic and human word, but for a “divine” name. The Scripture gives the name of ‫מלוה‬,
m.l.u.h., to a plant of the sands, of which poor people sometimes make use, a salad, we would say: the Semitic word ‫מלה‬,
m.l.h., in effect, signifies salt. In Greek, the exact equivalent of the name of the plant is ‘άλιμος (‘άλς, salt), and the plant
so designated is our atriplex halimus. “The plant,” say the Dictionaries of Botany, “is commonly called sea purslane: it is
eaten as a salad or marinated in vinegar.” It is a shrub, only the leaves and young shoots of which are comestible. The
flower is a milky yellow. The shrub is found on all the Mediterranean coasts. My friend M. Caullery, professor of the
Faculty of Marseilles, wished to procure a plant of it for me. Here is the letter which he wrote me at the same time:

I am sending you some branches and leaves. As for the flowers, there are none in this season and, as for the root, it should be
believed that neither I nor my gardener, who accompanied me to Borelli Park, are gods: we were unable to obtain one. The Atriplex
halimus forms bushes in bunches which raise themselves to one or two meters and attach themselves to the rocks along the Cliff. But
its true habitat is in the sandy ground. The root is a taproot, which buries itself deeply in the sands and progressively winds itself into
a spiral. It is accordingly very difficult to extract. according to our own experience, one succeeds only in breaking off the stem at the
level of the ground. This latter result is accessible to a man of moderate strength when he attempts a moderately large bush. The
flower is yellowish, say the books of gardeners. It is pale, little colored, like all the polygones. The root yellowish, with darker
rootlets. The one I am sending you is not black. But, in certain terrains, it often happens that the root takes a deeper tint. The plant,
on the whole, is of a bluish green which, very bright, gives it a whitish grey appearance from a distance.

“The halimos,” says Pliny,” has excited many discussions among the authors. Some have described it as a fruiting
plant, bushy, white, without spines, wiith leaves like those of the olive, but more tender: they cook and eat them; thte root,
in the dosage of one dram in honey water, dissipates colic, convulsions and ruptures... Others say that it is a maritime
plant, salty, whence its name, with long, round and edible leaves. They know of a wild and a cultivated species: the one
and the other are employed with bread against dysenteries, and with vinegar against ills of the stomach. They apply the
raw leaves to chronic ulcers, and they allieve the sting of fresh cuts, bladder pain and sprains. The wild species has
smaller leaves, bu with more active virtues, especially against mange and scabies. The root is further used in rubs to
whiten the skin and the teeth. The seed, placed under the tongue, prevents the sensation of thirst. They also eat the wild
species and pickle both... Some authors think that, for Hesiod, asphodel and halimos are synonyms... They maintain that,
scattered at the doorways of smallholders, asphodel is a prevention for evil spells. Nicander recommends the seed or the
bulbs against serpents and scorpions, and he would have it placed beneath the pillow to keep away hurtful creatures. He
also uses it against poisonous sea creatures and against centipedes.”

I believe that molu is the Greek transcription of the Semitic word for which halimos would be the translation. We
have, in the expression of the poet, the same mark of origin as, above, for gauloi (γαυλοι) and and phoke (φώκε). They are
Semitic words which will pass from the periple into the poem, and take only a slight clothing of Greek. Molu, μωλυ,
appears to me in effect the transcription of ‫מלוה‬, maluh or moluh, given that the last consonant ‫ ה‬is an aspiration which
only the Semites succeed in pronouncing: we know that it is very often ignored by the Hellenes and they do not know
how to render it accurately. The molu or moluh had its place in the original periple. Between the Forest, ‘Ύλε, and the
Valley, Βησσα, the periple should have described the Marsh and the sandy Beach, thoroughly sprinkled with atriplex

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halimus: “The ground,” says Bonstetten in describing the isle of Tibre near Ostia, “was covered with white daisys, red
poppies, and especially asphodels, a bulb plant, three feet high, with which the isle is almost entirely covered. The
beautiful plant, which bears a stem and flowers resembling the hyacinth, is of no use to livestock, which never touch it; its
odorless flowers, white and streaked with pink, have a beautiful appearance. A variety, they say, is the famous molu,
given to Ulysses by Mercury to protect himself from the charms of Circe.” The original periple should also have related
how the natives were served by the plant against the serpents which charmed them, and against the spells which they
feared. Hermes gives it to Ulysses for this purpose:

άλλ’ άγε δή σε κακων εκγύσομαι ηδε σαώσω.

τη, τόδε φάρμακον εσθλόν έχων ες δώματα Κίρκης
έρχευ, ‘ό κέν τοι κρατος αλάλκησιν κακον ημαρ.

The present onomasty knows of the Mount of the Magicians in this area, the Mountain of the Fairies, Monte della
Fate. During antiquity, the Marses, a people of the vicinity, were snake charmers, seers, magicians and sorcerers.
Descendants of a son of Circe, the Marses preserved the accounts of the art of the goddess, Marsis, a filio ejus orta gente,
quos esse domitores serpentium constat. During all of antiquity, the Roman authors and poets praised the marvelous
secrets of the enchanter people: the name of marsus even became a syonym for seer and sorcerer in Rome. Still today, the
inhabitants of the canton retain their old renown:

They hunt the badger here, not only for the meat, which is very delicious, but also for its fur, which they regard as a protection
against the influence of evil spirits. The young people frequently wear a piece of the skin in their hats; the women, especially those
who are married, place it under their girdles to protect themselves, and their children likewise, from enchantments, for they still
believe that the inhabitants of the mountains, the ancient Marses, near Lake Fucino, are adepts at sorcery. No horse can be
considered safe unless its bridle bears some ornament of badger skin. Even the mules and asses are similarly provided with the
powerful charm, which acquires a new power from the annual blessing of Saint Anthony.

The Marses are not a maritime people. They have their domain in the Appenines of the interior, somewhat distant
from the coast. But they live, like their neighbors, from their herds and especially from their sheep: each year they
descend for several months to the edge of the sea, to avoid the snow of the Appenines and reach the winter pasturage. In
the times of the Odyssian periple, I believe that it had already been this way. The first navigators had, like the present
mountaineers, their mount or cape of “the Enchantment”, Axur or Anxur. For the place name is anterior to the Greek and
Romen times. Like Ai-aie, it is, I believe, a Semitic name. It is from the same times as Aiaie - from the same family as the
Sparrowhawk, the Odyssian poet says. Along the Italian coast, the Sparrowhawk is not an isolated point. it has an entire
family of near relatives, of which the Odyssian poet makes father, mother, brother and sister: Circe is daughter of Perseus,
sister of Aietes. It is not the invention of the poet. The onomasty of the Italian coast is going to provide us all the
personages.

* *

For the navigators leaving Kumë (we know the eminent rôle of the port in the times of our periple) and voyaging
toward the north, the Italian coast presents the same appearance, the same alternation of advanced promontories and
indented shores, up to the region of mount Albain.

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 In leaving Kumë, a first shore, flat and bordered with lagoons, goes from there almost straight up to the prominence of
Castel Volturno, up to the Promontory of the Vulture, where the River of the Vulture, the Vulturnus of the Ancients, the
Volturno of the moderns, comes to empty into the sea. From the Vulture, a second shore, shorter but as straight, leads to
the foot of Monte Massico, the Massicus or Massikos of the Ancients. Then, in a semicircle, a third shore, much more low
and marshy, with the delta of the ancient Liris (Garigliano), leads to the sharp promontory, curved and very advanced into
the sea, which the Ancients named Kaieta or Caieta: we say Gaete; the Hellenes remember that the first name of the
debarkation was Aietes. Even lower and more marshy, a thin band of sand and mud, a new coast covered with forests and
scrub joins the cape of Gaite to the cape of Terracine, which the Ancients also name Axur. Then, from Terracine to our
isle of Circe, a new curve of mud, sand and dunes, bordering the scrub and the forest and serving as the southern façade to
the marsh of the Pontine Plain. Finally, from Circe to Astura, on the western façade of the plain, another entirely similar
curve of sand and lagoons, scrub and woods. Astura, the Isle of the Goshawk or of the Falcon, is just a repetition in
miniature of the isle of the Sparrowhawk. Before the low coast, it is a rocky peak, drowned in sand and sediments: “The
ruins of a fortress, formerly known under the name of Insula Astura, are joined to the coast by a bridge; in the northeast
of the point, one sees the mouth of the river Astura, which takes its source in the mountains of Albano”.
On leaving Astura, the appearance of the coast changes a bit: it is still low and sandy with small lagoons and great
woods. But the hinterland is no longer a plain. Here the last slopes of Monte Cavo (the Albain Mountains) is approached
by the sea: they reach the promontory of ancient Antium, present Porto d’Anzio. From the cape of Anzio up to the mouths
of the Tiber, a new view of the coasts, entirely different from that which has been up to there, will be presented to the
navigators:

The cape of Anzio is rocky and surrounded by banks. For 25 miles of length, between Porto d’Anzio and the Tiber, the coast is
sound beyond a half mile: at one mile, it has ten meters of bottom. The land is moderately elevated and wooded. 14 miles to the east
rise the Albano mounts, a remarkable group of mountains, whose summit, Monte Caro, has 950 meters of height. The tower
Vajanica is on the beach 12 miles to the southeast of the mouth of the Tiber. On the hills, one sees the village of the tower of
Prattica. The cliffs of clay continue up to the cape of Anzio.

For the navigators, especially for the primitive navies, the difference of the shores is paramount: they had a
determinate influence on the disposition of the habitats and the mores of the natives. It is necessary to study the nature of
the land well.

Between Port d’Anzio and the Tiber, the land is dominated by the enormous volcanic peak of the Albain mountains.
The extinct volcano has never awakened in the course of historic times. But its ejections will formerly flow in long slopes
down to the sea. They drop there in a steep fall, in a cliff of little height but very abrupt, at the foot of which the sediments
of the Tiber and of the Albain torrents have created only a narrow beach of sand and mud. Perched on the cliff, the
primitive towns of the region, Lavinium and Ardia, were “high towns” in the Homeric fashion: at the foot of their
acopolises, they had a beach of sand or mud, where they could draw out the boats, such as the harbor of Laurentum. At
the point where the cliff is the closest to the sea, a native navy installs its port of Antium, which is not a refuge for the
classical sailors, Άντιον, αλίμενοσ και αυτη πόλις ‘ίδρυται δ’ επι πέτραις, and which for the modern sailors has become
abordable only after the work of the popes: “Porto d’Anzio, also named the port of Innocent XII, is formed by a mole
which extends 230 meters from the coast toward the south, at a point where it forms an angle of about 100 meters toward
the east; they are presently working to lengthen it by an arm or rip-rap”. But the primitive boats had made a great station
of piracy of the promontory: the people of Antium made the first native navy of the coast.

Lavinium, Ardea or Antium, it is not in such “high towns” that the foreigners are installed: from the mouths of the
Tiber to the Falcon, Astura, only the natives found sites for their towns. Between the Falcon and the Vulture, Vulturnus,
to the contrary, the first foreign navies found their favored sites of trading posts or repositories, on the advenced points,
on the parasitic isles, of which the isle of Circe, the Sparrowhawk, offers us the best type. Falcon, Sparrowhawk, Vulture,

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Astura, Circe, Vulturnus, the place names are explained to us by the quantity of birds of prey of which the recent
voyagers just told us. In the game-filled forest, in the lagoons and marshes populated with water birds, in the fish-filled
sea (the coast had its lookouts and tuna fishereies during antiquity; it still has its Roads of the Fishermen), the falcons,
vultures, sparrowhawks and sea eagles easily find an abundant nourishment, and the landsmen do not come to raid the
nests on the steep promontories and the deserted islets. By our Odyssian poem, we can relate the onomasty back to the
first thalassocracies. For we see that the Isle of the Sparrowhawk was already Ai-aie for the Semites and, in the Homeric
family of Circe, we are going to retrieve the other birds of prey which will give their names to the promontories of the
region.
Circe is the daughter of the Sun, which lights humans, and of Persa, whom the Ocean gave birth to:

άμφω δ’ εκγεγάτην φαισιμβρότον Ηελίοιο

μητρός τ’ εκ Πέρσης, την Ωκεανος τέκε παιδα.

The kinship of Circe and the Sun is not surprising: the sparrowhawk, ‘ιεραξ or κίρκος, is the bird, the messenger of
Apollo:

κίρκος, Απόλλωνος ταχυς άγγενος...

The kinship of Circe with Persa will be no less easy to understand if we explain the foreign word by a Semitic
etymology. Perse offers no sense in Greek: in the Scripture, ‫פרם‬, peres, or ‫פרםה‬, pers’a, designates a sort of bird of prey;
the commentators recognize the eagle or vulture of the sea there, haliaeetus ossifragus: “The eagle of the sea, haliaeetus,
is born of the crossing of several species of eagles, and it gives birth to small vultures, e quibus vultures progenerantur
minores”. Persa is our promontory of the Vulture: the two words Perse-Vulturnus should be placed in the same
relationship as Aie-Kirke; we have for one part a Greco-Semitic doublet, for the other a Latino-Semitic doublet. And the
two names Kaieta-Aietes are again in the same relationship. If Circe has for a brother the pernicious Eaglet, Aietes,

αυτοκασιγνήτη ολοόφρονος Αιήταο,

it is that the first name of the promontory Kaieta was, the Ancients tell us, Aietes, Αιήτην τον νυν Καιήτην
προσαγορευόμενον. The name Aietes is presented with a Greek facies: it is αετός, αιετός, αιητός, the eagle. As for Kaieta,
the natives will always remember that the foreign word had been brought to them by the thalassocracies. But they would
no longer know exactly to which thalassocracy they were indebted for it. The Greeks will seek a Greek etymology and
find a dialectical word from Laconia, kaieta, which signifies the hole, the hollow: on that rocky coast, pierced with
grottos, kaieta does not appear misplaced to them, τα γαρ κοιλα πάντα καιέτας ο‘ι Λάκωνες προσαγορεύουσιν. The
Laconian etymology - how to explain the presence of the Laconians in that place? - appeared unacceptable to others who
make of Kaieta a personage of the Trojan legend, a nurse of Enea, ένιοι δε επώνυμον της Αινείου τροφου τον κόλπον
φασίν, and the Aenead will popularise the legend. In reality, we find in Leviticus a certain bird ‫קאת‬, k-a-t: it is catalogued
among the unclean birds, beside nis, which has given us the nisos of the Megarian legend and the nosim of the Sardinian
coast, beside selk, which has given us the solkoi or solchoi of the same Sardinian coast, beside kux, which has given us the
Keux or kex of our Odyssian text, beside aie, which became kirke on the same Italian coast, beside anap’a which we have
believed recovered in the Odyssian anapaia, finally, beside perse, which we come to study. The k.a.t. is a bird of prey
which lives in the desert. We do not know exactly which bird the Hebrews designated under the name. The Seventy and
the commentators hesitate in their translations. Sometimes they propose to recognize the pelican in it. But that opinion is
very doubtful. Others would recognize the bittern there. The k.a.t. should be a sort of eagle, αιετός: the Hellenes will
transcribe as Kaieta and translate as Aietes the Semitic original k.a.t., which they will find on the rock, as they will
transcribe as Aie and translate as Kirke the original ai’a of the neighboring promontory.

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 Isle of the Goshawk, Astura, isle of the Sparrowhawk, Aie-Kirke, cape of the eagle, Kaieta-Aietes, cape of the Vulture,
Perse-Vulturnus: we see how all the names of the coast enter into the same onomastic family. By virtue of the local
traditions and of the Odyssey, we also see how, near the Greek and Roman names, we can, for at least three of the
promontories, retrieve the first Semitic word: only for Astura nothing indicates to us the name by which the first
navigators will address the isle of the Goshawk.
But, in the intervals of the different capes or isles of the Birds, the Italian coast offers us two more intermediary
promontories: the cape of Terracine and the promontory of Massic. Now, for the cape of Terracine, the tradition has also
retained a doublet for us. For Terracina, say the Ancients, was at first called Anxur or more precisely Axur, Άξωρ. We
have seen the fine pun which the Hellenes made to explain to explain the last word: Axur, άνευ ξωρου. It is no differently
that they also wish to explain Terracina by τραχεινή, the rocky. It appears probable to me that neither the one nor the
other of these terms has anything to do with the Greek language. For Terrakina I would incline to see only an Etruscan or
native name, of the same form as Tarquiniae, Tarquinus, etc. As for axur, all the Semitic languages posess the root ‫אםר‬,
axar, with the signification of bind, chain: ‫אםור‬, axur, in the Scripture, is the jail, the prison: I believe that Axur would be
the equivalent of the Latin claustra; a little to the north of Circe, on the west beach of the same Pontine region, the
Romans had a station named, we do not know why, Closta Romana. But from the proper sense enchain, bind, the Semites
have derived, like most of the peoples, the figurative sense bind by enchantment, fascinate (fascio, bind, enchain),
ensorcel. For the last sense, the Hebrews resort most willingly to the root ‫הבר‬, habar, which is the exact synonym of axar;
but other Semites employ axar. The Rock of the Prison, Axur, Clostra, thus could also be the cape of the Enchantment.
And I believe that in his original periple our Odyssian poet finds the word in its double meaning. It is why he has the
companions of Ulysses imprisoned, bound by the enchantress. Circe shuts them in the stable; Ulysses has to unbind,
release them:

‘ράβδω πεπλγυια κατα σθφεοισιν εέργνυ... ,

ως ο‘ι μεν κλαίοντες εέρχατο... ,
... ‘έταροι δέ ο‘ίδ’ ενι Κίρκης
έρχαται...

And Circe enchants them by her drugs, έθελξεν, especially by her mixtures. For she mixes harmful drugs in the food:

ανέμισγε δε σίτω
φάρμακα λυγρά,

and she also makes with wine, honey, flower and cheese, a mixed drink, a pernicious kykeon:

εν δέ σφιν τυρόν τε και άλφιτα και μέλι χλωρον

οίνω Πραμνείω εκύκα... ,
τευξει τοι κυκεω, βαλέει δ’ εν φάρμακα σίτω... ,
τευχε δέ μοι κυκέω χρθσεω δέπαι... .

The Hebrews also knew of mixtures of wine, honey and other condiments. If the Hellenes have from their verb,
κυκαω, mix, muddle, drawn the name of their kykeon, the Hebrews, from their verb ‫מםך‬, massak, mix, mingle, have drawn
their substantive m.ss.k., ‫מםך‬, which the Scripture vocalizes as messek, but for which the primitive vocalization was
massik. The massik is a sort of “mixed wine” (with drugs or perfume), a vermouth. Massik or Massikos, Μάσσικος, is the
name of our last Italian promontory: it is an excellent transcription of the Semitic ‫מםך‬, massik (the Hellenes have made
from ‫ ם‬their ξ, of which the double σσ is a habitual equivalent). Massikos is the Cape of Kykeon.

466
 *
* *

In the episode of Circe, as in those preceeding, I believe it is now easy for us to retrieve the habitual procedure of our
poet and the nature of the materials of which his work was composed: it is always the same anthropomorphism, giving the
human personality and life to the words, to the things or to the beings which the original periple furnished to our author.
But it is also easy to reëstablish, under the embellishment of the adventures, the historical reality of the description and
the primitive topology of the Italian coast. In the times when Hyperia, on the edge of the Vast Campania, was a station of
the foreigners, the isle of Circe should have had the same rôle on the edge of the Pontine region and of the Albain land, in
that which later became the land of Latium and of Rome. Even better than Hyperia, see how Circe should have served the
foreign fleets.
For the convenience of the exposition, consider how a a delta extends along the entire Latin Coast, which goes from
the promontory of Terracina, where the Lepini mountains touch the sea, up to the Promontory of Civita-Vecchia, where
the Etruscan mountains and hills also plunge their last extensions into the sea. The mouths of the Tiber to the north and
the Pontine marshes to the south make a muddy and unhealthy extent of the Latin coast, which is no less inaccessible
from the edge of the land than from the edge of the sea. The mouths of the Tiber and the Pontine marsh, it is true, are a
little separated from each other: the last slopes of the Albain mountains intrpose the few leagues of cliffs of which we
have spoken; but the cliffs are also little accessible, aso devoid of ports, αλίμενα, Strabo said. In resumé, from Terracina
to Civita-Vecchia, the Latin coast is nothing but a front of a delta. In historic times, the needs of Rome created in the open
mouth of the Tiber, on the river itself, the artificial port of Ostia. Created by the human will, against all the natural laws
which we know well, the port had only an ephemeral duratiion; its creation still required the resources of a universal
empire like that of imperial Rome. For the Latin delta as for the other Mediterranean deltas, the law is always the same:
the veritable ports can be founded only outside of the muddy beaches, to the right or left of the plain of sediments, on the
first slopes of the mountains. And we see well that across history, Rome always had its natural embarcation points either
on the promontory of the Lepini mountains, at Terracina, or on the edge of the Etruscan plateau, at Civita-Vecchia today,
at Caere-Agylla during the first centuries.
The present rôle of Civita-Vecchia is understood without difficulty: it is on the rocks of the north that our fleets
coming from the north, from Livorno, Genoa or Marseilles land on the delta. The ancient rôle of Terracina is also rational:
the ancient fleets came from the south; it is on the rocks of the south, at Terracina where their great emporium is installed;
the Via Appia toward Terracina held for classical Pome the rôle which the railroad toward Civita-Vecchia has for the
Papal and Piedmontese Rome today. If, before the Roman antiquity, we go back to the primitive fleets and back to the
heroic centuries, we see that of necessity the natives had some stations intermediate between Civita-Vecchia and
Terracina: on the last cliffs of the Albain mountains, by virtue of beaching of primitive boats, some “high towns” had
been built; the legendary tradition knew of the fleets of Laurentium, of Lavinium and of Ardea. The “high towns”, semi-
legendary, have had some importance long before the foundation of Rome: the accounts of the Aenead contain, in that, an
aspect of verity. But we know that Lavinium and Ardea could only have been native stations.
On the front of the Pontine plain, to the contrary, the parasitic islets of the Falcon and of the Sparrowhawk, Astura and
Circe, appear arranged by nature for the service of foreign navigators, whether they be traders or pirates, or both together.
The Falcon is nevertheless truly speaking only a point of rock without resources and without extent. Only the
Sparrowhawk can offer to the primitive thalassocracies the conditions of security and provisioning which they seek in a
good harbor. With its high lookout which they perceived from afar and which surveys the land and the sea; with its harbor
well-closed and nevertheless devoid of natives, where they have nothing to fear in the vicinity; with its fountains and
caverns; with its game and forests: the isle of Circe, even better than the isle of Calypso, is a paradise of the primitive
navies. It is truly a post of sojourn, a wintering station, a place of sweet repose and of abundance. There, for a whole year,

467
one can eat, drink and sleep without fear for the morrow. They haul the vessel ashore. They stow the rigging and the
merchandise in some grotto. Along the continental façade the little river, the lagoons, the scrub, the forests and the
marshes exist like a moat and a rampart against the terra firma; the vessels, stores and camp are sheltered from all
surprise.
It is nevertheless easy to trade with the natives,, for twelve or fifteen killometers from here, at the foot of the
continental mountains, not far from the cape of Enchantment, the sanctuary of Ferona is, by virtue of its abundant springs
and the sacred truce of the goddess, a place of fairs and markets, a meetingplace of sailors and mountaineers. It is not to
make a very diffficult hypothesis to imagine near the sanctuary the same panagyrics, the same markets, the same
affluence of the devotees and merchants, the same meeting of natives and foreigners as near another sanctuary of the
same goddess, on the frontiers of continental Etruria. There, at the foot of Soracte, “the inhabitants of the neighboring
cities gather in a crowd for the feasts of the goddess, some for the motive of piety, others for the motive of business:
merchants, artisans, farmers held the most animated markets there in all of Italy,” mercatu ad Feroniae fanum frequrnti
negotiatores romanos deprehensos. The market of Terracina today replaces the antique fairs of Feronia.

The agriculture [and the pasture] attracts many foreigners to the Pontine marshes. Since there is no population at all in the
habitable region, laborers must be sought elsewhere. It is the Roman and Neopolitan mountains which furnish the workers of which
it has need. From the provinces of Sora, Isernia, Aquila, the workers arrive in bands, bands of men, bands of women, families
gathered in groups, according to the land, the conventions and the agreeements. Of the labor up to the harvest, it is they who do it all.
The lands around the palude send their men or women. The territory is a land of expliotation. They do not live there; they go there.
Even in the town of Terracina, the need [for foreign workers] is felt to the same degree. There are some small places whose entire
population llives off of Terracina, and transports itself there for six or eight months. Terelle, a small neopolitan burg, sends its
women and men there; not a sound being remains at home, except the priests and a few signori who have no need to work. Before
the end of autumn the Terrelans arrive at Terracina. They occupy, beyond the canal, a village of gourbis, made of briars, branches
and old rotton planks, where they nest with their pigs... During more than half the year, Terracine is submerged by a mob of people
from outside. All sorts of costumes are worn, the native with his Roman cappotto always lined with green fleece, the Aquilan in a
dark blue frock coat, the Abbruzin in his earth-colored mantella... Types, costumes, patois, interests come to meet there, and from
afar. Certain peoples have made true voyages of emigration, three, four, five or six days of travel, to return to where they came from.

Terracina, on the edge of the sea, could only be founded at a recent date, after the disappearance of the pirates. In the
times of the corsairs, it is at a distance from the beach, on the first slopes of the continental mountains, around springs and
the sanctuary of Feronia, that the same populations of the interior have their bazaar, not only the Volsques, herders and
farmers from the Lepini mountains, but also the inhabitants of the valley of the Liris, Latins, Herniques and Aurunces,
and the mountaineers of the Appenines, Sabins, Eques, Marses, Caracenes, Hirpins, etc. The motley crowd of devotees
and horse traders, of farmers and snake charmers, came from the towns of the interior, Alba,Velletri, Praeneste, Setia,
Privernum and Sora. Rome did not yet exist. Rome, town of pontifs, is the town of the bridge [pont]. Rome has existence
and fortune only from the day when the where the relations by land route are established between the Italy of the north
and the Italy of the south, the day when the bridge of the Tiber and its pontif can levy a toll on the commerce. When the
Etruscans, masters of Tuscany, of Latium and Campania, control and exploit all the Italian lands from Florence to Naples,
the bridge of the tiber becomes a great passage of caravans and armies: it is then that the grandeur of Rome begins. But, in
Odyssian times, we are still two, three or four centuries before the domination of the Etruscans. the natives do not yet
have their eyes turned toward the Capitol. It is the islet of Circe which attracts their desires and their interests. There
debark the foreigners with their manufactures and their trinkets. From there climb the foreign caravans to the sancuary of
Feronia where, under the protection of the gods, the market is installed. The sanctuary is in a situation entirely similar to
the great temples of old Greece, Olympia, Delphi, Eleusis, Heraion of Argos, Hyakinthion of Amycleas, etc. - all of them
at one day’s journey, short or long, from the maritime debarkations, at the meeting point of the foreign caravans and the
native crowds. Thus it is not surprising that the original periple had described the sanctuary with as much detail as the
embarcation itself and that, near the isle of circe, our poet had known of the great house of the goddess.

468
 *
* *

Monday, May 13, 1901. - Across the Roman Campania, along broken aqueducts, the train takes us from Rome to
Terracina. After the entirely straight traverse of the deserted Campania, the rail line reaches the foot of the Albain
mountains. It cuts and follows them at midslope, burrowing its tunnels and trenches in the compact rock or the black
ground of the volcano. At midslope, up to Velletri, it is a nearly regular semicircle which the line describes around the
volcanic butte, whose head, loaded with forests and towns, is lost in a thick mist, and whose slopes, loaded with brush,
slope down to the resplendant sea, a great plaque of burnished bronze, with two motionless boats. Velletri is seated
between two mountains, between the volcanic butte of the Albain mountains and the calcarious chain of the Lepini
mountains. Velletri guards the depression, the confluence of routes. Here, the routes from the Albain land and from the
Pontine region join to enter the pass and reach the valleys of the interior. From Velletri, the ancient Via Appia redescends
toward the Pontine region: the railroad from Terracina follows up to the end of the antique way, except for a slight
diversion toward Privernum. All along the descent, from Veletri to Terracina, it is the same view of the land, the same
contrast, to right and left, between the verdance of the Pontine Marshes and the steep wall of the Lepini mountains.
To the right of the rail line the Pontine Marshes spread to the horizon their dismal immensity of scrub, of marsh, of
shining or flowerring pools, and their isolated clumps of trees. At the end, a black line of forests hides the view of the sea;
but the long and steep spine of Monte Circeo stands out above the trees, in the open sky, and delineates a veritable isle.
All of the plain appears deserted: not a village, not a house; only along the way, some gourbis, some herds of black pigs
and some fields of vegetables or cereals. Above circles of rough stones or antique paving, which serve them as
foundations, the gourbis are just cones of branches, of sod, of straw, for whom an outer layer of straw or reeds completes
the covering. The fields of vegetables or wheat are spread all around, in the middle of the black lands, at the edge of
springs which, all around, well, boil, turn and spread among the roses and flowers.
To the left of the rail line, a short weathering of calcarious rocks, small round bare hills, thickets and olives front the
high wall of the Lepini mountains which surge to a peak. In a single jump, they rise to 500 or 600 meters. Their steep face
is a veritable fortress front which stretches up to Terracina, from north to south, without a projection, without a break. The
500 meters of rocks pierced with caverns offer only from place to place a natural stairway or the switchbacks of a route
cut by the hand of man, to reach the towns which perch at the summit, among the trees. Since the oldest antiquity, even
before the Roman times, primitive towns, Cora, Norba, Ulumbrae, Setia have perched their cylopian walls at the very top
of the cliff, whose rise to the skies their ramparts continue. Fleeing the pirates of the beach, the fevers and beasts of the
marsh, the native towns surveyed and still survey the distant sea and the flocks or cultivation of the lowlands. In only one
place is the wall of the Lepini mountains cut with a double door. To the two sides of a hill which stands, isolated like an
isle in front of the mountains, the double door leads to a small interior valley, where antique Privernum, the modern
Piperno was built. From the valley, by a transverse valley and somewhat large passes, climb the routes which traverse the
chain of the Lepini and which, from the other side, come to end in the valley of the Trerus, in the land of the Herniques
and the Marses. The railroad rounds the hill, enters by one entrance into the valley of Privernum, comes out from it again
through the other entrance, and comes again to the Pontine Marshes to again take up the descent to Terracina.
The same view of the land continues to file to the right and left of the rail line. Only on the right do the springs
become more and more numerous and abundant; their flows join in two small rivers, the Ufente and the Amaseno, which
border the way; still more verdant, more blooming, better populated with gourbis and black pigs, the Marshes have some
herds of cattle, some stone houses, mills and post offices, which border the old stagecoach route. To the left, similarly, the
Lepini mountains, less steep, have a longer patina of olives, of grapes, of cultivation; between their more prominent
ridges are hollowed some valleys. the railway cuts the larger and less deep of the valleys to go from the Punta di Leano to
the promontory of Terracina. It is the Val de San Benedetto, between the ancient sanctuary of Feronia, which we are

469
going to visit at the foot of the Punta di Leano, and the station of Terracina. The railway ends just at the edge of the
marine shore.
We leave the train. A little fine rain, almost melted into a thick fog, drowns the plain and the sea in its monotonous
mist. All day long, the mist and rain are going to accompany us on the route of Monte Circeo. Between Terracina and
Circoe, the route at first crosses a large band of black lands and aquatic verdures, 4 or 5 kilometers of marshes, of streams
and canals. Some bridges of boats are established on the muddy watercourses. Some ancient watchtowers mark the beach
where, more recently, the corsairs of Tunis and Algiers came to make their raids for “tall and beautiful” Christian women,
καλή τε μεγάλη τε, for the Barbary harems. Then the route sinks into a sandy terrain, entirely covered with brush, the
Maccia del Piano, scrub of broom, mastic, dwarf pine, juniper and atriplex halimus. Here is the molu, entirely resembling
that which I have described above. It is impossible for us to have the smallest root: all the shoots which we wish to pull
up break off in our hands at the level of the ground.
We finally reach the forest of great trees, of cork oaks, fine oaks, elms and pines, which extends to the foot of Monte
Circeo. Selva di Terracina et Bosco San Felice, the forest of vigorous trees, is fierced with clearings and fields. In the
lestras, gourbis raise their cones of branches above their foundations of stone. Crews of woodcutters, bands of black pigs,
some herds of cattle and sheep follow the road. The dog of our driver flushes a fox, which runs between the feet of the
horses: “It is a fine land for hunting”, affirms the driver. They still found the wolves and beasts of Feronia-Circe there.
Before us, at the very end of the “large route”, above the trees, Monte Circeo profiles its insular spine in the mist,
where the peak of the Semaphore (374 meters) and the even higher Lookout (541 meters), which bears the ruins of a
temple, point like two sharp vertebrae. Just above the Cala dei Pescatori is truly the guard, σκοπιή, the observatory,
περιωπή, of the Odyssian poem... We go “across the thickets and the forest”. Then we reach the river. We cross, on a
wooden bridge, the Rio Torto, which separates the rocks and the vines of Monte Circeo from the sandy woods. The burg
of San Felice is built at midslope, on the façade of the islet which faces Terracina. It is always the same alternation of
insular capitols. The isle of Circe, posessed today by landsmen, has its principal burg on the coast of the strait (for the
Marshes are a veritable strait between it and the continent). Formerly frequented by tthe Peoples of the sea, the isle had its
great town on the opposite coast which faces the open sea, near the Cala dei Pescatori.
From the summit of Monte Circeo, we have, they say, an admirable view over the sea and the land, when the weather
is good. Today, the rainy mist ends our view in a few paces. But the guides and the natives affirm that, in clear weather,
the view of the sea is limited at the extreme horizon only by the mountains of Sardinia: the primitive thalassocracies, to
go from Hyperia to the strait of the Lestrygons, should have followed the Italian coast up to here and, from here, have cut
across the misty sea, straight to Sardinia, which appeared to them. From the edge of the land, the view takes in the entire
occidental façade of Italy from the Albain mountains to Vesuvius. In the foreground, with its thickets and its trees, its
scrub and its forest, spreads the gloomy expanse of the Pontine Marshes, cut by clearings and “large routes”. In the
distance, the wall of the Lepini mountains fall into the sea in the cape of Terracina and point the highest spur of the Punta
di Leano toward the isle of Circe. Lacking clear weather, the photographs rendered well for us the view was offered to
Ulysses from the top of his observatory, above the thickets and woods of the plain, up to the Punta di Leano and up to the
palace of Circe.
We come back to the palace of Circe, to the ruins of Feronia. We have crossed the Selva di Terracina and the
Macchia di Piano anew, taking the route and the bridges which lead to Terracina. Then, from Terracina, we have
followed the Via Appia: along the canal loaded with boats and foam, under a dome of oaks and elms, across the valley of
San Benedetto, ‘ιεράς ανα βήσσας, we have come to the Punta di Leano, which suddenly surged from the marsh. Here in
the trees is the Aqua Feronia, whose currents well up at the edge of the rocks and the marsh, above the most extreme foot
of the Punta di Leano.
Large polished stones, ancient foundations of the temple, and a herd of black pigs, descendants of the companions of
Ulysses, still mark the place of the sanctuary near the springs. The springs have always had their great usefulness. Today
they turn a mill. In the Middle Ages they supplied a fortress whose dungeon and towers in ruins crown the last rocks of
the Punta di Leano: from the open place, περισκέπτω ενι χώρω, which dominates the marsh and the high vegetation, one

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could survey the entire plain and the debarkation of the Peoples of the sea. Since the first antiquity, the site has perhaps
undergone some changes. In Odyssian times, the sediments had not yet pushed the front of the beaches as far as today.
The curve of the shore did not yet join the isle of Circe directly to the promontory of Terracina. Perhaps the latter
promontory was surrounded by water. Between it and the Punta di Leano, perhaps a marshy gulf intervened, similar to the
present gulf of Fondi between Terracina and Gaete. The curve of the seashore then forms a large bend from the rocks of
Circe to the Punta di Leano and from the Punta up to Terracina. In that state of the coast, the springs of Feronia, closer to
the beach, should have had an even greater renown: their sanctuary could not have been unknown to the peoples of the
sea.
But even as it is today, the site of Feronia makes the ancient influx of natives and sailors, who formerly came to traffic
here under the shelter of the sacred truce, well understood. Coming down on their asses by the passageway of Travernum,
the mountaineers stopped here: they stayed at a distance from the marsh, where the attacks by brigands and the teeth of
the beasts were always to be feared, at a good distance from the beach, where the roundups and raids of the Peoples of the
sea had quickly changed a free man into a slave. Mounted on their insular encampment, the foreign sailors remained here:
they remained at the door of ther mountains, in the open place where they did not have to fear any surprise of the
landsdmen. Terracina, a maritime promontory, was at that time only a deserted rock, dangerous at the same time for
natives, who could fall under an ambush by the sailors, and to the sailors, who would have sojourned there under
perpetual threat from the natives. Today, the churches and the shops of Terracina have depopulated the sanctuary of
Feronia: only the black pigs are still faithful to the sacred spring and to its venerable stones.

CHAPTER II

THE NEKYIA

And Saul says to the woman of Ain-Dor: “Make those (of the dead)
to rise whom I would tell you”.
Samuel, 1, 28, 8.

Ulysses and his companions wintered with Circe. At the end of the year, “when the long days have returned”, the crew
longs for their homes, and ask to depart. But Circe imposes on them, before returning to their homeland, the voyage to the
land of the dead and the visit to the divine Tiresias, who will point out to them the route of their return.
Of all the episodes of the Nostos, the Voyage to the Land of the Dead, the Odyssian Nekyia is the most suspect, the
most tortured by the philologists, our contemporaries. To believe them, the entire episode may be just an amplification of
a very recent date, an ornament added much later to the primitive poem. It appears to me that in that opinion there is a
part, but only a part, of truth. Even to just take the great lines of the ensemble, we see well that the Nekyia is a sort of
disproportionate monster which departs from the general organization of the poem. The Nekyia occupys all of canto XI:
by itself, it has six hundred forty verses. The other episodes of the Nostos have sometimes forty, sometimes two hundred
verses: a single adventure never occupies an entire canto. Here, the material was convenient to amplify. The later bards,
the revisionists, interpolators and falsifiers have been able to give free course to their fecundity. At the first read, such
interpolations jump into view. The catalog of illustrious women (v. 225-327) with the refrain

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 την δε μετ’ Αντιόπην ίδον... ,
την δε μετ’ Αλκμήνην ίδον... ,
την δε μετ’ Ιφιμέδειαν

and the catalog of the heroes (v. 563-634) with the refrain

τον δε μετ’ Ωρίωνα... ,

are just imitations or fragments of other poems which have nothing in common with the Nostos, but of which we know
and posess some types, such as the catalogs of the Oiai. Without a great chance of error, we can reject the catalogs from
the primitive text. It appears to me, similarly, that verses 327-385 should be removed, where suddenly, we do not know
why, Arete and Alkinoös interrupt the account of Ulysses and speak to repeat things already said or to profer only useless
banalities. Thus, without remorse or regret, if I had to establish the text of the canto, I would at the very beginning effect
two cuts of verses 225 to 387 and 565 to 628: I would at first view remove these two hundred twenty to two hundred
thirty verses.
There would then remain to us a perfectly homogeneous and ordered account. Ulysses comes to the entrance of the
Underworld, as Circe wished. He makes the voyage by sea, then by land. He performs the ritual sacrifice and sees his
companion Elpinor, his mother, and Tiresias, who speaks with him of his return. Then he speaks with his chief,
Agamemnon [here again, a small interpolated couplet, v. 416-457, on the perfidy of women], to his friend Achilles and
his enemy Ajax [in the last couplet, I would certainly reject some verses]. Then the mob of the spirits frighten him.
Having been advised on the chances and the routes of return, he comes back to the land of the living.
In the episode thus reduced, I am not saying that the philologists have no good reasons to still suspect more passages
and, especially, more verses. To the contrary, I have the very distict sensation that, here and there, some verses, isolated
or in groups of two or three, but whose number in total can be somehat great, have been interpolated: the more difficlt
part of our task would be to precisely discern the parasitic verses; most often, we do not achieve it. Perhaps even some
rather long passages might be disputable: I think (we will presently see some reasons) that the meetings with
Agamemnon, Achilles and Ajax should be entirely excluded. But all that is in my eyes just a detail for the solution of the
problem, such as I see it. In our ordinary fashion, it is the study neither of the philological nor the literary arguments
which matters to us. It is the geographic reality, the material exactitude of the description which should, to my sense,
furnish us the only decisive reasons. Whatever the episode might be in the present redaction of the poem, only one
question interests me: did the episode exist in the primitive redaction? And to resolve the question, only one method
appears to me: the comparison with the other adventures of the Nostos. Does the Nekyia resemble the other adventures of
Ulysses in a respectful concern for the geographic truth? Or is it, to the contrary, pure imagination, a popular story, a
poetic dream? Did the poet invent the material in it? Or did he borrow, like the material of the other adventures, from that
which we term the original periple, the Instructions of the Phoenician navigators?
The answer, in my opinion, could not be in doubt: before the embellishments, developments and amplifications of the
later bards, the primitive poem had a Nekyia, a Voyage to the Land of the Dead. The material of the episode, like that of
all the others, is surely borrowed from that which we term the original periple. For we are going to retrieve here the same
Semitic memories and the same exact descriptions as in the other adventures of the Nostos. The Odyssian Land of the
Dead is no more chimeric than Lotophagia or Cyclopia. At one day’s navigation from Circe, the distance indicated by the
poem, the Land of the Dead exists.
We can only predict that we will have more difficulty in reëstablishing the perfect agreement between the Odyssian
description and the present reality. Two complications in effect are going to intervene, independant at the same time of
our ordinary method and of our theory. We come to see the one of the difficulties: it is certain that the primitive text of the
poem has, in the whole and in the detail, been subject to grave and multiple alterations; in more than one place, we have
to work with a doubtful or corrupted text. We are presently going to discover the other difficulty: it is no less certain that,

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if not in the whole, at least in the details, the Land of the Dead itself, the real region of Italy, has since antiquity suffered
equally grave alterations.
Here are two reasons which do not permit us to apply our method here with the same rigor. They are, I repeat, entirely
independant from my will. I predict that the adversaries to my theory will use and abuse the chapter. If I do not follow the
actual text word for word, they will accuse me of abandoning my “most Homeric” habits and of cutting corners solely for
the convenience of the argument. If I follow the text with a scrupulous fidelity, they will accuse my “most Homeric”
method of being so inexact that it is even applied to a text where they have never recognized the “Homeric” tone. May
they at least appreciate the difficulties of my task. When I would propose the some suppression in the actual text to them,
may they study my motives before attributing the suppression to the convenience or difficulty of the proof.
It is all too evident that the Nekyia should be studded with fake ornaments. The material itself invited, or rather forced
the later bards to perpetual retouches. In measure as new ideas about the Land of the Dead, different conceptions of the
Underworld, were adopted by the successive listeners, the singers or editors of the poem were obliged to complete the
primitive text, to adapt it to the tastes of the day... Despite the changes, I believe that, by the study of the geographic facts
and names, we can retrieve the primitive Land of the Dead, such as the originasl periple described it to the Odyssian poet.

*
* *

Circe gives to Ulysses some very precise details concerning the site and the nature of the Land of the Dead:

Do not bother to put a pilot aboard. Step the mast. Unfurl the sails. Then, remain tranquil. The breath of the Borea will take you.
When you have crossed the Ocean in your ship, there is a small beach with the woods of Persephone, tall poplars and willows: haul
out your vessel there, on the shore of the Ocean of deep whirlpools, and go yourself into the damp dwelling of Hades...

Ulysses follows the directions of Circe step by step. Prom the palace of the goddess, he redescends to his vessel and
the sea: from the sanctuary of Feronia, he returns to the isle of the Sparrowhawk:

αυταρ επει ‘ρ’ επι νηα κατήλθομεν ηδε θάλασσαν.

He sets the ship afloat and steps the mast. A “good companion” of wind from aft, which comes to him from Circe, pushes
them all day:

της δε πανημερίης τέταθ’ ‘ιστία ποντοπορούσης.

“The sun was set and all the streets full of shadow”, when he arrives at the end of the Okeanos. He draws up the vessel,
debarks and goes across the “narrow beach:, up to the place indicated by the goddess.
The text gives us from the start a very precise testimony on the location of the Land of the Dead. The land is situated
to the south of Circe, at one day of navigation. A good wind from the north is needed, a Borea full astern, to reach it.
Turning his back to Circe, he arrives there only after a great journey of rapid crossing. Now, south of Monte Circeo, on
the same Tyrrhenian coast, at a hundred kilometers in a straight line, a hundred twenty or a hundred thirty following the
curves of the coast, there was a land of the dead, which remained celebrated during all antiquity and all the Middle Ages:
our tourists still visit it. The Land of the Dead is not maritime: at least, it does not touch the shore of the sea itself. It was
situated at some distance from the coast. The distance was nevertheless not great, nor was the road difficult: one could go,
by boat, up to the vicinity. For the Land of the Dead was situated on the north shore of the gulf of Naples, at the foot of

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the bay pf Pouzzoles. It was composed essentially of one of the Round Eyes, one of the Cyclops which we have
described. It is Avernus.
We already know that Avernus is a volcanic crater, whose central subsidence is occupied by a deep lake. A steep
“eyebrow” encloses the lake on all sides, except toward the sea. From the coast, a breach is open which, by foot,
communicates the lake and the marine coast. But, between the lake and the sea, extends a flat land of a few kilometers, of
which a lagoon occupies three quarters. The lagoon is the Lucrin lake or gulf. The Ancients ordinarily said Lucrin Gulf,
Sinus Lucrinus, Κόλπος Λόκρινος. It is a gulf in effect, an ancient gulf, at the very least, which a thin jetty today separates
from the open sea. The jetty already existed in antiquity: it passed for being a work of man, a labor of Hercules. It was
covered by storms in the past, so that the sea entered into Lucrin. The jetty has always been, and today still is, pierced by
channels and outlets, which disperse the waters of Lucrin into the bay. In the times of Augustus, Agrippa, cutting the
jetty, then digging a canal between the Lucrin gulf and lake Avernus, dreamed of establishing one of the great stations of
the imperial fleet in the Round Eye. The canal was dug without difficulty in the ground of friable tuff. But they perceived
that Lucrin lacked the necessary depth for large boats. Since antiquity the local topography has changed a little as a result
of volcanic eruptions and risings which we have already described: in the XVIth century, Monte Nuovo, suddenly raising
its molehill of a hundred meters, has filled in the canal between Avernus and Lucrin, shrunk the coastal plain and the gulf.
Many other topographic details should have been modified, either on the occasion of a violent eruption, or by the caprice
of the subterranian forces. In Roman times, here is the description which Strabo gives us of the land, after the great work
of the engineers of Agrippa:

It is in Avernus that they place the Homeric Nekyia; there, they say, was an oracle of the dead. There, they say, came Ulysses.
Avernus is a deep gulf, but narrow at the outley, presenting the form and dimensions of a port, but not being able to take the rôle
because of the shallow and wide Lucrin, which separates it from the sea.
Avernus is encircled by high steep eyebrows, raised all around except at the entrance of the coast of the sea. The slopes, cleared
today, were formerly an impenetrable and savage forest, whose great trees covered the lake with a shade favorable to superstitions.
The natives related that the birds fell asphyxiated when they flew above the lake. They gave to the area the name of Pl οutonium. It
was, they say, the land of the Cimmerians. To sacrifice to the gods and spirits and invoke them, they came there in boats, and priests,
charging fees, showed the rites. Not far from the sea is a spring giving rise to a small river: it was the Styx, they said, with its oracle.
Not far from there, a current of hot water was the Pyriphlegethon, and not much further, the Acherusia. Ephora says that the
Cimmerians, in the neighborhood, lived in subterranian houses named argilles; they communicated with each other by tunnels and
also brought the foreigners to the oracle, who was himself at the end of a tunnel. They lived off of their mines and the oracle. The
priests never saw the sun, and only came out at night. It is why Homer was able to say: “The sun never shines or brightens”. The
Cimmerians will disappear, driven out by a king whom the oracle had deceived; but they transported themselves elsewhere.
Thus for the legendary accounts. Today the forest of Avernus has disappeared, cut by Agrippa. The land is covered with houses.
A subterranian canal discharges Avernus into the sea of Kumë. One can see the inanity of the ancient fables. The Lucrin gulf extends
[in front]; it is separated from the sea only by a littoral band; the band has only the width of a large road; it was the labor of Hercules.
The storms cover it without difficulty and render travel on it dangerous. Agrippa has reduced it. Today an entrance allows small
boats to enter. Some authors give to the gulf the name of Acherusia.

I should say that upon close study the text of Strabo appears to have reached us in very bad condition, with serious
gaps and repetitions, with mistakes by copiers which render incorrect phrases, sometimes even incomprehensible. But, in
the entirety, the text describes to us very exactly what route Ulysses had to travel, if he came to the Land of the Dead.
After having crossed the high sea from Circe to Cyclopia, Ulysses entered the Lucrin gulf, which he had to cross in a
boat. At the foot of Lucrin, he found the low shore; he left his ship there: he went by foot toward Avernus (see fig. 66). It
is, from point to point, the voyage which the Odyssey describes to us. Ulusses, leaving Ai-aie, crosses the sea, then the
Okeanos, in a boat; he then arrives by foot, by a narrow beach, ακτη λάχεια, the Land of the Dead. The two itineraries
agree completely, on the condition that the Lucrin of reality be the Okeanos of the Odyssian periple. Now, I believe that
this is the way it is. I believe that the two names Sinus Lucrinus and Okeanos designate a single and same thing: they are
just the two terms of a single Latino-Semitic doublet.

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 The name of Sinus Lucrinus is Latin. Exactly translated, it signifies gulf of lucre, lucrum, profit, commerce, wealth.
The Greeks rendered the term by Plοutonion, Πλουτώνιον, or, more completely, as Kolpos Ploutonios, Κόλπος
Πλουτώνιος: “the land,” Strabo tells us, “was a Ploutonion”. και τουτο το χωρίον Πλουτώνιον ‘υπελάμβανον. In the
empire of Hades-Plouton, the name is only customary. If we seek a Semitic equivalent for the Latin term Sinus Lucrinus,
it would be necessary, to render the word sinus, to resort to the root ‫הוק‬, h.u.k., and to the substantive ‫היק‬, hik, or ‫הוק‬, hok,
which has all the meaning of sinus proper and figuratively; for hok designates at the same time the breast, the chest of
man and the curve, the interior, the hollow of things. To render the word lucrinus, it would be necessary to resort to the
root ‫הון‬, e.u.n., and to the substantive ‫הון‬, ewon or ewan, which signifies wealth, means to live, etc. The complete term
‫הון‬-‫הוק‬, hok-ewan, we would translate as Kolpos Ploutinios, Sinus Lucrinus. The transcription of hok-ewan as ok-eanos,
ωκεανος, is in conformance with all the examples we have already encountered (by the loss of the initial ‫ ה‬and the medial
‫)ו‬. I thus believe that our Okeanos of the periple is just the Gulf of Lucre, the Sinus Lucrinus of reality.
Against this etymology of okeanos, a very strong objection is immediately presented. In the legendary and real
geography of the Hellenes, Okeanos is situated, not on the Italian coasts, but at the last extremities of the occidental
world, outside the Columns of Atlas. At each extremity of the world, the Homeric poems already knew of the Okeanos
which circles the earth with its limitless currents.
It suffices perhaps to open an Atlas Antiquus to resolve the objection. Beyond the Columns, the Ancients always keep
the name of Gulf of Commerce, Kolpos Emporikos, for the sea which extends along the Moroccan coasts. The Kolpos
Emporikos is, by the name, just another Sinus Lucrinus: the Latins employ the word lucrantes to designate the traders,
merchants; the Greeks employ emporoi, έμποροι. The name of Kolpos Emporikos, says Strabo, came from the Phoenician
establishments of commerce, Εμπορικος καλούμενος, έχων φοινικας κατοικίας. And in fact, the name should derive from
the first navies. It cannot otherwise be explained. To our sailors, the Moroccan coasts, completely straight, present no
gulf. But, having having passed the strait of Gibralter, the first thalassocracies believed to discover, between the Spanish
coasts and the Moroccan coasts, only a new section, a new pocket of the Inner Sea, a gulf encircling the earth, entirely
similar to other gulfs which, one after the other, the straits of the Inner Sea had opened to them (such as the gulf of
Marmara behind the Dardanelles; such as the gulf of Black Sea behind the Bosphorus; such as the gulf of Azov behind the
strait of Panticapea; or again as the Adriatic gulf behind the passage of the Pheacians, etc.; such as, finally, the great gulf
of the Sunset behind the passage of the Lestrygons). Up to Gibralter, the Inner sea had offered to the first navigators only
a series of straits always leading to new closed compartments. At Gibralter, the Spanish coasts on one side and the
Moroccan coasts on the other appeared to open and curve back to form a new gulf. From whence the name of gulf
applied, then retained, for the open sea.
All antiquity retains the place name which, on our exact charts, is impossible to understand, for the Moroccan coast
does not merit it in any way. The navigators of the following ages needed a long series of explorations to pursuade
themselves that the supposed gulf was in reality a sea without limit; neither to the north nor the south, from either coast of
the straight, do the two shores of Europe and Africa converge toward some distant point of the occidental world, but
distnce themselves from each other more and more; briefly, that the two edges of the continents do not curve themselves
back to enclose a gulf, but that,to the contrary, the two arms of the gulf continue indefinitely, diverging more and more to
the north and south to enclose their continents in their waves without limit. The gulf thus became the circular stream
which should surround the earth. The Gulf of the Wealth or Lucre, Ok-eanos, formerly designates the limitless stream
which encircles the earth.
In Homeric times, the Hellenes have already received from the navigators of Sidon the notion and the name of the
occidental Okeanos. The Odyssian poet already knew of the Ocean, as he knew of Atlas and Calypso. At the edge of that
Ocean, he already localizes the blessed Land of the Sunset, where the Eluis go to live. Among his contemporaries, in the
common notion of the Hellenes, the Okeanos is already a great stream with a rapid current. From that, I believe, come the
epithets βαθυδίνης, “with deep whirlpools”, and βαθύρροος, “with deep current”, which the poets apply to the Italian
Okeanos, to the Sinus Lucrinus. The epithets did not exactly accord with Lucrin. It is not that Lucrin may be everywhere a
sheet of water without depth, nor that it may have no current: its outlets flow into the sea by running and turbulent water

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channels. When Strabo tells us that the plans of Agrippa will fail because of the interposition, between the deep Avernus
and the open sea, of the Kolpos Locrinos “marshy and numerous”, προσβραχη και πολύν, , it should at first be well noted
that in the mutilated or corrupted passage a correction imposes itself: numerous, πολύν, makes no sense [wishes to say
nothing]. Even if we take it in the sense of wide, large, spacious (πολυς πόντος, says Hesiod), the second epithet does not
agree with the rest of the text; thus, a correction imposes itself, such as απλουν, not navigable. It should then be noted that
the description of Strabo does not agree with the evidence from our navies:

About two and a half miles from the fort of Baye, says Michelot, is the town of Pouzzole. Between the two, there is a great
hollow... and a beach of sand, behind which is a small pond which they call the lake of Lucrine, in the middle of which there are
twenty fathoms of depth of water.

Lake Lucrin has depths of 5 meters. It is possible that the proximity and the changes of the Phlegrian volcanos may
have frequently caused the depth to vary, The volcanos, in particular Mont Nuovo, have, since antiquity, gravely altered
the exterior aspect and the architecture of the region. And from this flow the great difficulty which we do not encounter in
the explication of the other Odyssian adventures. Everywhere else, from the Homeric ages up to our days, we have been
able to see that no profound, radical change had been produced in the very nature of the sites or in the great lines of the
passages described in the Odyssian periple. Here, to the contrary, we know with certain knowledge that an entire
mountain has pushed itself up in the middle of the plain, where the Lucrin perhaps formerly extended its marsh. Before
the eruption of Monte Nuovo, the plain abounded in hot and cold springs. The small town of Tripergole, which rose in
that location, was full of steamrooms and peopled with bathers. During Roman antiquity, all the region of avernus
“smoked with sulfurous spriings”,

is locus Cumass apud, acri sulphure montes

oppleti, calidis ubi fumati fontibus aucti.

Today, on the western shore of Lucrin, still flows an enormous hot spring, which promptly forms a small river and
sends into the Lucrin a “river of fire”, a pyriphlegethon, as the Odyssian poet says. During antiquity, the Pyriphlegethons
abounded on the entire perimeter of Lucrin. They covered the land with their mists and their thick fumaroles:

ηέρι και νεφέλη κεκαλυμένοι.

Beneath the shade of the forests, which Virgil and Strabo again describe to us,

tuta lacu nigro nemorumque tenebris,

and under the heavy veil of the volcanic smoke, the region of Avernus was a land of darkness and shadow, “ which the
shining sun never floods with its rays: over the unfortunate mortals, the pernicious night always reigns”,

... ουδέ ποτ’ αυτους

ηέλιος φαέθων καταδέρκεται ακτίνεσσιν,
αλλ’ επι νυξ ολοη τέταται δειλοισι βροτοισιν.

In the dark land, says the Odyssian poet, “live the people of the Kimmerian men”,

ένθα δε Κιμμερίων ανδρων δημός τε πόλις τε.

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 In the Semitic languages, the root ‫כמר‬, k.m.r., designates the darkness, the blackness, and the plural substantive (in the
constructed state) ‫כמרירי‬, kimeriri, is encountered in the Scripture to signify the eclipses of the day, the sudden darknesses.
In his ordinary fashion, our Odyssian poet has personified the Darkness which his periple described to him: of the region
of the kimeriri, he has made the land of the Kimmerians; for one part, he has transcribed the Semitic term as kimmerioi,
and he has translated it, for the other part, as “pernicious night”, νυξ ολοή. There truly is his habitual fashion of
proceeding: near the foreign term, he always gives us the Greek translation of it.
In the land of vapors,

vaporiferas, blandissima littora, Baias,

where the fire mixed with waters covers the shore with its exhalations,

littora, qua mediis alte permixtus anhelat

ignis aquis, et operta domos incendia servant,

Strabo and the Ancients found without difficulty the Pyriphlegethon of the Underworld, τον δε Πυριφλεγέθοντα εκ των
θερμων ‘υδάτων ετεκμαίροντο. They also found the cold waters of the Styx and of the Kokytos. We see by that that
Strabo already had before his eyes our present text of the Odyssey: in his Odyssian Land of the Dead, a Styx and a
Kokytos already flowed near the Pyriphlegethon. Nevertheless, in the text I would be disposed to suppress the three
verses where the rivers are enumerated. The three verses appear interpolated to me. The three verses are found only in the
description made in advance by Circe of the Land of the Dead: when Ulysses and his companions land “at the narrow
beach and at the damp dwellings of Hades”, the poet does not speak to us of the rivers. Let us study further the passage in
the discourse of Circe.
Circe explains the route which Ulysses should follow: “When you will have crosseed the Ocean by boat, at the point
where are a narrow beach and the woods of Persephone and tall poplars and willows, in that spot draw out your vessel on
the edge of the torrential Ocean and yourself go into the damp house of Hades. Then there, oh hero, having come very
close to doing all that I direct you, dig a ditch... , etc.” The fragment of discourse is perfectly clear. I have nevertheless
redacted three verses, for the actual text tells us: “Yourself go into the damp house of Hades [There, into the Acheron, roll
the Pyriphlegethon and the Kokytos, which is a diversion of the water of the Styx, and the Stone and the confluence of the
two tumultuous streams.] Then there, oh hero, having come very near, etc.” Here is the text:

Αλλ ‘οπότ’ άν δη νηι δι’ Ωκεανοιο περήσης,

ένθ’ ακτη τε λάχεια και άλσεα Περσεφονείης
μακραί τ’ αίγειροι και ιτέαι ωλεσίκαρποι,
νηα μεν αυτου κέλσαι επ’ Ωκεανω βαθυδίνη,
αυτος δ’ εις Αιδεω ιέναι δόμον ευρώεντα.
[Ένθα μεν εις Αχέροντα Πυριφλεγέθων τε ‘ρέουσιν
Κώκυτος θ’ ‘ός δη Στυγος ‘ύδατος εστιν απορρώξ,
πέτρη τε ξύνεσίς τε δύω ποταμων εριδούπων.]
Ένθα δ’ έπειθ’, ‘ήρως, χριμφθεις πέλας, ‘ώς σε κελεύω,
βόθρον ορύξαι.

The three verses which I propose to suppress, in addition to them being useless in the course of the account, are in
themselves incomprehensible. The word Stone lacks the qualifier which it needed to restore according to another passage
of the poem in canto XXIV, when Hermes leads the spirits of the suitors “ along the course of the Ocean and the White
Rock... , toward the Prarie of Asphodel where the spirits live”,

477
 παρ δ’ ίσαν Ωκεανου τε ‘ροας και Λευκάδα Πέτρην... ,
... αιψα δ’ ‘ίκοντο κατ’ ασφοδελον λειμωνα.

Canto XXIV of the Odyssey makes a part of the Mnesterophonia: it has nothing to do with our Nostos. I believe that,
similarly, the sojourn of the spirits, the “Prarie of Asphodel” has nothing to do with our “house of Hades”. For we need to
take the last words “house of Hades” literally. Near Avernus, in effect, Ulysses finds a house, a room of Hades. We can
see it today. The guides tell us:

To the south of lace Avernus, we note grottos and galleries worked from the tuff. One of these, a few hundreds of feet from
where the road from lake Lucrin ends, is called Grotto of the Sybil or Grotto of Avernus. One enters by a brick doorway and at first
crosses a long damp gallery cut into the rock and provided with vertical windows. About halfway between the two lakes, a narrow
gallery leads to a small square room where, they say, is found the Doorway of the Underworld. Near there one notes another room:
the floor is covered with a foot of tepid water, which takes its source in the vicinity.

It is the damp house of Hades, εις Αίδεω δόμον ευρώεντα, where Ulysses comes afoot, after having crossed the
narrow and flat isthmus, “the little beach”, ακτη λάχεια, which separates Lucrin from Avernus, Okeanos from the wood of
Persephone. Ulysses does not enter the house: he stays near the entrance, ένθα χριμφθεις πέλας. Ulysses does not descend
into the underworld: it is, to the contrary, the spirits which come out of Erebus, by the Doorway of the Underworld, to
climb up to him:

ψυχαι ελεύσονται νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων... ,

... αι δ’ αγέροντο
ψυχαι ‘υπεξ ερέβευς νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων... ,

The spirits, attracted by the smell of blood, gather near the ditch which the hero has dug. The ditch is not in the
Underworld; it is outside, in front of the house of Hades. One cannot emphasize this too much. Once Ulysses has crossed
the isthmus between Lucrin and Avernus, he has arrived at his destination; he stops; he goes no farther; he does not
descend into the subterranian sojourn of the dead; he stays upon the land of darkness, in the country of the Kimmerians.
The spirits climb from the underworld to come up to him, then return into the house of Hades:

ως φαμένη ψυχη μεν έβη δόμον Αιδοσ είσω

Τειρεσίαο άνακτος.

Ulysses does not see and cannot see there the Prarie of Asphodel or the White Rock, because they are in the Underworld,
neither [does he see] the Streams, Acheron, Styx and Kokytos, because they flow in the sojourn of the spirits, and have
nothing to do with our real land of Darkness, with our land of the Kimmerians.
That is why I would suppress the three verses of the primitive text pointed out above. And I would be similarly
inclined to suppress the other passages of our Nekyia where the Prarie of Asphodel is mentioned. In the actual Nekyia, the
prarie is mentioned only two times: once in the catalog of the heroes, in a couplet of τον δε μετ’

τον δε μετ’ Ωρίωνα πελώριον εισενόησα

θηρας ‘ομου ειλευντα κατ’ ασφοδελόν λειμωνα,

another time in the episode of Achilles,

ως εφάμην. ψυχη δε ποδώκεος Αιακίδαο

478
 φοίτα μακρα βιβασα κατ’ ασφοδελον λειμωνα.

The first of the passages falls on its own: it appears evident to me that the catalogs do not belong to the primitive Nostos. I
would gladly believe that the second should also be cut: the meeting of Ulysses and Achilles is just a fragment or the
continuation of one of the Erides, of the Disputes, which we know well; alongside the Nostoi, the Returns, of which the
Odyssey is a model or a collection, the Erides, the Disputes, formed a literary genre, entirely distinct but also extensive, of
which the Iliad is the type.
We see without difficulty how the later bards were led into interpolations, not only by the literary style of the day and
to flatter the taste or the erudition of their listeners, but especially to satisfy the new conception which they themselves
and their public made of the Nekyia. By the example and through imitation on Virgil, we see in effect that the Ancients
interpreted in a strange fashion the voyage to the Land of the Dead. For them, the real voyage to an earthly region is
transformed into a miraculous descent into the underworld: Virgil believed he was imitating the poet in sending Aeneas to
the sojourn of the Manes. Guided by the Sybil, Aeneas thus descends underground; he travels a long dark route,
subterranian; he passes an entire series of doorways and vestibules, befoer reaching the underworld. Aeneas thus retraced
the voyage that the Hellenic legend ascribed to a number of its heroes, to Orpheus, to Pollux, to Theseus, to Hercules, to
all those who descend to the sojourn of the Manes to to lead out a love or a friend. Aeneas himself tells us that he goes to
renew the exploit of the heroes:

si potuit Manes arcessere conjugis Orpheus... ,

si fratrem Pollux alterna morte redemit
itque reditque viam toties; quid Thesea magnum,
quid memorem Alciden?

In the ordinary legend of the Hellenes, the descents into the underworld are in effect frequent. But the legendary descents
have nothing in common with the real voyage of which the Semitic periple furnished the itinerary to our Odyssian poet. It
is not the legend of the Hellenes which can explain to us our Odyssian Nekyia. The voyage of Ulysses has nothing in
common with the expeditions of Theseus or Hercules. It is to the Semites, to the Scripture, that we resort if we wish to
find a text of comparison:

Samuel died. All Israel weeps for him. They bear him to Rama, to his town. Saul Suppresses the magicians and sorcerers of the
land.
The Philistines assemble and come to camp at Sonam. Saul assembles all of Israel and camps at Gilboa.
Saul, having seen the camp of the Philistines, fears, and his heart fails him.
Saul seeks the Lord. The Lord does not reply, neither in dreams, in visions, nor by prophets.
Saul says to his people: “Find a woman nacromancer, and I would ask her”.
His people will reply to him: “There is a woman necromancer at Ain-Dor”.
Saul changed clothes and was covered in foriegn attire. He goes with two men. He came to the place of the woman at night and
says to her: “Prophecy to me by necromancy and make to ascend to me [from the underworld] whom I would tell you”.
The woman replied: “Do you not know what Saul has done, and how he has suppressed the magicians and sourcerers; why do
you tempt my spirit to set me in peril?”
Saul swears to her by the Lord and says to her: “God live, if any harm comes to you from your words”.
The woman says to him: “Whom would you have ascend?” Saul replys: “It is Samuel whom you should have ascend to me”.
The woman saw Samuel and gave a loud cry and says: “Why do you trick me? You are Saul”.
Saul says: “Do not fear anything. But whom have you seen?” She says: “I see gods who rise from the earth”.
Saul says: “Whom do you perceive?” She says: “An old man who ascends: he is covered in the robe”. Saul recognized Samuel
and prostrates himself on the ground and adores him.

479
 Samuel says: “Why have you bothered to have me ascend?” Saul says: “I am in fear. The Philistines fight against me. The Lord
has turned from me; he no longer answers me, neither by prophets, nor by dreans. I have called to you that you make me know what
I should do.”

In the biblical text, there are words of a difficult explanation. The woman who makes the dead “ascend” is called by
the Scripture a ‫אוב‬-‫בעלת‬, baalat-ob; I have translated it as “necromanceress”; the Seventy and the Vulgate say
“ventriloquiste”, εγγαστρίμυθος, ventriloqua, We perceived the reasons for the translation: ‫אוב‬, ob, signifies the skin;
‫בעלת אוב‬, baalat-ob, the woman of the sin, of the stomach (ventre), becomes the ventriloquiste. It is probable that in the
times of the Seventy the old practices of magic had disappeared and that that the ancient terms were no longer
understood: the translation of baalat-ob appears to me a simple pun. In Arabic, the root ‫אוב‬, ub signifies return, come
back; ‫אוב‬, ob would be the return, and the necromanceress, the baalat-ob would be the woman of the revenant. As to the
word which signifies to consult the dead, , in the Scripture it is the verb ‫דרש‬, d.r.s.: if the Odyssian poet has chosen
Tiresias as the intermediary between Ulysses and the dead,

ψυχη χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο

I would not hesitate to believe that perhaps the Semitic d.r.s. was no stranger to the choice.
It is very regrettable that we know so poorly the practice of Hebrew or Phoenician necromancers: I believe that many
other details in our Odyssian story would lead us to the Semitic practices. Similarly, if we knew the particular rites of
Avernus better, perhaps we would see that the sacrifices of Ulysses in that place relate singularly to the old Italian rites.
The Latin texts only mention to us the “illlumination of the road of Avernus”, lustratio ad iter Averni. One of the most
employed sacrifices for the Italian illumination as the sacrifice of pig, of sheep and of cattle, suovetaurilia. It is precisely
the sacrifice which Tiresias recommends to Ulysses to expiate the wounding of Polyphemus:

‘ρέξας ‘ιερα καλα Ποσειδάωνι άνακτι

αρνειον ταυρόν τε συων τ’ επιβήτορα κάπρον.

The sacrifice of the pig, of the sheep and of the bull is not in the Homeric mores; it is mentioned only in the passage of
canto XI of the Odyssey and in another passage of canto XXIII (v. 277): in the two passages, it is just the same
illumination again, recommended by Tiresias, to expiate the wounding of Polyphemus.
In spite of the inadequacies of our means of comparison, I believe that a conclusion appears: it is an evocation in the
fashion of the Semites which the original periple describes and which the Odyssian poet copies faithfully; it was not an
attack in the fashion of the Hellenes. The later bards, who without doubt no longer had, either before their eyes or in the
spirit, the exact representation of the Semitic evocations, will retouch, develop and distort the original poem and set it in
the condition where we see it today: of the pilgrimage of Ulysses toward the necromancers of Avernus, they make a
singular mixture of evocation and descent. In the mixture, certain elements remain distinct, easily discernible. I believe,
for my part, that all the beginning of our canto XI belongs to the primitive poem: the first 225 verses (voyage of Ulysses;
sacrifice; Elpenor; Tiresias; Antikleia) appear to me to have undergone no alteration. On the contrary, from verse 225 to
verse 635, it appears to me that the present text has nothing in common with the primitive text; here, everything, or almost
everything, appears to me of a later invention; I believe, at least, it is impossible to make the part secure from
interpolations: the four hundred ten verses are almost equally suspect to me. At root, following nothing but a precise goal,
the identification of the Odyssian Land of the Dead with Avernus, I consider that the rejected or acceted verses have no
great importance. The uncertainty of the text only makes it that, for the Nekyia, we are not able to make the
identificationof the place in the same detail as for the other Odyssian adventures. But the assembly endures: Avernus
provides us, in the large strokes, our Odyssian Land of the Dead. And perhaps, in the very name of Avernus, we will find
a final argument.

480
 Avernus, said the natives; Aornos, say the Hellenes who here again make one of their wordplays: Avernus became the
lake without birds, α-ορνις. The Romans will adopt the pun and the natives themselves will repeat it:

principio, quo Averna vocantur nomine, id ab re

impositumst, quia sunt avibus contraris cunctis.

In reality, the fliers have never deserted the forests; the ducks, geese, teals and migratory birds in certain epochs cover
the waters of the lake. A-ornos is surely just a play on words: Dion Cassius more exactly transcribes avernus as aouernis,
Αουερνίς. We should enter, I think, the name of avernus in the same onomastic layer as many other terms of the Kumean
region: Oinotria, Kumë, etc., in the episode of the Cyclops, we have retrieved many Semitic traces. Avernus is just a
Cyclops, a Round Eye, an Eye full of forests and water: at the end of the narrow isthmus, it is the sacred wood of
Persephone (cf. the text of Diod. Sic., IV, 22, την Άορνον ονομαζομένην λίμνην, ‘ιεραν δε Περσεφόνηης, says the
Odyssian poet who, among the trees of the region, names the poplar and willow:

ένθ’ ακτή τε λάχεια και άλσεα Περσεφονείης

μακραί τ’ αίγειροι και ιτέαι ωλεσίκαρποι.

The two trees, in effect, willow and poplar, are characteristic of the Neopolitan region. But it is another tree which we
have already encountered near the cavern of Polyphemus and whose silhouette, even more characteristic, is profiled on all
the slopes of the hills: the parasol pine. The Scripture gives the name of aorn or aworn to an elongated tree, which serves
for making the masts of ships; the translators identify it with the pine. it is from ‫ארן‬, aorn, or ‫אורן‬, aworn that the
Ancients, I believe, will derive Avernus, Aouernis, Aornos. I believe that the lacus avernus was primitively the lake of the
pines; but, lacking the doublet, I do not know how to certify the etymology.

*
* *

April 20, 1901. - The tramway, which goes from Naples to Pouzzoles, then to the Beach of Cuma, borders the foot of
the Phlegrian hills up to Lucrin. The route is bordered by steam baths, hot springs and therapeutic establishments, which
utilize the innumerable thermal springs or jets of steam of the volcanic coast. Before the industrial exploitation, the
deserted shore should offer to the first navigators an almost uninterrupted succession of boiling and steaming rivulets, of
vaporous jets, of steams and fumaroles. It was truly the land of mists and clouds, of which the Odyssian poem speaks:

ηέρι και νεφέλη κεκαλυμμένοι.

Hannon the Carthaginian in his periple describes to us an entirely similar coast, “a coast of flames and vapors, letting
streams of fire fall into the sea and opposing to the sailors an unapproachable land because of its heat”, χώραν διάπυρον
θυμιαμάτων μεστήν. μέγιστοι δ’ απ’ αυτης πυρώδεις ‘ρύακες ενέβαλλον εισ την θάλασσαν. ‘η γη δ’ ‘υπο θέρμης άβατος
ην.
The tramway then parallels lake Lucrin. The rails are poised on the jetty which separates the waters of the lake from
the sea. The isthmus, the Ancients said with reason, was an artificial work. The work was without doubt prior to the
Greek colonization: Hercules, long before Hellenic times, had constructed the roadway for the passage of his herd of
Geryonian cattle. Between Lucrin and the sea, the very narrow roadway is pierced with channels to discharge the

481
overflow of the lake. Dams and small gates regulate the flow. Nets and hurdles retain the fish. Before the works of man -
one can see it well on site - the sea freely penetrated into the Lucrin gulf.
A flat route winds around Lucrin to the east and leads to the other isthmus which separates Lucrin and Avernus.
Along the route, we cruise the muddy shore of Lucrin and the steep slopes of Monte Nuova. Avernus opens the great
breach of its eyebrow before us. It is by that breach that the flat route, without a rise, joins the flat edge of Lucrin with the
flat edge of Avernus: there truly, at the end of Lucrin, “at the limits of the Okeanos”, is the small beach, ακτη λάχεια, of
the Odyssian poem. The lake of Avernus, girdled by an edge of stones, sleeps among the groves of willow and poplar; as
a crown, at the summit of the steep slopes of its “eyebrow”, the parasol pines make a diadem for it. Ulysses, having left
his ship at the end of Lucrin, came to the shore of willow and poplar. At the foot of the eyebrow, there is the Doorway of
the Underworld, before which, having dug his ditch, he made the ritual sacrifice. The guides have described to us the
Doorway of the Underworld and the damp house of Hades to us with a perfect exactitude above. From point to point, the
Odyssian description can be applied to our site.
The primitive navigators came here to consult the oracle of the dead and ask the “road of return” of the necromancers.
Perhaps it was a woman, a baalat-ob, who served here, as at Ain-Dor, as evocatrice. The native legend never forgets that
a prophetess, a sybil, formerly lived in the Kumean region. Perhaps it is truer than than they think, the relationship
Christian authors made between the Sybil of Kumea and the Sybil of Ain-Dor. It is by some substantive derived from the
root d.r.s. that the Semitic navigators perhaps designated the Sybil. Let us imagine a feminine substantive of the form
dires’a or deres’a, and we will perceive how the Odyssian poet took Tiresias for intermediary between Ulysses and the
spirits of the dead. In the Theban legend of Tiresias, we would find numerous details which would lead us to the same
hypothesis. Tiresias, during his life, had changed his sex several times; sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, he bore,
like a king of the Orient, a scepter of kyanos. If we had the leisure to study the legend of Tiresias here, I believe that, in
the Boeotia of Cadmus as well as in our canto of the Odyssey, the seer would appear as a close relation of the Semitic
Sybil...
We have come back to the tramway in finishing the tour of Lucrin by its western shore. In a hollow of the hills, a hot
spring boils in a large steaming eye: it is the Pyriphlegethon of Strabo. In a rivulet of tepid water, it it flows into Lucrin;
with many signs of the cross, some peasants come to bathe a poor bony horse: the sacred waters always remain
miraculous.

482
 BOOK TEN

THE SIRENS - CHARYBDIS AND SKYLLA

THE ISLE OF THE SUN

Charybdis an respondeat fabulis, perscribi mihi desidero.

SENEC., Epist., LXXIX.

CHAPTER I

THE SIRENS

και φωνην αυλων ηκούομεν και κραυγην μυρίαν

Peripl. Hannon., 15

Ulysses comes back from Avernus, across the low beach. He retrieves his boat at the foot of the Lucrin gulf. He
reëmbarks. First by oar, then by sail, he leaves the gulf and regains the open sea:

... απο δ’ ‘ίκετο κυμα θαλάσσης ευρυπόροιο.

A day of navigation brings him back to the isle of Circe. He draws his boat on the shore of Aiaie. He sets up the camp
anew in the Cala dei Pescatori. A group climbs again to the place of Feronia to seek the body of Elpenor, remaining there
without a sepulcher:

δη τότ’ εγων ‘ετάρους προίειν ες δώματα Κίρκης

οισέμεναι νεκρον, Ελπήνορα τεθνηωτα.

Circe awaits the return of the navigators there. She promptly descends to the beach, with her maidens who bring
provisions. She offers a feast to our men, which lasts all day. It is understood that, the following day, they will take again
to the sea, and that the goddess will show the route of return: Feronia had, she also, an oracle which the Peoples of the sea
came to consult. Thus all day they eat, they drink, they make a feast. That evening, Circe takes Ulysses aside and warns
him of the perils which are going to assail him, Sirens, Charybdis and Skylla, or of the temptations which he should
overcome on the isle of the Sun. The next day, Ulysses takes to the sea again. By oar, they leave the shore. Then the same
“good boy” of wind, sent by Circe, pushes them again on the same route as from the first departure toward the Land of the

483
Dead: they descend anew toward the south; they sail along the Italian coasts toward the strait of Messina. The breeze and
the pilot guide the ship. Ulysses then repeats to his men the counsels of Circe concerning the Sirens.

*
* *

You will first arrive at the Sirens, who charm all the men. Whoever approaches them without distrust and gives ear to their song
does not again see his wife and children run to greet him; he he does not again enter his home; the Sirens charm him with their
penetrating voices, in the meadow where they are seated: around them lies a mass of human bones and decaying skins.

For a long time, they have remarked with justice that no Greek etymology can explain to us the name of Sirens,
Σειρηνες.
To the contrary, a Semitic etymology is promptly presented for the singers, for the “girls of song”, as the Scripture
says, ‫השיר‬-‫בגות‬, benot-ha-sir. The Hebrew word ‫שיר‬, sir, song, hymn, would be exactly transcribed by the beginning of the
Greek word Sir-enes, Σειρ-ηνες. For the end of the Greek word, one ordinarily proposes to recognize there the Semitic
word ‫הן‬, hen, charm: ‫הן‬-‫שיר‬, sir-hen, would be song of grace, as ‫הן‬-‫אבנ‬, eben-hen is the stone of charm, the precious stone.
The etymology does not seem unacceptable to me. Nevertheless, it does not satisfy me: I believe that, from the Odyssian
text itself, another explanation can issue, which will be imposed with more certitude. We know in effect how the poet
makes use of the names and facts of his periple. Every time he transcribes a Semitic term, the comment or the translation
is arranged for us in its context: furthermore, most often - we have had the most typical example in the flight of Ulysses in
the land of the Fugitives - most frequently the entire adventure appears imagined as a poetic or anthropomorphic
development of this or that term of the original periple. Now see, on the one hand, that which the poet tells us of the
Sirens and see, on the other hand, the adventure which he imagines in their waters.
The Sirens are singers; but they are also magicians, fascinatrices, in taking the word in its primitive and complete
sense, that is to say, women who bind by their enchantments: such is the sense of the Latin fascinare, fasciare, or of the
Greek θέλγω. The Sirens charm the men, they enchain them, they retain them by their magical songs:

ανθρώπους θέλγουσιν, ‘ό τέ σφεας εισαφίκηται.

αλλά τε Σειρηνες λιγυρη θέλγουσιν αοιδη.

The adventure of Ulysses in the waters of the Sirens is thus just an enchainment: “Stop the ears of your companions,”
Circe told him; “as for you, listen to the Sirens, if you wish; but have the crew enchain you hand and foot on the cruiser,

δησάντων σ’ εν ηνι θοη χειράς τε πόδας τε,

and if you beg your companions, if you command them to unbind you, have them load you with more numerous bonds”,

ει δέ κε λίσσηαι ‘ετάρους λυσαί τε κελεύης

ο‘ι δέ σ’ ετι πλεόνεσσι τότ’ εν δεσμοισι διδέντων.

Ulysses repeats the counsils of Circe to his crew:

αλλά με δεσμω
δήσατ’ εν αργαλέω όφρ’ έμπεδον αυτόθι μίμνω.

484
 Things happen in this way. Ulysses is bound hand and foot:

ο‘ι δ’ εν νηί μ’ έδησαν ‘ομου χειράς τε πόδας τε.

Then, to accept the invitation of the Sirens, he vainly demands that they unbind him:

ήθελ’ ακουέμεναι λυσαι τ’ εκέλευον ‘εταίρους.

His companions bind him more tightly and confine him:

πλε’ιοσί μ’ εν δεσμοισι δέον μαλλόν τε πίεζον.

They do not unbind him until the voice of the Sirens has disappeared in the distance:

εμέ τ’ εκ δεσμων ανέλυσαν.

If the episode of the Lestrygons in the land of the Sards, the Fugitives, is the Flight of Ulysses, if the episode of Circe
in the sanctuary of emancipation is the Liberation, one sees that the episode of the Sirens is, above all, the Enchainment.
Also, to render account of the adventure and, on the other hand, to explain the formula of the poet word by word “the
Sirens fascinate by the song”, θέλγουσιν αιοδη, I believe that an etymology of Sir-enes is imposed: it is ‫ען‬-‫שיר‬, sir-en,
song of fascination. The word ‫ען‬, en, would come from the root ‫ענן‬, ‘n.n., as ‫הן‬, hen, comes from the root ‫הנן‬, h.n.n. The
root ‫ענן‬, ‘n.n., exists in all the Semitic languages. The Arabs make frequent use of it to signify on the one hand attach,
retain (especially to hold and control a horse by the reins), and on the other hand to injure by evil spells (in particular
render impotent [nouer l’aiguillette], as our fathers said): from this root the Arabs have derived the words cord, reins,
and the words enchantment, sexual impotence; they have also dreived the word cloud (the Latins similarly employ the
word fascia). The Hebrews use the root ‫ענן‬, ‘n.n., less frequently: they have nevertheless also derived the word cloud, ‫ענן‬,
anan, and a verb, of a more obscure meaning, which appears to signify to be delivered by magical operations, either by
divination (according to some), or by fascination (according to others). The Sirens at the same time fascinate men and
reveal the future: “Stop your ship in order to hear our voice. Noöne ever passed on your black boat without hearing the
harmonious voice of our mouths and without being charmed and instructed of that which he did not know, for we know
all the exploits of the Argives and of the Trojans before vast Troy, and we know all which happens in the habitable
world”,

ίδμεν δ’ ‘όσσα γένηται επι χθονι πουλυβοτείρη.

There is another detail in the Odyssian text which we should not neglect if we wish to retrieve the original onomasty
of the isles: the Sirens are seated in a meadow,

‘ήμεναι εν λειμωνι.

We know from the Scripture several place names of the form: Prairie of Acacias, Prairie of Vines, Prairie of the Dance.
It is an equivalent of the last name ‫אבל מהולה‬, Abel-Mehol’a, Prarie of the Dance, which I would restore to the origin of
our Odyssian legend: the first navigators will call the isle ‫ען‬-‫אבל שיר‬, Aben Sir-en, Prairie of the Enchantment or of the
Magic Song; the Hellenes will translate it as Leimon Epodes, Λειμων Επωδης, and the Latins as Pratum Carminis. For the
Greek and Latin can furnish us the exact translation of magic song, sir-en of the Semites: it is incantare, incantamenta
carminum, επ-ωδή or επ-αοιδή. The Seventy call singers of incantation, επαοίδοντες επαοιδήν, those whom the Scripture

485
calls the tiers of bonds, hober habarim, ‫הבר הברים‬: Eschylus gives us an exact deefinition of epode, when he speaks to us
of the binder song, ‘ύμος δέσμιος.

*
* *

The name of the Sirens remains, during all antiquity, attached to a small archipelago of rocks and islets, which is
found on the Italian coast, to the south of the Sorrentine peninsula, in the present gulf of Salerno and of Amalfi, in the
ancient gulf of Paestum, at the opening of the strait of Capri that the sailors call the Little Mouths. The islets are called the
Cocks, Galli, today (we do not know why). The Instructions tell us:

At ½ mile to the east from Vivara, we find the group of the three Galli islets, formerly considered the sojourn of the Sirens. The
largest and the most easterly of the group has ¼ mile of length; it is covered with brush and bears a tower at its summit. The two
small ones, named Castellucia and Rotunda and situated a small distance to the west, are sound, especially to the south.

Ulysses passes in front of the Sirens without debarking. The Odyssey gives us no charasteristic detail of the Meadow
of Enchantment. We thus are unable to deliver ourselves to our habitual task of comparison between the Homeric text and
the reality, But, for the location, the Galli accord well with the place which the Sirens should occupy in the itinerary of
Ulysses. On the route which leads from Circe to Charybdis and Scylla, that is to say, to the strait of Sicily, the navigators
encounter the archipelago when they have crossed the gulf of the Cyclops and reached the strait of Capri. For the first
thalassocracies, the archipelago of the Sirens marked a somewhat important stop. For here as elsewhere we need to not
neglect the difference in the times: the Galli do not have for us today, the Sirens already did not have for the Greco-
Romans during the classsical antiquity, any importance; to the contrary, the first thalassocracies should have had an
almost indispensible retreat there.
For the foreign thalassocracies, in effect, the isles were the key to the Mouths of Capri; here, their corsairs could
survey the entering or exiting of the strait; here, their merchants could await a favorable wind when, coming from the
south, they encountered a blow of the Mistral, which closed the mouths to them, or, coming from the north, they had the
descent closed by some blow of the Sirocco. We have long studied the the rôle of the guardian islets of straits: Asteris, in
the strait of Ithaca, will furnish the occasion to come back there. In the Italian waters, the Mouths of Capri are one of the
great routesof navigation. From all times, the navigators had some great retreat in the area. When the natives navigate (it
is the case today) or when the thalassocracies are at the same time sailors and colonists (it was the case with the Hellenes),
the ones and the others install their lookouts and their repositories along the continental coast: Paestum, Salerno, Amalfi
border the perimeter of the neighboring gulf. But we do not have to repeat, one more time, how and why the first
thalassocracies of Sidon or of Kumë preferred, to the contintntal ports, the shelter of coastal islets, or even of simple
insular rocks. The Sirens, for them, held the place of Paestum or of Amalfi. If we wish to measure the importance in their
eyes of the retreat, let us only reread some accounts of voyagers. When the weather is good, the exit of the Mouths of
Capri offers no danger:

At the decline of the day, we left the gulf of Naples by the narrow channel which separates from Capri the ancient promontory of
Sorrente otherwise called Cap Minerve and more commonly called today the Punta della Campanella... After having rounded Cap
Minerve, we turned to the east, leaving on our left three small islets which the muse of Homer had deigned to celebrate and which, in
our day, do not even have a name. Virgil still designates them under the name of Scopuli Sirenum.

But often, on leaving the Mouths, the navigators encounter adverse winds of the dangers of a storm, which forces
them to retreats and long waits in it matters not what refuge:

486
 The isle of Capri and the Cap della Campanella narrow the sea and leave the pilot only a narrow and dangerous passage.
Nevertheless, by virtue of the capability of our sailors and of the knowledge which they have of all the coast, we rounded the cape
without accident and debarked, after having made thirty miles, in a rather meager place named Donna Overa, serving as retreat for
some wretches occupied in fishing for tuna.
We are not about to believe that it is the agreeableness of place which had encouraged us on debarking: nothing [could be] less
[agreeable] than that [place]; it is the foresight of our [ship]owner who, reading an approaching storm in the sky, exiled us on the
coast. May the word of exile not appear too strong to us: we find ourselves in a truly deserted place, without bread, without meat,
with bad wine, no bed at all, and forced to lie down on the speronare. The prediction of our owner was fulfilled. All night we have
had a frightful storm. One moment the sea was so heavy and its waves rising so strongly that our sailors were obliged to pull their
ship eight or nine feet farther up on the shore.
The schiroc which blows with violence, loosens our fibers and our nerves to the point that we feel a kind of general disgust for
all sorts of work. After the voyage and the account of M. Brydonne, I believed that the destructive and evil wind predominated only
in the worst of the heat; but in these waters they are accustomed to feel it in all the seasons. The very troubling of the seas, in winter,
is from seeing the current in the airs suddenly born, and spreading its power with the greatest violence for fifteen or twenty days; it
chains up, so to speak, the voyager suddenly surprised by the storm, frequently on an uncivilized coast. Already three days that it
keeps us here; who knows how much longer?
All along the coast, at a distance of a mile from each other, are raised towers of masonry, of which each contains four disabled
servicemen and a sergeant, charged with observing the sorties which the Turks might be able to make, and to promptly warn the
neighboring garrisons by signals placed for that purpose atop the towers
We have been obliged to stop at Donna Overa from the 23rd of November to the 28th. In sum, we finally leave on the 29th with
a favorable wind, which made us cross in little time the Gulf of Salerno, which is considered very perilous, because of the currents of
water which rule there and which would have easily been able to capsise our ship. But over the eight hours of the evening of the
29th, the wind became so violent that we were obliged to retreat and land at Garouffle, the ancient Agropolis, which is just a
miserable burg. The sad appearance of our new sojourn at first frightened us greatly, because our owner announced to us that
evening thet we would be unable to put to sea for several days. We soon consoled ourselves in learning that only four miles from
Agropolis were situated the famous temples of Paestum...
Having achieved our tour of Paestum, and the wind having been declared favorable, we set to sea again on the 2nd of December.
But a small storm obliged us to land for fear of capsizing... After having landed on the shore three times, we finally arrived today
(December 5th) in the bay of Messina.

If the boats which descend toward Messina find the gales of the sirocco contrary at the Mouths of Capri, inversely the
boats which climb toward Naples find there the interminable winds of the mistral: For the one or the other, a refuge is
needed. Without anticipating the blows of the wind, the inexperienced captain would risk attempting a terrible storm; a
sudden gust would throw his boat on the rocks or on the savage coast: “the skins of the sailors would go to rot, and their
bones to bleach” around the Sirens, on the Meadow of the Enchantment.
For the first thalassocracies, the Sirens thus held a rôle which Paestum of the Hellenes or Salerno or Amalfi of the
Italians later played. Coming from the strait of Cicily, the Phoenician boats arrived here, either from cruising along the
mainland or in running straight across the sea, from the High Isle, Ai-olia. Such of the islets, Gallo Lungo or Castellucia,
offered them a watering place, near ruins which today mark the emplacement of ancient Byzantine or Norman fortresses.
For, in the middle ages and up to our days, the masters of the Italian coast, to defend the islets against the corsairs of
Sicily or Africa, need to construct lookouts and keep in each “four disabled soldiers and a Sergeant”: the Arabs and
Barbaries willingly made a station of the isles, a point of support. It is that the strait of Capri and its Sorrentine peninsula
mark a natural division in the Itlian coasts and seas. One can say that the climate, the winds and the seas of Africa extend
up to the palmaries of Amalfi. On the north façade of the peninsula, the gulf of Naples is European. On the south façade,
the gulf of Salerno is semi-African: Salerno was an Arab university, founded by Constantinus Africanus; the entire
history of Amalfi is just a battle against Pisa to hold the commercial monopoly of Africa and the Levant.
I have not visited the archipelago of the Sirens. But M. Attilio Mori has been very willing to dig in the cartographic
archives of the Geographic institute of Florence for me, and M. N. Mansi (of Ravello), very familiar with the fishermen

487
and hunters of the coast, has furnished me minute details of the three islets. The Galli are three in number. Two are just
conical rocks, elevated 50 to 54 meters above the sea: they are named la Castellucia and la Rotonda. The third, il Gallo
Lungo, much larger, has the form of a long sickle, whose concavity, turned toward la Castellucia and la Rotonda,
determines a bay somewhat well closed by the two islets. On the convex face of Gallo Lungo, is hollowed a samll cove,
named la Praja, which offers a somewhat convenient harbor, with a very short beach, at the foot of a peak af 54 meters. A
small modern house is constructed at the foot of the cove; the ruins of an ancient tower occupy the summit of the hill.
“The rocks,” M. Mansi writes to me, “are covered with vegetation and stunted thickets: in places, it is a veritable
prarie of narcissis. In 1848, the family of the Counts of Guissi undertakes the construction of a farm to raise rabbits; the
enterprise succeeds at first; but, in 1873, a terrible storm sweeps over the entire archipelago and drowns the rabbits.
Today, the islets are hardly visited except in the month of May by numerous hunters, who come there for the passage of
the quail.”
The “prarie of narcissis” entirely resembles the prarie of parsley and violets which we encountered on the rock of
Calypso; in each place the Odyssian poet has translated as prarie, λειμών, the Semitic word ‫אבל‬, abel: the Sirens live in a
prarie of flowers, λειμων ανθεμόεντα, in a meadow of narcissis.

*
* *

Beyond the Sirens, Circe leaves Ulysses the choice between two routes. Two routes, in effect, are open to navigators
who, coming from the Mouths of Capri, wish to reach the seas of the south in rounding Sicily. According to whether one
heads toward Carthage or toward Greece, toward the Levantine or African seas, the vessels should have gone to the right
or the left, to pass to the west or the east of Sicily, before Trapani or Messina:

When your companions have made you pass the sirens, I would not tell you, from point to point, which of the two routes you
will need to choose: it is for you to see. But I would describe both to you.

Of the two routes, it is the second which Ulysses chooses. To reach the Greek seas the most quickly, he takes the route
of Messina, the route between Charybdis and Scylla: we are going to follow the hero on the route. But Circe also
describes the other route to us; at least she indicates to us its principal refuge, with enough exactitude that we may be able
to discover it:

From the coast are raised the Stones in a dome, around which murmurs the great swell of Amphitriton of the blue visage. The
blessed gods call them Planktai. Neither the birds nor the doves which bring the ambrosia to Zeus the father pass the first; but, each
time, the bare rock takes away one of the doves, and Zeus should send back another to make the even number again. Near the other
stone, a vessel never passes without shipwreck: boards from ships and bodies of sailors, all sunk under the waves of the sea and
under the gusts of devastating fire.

After the Mouths of Capri, when one navigates toward the south, Spallanzani related to us above (p. 182)# how, on
the High Isle, Ai-olia, the cone and the plume of Stromboli offer a sure refuge to the ships which wish to reach Messina.
If, to the contrary, they wish to descend toward Trapani, they need to bear a little to the right: it is no longer Stromboli
which serves as a guide; but another of the Lipari isles raises its equally characteristic profile even higher. For to the right
of Stromboli, a little behind, the navigators who come from the north perceive the isle Salina whose height exceeds 960
meters, while Stromboli reaches barely 940 meters. The isle was called in antiquity Didyma, the Twin, or Didymoi, the
Twins, Δίδυμοι. Its two high mountains, in the form of domes or breasts merit the name well. The Nautical Instructions
tell us:

488
 Salina (Didyma or the Twins) - The isle, recognizable by its two conical summits, appears to be of an entirely volcanic origin:
one still sees there traces of craters which should have extended into prehistoric times, and which are now the most pleasant and
fertile of all the group of the Lipari isles. Between the mount dei Porri, rising 860 meters and situated in the west part, and the mount
San Salvatore, 960 meters high, and situated in the southeast part, a valley extends from each side toward the sea: it is rich and
productive, and merits the name which it is given, of Fossa Felice, or Happy Valley.

Here, I believe, is one of the prettiest puns which the navigators ever invented. The isle Salina indeed has two
mountains, which a pleasant and fertile valley separates. But the valley is called the Vale of the Church, Val di Chiesa.
The name Fossa Felice, the “Happy Valley”, is a mistake in transcription for Fossa della Felchi, the “Hole of the Ferns”.
It is, not the valley, but the higher of the mountains which bears this last name because of its extinct crater, entirely filled
with ferns. We are going to find in our Odyssian text an almost equally pretty pun.
The two conical summits of Salina are the two domed Stones, Πέτραι επηρεφέες, which Circe described: the Twin
Stones, Πέτραι Δίδυμοι, say the Greek navigators. To understand all the details of our Odyssian Description, it suffices to
transpose the Greek name into the language of the first thalassocracies. If we supose that the Greek name Πέτραι Δίδυμοι
had a Semitic precedent, it should have been ‫טורים תאמים‬, thurim tamim, the “Twin Rocks”. We have already studied the
word thur, thurim: we know how the Hellenes will elsewhere transcribe it as thourion, θούριον, and translate it as straight
rock, ορθόπαγοσ: thourim thus would be a good equivalent of the stones, πέτραι, of our Odyssian text. As for the Hebrew
word ‫ תאמים‬or ‫תמים‬, tamim, it could be either the plural of ‫תאם‬, tam, signifying twins or the singular of an adjectival form
‫תמים‬, tamim, signifying pefect, complete, integral, or an honest man, a flawless victim, or a complete year; it is the exact
equivalent of the Latin integer. It is the word tamin, I believe, that our Odyssian poet has translated as integral,
εναρίθμιος, in the little story of birds and doves, which he invents in his usual style to explain the place name:

αλλ’ άλλην ενίνσι Πατήρ εναρίθμιον είναι.

Note that the story of the birds and the doves, taken in itself, is as little comprehensible as the story of the
“cowherd who questions the shepherd” of the Lestrygons. What would the doves, one of which the bare rock always
removes, come here to do?

τη μέν τ’ ουδέ ποτητά παρέρχεται ουδέ πέλειαι

τρήρωνες ταί τ’ αμβροσίην Διί πατρί φέουσιν,
αλλά τε και των αιέν αφαιρειται λις Πέτρη.
αλλ’ άλλην ενίησι Πατηρ εναρίθμιον ειναι.

But, if in Hebrew our word ‫טור‬, thur, ‫טורים‬, thurim, would say the Stone, the Stones, Πέτρη, Πέτραι, it is the
similar word ‫תור‬, tur, ‫תורים‬, turim, which designates the dove, the doves, πέλειαι. Otherwise, the root ‫טור‬, thur, from
which the Hebrews and the Aramaians have derived thur, the rock, properly signifies to fly, flutter, soar: it is from this
root that the Arabs have derived a generic noun for all the birds, thaïrun, the flying - ποτητά, the Odyssian poet would say
- and a particular word for the homing pigeon, thaaïrun, πέλειαι. We can make out how the onomasty of the Twin Rocks,
Thurim Tamim, can furnish to the Odyssian poet the story of the integral dove, tur or thur tamim. After the story of
Antiphates-Korsos, which is at the same time the “Biter” and the “Contradictor”, the story of the doves has nothing which
can surprise us. When we will deal with the Composition of the Odysey, we will come back at length to the play of words
and alliterations. The Nautical Instructions have already shown how the pun flowered among the navigators. Do we want
another example? Near cape Misene, a lagoon, which the Italians name Mare Morto (see above, p. 137 ##), becomes for
the Provençals the port of Mala Morte. In our Odyssian text, here again is an entirely similar example. The poet tells us:
“The stones are named Planktai, in the language of the blessed gods”,

489
 Πλαγκτάς δ’η τοι τάς γε θεοι μάκαρες καλέουσιν.

The word of planktai presents a meaning, and even several meanings, in Greek; it can signify the Wanderers or
the Shaken (πλάζω, πλήσσω). If we take the meaning of Wandering Rocks, it is possible to imagine an explanation: the
volcano of Salina (we are going to see that it was then in full activity) can be a “wandering isle”, an isle of pumice and
floating stones, in the same way that the isle Aeolia was an isle that swims, πλωτη ενι νήσω. But the poets and
rhetoricians of the following ages will prefer the sense of the Shaken Rocks and they liken the Odyssian Planktai to the
Argonautic Sym-pleg-ades, to the two stones of the Bosphorus which beat against each other and which were stilled after
the passage of the ship Argo. It is why the interpolators will introduce the four verses about Jason into the Odyssian text:

οίν δη κείνη γε παρέπλω ποντοπόρος νηυς

Αργω πασι μέλουσα, παρ’ Αιήταο πλέουσα.
καί νύ την ένθ’ ωκα βάλεν μεγάλας ποτι πέτρας,
αλλ’ ‘Ήρη παρέπεμψεν, φίλος ηεν Ιήσων.

The last four verses are assuredly interpolations. I believe, nevertheless, that the Planktai rocks figured in the
primitive text. Even the name of Planktai appears to me a sure guarantee of the authenticity of the passage. The name is
not an invention of the poet: it is the simple transcription of a foreign word, which the poet finds in the original periple
and which he only dresses up as Greek. For, here as above, for planktai as for Molu, the poet warns us that those are not
Hellenic, “human”, terms, but foreign, “divine”, terms:

μωλυ δέ μιν καλέουσι θεοί...

Πλαγκτας δή τοι τάς γε θεοι μάκαρες καλέουσιν.

Molu can be explained by the Semitic languages; it appears that planktai could have a similar etymology. All the Semites
posess the root ‫פלך‬, p.l.k., with the meaning to be round or especially conical, pointed in the fashion of breasts: from the
root, the Hebrews have derived their word ‫פלך‬, pelek, which designated the rounded end of a spindle; the Arabs have
derived from it the words: palakun, globe, sphere and rounded hill; palkatun, end of the spindle and rounded hill in the
middle of a plain, etc. The two volcanic cones of Salina, raising their breasts in the middle of the waves, surely merit a
similar apppellation: the epithet επηρεφέες which the Greek poet gives to his “domed” Stones would only be the exact
translation of the Semitic word of which πλαγκταί would be the transcription. As our sailors transform Fossa delle Felchi
into Fossa Felice, I believe that the Odyssian poet derives his planktai from some ‫פלך‬, pelek, ‫פלכה‬, pelek’a, or (plural)
‫פלכות‬, pelekot, or (constructed form) ‫פלכת‬, peleket, which his periple furnished him. Dolomieu describes the mountains of
Salina to us thusly:

The mountain of the west is named Malaspina. Its form is the most perfect cone which I have ever seen; its perpendicular
height is more than a mile: its summit is almost pointed; one barely perceives that it may be truncated; it nevertheless bears, they
have told me, a depression or crater, which is little apparent. Its slope is extraordinarily straight, and I am astonished that the material
of which it is formed can sustain itself with so little embankment. Even its foot is too steep to be amenable to farming. I did not
attemp to climb it, because I saw there only an extreme fatigue, perhaps even the impossibility of reaching the top...
The other mountain is named Monte della Fossa Felice. When I undertook the ascent, I did not judge it to be as high as the
center of Lipari; it did not appear very steep to me and I did not believe the access to the summit difficult. But when I had traversed
the vineyards which envelop its foot and had arrived in the midst of its broom plants, the difficulty of the going and the time I
employed will inform me that I was deceived. I believe that the mountain is the highest of the Aeolian isles and that it rises above, by
more than a third, the highest summit of Lipari. I had incredible difficulty in arriving at the summit. [It is an ancient cratr] full of
ferns, which have given to the mountain the name of Fossa Felice, Crater of Ferns.

490
 The domes, the breasts, are of the volcanos which perhaps, in Odyssian times, were in full activity; their flows
descended to the boiling sea: “The wave and the gusts of devouring flame consume the planks of the ships and the bodies
of the crews”,

αλλα θ’ ‘ομου πινακάς τε νεων και σώματα φωτων

κύμαθ’ ‘αλς φορέουσι πυρός τ’ ολοοιο θύελλαι.

Salina, says Spallanzani, is so named in our days because of the sodium cloride which they harvest in a corner of the shore.
It formerly bore the name of Didume, that is to say, Twin, which it owed to the two mountains, which from a distance gives it the
appearance of two islands near to each other, although it really contains a third mountain distinct from the other two. It is, after
Lipari, the largest of the Aeolian isles, for it has fifteen miles of circumference. I made the tour of it. I crossed it in its middle region
and in its higher region. I examined the structure formed from flowing lavas. I held my attention principally on those which plunge
into the sea of the coast of the south. I saw that they had flowed from the sumit of the mountains, in traversing the distance of more
than a mile and that they fallen almost perpendicularly into the waves. I recognized at the same time that the flows had distinct
epochs... The superior lava covers another lava, which is placed on a third, and so continuing.

It is probable that the first thalassocracies, the periple of which the Odyssian poet copies, had observed some
equally terrifying phenomena, whether the volcanos of Salina were then in activity, whether a submarine eruption had
suddenly raised the waves and projected gusts of devastating fire. To hold close to the Odyssian verses, it would appear
that the first hypothesis was the most in conformance to certain details of the text: it is one of the two mountains, it
appears, that the navigators cannot approach and from which fall gusts. It could have then been that the story of the doves
had another origin than only the onomastic pun. By its position between Sicily and Sardinia, on the great route which the
migratory birds follow, when they pass from Europe to Africa, the Aeiolian isles have always been a place of refuge and
of rendez-vous for the birds of passage:

The sedentary birds at Lipari, says Spallanzani, are the partridge, the greenfinch, the chaffinch, the goldfinch, the owl and
the crow. The latter ordinarily live in the cultivated fields and nest on the steepest rocks, which are sometimes just enough for them
to raise their young.
As for the traveling birds, I have never seen any of them alone. I set in their number the diverse species of gulls and the
sooty pelican which go and come seeking their food and indifferently leaving the salt water of the sea for the fresh water of the rivers
and ponds. Rarely they are seen in the Aeiolian isles, like the other aquatic birds.
It is not the same for the migratory birds. The turtledoves and the quail arrive in April and stop for a few days; They return in
September for a few more times. The swallows do more; they nest... When I left Lipari, it was the 15 th of October; some swallows
still remained. I should observe that, two days before, a storm had occurred, accompanied by rain and hail, and that the following
day, at daybreak, I had seen a hundred swallows gather above the castle and leave with a wind from the southwest.
The Lipari isles are thus provided with numerous birds, when the volcanic eruptions and gas do not drive the
flyers away. But the volcanos in activity are deserted by the birds: “Stromboli,” Spallanzani, “is not inhabited by any
stationary bird: they have tried to have partridges nest there without success.” The present onomasty of the Lipari isles
translates faithfully enough the difference. On the extinct isles, Ustica, Ericusa, Panaria, etc., the Secca di Colombaia,
Falconara, Punta Palumba, etc., face isles and capes della Colombaia, palumbo, etc., of western Sicily, where the doves
held a great place in the ancient cult of Astarte, on mount Eryx. But around the active volcanos, Vulcano or Stromboli, the
names from birds and doves are not found:

τη μέν ουδε ποτητα παρέρχεται αυδε πέλειαι.

491
 CHAPTER II

CHARYBDIS AND SCYLLA

αυλών εστιν ου μακρος ‘ο συνάγων και εις στενον αποκλείων το πέλαγος.

Peripl. Mar. Erythr., 25.

Ulysses has chosen the route of Messina. After the Sirens, leaving the two domed rocks to the right, he perceived
the two other points which Circe described to him:

It touches the vast sky with its pointed summit; a dark mist envelops it... The stone is bare and as if polished: a cavern
turned toward the sunset opens in the northwest faceof the middle of the cliff... Ther lives Scylla, the terrible screamer... She has
twelve feet, six enormous necks, and a horrible head with three rows of teeth at the end of each neck... Hidden up to mid-body in the
cavern and thrusting her heads out of the terrible hole, she expores the surroundings of the rock and fishes for dolphins, dogs and
other monsters...

At the entrance of the strait of Scylla, the Nautical Instructions describe to us the town and the fortress of Scylla,
perched on a sharp point of the Italian coast

The town is built in an amphitheater on the jagged cliffs of a point jutting to the north. It contains several fine constructions
and beautiful fountains; but its streets are narrow and steep. From July to September, they fish for swordfish on the coast. A strong
castle, raised 65 meters above the sea, is constructed on the point of the town, Scylla suffered greatly during the shaking of the earth
in 1783, which which threw a part of the extreme point into the sea.

The tremors of 1783 in effect cut the point of Scylla. Thus here, as near Lucrin, we will be some little impeded in
finding all the details of the Odyssian description. Nevertheless, most of the details still endure.
From the very first, across the classical antiquity and up to our days, the old name of Scylla is retained. We have
already seen how the name, antecedent to the Greek thalassocracy, had been explained to us by a Semitic etymology:
‫סקולה‬, skula, from the root ‫סקל‬, s.k.l., is the stone. The Odyssian verse gives us, in its usual fashion, the verification of the
etymology by the epithet which it accords Scylla “the stony”, Σκύλλην πετραίην: the epithet πετραίην is not found in any
other part of the Homeric Poems. The Stone marks the entrance of the Sicilian strait, as another stone marks the exit of it:
the south, in effect, on the same Italian coast, the Sicilian strait ends at the White Rock, Leukopetra. Like the “White”
Rock, Scylla should have had a determinative,which distinguished it from the thousand other rocks strewn about the
Phoenician seas. The Odyssian poem has preserved for us, I believe, the determinative in the name of the mother of
Scylla: it was the Cut Rock, ‫כותה‬-‫סקולה‬, Skul’a Krat’a, said the Semites; in his ordinary fashion, the Greek poet has made
of Skula a personage, and of Krat’a another personage, and he has joined the two beings with the same bonds of kinship
which he established above between the Sparrowhawk, the Eagle and the Vulture: Kratais has become the mother of
Scylla, Κράταιν μητέρα της Σκύλλης.
That our Italian Stone merits the name of Cut, the Instructions have told us clearly enough. But, in the Odyssian
text, we still find the verification of the etymology: it is the Semitic epithet krat’a which, developed, has given to the poet
his verses on the “sharp summit”, on the “bare rock, as though scraped”,

οξείν κορυφη... ,

492
 πέτρη γαρ λίς εστι, περιξέστη εικυια.

The Scripture employs the word krutot for the squared and polished beams. All the other characteristics of Scylla
have similarly come from the original periple. If an exact transcription made of Kratis the mother of Scylla, a pun made
of Scylla the terrible screamer and gives her the voice of a young bitch, skylax:

ένθα δ’ ενι Σκύλλα ναίει δεινον λελακυια.

της η τοι φωνη μεν ‘όση σκύλακος νεογιλης.

Another pun made it a horrible monstor, pelor:

... αυτη δ’ αυτε πέλωρ κακον.

Facing Scylla, in effect, the Sicilian coast projects a long promontory which, during all antiquity and up to our
days, has born the name of Peloros, Pelorus, Peloro. The name appears to have already presented no sense to the classical
navigators, who will seek and find admirable etymologies for it. They pointed out on the cape the tomb of a certain
Peloros, Πέλωρος, of whom the Romans will make a pilot of Hannibal. The place name should harken back to the
Semites, in effect, but long before Hanninbal and the first Greek navies. It is from the same epoch and the same origin as
Scylla. The Odysssian poet knew of it; he makes of it an attribute of Scylla; but he he tells us nothing which can indicate
the true sense to us.
It should be noted that the verbal inventions of the poet could have conformed otherwise with certain very exact
facts of his periple and that that the facts stilll correspond to the present reality:

Curious to acquaint myself with the reefs famous for so many shipwrecks, I took a boat and directed it at first towardd
Scylla. It is a very elevated rock, situated twelve miles from Messina on the coast of Calabria, upon which is built the small town
which bears its name. Although there was no wind at all and I was still at a distance of two miles, I began to hear a trembling, a
murmur, and I would say almost a noise resembling the howls of a dog, the true cause of which I did not hesitate to discover. The
rock, cut to a peak on the edge of the sea, encloses at its base several caverns, of which the most spacious is called Dragara by the
inhabitants of the place. The waves, entering with force into the deep cavities, curli up over themselves, break, merge, foam all
around and produce all the diverse noises which one hears from afar.

The howling caverns are encountered all along the Sicilian strait. Most are at sea level:

The fine cape, or especially the rock, which the Sicilians baptise with the name of Saint Alexis, interrupt the route. The cape
is formed by a peaked rock of five or six hundred feet above the level of the sea... Cut in the form of a concave cone, one notes on
its surface five caverns, as high as deep, caverns large enough that a light boat can enter there and turn around; the waters of the sea
surge in there with a noise resembling that of thunder. Unfortunately for us, the size of our ship did not permit to follow them under
the retaining vaults. We had difficulty enough to resist the waves which were carried there, and not break against the rugged rocks.

There is an even more curious cavern, which the Nautical instructions point out to us: it is not at the edge of the
sea, but at the summit of a mountain. Nevertheless this cavern, also, bays: “the town of Ali, renowned for its mineral
waters, rises within the cape, on the slope of mount Scuderi, which has 1250 meters of height. Near the flattened summit
of the mountain, there exists a cavern from which the wind issues in blowing with a certain violence.”
Resembling the grotto of mount Scuderi, a cavern formerly opened, not at the level of the waves, but on the flank
of the cliff, on the northwest façade of Scylla, προς ζόφον, and its mouth opened to the west, εις έρεβος. The Odyssian
poet describes it to us:

μέσσω δ’ εν σκοπέλω έστι σπέος ηεροειδές

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 προς ζόφον, εις έρεβος τετραμμένον.

The cavern no longer exists today. The shakings of the eart have, we know, shattered the façade of Scylla. But the
exactitude of the other testimonies that the poet gives us forces us to admit that before the shakings of the earth, the west
façade of the rock was pierced at mid-height by a great cavern. From there, Scylla “fishes the dolphins, dogs of the sea
and other monsters which the groaning Amphitriton feeds by the thousands”,

αυτου δ’ ιχθυάα, σκόπελον περιμαιμώωσα

δελφινάς τε κύμας τε και εί ποθι μειζον έλησιν
κητος, α μυρία βόσκει αγαστονος Αμφιτριτη.

The “groaning sea” of the strait in effect nourishes dolphins and other monsters by the thousands. The Instructions
have already told us that Scylla fishes the swordfish. Here is what the voyagers relate, for the other part:

Before leaving the strait of Messina, I had thought that the reader might see with pleasure some details of the two fishings
which are in usage there: the one of swordfish, the other of dogs of the sea.
The dogs of the sea belong to the family of sharks: it is only accidentally that that they take them in the strait of Messina,
either because they do not have regular and periodic passages, or because their tough flesh is not good to eat, and there is always the
danger of of them attacking. Their aggressiveness is so great that thay go to attack men inside the port. A fisherman, bathing himself
one day, was surprised by one of the fish, which completely severed his leg. A little while later the voracious animal was killed in
the vicinity of the lighthouse, and they foound in its body the entire leg, as he had swallowed it. During my sojourn at Messina, not
having had the occasion to assist in the capture of a dog of the sea, I can have nothing to say of the fashion they take in attacking
them. I would limit myself to describing one of the fish... I would principally be arrested by its diverse arrangements of teeth. The
teeth of the lower jaw are sixty four in number, leaving an empty space in the middle. They form separate groups. Each group results
from four rows of teeth, excepting those which border the empty space, which are composed of five rows.
[The “bitch” Scylla has, herself also, multiple “rows of teeth, crowded and numerous, entirely full of black death”,

... εν δε τρίστοιχοι οδόντες

πυκνοί και θαμέες, πλειοι μέλανος θανάτοιο.]

They take the swordfish, frequently with the harpoon, frequently with the palimadora, a type of net with very fine mesh...
The fishing by harpoon drew to an end. Here is how it is practiced. The fishermen are provided with a boat which they call luntre. Its
length is eighteen feet, by eight in width and four in height. Its prow is more spacious than its poop to give more to him who has the
harpoon... The harpoon is made of hornbeam wood, which is difficult to bend. Its length is twelve feet. The iron which tips it is
seven thumbs long; its is armed laterally with two other irons, called oreilles.

On the prow of the luntra, the harpooneer looks for the swordfish and hits it when it appears. In arriving before
Scylla, Ulysses dons his arms, takes two long lances, and leaves the aft castle to come up on the fore castle, on the prow
of the vessel, in order to watch, as does the harpoonier of the luntra, the the appearance of the monster:

αυταρ εγω καταδυς κλυτα τεύχεα και δύο δοθρε

μάκρ’ εν χερσίν ‘ελων εις ‘ικρια νεος έβαινον
πρώρης. ένθεν γάρ μιν εδέγμην πρωτα φανεισθαι
Σκ’υλλην πετραίην, ‘ή μοι φέρε φέρε πημ’ ‘ετάροισιν.

Here again, we find the procedure of our poet and his habitual transposition of real facts and marvelous events.
But here again we also find the exact, precise evidence that the poet had drawn from his Semitic periple.

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 *
* *

Facing Scylla, Circe describes the point of charybdis:

The other rock, Ulysses, is much lower, you will see. It bears a great fig tree, covered with branches. Below, Charybdis
swallows the black water: each day she ejects the sea, and three times swallows it. Do not find yourself there when she swallows:
Poseidon himself would not be able to bring you from danger.

Ulysses perceived Charybdis:

The divine Charybdis swallowed the salty water of the sea terribly. When she vomited it, it was like a cauldron boiling and
murmuring on a great fire: from above, the foam fell on the head of the two rocks. When she swallowed, it was a great agitation at
the center, all around which the rocks groaned, and at the bottom I could see the ground of black sand.

Here are some pages from our Nautical Instructions:

The strait of Messina (Fretum Siculum), which separates Sicily from Italy, has a width which varies from 1 6/10 mile at its
north entry to 8 miles between capes Pellaro and Scaletta. The navigation of the passage so feared by the ancients requires some
precautions because of the rapidity and irregularity of the currents, which produce eddies or whirlpools dangerous for sailing ships.
Additionally, before the highlands the winds play, and strong gusts fall from the valleys and gorges, of the sort that, without a
favorable and well-established breeze, a ship can come to no longer be able to control its motion, even under steam.
Currents. - The currents of the strait of Messina are variable and sometimes reach 5 knots of velocity. They are in large part
tidal currents, which acquire their greatest force the day after the full and new moon (except for the perturbations due to the winds).
The flood carries to the north, the ebb to the south; but near the coasts, there exist countercurrents which one can take advantage of.
These make themselves felt from one to two hours after the beginning of the principal current, and are called refoli when they are
produced by the ebb, bastardi when they are produced by the flood.
On the coast of Sicily the principal countercurrents of the ebb are felt between the tower Palazzo (at the southwest extremity
from the village of Faro) and the point Sottile (south extremity of cape Peloro), between la Grotta and and the river Guardia,
between San Francisco di Paola and San Salvatore dei Greci. The width of the countercurrents increases in proportion to the duration
of the principal current, and become important toward high tide, when they extend out to a mile from the shore. On the coast of
Calabria, the coountercurrent of the ebb is not produced to the north of point Pezzo, but from there up to Catona, facing Messina, it
has about one mile of width. With the flood or north current, the only important countercurrent, or bastardo, makes itself felt on the
coast of Sicily between the lighthouse of Peloro and point Sottile; the others are insignificant. However, on the coast of Calabria,
after two hours of flood, between Alta Fiumara and point Pezzo, there is a coountercurrent bearing to the south and attaining its
greatest width before Canitello, where it extends up to a half mile from land.
The days of full and new moon, the ebb begins at 9 o’clock in the morning in the strait of Messina and carries toward Alta
Fiumara (Calabria); from there, it is directed toward point Pezzo and la Grotta (Sicily), then toward San Salvatore dei Greci, and it
arrives toward 11 o’clock before the lighthouse northeast of Messina; after that, it is directed toward Reggio (Calabria). The days of
the full and new moon, the flood begins at 3 o’clock [PM] at point Pezzo and thus appears to be the continuation of the
countercurrent of the ebb which already existed at that point; it gradually enlarges and goes to join the north countercurrent
extending from the from the tower of Palazzo to point Sottile, and all the mass of the waters flows to the northeast in the direction of
the passage.
At the end of two hours, the flood turns toward Scylla; but at the same time there comes from the north a current, called
Rema di Bagnara, which which, in uniting with that bearing toward Scylla, produces a current bearing toward the open sea. At
Messina, the north current begins only towards 5 o’clock. At low tide, the south current follows the same direction as at high tide and
produces the same countercurrents, but these are less rapid. It commences at Faro at 45 minutes past noon, and before Messina at

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3:45. At the cape of Faro the rise of water is barely sensible; At Messina it is over 0.25 to 0.3 meters; but it is very influenced by the
winds.
The meeting of the two opposed currents produces, in diverse points of the strait, whirlpools and great eddies, called
garofalo in the locality. The principal garofali are: on the coast of Sicily, between the cape of Faro and point Sottile, with the ebb,
and before the tower of Palazzo, with the flood: the latter Garofalo is very strong (it is the Charybdis of the ancients). There exists
another garofalo, equally violent and dangerous with the wind from the southeast, before point Secca, the northeast extremity from
Braccio di San Ranieri. At point Pezzo, on the coast of Calabria, on the coast of Calabria, there is another, very strong, dangerous
with the wind from the southeast. The other great agitations without whirlpools produced by the currents over the irregularities of the
bottom, are called scale di Mare.
Pilots. - Since the variations of the currents render the navigation of the strait by sail difficult, it would be imprudent on the
part of a foreign sailing ship to seek to pass it at night without a pilot. If one comes from the north, one finds pilots a few miles north
of the lighthouse of Faro; if one comes from the south, one finds them 3 or 4 miles to the south of Messina. The characteristic of the
pilot boats is an anchor painted on the sail, and a blue penant, marked with the letter P in white, hoisted at the front.

The marine chart, of which I give a reproduction (fig. 70), indicates by spirals the points where the bastardi and
garofali ordinarily whirl. The most importand of the eddies, for which the sailors retain the name of Charybdis, is just
across from Scylla on the opposite shore of the strait, a little to the south of cape Peloro. Ulysses, having passed Scylla,
escapes the whirlpool of Charybdis. He debarks without difficulty in the “hollow port” of Messina. But, after the
massacre of the sacred cattle, he takes to the sea again. Then a storm from the northwest, from Zephyr, carries him at first
toward the south, then a blow from the southeast, from Notos, throws him back toward Charybdis:

When we had left the isle, when no land appeared to our eyes, but only the sky and sea, then the son of Cronos raises a
blackish cloud over the hollow vessel: the sea was all dark from it. The ship did not run much longer, for a howling gust from
Zephyr breaks the two stays of the mast, which falls to aft, and all the rigging falls into the bilges. The mast hits the pilot seated on
the aft castle in the head, and renders mush of his skull. Like a diver, he was thrown from the castle and sinks. Zeus thunders; the
stroke hits the ship, which empties entirely, and is filled with sulfur. My men fall into the water... I moved and came to the gangway.
But a wave opens the sides of the boat, which becomes crippled. The mast is broken through. A false stay remained attached to it. I
take the rope of cowhide to tie together the mast and the keel. Then the Zephyr ends. A swift Notos arrives... which tosses me all
night and at daybreak throws me bach toward the rock of Scylla and the terrible Charybdis.

The Nautical Instructions also describe to us the winds of the strait:

Local Winds. - In winter, the most strong and frequent winds are those from the east, southeast and southwest, the latter
accompanied by a very heavy sea. In that season the battle betwen opposed winds is frequent, especially with the great breeze from
the northwest, which comes from the Tyrrhenian sea. The winds from the west do not last as long as those from the southeast and
southwest; they can blow strongly, but they quickly weaken. The wind from the southeast, to the contrary, becomes stronger and
stronger, and sometimes blows for fifteen days consecutively. The southwest generally follows it, but lasts little, then the wind turns
to the west and to the north, and the good weather returns. The turn from the southwest to the southeast is an indication of bad
weather; similarly the shift from southeast to north by east.
In summer, the good weather is accompanied by winds from the northwest and north. When the wind blows from the north,
it always makes the strait almost calm, although at Messina and Reggio the breeze is sometimes quite brisk, but generally it falls in
the evening and does not occur from the sea. In the fine season, the strait is the line of separation of the east and southwest winds.
The mists brought by the latter then accumulate on the strait, where it makes a flat calm, altough a strong breeze blows outside.
Sometimes the wind from the north [it is the Zephyr of Ulysses] blowing in the strait encounters, 20 miles to the south before cape
Spartivento, a wind from the south [it is the Notos of Ulysses], or a wind coming from the Adriatic; it results in a great atmospheric
perturbation; it is that which they call golfo di Cantara, on the coast of Sicily, between Taormina and Mascali. One should take
precautions against the heavy gusts which sometimes fall from the valleys, and which are dangerous for the small ships.

We can see that, point by point, the Instructions accord with all the details of our Odyssian description. The storm
of Ulysses is just the meeting of the winds of the north and south of which the Instructions speak to us. I we wish to better

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appreciate the exactitude of such and such Odyssian verses, we should take again the accounts of the modern voyagers.
The exact and conscientious Spallanzani visits Charybdis:

Although the tide may be nearly imperceptible through the entire length of the Mediterranean, it is made sensible in the strait
of Messina, by reason of its narrowness, and it is there ruled as elsewhere by the periodic elevations and depressions of the waters.
When the wind blows in the direction of the flux and of the current, the ships have no dangers at all in running; for, if the two forces
are against them, they are in the absolute necessity of stopping and dropping anchor at the entrance of the channel; if they are
favorable, they pass with full sails at the speed of the arrow.
[Cf. the first passage of Ulysses and the counsels of Circe:

αλλα μάλα Σκύλλης σκοπέλω πεπλημένος ωκα

νηα παρεξελάαν.]

But when the wind is opposed to the current and the inexperienced or too-confident pilot abandons his sails to pass the strait,
his ship, combatted by by two contrary forces goes to be broken against the rock of Scylla or to founder on the neighboring banks.
[Cf. the counsels of Ulysses to his pilot: “Watch the rock, for fear that the ship, even without you perceiving it, be thrown
against it; you would set us in misfortune”:

... συ δε σκοπέλου επιμαίεο, μή σε λάθησιν

κεισ’ εξορμήσασα και ες κακον άμμε βάλησθα.

The Nautical Instructions translate the verse to us even more exactly: “Without a favorable and well-established breeze, a
ship can come to no longer be in control of its maneuvers, even under steam”.]
There is why twenty-four of the hardiest sailors are kept day and night on the beach of Messina. At the first shot from the
cannon of a ship in peril, they come and tow it with their boats. Since the current never occupies the entire width of the strait, since it
winds and makes many detours, the sailors, who are perfectly familiar with its flow, know how to avoid it and extract the vessel from
the dangers which surround it. But if the pilot who has the command disdains the help or neglects to ask for it, as competent as he
may be, he courts the greatest risk to be shipwrecked. In the midst of the turnings and boilings of the waves,
[cf. the Odyssian verses:

λέβης ως εν πυρι πολλω

πασ’ αναμορμύρεσκε κυκωμένη]

occasioned by the rapidity of the current and by the violence of the wind, which blows in a contrary sense, the usage of the sound
becomes useless, the heaviest cables part and the anchors do not take hold because the bottom is rocky. Finally all the expedients are
of no aid here; the only means of salvation is to trust oneself to the care, to the courage and the experience of the Messinian sailors.
I would give several examples which trustworthy persons have related to me, if I had not myself been witness to an
occurence which shows that this course is, in effect, the only one to take. I was walking on the hills which overlook the strait, when I
saw enter the northern mouth a Marseillian ship passing with full sails and having the wind and the current with her. It had already
made half of the passage and was happily advancing toward the port, when all at once the sky was covered with thick mist; a
waterspout raises the sea against the direction of the current and agitates it in every sense.

[δη τότε κυανέην νεφέλην έστησε Κρονίων

νεος ‘ύπερ γλφυρης, ήχλυσε δε πόντος ‘υπ’ αυτης.]

The sailors barely have time to strike the sails; from all quarters the waves surround and assail their unfortunate ship... They
give the distress signal. A boat promptly leaves the shore of Messina and comes to take them in tow.

Spallanzani describes to us at length the efforts of the Messinian pilots, who succeed in saving the Marseillian. All
of the adventures in the strait do not end so fortunately. The same Spallanzani adds:

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 The light ships which the wind or the current drive hesitate, turn, but are not swallowed at all; they do not sink to the bottom
except in the case where the waves, in breaking over them, fill them with water.
[Cf. the vessel of Ulysses which, after having turned, sinks only when “struck by lightning and filled with sulfur”,

‘η δ’ ελελίχθη πασα Διος πλησεισα κεραυνω,

εκ δε θεείου πλητο.]

As for the large ships, they find themselves stopped at once and remain as immobile; neither the wind nor the sails can draw
them from there; after having been turned and battered by the waves, they are pushed against the nearby beach. Here on the subject is
a letter which Abbé Grano of Messina wrote to me: “It has not been five days since we were witness to the submersion of a
Neopolitan polacre, coming from Pouille with a provision of grain. A very sudden wind from the southeast was raised.

[ηλθε δ’ επι Νότος ωκα, φέρων εμωάλγεα θυμω]

The ship was forced to reach the port with full sails; but, the head or the tail of the current, to use the expression of our sailors,
having already entered by the lighthouse, seizes the ship and carries it into Calofaro. There, not being able to make use of its sails, it
remains exposed to all the fury of the waves, which ended in entering it and sinking it to the bottom:

[όρφ’ απο τοίχους

λυσε κλύδων τρόπιος, την δε ψιλην φέρε κυμα.]

(only) half of the crew were saved.”

We see that all the details of the Odyssian description are found in the periples or the recent voyages. If the
description presents some inexactitude, it is only on one point. It represents to us Charybdis swallowing the mast and keel
of the shipwrecked vessel, then vomiting them several hours later. The poet images Charydis as a deep funnel, with
voracious whirlpools. This is how, otherwise, the popular imagination pictures all of the marine abysses: this is how we
imagine the Norwegian Maelstrom; the spirals, which our marine charts still bear, only translate to our eyes the false idea
of whirlpools. Spallanzani warns us against such a false representation:

We understand by whirlpools of water the circular movement which it takes when it is moved by two opposed impulses. At
the center of the movement, there is formed a cavity whose interior walls turn around themselves in the form of a spiral. But in the
strait I have never observed anything similar: it was an area of sea having at the most a hundred feet of circumference where the
waves boiled, rose, fell, collided, without producing the least whirlpool... I was provided with different objects, some heavier than
water, others lighter. I observed that the former went to the bottom and no longer reappeared, and that the latter floated, but that the
agitation pushed them out of the sphere of its activity. The last observation sufficiently indicated to me that no abyss existed in the
strait, for the abyss would have produced a whirlpool which would have drawn in and swallowed the light objects floating on the
surface of the water.

The Odyssian poet is, as we see, of a perfect exactitude when he compares the expanse of sea, where “the wave
boils, rises, falls and collides without producing the least whirlpool”, to a cauldrom of boiling water. If his imagination of
a deep whirlpool, of a cavity with descending and ascending spirals, is more fantastic, we still should not hasten to accuse
him. The Italian hydrographers tell us above: “In the strait, the waters which run toward the south are always less cold
than those which are directed toward the north. The north current always leaves the bottom and carries to the surface
plants and vegetable debris, although that which is directed to the south does not have that force.” The debris torn from
the bottom and thrown to the surface should have given rise to the idea and the image of whirlpools which swallow, then
vomit. It could be that the periple had already set the image before the eyes of the poet, by the very name which the
Semites gave to the eddies of the strait. I believe in effect that H. Lewy has cause to seek a Semitic etymology for the
name of Charybdis, which is found in the Syrian land and which would say nothing in Greek: H. Lewy proposes ‫אובד‬-‫הר‬,

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khar (or khor) ubed (or obd), the Hole of the Loss. As for Scylla “the stony”, Σκύλλα πετραίη, the Odyssian text gives us
the verificatioin of the etymology: Charybdis is “the pernicious, the cause of loss”, Χάρυβδις ολοή, and the Odyssian poet
imagines the pernicious as a “hole”, khar, which, by turns, swallows the waters of the sea and rejects them. The classical
antiquity knew two other Charybdes. The one was in the waters of Cadiz: we know nothing of it but the name. The other
was in Syria: it was, between Apamea and Antioch, a hole, χάσμα, in which the Oronte was swallowed, it was the Loss of
the Oronte, καθάπερ Ορόντης εν τη Συρία καταδύς εις το μετξυ χάσμα Απαμείας και Αντιοχείασ ‘ο καλουσι Χάρυβδιν.
We have pointed out, in the Odyssian text, another inexactitude concerning the distance which separates
Charybdis from Scylla: the flight of an arrow, says the poet; It is in reality nearly two miles. Spallanzani consequently
asked himself whether since the times of the Odyssey Charybdis had not been displaced somewhat. It is not in the reality,
I think, that we should with Spallanzani make the correction, but in the text. After having described the rock on which
Scylla lives, the poet begins the description of the Point of the Fig Tree under which Charybdis swallows the sea: “The
second point is much lower, you will see, Ulysses: it has a large fig tree, entirely covered with foliage; it is under the
point that Charybdis swallows the black water”,

τον δ’ έτερον σκόπελον χθαμαλώτερον όψει, Οδυσσευ.

τω δ’ εν ερινεος έστι μέγας, φύλλοισι τεθηλώς.
τω δ’ ‘υπο δια Χάρυβδις αναρροιβδει μέλαν ‘ύδωρ.

In the description, very complete and very well ordered, I have omitted a verse from the actual text: “The second point is
much lower, you will see, Ulysses, [near the ones from the others, you could traverse with an arrow]; it has a large fig
tree, etc”. The verse,

πλυσίον αλλήλων. και κεν διοϊστεύσειας,

is hardly correct: διοϊστεύω signifies transfix (an obstacle) with an arrow and not traverse (a distance) with the flight of
an arrow. The verse in that place is unintelligible. It is, I believe, just an interpolation to make the counterpart and
contrast to the two verses regarding Scylla, “which a strong man would not be able to reach, even with the flight of an
arrow”,

ουδέ κεν εκ νεος γλαφυρης αιζήιος ανηρ

τόξω οιστεύσας κοιλον σπέος εισαφίκοιτο.

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 CHAPTER III

THE ISLE OF THE SUN

προς ηιόνα της Ταυρομενίας ‘ην καλουσιν Κοπρίαν

STRAB., VI, p. 268

When we had escaped from the Stones, the terrible Charybdis and Scylla, we promptly arrived at the admirable isle of the
god, where the fine cattle with wide horns and the numerous fat sheep of the Sun were. Fom the black vessel, still being at sea, I
heard the lowing of the penned cattle and the bleating of the lambs...

Tiresias and Circe had advised not to touch the herds of the god; lest the crew never know the blessed day of their
return. Ulysses thus would wish to not land on the isle of the Sun. But the chief of the opposition, Euryloque, forces him
to put in, to give the crew a night of repose:

Thus we stop the vessel in the hollow port, at the watering place; my men debark, prepare the meal; they eat and drink to
satiety; then we weep at the memory of the dear companions taken by Scylla, and sleep arrives in the midst of the crying.

After they passed Charybdis, they find in effect a “hollow port”, or, particularly, a curved one, whose circular
cavity entirely represents the curvature of a hollow vessel, νηυς γλαφυρή:

στήσαμεν εν λιμένι γλαφυρω ευεργέα νηα

άγχ’ ύδατος γλυκεροιο.

The port is Messina. The ancients tell us that the port received in Hellenic times the name of Messene, Messana or
Messina, from a colony of Messenians, but that, formerly, it was in reality the Sickle, Zankle, Ζάγκλη: “Its original name
was Zankle,” says Thucydides; “the name had been given to it by the Sicilians because of the form of the place, which
represents a sickle: sickle in Sicilian is zanklon.” The Nautical Instructions still tell us:

The port of Messina is formed by a tongue of land which is curved in the shape of a sickle, and which is called Bracccio di
San Ranieri. The entrance of the port has about 325 meters of width between the shallows which border the coasts at a small
distance, and which extend only about thirty meters... One finds at Messina provisions of all types, and one takes on water at a
fountain of the town.

The fountain, which our marine charts indicate near the cathedral, was already celebrated among the antique
navies. Certain classical authors asserted that it was the spring Zankle, the spring of the Sickle, which had given the name
to the entire port, Ζάγκλη πόλις Σικελίας, ο‘ι μεν απο Ζάγκλου γηγενους ‘η απο κρήνης Ζάγκλης. Near the watering
place,

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 άγχ’ ‘ύδατος γλυκεροιο,

the port of Messina marks the median stop of the Sicilian strait: it is the principal, or rather the only, refuge of it. But
currents, which sometimes have a great violence, do not allow the entry at all times:

The sailing ships destined for Messina need to profit from the current. As the currents are often very strong and variable, it
would be imprudent with a sailing ship to enter the port without a pilot; in the interior of the port, there is little current... When the
ships have to tack, they cannot enter if they have an adverse wind; in that case, they need to anchor to wait for the change of wind to
become favorable to them. Thus it comes to be said, it would be imprudent for the ships to attempt the entrance without the
assistance of a pilot, especially in the case of a strong wind and at the time of high tide.

The boats, which come from the south and which the current prevents from entering the hollow port, easily find
anchorages very near, a little to the north of Messina:

Between the turret of Ganzirri (near which anchoring should be avoided) and the point of la Grotta, the ships of commerce
can anchor in 8 to 32 meters: however the bottom is composed of weeds with some rocks. Near la Grotta, the bottom is better and
one is more protected from the Sirocco. Between la Grotta and Messina, one can anchor during the entire season of summer and
during the good weather in winter: in that area, the vicinity of Paradiso is that where the bottom is the best.

For the boats which come from the south, we see of what importance the cape of la Grotta is. It is very near the
Grotto that they should seek refuge, if the currents close the “hollow port” to them. Closer to Messina, they would only
find less secure anchorages: “Near the convent of San Francisco, the bottom is good; but in the anchorage, as in the port
of Messina, one frequently experiences eddy currents, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to disengage the anchor if one
stays for more than a few hours.” Our marine charts, to indicate the harbor of la Grotta well, do not fail to point out the
marker of the dome at the edge of the projecting point. The Semitic periple should also have pointed out the refuge of the
grotto. From the detail of the periple the Odyssian poet makes, in his usual manner, an episode of the adventure:

The night had two thirds passed, and the stars were marching: Zeus, gatherer of clouds, raises a furious wind and a terrible
gust, and covered earth and sea together with clouds; the night fell from the sky. When the rosy-fingered aurora appeared and
emerged from the mist, we put our boat in and haul it into a vast grotto... For an entire month, the Notos blows invariably: no other
breeze except the Euros and the Notos.

Ulysses wished to descend through the strait to reach the Greek seas: it is the winds from the south, the Euros and
Notos, which can close the route to him. Driven back by the winds from the south, Ulysses returns to la Grotta. Our
sailors come today to anchor near the dome. The first thalassocracies “drew their vessels into the vast grotto”,

νηα μεν ‘ωρμίσαμεν σπέος εισερύαντες.

That is for the boats which, coming from the south, cannot enter Messina. For the boats which come from the
north, the refuge is much more distant, and the route to the nearest anchorage much more difficult. For, after Messina, the
Sicilian shore is inhospitable: for about 50 kilometers, from Messina to the bay of Taormina or of Giardini, the straight
coast offers no shelter: not a cove, not the least “fairground” bay; barely, from stretch to stretch, some high promontory,
Capo di Scaletta, Capo St. Alessio, Capo St. Andrea. The Instructions tell us:

From Messina to cape Scaletta, a rocky point which, surmounted by an old tower, is 10 miles distance to the south-
southwest, runs a straight beach of sand, one cable from which one has bottoms of 18 to 90 meters. The chain of mountains, on
leaving Messina, comes closer and closer to the shore, and attains an elevation of 900 to 1200 meters at four miles; it is cut by

501
numerous watercourses, generally with wooded banks. To the south of cape Scaletta, the beach continues for a distance of three
miles to Capo d’Ali, foot of a steep hill with some rocks at its base. To the south of cape d’Ali extends a steep and solid beach, cut
by numerous torrents. The beach ends a cape San Alessio, a steep and rugged cliff bearing a tower and a redoubt. At 4 miles to the
south, the coast presents a extending promontory whose two capes, St. Andrea and Taormina, are the most advanced points. To the
north of cape St, Andrea, at little distance, is the point of Castellucio, which forms with it the cove of the same name. Isola, a small
peninsula placed between capes St. Andrea and Taormina, makes with them two other coves. One sees in the three small coves
several curious rocks of rough red marble, pierced with large grottos in which shelter innumerable wild pigeons. Cape Taormina is a
rocky prominence, a short distance from from the islet Agonia. The bay of Taormina is contained between the capes Taormina and
Schiso. On the shore, in the middle of the bay, is found the village of Giardini, in the south part of which is erected the statue in
marble of St. Pancrace, the first bishop of Sicily. The railroad from Messina, which borders the bay, passes behind and near to the
village.

It is into the bay of Taormina or Guardini that the navigators coming from the north finally find the first harbor
after Messina. In the interval, the beach, straight and bufffeted by the winds, dominated by the high mountains and cut by
cliffs, is dangerous to boats as it is to men. The blows of winds rage there; From south and north, west and east, from the
sea and mountains, the gusts gather; in the corridor of the strait, the currents of air change and oppose each other. And on
all the points the natives always have lookouts, ambuscades or fortresses threatening to the stranger. Thus, one needs to
go in a straight line, without a stop, from Messina up to the waters of Taormina:

The route from Messina to the ancient Taormenium not offering the least object which might be worth the fatigue which it
costs, we rented one of the boats which the Sicilians name speronares, a sort of small ship all the more suitable to such a voyage as,
since they go by oar and sail, one is more or less certain to advance against wind and tide. Our project was thus to cross the ten or
twelve leagues which separate Messina from modern Taormina in our skiff, to debark in the town and then go by land to Catana
itself, whither the speronare should transport our heavy baggage.
We left Messina toward the end of the month of September at nine o’clock in the morning. The wind was at first somewhat
favorable and, in the space of four to five hours, we found ourselves at the level of the small town of Ali, that is to say, about four or
five leagues from our point of departure.
Here, the winds which had served us so well appear to wish to oppose our travel, and soon become so contrary that we are
reduced to reefing our sail and contest, by force of oar, a sea boiling and of ill humor. At the level of the small town of Rocca
Lunara, our exhausted sailors approach the shore as closely as possible and, to our great surprise, one of them jumps into the sea and
swims toward the shore. He had barely reached the land when, by means of a cord which he had carried with him, he came to attach
our boat to four enormous oxen, charged with compensating for the caprice of the wind and the futility of the oar.
After twelve hours of travel, during which we have made a little over ten leagues, it is only by full night that we reach the
town of Taormina. To add to the misfortune, the bureau of health is closed: we can neither set foot aground nor stay in the port, in
view of the lack of security of the refuge. The creek where we cast ourselves is a league farther... ; we are now between the ancient
port of Venus and the altar of Apollo Archegetes.

It is, in effect, in the ancient port of Venus that the bay of Taormina offered its safest anchorage, or, rather, its only
constant harbor. The bay is bounded by the cape of Taormina to the north and cape Schiso to the south. Around the cape
of Taormina there are, to be sure, several anchorages. But, hindred by rocks and deep bottoms, bordered by threatening
cliffs which the fortresses and lookouts of the natives crown, the anchorages present to the navigators all the risks and all
the dangers. On the sandy beach of Giardini, which follows, “it is more dangerous to debark with winds from the east”,
say the Instructions. The rocks of cape Schiso, to the contrary, offer a convenient and covered station, and the advanced
promontory especially conforms to the needs of the first navigators:

Cape Schiso, low and black, has been formed by the largest and most ancient known torrent of lava; it bears an old castle and
other ruins: it is the emplacement of the ancient town of Naxos. Its extremity is bordered by rocks. But, within, at the extremity of
the beach of Giardini, facing the remains of the castle, there is an indentation where one can always debark.

502
 It is on cape Schiso that the first Hellenic colonies will found their town of Naxos: at the very end of the point,
they had their altar of Apollo Archegetes. But, long before the Hellenes, the first Thalassocracies frequented the refuge.
The Odyssian poet knew from his periple of the harbor of the Sun, as he knew of the harbor of the Grotto. To the south of
Messina, the cove of Apollo is another dependance, a necessary compliment of the Hollow Port; the winds from the north
and the currents carry the sailing ships straight there: “Before Messina,” says Strabo, “one encounters in the strait the
abyss of Charybdis, where the currents carry the ships, spin and engulf them: the ejected debris is thrown onto the
Tauromenian coast, which for that reason is named Kopria, the Dunghill.” It is in the harbor littered with offal that the
poet places, I believe, the stables of the Ruling Sun. The Hellenes say: Appolon Archegetes, Appollo the Great Chief. The
Odyssian poet says: the Ruling Sun, Helios Hyperion. It is the same god and is, at the root, the same term, for the two
Greek epithets are just two synonymous translations of a single and same foreign epithet. The harbor and the cults of
Naxos have retained the souvenirs, easy to retrieve, of the sojourn and the religion of the Phoenician fleets.

*
* *

For a topological study of the harbor of the Sun, there is a very important text. Appian relates to us how Augustus
came to debark here, when he attacked Pompeian Sicily. Sextus Pompey, who held the entire island, had made of Messina
his great military and naval place. Augustus sends one of his fleets and one of his armies to attack the island by the façade
of the north: Agrippa, who commands the Caesarian division, defeats a part of the Pompeian forces by land and by sea, in
the waters of the Lipari; then he debarks on the Sicilian coast of the north and installs himself at Milazzo. Augustus, at the
same time, plans to attack the façade of the strait in person: with his other fleet and his other army, he descends the Ionian
coasts and Calabria and arrives at Leucopetra.

Arriving at Leucopetra, Caesar wished to cross the strait and land at Tauromenium. The sentinels, posted at the summit of
the mountains, having signaled him that the pass was free, he loads on his fleet all that he could of troops and came to land under
Tauromenium, hoping that it would surrender. But the garrison refuses to receive his envoys. He thus cruises [the shore], the river
Onobala and the Aphrodision, and came to set anchor at the Archegetes, the god of the Naxians, with the intention to establish his
camp there and to attack Tauromenium from there: the Archigetes is a small statue of Appolo, which the Naxian colonists will erect
upon their arrival in Sicily.

The promontory of the Archegetes is our cape Schiso. Augustus debarks there. His troops commence to raise their
camp there. But the Pompeians arrive: infantry, cavalry and fleet, three Pompeian forces proceed against the Caesarians,
whose fleet is defeated. Augustus has to flee to Italy. He leaves his infantry to Cornificius who, on the rocks of Naxos,
holds well. Behind the earthworks of his camp, Cornificius can repulse all the attacks without difficulty. But he risks
being taken by famine. Thus he decides to rejoin Agrippa. Through the Pompeians and the mountains, he opens a retreat
to Milazzo. After his departure, the Pompeians occupy the camp of Naxos.
All the details of the text agree to explain the topology of the bay to us. Taormina to the north and Naxos to the
south, the two promontories have turn by turn seen the installatiion of two towns equally important but of entirely
different origins and life. In the times of Augustus, Naxos is deserted: all that remains on the promontory is a statue of
Archegetes and, in the hollow of the bay (at the point, without doubt, where the Nautical Instructions tell us that “one can
always debark), an Aphrodision. Taormina, to the contrary, is already the high town and the fortress which our
Instructions will describe to us again today:

The town of Taormina (ancient Tauromenium) is constructed on the north part of the bay, on an elevated and irregular
terrain, presenting a front of steep cliffs, 170 meters high: it is enclosed in part by high walls. Besides several edifices, convents and

503
other buildings, it is crowned by the fine ruins of a Saracen castle. Above Taormina, on an escarpment of 530 meters height, rises the
small town of Mola, with walls and a castle in ruins.

In a similar situation, on a steep promontory which holds to the mountains of the mainland and which itself is
dominated, surveyed, threatened by the mountaineers, Taormina can be nothing but a town of the natives, of the
landsmen. The texts inform us that it was, in effect, a foundation, not of Greek or other navigators, but of the
mountaineers. “The Sikeles will occupy the butte which they named Tauros. They were a compact people, but without a
chief. Finding the place naturally strong, they will stay there after having constructed a wall, and they will name it Tauro-
menium, because they had sojourned there, δια το μειναι τοθς επι τον αθοισθέντας.” Naxos is a foundation of navigators.
its cape, low and slender, barely joins it to the mainland. Viewed from the top of Taormine, it appears as a projecting
tongue. It is a parasitic promontory which a wall raised across the isthmus would easily allow it to be cut off from the
mainland. To the north, the bay of Giardini and the small river that the Ancients named Onobalas, to the south the plain of
Alcantara and the small river which the Moderns name Sana Venera make the foundations and ditch of the peninsular
fortress (fig, 75)*. The ruins of a castle and a fort, carried on our marine charts, still crown the promontory and show that
up to our days the place of debarkation needed to be defended agaonst the attacks of the thalassocracies.
A similar topography explains the history of the towns. at such a close distance from each other, they could never
have coexisted. Following the states of civilization, they replaced and succeeded each other. Naxos, the town of the
navigators, only flourished during the first centuries of Sicilian Barbary, when the foreigners exploit the savage land.
Naxos dissappeared at the beginning of the Vth century before our era, since the semicivilized Sikeles found
Tauromenium: for twenty-two centuries, Naxos is deserted in the face of a flourishing Taormine.
The foundation of Naxos by the Hellenes about 750 B.C. is one of the almost certain dates of the oldest Greek
history. Naxos was the first Hellenic colony in Sicily. It was surely to the promontory that the Hellenes, after cruising
along the Italian coasts, came to debark, just across from the last Italian promontory of Leucopetra: Naxos is in effect the
first Sicilian point that is offered to the ships coming by the route; it is at Naxos that the expedition of the Athenians will
later touch the Sicilian land. Thucydides tells us that the ambassadors leaving Sicily first come to sacrifice at the altar of
Appollo Archegetes, Απόλλωνος Αρχηγέτου βωμον, εφ’ ω, όταρ εκ Σικελίας θεοροι πλέοσι, πρωτον θύουσι. It thus
appears that the single god was at the same time a god of the voyage. It should be noted that it is not a temple in the
Hellenic style, but a simple altar. And the altar is not in the town, but at the extremity of the promontory, outside the
rampart, όστις νυν έξω της πόλεώς εστιν, adds Thucydides. Finally, if the Hellenes ordinarily give the name of Appolo to
the god, it appears that in reality he was simply, as Appian says, the god Archegetes, ‘ο θεος Αρχηγέτης.
The epithet archegetes is that which, in our bilingual inscription from Malta, serves the Hellenes to translate the
titles of our Lord Melkart, God of Tyre, Adon Melkart Baal Sur, Hercules Archegetes. The Lord of the Tyrians, the King
of the Town, the Great Chief is a solitary god with the starry robe, αστοροχίτων, and he is a god of navigation. I believe
that Melkart was the prototype of the Naxian Archegetes, and I believe that, across the successive religions up to us, the
cult has been transmitted in always adapting itself to new beliefs. Today, the statue of the Great Chief no longer stands at
the point of cape Schiso. But, on the beach of Giardini, the Instructions and the charts point out to us the statue of another
All-Powerful, of a certain Pancratios, in which the natives salut the first Christian apostle of Sicily. The Pancratios had
been a disciple of Saint Paul. He well appears to have never existed. He is the Great Chief, the Archegetes of the sailors,
who has become the Saint All-Powerful of the landsmen; formerly, he protected the rocks of the promontory against the
waves of the sea; today, he protects the fields of the plain against the flows of lava: “The inhabitants have erected the
statue of the saint who has blocked the lava from extending over the plain of Tauromenium and from destroying the
adjacent land. They are pursuaded that that would have happened without his intercession: he guided the [lava] with as
much wisdom as humanity along a low valley to the sea.” The Sicilians have the quick imagination and faith. The
Aphrodite-Venus of the Naxians has given them Saint Venera, whose name a village, a mountain and a small river near
Giardini bear: the ancient harbor of Aphrodite has also become the port of St. Venera. The people of Messina today still
show the famous letter which the Virgin Mary wrote them in Hebrew and which, translated into Greek by St. Paul, then

504
was miraculously found again in the archives of Messina in 1467, was translated into Latin by Constantin Lascaris, Maria
Virgo, Joachim filia, serva Dei humillima, etc., Messanensibus omnibus salutem, etc.
Thus I willingly relate the Archegetes of Naxos to the Phoenician pantheon. I concede that, for the origin of the
first cult, the hypothesis can appear uncertain. But, near the Archegetes, Naxos had retained another more characteristic
cult. In the hollow of the bay where one can always debark, near the watering place, antiquity knew of a sanctuary of
Aphrodite, an Aphrodision, says Appian, a temenos, an aula of Aphrodite, say others. The ex voto of the sanctuary had
given place to a celebrated dictum regarding the gerres of Naxos, γέρρα Νάξια: “The Sicilians name the aidoia, the
phallus and sexual triangles, gerres; at Naxos of Sicily, in the enclosure of Aphrodite which is above the sea, large gerres
were consacrated”, γέρρα ο‘ι Σικελοι λ΄γουσι τα ανδρωα και γυναικεια αιδοια. ην δε εν τη σικελικη Νάξω τέμενος
επιθαλάσσιον Αφροδίτης, εν ω μεγάλα αιδοια ανέκειτο. The word gerre with that meaning is not Greek. In Greek,
gerron, γέρρον, means only the objects and instruments of woven willow, wicker: baskets, shields, reinforcement for
earthworks, etc. The Syriacusans, beseiged by the Athenians, and hearing the Hellenes of the metropolis ask each other
for wicker reinforcements, for gerres, mocked such an incongruous request, and translated the Greek gerre by the Sicilian
gerre: the reinforcements became aidoia. In the Sicilian language the word passes among the comics: Plautus employs it
contemporaneously in ironic exclamation to say folly!, balderdash! “Politics! Gerres!” Our popular language furnishes us
the exact translation of the offensive expression: “Politics! Balls/Twats! [aidoiades!]”
The word, which is not Greek, is of Semitic origin. All the Semites derive from the roots ‫ ערר‬,‫ ערה‬,‫עור‬, g.u.r.,
g.r.’., g.r.r., etc. (which signify strip, denude) words which designate the nudities, the sexual parts, the aidoia, male or
female: Hebrew offers us the word ger(u)a, ‫ערוה‬, which, by the loss of the wav (‫)ו‬, or of the digamma (F), would give us
the Sicilian gerron or gerra. In our Naxian enclosure of Aphrodite, the thing and the word are in their place. The great
aidoia consacrated here take us back to the sexual symbols which Herodotus viewed on the steles of Palestine, τας
στήλας... εν τη Παλαιστίνη Συρίν και τα γράμματα ενέοντα και γυναικος αιδοια. We still see the symbols on the
numerous Carthaginian steles, and the walls of the sacred caverns of ancient Phoenicia are covered with them: such a
cavern as the Arabs name the Cavern of the Aidoia and which Renan describes near Byblos.
At the shore of the Naxian harbor, we thus surely have an old enclosure of the Phoenician Astarte. Naxos was one
of the “points above the sea”, which the Phoenicians will occupy over the entire perimeter of Sicily for the service of their
commerce with the natives: we need always come back to the text of Thucydides: ωκουν δε Φοίνικες περι μεν την
Σικελίαν άκρας τε επι τη θαλάσση απολαβόντες και τα επικείμενα εμπορίας ‘ένεκεν της προς τους Σικελούς. The point of
Naxos was indispensable to the Phoenician fleets. It was for them the key to the strait. It was a principal station of their
cruises along the Sicilian and Italian coasts. Coming from the south, the Phoenicians would arrive here after having
cruised the entire eastern façade of Sicily. When the Hellenes will appear, it was that façade which, on the edge of the
Greek seas, became Greek the first, received the first Greek colonies, and always keeps the great Hellenic towns. But
across all antiquity, up to our days, the façade also preserves the place names which the first thalassocracies coming from
Sidon or Phoenician Africa had imposed on it.
The southernmost point of Sicily was during antiquity called Pachynos, Πάχυνος: the geographers agree in
recognizing there an old Semitic observatory, bakhun, ‫בחון‬. In climbing toward the north, the first secure harbor which is
offered after Pachynos lives the fortune of Hellenic Syriacuse. The site of the town is too well known. I have no need to
insist on the advantages offered to the first thalassocracies by the isle of Quail, Ortygia. Attached to the mainland,
nevertheless separated by a channel, the isle was provided with an excellent watering place, by the spring Arerthusa
which up to us, or very nearly, keeps its sacred fish. Arethusa is a name which signifies nothing in Greek and which is
nevertheless found somewhat frequently in the Hellenic seas. The study of Ithaca is going to lead us to the edge of
another Arethusa, which wells near the Rock of the Crow. I believe that the Sicilian Arethusa also welled near a Rock of
the Gulls : Sur-ha-kussim, said the Semites, ‫הכסים‬-‫ ;צור‬Syria-koussai, Συράκουσσαι, say the Greeks. For the Hellenes will
never forget that the proper noun originally was made of two juxtaposed terms: in their usual manner, they will
metamorphose the two into two personages, into two women, and they say that the founder of the town, Archias, had had
two daughters, Syria and Koussa. We have already studied other Semitic Rocks, Sur, Syros, Syria, etc., and we have also

505
studied the kux or kuss (given the equivalence in Greek of ξ = σσ), the gulls or halcyons which the Odyssian poet knew.
The Greeks will make the legendary couple, Keux-Acyone, of them. The mythical couple inhabited a Rock on the strait of
Eubea, which the Hellenes named Τραχίς, Trachis: the complete Greek name would have been Trachis Alkyones, Τραχίς
Αλκυώνης: the complete Semitic name would be Sur-ha-kuss. Sicily does not have the monpoly on Syriakoussai: on our
strait of the Lestrygons, the Corsican coast also has its Rock of the Gulls, Syriakoussion or Syriakossion, facing
Laistrygonia, the Dove Rock.
After Syriacuse, the Phoenician boats, cruising the east coast of Sicily, found their second stop at Megara, in the
harbor of the Cavern, Megara, ‫מעוה‬, which tradition also made one of the first Hellenic establishments: in the area, the
Instructions point out numerous grottos and “a rock of Grotta Santa, pierced by a hole at the base”. After Megara, the
Xiphonian promontory (‫ספון‬, xiphon), then the plain of the Mouths, Hybla (‫אובלה‬, ubla, watercourse, α’ι των ποταμων
εκβολαι συνελθουσσαι εις ευλίμενα στόματα, says Strabo), then Katana (‫קמנה‬, Katan’a, the Small; cf. Κάταναθ in the
Septuagint) mark the stops of the Phoenician route. I do not have the leisure in this volume to study each of the stops; but
I would return to them in another work: lacking couplets, I believe that one can furnish some good proofs of the different
etymologies.
Across Greek antiquity, the coast remains seeded with Phoenician names, as it remains seeded today with Arabic
names: Aetna is, for the present natives, the Jebel, the Mountain, Monte Gibello, and the river, near ancient Naxos, is
always the River of the Bridge, Al-Kantara. It thus does not astonish us to find on our cape Schiso a Semitic name of
Naxos, ‫נס‬, nax. The name of Naxos, which we find in all the antique Mediterranean, is also the name of an isle of the
archipelago. Situated at the center of the archipelago, the isle of Naxos is recognized from afar by the characteristic form
of its high mountains, which define a regular wall. It has always served as a retreat to the navigators: whence the name of
Signal, Lantern, Fanari, which the present sailors give to one of its mounts. ‫נס‬, nax, is the exact equivalent of fanari: for
the Semites, nax designates all the signals erected at the summit of mountains, especially the signals of war; in the
Hellenic legend, the Hero Naxos is a Karian, son of the Warrior Polemon. On our Sicilian coast, the point of Naxos was a
natural signal or perhaps, at the extremity of the point, the Semites had erected a signal to guide those passing the strait: in
the Roman epoch, when the navigation was in some fashion reversed, when the strait was exploited by the
thalassocracies of the north. it its in the other shore, on the Italian coast, that they will erect their signal of the Rhegian
Column, Columna Rhegia, ‘η ‘Ρηγίνων Στύλις. A little to the north of Rhegium, the Signal marked the spot where the
navigators, coming from the north and having followed the Calabrian coast up to that point, could chance the crossing of
the strait without any fears of whirlpools, bastardi, garofali, et., which border the Sicilian coast.
At the end of the Signal, the Phoenicians had the high place of the King of the Town, bam’a Melkart, ‫מלקרת‬-‫במה‬,
from which the Hellenes will make the altar of the Great Chief, bomos Archegeton, βωμος Αρχηγέτου. At the
debarkation, in the indentation of the bay, the Phoenicians had the enclosure of Astarte, from which the Hellenes make
their precinct of Aphrodite.
The marine goddess of the Semites was also a luminous goddess, a companion of the Archegetes. In the land of
Circe, we have met a young god, companion of Feronia, of whom the Odyssian poet has made a beardless Hermes.
Entirely similarly, the poet made of the goddess of Naxos a parent, daughter or spouse of the Sun god, for he gives as
guardians of the herds of the god “the curly-haired nymphs, Lampetia and Phaethousa, which the goddess Neaira bore by
the Ruler Sun”,

... θεαι δ’ επι ποιμένες εισίν

νύμφαι ευπλόκαμοι, Φαέθουσά τε Λαμπετίν τε,
‘ας τέκεν Ηελίω ‘Υπερίονι οια Νέαιρα.

The names of Phaethousa and Lampetia, the Shining and the Sparkling, are Greek, and understood without
difficulty. But the goddess Neaira, δια Νέαιρα, is unknown in the Hellenic pantheon.In all the Semitic languages, the
roots ‫נור‬, n.u.r. and ‫ניר‬, n.i.r., signify to shine, to sparkle, to light [up]: ‫נר‬, ner, or ‫ניר‬, neir, in Hebrew, designate the

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seven-branched lamp (cf. Lampetia). The Palmyrian inscriptions furnish us theophorous names, Nur-bal. I believe that the
goddess Neaira of the poet, δια Νέαιρα, was just the exact transcription of ‫נעלת נירה‬, baalat neira, ritual title of the Naxian
Astarte: Astarte was here the Goddess of the Light as she was elsewhere the Queen of the Heavens. In his usual fashion,
the poet, who transcribed the foreign word Neaira, explains it to us by Phaethousa and Lampetia, of whom he makes the
daughters of the baalat. Among the Hebrews, the lamp of God, the neir Elohim, has seven branches: in the Odyssian
poem, Lampetia, daughter of Neaira and Helios, watches over seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep, each with
fifty head [of livestock]:

‘επτα βοων αγέλαι, τόσα δ’ αιων πώεα καλά,

πεντήκοντα δ’ ‘έκαστα.

We are very well acquainted with the sevenfold and fiftyfold rhythms. We are going to see the companions of
Ulysses banquet six days on the isle of the Son, and leave on the seventh:

‘εξημας μεν έπειτα εμοι επίηρες ‘εταιροι

δαίνυντ’ Ηελίοιο βοων ελάσαντες αρίστας.
αλλ’ ‘ότε δη ‘έβδομον ημαρ…

I have said that, in my estimation, the double series of seven herds should translate, in the usual fashion of our
poet, translate some indication of his periple concerning the week of days and nights. If we knew the rites of the Sicilian
sanctuary, I suspect that we will retrieve, here again, some realistic explanation of the marvelous history of the cattle (in
Hebrew ‫ בקר‬, bakar and boker, signifies at the same time ox and morning), which are not born and never die:

γόνος δ’ γίγνεται αυτων

ουδε φθινύσι.

We also understand the forebodings of the moving hides, the speaking spits and meats which frighten the
companions of Ulysses:

τοισιν δ’ αυτίκ έπειτα θεοι τέραα προu

ειπρον μεν ‘ρινοι. κρέα δ’ αμφ’ οβελοισι μεμύκειν.

The Scripture witnesses too obscurely to us regarding the different Semitic modes of consulting the oracles: it is
impossible for us to recognize whether the predictions of the meats and spit were perhaps habitual to the Phoenician
navigators. Perhaps the Astarte of Naxos, she also, had some oracle where the navigators came to inquire of the route of
return. It is to seek such a divine consultation that Ulysses tarries for a time in the Hollow Port and penetrates into the
isle:

δη τότ’ εγων ανα νησον απέστιχον ‘οφρα θεοισιν

εθξαίμην ε’ί τίς μοι φήνειε νέεσθαι.

Ulysses, to obtain the consultation, sleeps a sleep sent by the gods:

ηρώμην πάντεσσι θεοισ ο‘ι Όλυμπον έχουσιν.

ο‘ι δ’ άρα γλυκυν ‘ύπνον επι βλεφάροισιν έχευσαν.

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 We know the rôle that the dreams hold in certain oracles.

Aphrodite, says Bouché-Leclercq, does not appear to have had the immediate title of prescience considered among her
virtues. But, as her Oriental sanctuaries were full of fateful dreams, she retains her acquired habits in Greece. We have seen it
associated with Zeus Naios under the half-Pelasgic form of Diona, in the divinatory rites of Dodona. In the legends of Troy, she
prophecies the destinies of the son which she has from her loves with Anchise; she communicates the result of the divination to
Anchise himself. We should relegate, among the oracles of Aphrodite instituted outside of the Greek influence, that of Aphaca in
Libya, which has conserved or revived the Semitic character. But we accept [among the] Hellenic oracles the Cypriot manteion of
Paphos, which nevertheless experiences the Phoenician influence, and we will appear to not know that the mother of the lovers was
represented at Paphos, under the barbarous form of a conical block or even with the traits of a bearded androgyne.
[Tacitus (Hist., II, 3), who describes to us the cone of the goddess, simulacrum deae non effigie humana, continuus orbis
latiore initio tenuem cubitum metae modo exsurgens, adds that the reason for the image is obscure, et ratio in obscure: I believe that
our Naxian gerres could deliver the cone of Paphos to us].
The oracle of Paphos had not preserved the oniromantic method at all which belonged, for several reasons, to Aphrodite,
Oriental goddess and close relative of the telluric divinities of Greece. There, the presiding priests preferred the inspection of
entrails. They claimed that that knowledge had been brought from Cilicia to Paphos by a certain Tamiras, whose descendants will
associate with the theocratic dynasty issuing from Kinyras, who was the son or the lover and, in either case, the first priest-king of
Aphrodite.They knew by the inscriptions that the Kinyrades hierarchically constituted caste at Paphos [and that] the service of the
oracle [was] organized in a regular fashion: the title mantiarque, μαντιάρχος, μαντιάοχης, is attributed to a functionary. The last
excavations have barely enriched the history of the Aphrodisiac oracle. We appreciate only by epigraphic documents that Aphrodite
was associated with Zeus Polieus.
[We have again found near our Sicilian goddess a God of the town, Archegetes-Melkart].
Taking everything into account, we only know, from the annals of the Cypriot oracle, the consultation of Titus. It is on this
occasion that Tacitus indicates to us the divinatory proceedings of the Kinyrades. It was in the entrails of the victims, which were
always to have been male animals, preferably sheep, that the priests read the future. Titus returned from Rome where he had gone to
help Galba: “Titus first consults regarding the navigation, de navigationeprimum consulit. When he was informed that the route was
open before him and the sea was propitious, postquam pandi viam et mare prosperum accepit, he sacrifices a large number of
victims and made some involved questions regarding himself. The priest Sostratus, seeing a perfect agreement of the most propitious
signs, and sure that the goddess held this high consultation most agreeably, answers in the ordinary style with few words, and asks
for a private meeting to lay out the future.”

By the example of Feronia-Circe, we see that the periple described to the poet the local rites of the maritime
sanctuaries. We know the part which the poet drew from the testimonies. In the isle of the Sun, he proceeds, I think, as in
his isle of the Sparrowhawk. In the cove where later the Greek envoys come to sacrifice before their embarkation, the
poet imagines some adventure analogous to the liberation of the Achaeans in the sanctuary of emancipations. If we know
the ritual of Astarte-Neaira and the Archigetes, we will promptly perceive in the Odyssian text some word, some allusion
which would report to us on the practices of the cults: the killing and the roasting of the sacrificed beasts are described to
us too minutely, I believe; I suspect there some transposition entirely parallel to that which produces the emancipation of
the pigs with Circe. And even the ensemble of the adventure should be be imagined like the ensemble of each of the other
Odyssian stories, for the sole purpose of developing some formula encountered by the poet in his original periple.
If the land of the Lestrygons, the Fugitives, the Sards, sees the Flight of Ulysses, if the lands of the Sirens, the
Enchantresses, the Binders, sees his Enchaining, it is here that the land of the Sun, the Sicilian shore, sees his Isolation,
his Abandonment. Ulysses debarks in Sicily only to obey the demands of his men “who abuse him until he is alone in his
opinion”.

Ευρύλοχ’ η μάλα δή με βιάζετε μουνον εόντα.

The hero walks in the isle at a distance, far from all his companions:

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 αλλ’ ‘ότε δε δια νήσου ιων ή λυξα ‘εταίρους.

The adventure is ended by the loss of the entire crew. Ulysses alone remains, deprived of all his companions. In
sum, the episode was imagined for the sole purpose of explaining to us why, alone, Ulysses survived. Circe and Tiresias
had truly predicted that his companions would perish and that he alone could escape:

ει δε σίνηαι τότε τοι τεκμαίρομ’ ‘όλεθρον

νηί τε και ‘ετάροις. αυτος δ’ ε’ί πέρ κεν αλύξης
οψε κακως νειαι ολέσας άπο πάντας ‘εταίρους.

It is in Sicily, Σικελία, that the hero thus loses all his companions and remains alone, orbus, the Latins would say,
orphan, ορφανός, the Hellenes would say. For the Latins and the Greeks employ the words orbus and orphanos, orphan,
to designate the child deprived of its parents, the parents deprived of their child, or the friend deprived of one’s friend:
ορφανός παίδον και ‘εταίρων, says Plato. In the Semitic languages, it is the root s.k.l., ‫שכל‬, designates the deprivation of
parents, children or friends: in the Scripture ‫שכול‬, sekul, and ‫שכולים‬, sikulim, designate the state of an abandoned man or
land, left by everyone. By accident or on purpose, the periple should have informed our poet that the isle of the Sikeles
was the land of Abandonment and of Isolation, the Orphanage. We do not know if such was the primitive meaning of the
word Sikelia, or if we have here just a pun of the Phoenician thalassocracies: on the coast of Italy which faces it, the
Romans will discover that rhegium was the town of the kings, regum; it is possible that the Semitic etymology of sikelia
had been of the same value. But the certain fact is that Ulysses returns alone from the isle of abandonment:

αλλ’ εμε τον εφέστιον ήγαγε δαίμων

οιον.

*
* *

April 16-18, 1901. - Giardini, at the foot of the mountains of Taormina, is just a long street stretched between the
beach of sand and the steep slope of the mountains. The railroad crosses the entire length of Giardini. In its doors and
windows, on its balconies and terraces, the town of fishermen spreads out to the sun of springtime its flashy rags, its
blankets, its mattresses, its grimy pillows and its laundry flapping in the breeze of the Mistral. But the castoffs are scented
with citron and myrtle, and the sea of the strait dances and sparkles under the song of the breeze, in the joy of the great
sun.
The beach of Giardini is an admirable shore of fine sands, of soft sands, of golden sands which, from the cliffs of
Taormina spreads without a rock up to the promontory of cape Schiso. Near the town and near the statue of Saint
Pancrazio, the fishermen of Giardini have drawn up their flotilla of “boats with the double horn.” Ulysses would
recognize his embarkations. Between the statue and cape Schiso, the beach is strewn with larger ships, which the wind
from the north prevents from ascending to Messina, and which the crews have hauled onto the sand. In awaiting the
favorable wind, the men sleep in the shade, under the curve of the hollow vessel; others stretch out in the sun, patching
their old clothes or watching the pot and the fish soup which is cooking on two stones:

…έπειτα δε δόρπον επισταμένως τετύκοντο.

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 Most of the boats come from the towns of Aetna. They are loaded with citrus fruit which they are carrying to
Messina. But some of them also come from the Italian coast. One of them, the largest, is still afloat: four men are pulling
it ashore, under the first rocks of cape Schiso.
Seen from afar, the cape stands out sharply from the beach, less by its height than by the dark color of its rocks. Its
spine of black lavas projects into the sea, which laps it with foam. It takes root in the shore of almost white sands. It
appears like a long wreck, broken and half-submerged, or like a piece of foreign land, which the surf of the strait had
caused to arrive on the shore of the gulf. Upon the rocks and in the vegetation, a square farm and the steeple of St.
Pantaleone set their white mark.
The bank follows up to the road of sand which climbs the pedestal of lava and leads to the church of St.
Pantaleone. The marine charts indicate a well and a ruined castle. The well exists on the beach itself, very near St.
Pantaleone; the good saint was without doubt installed in that deserted spot by the sailors who frequent his watering place
and his refuge, άρχ’ ‘ύδατος γλυκεποιο. It is near here, perhaps, that the first thalassocracies had their marine enclosure of
Aphrodite.
By the road of sand, we climb onto the plateau of cape Schisto. The very even plateau is without great height; it
does not exceed the sea level by five or six meters. But, surrounded on threee sides by the surf or by the torrent of St.
Venera, it offers a seat easy to defend. Two farms have covered it with their gardens, with their oranges, olives and fields.
The land here is of a marvelous fertility. We enter into the volcanic region of Aetna, which will spread its slopes or plains
of lava from Naxos to Catana: “Cape Schiso,” say the Instructions, “was formed by the oldest and largest known lava
flow.” The lava, once broken up by the work of man or decomposed by the elements, bears all the harvests and all the
fruits. The orange orchards alternate with the fields of red clover. I have never seen fields of flowers comparable to these:
large oxen with lyre-shaped horns disappear in the clover up to their back. The farms have their herds of oxen all year
long, which serve for all the transportation here “the large slow oxen with recurved horns, which graze two feet from the
shore”,

εγγύθεν, ου γαρ τηλε νεος κυανοπρώροιο

βοσκέσκονθ’ ‘έλικες καλαι βόες ευρυμέτωποι.

For the navigators who come from the too-hot Africa or from rocky Greece, the great Sicilian oxen appear even
more admirable. The navigators who come from the north in descending the strait are also struck by the contrast, when
they encounter the verdant and flowered pastures of Aetna after the arid, burning slopes of the coastal mountains. Along
the Neptunian mountains which they come to cruise, from the gardens of Messina to the groves of Giardini, the shore is
desolate:

We follow an uneven path all night, traced above the shore of the sea, to the foot of the Neptunian mountains, whose long
chain cuts from the northeast to the southwest, from cape Pelora to the roods of Aetna… My view very distinctly perceives the
coasts of Calabria, near enough to those of Sicily to hear the ringing of the bells of the monasteries of Reggio.

[δε τότ’ εγω έτι πόντω εων εν ηνι μελαίνη

μυκηθμου τ’ ήκουσα βοων αυλιζομενάων
οιων τε βληχήν.]

From Messina up to the burg of Tremisteri, the plain is as fertile as it is picturesque: pretty casins, fields of vines, orchards
of olives, groves of oranges, plantations of blackberries cover the shore for for an extent of five miles. Farther away, the cultivation
thins out, the dwellings disappear, the land appears sterile and savage… During the night we have passed the towns of Cammari,
Tremisteri, Lardaria, Galati, etc. We have reached the cape della Scaletta, defended by an old tower. At the break of day, we find
ourselves on a deserted beach, absolutely uncultivated. We advance with difficulty across waves of sand. Some stunted Indian fig
trees, completely soiled with dust, rise here and there among the wrack or marine égragropiles… From time to time we cross ravines

510
bordered with oleanders, myrtles, Spanish broom and agnus castus. The Asiatic aspect of the pretty solitudes, a kind of oasis in the
midst of the desert, the softness of the air we breathe, transported my imagination to the plains of Arabia Felix. Toward six o’clock
we made a halt before the cabin of a fisherman. We set ourselves en route across a land always sadder and of an ever more burning
heat… : the storms of spring have stripped the surface of the mountains and the burning dog days have succeeded in the destruction
of all vegetation… [after] some six hours [walking as if] asleep, we enter the walls of Taormina: I was barely able to climb a steep,
arid hill covered in rolling pebbles.

At Taormina the arid and pebbly slopes of the Neptunian mountains end. At the foot of Taormina begins the
region of valleys and plains, which open between the foot of the mountains and the foot of Aetna. Streams or rivers,
constant watercourses or capricious torrents, hot or cold springs, the well-watered region offers to the navigators a smiling
land, a land of bucolic [beauty], a set of flowering valleys, small [river] mouths, verdent deltas, of villages and towns.

Cape Schiso, low and black, has been formed by the oldest and largest known lava flow. The Alcantara river flows into the
sea in a sandy bay about a mile to the south-southwest of Cape Schiso; In summer, it is almost dry, but at the time of the melting
snows, it becomes a rapid and considerable torrent. Near the river, one sees several villages… A mile farther south empties the
Minessale river and, a half mile from this, the river Fiume Freddo, a permanent watercourse, deep and clear, supplied by diverse
springs situated about a mile and a half from the coast; it differs in this regard from the other neighboring watercourses, whose beds
dry out in summer. About six and a half miles from cape Schiso is found the town of Riposto, whose population is about 10,000
inhabitants. The town of Giarra (18,000 inhabitants) is a small distance toward the interior and, so to say, contiguous with Riposto.

By virtue of verdant praries which border the sea, and of mountains which, entirely nearby, stage their double and
triple zones of cultivation, of forests, and of summer “alps”, the region of Aetna is a paradise for the herds. The oxen, all
year long, can stay in the plain. The sheep, at a distance of a few kilometers, find their summer and winter pasturage. A
rare thing on the periphery of the Mediterranean: they raise here, at the same time, sheep and cattle.

Taormina is just a big town, without police, without industry, and very poor, I do not know why, for the fields all around are
extremely fertile. So I hastened to leave to reach Giardini, located on the littoral, a small village where at least the voyager is not
condemned to such an austere dearth… In leaving Giardini, I crossed the beautiful fields which the Cantara waters. The river flows
under the walls of Randozzo, Francavilla, etc… On its banks covered with fat pasturages grazed numerous herds with monstrous
horns. Nowhere else have I seen such bulls, and of such a fine type, of which Diodorus could better have given the etymology of
Tauromenium.

The explanation which our voyager gives us of the word Tauro-menium only has the value of a bad pun. It should
nevertheless give us pause, for the voyagers and periples of all times have proceeded by puns. Before the founding of
Tauromenium, the cliff bore the name of Tauros, τον λόφον τον καλούμενον Ταυρον, and the Ancients will always retain
the name; they will claim that, from having sojourned on the Tauros, the founders of the town will name it Sojourn of the
Tauros, Tauro-menion, δια το μειναι επι τον Ταυρον Ταυρμένιον ωνόμασαν. It is perhaps an entirely similar play on
words which set the herds of the Sun on the Rock of the Bull, along the Beach of the Manure:

… ένθα δ’ έσαν καλαι βόες ευρυμέτωποι.

Not far from the shores of the Cantara, the Fiume Freddo rolls its waves tumultuously over a bed of rocks, gravel and lava.
Fed by the snows of Aetna, they retain a glacial coldness which renders them, they say, very dangerous to drink. The herdsmen take
great care to keep their herds away from the deadly shores of the small river… The land of Mascali extends from the shores of the
Fiume Freddo up to the foot of the middle region of Aetna, and comprises eleven quarters or parishes. The villages, in the midst of
the vineyards, gardens, orchards and meadows, form a scene as rich as picturesque. Here are immense draperies of vines festooning
the hills; there are vast fields of watermelon and cantaloupe. The vines cling to the tops of the sycamores. Elsewhere, you see an
inextricable nursery of young poplars. Approach it, and your astonished gaze will see a planation of hemp whose vigorous stems
shoot up to over six feet. All around enormous Spanish blackberry bushes shade the roads, decorate the avenues, surround the

511
dwellings, separate the gardens. Does a shepherd lead his rich flock to drink in the current of clear water near you? From the
appearance of the great black sheep, clothed in a thick pelt, you easily conceive of how Ulysses, to escape the cavern of the Cyclops,
could attach himself under the belly of a ram.

It is in the land of Aetna, near the sacred waters of the Akis, that Theocritus had his cowherds and shepherds sing:

Θύραις ‘όδ’ ‘ωξ Αίτνας…

ουδ’ Αίτνας σκοπιαν ουδ’ Άκιδος ίερον ‘ύδωρ.

We have come back toward the station of Giardini across the sands. An entire flotilla comes again to seek a refuge
from the wind of the north, which freshens more and more. The beach is loaded with cargos which the sailors unload and
which the natives come to buy. In Odyssian times, the beach again saw similar temporary bazaars. Not far from the
village, a cargo of amphoras is for sale. In the foliage of their oranges their cypress and their orchards, the Gardens,
Giardini truly merit their name. Behind the line of their white houses, which border the sands, the cliff of Taormina rises
steeply: another line of white houses and ramparts crowns it; other higher mountains climb behind it, and the heart of the
landscape is made of a regular cone, at the point of which the small town of Mola perches its battlements, at 635 meters of
altitude. Taormina is one of the “high towns” of the landsmen par excellance: the Peoples of the sea, Arabs or French,
will come to seize it sometimes; but they will never be able to retain it. As long as the corsairs and enemy fleets have
rendered the sea and the beach dangerous, Taormina has remained the town, the fortress, the place of the cult and the
market. Today, Giardini, by virtue of the railroad station, reigns over the beach and grows day by day. Taormina is no
longer anything but a dead town: it lives on its ruins, its theatre, and on archeologists, tourists and other pilgrims of
cemeteries.

From Giardini to Messina, the railway is just a succession of tunnels, bridges, or short passages at the edge of the
shore. Pushed by the wind from the north, the sea appears to flow between the two shores of the strait. Viewed from here
(it is the view which the first thalassocracies, arriving along the Sicilian shore, had before their eyes), the Italian coast of
the strait resembles a great regular wall, whose highest point, above Reggio, is made by the summits of the Aspromonte,
and whose two horns rest above the sea at Leucopetra and Scylla. At Leucopetra, the horn of the South descends regularly
down to the level of the sea, barely notched by a gentle rise of the cliffs of the White Rock. At Scylla, to the contrary, the
horn of the North is suddenly broken, cut to a peak, and one understands still better the name of Cut Stone which the first
navigators will give to the high cape.
At Messina, above the port or in the station especially, one encounters the teams of great slow oxen with curved
horns: it is they which make almost all of the drayage. The port of Messina, with its shape of a crescent or sickle, gives us
very well the Hollow Port of the Odyssian poet. The Hellenes have named Messena by a pun, I believe. Here, as at Kumë,
they will invent a legend of colonization and an arrival of Messenians to explain the old name of Messana, which they no
longer understand. If we knew the true meaning of the term, perhaps we would see that it is not Greek: like the name of
Kumë, Messana is perhaps one of the Semitic or Sicilian terms, from a doublet, of which the Hollow Port is the Hellenic
term: Messana-Zanklon-Limen Glaphyros, perhaps the three words are synonyms. But Greek, Sicilian or Semitic? I do
not see to what etymology the first name of Messana should be related.
Between Messina and the Lighthouse, the almost straight coast is a shore accumulated at the foot of flowering
hills: all the outskirts of Messina are populated with villas. The point of la Grotta and its well-defined dome only
determine two very open curves. Thus la Grotta offers two anchorages to the boats which come from the north and from
the south. On the north coast, the more pronounced curvature and the lower beach can have more attraction to the
primitive boats which, without difficulty, are hauled onto the shore as on the shore of Giardini. La Grotta no longer has a
cavern: the habitations of a large town have entirely covered the promontory; but an abundant fountain wells at the edge
of the sea.

512
 Near la Grotta, the coast up to the Lighthouse is a little less populated. The gardens and the foliage, descending to
the edge of the sea, leave only a narrow beach of sand where the flocks of goats gambol among the thistles and marine
flowers. The flowering trees, the pines and the figs sometimes reach down to the waves. It should not put into doubt, I
believe, the exactitude of the evidence which the Odyssian poet has transmitted to us. The first navigators should have
pointed out a large wild fig tree which served them to recognize and avoid Charybdis. The fig had pushed to the extreme
edge of the beach; its branches extended themselves over the waves:

τον δ’ ‘έτερον σκόπελον χθαμαλώτερον όψει, Οδυσσευ,

τω δ’ εν ερινεος έστι μέγας, φύλλοισι τεθλώς.

All along the Italian or Provençal coasts, our fleets have similar points of the Fig Tree. In the waters of Ithaca we
are goin to find a cape Agrioskyo, which is just another cape of the Wild Fig or, as the Odyssian poet says, of the Erineos.
In measure as we approach the mouth of the strait from the Lighthouse, the coastal hills distance themselves a bit
from the beach and leave at their feet a wider band of sands, lagoons and thickets. The band of Sicilian shore, near cape
Peloros, was celebrated in antiquity under the name of Pelorias. They praised its fertility and its terrains of hunting and
fishing all together:

Pelorias is unique for the quality of its terrain, which is never damp to the point of becoming mud, and which is never dry to
the point of crumbling into dust. At the place where it enlarges and expands, it contains three lakes. The first is full of fish, nothing
surprising in that. But the second is enclosed in brush so thick that it nourishes numerous game [animals] in its coppices: the hunters
arrive there with the feet dry and find there at the same time a double delight, the pleasure of fishing and the pleasure of the hunt,
duplicem piscandi venandique praebeat voluptatem.

The companions of Ulysses do not care for the double delight. They nevertheless hunt and fish in this Pelorias.
But it is from necessity, not pleasure, for always, in the poem, the indications of the periple become material for
discouraging and lamentable stories. Thus having exhausted all their provisions, near death from hunger, our people had
to avail themselves of the hunting and fishing:

και δη άγρην εφέπεσκον αλητεύοντες ανάγκη,

ιχθυς όρνιθάς τε, φίλας ‘ό τι χειρας ‘ίκοιτο.

After crossing the town of Ganzirri, we passed along the inland shores of the lakes. Then, across the vines and the
orchards in flower, we climbed on the hills covered with bushes, with oaks and figs. We look out over the Pelorias. At our
feet, the round lake shines in its frame of deep green. Beyond, the white houses of the village of Faro border the beach of
fine sand and the strait, which boils with garafoli. Facing it, on the Italian shore, rises the high stone of Scylla with its
double town of the beach and of the summit, steep and cut to a peak: its houses and its fortress appear to cling to the steep
flank of Monte Aspro. Here again, we justify the expression Cut Stone: the promontory is cut to a peak: its marine façade
appears uneven, περιξέστη εικυια. And, from here, all the Italian coast of the strait, between Scylla and Leucopetra, still
presents the same profile of a wall, whose summit crowns Rhegium and whose two horns rest above the sea: the horn of
Leucopetra descends regular and straight down to the level of the waves: the horn of Scylla, broken, cut, falls abruptly
into the surf.
The round lake is covered with boats which fish with nets. The waters teem with life: from the surface the fish,
which jump out of the water to snap up the insects, leap into the open. Between the round lake and the sea, the village of
Faro is just a long lane of poor hovels. The men are at sea or on the lake fishing. Flocks of children come out of all the
corners to offer us live swallows. The point of Faro is a great repository of migratory birds. The first thalassocracies had
already perhaps noted the abundance “of fish and birds which fall into the hand”,

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 ιχθυς όρνιθάς τε, φίλας ‘ό τι χειρας ‘ίκοιτο.

The new lighthouse is constructed at the extremity of the beach. Its topmost level offers an admirable view over
the entrance of the strait. The weather is clear. A light breeze blows from the northwest. The Tyrrhenian sea sparkles in
small waves; but without a swell, without whitecaps, without foam, the great sea extends calm and flat to the farthest
horizon. In the strait, to the contrary, the opposing waves dance and collide. All along the Sicilian coast, from the
Lighthouse up to la Grotta, large eddies boil here and there. The beach is bordered with shallows and submerged rocks.
Some heads of reefs appear below the clear water. Here is the low rock, σκόπελον χθαμαλώτερον, under which Charybdis
groans. Its head barely emerges, a few meters from the shore, in the south from the lighthouse. Before the construction of
the present great light, the head of rock bore a tower of bricks and a beacon. Upon the beach itself, the surf comes to die
without foam and without sound. It is at a certain distance from the land, almost in the middle of the passage, among the
low rocks, that the eddies leap, foam and whirl “like a cauldron of boiling water”. The Odyssian comparison is the first
which comes to mind. If we needed another, we should think of a veritable river of turning waves, which signals the
entrance and the exit of the tide in the Morbihan: they are the same “currents of lightning”, as our sailors say.
An English steamer renews, before my eyes, at the entrance of the strait, the maneuver which Circe recommended
to Ulysses. The steamer, which comes from Palermo, is bound for Malta, in stopping at Messina. It has followed the north
coast of Sicily up to the heights of cape Peloro. There, at the place of turning toward the south, to thread the strait, it has
continued its course toward the east as though it intended to land at Scylla and the Italian coast:

αλλα μάλα Σκύλλης σκοπέλω πεπληένος ωκα

νηα παρεξελάαν.

It is only at a few cables from the rocks of Scylla that, suddenly, it changes course. Then, cruising along the Italian
shore, it avoids the region of the garofali. Then, cutting across the strait anew, it comes back to the coast of Sicily to enter
the Hollow Port. On the calm sea, its shimmering wake indicates for a long time the knowledgeable curve that the pilot
has described around the boilings of Charybdis. It is the maneuver of Ulysses:

τουτου μεν καπνου και κύματος εκτος έεργε

νηα.

Michelot, in his Portulan, tells us: “They call Fare de Messina a strait or channel of water hemmed in by the coast
of Calabria and by the neighboring terrain of the isle of Sicily; it has only about a league of width; the coast of Calabria is
very high,

[ο‘ι δε δύω σκόπελοι. ‘ο μεν αυρανον ευρυν ‘ικάνει

οξείη καρύφη.]

and that of Sicily very low in that location.”

[τον δ’ ‘έτερον σκόπελον χθαμαλώτερον όψει, Οδυσσευ.]

I have frequently descended or reascended the strait of Messina to deliver myself to the Levant or to return from
there, at the beginning of summer, in the middle of August or even at the end of October. I have always seen the coast of
Sicily sunny, smiling, and the coast of Calabria misty, covered with heavy black clouds or long white layers. Today,
anew, it is this way. The southern exit of the strait, on leaving Messina, opens with a great clear sky. At the northern
entrance, to the contrary, although the Sicilian coast is lighted by the same sun, under the same dappled blue, the

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Calabrian coast is loaded with clouds and rain. Figure 88 (it is a photograph which I did not make that day; I bought it in
Messina) shows us again the crown of mists and clouds above Scylla. The poet has reason to say to us “that a black cloud
constantly surrounds the summit of the rock, without (during the entire navigational season), in summer or autumn, the
blue ever coming to appear”.

… νεφέλη δε μιν αμφιβέβηκεν

κυανέη. το μεν ού ποτ’ ‘ερωει, ουδέ ποτ’ αίθρη
κείνου έχει κορυφην ουτ’ εν θέρει ούτ’ εν οπώρη.

On site, the Odyssian description loses all legendary appearance; the most “poetic” details take on an air of
probability. There remain some embellishments without doubt, some “literary” arrangements, either in the choice of
words or in the arrangement of the episodes. But there remains even very much more of geographic, scientific, precise
verity. On only one point, the poet appears to turn his back to the verity: in his account, he does not always maintain the
exact intervals, the real distances which, on the terrain, exist among the different theaters of a single adventure. I would
return to that when I would treat with the Composition of the Odyssey. The strait of Charybdis, like the strait of the
Lestrygons, like the strait of Calypso, shows us well that the poet has not seen in situ, seen the places that he described: he
has not passed, for example, by sail or by oar, the distance which separates the Bear from the Well, Perijil from the cape
of the Vine, or the Hollow port from the Cove of the Sun, Thus, in his verse, the distances are effaced, and disappear, as
they are effaced again today and disappear from the eyes of the reader who, to know the waters, would take, not “the
roads of the misty sea”, but the descriptions of the Nautical Instructions. Compare thus the Odyssian verses, not directly
to the material reality, to the reality of the same things, but to the described reality, to the reality of books and portulans:
you see that in the Nostos of Ulysses there is not a detail that is entirely imaginary, false; the minutest expressions, when
we can understand them and when we have some text to which they compare, bring back to our eyes that which they were
in the spirit of the poet or in the ears of the listeners, exact, precise, technical expressions, and not poetic “teratologies”…
The sun has set. Dusk falls suddenly. We come back toward Messina along the strait which little by little is
covered with shadow. The last glimmers of sunset ignite the clouds which crown Scylla with their bronzed masses. We
reënter Messina “when all the streets are full of shadow”. On the vessel which should carry us to Lipari we sleep in the
Hollow Port. Messina for Ulysses was already the port of sleep. Sleep holds a great place in the episode of the Nostos.
Barely arriving at the harbor, the Achaean crew fell asleep:

κλαιόντεσσι δε τοισιν επήλυθε νήδυμος ‘ύπνος.

Then it is Ulysses who succumbed to sleep, at the very hour when his waking presence had been the most
necessary to prevent the massacre of the sacred herds. But the gods will pour out sleep on the eyelids of the hero:

ο‘ι δ’ άρα μοι γλυκυν ‘ύπνον επι βλεφάροισιν έχευαν.

Had our poet encountered in his periple some word which made him imagine the preponderant rôle of sleep in the
region? All the Semitic languages have the verb ‫ישן‬, i.s.n., to signify to sleep: the piel #####form is encountered in the
Scripture to signify cause to sleep; the participle of this form would give us ‫מישן‬, messan. I suspect some explanation of
the word Messana or Messene in the last story of the Nostos, entirely resembling the explanations of Sikelia, Sardoi,
Korsoi, etc., which we have encountered above.
In measure as we study the Odyssian text most minutely, it appears that the poetic embroidery becomes lighter
there, less compact, and that, behind, the solid and continuous framework of the real periple shows through in more
numerous places. Long before the arrival of the Messenian colonists, the name of Messana must have been attached to the
Hollow Port. The tradition would have it that the town had first been founded by pirates coming from Kumë. Thucydides

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tells us that that first foundation had been prior to the Chalcidian colonization on the oriental façade of Sicily: Ζάγκλη δε
την μεν αρχην από Κύμης της εν Οπικία Χαλκιδικης πόλεως ληστων αφικομένων ωκίσθη; ‘ύστερον δε και από Χαλκίδος
και της άλλης Ευβοίας πληθος ελθον ξυγκατενείμαντο την γην. We know that the Odyssian poet knew the Kumë of the
Opics under the name of Hyperia. We know that the people of Hyperia of the Vast Plains, Kumeans of Campania,
“fleeing the Cyclops who harried them” came to the coast of Corfu to found the town of Alkinoös. Between Kumë and
Pheacia we have retrieved some onomastic or legendary traces which preserve for us, it appears, on the contour of the
Italian lands, a memory of the passage of the Pheacians. Messina should be one of the principal points of that itinerary.

*
* *

Here we have the ending of the Nostos. From Calypso to Alkinoös, from the strait of Gibraltar to the entrance of
the Adriatic, we see that the story of Ulysses furnishes us five or six great stops. It is to be noted that most of the stops are
at some port of the Occidental Sea: the Pheacians guard the channel of Otrante; the Lotophages open the passage between
Sicily and Africa; Charybdis and Scylla watch over the Fare de Messina, the Sirens over the Mouths of Capri, the Cyclops
over the strait of Nisida, the Lestrygons over the Mouths of Bonifacio and Calypso over the Columns of Hercules. In the
fearful sea, which opens beyond Ithaca, the poet knows seven great ports in resumé, which all present some risks to the
navigators (I would return to the subject at length, when we deal with the Composition of the Odyssey). In the civilized
seas, for the other part, on the Achaean routes which join Ithaca to the archipelago and to the coasts of Asia Minor, the
poet knows three other dangerous ports: the islet and the lookouts of Asteris bar the channel of Ithaca; the Pointed Rocks
block the channel of Zante; the blows of winds, the currents and the swell most frequently close the Mouths of Cerigo. In
resumé, it would appear that from the coasts of Asia Minor, where the poet is installed, up to the extremities of the Great
Sea, where Kalypso stays, the Telemakheia and the Nostos describe ten redoubtable ports. We know how the Phoenician
Mediterranean had seven great isles, and how the Greek Mediterranean had ten. We know of the seven sages of primitive
Greece and the ten orators of classical Athens.
But to better understand the rôle of the “ports” in our Odyssian poem, we need to come back to the last, to the
principal, to that which, at the very end of the Achaean seas veritably opens to the navigators or to the reveries of the
Achaeans the road of the unknown seas, to the port of Ithaca… Ulysses has ended his account in the assembly of the
Pheacians. Alkinoös gives him a “transatlantic” to return to his realm.

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 BOOK ELEVEN

ITHACA

ουδ’ ‘Ηλλάνκος ‘ομηρικος, Δουλίχιον την Κεφαλληνιαν λ’εγων.

STRAB., X, 456.

CHAPTER I

THE REALM OF ULYSSES

Δουλιχίω τε Σάμη τε και ‘υλήεντι Ζακύνθω
ηδ’ ‘όσσοι κραναην Ιθάκην κάτα κοιρανέουσιν.

Odyss., I, 246-247.

Ulysses finishes his account in the assembly of the Pheacians:

Charybdis finally spit up the mast and the keel [of my wrecked vessel]. I seat myself on the long timbers. Nine days I was
carried by the waves. On the tenth night, the gods will have me approach the isle of Ogygia, where the divine Calypso of the curly
tresses lives… But why repeat the end of my story? I have already related it, oh king, to you and to your valiant spouse in your
palace.

We, also, have related the end of the adventures of Ulysses. We have followed the hero in the isle of Calypso and
among the Pheacians. We have described his last journey into the palace of Alkinoös. After the placing and the
arrangement of the presents in the bottom of the hollow vessel, after the banquet and the toasts, we know the adieu of
Ulysses to his hosts and his debarkation when the night has come, when the wind from the land has arisen. On the
Pheacian vessel, which rocks at the entrance of the bay, at the southeast point, εν νοτίω, Ulysses comes to take his place.
He climbs the stern castle. He lies down. He falls into a sleep “without interruption, a sleep of delight, near to death”: he
had banqueted all day and drunk senatorial “claret”, γερούσιον αίθοπα οινον. He leaves with the wind from the land. All

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night the vessel runs over the sea. At daybreak, when the shining star which announces the dawn appears, here is when
the “transatlantic” of the Pheacians, ποντοπόρος νηυς, reaches the isle of the hero.
Still recently, a number of geographers, archeologists, philologists and voyagers believed themselves to know in
which modern isle they should have sought the Odyssian Ithaca. There were without doubt some dissidents to be found.
Hercher affirmed that only the “hallucination” of the archeologists allowed them to recognize the isle of Ulysses
somewhere, and Wilamowitz proclaimed that the study of the Odyssey clearly proves the ignorance of its author
concerning the Ionian isles. But the majority of the erudites thought to land on the isle of Ulysses when they arrived in the
modern Ithaca or, as the Italians say, Theaki. Today, the fashion has other thoughts. We have changed all of that. Of the
four isles, Doulichion, Samë, Ithaca and Zakynthos which, in the poem, are the four principal organs of the Odyssian
realm,

Δουλιχίω τε Σάμη τε και ‘υλήεντι Ζακύνθω,

ηδ’ ‘όσσοι κραναην Ιθάκην κάτα κοιρανέουσιν,

we should, it appears, scramble the names and the sites, and set the heart - I wish to say, Ithaca - to the right, Samë to the
left, Doulichion below, Zakynthos above, or reciprocally… I would not have hesitated to announce a similar theory
myself, if it had not been given out by professor Doerpfeld, whose ingeniousness is often more laudable than his
criticism, but whose opinion, in a Homeric question, I believe is impossible to not examine. M. Doerpfeld has
summarized his theory in an article of the Mélanges Perrot: “das Homerische Ithaca”. Here are the grand lines and
principal arguments of it.
The Odyssey knows of four isles in the realm of Ulysses: Doulichion, Samë, Ithaca and Zakynthos. Today we
know of four isles in the region: Leucada (or Saint Maura), Ithaca, Kephalonia and Zante.
Zakynthos is Zante.
Doulichon is Kephalonia.
Samë is Ithaca-Theaki.
The veritable Ithaca, the Odyssian Ithaca, is Leucadia (or Saint Maura).
Why is Zakynthos Zante and Doulichon Kephalonia? No convincing indication is invoked by M. Doerpfeld,
except that things suit him that way, or that the modern names agree with the ancient names, for Zante is called Zakynthos
in modern Greek, and Kephalonia has a region named Dolicha or Douliko. But, by that account, Ithaca-Theaki should
have stayed Ithaca. Why does Ithaca-Theaki become Samë and why does Leucada become Ithaca? M. Doerpfeld has two
sorts of arguments, of which he wishes to draw the ones from the Odyssian text and the others from the geographic
reality. In explaining the text in his fashion, he believes to demonstrate that the Odyssian Ithaca should be :
1° the westernmost of the Ionian Isles;
2° the nearest to the mainland.
He believes to find the two conditions of the site in the description which Ulysses makes of his realm to the
Pheacians:

ναιετάω δ’ Ιθάκην ευδείελον. εν δ’ όρος αυτή

Νήριτον εινοσίφυλλον, αριπρεπές. αμφι δε νησοι
πολλαι ναιετάουσι μάλα σχεδον αλλήλησιν,
Δουλίχιόν τε Σάμη τε και ‘υλήσσα Ζάκυνθος.
αυτή δε χθαμαλη πανυπερτάτη ειν ‘αλι κειται
προς ζόφον, α’ι δε τ’ άνευθε προς ηω τ’ ηέλιόν τε.

M. Doerpfeld translates the verse thusly: “I inhabit Ithaca, visible from the distance; Mount Neriton, covered in
foliage, is remarkable there. All around, numerous isles are pressed close to one another, Doulichion, Samë and forested

518
Zakynthos. [Ithaca] itself is low in the sea; it is the last toward the sunset; the others are at a distance, toward the aurora
and the sun.” And M. Doerpfeld comments: “Low in the sea signifies distant from the high sea, thus entirely near the
coast”. Among the Ionian isles, which is the closest to the coast? It is Leucadia. And which is also the most occidental?.
Again, it is Leucadia, if we wish to take account of the fact that, up to our days, the ancient and modern geographers have
always attributed an east-west direction to the façade of the Hellenic continent, which extends from the gulf of Corinth to
the channel of Otrante. From Etolia to the Adriatic, the coast of Epira really has a south-southeast north-northwest
direction; but all of the ancient geographers and navigators were deceived by it. For them, Leucadia, being the last of the
isles on the Acarnanian coast, was the most “occidental”.
Thus, Leucadia is the Odyssian Ithaca, and then we understand why Eumea can say to Ulysses: “On what boat
have you come here, for I do not think that you came by foot?” Our “isle” of Leucadia is so close to the continent that, to
speak truly, it is only separated from it by the work of men: it is a peninsula rather than an isle; bridges or causeways will
join it from all times to the entirely near coast of the neighboring continent: one could come by foot to Ithaca-Leucadia.
Leucadia being the Odyssian Ithaca, it is Ithaca-Theaki of the moderns which should be the Samë of the Odyssey.
Here is why.
Between his Ithaca and Samë, the Homeric poet knows of a small rocky isle in the strait, Asteris, provided with
good ports and exposed lookouts, where the suitors go to await the return of Telemachus. Ordinarily, they identify Asteris
with the islet Daskalio which is found in the channel between Ithaca-Theaki and Kephalonia. But Daskalio is just a reef
without ports or lookouts, a back of rock at the level of the waves, which does not correspond to the Odyssian description
in anything. Asteris must be sought elsewhere. Without difficulty, M. Doerpfeld finds Asteris in the isle Arkoudi, which
rises between Leucadia and Theaki. Thus, Leucadia being ancient Ithaca, Theaki should be ancient Samë, if one wishes
that Asteris-Arkoudi is found between Ithaca and Samë.
I would not discuss this theory point by point. In exposing that which I believe to be the verity, I would at the
same time, as I go, refute each of the arguments of M. Doerpfeld. I nevertheless do not remain silent regarding the strange
impression which the translations and the geography cause me. Either by the material explication of the words or by the
rational interpretation of the facts, it appears that M. Doerpfeld has less the habit of handling the texts than the
monuments, and that he merits a little too frequently the criticism addressed by Strabo “to those who treat the Poet as a
simple landsman” , ο‘ι δ’ ο’ύτως αγροίκως εδέξαντο την επιχείρησιν την τοιαύτην ‘ώστε… τον ποιητην σκαπανέως η
θεριστου δίκεν …εξέβαλον I would only take two examples in the argumentation of M Doerpfeld - an example of
translation and an example of interpretation.
The poet, describing the harbors of the islet Asteris, tells us:

Αστερίς, ου μεγάλη. λιμένες δ’ ένι ναύλοχοι αυτή

αμφίδυμοι.

M. Doerpfeld translates: “Asteris small isle with two ports”, and he finds the two ports on the two oriental and
occidental façades of Arkoudi. The poet is much more precise: in his isle of Asteris, he knows ports, λιμένες, capable of
offering refuges, ναύλοχοι, in their two compartments, αμφίδυμοι. Asteris does not have two ports, but one or several
ports, of which each presents the remarkable particularity that it is not entirely surrounded by anchorages or shores to
beach the vessels - it is not panormos, πάνορμος, said the poet; - it is not even provided with several shores or harbors - it
is not euormos, εύορμος, said the poet; - but, divided by a rocky point into two compartments, it offers only two spots
where the vessel can be put away - it is amphidumos, αμφίδυμος. There are not two ports, but double ports, αμφίδυμοι,
“twin ports”, resembling the “twin stones”, πέτραι δίδυμοι, which we have encountered elsewhere. The Twin Stones
formed a single isle: our Twin Ports can form only one bay. They can in reality only be the unique refuge of the
Amphidumoi Ports, as Salinas was the unique land of the Didumoi Stones. And, like the name of Twin Stones, Πέτραι
Δίδυμοι, has become the proper name among the navigators, the particular name of the land, it is possible that Twin Ports,
Λιμένες Αμφίδυμοι may have become the proper name of the bay. For the epithet, that which we have already signaled

519
for other Odyssian epithets should be noted. The qualificative αμφίδυμοι is found in no other part of the Homeric poems.
It is characteristic of the harbor, as “stony”, πετραίν, is characteristic of Scylla. The channel of Samë thus has its Double
Ports, like the channel of Zante has its Pointed Isles, or like Cyclopia has its Small Isle. Now, in his isle of Asteris-
Arkoudi, M. Doerpfeld indeed finds two ports; but he would search in vain for Double Ports. His isle Asteris-Arkoudi is
as little “Homeric” as the other isle, which M. doerpfeld does not want at all, Asteris-Daskilio.
Example of interpretation. Telemachus says to Mentes:

πως δέ σε ναυται
ήγαγον εις Ιθάκην; τίνες έμμεναι ευχετόωντο;
ου μεν γάρ σε πεζον οίομαι ενθάδ’ ‘ικέσθαι.

“How have sailors brought you to Ithaca? Who are those to be praised? For it is not by foot, surely, that you have come
among us.” Telemachus poses the same question to the beggar who is Ulysses; he repeats it again to his father once he
recognizes him. Eumea has already posed the same question to her master. In four passages of the Odyssey, find the half-
ironic, half-polite formula. M. Doerpfeld takes it literally. Thus, if he had had to comment on some such similar question
in another poem or narrative of sailors; if he had, for example, to explain the voyage of the Egyptians to Puanit and the
first question that the savages of the land address to the navigators: “How have you reached the land unknown to the men
of Egypt? Have you descended by the route of heaven or have you navigated by water over the sea of Tonutri?”, it is
probable that M. Doerpfeld would have borrowed Jacob’s ladder to establish a possible, real, material communication
between the heaven of the gods and the land of Puanit.

*
* *

The realm of Ulysses comprises numerous islets and the four isles of Doulichion, Ithaca, Samë and Zakynthos.
During all antiquity and down to our days, three of the isles have kept their Homeric names. Down to us, Zakynthos has
remained Zakynthos or, by a slight abbreviation due to the Italian thalassocracies, Zante. During antiquity, Samë or Samos
was at the same time the name of a town in the isle of Kephallenia (we say Kephalonia) and the name of the entire isle.
Finally, Ithaca, which was always Ithaca for the navigators of the classical navies, is still recognizable under its slight
Italian disguise of Theaki.
It should be noted that the three insular names, Zakynthos, Samë and Ithake offer no meaning in Greek: in spite of
the puns and alliterations of the lexicographers, it is impossible to discover an Hellenic etymology from them. The
phenomenon has nothing which should surprise us. In the archipelago as in the Ionian sea, we know that most of the isles
bear names of the same sort, names foreign, anterior to the Hellenic thalassocracy. We have only been able to explain the
terms Kasos, Siphnos or Kythera, like the terms Kerkyra or Paxos, by resorting to the Semitic vocabulary. The value of
the Semitic etymologies was certified to us by the Greek name in which the Hellenic isles have sometimes redoubled their
foreign name. By virtue of the Greco-Semitic doublets Kasos-Akhne or Paxos-Plateia, we can affirm the succession in the
region of Phoenician and Greek navies and onomasties. Now, among the three Ionian isles, there is at least one which
presents to us a similar Greco-Semitic doublet: it is Samë-Kephallenia.
We have studied the names of the form Samos or Samë at length: the Semitic term signifies the height or the top.
We have explained the doublet Samë-Kephallenia: the isle, which was Samë, the High, for the first thalassocracies,
became the Head, Kephale, or the Nipple, Kephallene for the Greeks; in the local legend, the heroes Samos and Kranios
will become the sons of Kephalos. The entire isle merits the name well. It imposes itself on the eyes of the navigators. Its
height distinguishes it from all the neighboring lands: “Mount Nero,” say the Nautical instructions, “is the highest

520
mountain of Kephalonia. 1590 meters high, mount Nero is visible for 80 miles: it is ordinarily the first land which one
perceives in coming from the west.” Thus the isle is the High Isle of the area for the navigators. Near to high Kephalonia,
it should not surprise us if the neighboring lands, Ithaca in particular, appear low in the eyes of the sailors. Ithaca, in spite
of its rocks and in spite of its two peaks of Neriton and Neion, has only 800 meters of height; it is two times lower than
Kephalonia: it is “the low isle” beside “the high isle”. It is that which the poet tells us, who only reproduces the viewes
and descriptions of the navigators in his verse. Compared to the other isles of the realm, Ithaca is low, αυτε δε χθαμαλή.
To explain the perfectly just epithet, we need only take into account of the fact that here again the poet speaks like
a periple: he describes the isle to us, not only for and by itself, but also in comparison with the surrounding lands, from
which the navigator needs know how to distinguish it. It is thus needless to resort to the imaginations of M. Doerpfeld.
The epithet low, χθαμαλή, has never had, either in the Homeric language or in any Greek language, the sense which M.
Doerpfeld would give it. When the poet described the port of Sicily to us, he opposed the lower rock of Charybdis,

τον δ’ ‘έτερον σκόπελον χθαμαλώτερον όψει,

to the straight stone of Scylla, which touches the sky. In the verse which, now, describes to us the port of Ithaca or, as the
poet says, the port of the northwest, we undoubtedly do not have the same textual opposition between the high Samë and
the low Ithaca. But the opposition, already implicitly contained in the name of Samë, had been materially formulated, I
believe, in the very text of the periple which the poet or his predecessors had before the eyes: in the periple of Skylax, we
have encountered the same opposition for the strait of Calypso, between the Column of Europe and the Column of Libya,
this one being low, that one being high, ‘η μεν εν τη Λιβύη ταπεινη, ‘η δε εν τη Ευρώπη ‘υψηλή. For, here as elsewhere,
we can find a thousand indications showing us that the poet has not known the sites which he describes to us from
personal experience. He has not seen, seen with his eyes, Ithaca - no more than he has seen the grotto of the Cyclops on
the western sea, nor the beach, the acropolis or the sanctuary of Pylos, on the Peloponesian coast. But he had before his
eyes or in his memory scientific or literary texts, periples or Nostoi, which gave him as exact a description of the Port of
the Northwest as of the Port of Sicily or of the Port of the Lestrygons. The Nautical Instructions tell us:

When one comes from the northwest to reach the channel of Ithaca, one will first perceive the high land of Saint Maura, then
the remarkable white block of the promontory of Leucate (cape Dukato), the elevated hill of point Oxoi of Ithaca, and finally the
north point of Cephalonia, which is relatively low. The ships under sail will not enter the channel of Ithaca without a good wind, for
there is too much depth to anchor; if the wind falls, the currents are uncertain, and sometimes storms with an extreme violence fall
from the high ground.

Our Instructions are made for our sailors who, coming from the northwest, go to the southeast, in passing from the
Adriatic into the Greek waters. We see that, for them, the entrance of the channel also has its low shore and its high shore:
“when one comes from the northwest”, it is the southern extremity of Leucadia which is the “high land”, and it is the
north point of Kephalonia which is the relatively “low” land. for the primitive sailors who, navigating in the opposite
direction, come from the southeast toward the northwest, it was the southern point of Kephalonia with its mount Nero
(1590 meters) which was the high land, Samë, and the “relatively low”, χθαμαλή, land was Ithaca, with its hills of two or
three hundred meters (Partsch gives only 280 meters to the plateau of Marathia which ends Ithaca in the south). Consult
our charts. You see that, to our present sailors, the “high shore”, the land of Leucade, presents the 1200 meters of mount
Stavrotas, and that the “relatively low shore”, the land of Kephalonia offers steep hills exceeding three and four hundred
meters (Partsch gives 120, 242, 318 and 618 meters to the hills which alternate, without interruption, on the north point of
Kephalonia). The comparisons and contrasts of altitude are, we see, the same in the part and in the whole.
It is the words toward the zophos, προς ζόφον, which I translate as northwest. I have given the reasons for that
translation above, when, in the episode of Circe, we have explained “the houses of the Aurora”. We know that the poet
divides his horizon into four dwellings: the aurora has the façade between the north and the east; the sun (we say the
south [midi, midday]) has the façade between the east and the south; the sunset (the poet also says the erebe) has the

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façade between the south and the west; the zophos, finally, that is to say the darkness and the shadow, σκιά, σκότος,
occupies between the west and the north the fourth and last façade which the sun of the living never visits, φαεσίμβοτος,
but which the sun of the dead passes, behind the limits of our lands, invisible to our eyes, visible only to the departed, the
sun of the dead. The strait between Ithaca and Kephalonia is, for the navigators of the time, the last port of the northwest.
When the people of Pylos will adventure toward the region of the shadow, toward the zophos they make the voyage
which the Telemakheia described to us. Having first cruised the muddy beaches of the Elide, they pass, like Telemachus,
the port of Zakynthos, the channel between Zante and the Peloponnesus: in the port, the poet has warned us that the
Pointed Isles are a dangerous reef. Then they reach cape Monda, the extreme southern point of Kephalonia. Then cruising
the southeast coast of Kephalonia, they enter into the channel between Samë and Ithaca. But, to be protected from the
winds from the north which rage in the corridor, they promptly leave the coast of Kephalonia and come to cruise along
Ithaca itself. The “low” isle (in contrast to Samë, the high isle) is thus, after Zante and Kephalonia, the last, πανυπερτάτη,
which they encounter in the sea, ειν ‘αλι, toward the northwest, προς ζόφον:

αυτή δε χθαμαλη πανυπερτάτε ειν ‘αλι κειται

προς ζόφον.

The two isles Samë and Ithaca do not form only the two uprights of the door of the northwest: they offer there also
the two rests in their two towns named, also, Samë and Ithaca.
At the southern entrance of the strait, the coast of Kephalonia is indented by a double bay on the two sides of cape
Dekalia: the bay of Samos and the bay of Antisamos, say our charts, and the Nautical Instructions add:

Cape Dekalia forms the east coast of the bay of Samos; it is rocky, steep and bare, and easily recognizable by a small
remarkable peak which surmounts it. The peak, 160 meters high, is partially covered with bushes. The cape forms, with point St.
Andrea, the southern extremity of Ithaca, the south entrance of the channel of Ithaca, about 2 miles wide, with steep shores of the
two sides and deep bottoms.
Bay of Anti-Samos. - Directly to the east of cape Dekalis is found the bay of Anti-Samos, about ¾ mile deep, but without
importance. A ship will anchor in the bay with 18 to 22 meters of water, at about two cables from the beach which is found at the
foot of the bay; but since this is open to the northeast, from where sometimes blow violent gusts, one will only utilize it as a retreat
during summer.
Bay of Samos. - The bay, which is found between cape Dekalia and the shore and the shore which faces it to the west, has 2
½ miles of opening and 1 ½ miles of depth. It is semicircular and sheltered from all the winds excepting those from the north; even
with the winds from that quarter, the sea would not be dangerous there, for the holding of the bottom of the bay is good, mud and
sand. The ships can anchor in bottoms of 22 to 27 meters. There is a good anchorage for small boats in 22 to 24 meters of water. The
large ships anchor more in the open. A small mole, ending near the large house, extends to the west down to bottoms of 3.6 meters,
and serves as a shelter to the coasters. During the heavy winds, one should be prepared to receive violent gusts which fall from the
high land.

The retreat of Samos is used in case of necessity. It is far from being good: it is fully open to the winds from the
north; it is buffeted by “the violent gusts which fall from the high land”; it has been necessary to construct a small mole,
extending toward the west, to give some safe shelter to the coasters. Thus it is not in that bay that the sailors frequenting
the strait have their principal station. By virtue of its “richly cultivated and well-watered plain”, Samos has been able to
formerly become, and could tomorrow become again a somewhat large town of the islanders, of the landsmen. But the
sailors, especially the primitive sail navigators, have need of another refuge in the dangerous waters which the Nautical
Instructions describe above.
Coming from the northwest, our sailboats “do not enter the channel of Ithaca without a good wind”, that is to say,
without a wind from the north; but, entering with a good wind which carries them toward the south, they descend the
entire channel with one breath, without another stop except, sometimes, a refuge of coastal cruising for the service of the
islanders. In the channel of Ithaca, our sailboats thus have no need of a large refuge or even of a resting place. For the

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primitive rowers who, coming from the southeast, needed to struggle against the dominant winds from the north in the
corridor, it went entirely differently. For the navigation of Telemachus, we see again the fashion the rowers use for it.
Arriving at the first point of Ithaca toward the south, the men of Telemachus land at the port of St. Andrea (we will come
back to the navigation). In the port of St. Andrea they leave their passenger. By oar, no longer by sail (in order to avoid
the risk of sudden gusts at each turn of cape or mountain), they ascend the strait again: they keep themselves under the
shelter of Ithaca, whose general north-northeast direction covers them from the Borea and protects them somewhat from
the Zephyr. They thus reach their beach of haulage at the foot of a well-sheltered cove below the Odyssian town of Ithaca.
All the way at the other end of the channel, the Odyssian Ithaca (town) sets its houses and lanes around the small
bay which we still call the Port of the Town, Port Polis, today. We will study the harbor at length. We will legitimize the
identification point by point. From the edge of the sea and the edge of the land, we see that that Port Polis satisfies all the
necessities of the first navigators. Well-protected from the winds of the north; circled by sandy beaches which gently
descend into the deep water; provided on the shore itself with an abundant and convenient water source of the Well,
which our marine charts still indicate on the eastern beach: it is truly an excellent port to the taste of the Homeric sailors.
The galleys find hauling places all around. The rowers, without fearing winds from the open or gusts from the
high land, can refresh themselves there. At the foot of the port, the land slowly raises itself toward the middle of the isle:
by another slope, they descend again toward another harbor of the opposite coast. Between Port Polis on the strait and
Port Frikais on the open sea, we see that the town of Ulysses guards one of the isthmic routes, the rôle of which we have
studied: in the small isle of Ithaca, the isthmic route is very short; it is none the less - we will see - very important. In such
a location, Port Polis becomes the great relaxing place for the navigators in the port of the northwest: it is, for the
Achaeans, the last rest on the route of the zophos. The town of Ulysses, capitol of the maritime realm, is truly the “last”
town at the edge of the barbarian world.
The poet adds that the numerous isles of the realm “surround, Ithaca, entirely near each other”,

πολλαι ναιετάουσι μάλα σχεδον αλλήλησιν.

Thus, the other isles are around, αμφί, Ithaca. They are numerous, πολλαί. But there are three principal ones of
them, Samë, Doulichion and Zakynthos, which the poet cites by name. They are the largest, without doubt, or the most
populated. the three isles are less near to Ithaca than these or those other lands of lesser importance. They are at a little
distance: Entirely near Ithaca, in effect, there are other islets or isles, Atoko,Arkoudi, Daskalio, etc., much closer than
Doulichion and, especially, than Zakynthos. The three large isles, furthermore, are not to the northwest ot Ithaca, προς
ζόφον: they are in the two “houses” or the dawn and of the sun,

... α’ι δέ τ’ άνευθε προς τ’ ηέλιόν τε.

To employ an Homeric expression which is familiar to us, they are not behind Ithaca, on the route of the shadow
and the night: they are entirely before Ithaca, on the route of the light and the day. But the ones are in the right part of
before, toward the sun, toward the south; the others are in the left part, toward the dawn, toward the east. We have found
two of the isles, Samë and Zakynthos. Those two are toward the south, toward the sun from Ithaca, προς ηέλιον. it
remains to discover the third, Doulichion, which, consequently alone, can and should be found in the house of the dawn,
προς ηω, that is to say, between the north and the east.

*
* *

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 The Ancients already hesitated over the veritable site of the “Long Isle”, Doulichion, δούλιχος, δόλιχος: the navies
of the classical epoch no longer frequented the Odyssian isle, or gave it another name; the geographers will seek
Doulichion in all the vicinity of Ithaca. The moderns have only repeated the hypotheses of the Ancients.

Among the hypotheses, there is one which we discard at the very first. Under the pretext that, facing Ithaca and
Port Polis, the southern coast of Kephalonia has a place called Douliko, certain Moderns have set in fashion a thoery
announced by Strabo, who credits it to Hellanikos. Deeply indented by long gulfs which oppose each other, almost
divided into parts, Kephalonia, they say, is a double isle, a pair of isles rather than a single isle: our old geographers
frequently speak of the two Kephalonias. In the Homeric epoch, Samë and Doulichion will be the double isle Kephalonia:
Samë will be the Kephalonia of the southeast, around the bay and the plain of Samos; Doulichion will be the Kephalonia
of the northwest, the long peninsula where we find the place called Douliko today.
It suffices, I believe, to expose this theory by seeing the incompatibilities of the Homeric text, on the one part,
with the geographic realities, on the other. The text informs us that Doulichion should be toward the dawn from Ithaca,
that is to say, between the north and the east: the peninsula of Kephalonia is just the opposite, not before Ithaca, but
behind, not toward the dawn or the sun, but toward the sunset and even the zophos. In the Homeric reality, as in the
reality of all times, Kephalonia could not be a double isle: the navigators, in speaking of the two Kephalonias, indicate the
Large and the Small, Ithaca and Samë. the Homeric poet said. The geographers, when they have a chart before their eyes,
can indeed see the deep gulfs which, from two directions, indent the isle and seem to wish to join to cut it in two. But on
the sea, Kephalonia borders the channel with its continuous high chain [of mountains]. Mount Nero, from its six hundred
meters, dominates the southern extremity; the northern hills of Douliko, lower, still exceed three hundred meters. in the
interval the navigator, far from perceiving a cut, to the contrary sees only a front of steep wall, lowering regularly but
continuously. All about, along the rampart, the bottomless sea borders the steep coast. In only one place, around the bay
of Samos, the navigators perceive a plain and, dominating the plain, the town whose name the first thalassocracies applied
to the entire isle: Samë. But the plain, only a few hundred meters deep, is still encircled by the same steep mountains. It
does not extend from one sea to the other, across the isle. It forms, not an isthmus, but a circle. It is not a cut or even a
cleft: It is just a simple neck of the mountainous barrier. Doulichion thus could not have been Kephalonia.

Another theory: to the northeast of Ithaca, the isle which the Ancients named Leucas, the Venetians Santa Maura,
and which we indifferently call Leucadia or S. Maura, extends a long point toward Ithaca; among the first navigators, the
point had borne the name of Doulichion. The second hypothesis, also propounded from antiquity, also reprised by the
Moderns, does not appear any more unacceptable to me. Leucadia, I believe, cannot be the Long island of the poet for the
good reason that in Homeric times it was not an isle; still today, we can give it the name of isle only by a singular liberty
of language. The old periple of Skylax had reason to tell us that Leucadia is a peninsula, ακτη και πόλοις Λευκάς, which
holds to Arcania and is extended into the sea up to the White Promontory, to cape Leucadia, on the channel of Ithaca:
α‘ύτη ανέκει επι τον Λευκάταν, ‘ό εστιν ακροτήσιον πόρρωθεν εν τη θαλάττη.
On their charts, in effect, the navies show us exactly what Leucadia is - not an isle, but a promontory of the
Arcanian coast. The entire coast of Arcania, between the gulf of Arta to the north and the mouths of the Acheloös (Aspro-
Potamo) to the south, presents the same aspect and the same nature. It is nothing but a field of mountainous islets joined
together by the mud of alluvions or by strings of lakes and marshes. In the south, around the mouths of the Acheloös, we
readily see how the deposits of the muddy river, of the White River, Aspro-Potamo, have again quite recently joined the
isles and islets, which should have been surrounded by the water of the sea or by brackish water, to the continental shore.
In the north, similarly, at the very foot of the gulf of Arta, the deposits of another muddy river - the Arachthos of the
Ancients, the Arta of the Moderns - have modified the line of the antique coasts. The Nautical Instructions tell us:

The Aspro-Potamo, or White River, has only 0.6 meters of water over the bar. It is the most considerable of the rivers of
Greece. As it descends from a chain of high mountains, it swells greatly in winter, inundates all the plain in the vicinity of the sea,

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and produces considerable deposits. The bar breaks [the surf] of the winds from the southwest; the bottom is shallow up to ¾ of a
mile outside, then it deepens suddenly. Sometimes the water is discolored for nearly two miles from the shore.
[in the Gulf of Arta], the north coast is formed by a monotonous succession of marshes, of bogs, of lagoons, which are
separated from the waters of the gulf only by a narrow band of sand and mud, submerged in winter, and which make the gulf appear
larger than it is in reality, for they extend far, up to the more elevated terrain. It is to the large marshes and to the humid terrains
which we should attribute the pernicious effects of malaria which render the land unhealthy, especially in summer, during the
months of August and September. The lagoons abound in fish and crayfish, and are the rendez-vous of an immense quantity of
waterfowl, especially numerous flocks of pelicans, which are nourished by the fish of the gulf. The Ambracicus sinus was formerly
celebrated for its fish; it would be again today; but the fishery there is little active. The rivers Luro and Arta flow across the large
plains and the marshes, which are formed between the gulf and the mountains where they take their source.

From antiquity up to our days, we thus see the active and powerful causes which have certainly modified the
Acarnanian coast, either to the north in the gulf of Arata or to the south in the waters of the Acheloös. But in the inerval
between the two rivers, and particularly around S. Maura, we see neither sufficently “working” rivers or torrents to make
us suppose that the Ancients knew the waters [to be] very different from those which we see today. We can agree with
Partsch that the marine currents and the swell, thrown by the winds from the north against the western cliffs of Leucadia,
erode the cliffs and, from their pulverized debris, construct the large point of sand which goes from cape Zuana to Port St,
Nicolo, in bordering the northern façade of our isle. But it is not the marine currents which, in the historic ages, have
filled the interval between the rocky masses of the continent and the rocky masses of Leucadia: in that place, the isthmic
plain is made of mud; it is not made of sand like the northern point; the maritime current, furthermore, bears toward the
north.
Between the rocky masses of S. Maura and the rocky masses of the neighbboring continent, the Ancients already
saw the land such as we percive it in our days. An artificial canal crosses the low marshy plain today, which a lagoon
barely two feet deep partly covers. The eroded lands and their thick waters make a veritable isthmus which always bars all
maritime communication between the sea of the north and the sea of the south. The plain resembles in all points the other
extent of fields, marsh and lakes which, a little farther to the east separates Arcania, properly speaking, from the Lamia
and Saussi mountains. In their eyes, in their descriptions, the eastern corridor, half drowned under the waters of lake
Vourlia, extends from the bay of Zaverda to the port San Nicolo: the western corridor, our plain of S. Maura, goes from
the Demata bay to the port Drepano. Our navies, between St. Maura and the terra firma, thus do not know a strait, but a
port in a cul-de-sac:

Port Drepano, formed between St. Maura and terra firma, has three miles of depth and a middle width of 1 ½ miles. The
anchorage is at the depth of the port, with the bottom at 22 to 13 meters, of good holding, to the southwest of the fort of San Giorgio,
of a white color and situated on a hill of the continent at 45 meters of elevation. A small islet of rock of a white color, situated at the
foot of the hill, projects a drowned mole in the west; facing it, above St. Maura, the remains of an ancient mole are advanced in the
east. At the extremity of each mole a small black buoy mark the channel which leads to an interior anchorage.
The interior anchorage is employed by the small ships which come to load the salt from the large saltworks in the vicinity.
From the interior of the harbor, a narrow channel of embarkation, with a meter of water, leads to the mole of S. Maura, in the north.
A fine route leads to the capitol of the isle, where there is a telegraph. A steamer coming from Patras makes a call at Fort Drepano all
the weeks.

The steamers coming from Patras to Fort Drepano did not know how to ascend up to St. Maura by “the narrow
channel of embarkation with one meter of water”. But, by the fine route, the people of St. Maura, descending toward the
port of the south, come to the arrival of the steamers from Patras, as they come by another route to the arrrival of the
steamers from Prevesa or from Corfu, on the northern bay. Their isthmic town has two echelles, the one on the bay of the
north, the other in the southern port. The channel which cuts the marshy isthmus is not and never has been a passage of
the sailors: it is and always has been only a fortification of the islanders against the pillages of the continental
mountaineers, a ditch which the foreign colonists or thalassocracies, masters of Leucadia, have dug, maintined and

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marked by fortresses (forts S. Maura, Alexandros, Constantin and St. Georges) to defend themselves from the natives of
the mainland.
The texts of the Ancients are formulated on this. Herodotus and Thucydides alredy pointed out the sediments and
alterations which we have indicated at certain points of the Acarnanian coast. The mouths of the Acheloös, especially,
were made celebrated by all the authors of antiquity for the work of construction “which transformed the isles into
continents”, as the versifier says,

νησοι
‘άς ‘ο Αχέλωος προσχωνύνων ήπειρον ποιει.

Herodotus already thought that half of the ancient Echinadan Isles (we are going to study this small archipelago)
had been joined to the terra firma, των Εχινάδων νήσων τασ ‘ημισέτας ήδη ήπειρον πεποίηκε, and Thucydides calculated
that, as a result of the Acheloös and its delta, all of the isles before it might become coastal mountains, ελπις δε και πάσας
ουκ εν πολλω τινι αν χρόνω τουτο παθειν. But for Leucadia, far from noting a similar work of joining with the
neighboring coast, the Ancients unanimously tell us that, from the origin, it was a peninsula attached to the mainland.
They knew of an isthmus here comparable, with all proportions preserved, to the isthmus of Suez; there were the same
absence of mountainous lands, the same semi-fluid expanse of sands, of mud, of lagoons and of marsh. But it was truly an
isthmus and, far from supposing that Leucadia had formely been able to be an isle, all the Ancients affirm that before the
arrival of the Dorian colonists, it already made a part of the continent. Across the isthmic band, they say, it was the
Dorian colonists who dug an artificial channel. Thucydides and Skylax speak to us of the isthmus of the Leucadians.
Strabo and the geographers agree with Polybius and the historians in calling Leucadia an ancient peninsula: Leucadia
nunc insula est, says Tite-Live, who copies Polybius, vadaso freto, quod perfossum manu est, ab Acarnania divisa: tum
paeninsula arat, and Strabo gives us the exact date when the artificial channel was dug:

Leukas was formerly a penisula of the land of the Acarnanians, α‘ύτη δ’ ην το παλαιον μεν χερρόνησος της Ακαρνάνων γης.
Homer also calls it a point of the continent, καλει δ’ ‘ο Ποιητης αυτην ακτην ηπείροιο. He makes it a perea of Ithaca and of
Kephalonia, a piece of Acarnania, την περαίαν της Ιθάκης και της Κεφαλληνίας ήπειρον καλων. α‘ύτη δ’ εστιν ‘η Ακαρνανία. It was
the Corinthians sent by Kypselos and Gorgos who will install themselves on the penisula and, cutting the penisular isthmus with a
channel, will make an isle of Leukas, της χερρονήσου διορύξαντες τον ισθμον εποίησαν νησον την Λευκάδα.

If one thought to set in doubt the testimony transmitted by Strabo and confirmed by all the authors, it would be
necessary to be warned that the attentive study of the geographic facts and names lead us to the same assertions. Here are
three sorts of argument furnished by the ethnography, topology and onomasty.

By the antique ethnography, at first, we see that Leucadia differs entirely from the other Ionian isles. The first
Greek colonies, of Aeolian race and language, will occupy Zakynthos, Samë and Ithaca, which were isles and where they
had nothing to fear from the savage landsmen. They will leave Leucadia, from which the fear of the Epirotes without
doubt kept them at a distance: From the modern history of Leucadia and from the Valaque, Albanian or Turkish
incursions, from which it had to suffer during twelve centuries, we see the dangers of the too-near continent.Long after
the Aeolians, in historic times, new hardier Greek colonies, better armed and supported by the Corinthian force, will come
to install their families and their Dorian language at Leucadia: they will still take the effort to dig the ditch which we
know between their town and the tribes of the barbarian continent.
Among the Moderns, they have argued at length over the site and the length of the Corinthian ditch. Some think
that, the present lagoon already existing, the Corinthians will only cut the northern tongue of sands which bear the citadel
today. I would more readily believe - because of the text of Arrian which we are going to see - that the Corintian channel
also crossed the fluid muds of the lagoon. But the langth of the ditch matters little. Its existence alone is sufficient proof
that the Homeric boats, before the work, were not able to use the cul-de-sac as a strait. The ditch itself appears to me

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without doubt as a channel of small navigation, but, even more, as a work of defense. It can serve as a passage to small
boats. During the antiquity, we even see fleets borrow the route. But, across the crumbling lands and stagnant waters, it
well appears that the channel without width and without depth can only serve, as today, very small embarkations: when
the large vessels wished to borrow it, it was less as a navigable arm of the sea than as a route of hauling, a diolcos still
more than a dioryktos. The artificial strait was of such little width, so difficult to recognize and so changeable that it was
necessary to mark it with pilings and signs to avoid groundings: πασσάλοις δε ένθεν και ένθεν πεπηγόσιν απεδηλουτο τα
βραχέα κατάπερ εν τω μεσσηγυς Λευκάδος τε νήσου ισθμω και Αχαρνανίασ αποδέδεικται σημήια τοις ναυτιλλομένοισι
του μη εποκέλλειν εν τοισι βραχέσι τασ νέασ. To take certain texts literally, it could even appear that the channel of boats
was ceaselessly threatened, already during antiquity, of collapse or interruption. in the XIXth century, it required the work
of the English to render them its depth of three feet and its width of a few meters: The Hellenes, setting themselves to
work in the last years, have brought it, with great effort, to three meters of depth.

At the edge of their ditch, the Corinthian colonists will install their town on the first insular hills, between two
valleys of olives, near abundant springs. The present capitol, S. Maura of the Venetians, Amaxiki of the Greeks, does not
occupy the site of the antique town. We again find here the alternation of the insular capitols which we have pointed out
everywhere. Here, the two successive capitols nevertheless will respond to the same needs. They were less towns of
navigators, of rowers, than town of colonists, of charioteers, amaxa, amaxike. Both will be established within reach of the
sea, but not on the shore. Both, on the great plain of the isle, among the fields and the olives, lived or live on the sales of
their agricultural produce, not on navigation. Both, for the convenience of commerce, will dig a canal permitting their
own boats to reach the open sea or the embarcations of the navigators to reach their agoras. But both remain isthmic,
continental towns, rather than ports.
The only difference between their two sites holds to the difference of their times and of their thalassocracies.
Venetian S. Maura was founded as close as possible to the northern bay, because the thalassocracies came and still come
to it from the north, from the Adriatic, from Corfu. Dorian Leukas had also been founded as near as possible to the
southern port, because the thalassocracies then came from the south, from the Greek seas, from Corinth. Leukas had
perched it acropolis and its walls on a high butte, from which it faced the barbarians of the opposed coast: S. Maura,
established in the plain, had need of constructing a citadel across the point of sand which led the incursions of the
landsmen to it. Leukas, under it s walls or even in the interior, without doubt had a port, quais, basins and warehouses
built by the hand of man - as S. Maura today has its advance port on the north coast. Leukas had also dug a canal of direct
communication between its interior port and the fairground anchorage, to allow the large boats to come up to it: by
the ;ast corrections to our marine charts, we see how the Greeks today have, from Amaxiki to the open sea, dug a canal
which has 7 meters of depth in the advance port and 5 meters at the quais of the town. But we also see that with all the
resources of our modern engineers, the Greeks still have not succeeded in digging a true passage of navigation across the
entire isthmus, from the bay of the north to the southern port: they have contented themselves with deepened the muddy
channel of the English a little, dredging it to three meters of depth.
The topology of Leukas, like the topology of S. Maura, can thus only be explained if the Corinthian colonists will
already find here the same conditions as the Venetian colonists, the same lagoon without depth, the same marshy isthmus,
the same interruption between the sea of the north and the sea of the south, the continuity between the insular mass and
the continental shore. The name which the Corinthian colonists will give to their town is a new indication for us.

The Dorian colonists will call their town the White, Leukas. The Ancients add that the name, borrowed from
another site, was applied without a reason by the Dorians to their new site. The first navigators, in effect, had given the
name White only to the Stone which terminates the extreme point of the same “isle” on the southern sea, above the
Homeric port of the northwest, facing Ithaca and Kephalonia. The Instructions describe to us “the remarkable white
mass” of the Leukatas promontory, of which a fine Italian pun today makes cape Dukato. Strabo tells us: “Leukas was
first the White Rock, the Cape Leukatas. The stone truly merits the name by its color, πέτρα γάρ εστι λευκη την χρόαν.

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They later transport the name to the town.” From the stone, in effect, it is probable that the name extended to the
neighboring region, then to the entire isle. The Corinthian colonists, arriving, will give to their new town the name of the
isle of which it became the capitol. They are the onomastic principles which are familiar to us: we know how most of the
Greek isles take the name of their capitol or inversely. Without even leaving our Odyssian isles, we see how, in the
Homeric epoch, the terms Zakynthos, Ithaka and Samë are at the same time the names of isles and towns. But the
comparison with Zykanthos, Ithaka and Samë, in itself, can teach us something more concerning the date and the origin of
our name Leukas.
From antiquity up to our days, across the changes of conquests and civilizations, the insular names had very
different types: Zakynthos is always the name of the isle and its capitol; Samë (or its Greek equivalent, Kephalonia) and
Ithaka are now only the names of two isles of which, for modern capitols, the one has Argostoli, the other Port Vathy.
The difference of onomastic destinies is explained to us by the differences of the sites. Across all the changes of
exploitation, Zanthe keeps its capitol at the same point: it is that the site responds turn by turn to all the needs of the
exploiters, be they thalassocrats or colonists, navigators or peasants. The isle of Zante has a great importance for the
navigators: it is situated along the Elean port, on the strait which borders the Peloponnesus: the capitol of the navigators
will thus be on the strait. For the colonists, the isle has value only for the fertile plain which extends to the foot of the
mountains; but the plain is on the same façade of the strait, while the mountains occupy the opposite coast: the capitol of
the colonists thus will be at the same point as the capitol of the navigators; Semitic, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian
or English, the same bay orf Zante will always see the same insular capitol persist. The Nautical Instructions tell us:

Zante (ancient Zakynthos) is separated from Cephalonia by a deep and solid channel, 8 miles wide. The isle has 20 miles of
length from northwest to southeast and a maximum width of 9 miles. Its west part is mountainous; its greatest elevation, situated at
almost a third of its length from the north, is 829 meters above sea level. Its east part in general forms a large plain with plantations
of olives and rich vineyards.
Bay of Zante. - The bay, contained between point Krionero to the northwest and point Davia to the southeast, has 3 miles of
width, 1 mile of depth, and the form of a semicircle. When we rounded point Krionero in coming from the north, we perceived,
under a beautiful vista, the town and castle of Zante. The town extends in a horseshoe along the shore of the bay for the distance of 1
½ miles; it is well-built and clean, with several churches and fine Venetian constructions. The Quarantine, the customs and the post
office are situated near the foot of the mole, in a convenient location for business. The population, of pleasing manners, is about
22,000 inhabitants. There is a regular service of mailboats, an electric telegraph, etc... Zante, the only port of exportation on the isle,
is particularly animated in September and October, the grape season of Corinth.
On leaving the hill of the castle, a large cultivated plain forms a splendid panorama with the the slopes of mount Skopo
covered with verdure. At the foot of the mountain is found point Davia, a hill bordered with rocks ending the beach of sand which
extends along the shore of the bay, of which it is the southeast extremity. One can be supplied with provisions and resources of all
kinds at Zante, such as fresh water at a source situated a little to the south of point Krikonero; but the quantity of water is limited,
and insufficient for a squadron.

At Kephalonia and Ithaca, we have nothing to compare. Across the centuries, the two isles change to occupation
of the towns. Both also border a strait. But it is found that their cultivable plains or valleys turn their backs to the channel.
Thus, in the hands of the thalassocracies, the two isles have their two capitols on the strait (it is what we see in Homeric
times), and the names given by the first thalassocracies are applied at the same time to the isles themselves and to their
old capitols, Samë and Ithaca. But, for the arriving colonists, the strait and its steep shores lose their importance: the
plains or valleys of the other façade and their cultivable fields take their turn. It is there that, turning their backs to the
strait, the new towns of the landsmen come to be placed. Homeric Samë (town) is succeeded, on the other coast of
Kephalonia by the Krania of the Hellenes or the Argostoli of the Venetians. Odyssian Ithaca (town) is succeeded by the
present Port Vathy. In the two isles always retaining their primitive names of Ithaca and Samë-Kephalonia, the names of
the new capitols Krania or Argostoli and Port Vathy belong to another onomastic layer.
We can follow an analogous history for the term Leukas, with the difference that the Corinthian colonists will not
invent a new name for their new capitol: they will only transport the old name Leukas, from the primitive site where it had

528
been well-placed, to their site where it did not pertain. Today, we call S. Maura the isle which the Venetians will endow
with their castle and capitol S. Maura, in the northern plain, in the midst or within reach of the fields and the olives:
Facing Acarnania, opposing our Homeric route from the northwest, the plain was, for the Venetian colonists, the principal
façade, the habitable and living region of their isle. During antiquity, the Corinthian colonists had acted in a similar
fashion. But, before the Corinthians, the first occupants or exploiters of the land used it entirely differently. There was, at
the other extremity of the isle a steep point, a white rock, the White Stone, Petra Leukas which they alone knew and
denoted - why? Without hesitation, we can reply: because the first exploiters were, not colonists, but navigators, that the
thalassocrats needed, not cultivated fields, but maritime routes, and that the White Stone was a repair for them, the last
repair of their great route toward the northwest. After Ithaca, the last isle and the last town toward the zophos, the White
Stone marked for them the veritable entrance of the ocean of the darkness and the night. It is that which one of the
Odyssian poems tells us in proper terms. In canto XXIV, Hermes leads the souls of the suitors toward the Field of
Asphodel, near the currents of Okeanos, toward the Doors of the Sun and toward the People of the Dreams: the White
Stone is a stop on the voyage:

παρ δ’ ίσαν Ωκεανου τε ‘ροας και Λευκάδα Πέτρην

ηδε παρ’ Ηελίοι Πύλας και Δημον Ονείρων
ήισαν. αιψα δ’ ‘ίκοντο κατ’ Ασφοδελον Λειμωνα.

The study of the Nekyia has already led us to the text. I have said that in my eyes the Field of Asphodel has
nothing in common with the Kumean Land of the Dead, with the Odyssian Kimmeria, for canto XXIV of the Odyssey
should be separated from the Nostos properly speaking. But, if it is not by the same author, it is from the same time and, if
it does not describe the same Land of the Dead, it, also, gives us some exact testimonies regarding another Land of the
Dead as real as the preceeding. Beyond Ithaca and the White Stone, the Hellenes had on the coast of the Thesprotes, in the
valley of the Acheron, a Land of the Dead, celebrated from the first antiquity. For the first Hellenes, it was there that in
truth the dead , leaving on the route of the dark zophos, reached the Field of Asphodel. Before the Hellenes, it is probable
that the first thalassocracies already frequented an oracle of the dead in the vicinity entirely similar to our oracle of
Avernus. Herodotus describes to us the ceremonies of evocation which were made in that place: Periander the Corinthian
had sent messengers to the oracle of the Thesprotes, on the edge of the river Acheron, to consult the shade of his wife
Melissa, πέμψαντι γάρ οί ες Θεσπρωτους επ’ Αχέροντα ποταμον αγγέλους επι το νεκυομαντήιον. To reach the Field, the
dead needed to round the Stone.
The White Stone is thus the great boundary of the sunset. It is by it, and by it alone, that the primitive navigators
can leave from the Greek seas, from the “flour-eaters’” seas, to enter into the darkness of the anthropophagous Barbary.
The navigators did not know of another door of the zophos. We ourselves do not know of another today. It is that the term
“isle” of Leucadia makes us wrongly believe in the possibility of another route. Tricked by the appellation, our public
and our geographers of the cabinet readily believe that a navigable strait separates Acarnania from the “isle”. But the
navies tell us and their charts show us that the strait does not exist. Furthermore, it did not exist in Homeric times. Strabo
has reason to tell us that for the poet Leucadia was already just a point of the continent, ακτη ηπείροιο.
The detail is of capital importance for us to explain well the rôle of Ithaca and of Ulysses in the Achaean Nostoi. If
the thalassocracies of that time had known of a truly navigable channel between the “isle” of Leucadia and the mainland,
they would have adopted the passage by preference, for the timid coasters had found all advantage in following the shores
of the continent to the end, and not risking themselves, as they did, in the open sea and the insular channels. From the gulf
of Corinth to the gulf of Ambracia, then along the coast of the Thesprotes toward the waters of Corfu, their route of the
northwest would have prudently cruised the shore of the mainland; they would not have made of Ithaca their last resting
place towards the dark zophos; they would not have made of Ulysses the great adventurer in the sunset sea. But their route
of the northwest came to brush Ithaca; they will adopt the direction toward the zophos that our poet has Telemachus
follow in his return to Pylos; from the Elide toward Zante, then toward Kephalonia, toward Ithaca and toward the White

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Stone, the first thalassocracies will already navigate, as we navigate, from isle to isle, from port to port: it is not that the
insular route was more convenient, without risks or dangers (it is to the contrary infested with pirates, strewn with Pointed
Rocks and buffeted by gusts and tempests); but it is, in truth, that no other road existed.
From the White Stone to the Mouths of the Acheloös, the continuous continental shores from Leucadia and from
Acarnania describe an entirely closed gulf, without a strait at its foot, without a back door. Leucadia is not an isle; it is the
peninsula of the White Stone. Of that peninsula, the first navigators only knew the White Stone, cape Leukatas: Nothing
distinguishes to their eyes, from the continent, the rest of the land, which is just an extended peninsula, ακτη ηπείροιο.
Under these conditions, it is too evident that our “isle” Leucadia is not the Long Isle, the Doulichion, of the Odyssian
poet: it has only been able to be an appendage, a smallholding, a perea... But perhaps, having henceforth a more just
view of the seas, we will proceed to more easily discover our Long Isle. The expanse in which we should seek it is now
circumscribed and very limited. Doulichion is at the aurora, to the northeast of Ithaca; it can only be in the Acarnanian
gulf, whose curve of alternating rocks and marshes goes from the White Stone to the mouths of the Acheloös, from the
door of the northwest to the entrance of the gulf of Corinth.

*
* *

On our marine charts, the gulf of Acarnania between Leucadia and the Acheloös is populated with innumerable
isles. During antiquity, many other isles still existed, which today the alluvions of the Acheloös have joined to the
continental shore. Among the archipelago, Strabo sought not only the Long Isle of the Odyssian realm, but also the isle or
isles of the Taphian realm, of which the poet knew in the waters. In the time of Strabo, the names of Taphos and
Doulichion have already fallen into disuse and, already, the erudites dispute without a break over the exact location of the
two lands. Strabo decides that Doulichion is at the mouth of the Acheloös, among the Echinades, and that the realm of the
Taphians is one or the collection of the isles which rise a little farther to the north, before Port Drepano, between Leucadia
and Acarnania (today, we call these latter isles Meganisi, Kalomo and Kastos). The decision of Strabo is generally
accepted among the Moderns: Patsch and Oberhümmer, in particular, have no doubt that Meganisi may be the ancient
Taphos. I do not share this opinion. I see very well the reasons which will decide the choice of the ancient geographers.
But I see even more clearly the incompatabilities between the theory of Strabo and the Homeric text.
Strabo decides that Doulichion is among the Echinades because, in his times, the sailors know, in the coastal
archipelago, of an islet named Doulichia, ων τό τε Δουλίχιόν εστι. καλουσι δε νυν Δολίχαν. It is for an entirely similar
reason that the same Strabo again retrieved the Pointed Isles of the Telemakhia: the Pointed Isles, which the poet names
Nesoi Thoai, says Strabo, are the Oxeiai Isles of the more recent geographers; for oxeiai and thoai are synonymous terms.
We know that this last hypothesis of Strabo is entirely fantastic. We have retrieved the veritable Pointed Isles, the
Montague Rocks, on the maritime route which Telemachus and the navigators actually follow Between the Elide and
Ithaca, in the channel of Zante. The error of geography on the subject of the Long Isle appears equally evident to me.
The charts of our navies still know, among the isles of the Acheloös, of the Broad Isle, Petala, the Pointed Isle,
Oxia, and the Long Isle, Makri. But, Wide, Pointed or Long, all the Echinades isles are only poor rocks. Strabo has
already told us: all are rocks, and barren, πασαι λυπαι και τραχειαι. Open the Nautical Instructions:

The isle of Petala, 2 ¾ miles long, 260 meters high in its middle, rocky and barren, and separated from the plateaux and
marshes of the continent by a narrow channel, offering passage only to a canoe. Its west coast is irregular, steep and rocky. Before its
northern extremity lies the rock Shag, and farther, in the north-northeast, the shallows indicated above.
The isle Makri has 2 miles of length from the northwest to the southeast, about 3 cables as the greatest width; it is
mountainous, 127 meters high, and cultivated. At about one cable to the east of its southern extremity lies the islet Kunelli, of rock,
steep, 30 meters high, and about ½ mile long. The water is deep around these last two isles, which one can approach at a reasonable
distance.

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 The isle Oxia has nearly 2 ½ miles of length from north to south; its form is irregular, for it is cut in its middle by an isthmus
bathed by a bay of both coasts. The isle is easily recognized by its savage and irregular aspect and, further, it appears cut into two
parts: that of the north, by far the higher, is formed by a peak of 426 meters height, nearly as high as mount Kutzulari. On the north
coast of the isle is found a small bay, 1/3 mile deep with a beach, offering anchorage to coasters in 20 meters of water. The isle Oxia,
inhabited only by some shepherds, is steep all around, and separated from the mainland by a deep channel, ½ mile wide.

The rocky and savage isles, as we see, are incapable of nourishing a numerous agricultural population: some
flocks in Oxia, some fields in Makri and the desert in Petala, there is all they can offer. Now, the Odyssian Doulichion is a
land of agriculture and breeding: it is “rich in wheat”, πολύπυρος; it is “herbaceous” ποιήεις. The people of Doulichion
live off of their lands, not their vessels. They should not have left on the crusade with Ulysses. But, remaining at home
while the fleets of the realm went to Troy, they should have to furnish fifty-two fine sons to the troop of the besiegers.
Samë furnished only twenty-four of them, Zakynthos twenty, and Ithaca itself twelve: the three isles of navigators had
sent their princes to the army of Ulysses; Doulichion had reserved its from the gallant adventures.
Among the other isles which surround Ithaca toward the aurora, in the Arcanian gulf, there is one which
resembles the Echinades in their barrenness:

The isle Arkoudi is separated from point Lipso by a 2 ½ mile wide passage, and from the northern extremity of Ithaca by a
passage 3 miles wide. It has nearly 2 miles of length from the north to the south, 1 mile of width , and 133 meters of elevation in
its western part. It is lowered in its eastern part. The shores are rocky and steep, but a drowned rock is found, they say,
about 2 cables infront of its southeast point. The isle has given pasturage to some goats.

Others, less desolate, nourish some flocks:

The isle Atoko, of triangular form and steep all around, has two miles of length from the northeast to the southwest and 1 ½
mile as the grreatest width, in its southwest part, where one of the three peaks which are found there reaches 304 meters of height.
The isle is covered with bushes, and is cultivated here and there. Sheep and goats find an excellent pasturage there. On the southeeast
coast, there is a bay with a well of water and a small church. One finds much broken coral on the beach.

Finally, others have a few vines ande some well-cultivated fields:

The isle of Colomo has 6 miles of length from the northeast to the southwest and a maximum width of 2 ¼ miles; but at 1 ¾
miles from its southern extremity it is almost cut into two parts by a narrow isthmus. The northern part, of an oval form, is crossed in
its entire length by a chain of mountains which rises, in its central part, to 600 meters above the sea. The coast is rugged and steep all
around, if one excepts a crust of 5.5 meters which lies touching the northwest corner of the isle and another, of 9 meters, a little
farther to the east. The isle is cultivated and produces excellent wine. The town of Colomo is found on the east coast; a mole, inside
of which there is 5.5 meters of water, conveniently shelters the small ships.
The isle Kastos, narrow, wooded, well-cultivated, has 4 miles of length, an irregular coast, and 160 meters of height at its
northern extremity. There is a small village on the isle, which is populated but little. On the west coast is found a small creek
extending 3 cables into the land, open to the north, with a bare rock in the middle of the entrance, within which the small coasters
anchor in 5.5 meters of water. To the east of the entry, there is a mill.

But, cultivated or deserted, still none of the isles can merit the Homeric epithets “rich in wheat”, πολύπυρος, and
“herbaceous”, ποιήεις - none, except, nevertheless, the last, Meganisi, the Large Isle:

The isle Meganisi has a very irregular form. Its principal part has 3 ¾ miles of length from the east-northeast to the west-
southwest, and a average width of 2 miles; but, at its southwest extremity, a band of land, long and narrow, which extends nearly
four miles to the southeast by east, goes to terminate at cape Kephali, and forms a deep bay with the principal part of the isle. The
isle is covered with hills with cultivated valleys; the hills have about 140 meters of height in the northeast part, 265 meters in the

531
southwest part, and a hundred meters in the central part. On the north and northeast coasts there are several deep creeks, good for the
coasters. The two principal points are the ports of Spiglia and Vathy, at the foot of which are found the villages of Spartokori and of
Vathy; There is on the southeast coast another village which contains a thousand inhabitants. Water is rare.
The isle Kithro has a mile of length, 4 calbes in its greatest width, and an elevation of 91 meters. Its coast is irregular, steep
and surrounded by a bank, which extends ¼ mile before its west point, and on which one has bottoms of 9 to 30 meters. The isle
produces a little wheat.

The page from the Nautical Instructions shows us well, I believe, that the Large Isle is, in reality, the Long Isle.
On the marine chart, one perceives even better “the long and narrow band of land which extends nearly 4 miles to the
southeast”. If there is a land which merits the epithet dolichos, δόλιχος - the same epithet as the Homeric lance - it is surely that one,
by virtue of the long arm with which it is provided. On the marine chart we can also see that Meganisi is, like the isle Kithro, is a
land of wheat. In distinction to the other rocks which we come to pass in review, Meganisi is not encumbered with steep mountains.
Gently undulating with hills lacking steepness and well-opened valleys, Meganisi truly offers large cultivable expanses. The chart
shows us the valleys quarterd with cultivations, around the villages Vathy and Spartokhori, and even the name of the last village, the
Burg of the Harvests depicts for us the location at the edge of the sown lands. The wheats of Meganisi and Kalomo, its neighbor,
have always been reputed among the islanders. Dodwell thinks that the wheats of Kalomo are “the finest in the world”. But Leake
gives the preference to the wheats of Meganisi.
There, I believe, is the Homeric Doulichion. Strabo and most of the Geographers wish to recognize the isle of the Taphians
there. Suited to nourish an agricultural population, Meganisi appears to me poorly situated to serve the commerce or the piracies of
the celebrated navigators which are the Taphians of the Odyssey. The Taphians live by the oar, φιλήρετμοι. They are corsairs,
ληίστορες άνδρες. But they are also shippers and conveyors of raw materials; they go to Temesa to seek copper, and they carry iron
there:

ες Τεμέσην μετα χαλκόν. άγω δ’ αίθωνα σίδηρον.

Such a profession implies a certain type of establishment. In that epoch, the commercial communities were installed either
on straits or at the mouths of rivers. The Acheloös is the largest river of Greece. Its long valley opens a convenient road to the heart
of the mountains. The valley was always the way of commerce between the people of the sea and the peasants or herdsmen of the
interior. Today, it is Missolonghi, facing Patras, which diverts all the traffic of the valley toward the east. I imagine that in Homeric
times the Acheloöos already should have had its port, its great port. In the fashion of the times, the port could have and should have
been some Tyre, Milet, Syriacuse or Marseilles, I would say some coastal islet, of which the thalassocrats had made a well-built
town,

οί κέ σφιν και νησον ευκτιμένην εκάμοντο.

Facing the mouths of the Acheloös, among the Echinades isles, the Instructions point out the isle Dragonier, Dragonara:

Dragonara, the largest of the group, with 1 mile of length, 137 meters of elevation and irregular and steep edges, is well-
planted with olives, and forms at its northwest extremity a small cove for the boats. It forms, with the islet Kaloyero, the south coast
of the northern entrance of the bay of Dragomesti.

Dragonara in the sea faces two or three continental anchorages which our our fleets frequent today in the western
mouths of the Acheloös. At the edge of the delta, outside of the alluvions, the anchorages are hollowed and sheltered
among the rocky promontories of the ancient isles joined to the coast today:

In the south-southeast of the bay of Dragamesti, and protected in the west by the Echinades isles, one finds the port of Platea,
convenient, sunk into the lands and open to the southwest, with ½ mile of width and a depth of ¾ mile. It is surrounded by
undulating hills heavily wooded, and forms the most sheltered anchorage of the coast, with bottoms of 16 to 22 meters of water, mud
of excellent holding. There is neither a village or fresh water; consequently it is little frequented. The lake of Platea is found 1 1/3
mile in the interior.

532
 The port of Petala is almost surrounded by lands; it has little water; but, during the season of the rains, its depth increases
with the rise of the river Aspro-Potamo. The entrance of the port, about 3 cables wide, is formed by the southern extremity of the isle
of Petala and by the northern of a narrow peninsula, about 1 1/3 miles long, having three hills, of which that in the middle is about 90
meters high. The peninsula is covered with bushes; it has formerly been completely separated from the continent, to which it is
presently joined by a narrow isthus of sand. Since the port is at the entrance of the gulf of Patras, it is a refuge of the merchant ships
which encounter the violent blows of wind from the southwest near Cephalonia and Zante; It serves equally as a point of refuge from
the heavy winds from the northeast, which descend from the gulf of Patras during the winter.

I easily imagine a town of navigators installed on the isle Dragonara, in front of the continental anchorages, where
the people of the interior come to sell their agricultural products, their woods, their minerals, and where the people of the
sea come to display their utensils and manufactures. Today patras is the great buyer and the great provider of the region.
Each week, its packet boats arrive in the harbor of western Acarnania, where the natives bring their beasts, hides, woods
and cereals:

Behind the low point Mytika, sandy and steep, one sees the village which has regular communications by packet boats with
Patras. In the foot of the bay, there is a cultivated plain. The edges of the bay Dragomesti are abrupt. To the left of Astoko, a rich
village of about 1,800 inhabitants, situated at the foot of the bay, the land rises very rapidly up to mount Veloutzi (741 meters),
which is only 1 ½ mile of land. The town of Dragamesti is a little higher in the valley. Aregular service of steamers link Patras and
Astoko each week. The water is of good quality: one takes it on near the wharf. Neither fresh meat nor vegetables are lacking. The
inhabitants export wine, grapes, wheat and livestock.

We see clearly on the marine chart what rôle Dragoniere could have played facing the continental echelles, in the
times when the thalassocracies liked to install themselves on coastal islets: before the mouths of the Acheloös, Dragonara
then held the same rôle as the old Milet at the mouths of the Meander, or the old Marseilles at the mouths of the Rhône.
The semi-legendary tradition represented the Taphians as foreigners - Phoenicians, some said, αυτοι δε ανέκαθεν
Φοίνικες των μετα Κάδμου σταλέντων. In the onomasty and in the cults of the Acarnanian coast, E. Oberhümmer
believed himself to have discovered many souvenirs of the passage or the establishment of the Phoenicians. His study,
Phoenizier in Akarnanien, contains many interesting remarks but, in my estimation, few or no certain proofs. The cults
here have neither practices nor invocations indisputably Semitic. the place names offer no Semito-Greek doublet. Only
the name of Taphos could merit some minute attention.
The insular name, if it is not Greek, can enter into the class of Paros, Paxos, Pharos, Naxos, Kasos and other
insular names whose sense is explained by a Semitic etymology. If Taphos is not Greek, if it does not intend to say the
Isle of the Fall (and I would readily believe that the Greek fall, τάφος, has nothing to do here), I see only a Semitic root
where the relationship is ‫צבב‬, t.b.b., which signifies to crawl, and whose derivative ‫צב‬, tab, designates a type of reptile,
crocodile or dragon, half fabulous. The Greek transcription of tab into taph-os would be confirmed by all the examples
which we have encountered: the initial ‫ צ‬of the word is rendered by the Arabs in a dad, whence the dental, and not the
sibilant, which the Hellenes have employed; as for the equivalence ‫=ב‬φ, it is of current usage - without taking account
that a popular pun could have inclined the tab, dragon, of the Phoenicians toward the taphos, fall, of the Hellenes. From
the first antiquity, Taphos, the Dragonara isle of our navies, had been the Isle of the Dragon.
To explain to us the persistance of the name across the ages, I believe that the Greek term, Echinas, with which
the Hellenes, between the Phoenicians and our sailors, will address the same isle, is just an equivalent, a synonym of
Taphos and of Dragonara. Our Dragoniere was for the Hellenes one of the Echinades, Εχινάδες, or Echines, Εχιναι, one
of the Isles of Serpents or of Dragons: έχις, viper, έχιδνα, viper and fabled dragon; Echion is one of the Cadmian giants,
one of the Spartes, born from the teeth of the dragon.

*
* *

533
 If we adopt the sites which I propose for Taphos and for Doulichion, we understand without difficulty the
passages of the Oddyssey which make mention of the two isles.
Ulysses reigns over Zykanthos, Samë, Ithaca and Doulichion. The poet cites the Four Isles of the United Realm.
The realm knew other islets (we will study in the set the islet Asteris between Ithaca and Samë). But the poet knew
especially the four large isles which, alone, have a fixed population and which, all four furthermore, should have their
renown by their same situation of bordering straits. For doulichion, also, borders a channel. Our Nautical Instructions
again devotes long pages to the channel of Meganisi which allows ships to pass between the east shore of Leucadia and
our Long Isle, to penetrate to the foot of the Acarnanian gulf in the Port Drepano. The channel of Meganisi does not have
the international importance in Odyssian times - we would say today: world importance - of the other channels of Zante,
of Ithaca or of the White Stone: it is not the route of the thalassocrats between the Achaean Levant and the barbaric
Couchant. But the passage should still greatly serve the native boats to spread out from the ports and warehouses of Ithaca
toward the fields and the clientel of the mainland.
Doulichion figures in one of the Odyssian stories. Ulysses with Eumeus, before making himself known, relates a
story of shipwrecks and brigands in which the Thesprote sailors were to have conducted him to Doulichion. We have
studied the beginning of the story. It is the story of the Cretan corsair: made prisoner, then staying seven years in Egypt,
our man became the associate, then the victim of a Phoenician crook who embarks him toward Libya: storm, shipwreck,
survival on the floating mast; the pretended Cretan is carried to the shores of the Thesprotes. Welcomed and clothed by
the king, he is embarked on a Thesprote ship which makes sail toward Doulichion:

τύχησε γαρ ερχομέην νηυς

ανδρων Θεσπρωτων ες Δουλίχιον πολύπυρον.

But, barely at sea, the sailors strip him and fasten him under the benches with the intention of selling him as a slave. That
evening, they debark in a cove of Ithaca,

‘εσπέριοι δ’ Ιθάκης ευδειέλου έργ’ αφίκοντο,

to prepare the meal on the shore. Our Cretan then comes to flee and hide himself in the slopes of the coastal forest:

ένθ’ αναβας, ‘όθι τε δρίος ην πολυανθέος ‘ύλης

For it is not on the inhabited coast of the isle, at the foot of and in the port of the capitol, that the Thesprotes have
debarked. The Odyssian capitol is on the shore of the strait, on the northwest coast. Going toward Doulichion, to the
Aurora from Ithaca, the Thesprotes, coming from the zophos, have rounded the White Stone, then have come to rest in
some refuge of the east coast. This façade of Ithaca is deserted at that time, abandoned to the herds of pigs and to the
forests of oaks. It is clearly the forested coast that the boats cruised to go toward Doulichion-Meganisi.
To that east coast also come the Taphians and their king Mentes, whose appearance Athena takes: “I am Mentes,
son of the sage Anchialos (the Coaster). I have put in here with my ship and my crew. I go to Temesa to seek copper and
bring iron. I have put my vessel away far from the town, in the country, at Port Rheithron under forested Neion”,

νηυς δέ μοι ‘όδ’ ‘έστηκεν επ’ αγρου νόσφι πόληος,

εν λιμένι ‘Ρείθρω ‘υπο Νηίω ύλήεντι.

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 We are going to find the port Rheithron, and the Port of the Current, on the east coast of Ithaca, in the harbor
which the sailors call Port Frikais. We will see that the port is at the edge of the Odyssian town, νόσφι πόληος, among the
olives and the fields, επ’ αφρου. The Odyssian town lines the bay of Port Polis on the strait; Port Frikais, washed by the
open sea, is symmetric to it, on the other façade of the insular isthmus, so that, Port Polis being the anchorage of the town,
Port Frikias is indeed the anchorage of the suburb. From Port Frikias, the sailors easily ascend to the town, but the citizens
can be unaware of what boats are anchored at Port Frikais: Athena thus can, with all credibility, relate to Telemachus her
supposed voyage and the layover of her Taphian vessel. Port Frikais is furthermore entirely the designated anchorage for
the vessels which, leaving from Dragonara, wish to reach the western seas of Temesa (Temesa well appears to be an
Italian town), in reaching the door of the sunset, in rounding the White Stone: from Dragonara to Port Frikais, the rock
Atoko marks the road.

CHAPTER II

PERIPLES AND REALITIES

The inhabitants, 13,000 in number, are sailors for the most part

Naut. Instruct. no. 778, p. 75

In the realm of the Four Isles, Ithaca is the center of the politic and business. Ulysses, king of Ithaca, is the chief
sovereign of the United Realm. During his absence, all the vassels of the Four Isles come to court his wife and devour his
succession.
It is not that Ithaca is the largest or the most fertile. Telemachus gives to Menalaus an exact description of his
patrimony: “Oh king, I would not take the horses you wish to offer me to Ithaca. You reign on an open plain where the
forage and the hay, the grains and the barley grow abundantly. In Ithaca, I have neither training fields nor meadows. It is
an isle of goats; I nevertheless prefer it to all the lands of horses. All the isles of our seas lack stud farms and praries, but
Ithaca more than all the others”,

εν δ’ Ιθακη ούτ’ αρ δρόμοι αυρέες ούτε τι λειμών.

αιγίβοτος και μελλον επήρατος ‘ιπποβότοιο.
ου γάρ τις νήσων ‘ιππήλατος ουδ’ ευλείμων
α‘ί θ’ ‘αλι κεκλίαται. Ιθάκη δέ τε περι πασέων.

Ithaca is, in effect, an isle of goats, αιγίβοτος, par excellence, a block of rocks, τρηχεια, which without doubt
nourishes valliant palikares, αγαθη κουροτρόφος, and which has corners of fertility in some moist valleys, Ιθάκης εσ
πίονα δεμον. Bellin, in his Description du Golphe de Venise, tells us (p. 171): “Although the terrain of the isle may be
very uneven, it is in general fertile enough and passably cultivated”. But, if in spite of its smallness, Ithaca is not too
miserable, if the grain in places and the vine in others yield well, if the rains and the dew give some constant rivulets and

535
all sorts of trees, it should not be forgotten that the agricultural wealth of the islanders comes to them above all from their
goats and their pigs:

η τοι μεν τρηχεια και ουχ ‘ιππήλατός εστιν

ουδε λίην λυπη, αταρ ουδ’ ευρεια τέτυκται.
εν μεν γάρ ο‘ι σιτος αθέσφατος, εν δέ τε οινος
γίγνεται. αιει δ’ όμβρος έχει τεθαλυιά τ’ εέρση.
Αιγίβοτος αγαθη και <σύ>βοτος. έστι μεν ‘ύλη
παντοίν. εν δ’ αρδμοι επηετανοι παρέασιν.

In the last passage, I have made a correction which imposes itself on me. Our present texts agree in writing for verse 246
βούβοτος, nourishing cattle. It is, for the attentive reader, a veritable absurdity: Telemachus has told us that the isle does
not have pastures.
Eumeus, making the enumeration of the royal herds, speaks of cattle, of sheep, of goats and of swine. But the
cattle, we are told, are not on the isle: they are on the facing coast, in one of the moist plains of the continent (like all the
Greek isles, Ithaca poseses a bit of perea on the facing coast). The twelve herds of royal cattle are thus on the mainland:
up to to our days, all the communities of the Ionian isles, even of Corfu, have brought their large livestock from the
neighboring land. Bellin, in his Description du Golphe de Venise, tells us, a propos Zante: “One can find in the harbor
refreshments, like fowl in small quantities at an honest price, excellent fruits; the cattle come there from the mainland”.
And the Instructions add, on the subject of Kephalonia: “The pricipal products of the isle are the grapes of Corinth, the
oil, the wine and the melons, the last renowned by their size and their flavor. The provisions are abundant. They only raise
some sheep and some goats there because of the lack of pasture, for the vine is cultivated almost to the summit of the
hills. The livestock come from the mainland.”
As for the small livestock of Ulysses, part is in Ithaca under the care of island herdsmen, part in the rest of the
realm under the care of foreigners (still presently, the people of Ithaca have some flocks on Arkoudi, Atoko and the other
isles of their vicinity):

δώδεκ’ εν ηπείρω αγέλαι. τόσα πώεα οιων.

τόσσα σθων συβόσια, τός αιπόλια πλατέ’ αιγων
βόσκουσι ξεινοι τε και αυτου βώτορες άνδρες.

Eumeus adds further that, in Ithaca itself, the swine and the goats are separated into two entirely distinct herds, in two
particular districts. In the canton which Eumeus watches are the swine:

αυταρ εγω συς τάσδε φυλάσσω.

Also in the isle, ενθάδε, but entirely at the other end, εσχατιη, are the eleven flocks of goats:

ενθάδε δ’ αιπόλια πλατέ’ αιγων ‘ένδδεκα πάντα

εσχατιη βόσκοντο.

The same division is going to be found in the adventures of Ulysses. The debarking hero is at first directed to the
enclosure of the swineherd Eumeus; he finds there only the swine and their guardians. He will then cross the entire isle to
take himself to the other end, εσχατιη, toward the town and the palace: it is at the gates of the town that he will meet the
goatherd Melanthios. The swineherd Eumeus and the goatherd Melanthos represent, in the last chapter of the Nostos, the
two types of servants - the virtuous swineherd, hospitable and faithful to his master; the dishonest goatherd, insolent and

536
voracious. The poet,, here as in his other stories, has not invented the contrast. In reality, the Odyssian Ithaca was divided
into two regions of pasture, a canton of goats and a canton of pigs. We see that at the center, the rocky isle, τρηχεια,
strewn with steep mountains, κραναή, is a land of goats. In the south, to the contrary, Athena depicts to us the forested
plateaux and the springs of black water which, under the Rock of the Crow, near the Arethuse fountain, give their cool
flow and their nourishing acorns to the bands of swine: it is there that Ulysses will go to find Eumeus:

δήεις τόν γε σύεσσι παρήμενον, α‘ι δε νέμονται

παρ Κόρακος Πέτρη επί τε Κρήνη Αρεθούση
έσθουσαι βάλανον μενοεικέα και ‘ύδωρ
πίνουσαι, τά θ’ ‘ύεσσι τρέφει τεθαλυιαν αλοιφήν.

There, surely, I believe, is the forest completely of essence, παντοίν ‘ύλη, and the constant streams, αρδμοι
επηετανοί, of which the poet spoke to us above, in the text which I wish to correct: the waters and the forests of the south
make of Ithaca a “nourisher of swine”, σύβοτος - and not a “nourisher of cattle”, βούβοτος. On the other hand, the rocks
of the center make it a “nourisher of goats”, αιγίβοτος. Ithaca, among the sailors of the times, is a goatherding and
swineherding land, completely resembling the Swineherding isles, Sybota, Σύβοτα, which the sailors of all the times, and
of ours still, know in the same waters of western Greece.
In spite of the wealth of small stock, it is too evident that in the realm of the Four Isles, Ithaca does not owe its
preëminence to its agricultural resources or to its extent. Near the spacious, fertile and rich Kephalonia, the rock of Ithaca
would be without value in the eyes of peasants: from the Homeric times up to ours, the Hellenic or Venitian colonists,
despising the poor land, have only viewed it as the little Kephalonia. Compared to Zante, to “the isle of gold” of the
Venetians, to the “flower of the Levant” of the French, Ithaca, in the esteem of the laborers, is still much less important.
Today, after three thousand years of obscurity, if the name of Ithaca and the rôle of the Ithacans reappears to the light, it is
by virtue of its navy. Already in Odyssian times it was so. Ulyssses is the chief sovereign of the United Realm because,
except for the laborers of Doulichion, the entire realm works the “wet fields” exclusively. Ithaca, at the edge of its
channel, is the best situated of the Four Isles for the exploitation of the passages of the northwest, as it is also the best
supplied with harbors open to the four corners of the horizon.

*
* *

In the circuit of Ithaca, our marine charts and our Nautical Instructions know of a gulf, two or three bays, and four
ports. Let us take good caution regarding the different words: in our language of landsmen, they are almost synonyms,
and we readily go to seek a port in all the indentations, coves, bays and gulfs of a coast. The sailors are rewarded by
experience to be more circumspect in the choice of their anchorages, and more precise in the onomasty of their
descriptions. A gulf is not always a port for them. The Nautical Instructions describes Ithaca to us in this manner:

Ithaca has 13 miles of length from north to south and a maximum width of 4 miles. It is mountainous and nearly divided into
two parts by the gulf of Molo which indents the east coast: the north part has [8]30 meters of height, and the southern part, 650
meters. The grapes of Corinth, which grow there in abundance, comprise, with the wine, which is excellent, the only items of export.
The inhabitants, around 13,000 in number, are sailors for the most part.
In general, the coasts are rocky, and offer several indentations where the boats of the land find excellent shelter. The west
coast runs in a line almost straight, and parallel to the northeast coast of Cephalonia, from which it is separated by the channel of
Ithaca, which varies in width from 1 ½ to 2 ½ miles. The east coast is irregular; at near its middle, the gulf of Molo is sunk in about
3 ½ miles to the southwest, nearly dividing the isle into two parts, joined by an isthmus 4/10 of a mile wide.

537
 The shores of the gulf of Molo are steep and rocky; the water is deep there. From the windstorms of the southeast to the
northwest, the squalls fall across the cuts of the high ground with an extreme violence. During the squalls, the ships which cannot
enter Port Vathy find anchorage in the bay Ex-Aito, in the foot of the gulf where the blows of the wind are less violent.

By the gulf of Molo and by the low-lying isthmus which separates it from the strait of Samë, the isle of Ithaca is
cut, as we see, into two mountainous blocks. To our sailors, the isle appears double, made of two twin mountains. The
mountain of the south has 650 meters. The mountain of the north has more than 800 meters. Already for the Homeric
sailors, two mountains, the two mounts Neriton and Neion, dominated the insular mass: among the anchorages of the
Odyssian Ithaca, some were beneath Neriton, the others beneath Neion.
The gulf of Molo itself is not an anchorage. Open, as the Instructions tall us, to all the blows of wind from the
southeast to the northwest, it is without usefulness to the ships which, in the waters, fear precisely the gusts of Zephyr
(northwest), Boreas (northeast), and Notos (southeast). The sailors in the gulf remain exposed to all the storms, and the
rocky, sharp coast would reserve a sad fate for the ships which would be carried there. Only at the foot of the gulf, a cul-
de-sac, named bay Ex-Aito, can serve as a temporary, provisional anchorage to the navigators who, in good weather,
would not or cannot reach the true refuge of the region, the Deep Port, Port Vathy. The Instructions describe the dangers
of the gulf of Molo: “The east coast of the gulf is high, straight, and steep all around, and rises in hills with deep ravines.”
They add: “On the south coast, there are three distinct anchorages: the bay of Skino, the port of Vathy, and the bay Ex-
Aito”.
The three anchorages do not have the same value. The bay of Ex-Aito is celebrated for a hill in the shape of a cone
upon which the explorers believe themselves to have found the Castle of Ulysses: whence the renown of the bay among
our sailors. But we know little security in this:

The bay of Ex-Aito, third anchorage of the gulf of Molo, is found at its southwest extremity, at the foot of a circular hill 122
meeters high, rising in the middle of the isthmus which joins the two parts of the isle. At the foot of the bay reigns a large beach of
sand, of 2 or 2 ½ cables width, of which there is an anchorage in 26 to 33 meters of water, sand; farther out, the depths are great. On
the summit of the hill are foud the ruins of the castle of Ulysses.

Similarly, the bay of Skino lies open to the winds from the north, to the Zephyr and the Borea, as to the great swell
from the open, which they raise. Bellin, in his Description du Golphe de Venise tells us:

The isle, which we call the little Cephalonia, is called by the Greeks Tiachi, and by the Turks Phiachi. It has had almost as
many names as authors who have spoken of it... The isle is longer than wide, and of an irregular shape. It is heavily populated, and
they count nearly 15,000 inhabitants, of which the greater part are people who have been banished from Zante, Corfu and
Cephalonia.
There are some ports on the isle, or particularly in the harbor; [but] there are places very open, where one courts risk to
remain long without being able to rig for leaving, being subject to very violent gusts which prevent it. The anchorage is in the east
part of the isle. It is a large bay [our gulf of Molo] open to the winds from the east, of the northeast and of the north, in which there
are two indentations. The first upon entering is that which they call the port of Squino or Squinosa.

In reality, in the gulf of Molo, only Port Vathy “is a small basin convenient and surrounded by the lands”. Behind
the islet of Katzurbo-nisi, it is composed of a double refuge: to the right, very near the entrance, is a small cove, poorly
closed, which they name Dexia bay; to the left, at the end of a long, very narrowed passage, in a sort of triangular lake, is
Port Vathy. The bay Dexia, like the bay Skino, is just a mediocre resting place: the winds and the swell from the north
strains the ships there; it is just an almost “fairground” outer harbor, of so little use to navigators that, up to the latest
times, even their detailed charts did not mention it; neither Bellini nor Grasset Saint-Sauveur designate it on their plans of
the great echelle. In Port Vathy itself, it is necessary to penetrate somewhat before being entirely in the calm. The
Instructions tell us:

538
 Anchorage. - The ships of war ordinarily anchor in 24 to 27 meters of water, to the northeast of the quarantine. The small
ships anchor nearer, in bottoms of 5.5 to 7.3 meters. At certain times they receive gusts from the northwest in the harbor of an
extreme violence, and against which a ship should be on guard.

There, thus, is a premier port of the Ithacans: the Deep Port.

To the north of the gulf of Molo, the same east coast of Ithaca offers a second refuge to coasters, much less secure,
but itself also composed of several anchorages. Port San Nicolo, Port Frikais, Port Kioni: our charts and our Instructions
give the name of ports of the three coves of the refuge, the ensemble of which form the bay of Frikais. In reality, Port
Nicolo and Port Kioni, like the bays of Skino and Dexia, offer only open coves, shelters mediocre in extent and even
more mediocre in security: they are, truly speaking, only outer harbors, fenced with steep rocks and communicating with
the rest of the land with difficulty. The veritable port, the best sheltered of all the anchorages, the Port of Frikais properly
speaking, has become, in the last years, a good enough repose of caïques and small sailboats only by virtue of an artificial
jetty which closes it to swells from the open and to gusts from the east and the north. But the port of Frikais has always
had some importance because of several insular valleys which descend there: one of the streams, the largest stream, or
rather the only torrent of the entire island, empties there. Our marine charts indicate the “current” of Frikais, in which
there is ordinarily less flowing water than rounded stones. But there is what all the Greeks have always called a “current:
rhevma, ‘ρευμα”, say the modern Greeks; we see that the Achaeans said rheithron, ‘ρειθρον. A “current” in the times of
rains or after the storms, the passage is in ordinary times, during the fair season, a convenient route between the port and
the interior.
The north coast of Ithaca presents the bay of Aphalais, which is deeply indented between Point Marmaka and
Point Oxoi. The bay has no harbor. It is fully open to the gusts of the Zephyr and to the distant swells from the open. The
storms from the Adriatic, through the strait of the northwest, through the door of the White Stone, push violent gusts and
agitated waves: even in a flat calm, an “appreciable” current, say the Instructions, buffets the strait. Additionally the
perimeter of the bay of Aphalais is inhospitable; except for a small beach of sand which occupies the foot, there is nothing
around it but sharp stones and steep rocks.
On the channel of Samë, “the west coast of Ithaca runs in a line straight and parallel to the coast of Cephalonia”,
say the Instructions. All its length, it is a wall, or rather a straight bank. Symmetric to the gulf of Molo and to the bay of
Ex-Aito, a small bay, the bay of Opis-Aito, “has a small beach of sand”; but, open to all the winds of land and sea, as to
all the currents of the straight, it can be of no service for the sailors. It has utility only for the present islanders, who have
their passage, their “ford” toward Cephalonia here. The people of Vathy come here to pass to Pylaros or Samos in fragile
boats, when the weather is entirely fair. It is a little farther to the north, on the same strait, that Ithaca has its true port in a
convenient cove: we have described it above; the natives always call it the Port of the Town, Port Polis. We have
enumerated the advantages which the Port of the Town, well-covered, well-provided with beaches and supplied with a
watering place, can provide to the navigators - especially to the primitive navigators. They additionally find an isthmic
route there, to pass across the isle, from the coast of the strait to the coast of the open sea, from the Port of the Town to
the Port of the Current, from Port Polis to Port Frikais.
The last façade of Ithaca remains, the southern façade, and the last port which the Instructions describe to us. To
the south, in effect, our sailors point out a refuge very important to know for the sailing ships which, coming from the
southeast, from Patras and the Peloponnesian coasts, find adverse winds, at the southern entrance of the channel of Ithaca.
It is the “Port S. Andrea”, say some, “Port Andri”, say the others:

The point S. Andrea, the southern extremity of Ithaca, forms the west point of the entrance of the small port of S. Andrea, 1
cable wide and indented 4 cables toward the north up to a small beach of sand. The small coasters find anchorage in the port, which
has 66 meters of water at the entrance: the depth diminishes up to 5.5 meters near the foot of the port... The point S. Andrea forms
with cape Dekalia of Cephalonia the southern entrance of the channel of Ithaca, which has close to 2 miles of width, with raised
edges of the two coasts and with great depths.

539
 In resumé, in the entire perimeter of Ithaca, our sailors know of only four nearly secure ports: Port Vathy and Port
Frikais on the open coast, Port Polis on the coast of the strait, and Port S. Andrea or Andri on the southern coast.

*
* *

In our odyssian Ithaca, the Homeric poet knows four anchorages and relates four stories to us, of which each plays
out in one of its ports.
Telemachus, leaving for Pylos, embarks at the foot of the town.
Telemachus, returning from Pylos, debarks in the open country, at the first point of the south.
Ulysses, brought dack by the Pheacians, also debarks far from the town, in the port of Phorkys.
Finally, we have seen Mentes, king of the Taphians, debark in the Port of the Current, at Port Rheithron.
One for one, the four anchorages of the poem correspond, I believe, to the four ports of our Instructions. If we
compare, in effect, the Homeric text to the charts and descriptions of our sailors, it appears to me that we can retrieve the
theater described for each of the stories with certainty.

1. - On our charts, the most easy to recognize is the harbor where Telemachus lands in returning from Pylos. Athena,
predicting the ambush by the suitors, has counseled the young man not to enter the strait, but to debark at the first point of
the isle: “The suitors watch for you in the strait which separates the rocky Samë from Ithaca,

εν πορθμω Ιθάκης τε Σάμοιό τε παιπαλοέσσης.

Navigate at night: the god who protects and watches over you will send a good wind from astern. When you will have
reached the first point of Ithaca,

αυτάρ επην πρώτην ακτην Ιθακης αφίκηαι,

send your ship and crew toward the town; but you go to the swineherd, who is a man of good advice.” Telemachus
follows the orders of the goddess point by point. Leaving Pylos in the evening, he sails all night, taking good heed of the
Pointed Isles which are in the channel of Zante. When the aurora comes, he is in view of Ithaca. At the first point, his
companions quickly furl the sails and demast:

ο‘ι δ’ επι χέρσου

Τηλςμάχου ‘έταροι λύον ‘ιστία καδ δ’ ‘έλον
καρπαλίμως.

`Then, seizing their oars, they enter into the port and push up to the anchorage at its foot, where they set anchor,
carry the rigging ashore, and come to themselves debark on a beach:

την δ’ εις ‘όρμον προέρεσσαν ερετμοις.

εκ δ’ ευνας έβαλον, κατα δε πρυμνήσι’ έδησαν.
εκ δε και αυτοι βαινον επι ‘ρηγμινι θαλάσσης.

540
 Take the chart with the Instructions. They have already described the southern point of Ithaca to us: it is the first
which one encounters in coming from the Peloponnesus and from the Peloponnesian ports, from Patras today, from Pylos
in Homeric times. The Instructions name the point S. Andrea: if that is its veritable name, it should be known that Saint
André is the great protector of the people of Patras: “The point S. Andrea, southern extremity of Ithaca [πρώτην ακτήν]
forms the entrance of the small port of S. Andrea, one cable wide [in the narrow passage all wind fails: it is necessary to
demast], and indenting itself four cables toward the north [then it is necessary to propel the ship by oar] up to a beach of
sand [επι ‘ρηγυινι θαλάσσης]. The small coasters find anchorage in the port [εις ‘όρμον προέρεσσαν].” Always respectful
of the orders of Athena, Telemachus sends his crew towards the town by sea:

‘υμεις μεν νυν άστυδ’ ελαύνετε νηα μέλαιναν.

Without masting anew, the rowers push the vessel out of the harbor, then they row in the direction of the town, in
reëntering the channel of Samë, where the suitors watch for them. As for Telemachus, he goes “to climb” to the fields,
near the herdsmen; he will will come down to the village only in the evening, after his tour of inspection:

αυταρ εγων αγρους επιείσομαι ηδε βοτηρας.

‘εσπέριος δ’ εις άστυ ιδων εμα έργα κάτειμι.

Telemachus “climbs” to the herdsmen; he goes to Eumeus, who watches the pigs near the Arethuse fountain, under the
Stone of the Crow. The Instructions tell us: “In the vicinity [of Port S. Andrea], above the slopes of a hill with cliffs, is
found the celebrated Arethuse fountain.” Telemachus has put back on the fine sandals, εδήσατο καλα πέδιλα, which he
had taken off to lie down and sleep on the couch of the aft castle. The stones of the rocky roads are sharp. But the route
should not be long. Leaving from Port St. Andre after the repast of the crew, the young man arrives near Arethuse, when
Eumeus and Ulysses come in awakening to also take their morning repast and to send the guardians of the pigs to the
acorns: Telemachus appears to have taken only a few minutes, a very short hour, to make the distance.

2. - Ulysses, disguised as a beggar, comes to Eumeus by another route. He has debarked at the port of Phorkys.

There is in the dème of Ithaca a port of Phorkys, the old man of the sea. The two protruding points, made of steep rocks, and
which lower toward the port, keep out the great swell of the gusty winds. In the interior, the galleys remain in a calm, even without
moorings, providing that one would make them enter all the way to the true anchorage:

Φόρκουνος δέ τις έστι λιμην ‘αλίοιο γέροντος

εν δήμω Ιθακης. δύο δε προβλητες εν αυτω
ακται απορρωτες λιμένος ποτιπεπτηυιαι,
α‘ί τ’ ανέμων σκεπόωσι δυσαήων μέγα κυμα
έκτοθεν. έντοσθεν δέ τ’ άνευ δεσμοιο μένουσιν
νηες εύσσελμοι ‘ότ’ άν ‘όρμου μέτρον ‘ίκωνται.

In describing to us their Deep Port, Port Vathy, the Instructions have already pointed out to us, word for word, all
the details of the site which we encounter in the port of Phorkys. The marine chart does nothing but set the different
peculiarities in their place. In the gulf of Molo, with shores “steep and rocky”, where the squalls fall with an extreme
violence from the blows of the wind from the southeast to the northwest” (cf. the verse of the poet on the great swell from
the gusts of wind, ανέμων δυσαήων μέγα κυμα: for the Odyssian navigators, the gusty wind par excellence is the wind
from the northwest, the Zephyr, Ζέφυρος δυσαής), the Deep Port opens between the two protruding points, δύο
προβλητες ακταί, of sharp rocks, απορρωγες, which lower toward the port, λιμ΄νος ποτιπεπτηυιαι: “Point Skino,” say the

541
Instructions, “is the extremity of a tongue of land formed by a chain of low hills. The hill which dominates the bay has
168 meters of height. “ All the neighboring points resemble point Skino.
To distinguish the ones from the others and recognize each, our Instructions do not fail to point out the natural or
artificial retreats which the navigator can perceive from the sea: “On the north coast there is a remarkable hill, and on the
south point are found two windmills, which serve in recognizing the port... The cape is steep and shows a chapel of white
color a little above the sea: farther, in the interior, above the high sea, one sees a windmill... etc.” Lacking the chapel and
the windmill, the first thalassocracies pointed out to their pilots “a large olive tree, with wide foliage, at the very entrance
of the port”,

αυταρ επι κρατος λιμένος τανύφυλλος ελαίν.

It is furthermore no different than today still, in the channel of Cephalonia, our pilots recognize the entrance of the
port of Pylaros by the hill of the Wild Fig, Agriosko, or, in the sea of Leucadia, the southern entrance of the channel of
Meganisi by the Mount of the Tree. Let us open the ancient periples: “The point is rocky, άκρα εστι τραχεια, it has a cliff
at the summit, έχουσα επι του ‘υψηλου σκ΄΄οπελον, on the land one sees a tree, επι δε της γης δένδρον: there is a harbor
and watering place under the tree, ‘όρμοσ εστι και ‘ύδωρ έχει ‘υπο το δένδρον: take care against the Notos, φυλάσσου
Νότον.” - “One sees in front a high and large cape, όψει παρεμφαίνουσαν άκραν ‘υψηλην και μεγάλην: to the left is an
artificial port, εκ δε των ευωνύμων χειροποίητος ‘όρμος εστίν: there is fresh water under the fig tree, έχει δε ‘όδωρ ‘υπο
την συκην, whence the name of Fig Tree given to the place, διο και τόπος Συκη καλειται”.
Having rounded the cape of the Olive Tree, the navigators reach the port of Phorkys, in threading “the channel
which leads into the port of Vathy. The channel has 6 cables of length, a width which falls to 1¼ , and bottoms of 66 to
38 meters. Within the entrance, the port has 5½ cables of depth, 4 cables of width... it is a convenient small basin,
surrounded by lands.” One can anchor anywhere in the basin, But it is most valuable to penetrate as deeply as possible:
“At certain times one receives in the harbor gusts of an extreme violence from the northwest, and against which a ship
needs to be on guard.” An islet (which bears the quarantine today) furnishes an excellent shelter in the interior: it is there
that the galleys veritably find an anchorage, ‘ότ’ άν ‘όρμου μέτρον ‘ίκωνται, where, all gusts having ceased, they no
longer even have need of carrying their rigging ashore, έντοσθεν άνευ δεσμοιο μένουσιν. The Instructions add: “The
resources are restricted. Water is scarce”. And our charts carefully point out a small fountain which is found at the right,
almost at the foot. The first thalassocracies also pointed out, not far from the Olive Tree, “a dark and helpful grotto of the
Nymphs, which they call Naïads, where one always finds water”,

αγχόθι δ’ αυτης άντρον επήραντον ηεροειδές,

‘ιρον Νυμφάων, α‘ί Νηιάδες καλέονται.
εν δ’ ‘ύδατ’ αιενάοντα.

A grotto exists, in effect, in the hills which border Port Vathy to the right, and the grotto - we will see - presents
all the particularities indicated by the poet, who gives us a very detailed description.
At the foot and on the perimeter of Port Vathy is built the present capitol of the isle. It occupies, at the foot of the
hills, the low beach which a small valley limits toward the interior: “The town,” say the Instructions, “borders all the
south and southeast of the port of Vathy: its principal part is found only a little above the level of the sea: but in the
western part numerous houses are built on the slope of the hill. Behind the town, there are large gardens and plantations of
Corinthian grapes.” In Odyssian times, the capitol was not here. We already know the causes of the difference. The
subjects of Ulysses, living particularly from the sea, had constructed their town on the great passage of the ships, on the
channel of Samë, at the port of the northwest, for the service of the navies and the surveillance of the straits. Today, the
islanders also navigate: “The population of Port Vathy can reach 5,500 inhabitants; most are sailors.” But, all their
business relations being with Patras and the Greek realm, it is facing Patras and the Hellenic land that they have installed

542
their quays and their storehouses, at the foot of the very tranquil port, at the end of the small interior valley which,
provided with alluvial lands and seasonal streams, is covered “with large gardens and vines”.
In the Odyssian Ithaca, here was the “country, the dème”, εν δήμω Ιθακης, in contrast to “the town”: the poet
always speaks to us of Ithaca town and Ithaca dème, as we say Basel-town and Basel-land [Bâle-ville and Bâle-campagne]
The port of Phorkys is in the dème, far from the town, at the foot of Neriton, all clothed in forests:

τουτο δε Νήριτόν εστιν, ‘όρος καταειμένον ‘ύλη.

Above Port Vathy, in effect, rises one of the insular mountains which the sailors still know. It is the Mount which they
call Stefano and to which they attribute 650 meters of height; Partsch gives it 671 meters and calls it Merovigli: the
Achaeans named it Neriton.
The mountain Merovigli-Neriton is completely bare today. The Instructions tell us on the subject of Cephalonia:
“The isle is mountainous. It reaches its greatest elevation at the Black Mountain or Mount Nero (ancient mount Aenos),
1590 meters high and situated in the southeast part. The summit of the mountain was formerly covered by a fine forest of
pines, portions of which still exist, but the greater part of which was burned by the inhabitants.” Zante, the forested
Zakynthos of the poet, ‘υλέεσσα Ζάκυνθος, has suffered the same fate: “The isle of Zante, denuded of forests today,
produces no firewood at all. They bring from the Morea or Albania that which serves them for heating, building and
making household utensils; the poor people employ the olive wood for heating. I have found only very few myrtles and
laurels in my excursions, but at times some pomegranites which, in Morea, are still very common.” At the summit of our
Neriton, Partsch points out the remains of the ancient forest.
From the foot of Port Vathy, a route, directing itself toward the southeast, crosses the gardens and the vines of the
valley, climbs slowly on the flank of the southern slopes, then, dominating the coastal hills, reaches the plateau of
Marathia, from where it redescends toward Port St. Andre. The plateau of Marathia falls suddenly in the eastern sea by “a
hill with cliffs”, at the flank of which our Instructions know the Arethuse fountain. In this place, in effect, under a rock
cut to a peak, in a corridor of stone which falls away to the small cove Ligia or Lia, facing the insular rock which our
sailors call the Parapigadi Isle (its veritable name is Ligia), wells a fountain named Parapigadi. They generally agree in in
recognizing the Stone of the Crow in that rock, and the Homeric Arethuse in that fountain.
It is certain that the location (we will explore the site in the minutest detail later) conforms to the givens of the
Odyssey. Debarking at Port St, Andre, Telemachus climbs to here: he arrives in a few minutes. Here he meets his father
coming from Port Vathy. The Pheacians had deposited the hero, still fast asleep, on the shore of Phorkys, where the
momentum of the rowers had grounded the ship up to mid-hull; famililiar with the harbor, the Pheacians were acquainted
with its shores of sand or mud:

ένθ’ ο‘ί γ’ εισέλασαν πριν ειδόντες. ‘η μεν έπειτα

ηπείρω επέκελσεν, ‘όσον τ’ επι ‘ήμισυ πάσης.

At the foot of the port of Phorkys, the Pheacians thus had deposited the hero in the sand:

καδ δ’ άρ’ επι ψαμάθω έθασαν δεδμημένον ‘ύπνω.

But they had carried his riches, tripods and manufactures, a little to the interior, to the foot of the olive tree, far from the
route, to remove them from the sight of greedy passers-by:

και τα μεν ουν παρα πυθμέν’ Ελαίης ‘αθρόα θηκαν.

εκτος ‘οδου.

543
After their departurer, Ulysses, awakening, had followed the counsels of Athena and transported his riches into the Grotto
of the Nymphs. Then he had climbed from the port, across the hills and the forest, by a rocky path, up to the Stone of the
Crow. Near the Spring Arethuse, he had encountered Eumeus and the sheds of the pigs:

αυταρ ‘ο εκ λιμένος προσέβη τρηχειαν αταρπον

χωρον αν ‘υλήεντα δι’ άκριας.

On the chart, we can easily trace the “rocky windings” of the path, τρηχειαν αταρπόν, which goes from Port Vathy to
Paragigadi. The voyagers describe it to us. Gell, in his knowledgeable and precise description, to which we should always
return, had already seen that Telemachus and his father could only meet in that place of Ithaca, at the southern extremity.
Inversely, the citizens consider that Eumeus lives at the very end of the country:

αγρου επ’ εσχατιην, ‘όθι δώματα ναιε συβώτης.

“They say that the town is very far”, says Ulysses, the pretended beggar:

... ‘έκαθεν δέ τε φάτ’ ειναι.

In fact, Eumeus occupies a day to make the trip of going and returning when Telemachus charges him with taking the
news to Penelope of his fortunate arrival. Telemachus has given the order to go quickly, to make no detour and to lose no
time in talking. Eumeus respected the instructions. He went and, the mission accomplished, returned as quickly as
possible:

ουκ’ έμελέν μοι ταυτα μεταλλησαι και ερέσθαι

άστυ καταβλώσκοντα. τάχιστά με θυμος ανώγειν
αγγελίην ειπόντα πάλιν δευρ’ απονέεσθαι.

But, leaving in the morning, he did not return until evening (the periples should have estimated the length of Ithaca at a
half day of walking “for a well-girded man”):

‘εσπέροι; δ’ Οδυσηι και υ‘ιέι διος ‘υφορβος

ήλυθεν.

The next day, Telemachus returns to the town at dawn. Eumeus and Ulysses remain at the sheds until the middle of the
day, then set themselves on the road to arrive before the cold of the evening. The follow a coastal road,

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη στείχοντες ‘οδον κάτα παιπαλόεσσαν,

which leads them to the capitol.

3. - The Odyssian capitol is a high town in the fashion of the times, with an echelle at its feet. The town is above. The
echelle is below, deserted or populated only by the foreign crews who have hauled out their ships there. Telemachus, to
meditate at his ease, comes to walk alone on the beach, at the edge:

Τηλέμαχος δ’ απάνευθε κιων επι θινα θαλασσης.

544
At the point of the south, we have already studied the embarkation of Telemachus when he sets to sea to go to Pylos. The
port is oriented like that of the Pheacians, the mouth toward the south. When they wish to leave, they set the vessel afloat,
they guide it by oar up to the point of the bay in the southeast, in the quarter of the Notos, εν νοτίω. There, they anchor it
in the open sea.

‘υψου δ’ εν νοτίω τήν γ’ ‘ώρμισαν,

so as to be able to use the wind from land as soon as it will rise. Telemachus does this. The suitors do this when they go
into the strait, between Ithaca and the rocky Samë, to watch for the return of the young man. The orientation is retrieved
in the Port of the Town, Port Polis, of our contempoaraies.
The evening having come, once the wind from land has arisen, Telemachus and the suitors set sail. Telemachus
leaves abroad. The suitors stay in the realm of Ulysses. They go to cruise around an islet which bars the strait, the islet
Asteris. From there, they survey the entire channel and the entrance of the Port of the Town. The Instructions tell us:
“Port Polis, of circular form, with 3 cables of diameter and 1 cable of width at the entrance, is open to the southwest and
lies directly to the east of the islet Deskalio. There are 31 meters of bottom in the middle of the port; but the small ships
anchor near the shore.” There, it appears to me, is our Odyssian port. It has 31 meters of bottom. The poet, also, tells us
that the port is very deep,

ο‘ι δ’ ‘ότε δη λιμένος πολυβενθέος εντος ‘ίκοντο,

and that the small boats of the time do not anchor in the open bay, but come to beach themselves on the shores of the
perimeter

νηα μεν ο‘ί γε μέλαιναν επ’ ηπείροιο ‘έρυσσαν.

The poet describes to us the maneuver for the vessel which returned Telemachus from Pylos as well as for the
vessel which will return the suitors from Asteris. Having left Telemachus at the port of St. Andre, the crew has
reascended the channel by oar. Not having sails, their ship, which is hidden under the insular coast, escaped the lookouts
of Asteris. These only recognize it at the moment when it rounded the entrance of Port Polis. It was too late to sink it:
they would have been seen from the town. They then left Astris-Daskalio and returned under full sail, they also, to Port
Polis. The two vessels were pulled ashore... On the marine chart, we can without difficulty make out the goings and
comings, the entries and sorties of boats, if we place the Odyssian capitol at Port Polis, and if we recognize Asteris in the
islet Daskalio.

4. - Then there remains the fourth anchorage of which the Odyssey speaks: the port Rheithron.
The last Odyssian anchorage finds its place in the last port which the Instructions describe to us. At Port Frikais,
we have already encountered the Port of the Current, and we have described the convenient route which can led the suitor
Mentes from the shore of Rheithron to the capitol of Ulysses. The port Rheithron is under the forested Neion, ‘υπο Νηίω
‘υλήεντι, as the port of Phorkys is under Neriton. Of the “two Mountains”, in effect, which the sailors perceive on the
base of the rocky isle, the one is to the south of the gulf of Molo: it is the Neriton which dominates Port Vathy; the other,
larger and more compact, covers, at the center of the isle, the entire interval between the gulf of Molo and the bay of
Frikais: it is Neion. The second mountain is less a peak than a large triangular bastion whose highest summit, according to
Partsch, exceeds 800 meters (the Instructions give it only 630 meters) and whose slopes descend steeply above Port Polis
and Port Frikais. The Port of the Current thus is surely under the other mountain, under the Neion which formerly was
covered with forests and which currently, it also, is completely deforested.

545
 To the north of the depressed peninsula which joins Port Polis with Port Frikais, the northern part of Ithaca is
much more rocky, τρηχεια, and rugged, κραναή. But between Neion and the two elongated hills, whose extremity goes to
form the bay Aphalias with the sea, a fertile region nourishes nine or ten villages and nearly 2,500 cultivators today.
Vines of Corinth, olives, small gardens and cereals: it is truly the largest, the only agricultural region of the entire isle. If
in the mountain of the south, under Neriton, Odyssian Ithaca had its pigs around Arethuse, and some fields at the foot of
the port of Phorkys; if, in the center, under the high brushy and dry table of Neion, it had some forests, but especially
rocky goat pastures: it is here, in the three valleys descending toward Port Polis, toward Port Frikais and toward the bay
of Aphalias, that it could have had its true country, its only peasants, properly speaking, the rest of the population living
only from the sea or the flocks. While Ulysses travels afar and the suitors in the town devour the beasts sent by the chiefs
of the swineherds and goatherds every day, Laertes retired to the country, in the distance; he leads his old days on the
slopes of his vineyard; he does not even come down into town:

πατηρ δε σος αυτόθι μίμνει

αγρω, ουδε πόλινδε κατέρχεται... ,
αλλ’ απάνευθεν επ’ αγρου πήματα πάσχειν... ,
‘ερπύζοντ’ ανα γουνον αλωης οινοπέδοιο.

The compound of Laertes should have been to the north of the capitol: it was not on the route between the town
and the cabin of Eumeus. When Telemachus, arriving at Eumeus’, sends him to take the news of his return to his mother,
Eumeus asks if he should continue to Laertes’ place:

ει και Λαέρτη αυτην όδον άγγελος έλθω.

Return then,” replies Telemachus; “do not make the detour to his place in the country,

αλλα σύ γ’ αγγείλας οπίσω κίε μηδε αγρους

πλάζεσθαι μετ’ εκεινον,

tell my mother to send a servant in secret to give the news to the old man.”

*
* *

On the charts of our navies, with their Instructions, it thus appears that we discover in Ithaca today all the
locations, intervals and reciprocal distances of the scenes, embarkations, debarkations, voyages and encounters of the
Odyssian account. Looking from a distance and from the sea, with the eyes, the habits, the prejudices and the onomasty of
the navigators, it appears that we would vainly seek a disagreement between the present reality and the Homeric
descriptions. The isle with double mountains, four ports, three regions of swine, of goats and of cultivated fields, is still
profiled upon our seas and in our Nautical Instructions, so that the Odyssian poet could perceive it in the accoounts or
periples of the first navigators, at the last extremity of the Achaean seas, in the ports of the zophos. How is it that, for a
century, the erudites should quarrel over the identification?
I do not only speak of the recent discussion, raised by the latest theories of M. Doerpfeld. In geography and
topography of ancient greece, I know that M. Doerpfeld always professes innovation: it has sufficed, I think, that all the
world recognizes the home and the domain of Ulysses in the Ithaca of our days, for M. Doerpfeld to undertake to discover

546
it in some other region. It only surprises me that M. Doerpfeld should not go farther afield, to Paxos, Corfu, Malta, into
the Liparis or the Balearics, to seek the Odyssian town. Leucadia is truly still too near the real Ithaca, and we can too
easily predict that at Leucadia, as in it matters not what other of the Greek lands, the excavations might well result in
giving to the archeologists some debris of Mycenaean pots. In every place on the globe, we will rediscover the primary
terrain, if we dig to the appropriate depth. There is not a site of the Primitive Greece which would not have, at some
depth, its Mycenaean subsoil.
But well before M. Doerpfeld, the faith in Ithaca-Theaki had had its heresiarchs. During the XIXth century, the
quarrel had already been pursued. W. Gell had been, in 1807, the founder of the Odyssian orthodoxy by his admirable
memoir The Geography and Antiquities of Ithaka, to which, after a hundred years, it is always necessary to resort. W.
Wölcker, in 1830, directed against the assertions of Gell his Homerische Geographie und Weltkunde. But it is R. Hercher
who, in 1866, was the great heresiarch in the article of the Hermes (I, 263-280) where he denied any possible agreement
between “Homer and the Ithaca of reality”. Behind the chiefs of the ranks, the erudites, after forty years, have divided
themselves into two irreconcilable armies: one will find in the fine memoir of Partsch, Kephallenia und Ithaka
(Petermann’s Mitteilungen, Ergänzungsband XIII, 1889-1890, no. 98) the history and the entire bibliography of the
quarrel (p. 54 and following). Whence comes the discord and endless war, now that it has appeared so easy for us to
discover the truth? We have contented ourselves, it is true, with distant and maritime views: is this to say that our marine
charts and our Instructions may have furnished us an entirely illusory certainty? Does the “terran” reality and view of
Theaki hold some surprises for us? The most simple is still, in our ordinary fashion, to go see.

*
* *

Sunday April 28 1901. - From Corfu, having explored the town of Alkinoös and the land of the Pheacians, I would
have wished to take a sailing ship and retrace from point to point the passage of Ulysses toward Ithaca. By a well-
established wind from the north, on a well-handled sailing ship, one can hope to make the passage in eleven or twelve
hours: Ulysses had an excellent boat which made the voyage in one short summer night. But, as already in the times of
Ulysses, the communications are not at all easy between Corfu and the Greek isles, in spite of the two markers of Paxos
and Antipaxos, the great abyss of sea still today makes a separation. Zante, Kephalonia, Ithaca and even St. Maura (this
one rather less joined, as we are going to see) are joined to the Greek land by the coming and going of a thousand small
boats, sailors or steamers, which each day put the Four Isles in communiacation with the modern Pylos, I wish to say,
Patras. In the present Greece, Patras holds, on the western façade of of the Peloponnesus, the rôle which Pylos held in the
Greece of the Achaeans: it is the great port of the Occident. Thus, from Patras, there is not a day when several sailing and
steam boats do not leave toward some or each of the Four Isles. Corfu, to the contrary, is attached only to the lands and
ports of the European thalassocracies by numerous and regular lines of Austrian, Italian or English boats. Corfu, governed
by the Greeks, always remains an “isle of Epirus and not of Greece”, according to the word of an English consul or, as the
old periple of Scymnus of Chio (v. 446) already said, “an isle of Thesprotia”:

Κόρκυρα νησος δ’εστι κατα Θεσπρωτίαν.

Its harbor is especially frequented by occidental navies: it is like an outer port of Brindisi, of Venice and of Trieste. The
transatlantics of the thalassocracies, it is true, continue from Corfu to Patras, but straight through, without intervening
stops. Inversely, certain steamers from Patras ascend up to Corfu, without any more stopping in the door of the northwest,
in the channel of Ithaca, which they nevertheless borrow. The separation always exists between Corfu and the Four Isles.
The sailing ships only rarely cross the great abyss of sea. Only, sometimes, some steamers of the thalassocracies go from

547
Corfu to St. Maura or from Corfu to Kephalonia and Zanta. We have this morning taken the boat of Lloyd who, five days
a week, follows the first of these itineraries.
If it is still this way after a century of the English peace and Greek independance, calculate what the space could
have been when the corsairs, pirates and bandits added places to the distance to multiply the risks tenfold. In all the Greek
seas, the piracy from Minos up to our days was an endemic evil which the presence of populations raised to the life of
brigandge for nourishment would almost necessarily engender, on the edge of the seas of a thousand refuges and hideouts:
the shepherd on land becomes a klephte, a thief; he is transformed into a corsair when, each year, his migrating sheep lead
him along the bays sown with isles and ambuscades, barred by straits and cutthroats. Add that the piracy always finds a
most lucrative field at the point where the different races, languages, civilizations and riches needed to navigate for
commerce among themselves - πλέων επ’ αλλοθρόος ανθρώπους, says the Odyssey, in speaking of the king of the
Taphians. It was always at the barbaric limits of the Hellenic seas that the Carian, Cretan or Psariot pirates will exercise
their traditional profession with the most profit, the least remorse. Our Ionian isles, in that, have always had their
Taphians, ληίστορες άνδρες. Piracy found some station of choice in the waters, which were Taphos, Ithaca or Paxos two
or three thousand years ago. In leaving the channel of Corfu, here are Paxos and Antipaxos which raise their small
archipelago before us. The Instructions tell us:

Paxos, the smallest of the Ionian Isles, has nearly 5 ½ miles of length from the northwest to the southeast, a bit less than 2
miles of width, and a maximum height of 245 meters; its shores, generally elevated, especially on the west coast, are formed of white
peaked cliffs. In general, the isle is flat and covered with a thick plantation of olives, which give the best oil of the seven isles. One
finds several villages there, situated in the midst of the plantations of olives, and which have the appearance of wealth that one does
not encounter in those of the other isles. Its population is about 5,000 inhabitants. The exports consist of oil, firewood and flat stones.
Port Laka, at the northern extremity of the isle, is an entrance of the coast. It has a few houses in the foot of the bay, where
the boats are left during the months of summer; but the coasters rarely anchor in the bay, for it is open to the winds from the
northeast. The port of Gayo is formed by two islets which border an entrance in the east coast of the isle: on the islet of the Citadel,
the larger of the two, there is a fort, and on the islet of the Madonna, the smaller, to the northeast of the preceding, is found a
lighthouse. The two isles are joined to the land and between themselves by shallows, which equally border the northeast coast of the
islet of the Madonna, where there is found a large rock, the rock Zouane. They form with the shore a well-sheltered creek, with
bottoms of 2 to 18 meters. Since the creek is narrow, the small ships need to berth very closely once inside the entrance and moor
themselves fore and aft. The town of Gayo rises in a semicircle on the edge of the creek, and contains about 2,000 inhabitants. It
posesses a wharf. One can procure some provisions there; but water is rare.
Anti-Paxo, 2 miles long and 1 mile wide and generally flat, rises up to 107 meters of height in its northern part. It has the
same orientation as Paxos, from which it is separated by a channel with deep bottoms, in which strong currents are felt. Its coast is
bordered by a narrow bank, with some rocks, but free of dangers, if one excepts a shallows of 3.6 meters at its northern extremity.
Several small islets or rocks, named the Plakka rocks, lie before its southern extremity. On the east coast of the isle, there is a small
bay, near a single village, in which are made the fishing embarkations. The isle has only a few inhabitants; it is little cultivated, but
produces excellent fruits.

The Port of Gayo, or Gai, as the French voyagers say, was always renowned for the facilities which its hideaway
with a double bottom, the difficulties of its passes accessible only to habitués, and the abundance of the ships which
frequent the channel, give to pirates. In the XVIth century, the celebrated Turkish corsair Dragut made it one of his
repositories. The habitual presence of the pirates, together with the dryness of the soil, in Venetian times prevented the
Paxinotes from having the least flocks. We know that the first need of debarking pirates is to skin and roast some dozen
goats or sheep to eat meat to their satisfaction:

The Paxinotes are reduced (1800) to a few goats, the maintenance of which is neither difficult nor expensive, and some
mules necessary for transport. The neighboring mainland furnishes for their consumption [of meat], very limited by their simplicity
and habit of living on vegetables and roots; they go there equally to seek wheat and other grains of which they are deprived on the
isle... To the south of Paxo is a small isle named Anti-Paxo capable of cultivation; it has long lain fallow: one saw there only some
low wild trees there which, for heating, were of some resource to the Paxinotes. It was always uninhabited. Some Paxinotes had tried

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to establish themselves there. They were obliged to renounce the project, which could have had a real utility, by the frequent
incursions of the brigands who, from the mainland and the neighboring isles, came impudently to strip them. It would not be difficult
to stop them and take advantage of the soil of Antipaxo.

All the voyagers of the XVIIIth century still speak to us of the pirates who, pillaging the islanders, also held
navigators for ransom. Their incursions or ambushes barely took them from their ports of origin, as long as they stayed to
themselves and to their own experience of the sea. The experience was very short: shepherds or brigands embarking for
the day on bad boats, they did not venture far. But when navigators, foreigners, furnish them large boats, some good
officers and a pilot: our people, all at once, extended their operations; promptly, from the Italian coasts to the end of the
Levantine Mediterranian, they transported their squadrons everywhere. This was the history of Dragut in the XVIth
century, during the Turkish Thalassocracy. This was the history of Lambro Kasdoni at the end of the XVIIIth century. I
can not help myself from seeing in Ulysses some “Mycenaean” Dragut or Kasdoni. Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, in his
Voyage dans les isles ci-devant Vénitiennes (1800), devotes a chapter to the “facilities which the Russian shipowners
found for forming numerous crews in the former Venetian posessions and isles of the Levant”:

Russia, in making the peace which ends the penultimate war with the Ottoman Empire, had not at all lost sight of the
advantages which it always had, in case of new hostilities, in recruiting Greeks. The vicinity of the Venetian isles to the Ottoman
territory was a circumstance which facilitated intelligence. The empress Catherine placed in the isles, in the capacity of consuls and
vice-consuls, Greeks and Albanians who had always had a powerful part in their nation. A nominee Benadis, whose capability was
known, was named consul general at Corfu. At Cephalonia they place, in capacity as consul, a Greek of the archipelago who did not
lack cleverness and intrigue [the Odyssey said: άνδρα πολύτροπον]. The vice-consul of Zante was given to an Albanian of an
extremely rude character, but endowed with a certain cunning which partly compensated for the greatest ignorance.
The Greeks of Morea, established at Trieste, will organize and establish sufficient funds to crew a certain number of corsairs
under the Russian flag, the command of which was given to Lambro Cazzoni. The Greek, with a courage and intrepidity of which
there are few examples, did not know how to read or write. But his lack of knowledge was compensated for by a firmness, an
activity and a vigilance of everything which surrounded him, which never failed him. Anyone who deceived him, in losing his
confidence, did not escape his resentment: he proved it on numerous occasions. He had the rank of a marine major in the service of
the empress. He left Trieste, commanding an old merchant frigate, armed with thirty cannon, and seven or eight Hydriot boats, some
carrying six, the others, four cannon. His crews were short and composed of a few Greeks who had been able to form at Trieste. He
first arrived at Epirus, where a good number of Albanians embark on his little fleet. Then he passes into the different Venetian isles,
from which a large party of Greeks are impressed to augment his forces...
Lambro Cazzoni sent the prizes which he could make to Trieste to be sold; he made several in the Venetian isles. The sums...
served in part to pay the crews; but they were insufficient. The number of armaments were augmented. The islanders, especially
those of Cephalonia, had set several corsairs to sea and placed them under his command. The corsairs, armed and crewed against the
laws adopted in all the navies, could only be considered pirates... The needs ofr Lambro increased. The [Russian] general Tamara
was sent to direct the operations of the Greeks. He passes to Theaki where he attended at length to the orders and the means to act.
Meanwhile the fleet of Lambro did not limit its raids to the Turkish ships: it singularly impeded the commerce and the navigation of
foreigners in the Levant. The Venetians were the only ones for whom he had regard: Lambro wished to manage the entry of the ports
of the isles, and the aid which he drew from them. The peace was finally concluded between Russia and the [Ottomans]. General
Tamara, before leaving Theaki, ordered Lambro to cease all hostilities and retire to Trieste to disarm there. He refuses to obey and
fiercely replies that, if the empress had made her peace, he had not yet concluded his at all. From that time, he assembles his
armaments and [goes] to establish himself at Port-aux-Cailles [Port of Quails], port of Maïna...

Grasset then describes the “courses” which Lambro, for over ten years, posted at the entrance of the archipelago,
directs against all the navies... Between Lambro and Ulysses, or Mentes the Taphian, I do not imagine a great difference.
That which the people of Trieste did in recruiting, outfitting and above all setting to navigation the Albanians or islanders
of Lambro, I imagine that the people of Sidon had formerly done for the people of Taphos or Ithaca. The Phoenicians, the
Odyssey tells us, then frequented the waters of the Elide and Thesprotia. Before the coast of the Thesprotes, Paxos
retained up to us the old name which the foreigners will give it and which only the Greco-Semitic doublet Paxos-Plateia

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can explain: Paxos was the Flat Isle of the Phoenician thalassocrats. They have sought a Greek etymology for the term,
and they have found Paxos = [E]p-axos: by the same word play, they have said Naxos = [E]n-axos. The root axa or ak
signifying water, Paxos would be the isle on the water, and Naxos the isle in the water. They have reproached me for not
having taken these etymologies into account. If I had discussed all the drivel in this fashion, ten volumes would not have
sufficed. Perhaps the isle On the Water and In the Water satisfy the philologists. But navigators will never imagine such
proper names. The name of an isle , needing to distinguish it from its neighbors, is always drawn from some particular
characteristic. All the isles are in or on the water: all should have been named Paxos or Naxos.

From Corfu to Patras, the ships, in cruising Paxos and Anti-Paxos, come to thread the channel of Ithaca. We have
left Paxos on our right to cruise along the coast of the Albanians - of the Thesprotes, said the Odyssian poet. Mysterious
and savage coast, made of steep hills, which a line of sharp mountains doubles in a second layer, and which the snowy
peaks of the Tomaros and of the mountains of Dodone crown to the horizon. Steep coast, with some deltas of rounded
stones, some small plains of sands and muds, and some mouths of torrents or rivers which push their triangles of alluvions
and marshes into the sea. Deserted coast, without a maritime or mountaineer village, without a tree, without a cultivated
field. On all the perimeter of the Mediterranian, we vainly seek, I beleive, such prehistoric solitude, such desolate
Barbary. From distance to distance, a breach in the hills and a cleft in the mountains leads up to a muddy beach some
route from the interior, which ends at a Turkish customs: three houses of wood, a ruined fortress and, sometimes, the new
bricks of an inn, comprise the entire echelle. Such is Hagia Sayada, where we have set anchor for a few minutes to put
ashore the harem and the retinue of a Turkish magistrate, and to load butters, cheeses and cattle destined for the Greek
isles. Such again are the echelles of Levitazza and Gomenizza, which we ignore. An islet sprinkled with verdure, a rock
with shining cliffs of whiteness at times interrupt the monotony of the wall: Prasoudi isle, Sybota isles. We spend a few
hours in the small port of Parga:

The isle of Syvota, remarkable for its black color, is an important seamark for the navigation of the channel, especially at
night; the bottoms are deep at ½ mile away. High mountains, which reach 500 meters, follow the coast in a backdrop. As this can
become obscure at night, one needs to keep a good watch.
Parga is a town of 500 inhabitants which is found, with the citadel and its fortifications, on a rock of conical form, 80 meters
high; the citadel, built in front of the town, falls in ruins; it is perceived from afar. The surrounding country is fertile: it produces an
abundance of tobacco, of fruits, of olives, and of wine, which are the objects of export. The small port of Parga is divided into two
bays by the projection of coast on which the citadel is fouund.

We know the rôle which the town of Parga had in the Venetian epoch. We have studied the establishment of the
foreign thalassocracies before the barbaric coast, on a point almost detached from the mainland, άκρα επι τη θαλάσση. It
was one of the ports of Albania for the Venetians. From here, the natives furnished the sailors their woods, meats, butters
and skins, and the sailors furnished to the natives their fabrics and manufactures. The Ancients had their port and bazaar
of Thesprotia a little to the south, in the valley of the Acheron river. Today the river pushes the muds of its delta into the
sea: at the flank of the delta, our present sailors frequent the echelles of Phanari and San Giovanni. During antiquity, and
especially during the first antiquity, the river ended at the foot of an interior gulf, which it has only imperfectly filled, and
in which it still leaves a deep lake with large marshes. The gulf, the mouth and the upper valley of the river Acheron
permitted the primitive sailors to reach, across the defiles of the mountains, the high plains of the interior and the
sanctuary of Dodone. The Acheron has a tributary which the Ancients called Cocyte. The Instructions tell us:

The harbor of Phanari is found at 1 ½ cables to the northeast of the northern point, with 10 meters of water. The boats of the
land winter here, in anchoring on the shore here above, and in being hauled to touch the rocks. There is also temporary anchorage
there for good weather in summer, at 3 cables to the southwest, in 18 meters of water, the bottoms rapidly deepening toward the
open. The river Gourla (ancient Acheron) flows into the southeast part of the port; it is a considerable watercourse, which has only
0.6 meters of water over the bar, but the canoes can ascend it for some distance and take on the water, which is potable. The Vouvo

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(ancient Cocyte) flows into the river Gourla at about 2 ½ miles from its mouth. A current of about 1 ½ mile flows, in general, from
the port of Phanari; it is much stronger during the season of rains.’

Here the first Hellenes had located their Land of the Dead, beyond the White Stone and the Port of Zophos. The
people of Ithaca came here to debark in the place of the king of the Thesprotes, to reach, across the mountains, the oracle
of Zeus Dodonaios. The Thesprotes were in relations of commerce and of friendship with the United Realm of the Four
Isles: they went there to sell their cattle and their wood, and to load wine, pigs, wheat and, without doubt, manufactures,
vases, fabrics and tripods. The friendship surely experienced eclipses. The father of the suitor Antinoös had one day
served as a pilot to the corsairs of Taphos for a raid on the Thesprotes, even though they were the allies of Ithaca:

ο‘ύνεκα λημιστηραιν επισπόμενος Ταφίοισιν

ήκαχε Θεσπρωτούς. ο‘ι δ’ ‘ημιν άρθμιοι ησαν.

Ordinarily, the sailors especially had nothing but praise for the Thesprote hospitality. In his story of the Cretan
corsair, Ulysses relates to Eumeus how he was cast by the shipwreck on the coast of Thesprotia, from which a Thesprote
ship was to take him to Doulichion: “There, I heard talk of Ulysses. They relate to me that they had welcomed and
entertained him on the road of his return. They show me the riches which he brought... As for him, he had gone, they tell
me, to Dodonia to consult the divine will in the great oak of Zeus,”

τον δ’ ες Δοδώνην φάτο βήμεναι.

The old periple attributed to Scymnus of Chio tells us (v. 446-450): “Korkyra is an isle of Thesprotia. After the
Thesprotes live the Molosses, who make their descent through Pyrrhus, son of Neoptoleme; with them is Dodone, the
oracle of Zeus.” One day I also went on that route of Soli to consult at Jannina, if not the will of Zeus, at least the good
pleasure of the Turkish authoroties. The route today is dangerous: the passes and valleys of the nountains are of an easy
access; but the present Thesprotes are terrible brigands, and the Turkish law only sets them to pillage.
To the south of the Acheron, The Venetians still had two small harbors, Reinassa and Gomaros, from which they
tried to prevent the incessant Albanian incursions on Corfu and St. Maura. We have occupied an entire day in slowly
cruising along Thesprotia.
Toward the evening, behind the golden sands of the point Hiero-Tripa, finally appear the marshes and olives of St.
Maura. A shore where the surf comes to break; an extending mole; a channel which the boats thread in crossing and in
furling their white sails; a fortress foundering in the marsh; a small town of low houses extending with its escort of plane
trees and olives up to the middle of the marshy lagoons: such is St. Maura. Old small wooden houses with green shutters:
verandas and galleries bordering the street with their low arcades; none of the high stone buildings, with the large
storhouses, with the fine “establishments” - καταστήματα - , with which the Hellenes populate their new towns: St. Maura
is still a poor Venetian echelle. Nowhere can one better appreciate how an ancient Levantine town differs from the new
Greek ports. The squalor and barbarity still reign in the lanes, under the old plane trees, in the wood market. Partsch, at
the beginning of his memoir on Leukas, remarks with reason how the town and the isle, in spite of their proximity to
Greece, remain outside the itineraries and studies. It also remains outside the progress which leads the other insular
communities toward the European civilization. From the first steps, one establishes that here is not a port in an Hellenic
isle, but a bazaar in an Albanian plain. The marshes, which close the strait and join Leucadia to the continent, always
make it an extension of the barbarian land. The natives are landsmen who do not navigate. While the people of Ithaca and
Cephalonia emigrate and go to seek fortune in the four corners of the earth, the Leucadians remain to graft their olives.
The Greek routes always pass the Acarnanian peninsula in the distance.
From the present capitol, Amaxiki, across the plane trees and the old olives, we went up to the acropolis of the
antique capitol. From there, we perceived the sea of the south, the Port Drepano and the large lagoon which fills the entire
strait with its pools, its banks of sand and its salt marshes. The narrow channel of embarkations cuts the isthmic lagoon

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from south to north: its bright ribbon of deeper waters cuts the scums and muds very neatly; some boats are being towed
there, evoking to the eyes a memory of the Pontine Marsh.
We have passed a terrible night of squalor and vermin at St. Maura. The landsdmen of Leucadia are always grimy
Epirotes who admire the white linens of Alkinoös and the laundry of Nausikaa from a distance. Living on the oil, the
butter, the sour cheese, the wine and the flocks, stinking of garlic and the dairy, they do not send their clothes to the
fountain, like the sailors of Pheacia. They have, like poor Eumeus, only one miserable wardrobe:

ου γαρ πολλαι χλαιναι επημοιβοί τε χιτωνες

ενθάδ’ ‘έννυσθαι,

or, rather, each of them posesses only the clothes which he has on his back:

μία δ οίν φωτι ‘εκάστω.

In the isles of the navigators, Ithaca and Cephalonia, we are going to find a relative propriety, a luxury of clothes in the
London style and of ties in the Paris style, which is just the visible testimony of the foreign influence; but St. Maura, in
that again, remains at a distance from the Greek world.

From St. Maura, a charming small Greek steamer, the Pylaros, should take us toward Ithaca by the channel of
Cephalonia. The small yacht was bought in England, where the Hellenes of today are furnished with boats and models: in
the times of the Odyssey, it is to Sidon that they went to seek the masters and suppliers. At the hour when the agora begins
to fill, about seven in the morning, we have left the plane trees of Amaxiki to descend on an embarkation to the
fairground bay. In the sands, between the sounding waves and the pestilential lagoons, under the old ruined citadel, which
appears to have ended in dying in the atmosphere of fever, we awaited our boat. It finally appeared, emerging from the
strait of Prevesa. It does not approach the quai. It holds a prudent distance, in spite of the latest dredgings. It leaves almost
immediately, knowing the lack of safety of the bay where breezes and currents, even in almost calm weather, have
quickly thrown a ship on the shore.
We leave. We descend the west coast of Leucadia. It is a steep cliff, sprinkled with verdure at the summit. Fom
distance to distance, a route comes down to some beach of gravel or sand by zigzag switchbacks or by the indentation of a
ravine. By measure as we advance to the south, the beaches diminish, then disappear. The whiteness and the harshness of
the cliffs increase. At the very end, the cape Dukato of the Italians truly merited its antique name of Leukas, the White
Stone, by the shining clarity of its vertical rocks. Upon rounding the cape, the double channel of Ithaca opens before us:
channel of the north between Ithaca and Arkoudi; channel of the south between Ithaca and Cephalonia. It is the latter
passage which we are going to take: we are going all the way around Ithaca on the west and south to then pass up the
eastern façade up to Port Vathy.
But, before threading the channel, we first go to put in under the extreme northern point of Cephalonia, at Porto
Viscardo. The port, where Robert Guiscard came to die - whence its name of Guiscardo, Wuiscardo, Viscardo,
Phiscardo, etc. - has always had its its importance and renown among the navies which need to take the channel of
Cephalonia, the Odyssian door of the northwest. The name of Viscardo itself was applied to the entire channel. All the
voyagers of the Levant point out or describe the refuge:

We entered into the strait of Viscardo, which separates the isle of Cephalonia from that of Thiaki: in many places there is
only a mile of distance one from the other. The two isles, especially Ithaka, allow only steep flanks of their mountains to be seen,
without any sort of culture or trees. Sad and thin bushes dispersed here and there are the only ornaments of the high wall. A
favorable wind, which was raised, had already carried us more than fifteen miles, when a violent storm came to threaten us. The
boatman, not wishing to expose his small boat in the dangerous channel of Viscardo, undertook to reach the bay situated at the base
of the promontory of that name. The precaution protects us from the furors of a terrible tempest, which was contented with tossing us

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severely. If our frail skiff had remained in the channel, the violence of the current would have inevitably thrown us against the reefs
of Ithaca.
The following day, a violent wind from the north did not permit the boatman to weigh anchor at all. I profited from the
circumstance by making a small excursion on the neighboring coasts, whose hills are somewhat pleasant. To the north of the bay
rises a small hill sprinkled with large stones; one sees the ruins of the castle of Viscardo on its summit, destroyed by the tremblings
of the earth. It is the famous cape Viscardo, which has played such a great rôle in the history of the wars on the Adriatic sea. The
steep road which leads to the castle is straight and exhausting. But I was amply compensated for my fatigue by the magnificent view
which was offered to my gaze on the very emplacement of the ruins. Beyond the strait I perceived the isle of Ithaca: the frightening
noise of its reefs made itself heard, similar to the groanings of a distant storm. On the left is Leucadia, or St. Maura: on its summit
rises the famous rock... The bay of Viscardo reveals itself, as do the charming hills which neighbor it: to the southwest, one sees a
small chapel surrounded with cypress, and higher up a small village; to the west, the view is limited by a mountain entirely covered
with myrtles and olives... After three days of wait, the wind moderates and permits us to leave the bay of Viscardo.

Better than all the commentaries, the account shows us the rôle of the retreat for the navigators, and of the lookout
for the islanders. From here, one can survey the northern entrance of the two channels of Ithaca, in the same way as the
high sea of the west and the entire passage of the “Viscardo channel” between Ithaca and Cephalonia. In the eyes of the
sailors, the refuge is characterised by a long point of rocks which, in the interior, divides it into two harbors:

The 22nd of April, we leave [from Port Vathy] at two o’clock in the morning, so as to be able to round the southern cape of
St. Maura [cape Leucadia], before the return of the wind from the northwest which we await... We were already more than a league
from the southernmost coast of Ithaca when we came to draw cannon fire from a very small ship to which we had not paid attention
until then. We did not see the flag of the corsair well. But as it did not appear to be French and every foreign ship should be suspect
to us, we took the part of tacking and directing ourselves to Cephalonia, the more so since the wind was already contrary. In less than
one hour, we came to set anchor at por Fiscardo or Viscardo, situated to the northeast of Cephalonia: the isle of Ithaca was just a
league distant. The port is small and secure enough; it is formed of two coves open to the wind from the east and to that from the
southeast, but sheltered by the isle of Ithaca.

In the unique bay, the Odyssian poet recognized twin ports, one port with twin harbors:

λιμένες δ’ ένι ναύλοχοι αυτη

αμφιδυμοι.

Our instructions appear to have copied or commented on the Odyssian vese:

Cape Vlioti, north point of Cephalonia, is 5 miles from cape Dukato, southern extremity of St. Maura. The the high land of
the northern extremity of the isle ends at the cape, which is low, with cliffs, and steep, with a shore of rock.
The bay of Phiscardo, small entrance of the coast, at about 2 miles to the southeast of cape Vlioti, has about 3 cables of
length with 1 cable of width in its narrowest part. The habitual harbor is in the foot of the bay, in bottoms of 5 to 7 meters. The
village contains a church and thirty houses inhabited entirely by sailors, to whom the surrounding cultivated parcels belong. With
blows of winds from the west and northwest, the ships find a shelter in 26 meters of water, in raising the lighthouse to the north-
northeast. In 1872, the lieutanant Lobb, of the English warship Rapid, wrote: “Phiscardo is a small port completely sheltered from all
the winds, with good anchorage in muddy bottoms [λιμένες ναύλοχοι]. A point, which projects from the west coast, divides the port
into two parts [αμφίδυμα], one part exterior and one part interioir. The Rapid anchored in the interior port, but did not have too much
space to manage. There is space in the exterior port for a large ship which would set forked anchorage. The village is on the west
coast. Some ships come here to load grapes of Corinth, of which the annual export amounts to about 1 ½ million poundds.”

There, I believe, are the “Twin Ports” of the Homeric poet. Αιμένες Αμφίδυμοι: the plural name, applied to a
single bay, is entirely similar to that of “Good Ports”, Καλοι Λιμένες, which we could find elsewhere. In holding
ourselves to the letter of the Odyssey, the Twin Ports should have been in the isle of Asteris, λιμένεσ δ’ ένι ναύλοχοι

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αυτη. Since antiquity, all the geographers have pointed out the inexactitude of the detail. The only solid argument, in the
first reading and the final analysis, which one can invoke to support the theories of M. Doerpfeld, is precisely the inexact
detail. In the strait between Ithaca and Samë,

μεσσηγυσ Ιθακης τε Σάμοιό τε παιπαλοέσσης,

we are going to cruise an islet which the present sailors name Daskalio. Only this islet islet can and should be the
Homeric Asteris. Rocky islet, in the middle of the channel, it corresponds to certain expressions of the poet:

έστι δέ τις νησος μέσση ‘αλί πετρήεσσα.

But without shelter, without the slightest creek, it is just a tonge of calcarious rocks, with sharp borders, with a
slender profile. All the descriptions of the voyagers agree. It is impossible to find the Twin Ports in the isle. The text of
the poet is indisputably inexact. Is this to say that Daskilio may not be Asteris and that it is necessary, as in the example
of M. Doerpfeld, to upset all the antique geography of the area, for the sole purpose of setting the Homeric speech and
reality in agreement?
But the Homeric speech, are we truly sure to exactly posess and faithfully translate it? In place of λιμένες έ[ν]ι, if
we read λιμένες έ[π]ι, a single changed letter would reëstablish the agreement again. For επί with the dative is currently
employed in the Odyssey to signify near. Thus, near the isle Asteris, and no longer in the isle Asteris, we have the Twin
Ports, which corresponds exactly to the reality. The sailors, in effect, who, coming from the south, ascend the channel (it
was the case of the first thalassocracies), find the Twin Ports together with, near, above, επί, the islet Asteris. Our sailors
today descend the channel: they nevertheless establish the same tight bond between the port viscardo and the rocky islet.
It suffices to open the old Italian portulans, such as C. Constantini, Guida Practica della Navig. del mare Adriatico (p.
141):

Circa un miglio e ¾ in Ostro del porto Viscardo e un miglio de Cefalonia, è la piccola isola Discaglio, sulla quale vi è un’
antica torre. Fuori dell’ estremita settentrionale di questa isola vi è una piccola roccia sotto aqua, ma vi sono da venti a 25 passi
vicina ad essa, e 36 passi fra essa è il porto Viscardo.

From portulans to voyagers, the testimony is transmitted across the ages. In all the periples and instructions, the
bond between Daskilio and Viscardo is not only maintained, but more and more tightened. Grasset Saint-Sauveur, in his
Voyage dans les Isles Vénetiennes, sums the miroirs and guides de la mer, in telling us (III, p. 15):

After the harbor named Samos... , in continuing to range the oriental coast of Cephalonia and going to the north, we find
another harbor named Fiscardo. It is a small cove which can only receive merchant ships of small tonnage, galères and galiotes. At a
third of a league, there is a small reef named Daskilio. We anchor very near to the coast, even carrying moorings to land to prevent
the anchors from shifting. The inclination of the bottom renders the anchorage unshure, and in tripping anchor, we risk being cast on
the coast of Thiaqui. We see a somewhat considerable village on the summit and on the slope of the mountain.

The description, very exact in the language and habits of the sailors, would become, I believe, a source of easy
errors for the landsmen and geographers of the cabinet. For it is impossible, without a marine chart or the reality before
the eyes, to set well in place each of the elements of the site faithfully described by our author. To read the text, in effect,
Daskilio itself appears to make part of the harbor: one could believe that it is to Daskilio that they should carry the
moorings; only the chart can show us that “the somewhat considerable village” is not “on the summit and slope” of
Daskilio. Between their isle Asteris and their Twin Ports, the first thalassocrats already established the same bond: for
them, the Twin Ports were near, above Asteris, because they were beyond the coast of the high sea, ‘υψου, in altum. If we

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wish another explanation of the word επί, the Twin Ports were near, above the channel of Asateris, exactly as the towns
are on/upon/above [sur] the rivers.

έστι πόλισ τηλου επ’ Αλφείω,

or, as Eumeus and his pigs are near the Rock of the Crow, on/upon/above the spring Arethuse:

καρ Κόρακος Πέτρη επί τε Κρήνη Αρεθούση.

The use of epi, επί, is encountered on every page of the Homeric poems... And nevertheless I would prefer another
explanation entirely for the correction. For we see from Strabo that, since classical antiquity they already disputed over
the text: the Ancients read like us ένι and not έπι, in and not on; they were astonished that the poet would speak thus of an
isle “which does not even have a natural anchorage”, νυνι δε ουδ’ αγκυροβόλιον ευφυές. Thus, let us retain the text of the
Ancients; let us admit that he truly said that which we have him say, and conclude that he was mistaken in setting the
Twin Ports in the isle Asteris. But it is not willing error on his part at all, nor even invention or fantastic distortion. It is
one of the habitual inexactitudes which we have encountered along the voyage. We know, by other examples, the
provenance and reason for it. The inexactitudes are not imputable to the imagination or the will of the poet: they are
inherent, practically essential to the work which he undertook. When he gives to Calypso the attributes of the neighboring
coast, the springs of the shore and the vines of the cape; when he makes the isle of Circe an “oceanic isle”, and of Nisida
an “isle of goats”, in attributing to them as epithets the names of the neighboring isles, Capri and Ponza; when, at the
strait of Messina, he makes of the Hollow Port and the cove of the Sun two barely distinct harbors: we know that the
apparent deficiencies are due only to an exact fidelity to the text of the periple itself. For it is always necessary to come
back to the fundamental conception, and judge the verity of the Odyssian descriptions, not only by the reality, but by
always interposing the language of a periple between the description and the site described: the poet has not seen; he has
read. Let us read some Greek periples.
Here is a passage from Skylax which would be in favor of the correction proposed above: “Then two isles are
above, έπεισι, named Gadeira”, και νησοι ενταυθα έπεισι δύο αις όνομα Γάδειρα. Here is a second passage from the same
Skylax which would give us the exact equivalent of our Odyssian text: “Then the town of Phara, then, facing it, is the isle
of Ithaca and [its] town and [its] port, μετά δε ταυτα νησός εστιν Ιθάκη και πόλις και λιμήν”. This translation is
indisputably the better: the town and the port in question are in the isle of Ithaca; we understand it at the first reading,
even though the periple does not explicitly tell us that. But if I should or can translate the first phrase thusly, how would I
translate the following? “After that, is the town Alyzia and, facing, the isle Karnos and the town Astakos and the port... ,
etc.” Could one reproach me for a counter-sense if, not knowing the places except from the text, I translated, as above
“The isle Karnos and [its] town of Astokos and [its] port”? μετα ταυτα πόλις Αστυζια και κατα ταύτην νησος Κάρνος και
πόλις Άστακος και λιμήν. The town and the port of Astokos nevertheless have nothing to do with the isle Karnos; they are
on the facing continent. Set before the eyes of our Odyssian poet a text of a periple describing the strait of Ithaca in
entirely similar terms: “After that, the town of Samë.., then, facing, the town of Ithaca... , then, facing, the isle Asteris,
small, stony, and the Twin Ports, with a good harbor”, μετα ταυτα πόλις Σάμη... , και κατα ταύτην πόλις Ιθάκη... , και
κατα ταύτην Άστερις νησοσ ού μεγάλη, πετρήεσσα, και Λιμένες Αμφίδυμοι ναύλοχοι. Will not the poet be able to tell us
that the Twin Ports are in the isle Asteris?
It is necessary to have before the spirit, before the eyes, the fashion of describing the sites, and of grouping them,
which are habitual to the periples. It suffices to follow the reading of Skylax to discover twenty similar examples there:

Εν δε τω μέσω Πέτραντος και Χερρονήσου εισι νησοι Ανδωνία και Πλάτεια. ‘ύφορμοι δε ‘υπ’ αυταις εισίν.

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 “Between Petras and Cherronesos, are the isles Aedonia and Plateia, under which there are temporary harbors.”
The harbors are under the coastal isles, along the continent; but we see what minimal fault of tyranslation, εν in place of
‘υπ’, in in place of under, would suffice to distort the very exact testimony. Another passage from the same Skylax:

εντεθιεν... Αφροδισιάς νησος. ‘ύφορμος. Νάυσταθμος λιμήν.

Here, our punctuation alone succeeds in setting a distance, a separation between the insular harbor, ‘ ύφορμος, of
Aphrodisias and the continental port, λιμήν, of Naustathmos... For the exact description of our channel of Cephalonia,
Skylax would furnish us a later text:

και άλλαι δε καταφυγαι ‘υπο νησιδίοις και ‘ύφορμοι και ακται πολλαι εν τη μεταξυ χώρμα.

Between Viscardo and Samë, the coast of Cephalonia is going to present us a number of points, ακταί, of
temporary harbors, ‘ύφορμοι, and of refuges under rocks or islets, καταφυγαι ‘υπο νησιδίοις. In cruising along the coast,
we see well that the refuges and harbors are sometimes under the wind, under the cover of Asteris, but that in reality they
hold to the shore of Caphalonia. In place of the reality, if we only had before our eyes a text of a periple, would it not
occur to us to imagine that such refuges and harbors belong to Asteris, that they are on the insular coast, and not on the
facing coast? I have taken all my examples in the periple said to be from Skylax. It is one of the oldest portulans of
classical Greece. But, in the more recent periples, we will find the same ambiguous expressions at every step. The
periples of the new seas especially - such as the Periple of the Red Sea, which they sometimes attribute to Arrian - would
give us word for word prosaic fragments of our Odyssian poem: we will make multiple borrowings from the Periple when
we wish to explain the Composition of the Odyssey. The periples of the more frequented seas - such as the Stadiasme de
la Grande Mer (Mediterranian) - also teem with similar examples:

Απο Ζύγρεως εις Λαδαμαντίαν στάδιοι κ’. νησος ‘ικανή παράκειται. αυτην έχων δεξιάν κατάγου. λιμήν εστι παντι
ανέμω. ‘ύδωρ έχει.

“To the right of this somewhat large isle”, on exacly which shore is found “the port covered from all the winds,
with a watering place”? Is it on the insular coast? Is it on the continental shore? For all the coastal isles, to read the Greek
periples, one should pose the same question: each reader can decide the alternative as he pleases. It is thorny enough to
retrieve, on the subject of our isle Asteris, an entirely similar text in a periple of modern Greeks. The modern Greeks
toward the beginning of the XVIIth century, when they will seriously set themselves to navigating again, were under the
influence of the Venetians “who then posessed most of the isles”, ουτοι γαρ δη τασ πλείστας νήσων ώκησαν, as
Thucydides says on the subject of primitive Greece and the Phoenicians. The moder Greeks will thus imitate or even copy
the portulans of Venice, and such of the Greek portulans are just exact translations, still entirely crammed with Italian
words. Here is the Portulan of all the Ports, Πορτολάνο ‘ολούνων Λιμένων, printed in 1619 in Venice by Antonio Pinelli
(without the name of the author), τυπωθεν εν Βενετίαι παρα Αντωνίω τω Πινέλλω. And, in the portulan, here is the
description of Cephalonia:

‘Η Κεφαλψνία έναι νησι μπιτάδο, και έχει πόρτο απο μέσα ‘ωσαν και απόξω...
Απο τον σπα ‘οπου έναι ‘ο κάβος του Πισκάρδο ‘ως ‘ο πόρτο του Πισκάρδο, έναι μηλλια β’. Το πόρτο του
Πισκάρδο, έναι καλο δια ξύλα μικρα και δια αρματωωμένα, και εναι δια τον λεβάντι όχι δια τον πουν’εντι.
απο το Πισκάρδο ‘ως τον Αθέρα, έναι μήλλια ιβ’. ‘Ο Αθέρας έναι πόρτο και έχει ‘ένα νησι ομαρος και έναι καλο
πόρτο δια τον πουνέντι...
Το Θιάκη έναι μπίταδο και ανάμεσα των Κεφαλονία και το Θιάκη έναι ‘ένα νησόπουλο χουμηλο και έχει ‘έναι
πύργον και μια στέρνα απάνω τοθ και λέγουν τουτο το Διδασκαλειον.

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 In the text, let us leave aside our bay of Viscardo; but let us take the two coastal isles. The one is Daskalio. The
modern Greek tells us of Daskalio exactly what the Homeric Greek told us of Asteris: it is a small low isle between Ithaca
and Cephalonia, ανάμεσα των Κεφαλονία και το Θιάκη έναι ‘ένα νησόπουλο χουμηλό:

έστι δέ τις νησοσ μέσση ‘αλι πετρήεσσα

μεσσηγυς Ιθάκης τε Σάμοιό τε παιπαλοέσσης
Άστερις ου μεγάλη.

The modern Greek adds that which the Homeric Greek also tells us: the islet is a good lookout in the passage: the
watchers have raised a tower there and installed a cistern, έχει ‘έναν πύργο και μία στέρνα απάνω του. The modern Greek
does not know of a harbor on the isle, and it does not know another refuge in the waters except our port Viscardo, which,
not to doubt it, is the Double Port, the Twin Ports of the Homeric Greek. But the modern Greek, in the preceeding
paragraph, also shows us where the error of the Odyssian poet came from: “The [bay] Atheras [it is a bay on the west
coast of Cephalonia] is a port and it has an isle in front and it is a good port for the wind from the west”. The “good port
for the wind from the west”, is it in the coastal isle, above the isle, under the isle? Is it on the mainland, facing the small
isle? If we consult the chart, we cannot doubt: the port is under the isle, not in the isle. But the Homeric poet, lacking a
chart, had to draw from the text what he will in all likelihood draw from an entirely similar text. When he tells us that the
Twin Ports are in the coastal isle, he interprets his periple badly, but he does not dream of falsifying it. He is surely
deceived, but it is not by deliberated words. He leads us into error, but not into full fantasy. M. Doerpfeld thus has good
reason to direct the attention of the critics to the detail of the Odyssian description. He appears to me to have made a
mistake only in resorting to violent means, to revolutionary upsets or, at the very least, to subversive reforms, to suppress
the difficulty instead of resolving it, and in replacing it with other much more irrational difficulties: it is there that are, as
Strabo said, “teratological” operations.

We have remained an hour in the port of Viscardo. Partsch would recognize the port Panormos there, of which
some Byzantine texts and a doubtful inscription found in Italy make mention. Across history, the port was a necessary
station to all the navies. It is probable that the classical Greeks knew and denoted it. The name of panormos alone appears
to me not to correspond to a bay which has only two harbors, αμφίδυμος, and which is not a port of all harbor, πάνορμος.
On the Byzantine, Norman, Venetian and English ruins which sprinkle the perimeter, the Greeks today construct one of
their new towns. It will one day perhaps be a station of foreign navies, at the entrance of the channel which the
thalassocrats set themselves to frequent - a station of provisioning and a depot of charcoal between the ports of the
Adriatic and the Suez Canal.
For our large steamers desert, in these waters, the route which, for nearly a thousand years, the Venetians have
traced for the navigation. From the Adriatic, the channels of Corfu and Paxos led the Venetians along the Albanian coast
and the cliffs of St. Maura up to the entrance of our port of the northwest. There, instead of entering into the new strait,
whose storms, pirates and insecure ports they feared all at the same time, the Venetians continued straight toward the
south, along the outer shore of Cephalonia. By Assos, Lixouri and Argostoli, they cruised the façade of the west and the
south. They thus reached the large channels between Zante and Cephalonia at first, then between Zante and the Morea.
They reached their echelles of Modon and Coron to the south of the Peloponnesus. The mouths of Cerigo opened the
archipelago or the Cretan seas together for them.
The route of the Venetians was the least dangerous. It was not the shortest. Draw a straight line on the chart
between the Otrante channel and the south of the Peloponnesus. You see that, passing outside of Corfu and Paxos - not
between the isles and the continent, but in the “savage sea”, in front of the town of Alkinoös - the shortest route then
threads the channel of Ithaca. You will by the same stroke retrieve our old Odyssian route by the mouths of Samë, by the
White Stone and by the outer coast of Paxos and Corfu. It is that the line drawn on your chart is also traced in reality by

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the winds from the north (here alternating between the northwest and the northeast) and the winds from the south which
prevail in these waters: from Pylos, the winds conduct the sailing ships straight to the towns of Ulysses and of Alkinoös,
or inversely. From that will come the fortune of Ithaca and the celebrity of Ulysses. Nothing makes the place of the isle
and the hero in the geography and in the Homeric legend better understood than the encounter of our English, Italian and
Austrian transatlantics in the channel of Viscardo. Between the Adriatic and Crete, our steamers today again take the
route which the Cretan or Phoenician sailing ships followed in the times described by the Odyssey. Tomorrow, for the
torpedo boats and small warships, Viscardo will take back the rôle which the town of Ulysses held. The town of Ulysses
corrresponded best to the needs of the primitive sailors who, using the oars, set themselves under the cover of Ithaca to
ascend the channel against the winds from the north.

We descend the channel of Viscardo slowly. Our captain is an erudite man who, several times, has carried M.
Doerpfeld to St. Maura. He is converted to the new ideas. To demonstrate to us that Asteris of the two ports is not
Daskalio, he has put his Pylaros at low steam: slowly, we descend the channel in taking the narrowest passage between
the rock of Daskalio and the shore of Cephalonia.
The shore of Cephalonia is a somewhat high cliff, but frequently cut by creeks, coves and small ports, which our
charts render very exactly. That which the bay of Viscardo is in large, each of the creeks is in miniature. In a circle of
hills, an extending point divides a more or less closed small port into two harbors. The Instructions tell us: “From
Phiscardo, for 9 miles, up to the hill of Agriosko, for almost the entire distance, the coast is irregular, and presents several
small coves, which have importance only for the boats which unload or load their cargos of fruits or grains there.”
The small ports have always obliged the islanders to keep lookouts on the neighboring hills, as much for
themselves to exercise the profession of wreckers as to survey the corsairs of the strait or the plague boats, for the evaders
of the quarantine attempted to anchor in the deserted creeks. In 1830, A. Findlay still saw the hills strewn with lookouts.
The primitive periple described similar habits. Thus the poet installs the lookout of the suitors on the coast of the strait.
Leaving from the town of Ulysses, the suitors came to Asteris: “I would go,” said Antinoös, “to watch the return of
Telemachus”,

όφρα μιν αυτον ιόντα λοχήσομαι ηδε φυλάξω.

“During the entire day, the lookouts stayed on the windy promontories. We continually relieve them. At the setting of the
sun, we have never stayed on the coast for the night; but in the sea, navigating with the cruiser, we await the divine
dawn”,

ήματα μεν σκοποι ιξον επ’ άκριας ηνεμοέσσας

αιεν επασσύτεροι. ‘άμ δ’ ηελίω καταδύντι
ού ποτ’ επ’ ηπείρου νύκτ’ άσαμεν αλλ’ ενι πόντω
νηι θοη πλείοντες εμίοντες εμίμνομεν Ηω διαν.

No more than the Twin Ports can the “windy promontories” be found on our isle Asteris, our low rock, our reef of
Daskalio. The poet well appears to tell us that they are επ’ ηπείρου, “on the large land” (in opposition to the sea, but also
to the islet). Only the large land, in effect, can offer hills for lookouts. Asteris is just a bank of rock at the level of the sea.
Here it is before our eyes. We can see it and measure it well in all senses. We look out over all of it. The good captain, to
win us to sane doctrines, delays his passage further. From the bridge, he shows us the smallest cracks of the minuscule
rock. Not the smallest port. No cove. No elevation. The description of the Nautical Instructions is exact in all its points:
“The islet Daskalio, 4 cables from the coast of Cephalonia and nearly 2 miles to the south-southeast of the lighthouse of
Phiscardo, is about 1 cable long, flat, low (3 meters of height), of a reddish color, and surmounted by the ruins of an old
tower.” Daskalio is truly the small isle, ου μεγάλη, rocky, πετρήεσσα, of which the poet speaks. The stone is white, totally

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bare all around. Its shining whiteness stands out above the blue of the deep water. Barely a few meters high, the isle
presents a border of fragmented and broken rocks all around, which the least embarkations approach only with prudence.
The southern extremity is cut to the flanks of a projecting tongue by a double breech. The double breech would not be
able to give us the Twin Ports of the poet. Without width, without depth, without shores, each of the culs-de-sac can hold
only one or two boats afloat. The only debarkation of the isle faces Cephalonia, on the west coast of the rock. There, a
narrow slope of sand descends to the sea. It is assuredly not a shelter of sailors. The word “refuge”, applied to the
pavement of rock, would be exact if we thought of of refuges installed on our boulevards or in our intersections to give
some security to pedestrians and cut the stream of cars: Asteris also can only serve to cut the stream of the ships in the
channel.
On the rock, 150 meters long, 35 to 45 meters wide (maximum figures), two ruins of churches among the brush, a
crumbling tower, a cistern cut in the rock, and a sort of tumulus or mound of piled stones nevertheless testify that the islet,
deserted today, was long frequented by men. The tower could have served as a guide to navigators, still more often as a
lookout for pirates. From here, one surveys the entire channel of Viscardo and the open sea of the two entrances. Toward
the north, the horizon is limited only by the White Sone of Leucadia. Toward the south, in clear weather, it is open
without limit up to the coastal mountains of the Peloponnesus. The only inconvenience of the lookout is its insufficient
height above the wave. With a slightly agitated sea, especially with the strong swells which the Adriatic drives into the
strait, the watch from Asteris no longer distinguishes the embarkations, nor even the small sailing ships. To their eyes, the
hulls and masts disappear in the hollow of the swell or barely stand out along the dark coasts. The vessel of Telemachus,
once it is demasted and pulled by the rowers, threads its way under the shadowy mass of Ithaca and escapes the watchers
of Antinoös. They need, to complete the vigil from Asteris, lookouts on the neighboring large land, επ’ ηπείρου, at the
summit of the windy hills, άκριας ηνεμόεσσας, which the breezes of the channel and the great blows of the open sea on
the other façade of Cephalonia buffet at the same time.
The coast of Ithaca above the channel is almost rectilinear except for the depression and indentation of the lands at
Port Polis. It is very high, but not with straight cliffs. It is stony and rocky; but the rock is nowhere steep nor entirely bare.
In most places, terraces of vines and olives, otherwise clumps of cypress and large trees descend down to the sea. All
around brush and bushes in flower, whose balsamic odors the wind carries to us, clothe the façade where we vainly
sought a site which the sailors can denote the Stone of the Crow. there is not a “cliff of rock” on the façade. the coast of
Cephalonia is much steeper. “Strewn with hills and remarkable cliffs”, say the Instructions, it is suddenly cut by the
spacious, long and wide bay where the two towns of Pylaros today, of Samë in antiquity, have been able to live from their
commerce and their fields.
St. Euphemia or Pylaros - whose name our steamer bears - is in the north part of the bay. It is the modern town, or
rather the future town, for it has barely begun to be built. Under the Venetian domination, all the insular life had taken
refuge on the other façade of Cephalonia, around the walls of Assos, Lixouri and Argostoli, on the route of the fleets: the
strait and the coastal plains were entirely abandoned. Under the English, the Greeks of the isles will renew their habitual
relations of commerce with their brothers of Morea and Epirus. The people of Cephalonia then had need of an echelle on
the eastern façade of their isle, facing Patras and Missolonghi. A customs bureau was opened in the bay of St. Euphemia,
at the foot of the “Lookout of the Day”, ‘Ημεροβιγλιά, of which the present natives have made Merovigli. (We are going
to retrieve the place name at Ithaca. It is frequent in the area. Through the centuries, the unfortunate islanders have passed
their days, like the lookouts of the suitors, at the summit of the windy hills.) At that time a great route, by virtue of the
long defile which the pleasant valley of Pylaros opens across the isle, from one sea to the other, put the echelle of the east
in easy communication with the insular capitols of the western façade. Pylaros today becomes the great emporium of the
Greek navigators, while Argostoli and Lixouri remain towns of colonists, of Greco-Italian cultivators.
During the first antiquity, it was Samë and not Pylaros which held the rôle. The sites of the two towns compared
sufficiently show the reasons which the first thalassocrats then had to prefer Samë. If Pylaros, by virtue of its valley and
the route which joins it to the towns and plains of the isle, imposes itself to the choice of the islanders, Samë and its
isolated “height”, its beach, its spring at the edge of the sea and its small fertile plain better corresponded to the needs of

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the first navigators. The sailing boats, which descend the channel with the favorable winds from the north, arrive directly
to the beach turned toward the northwest, as the sailing boats which ascend the channel come directly, by virtue of the
winds from the south, to land on the coast of Ithaca, in Port Polis, turned toward the southwest. For the first thalassocrats,
Samë and the town of Uysses thus were made a matching pair. At the two extremities of the corridor, they completed each
other. Their interests and their destiny were joined by their complimentary rôles. Ulysses of Ithaca, king of the principal
port, was also the chief sovereign of Samë. On site, the Odyssian geography illuminates and animates itself. It is too
visible that in the port of the northwest, the primitive sailing ships and galleys had need of a port of call:

The isle of Cephalonia begins at cape Phiscardo and forms, with that of Thiaqui, a channel of about seven leagues, running
S.S.E. and N.N.W.. One cannot anchor there because of the great depth of the bottom: the anchors would not hold and, further, one
would be exposed to the extremely violent gusts which one experiences with all the winds. There pass into the channel almost none
but small ships, of which even those await a favorable and well-established wind for the crossing. If one is nevertheless obliged to
navigate there, it would then be necessary to range the coast of Cephalonia, on which there are two ports, Fiscardo and the Valley of
Alexandria (Samos).

It is no less visible that our present ports of call in the open bays of Cephalonia had less attractions for the first
navigators than the closed bay of the small isle of Ithaca. On site, at Port Polis, we will grasp even better the reasons for
that preference; but from the account of the Telemachea, we have already seen the Odyssian galleys “range the coast” of
Ithaca and not that of Cephalonia. The coast of Ithaca has only the resting place of Port Polis. Nevertheless, just facing
Pylaros, a small cove cuts the shore. It is at the foot of a high hill in a dome, which the islanders call Aetos, the cove,
Behind-Aetos, Opiso-Aetos. The hill covers with its conical mass the narrow isthmus which separates the channel from
the gulf of Molo. The mount Aetos is crowned with cyclopian ruins. Certain voyagers and the Instructions would find the
castle of Ulysses there. It is in reality the classical citadel of Alalkomenai. At the foot of the citadel, the cove of Opiso-
Aetos has never held the rôle, and in no way merits the name, of a port. In a breach of the rocks, the trees and the bushes
descend down to the edge of a sea seeded with reefs. No shelter covers the beach against the winds or the swell. No shore
can hold the ships hauled out of the water here. The cove of Opiso-Aetos seves only for the embarkations of those
crossing the strait, which leads the people of Ithaca to the port of Pylaros, when they desire commerce with the islanders
of Cephalonia or when, from Pylaros, they go across the isle to embark at Argostoli on the vessels of the Austrian
thalassocrats.
To the south of Opiso-Aetes, as to the north, the coast of Ithaca extends its slopes of stones or its slopes of brush.
The southern extremity of the isle is much lower. The ancient Neriton - another Lookout of the Day of the present
islanders, Merovigli - culminates in the center at 671 meters. But, by degrees, from terrace to terrace, it ends above the sea
in a plateau whose last step, although somewhat vertical, is little elevated. The shore is clothed in verdure and brush
everywhere.
From Pylaros, we have come to the echelle of Samos. At the edge of a small marshy plain, a narrow quai borders a
line of new houses. Behind, the rocky hill rises almost to a peak of 275 meters, above which the high Samë was perched.
A number of voyagers have described the enclosure and the ruins which endure on top of the hill: Partsch gives a plan of
it and an inventory of details. It is the same type as the “high towns” in the Homeric style.
Cape Dekalia, which closes the bay of Samos, advances itself very near the southern extremity of Ithaca. To round
the extremity and reach Port Vathy on the façade of the east, we cross the strait. We come to recognize the cape and the
port St. Andre. In the somewhat vertical slope which continues the shore of Ithaca, Port St. Andre hollows its long
corridor: a shore of sand, at the foot, whitens the feet of the green hills. Here Telemachus and his crew will come to
debark at the first warmth of the morning, at the hour when the flat calm follows the nocturnal land breezes, and preceeds
the sea breezes of the day. Here, from all times, the sailing ships coming from the south have sought a refuge in case of
storm or contrary winds. The entrance of the channel of Ithaca is very often obstructed by the winds from the north. A
refuge is needed, or at least just a resting place for the small vessels which, with sails furled, would attempt to fight the
breeze and ascend the strait by oar:

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 We weighed anchor (from Missolonghi) at ten o’clock in the morning and made way, by a fresh enough wind from the
northwest, toward the channel which separates the isle of Cephalonia and that of Ithaca. We passed to the south of the Oxian isles:
they are two uninhabited rocks, where are found three ports which they say are very good, and where pirates, with which Etolia is
infested, take refuge. [The pirates] amount to ten, twelve or fifteen in number altogether, with very slow boats, which go by sail and
oar, and they attack with audacity those ships which they see are poorly armed [or] those they judge to not be on guard.
The wind not permitting us to enter the channel [of Cephalonia], we tacked all day and came back toward the two rocks to
anchor there. Not being able to reach them, we gain the coast and set the anchor a little above the cape which we had before us in the
morning, so that, after having remained at sea all day, by evening, we have made only two leagues.
The 20th, before the day, we weigh anchor and set ourselves toward the channel of Cephalonia a second time. At three hours
after noon, we were only an hour from the southern extremity of the isle of Ithaca, when all at once we were tossed by gusts which
come to us from different directions. The wind from the northwest continued to blow between Ithaca and Romelia, as we judge by
two boats which were found a few miles from us towards the reef of Dragonneau. We passed nearly an hour without being able to
advance and with a sea which greatly fatigued us. Finally we tried to carry ourselves to Cephalonia by force of oars; but the wind
from the west, which came from the channel, distances us from it. We then wished to direct ourselves to Dragonneau: the wind from
the north opposes us from it. We took the part of going towards Ithaca: the wind from the northwest constantly prevents us from
approaching it. In this manner we fought the wind until the night. As it falls then, we profited from the calm to reach the port of Lia
by oar, situated at the easternmost part of Ithaca: it was eleven hours [of the evening] when we were able to set anchor.
The port [of Lia] is narrow, a little sinuous, very deep, open to the east and northeast, but secure enough for the weather,
even for the largest vessels. The coast is high, calcarious, entirely covered with brush; it was uncultivated, although it was suitable
everywhere for the growing of vines and olives.

Lia or Ligia is the veritable name of the small isle which our marine chart calls Parapigadi. By virtue of an
entrance from the coast and of the presence of the islet, Port Ligia offers a shelter, if not very secure and permanent, at
least satisfying and temporary, to the boats which cannot reach the true refuge of Ithaca on the east coast, Port Vathy. It is
here that Gell, coming from Patras, was obliged to debark. Port Ligia is on the southeast coast of the isle. We discover it
when, the southern coast having been cruised and point Ignanni or Hagios Ioannis having been rounded, we again take the
route toward the north. Port Ligia offers to the coasters some spacious enough beaches, between the projecting rocks
which the work of the waves sharpens at the foot of the hills. The fragrant bushes, cystes, brush and thymes, always clothe
the slopes. But, at the foot of Port Ligia, the rocky gully of a torrent falls in cascades. A high cliff of steep rocks supports
a plateau of large trees in the sky. It is in the gully of the torrent, at midslope, that the fountain of Parapigadi wells, whose
name the sailors have transported to the islet Ligia.
With reason, I believe, Gell and the “orthodox” Homerics recognize in this cliff the Stone of the Crow, and in the
fountain the spring Arethuse. On the perimeter of the isle one will vainly seek another Cut Stone. All along the channel,
we have folled the bank, more or less straight, but never steep, which form the insular coast. To the south, we have found
the same view of rocky, stony, coasts, but without cliffs cut to a peak. To the east, one again sees the same projecting
points where, from level to level, by an uninterrupted slope, the high mountains of the interior descend toward the sea.
High rocks never overhang the waves. The limestones, cut and whitened by the surf encircle the entire isle at the level of
or a few meters above the shore. But no part of the coast offers a wall of stone to the view of the navigators - except at the
foot of Port Ligia. In continuing the periple of Ithaca toward the north, we would follow the same observations. Nowhere
did the sailor perceive a vertical cliff, a steep rock, a Cut Rock. Around the gulfs rise hills in almost regular domes, long
points or very straight banks, strewn with brush and round stones. Between the points, the domes and the banks, some
creeks sink in toward sandy beaches: small verdant valleys penetrate toward the interior; the olives climb in terraces and
gentle slopes up to the summit of the hills. The descriptions of the Nautical Instructions agree with the photographs:
“Coasts rocky, sharp, elevated, irregular, steep above deep waters... remarkable round hills... low hills, circular hills” are
the words which alternate in the Instructions to describe the shores of Ithaca. The first view which our sailors, coming
from the northwest, perceive at point Oxoi, to the north of the isle, will be followed for the entire circumference: “Point
Oxoi, three miles to the north of Port Polis, forms the north entrance of the channel of Ithaca. It is high and steep. When

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one finds it in the west, one found it in front of the land of cape Vlioti of Cephalonia, which is much less elevated, under
the aspect of a large round hill.” The navigators coming from the south perceived, inversely, the coast of Cephalonia
before the shore of Ithaca “which is much less elevated”; but their view of the coasts is entirely similar. Even in the places
where the Instructions speak to us of steep shores, it still is just round hills, domes or sloped banks. Only the rock of Ligia
is truly a vertical Stone, a façade of rock resembling the White Stone which ends the isle of Leucadia farther to the north.
the navigators of all the epochs continue to note the Stone. Below it, the islet of Ligia offered, especially to the primitive
boats, a very useful shelter, and the spring of Parapigadi, an appreciable water source in the regions poorly supplied with
fountains. Besides the water source, near the constant spring, the navigators were assured to find shepherds, provisions
and meat: they should have climbed here, as Ulysses climbs to the Cyclops. Gell, debarking on the shore, reaches the
Arethuse fountain through the ravine. One can recognize the fountain, from the sea, by the higher and more intense
verdure of the bushes which surround it.
Between Port Ligia and Port Vathy, the coast of Ithaca is still stony; but it can be cultivated, planted with vines
and olives, if the islanders, given to navigation, did not abandon the herds of goats. Everywhere man has been truly
willing to clear, it bears fertile olove groves today. The work of clearing barely extends beyond the suburbs of Port Vathy.
Nevertheless the olives reach the open sea across a narrow isthmus, to the foot of the small cove of Karelata, which could
have been a subport to Port Vathy on the open sea. Everywhere else, the round hills, the carved coves and the sharp points
are only overgrown with a very low scrub, where only goats finds their nourisment today. Before the deforestation, which
transforms all the Greek lands, we imagine without difficulty the primitive forest, covering the shore and nourishing the
pigs of Eumeus.
The gulf of Molo finally opens its large circle of high lands before us, which presents the same teeth of sharpened
rocks to the wave all around. Only the shores of the south can offer some refuges, either in their open bay of Skino, or in
their closed circle of Deep Port, Port Vathy.
Between point Skino and point Nera (fig. 99)*, the bay Skino opens in the rocks. It offers only rocky shores. The
two coves Skino and Neios, which terminate it at the foot, have only a short shore which allows the unloading and
loading of caïques anchored in the bay to embarkations. The sailing boats come here when the heavy weather prevents
them from threading the inlet of Port Vathy, or when they have some passengers aboard wishing to avoid the traverse.
From the foot of the bay, a route leads rapidly to Port Vathy. Gell, reëntering from visiting the north of the isle, and not
being able to fight the gusts of Neriton because of the poor sails of his boat, came to debark here and reaches the town
afoot. Skino is not a harbor, but barely a temporary anchorage.
As for Port Vathy, the Deep Port corresponds trait for trait with the descriptions which the Nautical Instructions
gave us above. But visibly it is also only the Odyssian port of Phorkys.
To the right, in entering, the small foreport of Dexia hollows itself - αυτην έχων δεξιαν κατάγου, the periple said.
The small isle of Katzurbo protects it a little from the swell. But it remains open to all the breezes from the open and to
the gusts from the land. Between the two long projecting penisulas, we penetrate into the rocky inlet. Some windmills and
some olives mark the passage to the right and left. In the middle of the port, the small island of the quarantine as the mark
and as the limit of the secure anchorage, ‘ότ’ αν ‘ ‘όρμου μέτρον ‘ίχωνται. Beyond the islet, the foot of the bay is
encircled by quais of the new town, whose houses, from year to year, enclose their more complete ring all around the port.
The sailing boats today come to draw alongside the quais: on the calm water, without a swell, without a ripple, they rest
immobile. Outside, the wind blew from the northwest, a somewhat brisk Zephyr. In the gulf of Molo, the raised surf
gnawed all around the rocks with its foam. Even in the inlet, the lapping swell entered and came to break on the quais of
the quarantine. But in the depth of Port Vathy, all is calm and silent. Here one can only sense the great wind which blows
in the open by the wings of the windmills flowering the hills with their turning sails. Once anchored at the foot of the
well-closed circle, it is with difficulty that we can recognize the exact location of the outlet that we came to pass, such
does the wall of uniform hills surround the harbor with a continuous enclosure.
Port Vathy, present capitol of Ithaca, is a new town, which just succeeds in establishing itself. It is barely a
century since it was just the almost deserted echelle of the high burg of Perachorio. Perched on the slopes of Neriton-

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Merovigli, Perachorio had been founded by the new colonists which Venice brings into the depopulated isle, at the
beginning of the XVIth century. For, on the maritime route of all the crusaders, pirates and corsairs, under the hand of all
the brigands, Janissaries and estradiots from the mainland, Ithaca had been completely deserted during the middle ages.
In 1504, the republic decides that its lands would be distributed to the colonists who would wish to stay there. Islanders
from Leucadia and landsmen from Acarnania will come to estabish themselves there. For the convenience and the
security of daily life, the peasants will construct their villages within reach of the cultivable fields, but far from the sea,
out of the reach of the incursions, raids and sudden debarkations, near the “day lookouts”, the meroviglia, from which
their sentinels survey the suspicious ships. Owners of the fertile valley which makes the foot of Port Vathy, the people of
Perachorio had perched their village under the ridge rocks of Neriton, at the very top of the sloped banks. Their village
will prosper by virtue of the fields of cereals, of vines and olives of the lowlands, and of the goats of the mountain.

Almost all of Ithaca is composed only of bare and rugged mountains. On the entire west coast, along the channel of
Viscardo, one sees no traces of cultures or habitation... Nevertheless, not only does the small quantity of grain which they harvest
[on the isle] suffice for the consumption of its inhabitants, but they even export a little to Caphalonia and Zante, where they prefer it
to that from Morea. Ithaca produces about 4 million pounds of grapes of Corinth yearly: the grapes, a little oil and some good wine
are what its commerce consists of, and provide for the purchase of [large] livestock, for the isle posesses none, and obtains them
from Morea.

Port Vathy became the great port of call of the islanders for their relations with Morea: leaving from Missolonghi
or Patras, the sailing boats came to the closest and most secure bay. Since Morea remained under the power of the Turks,
the commerce drew more pirates and brigands than honest merchants. The bay even became a refuge attracting the
buccaneers of the sea. It is here that Catherine the Great sends her general Tamara to direct the operations of Lambro
Kasdoni and of his emulators at the end of the XVIIIth century. But from the day when the peace and civilization will be
reëstablished in the Levantine waters; from the day when Morea, returned to the hands of the Greeks, became the market
more and more frequented by the Ionians; especially from the day when the great port of western Morea, Patras, became
the center of transactions, the Ithacans will go there to bring the raisins, which made all their wealth, and to meet the
English brokers, who furnished them, in exchange, all the European products. The rôle of Port Vathy quickly increases.
The new capitol of Ithaca is installed in the Deep Port facing the seas of Patras and the Hellenic lands - exacly as in
another isle the new capitol of Samos, Vathy, came to be installed in a similar Deep Port, facing the Hellenized plains of
Anatolia and on the route of the Smyrniot vessels. The comparison between Ithaca and Samos is instructive: in one and in
the other, the antique capitol of the two isles had been installed on the strait, for the convenience of the international
transit; the modern capitols were transported to the open sea, in a deep port, for the exploitation of the cultivable fields
and for the service of the insular traffic.
The Port Vathy of Ithaca captured all its importance in the times of the English domination. When the foreign
thalassocrats will take the government of the island in hand, their presence and their lessons will set up the natives for
maritime interprises. In the pay or company of the English, the crews of the vessels of Ithaca will frequent all the ports of
the Levant. Already their relations with trieste and Odessa had led them into the far regions of the Mediterranian. But,
with the English, the people of Ithaca will take up the road of the other hemisphere. Today they go to Australia and the
Transvaal to seek fortune. Sydney and the Cape have no more secrets than Thebes of Egypt or Sidon had for Ulysses.
Their chiefs know English. All of them learn some words of it in their distant “absences”. To enrich themselves, they
leave and stay far from their Penelopes for ten and twenty years. Rich, they come back to the land and seek to acclimate
the civilization and the mores of the thalassocracies there. By the cleanliness of its squares and its streets, by the
stylishness and size of its houses, Port Vathy distinguishes itself from St. Maura at the first glance. Port Vathy is a small
European town; St. Maura is always just a Levantine village. In the square of Port Vathy, a bust of sir Th. Maitland, the
first English governor of the Ionian isle, testifies to the recognition of the islanders toward the foreign thalassocracies.

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 During the four days that we stay at Port Vathy, everything confirms the first impression. After the vermin, the
sualor and barbarity of St. Maura, Ithaca delights and comforts. We have passed four hapy days in the clean, healthy,
fresh town, where the fever is never to be feared, where the breezes of the sea temper the winters and the summers, where
the people of Patras and Missolonghi come to pass the hot season. Ithaca offers to the landsmen the summer sanitorium
which the sill too savage mountains of Etolia or Arcadia cannot give them. Ithaca is always the “good nourisher of
pallikares”, αγαθη κουροτρόφος, of the Homeric poet.
Our first visit is for the Grotto of the Nymphs. A little to the west of Port Vathy, beyond the road which circles the
bay, εκτος ‘οδου, not far from the windmills which, on the top of the hills, replace the great olive tree of the Odyssian
periple for the our present sailors, we go to the grotto:

αυταρ επι κρατος λιμένος τανύφθλλος ελαίν

αγχόθι δ’ αυτης άντρος επήρατον ηεροειδές
‘ιρον Νυμφάων, α‘ι Νηιάδες καλέονται.

On our charts - as in the text of the poem - all the details of the site appear very close to each other. In the reality,
the distance appears much greater - the path from the port to the grotto being very steep. It takes a half hour of walking to
scale the hills, climb to the windmills, then come back down to the grotto, whose very narrow entrance would be, without
a guide, impossible to find. Here it is before us. Each verse of the Odyssey applies itself to some detail of the real site. The
door of the cavern, which opens itself to the descent of humans, is turned toward the north:

α‘ι μεν προς Βορέαο καταιβαται ανθρώποισιν.

The door is of a triangular form and of such restricted dimensions - 1.2 meters in height, 60 centimeters in width -
that a man of medium corpulance does not slip through without effort. A large stone would suffice to obstruct it and, in
the field of rocks which covers the entire slope of the hill, the entrance would become indiscoverable: the grotto thus
would be an excellent hiding place for leaving provisions and treasures. The wise Athena has him transport the gifts of the
Pheacians here:

αλλα χρήματα μεν μυχω άντρου θεσπεσίοιο

θείομεν αυτίκα νυν, ‘ίνα περ τάδε τοι σόα μίμνη.

Ulysses then blocks the entrance by rolling a rock there:

και τα μεν ευ κατέθηκε, λίθον δ’ επέθηκε θύρησιν.

We descend into the grotto by a slippery slope of slimy ground and wet rocks: it is the “descent” of the mortals,
καταιβαται ανθρώποισιν. In the interior, a large conical room is today lighted by a round hole which pierces the summit
of the vault and lets the light of the sun penetrate. The hole did not exist in the time of Ulysses: the grotto was dark,
ηεροειδές, lighted only by the “door of the men”. But to produce the hole, it has sufficed to displace a few rocks from the
flank of the hill, for the summit of the vault almost reaches the level of the rocky soil. The floor of the room is piled with
wet pebbles, sticky mud and broken stalactites. The walls are covered with seeping waters, which should have been still
more abundant in Odyssian times, when the forests of Neriton covered them all around, εν δ’ ‘ύδατ’ αιενάοντα. Ιν
σταλαψτιτεσ, ιν φλοςσ οφ ςηιτε ηονευ,

... ένθα δ’ έπειτα τιθαιβώσσουσι μέλισσα

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in projections, basins and fonts,

εν δε κρητηρές τε και αμφιφορηες έασιν

λάινοι,

and long parallel threads, separated or joined, in folded or straight sheets,

εν δ’ ‘ιστοι λίθεοι περιμήκεες, ένθα τε Νύμφαι

φάρε’ ‘υφαίνουσιν ‘αλιπόρφυρα,

the calcarious deposits have clothed the walls with their marvelous embroideries,

... θαυμα ιδέσθαι,

veritable works of the nymphs, which they call Naiads - I would say: of the flowing and seeping waters. The hammers of
the shepherds and the tourists have wrecked the white lace and piled the ground with blocks and tangled threads. At the
depth of the grotto, toward the south, a recess ends in a narrow fissure, “the divine doorway, where the mortals cannot
penetrate, but which is the road of the gods”,

α‘ι δ’ αυ προς Νότου εισι θεώτεραι. ουδέ τι κείνη

άνδρες εσέρχονται. αλλ’ αθανάτων ‘οδός εστιν.

Outside, among the fallen rocks, the flank of the stony slope is covered with mosses. On the summit, the olives
spread their great trees. We have seated ourselves in the shade of an old olive, perhaps in the place where, so tenderly,
Ulysses was comforted and counseled by Athena: “I cannot leave you in your unhappiness; you are too capable, too
sensible, too valient”. The pretty speech of a Greek god, who loves neither weakness of heart nor simplicity of spirit! And
here, on the slope of the rocky Ithaca, the valiant and intelligent goddess well appears in her place! To obtain anything
from that hard and stony land, ingenuity and cunning are needed. To enter the Deep Port which opens itself under our
feet, audacity and cleverness are needed. Ulysses is truly the son of that land, where our gods do not have their place.
Here the liberated Greece should some day again raise the great olive of Athena.
Under our feet, the Deep Port sinks in among the rocks of the pass. The two sides of the narrow inlet appear to
almost meet. The port, without any ripple other than the wake of a small steamer, sleeps like an alpine lake at the foot of
high mountains. The Odyssian periple said very exactly to the poet that the olive of Athena was beyond the road, εκτος
‘οδόυ, not on the shore where the navigators debark and where the Pheacians leave the hero,

καδ δ’ άρ’ επι ψαμάθω εθασαν δεδμημένον ‘ύπνω,

but at a distance from the passers-by:

εκτος ‘οδου, μη τώ τις ‘οδιτάων ανθρώπων,

πριν Οδυση έγρεσθαι, επελθων δηλήσαιτο.

On site, we measure the distance exactly: in the text of the poet, it appears only as to the reader attentive and
accustomed to the Odyssian turns of phrase. Nevertheless they would have accused the poet of fault. We need to recall the
similar examples which we have encountered in each of the episodes of the Nostos. What he does with Calypso, Circe, the
Lestrygons, the Isle of the Sun or of Asteris and the Twin Ports, the Odyssian descriptions resemble each other in a literal

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precision, on the one hand, and in a sort of topographic inexactitude, on the other. They are precise in the complete
enumeration of all the characteristic details of a site. They appear inexact to us by the too intimate juxtaposition of the
different details. They lack in the depiction the true intervals which exist in the reality. All the episodes of the Nostos
resemble each other in this point. But we should not attribute these slight errors to the imagination of the poet. The only
cause, always the same, leaps at the eyes of the reader of periples and of Instructions. For the texts, scientifically precise,
always lack a little exactitude simply by the fact that, enumerating all the details of a coast or a harbor item by item in a
series, they group the details, in the understanding of the reader, more closely than the reality would have them. Not
comparing the Homeric description to some text of a periple, Gell and a number of moderns have sought another cavern
of Nymphs very close to the sea. Gell believes himself to have discovered the veritable grotto on the beach itself of the
bay Dexia, and made of that bay the Port of Phorkys. We have already seen that that minuscule and too open bay is not a
port, properly speaking: the periples and Instructions have never given it that name [of bay]; the navigators have long
failed to indicate it as a large echelle on their charts; still today, our Instructions enumerate three ports in the gulf of
Molo, Ex-Aito, Skino and Port Vathy, but see in Dexia only a fore-port of Vathy.
Near Port Vathy, the bay Dexia opens itself before us. A large valley descends there from the Grotto. Across the
fields and vines of the valley, we again reach the sea. On the shore of the bay of Dexia, they still show the ruins of a
building inserted under the rock, and vaguely resembling a semi-artificial grotto. It is there that Gell saw the cavern of the
Nymphs. Without an experienced guide, he did not know how to discover the opening of the veritable grotto - : “a guide
is needed to point out the opening, for it is very narrow and entirely hidden in the rocks”.
A fine marine rain has brought us back to the hotel of Vathy more quickly than we would have wished. Then a
“squall” [grain] followed, violent but brief. The Instructions tell us that in these waters “the storms are frequent,
especially around the equinoxes; one should then watch for heavy squalls falling from the hills and mountains”. Most of
the voyagers to the Ionian isles note the rains which the Adriatic and the winds from the northwest, the Zephyrs, bring
with frequency. They make for the western islands a very different climate from the other Greek lands. Ulysses with
Eumeus will endure one of the storms:

νυξ δ’ άρ’ έπηλθε κακη σκοτομήνιος. υε δ’ άρα Ζευς

πάννυχος. αυταρ άν Ζέφυρος μέγας, αιεν έφυδρος.

The rains maintain a wetness in the soil of rocky Ithaca from which the great trees of the forests formerly profited,
and from which the olives and vines profit today.

After a night of storm, of gusts and heavy rain, a radiant dawn rises behind the hills, and bit by bit fills the bay and
the valley of Port Vathy with its tender radiance. The day appears. The vertical cliffs, which crenelate the summit of
Neriton-Merovigli are lit, then the high village of Perachorio, then the slopes of vines and olives. One by one, the lanes of
Vathy are filled with light; “when all the streets are full of sun”, we set ourselves en route toward the Stone of the Crow
and the Spring Arethuse.
The houses of Port Vathy are just a thin ring around the bay. the vines and the olives begin at a few steps from the
quai, The foot of the circle is a large garden where, revived by the nocturnal rain, the spring verdure shines on the dark
red of the ferruginous soil. The rich people of Port Vathy posess the enclosure of cleared rocks. On the slopes of the hills
which close the bay toward the south, the white chalk of the walls and the small chapels, among the fig trees, near the
large motionless cypresses, give to the entire country a neat air of a miniature, and the winding route, whose turns climb
across the trees, resemble the pretty streets, very neat and well-designed, which the painters of Tuscany have zigzag in the
depth of their talbleaus.
Everything in the gay land breaths ease. The well-maintained plots are properties of luxury as much as of yield.
The orange trees in flower scent the valley. The fruits are beginning to appear on the branches of the almonds. Enriched
by the commerce and the navigation, the people of Port Vathy, place their pride in their gardens, which Alkinoös might

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admire, and their piety in their chapels, where each wishes to have his personal saint: they offer them, no longer rich
hecatombs - the Ithacans no longer have the generous piety of Ulysses - but candles and smoke of incense.
From plots with chapels, the route gains the summit of the hills, then winds up the cliffs of Merovigli to reach the
plateau of Marathia. But we leave the route in order to go to the spring Arethuse, whose ravine with cascades of rock falls
from the top of the cliffs to the sea. Goodbye to the easy route, to the olives and the tidy orchards! Here is the rocky path,
across the brush, on the flank of the hills, which Ulysses followed, to climb up to Eumeus:

αυταρ ‘ο εκ λιμένος προσέβη τρηχειαν αταρπον

χωρον αν’ ‘υλήντα δι’ άκριας.

The heights, blown by the breaths from the open, today are topped with windmills. This morning, the Borea
whistles and howls under the great clear sky. The forests of the past have disappeared. Some herds of goats parade their
bells across the thickets of cysts and carob trees. From the summit of the hills, nothing closes the view of the sea, which
extends up to the far mountains of Leucadia and the isles of the Acheloös. Behind us, the bay of Port Vathy is just an eye
of glistening water, in a circle of olives, which give it verdant “eyebrows”.
Before us, the bosses of the brushy hills alternate with the cuts of the torrents, under the high vertical wall which
supports the plateau of Marathia. In round rumps, all frizzed with bushes, the hills descend to the zone of bare stone,
gnawed by the lapping wave.
The bay and the islet of Ligia spread beneath our feet. Their gilded beaches interrupt the girdle of limestone.
Suddenly, at a turning of rock, the ravine of Arethuse appears. From the top of Marathia, three or four enormous steps of
rocks cascade in cliffs down to the shore. The step from the summit is the steepest and highest. A vertical wall of twenty
or thirty meters, the Stone of the Crow forms a regular semicircle in a cascade, which the breach of a torrent cuts in its
middle. The torrent has water only after the great rains of winter. Falling from the Crow, it crosses a slope of brush, which
leads it to a new cascade of bare rocks. Less vertical and less elevated, the new wall is hollowed into a sort of grotto, in
which wells Arethuse. The grotto, or particularly the niche, contains a full basin of “black water”, μέλαν ‘ύδωρ, which
collects the incessant drops falling from the vault, and the thin streams coursing the walls.
The natural cistern should have been formerly doubled by a reservoir of cut stones, constructed in front of the
rock. The ruins remain. before the foundation of Port Vathy, the sailors frequented the watering place: from Port Ligia,
across the rocks in a stairway, a path led them here. It is from there that Gell, dabarking at Port Ligia, begins the
exploration of the isle. Leake also came to debark at Port Ligia to visit Arethuse. The name itself of Arethuse should come
from the sea, brought by foreigners. The name, which presents no signification in Greek, was retained by the Hellenes at
three or four maritime watering places. We have encountered the most celebrated of the Arethuses at the bottom of the
Stone of the Gulls, which the Phoenicians will name Sur-ha-Kussim: the Hellenes have derived Syriacuse, Σουρακουσσαι,
from it. Near the Stone of the Crow, the Odyssian Arethuse is in an entirely similar situation. But no doublet has
remained, permitting us to retrieve the veritable meaning of the Semitic name.
Today, the springs and cisterns of Port Vathy offer more abundant and assured provisions to our large boats. But
Arethuse, which never fails and is never muddy, always remains a point of supply for the islanders. From very far, the
wives of the herdsmen and peasants of Marathia come there to fill their casks. A calcarious plateau, Marathia offers only
a few wells from place to place, quickly drying out in the hot season.
The sheds of Eumeus were above the Spring Arethuse, along the Stone of the Crow:

παρ Κόρακος Πέτρη επί τε Κρήνη Αρεθύση

All the words of the Homeric poet take their true worth here. It is in the brushy slope, which joins the foot of the
Crow to the cliff of Arethuse, under the Crow but above Arethuse, that Eumeus had constucted his sheds, in the well-
projecting place, περισκέπτω ενι χώρω, from where one can survey the debarkations at the port of Ligia. Always famous

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in the times of corsairs, the proximity of a good harbor was dangerous for the herds: twenty stories related earlier have
apprised us of the dangers. The harbor of Ligia with its coastal islet was too convenient and, in the vicinity of the
watering place, the presence of the herds too visible from the sea for the swineherds to sleep in total security. Even the
guard of ferocious dogs did not suffice them. Eumeus had constructed an elevated enclosure, αυλη ‘υψηλη δέδμητο, a sort
of circular wall, very fine and very large, καλή τε μεγάλη τε περίδρομος, made of large stones and crenellated with pines,

‘ρυτοισιν λάεσσι και εθρίγκωσεν αχέρδω,

which a palissade of close-set stakes surrounded outside:

σταυρους δ’ εκτος έλασσε διαμπερες ένθα και ένθα

πυκνους και θαμέας.

In the interior of the bastion, twelve sheds could contain six hundred pigs. Each evening, the sows and their piglets
were shut in against the beasts and the cold. The boars ordinarily lay outside, under the guard of dogs “similar to wild
beasts”. But at the least alarm, all the herd and the swineherds, taking refuge in the enclosure, could withstand an attack,
and even a siege, behind the rampart. A single door opened at the end of a narrow corridor, πρόδρομος, which could be
defended by the dogs and the swineherds.
The people of the sea knew, and their periples described, above Port Ligia and Arethuse, the encampment of the
swineherds, where they were sure to find supplies, and even hospitality. Such a Greek periple describes to us a mountain,
entirely similar, with vertical cliffs of the summit, όρος κατα μεν την κορυφην πετρας αποτομάδας έχον και τοισ ‘ύψεσι
καταπληκτικάς, with the ravines falling to the sea and the grottos at the bottom, ‘υπο δε τας ‘ρίζας σπιλάδας οξείας και
πυκνας ενθαλάττους και κατόπιν αυτων φάραγγας ‘υποβεβρωμένας και σκολιάς... , and the natives hospitable to the
extreme, ο‘ι δε τον τόπον οικουντες φιλόξενοι εις ‘υπερβολήν. The sailors came to Eumeus to buy small pigs to roast.
They payed in manufactures, in dyed cowhides, like those from which Eumeus made sandals:

τάμνον δέρμα βόειον ευχροές.

In the Greek bazaars, we still see the fine red or yellow hides today, from which the modern Greeks cut their
slippers with pompoms. Sometimes, the people of the sea payed in slaves. Eumeus has, with his denarii, bought
Mesaulios, who serves at his table, from the Taphians:

παρ δ’ άρα μιν Ταφίων πρίατο κτεάτεσσιν ‘εοισιν.

As for those shipwrecked, fugitives and beggars, they pay in stories from distant lands, in news, true or false, from
the surrounding isles. Eumeus knew the talkers: “I no longer find pleasure in the questions and exchanges of news, since
an Etolian hoaxed me with his stories. Having killed his master, he had wandered in many lands; he finally came to my
encampment; I welcome him:

ήλυθ’ εμον προς σταθμόν. εγω δέ μιν αμφαγάπαζον.

He only gave me lies.” But Ulysses protests: “If I lie, have me thrown by your men from the top of the Great
Stone, so that another beggar will hesitate to trick you”:

δμωας επισσεύας βαλέειν Μεγάλης κατα Πέτρης

όφρα και άλλος πτωχος αλεύεται ηπεροπεύειν.

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 Above the sheds, the great Stone of the Crow raises its vertical wall, all pierced with grottos and shelters under the
rock. Eumeus, giving his bed to the beggar, Ulysses, went to sleep outside, near the pigs; but the night is rainy and the
gusts of the Borea do not allow sleeping in the open air; Eumeus installs himself under the hollow rock, where the pigs
have taken shelter:

βη δ’ ίμεναι κείων ‘όθι περ σ΄θες αργιόδοντες

πέτρη ‘υπο γλαφυρη ευδον Βορέω ‘υπ’ ιωγη.

Eumeus has truly had need to take his arms, sword and lance, to defend himself at the same time from dogs and
men:

ε‘ίλετο δ’ οξύν άκοντα, κυνων αλκτηρα και ανδρων.

During the Cretan insurrection (1897), in the mountains of Lakkous and Lassithi - Crete is still a nourisher of pigs,
σύβοτος, entirely similar to Odyssian Ithaca - I knew the life and the hospitality of the guardians of swine, their feasts of
roast pork, their grilled meat sprinkled with flour and served right on the skewer,

θέρμ’ αυτοις οβελοισιν. ‘ο δ’ άλφιτα λευκα πάλυνεν,

and the nights in the huts, on the bench of stone and the mattress of brush, which a wool blanket, a fresh fleece or a
cowhide rendered softer:

χευνεν ‘ύπο χλωρας ‘ρωπας και κωας ‘ύπερθεν.

All the details of the Odyssian description correspond to the realities still present.
Under the shelter of the rock, we ourselves have had to wait some time, to allow a wave which rose from the sea
to break. Then, rounding the Crow by a straight slope of brush and bushes, along a path in stairs, which the women of
Marathia descend to fill their casks at the spring Arethuse, we have reached the edge of the cliffs and the plateau of
Marathia.
On the cliff of the Crow, Marathia is a great calcarious table of blued rocks and reddened earth, where old olive
trees alternate with plots of vines and cereals. The wheat, the vine stocks and the large trees grow here with vigor. The
Odyssian forest covered the table. The herds of pigs could wander there and seek their nourishment in half-liberty. Today
the table is cultivated but not inhabited. During the sowings or harvests, the people of Port Vathy or of Perachorio come
there to camp under the huts of branches, near a few meager wells. A village would find subsistance here: Arethuse would
furnish its water. Some day, the temporary encampments will establish themselves to stay. Very near Arethuse, a hamlet
takes the ancient place of the sheds of Eumeus. But the plateau is habitable only when the sea is peaceful. In the times of
the corsairs and pirates, the place is not of a convenient defense. The Stone of the Crow offers it a secure rampart against
the debarkations of Port Ligia. But it is from Port Andri or St. Andre that, by an easy route, the people of the sea can
climb without warning toward the port St. Andre; in effect, the olives and vines descend in a very narrow corridor, but
without steepness, which comes to end at the shore of the coast, at the very foot of the port. Here is the route which
Telemachus followed to climb to Eumeus, in leaving his boat.
The route, from the foot of Port St. Andre up to the edge of the plateau, borrows a stony defile between two rocky
hills. The defile is narrow, but without steepness. A half-hour of travel by a pedestrian should be reckoned. Furthermore,
mules pass without difficulty. At the foot of Port St. Andre, the sailors find a fine beach of pebbles, of gravels and sands.
which gently sinks into the water, so that at fifteen or twenty meters from the beach the depth is barely a meter. Some

569
houses around a well and some young olive trees animate the foot of the port somewhat. The promontories of the outlet
and, far to the south, the mountains of Cephalonia, shelter the harbor. On the beach, the people of Telemachus push their
boats and come to take foot:

... την δ’ εις ‘όρμον προέρεσσαν επετμοις

εκ δε και αυτοι βαινον επι ‘ρηγηινι θαλάσσης.

At the watering place, they come to prepare the evening meal and mix the black wine:

δειπνον τ’ εντύνοντο κέρωντό τε αίθοπα οινον.

Then Telemachus, having fastened his fine sandals, climbed the slope of pebbles and rocks. The two slopes of the
passage are beginning to be cleared today. Some olives border the road. Small terraces support some vines and some
furrows of cereals. A white house has already been built. A hamlet will be able to install itself not far from the repository
of the sailors. On all the perimeter of the Greek coasts, for thirty or forty years, it is the same descent of cultivation and
the small farms down to the edge of the sea formerly infested by the corsairs: Around Attica, one could make curious
studies on the subject. It is probable that in the times of Telemachus the forest and the pigs of Eumeus will already fill the
corridor. The hero had taken his lance to defend himself from the dogs and to serve him as a cane. “His feet bore him in
the rapid climb toward the sheds”,

τον δ’ ωκα προβιβάντα πόδες φέρον, όφρ’ ‘ίκετ’ αυλήν.

A final bend of the path in the very widened corridor finally leads him to the edge of the plateau.
Gell admirably describes all the region of Odyssian Ithaca. On location, I have verified the smallest details of his
account. Word for word, I have been able to satisfy myself in translating it. From Port Ligia, Gell climbed to the fountain
by the passage of the cascade: we proceeded up a very rugged path towards the precipice, till we arrived at a spot where
the strata of the rocks, disposed in steps, present a curious and singular natural descent to a fountain called Pegada or
the “well”. frequented by the shepherds of the vicinity; a stream rushes, in the winter, from the mountain above, having
precipitated itself from the rock. Then Gell visited the “uncovered place”, the brushy esplanade which dominates the
spring. He saw the shelters under the Stone of the Crow: under the crag we found two caves of considerable extent, the
entrance of one of which, not difficult of access, is seen in the view of front; they are still the resort of sheep and goats. At
the summit of the Crow, a herdsman watched the ascent of the strangers and Gell, who lived from plain piracy,
appreciates better than even we the utility of the lookout. In his times, the Ithacans barely begin to dwell around Port
Vathy. Their principal village of the south was always perched on Perachorio. The pirates of the Echinades harassed
them, as the Taphians formerly harassed the islanders of the Odyssey.
Gell tells us with reason: Convenience, as well as safety, seems to have pointed out the lofty situation of
Amarathia as a fit place for the residence of the herdsmen of this part of the island from the earliest ages. a small source
of water is a treasure in these climates, and if the inhabitants of Ithaka now select a rugged and elevated spot to secure
them from the robbers of the Echinades, it is to be recollected that the Taphian pirates were not less formidable and that
a residence in a solitary part of the island, far from the fortress and close to a celebrated fountain, must at all times have
been dangerous without some such security as the rock of Korax.
In the times of Gell - it is his traveling companion, Dodwell, who relates it to us - the rock of the Crow bore the
mark of the foreign thalassocrats. The French, conquerors of the Venetian isles, had covered the rocks with their
revolutionary inscriptions: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” - “Live the Republic!” From all times, the thalassocrats should
have known and pointed out the characteristic rock above the watering place. Here again, our Homeric poet only
reproduces an exact description of the people of the sea, who frequented the slippery lookouts of the rocky hills,

570
 ... επει η φάτ’ αρισφαλέ έμμεναι ουδόν.

On the stones polished by the foot of herds and the sandal of the herdsman, across the very low bank, all sticky
with resin and balsamic exudations, we have come back to the route from Port Vathy. It is the road which Ulysses and
the swineherd take, when they go to the other end of Ithaca, to the Odyssian town. The present fine route at that time was
just a difficult path: Ulysses had need of a solid cane not to stumble on the stones.
We come back to the herdsmen, to the chapels, to the white compounds of the suburb of Port Vathy. At the foot of
the circle, where the sun concentrates its rays, the bay and the town slumber under the burning midday. Nothing should
equal, it appears, the tranquiul happiness of the little community, in the smiling valley, at the edge of the tepid gulf. And
nevertheless, what rivalries and battles! A hundred fifty years ago, Bellin, in his Description of the Gulf of Venise, wrote,
a propos of Cephalonia:

The people are poor. Almost all the land is posessed by some rich inhabitants, with the result that every year four or five
thousand peasants go to cultivate the land of Morea, although belonging to the Turks, and bring back money; they are almost all
libertines, bandits and armed. Four or five of the most powerfrul of the isle maintain the greatest part of their soldiers to make a war
among themselves which never ends at all, and which is maintained more by their mutual hatred and jealosy than by ambition: by
this means, they are rendered extremely unhappy and poor, although [the peasants] give up to eighty thousand livres of rent to the
principal chiefs.

Ithaca, then almost deserted, did not know the internal wars. The maritime commerce begins to enrich it at the
ending of the XVIIIth century. It had as a primary effect the leading to an even greater agreement: the inhabitants will
form small societies of navigation. It also leads to a devaluation of the price of lands, which noöne wants any more, all
hands going to the cultivation of the “wet fields”. In the times of Gell,

... the number of the sailors and vessels has lowered the value of the lands with the number of the cultivators. Nevertheless,
since the French occupation of Naples and the ruin of the Neopolitan commerce, the Italian sailors have come to take service on the
boats of Ithaca. In some years, the lack of hands will be made to be felt less. Some authors, supposing that Homer was originally
from Ithaca, think that he introduces such terrifying expressions and such a repelling depiction of the miseries and dangers of the
sailor just for the sole purpose of combatting the irresistable taste for things of the sea in his compatriots. They have returned to their
penchant. Down to the shepherds and goatherds of the mountains, everyone wants to quit their ordinary work; it is with a strange
enthusiasm that they enter into the merchant marine.

From the schooling of the people of Trieste, then in the company of the Neopoloitans (the Pheacians of Ulysses
came from Kumë), then under the banner of all the thalassocrats, Russian, French and English, the people of Ithaca of the
XIXth century were enriched. Some families of shipowners took the lead. Each one is made a party. Politics replaced war.
But, between Petalas and Karavias, the battle for preëminence has been no less heated.
Even today, the arrival of M. the Prefect of Leucadia sets all the intrigues in play. On his small warship, with
surgeon general of the army, who carries a large saber of gold, M. the Prefect has come from St. Maura in a tour of
revision. Everyone is forced to avoid, for himself, for his sons, and for his clients, the ruinous and wearying service of the
king. Already in the times of Agamemnon, the islanders did not go into the army with enthusiasm: Ulysses counterfeited
madness to have a cause for exemption. M. the Prefect is surrounded by Ulysses ingenious enough to defraud the
recruiters of the king George. Almost all of the conscripts, furthermore, are absent, departed for years already, in England,
in America, in the Cape, in Australia. In the square of cafes, where the boats moor at the edge of the small quai, a casual
friend explains the distant excursions - the poet would say: αποδημία - to us in detail.
It was Trieste at first, then Odessa and Romania that will attract them: they make the commerce of wheats in the
Black Sea. But the english domination over the Ionian isles quickly turns them toward the Anglo-Saxon lands. From
Ithaca to Corfu, from Corfu to Malta, from Malta to London, they went to England where, merchants in sponges, in

571
raisins, in oil or coral, they have installed their business as commissioners in the city and on the squares of Liverpool and
Manchester. Exchanging their Greek products for the English manufactures, fabrics, instruments, hardware and furniture.
they have reëstablished with the present thalassocrats the relations of commerce which Ulysses, in Achaean times, had
with the thalassocrats of Sidon. Then, from London, they will pass on the English vessels into the English trading posts of
America or in the English colonies of the other hemisphere; similarly, the Cretan of Ulysses passed from Sidon to the
Phoenician trading posts of Egypt or into the Phoenician colonies of Libya and of the other Occidental world.
Today, the people of Morea and particularly the people of Sparta making a too rough competition in America, it is
especially in Australia and South Africa that the islanders go to market their labor. There, they do all the small urban jobs,
for they always remain “animals of the town”, πολιτικα ζωα. The work of the fields is not to their taste. They arrrive at
the Cape, at Sydney, at Melbourne without the laest money: a brother, a parent or a friend, already installed, has sent them
the price of passsage and will furnish them on arrival with the costs of first establishment. Mininal costs: they have need
only of a small stand and some fruits. In selling their pistachios, oranges, almonds and citrons in the streets, they find the
means to live. It requires the sobriety of the eaters of olives to economise a few sous, then a few francs from the pitiful
profits.
Nevertheless, at the end of a year, having reimbursed their voyage and their grubstake, they find themselves in
control of a little capital, which they promptly engage in some speculation. Then, passing the fruit stand to some new
arrival, they buy from someone longer established, who is returning to the country, a small base of sedentary commerce.
They become bakers, restauranteurs, cafetiers. the food services especially agree with them: for eight or ten years, they
remain cooks or delicatessins there, in order to be able to return here and become orators.
They all return - like Ulysses - after eight or ten years: the ones, their fortune made (they are content with little),
establish themselves so as not to leave again; the others, having a small affluence which permits them to marry, seek only
some Penelopes whom they take with them. All of them find the corner of land in the country which they have had
purchased in their absence. For, regularly, they send some money to their family as much to provide for the needs of the
children or elders as for the acre of vines or olives desired for so long. In recent years, the movement to departure has
increased: in 1900, more than five hundred emigrants, between fifteen and twenty years old, have left. The movement of
return is waning: the South African war has suddenly hindered many fortunes, and those who planned on returning today
calculated that the enterprises of M. Chamberlain are going to delay them perhaps five or six years.
Needless to say, the “Australians” returning to the land - in the times of Ulysses, Ithaca had “Egyptians” - by
virtue of their fortune and their illustrious adventures, enjoy a legitimate popularity. They talk in the cafe, and the people
listen to them. They speak at elections, and the people name them administrators of the church or of the commune,
unaffiliated, even deputies. “Having seen the towns and known the spirit of many men”, they introduce the civilazation of
the thalissocrats in their isle. It is to them that Port Vathy owes its cleanliness, its comfortable houses, its lecture hall,
where the Ithacans of today come especially to read the French novels - in Odyssian times, in their megara, they were
interested in stories about Egypt - its “European” hotels and restaurants. The english thalassocrats are no longer masters
of the isle: the English influence and civilization nevertheless endure there. In the times of Ulysses or of Minos, Ithaca or
Crete were similarly independant; but the mores, the ideas, the inventions, the names and the languages of the
thalassocrats still penetrated all the “Aegean” life.
M. the Prefect in white gloves and his doctor with the big gold saber have some difficulty in finding conscripts for
king George: Australia and the Cape, lands of gold, offer too high a pay to the people of Ithaca.

It is not only at Port Vathy that the influence of the “Australians” makes itself felt. They have provided driveable
routes. They have brought two landaus and some chargers. The landaus are affected a little from the long voyage and the
stops they made in many rental places before arriving here. The chargers also give reason to the wise words of
Telemachus: in this rocky isle, they somewhat lack pasture; they have no training field; to run them, the coachman needs
to jump down from his seat and trot at their head...

572
 In the full morning, a couple of the nags take us from Vathy toward Port Polis. We have rounded the Deep Port,
then the bay Dexia, then the foot of the gulf of Molo. At the very edge of the shore bristling with pebbles and fringed with
white stone, we follow the sea which sleeps the calm of morning: not a breath, not a ripple. At the foot of the Gulf of
Molo, the hill of Aetos raises its regular cone, which bears a crown of cyclopian ruins. It is there that the explorers have
long sought the town of Ulysses: the name of Castle of Ulysses still remains to the ruins which Gell, Schliemann and
Partsch have described at length. But they are of a much more recent epoch than our Achaean times: with reason, the
geographers today recognize the classical fortress of Alakomenai there, who defended the insular isthmus at the point
where a very low passage joins the bay of Ex-Aetos on the eastern gulf to the bay of Opiso-Aetos on the strait.
At the bottom of Aetos, the olives extend down to the sea. We leave the ruins of Alalkomenai on our left. In a
brusque climb of switchbacks on cliffs, the route scales and winds around the southwest flank of Neion. The great
mountainous triangle covers the entire center of the island between the gulf of Molo and the bay of Frikais. Above the
gulf of Molo it it falls along a steep bank, overgrown with thymes, cysts, mint and bushes. Our chargers climb with
difficulty. In spite of the morning hour, the heat is already heavy; all breezes having died, an absolute calm reigns over
the sea: It is at a similar hour that, sails furled, the companions of Telemachus rowed toward the port of the Town.
A last turn leads us to the summit of the insular isthmus which plunges, on one side, into the gulf of Molo and, on
the other, into the strait of Cephalonia. We lose the view of the gulf. The strait stretches before us. At two hundred meters
of altitude, on the flank of Neion, the cliff route goes to follow the western shore: a cliff route, barely three meters wide,
supported by stone drywall, without guardrails, and dominating the motionless water from two hundred meters. The same
calm weighs heavily on the waters of the strait. Along Caphalonia, a boat progresses by oar. Up to Port Polis, for six or
seven kilometers, the route follows the flank of the same bank, overhanging the same slides of rock and pebbles, looking
out over the same brushy and deserted slopes, which some terraces and cultivations interrupt only here and there. The
largest of the terraces support a small hamlet, Hagios Ioannis, on their wheat, their vines and their olives, and a somewhat
large village, Levke.
Hagios Ioannis is below the route, at the very edge of the sea, in a small cove of the shore. Its vines climb up to
the route, on the two flanks of a long stony ravine. Its goats graze in the aromatic shrubs up to the top of the mountain.
The entire façade of Ithaca rings with their bleating. There, truly is the land of the goatherd, Melanthios.
Levke is on the route. As its name indicates, it is the village of White Poplar. In the midst of the stones and brush,
a stream of water has created the verdant oasis. From the sea up to the route, Levke steps its scattered houses, its terraces
of olives, its prospering cultivations, its vigorous wheat, its vines and its enormous carob trees, which poplars and cypress
punctuate with their tall trunks. Levke is a large village living without difficulty on its harvests and its gatherings. On the
cliff route,

αλλ’ ‘ότε δη στείχοντες ‘οδον κάτα παιπαλόεσσαν,

Ulysses and the swineherd went to the town. A grove of poplars watered by the spring offered itself to their view:

αμφι δ’ άρ’ αιγείρων ‘υδατοτρεφέον ην άλσος.

The grove surrounded the fountain, where the citizens came to seek water. It was very close to the town:

άστεος εγγυς έσαν και επι κρήνην αμφίκοντο

τυκτην καλλίροον, ‘όθεν ύδρεύοντο πολιται.

Levke is several kilometers from Port Polis. The Homeric fountain was not here at all. The artificial fountain, τυκτή, had
been created by the lords of Ithaca, and the water perhaps came from a distance. But the spring of Levke is in fact too
distant: it would require too long an aqueduct.

573
 On the cliff route, Ulysses and the swineherd also cross the Hill of Hermes, which is somewhat distant from the
town, but from which one can perceive the entrance of the port. It is from there that Eumeus sees the vessel of the suitors
reënter the harbor, loaded with lances and shields:

ήδη ‘υπερ πόλιος ‘όθι θ’ ‘Έρμαιος λόφος εστιν

ηα κιων ‘ότε ηνα θοην ιδόμην κατιουσαν
ες λιμέν ‘ημέτερον.

In leaving the verdures of Levke, the route, always perched high, winds around several rounded hills on the flank
of Neion. The domes of brushy pebbles serve only as open pasture for the goats.
Port Polis appeared under our feet. Its almost regular horseshoe is girdled with long slopes of little steepness,
except for the southeast side, toward the Notos εν νοτίο, by which we arrive. Here, the cliff of the route still overhangs a
very steep bank, whose pebbles cascade into the sea. Up to the hamlet of Stavros, which overlooks the foot of the bay, the
slopes of Neion, steep and rocky, make an inhospitable shore to the sea. But the hamlet of Stavros marks the entrance to a
new land. The horizon appears. The terrain levels a bit. To the north of Stavros, all the northern extremity of Ithaca,
between mount Neion and the hills of Oxoi and Marmaka, is a triple valley, a sort of star with three unequal points, which
descend toward Port Polis, toward Port Frikais and toward the bay of Aphalais. If one excepts the valley of Port Vathy
and the small plateau of Marathia at the other end of the isle, here are the only fields of any extent, the only truly
cultivable lands which Ithaca can offer.
In the valleys of the north, in spite of their rocky appearance, the soil is of an admirable fertility. Under the gravel
at the surface of the ground, a reddish clay, conserving the moisture well, nourishes fine cereals, prospering vines, olive
trees, carob trees, groves of myrtles and almonds. All the stony and verdant plain, bristling with gravel and flowering with
roses, poplar and cypress, already evoked the astonishment of Gell: we were astonished to find vines or currants
flourishing in the greatest luxuriance among loose stones... ; cypresses and gardens among the dwellings give an
agreeable effect to the village... ; the wines of the district are excellent and we were regaled with some of that.
Since the pirates have allowed them to reconquer the slopes, the peasants have cleared all the land. But for a long
time their houses still will distance themselves from the shores and echelles. The high burg of Oxoi or Exoi (Exoge) held
the rôle here of Perachorio in the valley of Port Vathy. Far from the sea, Oxoi was built under a rock, almost at the top of
the northwest hills. Two reasons of convenience and of defense had determined the choice of its emplacement. For the
convenience of the daily life, Oxoi was very close to the watering place. In the flank of a rock springs a fountain “of black
water”, Melanhydros, resembling Arethuse of Marathia. The abundant and clear spring formerly gave birth to the
“current” which descends toward Port Fikais: today, entirely taken by the town or by the fields, Melanhydros no longer
sends water to the Rheithron except during the season of heavy rains. For the defense, Oxoi was planted under a lookout,
as far as possible from Port Frikais and Port Polis, from where the corsairs could threaten it: almost at the extremity of the
isle, Oxoi overhangs from a peak the bay of Aphalis, where the people of the sea are not able to sojourn. Gell tells us with
reason that, in the open bay, circled with precipices, no boat of any type whatever can find a harbor, the bay is notoriously
unsafe for every species of vessel, and the view from the monastery of Archangeli will sufficiently show the difficulty of
getting on shore from a wreck in an enraged sea, dashing against such perpendicular precipices.
In the “high town” of Oxaoi, the grouped peasants have long had their individual fixed dwellings. Nevertheless, in
measure as the cultivations of olives redescended nearer to the sea, some summer hamlets, some kalyvia (huts) were
constructed in the country for the times of harvest. With piracy suppressed, the temporary hamlets became constant
villages little by little. All the land today is covered with the small villages and their dispersed farms. From the lookout of
Oxoi, the habitations today descend down to the echelle of Frikais: Frikais holds in the north of Itaca the rôle of Vathy in
the south. For the same relations of commerce with Patras and Missolonghi, with the Hellenic lands of the Levant, Oxoi,
like Perachorio needs to have its echelle on the eastern coast of the isle, on the open sea, and not on the strait: Port Polis is
deserted.

574
 From Stavros, the driveable route turns its back to Port Polis and descends toward Frikais. It follows or even
borrows the bed of the “current”. It crosses the small terraces of olive trees which come to end above the beach itself. At
the very bottom of a rocky cul-de-sac, the beach of Frikais is populated with some new houses, with stores and cabarets.
The small port is poorly defended from the breezes of the open sea. Some windmills turn at the top of the promontories
and of the very rocks which overlook its short shore.
In the times when the vessels were hauled onto the beach, the shore could have been a sufficient shelter, a refuge
rather than an echelle, a port, not of a capitol, but of a suburb. To render it tenable today for our smaller boats, it was
necessary to construct an artificial mole against the gusts and swells from the open sea. Under the slopes of Neion which
fall very steeply, ‘υπο Νηίω ‘υλήεντι, the perimeter of the bay is made of sharp rocks. Port Frikais has only a few fishing
boats. It serves only for short cruises toward Port Vathy by the locals. By virtue of the route which leads the islanders to
Vathy, It is the Deep Port which today does almost all the business of the isle.
More recently, the northern extremity of Ithaca had another somewhat frequented harbor. To the right of Port
Frikais, toward the high sea, between two points ofr rock, Port Kioni, the echelle of Anoi (or Anoge) had been founded.
At the very top of the overgrown table of Neion, in the small rocky plain which crowns its summit, Anoi had fled far from
the sea. It was the burg of the center of the isle, as Oxoi was the burg of the north of it, and Perachorio of the south. But
without resources other than the pasturage of goats and a few terraces of wheat, Anoi never knew the affluence of the
other insular burgs. Its greater security always made its worth: one does not imagine corsairs sufficiently audacious to
ascend the slopes. Anoi had its echelle at Port Kioni, from when the maritime peace came to be reborn. But the
development and the prosperity of Port Vathy also ruined the commerce of the harbor. It is also toward the Deep Port that
the people of Anoi descend today. A single capitol and a single market suffice for the Ithacans: they always have need of
only one town; the rest of the isle is the “deme”, the country, the suburb of the capitol.
From Port Frikais, leaving the route, we have followed the very bed of the Current to climb again toward the
monastery of the Archangels, whose esplanade rises between the two hills of the north. Our marine charts (of which I give
a reproduction, fig. 97, without correcting anything there) represents the course of the Current with little exactitude: they
have it descend from Neion and flow from south to north. Neion is deeply cut by a gorge oriented in almost that direction.
But it is from Oxoi and from Melanhydros that our Current comes in reality: it descends from west to east, from the
“Black Spring”, to the bay of Frikais. Its bed of gravel is poorly discernable among the olives which invade it, divert it,
and even obstruct it entirely. It is with diffficulty that its trail of rocks and, from place to place, some nooks of oleander
indicate its general slope. All the valley is cleared, populated with farms and vines. Partsch counts eight villages and
2,500 inhabitants in the plain, which certain travelers compare with justice to the prettier corners of the Provençal or
Genoese Riviera. Under the shade of the olive and carob trees extend the plots of vines and the small gardens of cereals.
Near white houses, the apples and pears in arbors, the Japanese medlars and the almonds mingle with rose and myrtle
bushes.
We reach the monastery of the Archangels. On its esplanade, the little chapel overlooks the shore of Aphalais at
the foot of the bay. A road in a defile, barely practicable for asses, falls, rather than descends, toward the shore. The
insular coast here is made only of crumbling schists and tiered rocks. The bay, provided with a short and steep beach, in
reality offers no embarcadero. The broom in flower, hanging from the flanks of the steep coast, make a high belt around
it, interrupted only by the openings on some goat paths. Entering by the door of the White Stone, the wind from the
northwest curls the waves and buffets the deserted bay: not a caïque; not a fisherman’s hut; not the smallest boat.
To lead us across the vines toward Oxoi and the Melanhydros spring, the kaloyer of the Archangels gives us a
little barefoot boy, who promptly displays for us his knowledge of English and his dreams of the future. He is twelve. He
knows how to read, write and calculate. He even knows how to count in English up to ten, and to say good morning. He
has four uncles and two brothers abroad, in Africa and in Australia, in Sidnais, Melifournais and at Akrotiri. It is to
Akrotiri or to Limani of Natalia that he himself wishes to go, because Akrotiri and Limani are near the land of gold, the
Transvaal: Akrotiri is the Cape; Limani is Port Natal. Ulysses did no differently with the foreign onomasties. He
translated the names which he understood: of the isle of Spania, he made the isle of Calypso; of the land of Oinotria, he

575
made the land of the Cyclops. But he also inclined the names which he did not understand toward vague puns: Melbourne
would, for him also, become the Ovens of the Honey (Fours du Miel), Melifournais, as the Land of the Lotos was the land
of Lethe, of the Forgetting.
Thus, our future emigrant awaits the loaded letter which one of his brothers will address to him and which will
permit the voyage for him. He will go to the cape, “climb” to the Transvaal, sell fruits, buy or start an “eating
establishment”, κατάστημα του φαγητου, and come back with great wealth, like the old man who walks, there in his
garden, on the other side of the bay, and who has all his fortune placed in the bank of Athens. There are, says the boy,
more than a thousand in Ithaca who wish or need to leave; but the voyage costs dearly. Oxoi is peopled only with future
or old emigrants. The price of the lands has doubled in one generation. Many Laertes, retired from business, come to end
their days in the peacible valley, a little distant from the sea which they have frequented too much.
The people of Oxoi show a fountain of the Black Water, Melanhydros, under a rock which they name the Stone of
the Crow, and near ruins which they name the School of Homer. All the names were imagined in the last century to
localize the Odyssian story in the place. Oxoi, seat of the ecclesiastical authorities, was from the XVIIIth century
provided with a school and with savants. Gell knew a “protopapas” there as a professor, who had sojourned in Italy, at
Naples, and whose local patriotism invented a thousand “most Homeric” stories, for the sole purpose of illustrating the
sites of his canton. The people of Oxoi thus wish to recognize here the spring Arethuse: all the words of the Odyssian text
contradict the pretension. If one wished at all costs to localize some Odyssian adventure in this place, one could find the
farm of Laertes there. He was surely in this region of the isle, in one of the valleys, on some slope of the hills. The
“mishomerics” have loudly vanquished a contradiction on the subject, which they correct in the Odyssian poem. In canto
XI, the poet tells us that Laertes never descends to the town:

πατηρ δε σος αυτόθι μίμνει

αγρω ουδε πόλινδε κατέρχεται.

and we read in canto XXIV that Ulysses and Telemachus descend from the town to Laertes:

ο‘ι δ’ επει εκ πόλιος κατέβαν, τάχα δ’ αγρον ‘ίκοντο.

There, in effect, a terrible contradiction! And what better shows that the two cantos are not from the same hand - if
we do not already know that the first made part of the Odyssey, properly speaking, and the second of the Mnesterophonia,
and if the text itself of canto XXIV did not give us on the other hand an evident mark of its modernity. In canto XXIV,
Laertes lives in his enclosure with an old Sicilian servant:

εν δε γυνη Σικελη γρηυς πέλεν.

The detail could only have been invented after the Greek discovery and colonization of Sicily. Ithaca then became
one of the steps of the Sicilian route. But the Homeric Greeks did not yet know the name of Sicily. The words Sikania or
Sikele are encountered only in the last cantos of the Odyssey: one time in canto XX, v. 383, and four times in canto
XXIV, v. 211, 307, 365 and 389. It is only too visible that the ending of the Mnesterophonia is an ornament from a very
recent epoch, and that it has nothing in common with the Nostos of the hero.
We only need to take account of the testimony of canto XI. The Odyssian capitol should in reality have been lower
than the farm of Laertes. From Oxoi, we redescend toward Port Polis. It is only in that bay that the capitol of Ulysses
could be found, in the times when the strait was the great road of the fleets, when the islanders lived above all on
navigation and the sea, when their principal relations were with Pylos. I have commented on and localized the navigation
of Telemachus too long for me to have any further need to show the route from Pylos ending directly at the bay of Port
Polis.

576
 Returning to the hamlet of Stavros, we now have the bay under our feet. Except for the coast of the southeast,
which the bank of Neion overhangs, and the point of the northwest, which rises almost to a peak, the perimeter offers a
circle of somewhat gentle slopes, which the cultivations have recovered somewhat, which the lines of cypress and the
squares of vines or cereals cut in a checkerboard. Stavros occupies the summit of a donkeyback which descends toward
Port Frikais on one side and toward Port Polis on the other. Toward Port Frikais we have already followed the “Current”
and its olive trees. Here are the vines and cultivations which descend to the shore of Port Polis.
At the bottom of a long slope of reddish lands and pebbles, the spacious shore forms its regular horseshoe. A
canoe of fishermen is afloat. Two or three others are on the beach. Two huts are constructed near the well, where the
sailors have a good watering place. A crew of debarking sailors haul a somewhat large caïque ashore. The gently inclined
beach is made of sandy gravels and small pebbles. It is well-suited to the operations of beaching. Without sharp rocks,
without too-soft muds, it offers a refuge of choice to the Achaean fleets.
Where to discover the exact place of the palace and the town? No human indication appears to remain. The
cultivations have effaced everything; excavations would be necessary; but where to begin?
Certain emplacements are excluded by the text of the poem or by the nature of the places. The “high town” surely
is not on the beach. To the south and east, the too-steep slopes of Neion do not lend themselves to the erection of a town.
Additionally, the poet relates to us how, below the town, the sailors descend to the beach, set the ship afloat, and guide it,
by oar, toward the point of the southeast, εν νοτίω. The southeast point consequently appears to be at a distance, opposite
the town. The southeast point under the bank of Neion extends into the sea and forms a sort of natural mole, along which
the anchored ships can easily receive passengers and cargo.
I only see two possible sites for the Odyssian town, either the slopes at the foot of the bay, in the vicinity of
Stavros, or the slopes of the north, under a double butte of 150 and 265 meters, which would serve as a lookout and
acropolis, and which would be the “polis”, properly speaking, facing Neion. Each of the two places would have its natural
advantages. At the foot of the bay, the town would have dominated, like Stavros, the double descent toward Port Polis and
Port Frikais: the isthmic commerce would have found its convenience there. At the flank of the acropolis, the defense
would have been easier, and the refuge against all incursions closer. the Homeric text furnishes no indication to decide
our choice. Before entering the town, Ulysses and the swineherd encounter a fountain: the water falls from a rock. But the
fountain - we know it - is artificial. On the perimeter of the bay, there is more than one spring which, by pipes of wood or
by some other means, they could easily have channeled and led the water where they wished.
In the times of Gell, some ruins still appeared on the slope of the north, at the foot of the acropolis. It is there that
Partsch localiized the Homeric city and the palace. In awaiting whether the excavations verify or condemn the hypothesis,
I entirely rally to it. Everything here can accord to the good fortune of a “high town”.
Sheltered from the winds of the north by the hills; turned toward the breeze of the sea; gently inclined and forming
a semicircle; in proximity to the heights of the acropolis and nevertheless very near the beach; provided with several
springs which little labor would surely capture and augment: the slopes will see a village occupy them anew someday,
when the strait will have taken back all its important. Should a Turkish, Albanian or Greek complication arise tomorrow:
the torpedo boats of the nations will gather in the refuges of Polis or Viscardo, and the islanders of Oxoi will find it in
their interests to descend toward Port Polis, and no longer toward Port Frikais.
From the top of the hills which dominate the ancient town and the bay, the view embraces the southern entrance of
the strait of Viscardo and the high sea up to the White Stone of Leucadia. The sea of Atoko and the Echinades also appear
by the defile of Frikais. A lookout placed there could signal all the boats which penetrated into the strait by the north and
all those which sail in the eastern sea. But, toward the south, the view is not as unobstructed. If the strait itself, the coast
of Cephalonia and the bay of Samë open and spread out to the right or just in front, the coast of Ithaca, on the right of the
viewer, prevents the view of the southern door of the strait. Climbing the channel along that coast, the boats would withou
difficulty evade the most attentive lookout: at the very entrance of the port, the last insular promontory would still cover
them.

577
 The lookout and the acropolis of Polis thus have need of a compliment to survey the boats which come from the
south, from the Peloponnesus, from Pylos. From here, one understands better the maneuver of the suitors and the
installation of their ambuscade on the islet which the poet names Asteris and which the Italians will without doubt name
the Reef, Scoglio, whence the present Greeks, by a fine pun, should have drawn Didaskalio, Daskalio, the School. And
from here, one understands still better the intimate relationship which, for the people of Ithaca and the periples of the
navigators, unites the low and inhospitable rock of Asteris, as much to the windy hills as to the Twin Ports of the
Cephalonian coast. Behind Daskalio, the coast of Cephalonia stretches its high spine, loaded with white villages and
windmills: in the anchorage of its deep bay, Viscardo holds its double harbor.

*
* *

Here thus is the last stop, the end of the Nostos. After ten years of combat and ten years of adventures, the hero
comes back here. Ten years of study have led me here also. Alas! It was the approaching end of all his ordeals: here mine
come to begin! Through the protection of helpful Athena, he promptly triumphed over the unjust suitors: how many times
more will I have to battle? Already on the route, before reaching the town, I have met several Melanthios of coarse and
injurious language. Now, what stools will rain on my head! What kicks will bruise my ribs!

πολλά [μ]ο‘ι αμφι κάρη σφέλα ανδρων εκ παλαμάων

πλευρα αποτρίψουσι δόμον κάτα βαλλομένοιο.

We follow our road. One day Athena will surely know to recognize her devotees:

ου γάρ πληγέων ουδε βολάων.

τολμήεις μοι θυμός.

578
 BOOK TWELVE

THE COMPOSITION OF THE ODYSSEY

της γαρ Οδυσσείας μικρος ‘ο λόγος εστίν.

... το μεν ουν ‘ιδιον τουτο, τα δ’ άλλα επεισόδια.

Aristot., Poet., XVIII.

CHAPTER I

THE SOURCES OF THE POEM

ο‘ι γαρ Φοίνικες εδήλουν τουτο.

STRAB., III, p. 156

At the end of the long voyage on the traces of the hero, after the detailed explanation of each of the Adventures,
now would be needed the study of the poem in its entirety and the seeking to understand - or at least to imagine - how the
work has been able to be produced, by what union of Greek genius and Semitic science, at what crossroads of Achaeand
and Levantine civilizations - in brief, what were the sources, the composition, the homeland and the date of the Odysseia.
Sources, composition, homeland and date: four questions, obscure and always of uncertain answer, when asked of
a work of art, of literary art, of very ancient literature and of an unknown poet - for it is only in the work that I would first
wish to seek the hypotheses, without taking much account, beforehand, of the more or lesss fantastic traditions which the
Ancients have been able to transmit to us.
In imagining the most rational answer to each of the questions, we would not know how to manage the part of the
contradictory possibilites, the illogicalities, the fortuitous coincidences. Logic can only lead us to some probable
hypotheses and conclusions. Even though our poem may be Greek and the part of logic, of pure reason may always be
dominant in all Greek work, rational methods alone did not preside at the birth of the work of art: preferences or caprices
of the author, habits or necessities of the profession, inspiration of the moment or exigencies of the audience, sentiments
or fantasies of the Muse, how many elements, secondary, it is true, could and should intervene here!
To reserve in the mind of the reader the place and the rôle of the illogicalities, to maintain in the chapters an
atmosphere, not of certainty, but of hypothesis, I would wish to begin all my phrases with the formulas: It appears that... ,

579
We can imagine... , It is more logical to believe... , etc., and slip, between each word, some perhaps, without doubt, and
other dubative adverbs. The only fear that has remained with me is the complication, without great benefit, of the already
very complex deductions. In multiplying the cuts and asterisks the least, I would attempt to leave out most of the
hesitation and gaps between the diverse members of the reasonings. In their reconstructions of ruined or disppeared
monuments, the architects have different lines at their disposal, interrupted, solid or dotted, and and multicolor inks to
translate to the eye of the reader the variable certainty of their calculatons and restorations: they would set here only some
dotted lines and some poetic tints of blue or red.

At the origin of everything, there was a periple or fragments of several periples. By that, I mean: descriptions of
sea, of coasts and of lands, made by the navigators for the needs of navigation, with the habits, the visions, the terms and
the idioms of the people of the sea. The existence of the original periple is proven to us, I believe, as much by the
background itself and the material of the Odyssian accounts as by their text, formulas and expressions.

*
* *

As for the background, we do not know how to be more affirmative. After having examined all the Adventures,
we know that they contain no imaginary descriptions nor, even, in each of their passages, any purely fantastic detail. It is
Strabo and the Most Homerics that we should claim to represent: one should give confidence to all the stories and believe
in the erudition of the poet, αυταις τε ταύταις ταις ‘ιστορίαις πιστεύσαντες και τη πολυμαθία του Ποιητου. I have
dedicated a thousand pages to the demonstration of that verity. In attaching a real meaning to all the words of the text, in
banishing the the explanations termed poetic, we have arrived at localizing the smallest details of the Nostos. On our
marine charts, with the aid of the Nautical Instructions and of the voyagers, we have established the minute exactitude of
all the descriptions. The Nostos, properly speaking, as well as the Telemachea, has rendered us, in the final account, a
gallery of geographic tableaus, and not a museum of “teratologies”.
But the tableaus are not designed in the fashion of the “terran” geographers. They betray the hand of the
navigators, by the very vision of realities which they assume. Ithaca can only be a “low”, χθαμαλη, isle in the eyes of
sailors which compare it to the “high” Caphalonia. To the eyes of landsmen, Ithaca presents two summits of 600 to 800
meters and elevated hills and plateaus all around; the complete absence of deltas and plains make it the opposite of a low
island: it is a high land, declare all the voyagers. - Mount Circeo is not an “isle” except seen from ther sea. Kumë is not a
“height”, an Hyperia, except for the people who debark on the beach: the natives see there only an humble hill, much less
elevated than the Phlegrian “Fields” of the vicinty. - The High Isle, Ai-olia, raises its unbroken wall only for the sailors:
for the colonists, it spreads its circumference of the round isle, Strongyle above the sea.
And not only the particular vision of each reality, but further the grouping, in in the same tableau, of neighboring
realities, can be explained without recourse to the visions and habits of the navigators. If Circe-the-Sparrowhawk, Aietes-
the-Eaglet and Perse-the-Vulture become the members of one and the same family, the essential refuges of a coast or a
land, it is not that, from the point of view of the landsmen, the promontories appear as indissolubly solid. Entirely to the
contrary, : they are very distanced from each other; in the terrestrial geography, they belong to two or three very different
“lands”; Circe is Latin or Volsque, Aietes is Aurunce, the Vulture is Campanian. Across history, up to our days, they
remain enemies. The landsmen establish their political barriers between the brothers and sisters of the Odyssian

580
geography: It has not yet been forty years since the Sparrowhawk obeyed the Pope and the Vulture, the king of Naples.
But the navigators, ignoring the terran nomenclature and divisions, have always seen, between the rocks of the Tiber and
the gulf of Naples, only an uninterrupted suite of rocks and refuges, all similar, all equal, all brothers, along a same and
single “coast”, always resembling itself.
In all the episodes of the Odyssey, we find the fundamental difference between the views of the “coasts”, such as
the Instructions and the marine charts perceive, and the views of the “land” that the landsmen distinguish in their
geographies, nomenclatures and frontiers.

*
* *

If there are inexactitudes or errors anywhere in any of the portraits, we know that, to rectify or understand them, it
still suffices to go back to a text of periple. Failing to recover the means of correction, the example of M. Doerpfeld
shows us to what strange practices it should deliver us.
Among the inexactitudes, none can instruct us as clearly as the verses regarding Asteris. It is very certain that
Asteris-Daskalio is not the Twin Ports, nor the windy Lookouts, of which the poet speaks. It is nevertheless no less
certain that, in the strait which separates Samë-the-Rocky, facing the Port of the Town, from Ithaca, only the rock
Daskalio can be the islet Asteris. Set a text of periple at the origin and, very promptly, the difficulties disappear. Facing
the Port of the Town, the rocky islet covers the Twin Ports and borders the windy Lookouts: Ports, Lookouts and Rocks
just form the three members of a same and single harbor.
In almost all the episodes of the Nostos, we have found some of the errors. We know that they are inherent in the
very text of a periple. In reading our Instructions, still today, we commit entirely similar ones. The cause of them is less
in the mind of the reader than in the very procedures of the text. By the monotony of their enumeration, the periples end
up not giving the reader the sense of the distances: they almost never furnish the exact measure of the intervals which in
reality separate the different particularities of a coast, of a harbor or of a site.
A periple is like a necklace of independant and mobile grains which the reader relates or separates at the whim of
his imagination. Each of the grains represents a materially exact reality; but in the necklace, the inexactitude springs
almost necessarily from the too intimate union or the too great separation which the reader can establish between two or
three consecutive grains.
The springs and the vines of Calypso, the shores and plains of the Cyclops, the cove of the Sun at the flank of the
Hollow Port have shown us that the poem betrays the readings of periple everywhere. Take Skylax as text of comparison
and see what an attentive but inexperienced reader can draw from such a very exact - but nevertheless deceptive -
enumeration:

Attica. After Megare, the towns of the Athenians. First point of Attica, Eleusis, with the temple of Demeter, and fortress.
Facing it, there is Salamine, isle, town and port. Then, Piraeus, the Long Walls, and Athens. Piraeus has three ports. [Then]
Anaphlystos, fortress and port. Sounion, cape and fortress, temple of Poseidon. Thorikos, fortress and two ports. Rhamnonte,
fortress. There are numerous other ports in Attica. The periple of the Athenian land is 1140 stades.

Is that not like a veritable necklace, whose grains can be displaced, joined, separated under the play of the reader?
From the scientific text, can we not, if we do not have the reality or the chart before our eyes, draw an entirely fictional
description of Attica? What would prevent us from suppressing the distances, from reducing or increasing the intervals of
the different points of the coast? In adhering to the words of the text the most strictly in the world, nothing can control or
guide our fantasy when it acts to set each of the enumerated sites in its place.

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 *
* *

All the Odyssian descriptions thus are exact, but exact only in the fashion of periples. Habituated to the language
of the Instructions, a navigator is not surprised to encounter here such an alliance of sites which our landsmen’s eyes
perceive as disunited, even separated by somewhat long distances.
It is a notion on which I have long insisted. It matters to have it always present in the mind, in order to avoid the
needless objections which certain ones have already made to me. concerning the glaring inexactitudes, they say, of this or
that Odyssian description: “Perijil has no watering place and no vines today. Perijil thus is just a rock very far from Spain.
Perijil thus is not the isle with springs of Calypso. Perijil is not Ispania, the Isle of the Hideout.”
Let us open the periple of Skylax: in the waters, we will see the history and the rôle of an entirely similar isle,
symmetrically disposed on the other shore of the strait. The pilots of Skylax, who pass from Europe to Libya, from the
Spanish coasts to the African coasts, describe the isle of Gades - although very close to the shore of Europe, νησοι αυται
προς τη Ευρώπη - at the same time as the coast of Africa. The European isles are the Hellenic door of the Libyan
continent. To the eyes and in the mind of the Hellenes, they command and posess, in some measure, all the Occidental
façade of the opposite continent. They have not transmitted their name to it. But we have encountered a thousand other
cases of the onomastic exchange between an islet or even a rock and the neighboring mainland. If, turn by turn, our isle of
Corfu was the land of the Sickle (serpe), Drepane, or the land of the Cruiser (croiseur), Kerkyra, it is that, coming from
the east and from the west, the navigators transported turn by turn to the large isle the name of the bare reef, Sickle or
Cruiser, which they had to round before reaching the harbor: the Sickle or Cruiser served them as a seamark and guide.
When the Semitic navigators frequented the Spanish strait, they arrived along the Libyan continent; Perijil was for them
the door to Spain since, from Perijil, the passage toward the Spanish coasts was the shortest for them; and Perijil was for
them the great watering place and the great refuge of the strait, since there, and there alone, a convenient and hidden
resting place assured them the enjoyment of the springs and vines of the Libyan coast.
If some archeologists and even some geographers come today to speak to us of the Homeric imginations, it is that
their bookish science is not valid for judging well the veritable exactitude of the marine tableaus.

*
* *

The bookish science itself does not measure the precision of them any better. All the descriptions of the Notos are
precise and complete, but still only in the manner of periples - and the precision is sometimes completely opposite to that
which our eyes and habits of landsmen would make us expect.
We open the periple of Skylax to acquaint ourselves with Lacedemonia. To our eyes and in our conceptions of
landsmen, even in our language, Lacedemonia is above all synonymous with Sparta: it is, first, the description, it is at the
very least the site of Sparta that we wish to know.

Lacedemonia is a people, and it has the towns of Asine, Mothone, Port of Achilles, Port Psamathous; between the two ports,
the point of Taygete and the sanctuary of Poseidon; then Las, town and port, Gytheion, arsenal and fortress; then the river Eurotas,
the town of Boia, and the cape Malea. Facing it, the isle of Kythera, the town and the port: facing Kythera, Crete. After the above
mentioned cape of Malea, Sidë, town and port. There are additionally many other towns of the Lacedemonians. In the interior, there
are Sparta and many other towns.

582
 We see the meticulous precision with which the periple describes the entire shore, points, gulfs, towns and ports.
But we also see that only the line of the coasts, only the maritime fringe is treated in this way. The interior of the lands
appears only in very indistinct distance, in a sort of mist. The great name of Sparta, barely makes it to the ears of the
navigator. The name, for the people of the terra firma, animates and peoples the entire land: in a periple, it holds a lesser
place than the last position of the coastal burgs, Methana, Boia or Las.
Still, the name of Sparta is cited by our author. But it can happen that such terran greatness, which alone draws our
attention and fills our horizon, disappears entirely from the eyes of the sailor. Sicily for us is the land of Aetna. In the eyes
of the geographers, from Stabo up to Elisea Reclus, Aetna dominates, overhangs, invades every description of the Sicilian
coasts: “Aetna above all dominates the shore of the strait and the land of Catana, but also the Tyrrenian sea and the isles
of the Liparians. At night, a shining glow escapes from the summit; by day, it is a smoke and a cloud which crowns it”,
‘υπέρκειται δ’ ‘η Αίτην μαλλον μεν της κατα τον Πορθμον και Καταναίαν Παραλίας, αλλα και της κατα το Τυρρηνικον
πέλαγος και τας Λιπαρίων νήσους. Listen to Skyax:

Facing Rhegion is the isle Sikelia, separated from Europe by twelve stades... In Sicily, there are barbarian peoples, Elymes,
Sikanes, Sikeles, Phoenicians and Trojans. There are the Barbarians: there are also Greeks. The first Sicilian cape is Pelorias. In
leaving from the cape, Greek towns: Messina, with port, Tauromenion, Naxos, Catana, Leontini, where the river Terias ascends for
twenty stades; then the river and town Symaithos Megaris and its port the Xiphoneios [promontory]. Adjacent to Megaris, the town
of Syriacuse, and its two ports, one on the inside, the other outside the wall. Then the town Eloren and the cape Pachynos...

Our author continues the periple of Sicily. He makes the circuit of the isle. He notes its smalles coastal towns, the
capes and the streams. He does not mention Aetna. Is there need to remark, after our study of Charybdis, of the Hollow
Port and of the Cove of the Sun, that the Odyssian poet describes the same area in the fashion of Skylax, and not that of
Strabo? From the point of the Monster, Πελωριάς, to the Beach of the Manure and of the Oxen, the poet gives us a
thousand circumstancial details of the topography, the shelters, the resources, the cultivations, the oracles, the coastal and
maritime life, the fishing, the hunting, etc., of the Sicilian shore. But does Aetna, which dominates the strait with its
snows or its flame, appear at the back of the Odyssian pictures, as it appears in all the pictures, photographs and
descriptions of our voyagers, savants or simple tourists?
In each of the Adventures, the same contrast stands out: in the foreground, the detailed precision of the views of
the coast; in the background, the hazy vagueness of the views of the land. The maritime fringe is described everywhere
with an abundance of details, even a superabundance of particularities. But we would say a theater prop closes all the
distant horizon: masking the back of the scene, it leaves only one or two entrances toward some poorly-lit and poorly-
known backstage.
In this spirit, take again the study of the Lestrygons or Cyclops. See if the Odyssian verses alone could not still
today suffice for a complete description for such fractions of our Sardinian or Neopolitan coasts. But also see what an
absence of a notion of the interior land, of the regons, the people and the towns which are not even a few kilometers from
the shore. We have been able to examine and prove the reality of the Odyssian lands, in taking the roads of the sea, and
not those of the interior, in cruising along the shores, and not in circulating by valleys and mountains. It was useless - we
see better today - to engage in some exploration of the closest hinterland: an inspection of the edges sufficed. It would
have been the same, it would at least have been able to be dangerous, to begin the inspection with the interior and not with
the shore, by the routes and guides of the tourists, and not with the debarkations and Instructions of the sailors.
Regarding the continental realities, the precision of our Odyssian depictions would only have been able to blur or
disappear. From the point of view of the landsmen, in effect, the precision blurs and is shadowed by lack of balance and
proportions between the slightest prominences or particularities of the coast - which appear in full light, which are
rendered by the poem in a thousand formulas and expressive words - and the greatest, the most characteristic architectures
of the hinterland, which the poem passes entirely in silence or which it mentions only with an occasional inexact word.
Among the Cyclops, the “round eyes”, their eyebrows and forests, their verdant beaches, their explosions and their
angers are amply, minutely, almost scientifically described: it is that the navigators, to shelter their vessels, penetrated

583
into the Eye of Porto Pavone, in the heart of Nisida or, to consult the Dead, into the Eye of the Pines, at the foot of the
Gulf of Lucre, in Avernus. In the foreground, behind the Phlegrian coast, the mount of the One-Eyed, the Gauros,
perhaps allows itself to be guessed: it is that from all directions, its peak could serve as a guide to the cruisers of the gulf
and the high sea. But in the background of the terra firma we vainly seek the high and powerful mass of Vesuvius which,
without doubt, was no longer a volcano in a period of activity, but which was still an imposing mountain, of rare form, of
original aspect, of a very remarkable nature, of exceptional profit: “All the region is dominated by Vesuvius,” - writes
Strabo, before the waking of the monster - “a mountain entirely encircled by admirable fields, with the exception of the
summit: the summit still has terraces in many places, but it is entirely sterile and of an appearance of cinders, with very
visible grottos and crevasses and rocks of a burned color, which one would believe emerged from the fire... , etc.”
Into the land of Circe, the same narrowness of the terrestrial horizon. Then, in the background, still with a very
neat distinctness, the the sanctuary and the rites of the Goddess of the Beasts. It is that in those distant times, the sea or, at
least, the sailors reached up to the borders of the sacred enclosure. The Goddess inhabited the junction of the terrestrial
forests and the marine beaches, at the crossraods of the native caravans and the foreign sailors. But, behind the temple,
nothing makes the reader suspect a vast country of plains and mountains, the expanse of the Pontine Marshes, the cone of
Monte Cavo, the spine of the Lepini Mountains, the fortresses of Setia, of Norba and Velitrae, and the walls of Albe-la
Longue, which should already have existed, and the Tiber and the ford frequented by the merchants, where Romulus will
later install his band of thieves.
In our eyes, as in the mind and verses of the Odyssian poet himself, the land of Circe has only the sea. In no
direction does it appear to touch the rest of the world: “It is an isle which crowns the sea, the infinite sea”,

νησον, την Πόντος απείριτος εστεφάνωται.

All the Odyssian lands are presented to our view with the appearance of wandering isles or of maritime bands, fringes.
The sea on one façade divides them very neatly into harbors, ports and promontories. But their other façades seem to have
only vague countries, almost unreal continents. The Lestrygons, behind the Bear and the Well, indeed have a continental
town and, without doubt, some plain which mountains bearing forests limit to the horizon. But the poet, who indicates the
mountains and the fields and the town itself to us by one word, knew them very little. His erudition, so precise and
complete on the edge of the mysterious shore, stops at the first slopes of the coastal hills; his detailed knowledge never
exceeds the range of the marine lookouts.
In the first point, the Telemachead does not differ from our Nostos properly speaking. Through the voyage of
Telemachus we have been able to see with what exactitude and precision the poet knew the Triphylian shore, the
mountains, the harbors and the sanctuaries of Pylos. He additionally knew, but in an already more vague fashion, the gods
and the rites of the first Arcadian stop, Pheres-Aliphera. Beyond the first bazaar, on the route to Sparta, everything is
blurred, or rather is shadowed: in a jump, in one day of travel, Telemachus and his coachman “fly” from Pheres to
Menelaus.

*
* *

The ancient periples and our Instructions still procure the same visions for me. Behind a coast of a thousand
projections, whose slightest detail appeared to me with a magnifying precision, I perceived only a hinterland of mists or
mountains:

584
 GULF OF CORINTH OR OF LEPANTE. - The gulf is 70 miles long and its width varies from 2 to 11 miles. Its coasts in the north are
cut by deep bays, while on the shore of the Morea they are straight, and offer no shelter at all to ships. It is surrounded by high
mountainous lands, rising to 1,520 and 2,380 meters of height.
WEST COAST OF MOREA. - The coast rises in rounded hills, of a dark color, of which the highest, Mavro Vouno, situated at 3
miles from the cape, reaches 243 meters, and falls from a peak above the plain of the coast of the south, then a beach of sand, low,
bordering a low and very wooded land... On leaving from point Kounoupeli, the low, sandy shore, wooded and cultivated in the
interior, continues,... etc.

The marine charts translate to us very exactly the vision of the periples: their writings and descriptions stop a few
meters from the shore. If I have had to give so many reproductions of marine charts in this work, it was to habituate my
readers with the “most Homeric” vision of things.
It should be noted that the Egyptian periple of Deir-el-Bahari is accompanied , comented on by drawings which
present views of the coasts to us entirely resembling the Odyssian descriptions: the shore, the mouths of rivers, the forests
and the huts of the foreground are faithfully reproduced; but behind is the void, the depopulated horizon.

*
* *

Nowadays we ignore the origin of the story: the Odyssian text lets the language of a periple show through.
Nomenclature of the toponyny, turns of idioms: the sailors employ a different language from the “terrans”, and they do
not describe the same traits and characters of the regions which they perceive.

*
* *

See for the nomenclature how it is taken by the terrans. The diverse regions of present France have been baptized
and denominated by the terrans of Paris. They are Jura or Pyrénees, Aude or Somme, Loires or Saônes, Alpes or Vosges,
etc., because the rivers or mountains are of a capital importance to the terrans. They are Pas-de-Calais and Finistére
because the same terrans find the sea or the sea ford at the end of their routes. They are Morbihan and Landes because of
the maritime and terrestrial obstacles they find across the routes. All the official nomenclature of France betrays a vision
of terrans. In only one place, a name coming from the sea is conserved: a line of reefs has made of the neighboring
continent the department of Calvados. It could not have been said better by sailors. And nevertheless it is not, properly
spaeking, the nomenclature of the sailors which passes into our lands. The reef makes the fortune of its name only
indirectly. If the invincible Armada had not come to be broken there, it is probable that the memory of the terrans would
have never registered the term: our Calvados would be an Orne-Inférieure, a Touques or a Dive.
Inversely, one can say that the nomenclature of the Mediterranian lands is, in the ensemble and in the details, a
maritime nomenclature, come from the sea. For some of the lands, the origin is evident: Tripolitania, Algeria, Tunisia,
etc., are just the countries of the ports of Algiers, of Tunis and of Tripoli. The Sidonia of Homer is similarly the land of
Sidon. Syria of the Ancients is the land of Sur or Tur, of Tyre. It is probable that Egypt is again the land of Aikupta, the
old Phoenician port of call and bazaar of Memphis. Palestine is also just the region of the Philistines: familiar to the ears
of the navigators, the name of the coastal tribe has ended in covering five or six regions of the hinterland, Canaan, Moab,
Aram, etc. On the entire perimeter of the Mediterranian, the fleets have thus annexed vast regions of the interior to their

585
coasts and to their ports of call. A minuscule canton of the shore or of its immediate vicinity has furnished the name of an
entire continent: Asia was originally a Lydian plain, celebrated by the people of the coast.
But, in most of the Mediterranian countries, it would appear that, coming from the sea, the names nevertheless
partake of the terran nature; I mean by that, that they appear to have been given, not by navigators of passage interested
only in maritime particularities, but by the colonists or merchants of a fixed location and tied to the life of the natives, to
their towns, to their commerce, to their terra firma. Terrans, also, could have denominated Tunisia, a region of which
Tunis is the effective capitol, and Candia, an isle of which the fortress Kandak, Kastro, is the principal bazaar.
The Odyssey, to the contrary, reveals to us a nomenclature even more marine, a nomenclature more characteristic
of sailors, of coasters, of wandering navigators, and not of colonists, of conquistadores, of fixed navigators. The Stone of
the Doves is a reef at sea level. Only our marine charts recognize it, or such of our terranian charts as have copied the
works of the hydrographers and sailors. On site, even to the boats which avoid it, the Stone appears only in a calm sea.
The slightest swell can cover it. Twenty other rocks, very near, resemble it. Only to the coastal cruisers, whom the wind
from the west stops at the threshold of the Mouths, is it familiar and known: it marks for them the entrance of the refuge,
of the Hollow Port, of the Well. The Odyssey nevertheless gives the name of the reef to an entire terrritory. It is an
Odyssian Calvados. But the French rock of Calvados had had its rôle in the history of the terrans. It does not appear that
the Sardes, in the times of the Odyssey, had been able to expand the renown of their Stone thusly. It gave its glory only to
the people of the sea. Only the sailors of the Mouths and their periples were able to believe in Lestrygonia.
In Lestrygonia itself, examine some details. If the spring of Palau becomes the fountain of the Bear, Artakia, it is
that, climbing from the Orient, the primitive navigators discovered the watering place behind the promontory and
recognized the watering place by the promontoryof the Bear. Our Occidental sailors, traveling in the opposite direction,
would not have the idea of joining the Bear to the Fountain. On their route toward the Levant, the Fountain is presented
before the Bear, somewhat distant from the Bear; it is the isle of Maddalena to which our Instructions join the wateing
place today. They tell us that the people of Maddalena, not of the Bear, come there to water. They name the spring the
Watering Place of Palau. During antiquity, colonists, fixed in location, would without doubt have named it the Fountain
of Telepylos, because of the neighboring town, whose girls came there to fill their jugs.
Each Odyssian adventure would furnish us material for the studies of minute toponymy. The marine character of
the primitive nomenclature, whose evocations and terms differ entirely from the onomasty of the Hellenes, is affirmed all
around.
When they will later come to be fixed in the same regions, the Hellenes, colonists and owners, make, in their
onomasty, a just part of the riches or lacks of the fields, hills and terrains which the hinterland offered them. The Opics,
for them, will become the inhabitants of the Field: their Opikia was just the region of Campania, as the Height, Kumë-
Hyperia, was one town of that Campania, Κύμη της Καμπανίας. Behind the Eyes and behind the Butte, the Greek
onomasty thus makes us glimpse the continental plain, of which the Eyes and the Butte become a dependance. In the
Odyssian nomenclature, the rôles have in some fashion reversed: a single epithet, ευρύχορος, indicates vaguely to us that
a great plain is on the outskirts of Kumë-Hyperia.

*
* *

If, down to us, the geographers had still never achieved the secure localization of the Adventures of the hero; if,
since Eratosthene, the veracity of the Homeric descriptions had been put in doubt, it is, I believe, the contrast of the Greek
and Odyssian toponymies which, more than all the rest, diverts the seekers and sows defiance.
In good and proper place, the toponymy of the Hellenes had conserved such and such names of the Odyssey:
Circe, Sirens, Charybdus, Scylla, etc. We have only had to retrieve the probable signification ourselves. But in the

586
toponymy of the Hellenes, what a secondary, obscure rank did the Odyssian glories hold! They were no longer in first
place. They barely emerged from a crowd of terms which the Hellenes had invented, set in a fine light, and which
imposed themselves first of all to the attention of the geographers. The Odyssian names had lost their importance. The
Greek terms had covered them with their shadow everywhere. Were the old, almost divine names which shone at the front
of the epic really there? Some of them had even been entirely erased from the memories of men. The new masters of the
sea no longer frequented certain waters. From the day when the navigation, properly speaking - caravan and passage - had
ceded the premier rôle to the colonization - conquest and exploitation of the fields - , such a previously celebrated route
(Mouths of Bonifacio) had been neglected. The old names, which marked it, had fallen from usage. Where was the Stone
of Doves found, which formerly marked a great station of pirates and merchants? It no longer had a name in the Sardinia
of the colonists. Had it ever existed? Was it not just a myth, an invention of the poet? Was not all of Lestrygonia a land of
fable? “There is a marvelous inutility, purely artificial,” says a modern commentator... “the episode [of the Lestrygons] is
just a variant of that of the Cyclops, but a variation without an original value”. The Ancients reasoned in no different
fashion.
By the very quality of its terms, the nomenclature of the Odyssey is an onomasty of navigators and periple: it also
is by the combinations and arrangements of its terms. The unions and alliances of proper nouns present there the same
marine character as, above, the unions or alliances of sites. Here again, a similar contradiction with the onomasty of the
Hellenes.
The Ancients would be able to explain the fraternity of Circe and Aietes only by making Circe a princess of
Colchide. For them, Aietes was first a terran king, a sovereign of Colchide. They knew of another Aietes, a minor prince
of the sea, who had, they said, reigned over Gaete, not far from the Italian Circe. But they could not imagine that the
glorious Circe of the poet was truly allied with the marine petty king, and not with the great emperor of the Levant, with
the noble and powerful lord of Caucase and Phase.

*
* *

I believe that the very language of the Odyssey is still redolent of its periple. In the course of the long study, I was
compelled to translate each page of the poem by some page of our Instructions: only the language of the sailors has
appeared able to me to render in their fullness and in their minutia all the thoughts and all the words of the text. Let us
think back on the numerous examples encountered. It would be necessary to take up again here most of my translations.
Nevertheless, one or two examples can suffice.
In his description of the ports of Pheacia and Ithaca, the poet spoke to us of the “southeast part”, νότιον. The
expression is very clear and very precise in the language of periples. It is found in each page of our Instructions.
Nevertheless, the commentators tried vaily to understand it. The Lexicum Homericum of Ebeling still tells us: “notion
signifies the wet sea and, in the sea, the part which is nearest the beach”, umidem mare alque ea ejus pars quae prope
littus est. Unhappily, the Odyssian text adds that the “southeast part”, εν νοτίω, is “in the high sea”, ‘υψου:

‘υψου δ’ νοτίω τήν γ’ ‘ώρμισαν.

The philologists promptly explain the apparent contradiction: high sea, they say, signifies in reality deep sea, εν
βάθει του ‘ύδατος, and the deep sea can be found along the shore. But an ancient commentator had already seen that
notion is in reality “the southeast part”, του προς νότον μέρει. To have an exact equivalent of the term, just open the
Instructions: “The south entrance of the port of Sigri is found between the islet Sidoussa and the cape Sigri in the
southeast.” The entrance of the port of Ithaca, turned toward the south, was similarly between the butte of Polis and the

587
coast of the isle, in the southeast. It is to the southeast part of the inlet that the companions of Telemachus guided, in
rowing, their boat set afloat, and it is there that they embark merchandises and passengers.
Another example. The poet speaks to us of ports klutoi, κλυτοί:

ένθ’ επει ες λιμένα κλυτον ήλθομεν... ,

‘ημεις δ’ ες λιμένα κλυτον ήλθομεν... ,

The littérateurs translate as “celebrated port”, in relating the word κλυτός to a verb κλείω and to the analogues
ονομακλυτός, δουρικλυτός, etc. A banal epithey, if it was thus: why would the ports of Syria and the Lestrygons (it is to
the two harbors that the poet applies the epithet) be more “celebrated” than such and such others? In the ancient periples,
it is “shut” ports, κλειστοί:

Πάρος έχουσα λιμένας δύο, ων τον ‘ένα κλειστόν... ,

Φαλάσαρνα και λιμην κλειστός... ,
Θάσος νησος και πόλις και λιμένες δύο. τουτων ‘ο εις κλειστός... ,
Νησος Κώς και πόλις και λιμην κλειστός...

I do not know whether I should, in our two passagrs of the Odyssey, give the same meaning to the word κλυτός,
either in correcting κλκυτός into κλειστός, or in deriving that form or some similar form from the verbs κλείω, κλήω,
which mean to close. We will then have a very satisfying explanation, conforming to the language of the navigators and
to the reality of the places: the port of the Lestrygons is truly a closed port - our Achaeans perceived it only too well - and
the port of Syria is, also, closed by the extension of the promontories and by the coastal isle; the periples describe the port
of Samos to us thusly, Σάμος εστι νησος πόλιν έχουσα και λιμένα κλειστόν.

*
* *

One can say, it is true,: “The poet could have had only the descriptions and expressions in the accounts and in the
very speech of his listener or in his own personal experience. It is superfluous to imagine a periple at the origin of the
formulas, metaphores and idioms of the ‘sailor’ language, as at the origin of the stories and scenes of the navy, if the poet
lived among the sailors and if he made the entire voyage in person”. With his own eyes, from the deck of his ship, the
poet thus had seen the sites which he described; he had described them from nature, without the aid of a periple, but in the
fashion and following the visions of a navigator:

And first know well to my credit, friend,

That I am not, as they say, a freshwater sailor;
I have known the shaking of pitch and roll;
I have blanched on a deck which the waves tossed.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I have seen the workers and vagabonds of the open sea.

I have sung their refrains and lived their poems.
And you see verses here, in many places.
They made rhythm to the slapping of the sails

588
 While I had the watch under my sou’wester’
My back against the tiller and my eye on the stars.

*
* *

The hypothesis of a Homer-Ulysses, of a single man, poet and hero of the Adventures, has found some partisans. I
do not believe that we can linger there for long. We already have some clear indications which are contrary to it. The
poem is exactly in the style of the periples: the exactitude would be imputable to the direct experience of an eyewitness.
But the poem is also inexact in the fashion of the same periples, and only of the periples. Now, a witness would have
avoided this or that of the errors without difficulty. Homer-Ulysses, citizen or denizen of Ithaca, would have known that
the Twin Ports are not in Asteris. A cruiser of the Doorway of the Zophos would never have been so grossly mistaken.
Only a reader of periples or of Instructions has always risked, and risks even today, interpreting thusly the descriptions -
not the realities - which he has before his eyes.
But there is a much stronger objection to the hypothesis of a Homer-Ulysses: it is that the poem is visibly the work
of an Hellene, although the periple bears, I believe, the mark of the Semitic worker. The poet - Homer, if you will - was
Greek; the navigator - Ulysses, to give him a name - was Phoenician.

II

It is a Semitic periple, in effect, that should be supposed as the original source of the Nostos. Here again, examine
the basis and the form, the material and the words. The hypothesis of a Greek periple would explain to us neither the
enseble nor the details of the navigation, nor certain technical terms, nor certain proper names.

*
* *

There are Odyssian regions which the Hellenes never knew, sites which they never frequented. Waters of the
Lestrygons, coast of Perijil: the Hellenic navigators will never carry out, from the edge of their explorations of Sardinia
and Libya or, especially, their periples will never take the pains to minutely describe the shores which their fleets did not
cruise.
During all antiquity, across all the classical periples, geographers, historians and commentators, it is impossible to
find mention of Perijil. Very explicable silence: The coast of Libya was of no use to the Greek and Roman navies. The
old periple of Skylax, describing the waters of the Columns, only tell us that in Europe the coasts are populated by
Carthaginian establishments, and muddy, and swept by tides, and bordered by a sea without limit, απο ‘Ηρακλείων
Στηλων εν τη Ευρώπη εμπόρια πολλα Καρχηδονίων και πηλος και πλημμυρίδες και πελάγη: in Libya, Skylax only knew
the Abila column on the “entirely Carthaginian” shore, πάντα εστι Καρχηδονίων.
Of the land of the Lestrygons, the same Skylax knew nothing: he nevertheless knew that Sardinia is near Corsica,
at 1/3 of a day of navigation, απο δε Κύρνου νήσου εις Σαρδω νησον πλους ‘ημέρας τρίτον μέρος, and that in the interval
is an uninhabited isle, και νησος ερήμη εν τω μεταξύ. The Hellenes will never know of Telepylos. It is by another road
that they will traffic with the mountaineers of the Gallura. At the foot of our bay of Terranova, on the sea of the Levant,

589
they had established their trading post of Olbia. Their caravans took the route which the railroad presentlly follows from
Terranova to Tempio. They made of Olbia the great emporium of Sardinia of the North. The Hellenes thus left the harbors
of the strait and “the route by which the carts brought the wood from the mountains” toward the odyssian port of the
Stone of the Dove.
It should be noted that most of the Odyssian regions present us the same opposition betweeen the site described by
the poet and some very near site where the classical navies later had their embarcadero. It is not on the isle of Circe, but at
Anxour-Terracine that the Hellenes come to traffic. There will not be a retreat or a “well-built town” at the Small Isle
(Nisida), they will not climb to the cavern of the Cyclops; but, installed at Naples, they will exploit the “eyebrows” of the
Eyes and the fields of the plain at the same time. Of what use are the Isles of the Sirens for the masters and lords of
Paestum? Aeolos loses his scepter, the High isle loses its supremacy the day when the Hellenes made Lipari the great
bazaaar of the Seven Isles. Since the Pheacians, Palaio-Kastrizza never regains the rôle which Kerkyra of the Hellenes
made it lose.
Everywhere, we thus have the opposition of the Greek site and the Odyssian site. Entirely different sites,
responding to opposing needs. The Greek site always accords with the colonists or merchants of a fixed residence, in an
allied or conquered land. The Odyssian site is never anything but a passage, a rest stop, a watering place, a repository in a
savage, hostile or unknown land.

*
* *

One will say: “The Odyssian descriptions will make the first vision which presents itself to the eyes of the
Hellenes when their fleets penetrated into the Occidental waters for the first time. The Greek establishments did not yet
exist. The resting places of the previous thalassocracies remained. The Odyssey comes from the first Greek periple, drawn
up by the first explorers. Thus nothing prevents the poet from having been able to describe to us, not an Hellenic
Mediterranian, but a more ancient and very different Mediterranian.”

*
* *

Far from furnishing to the poem the material of its descriptions, the first Greek explorers will borrow from it, I
believe, the nomenclature of their discoveries. It is not on a periple of its nations that the author of the Nostos models his
verse. It is to the verse of the Nostos that the first Greek Periples try to relate, to adjust their geography.
The Nostos existed in its present form before the departure of the Hellenic conquistadores toward Sicily and Italy.
For, in leaving for the conquest of the Occidental sea, the Hellenes will import with them certain names, certain
geographic ideas which only the Nostos had been able to provide them and which they were obliged to localize on the
shores of their explorations. They will seek the land of the Cyclops, the isle of Calypso, the coast of the Lestrygons, the
palace of Aeolos, the field of the Sirens, the rock of Circe. They will wish to find each Odyssian land.
Presently, they will succeed. Presently, they will fail. Always and everywhere, they will try. They never abandon
the preoccupation of their spirit. The poet presides over all their adventures, and the Adventures of Ulysses, over all their
accounts. And even in the Oriental seas, where the Nostos has not conveyed us at all, up to the ends of the Black Sea, the
people of Milet will believe themselves to be passing over the traces of the “Cunning” [Ulysses]. From the Colchide to
the shores of Sicily, the Hellenes will think themselves retrieving the Homeric nomenclature and realities at each step.

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They will believe with reason that Aeolos was a king of the isles around Lipari, τον Αίολον δυναστευσαί φασι των περι
την Λιπάραν νήσων. They will imagine that Charybdis and Scylla symbolized the pirates of the Sicilian strait, την
Χάρυβδιν και το Σκύλλαιον ‘υπο ληστων κατέχεσθαι εν άλλοις τόποις ‘ιστορουμεν. The Kimmerians of the poet will be
obliged to inhabit their Kimmerian Bosphorus, toward the north, in the polar night, and the Odyssian Circe becomes the
sister of their Medea, as both were supposed to be the daughters or sisters of Aites, king of their Colchide.
The least analogy will suffice for them. The Odyssey points out that the Cyclops is a thrower of rocks,
“Resembling a man less than shaggy mountain, isolated from the others”. When they are acquainted with Aetna, they will
discover at its feet the rocks of Polyphemus: it is still in that place that our sailors, disciples of the Hellenes, retrieve the
rocks, and our Instructions do not fail to point out, to the sailing ships which descend toward Catana, the “Reefs of the
Cyclops”. - The Lestrygons will appear to them, like a modern commentator told them above, close relatives of the
Cyclops: thus it was in the same region of Aetna, in the plain of Leontini, that the Hellenes, for no other reason, will
discover Lestrygonia. - The isle of Calypso appeared to them, we do not know why, on the Italian coast, facing Krotone
and the promontory of Hera Lakinia. Already, the old periple of Skylax indicates it in that place: Κρότων, Λακίνιον
‘ιερον ‘Ήρας και νησος Καλυψους εν η Οδυσσευς ώκει παρα Καλυψοι.
The erroneous localizations, the entirely imaginary geography, would they have been possible, or even admitted
without argument, if some Greek periple had pointed out to the Greek navigators, as to the poet, the veritable site of the
Odyssian lands?
` Are they not to be understood, to the contrary, if the poet serves as a guide to the navigators, if the Nostos existed
prior to their periples?
We know the place that the Homeric poems held in the popular education of the Hellenes. The stories of Ulysses
had been presented to the memory of all the fellow sailors. In arriving in the seas of the Sunset, the first Greek explorers
will retrieve some “evidence” of the Mediterranian described by the Nostos. To localize certain Adventures, they had at
times the sure indications of the existing nomenclature: in proper place, the names of Charybdis, of Scylla, of Aeolos, of
the Sirens and of Aiaia will give them the habitat of the monsters and demigods. But when their navigations will not lead
them to veritable sites, they will localize the Odyssian onomasty there no less: they will apply it to the sites which it had
never designated. They had thus imported the onomasty from their home bases. The poet was their guide: he was not their
pupil.
We should take certain verses of the Odyssey literally. In that epoch, the Achaean fleets barely passed the
repository of Ithaca. The isle of Ulysses is at that time the last stop at the entrance of the unknown seas. It is “the last in
the sea toward the zophos”. After the White Stone opens the realm of the Dead. The “flour-eater” seas go only to the end
of the channel of Ithaca. The savage seas, populated with monsters and cannibals, begins beyond. If the Achaeans have
not penetrated into the Sunset sea, how would their periples have been able to faithfully describe them?

*
* *

Now study the Odyssian nomenclature. You can, in places, compare it to the onomasty of the Hellenes. The Greek
navigators will retrieve and reproduce certain primitive names, which the poet had known, but which he had transcribed
in a different fashion: in certain points, the onomasty of the Hellenes and the nomenclature of the Odyssey are presented
to us as the double translation of a single and same toponymy. From one to the other, you will nevertheless remark an
essential difference: the Odyssian translation is a knowledgeable, “written”, translation: the translation of the Hellenes is a
popular, “spoken”, translation.
Here is the Land of the Round Eyes. The Semites had only baptized it with a name which the Ancients have
transmitted to us under the form Oinotria. The Semitic term, formed of two components, was exactly, completely,

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literally translated by the Odyssian poem as Kukl-Opia. The Hellenes, to the contrary, have rendered us only the general,
global, summed sense, in the later name of Opikia. Kukl-opia-Opikia, a double Greek translation of a single and same
term. But is it inexact to say that the first of the translations is redolent of its “author” of its savant, and that the second, to
the contrary, betrays its popular origin?
The people, in transcribing or translating, always simplify a bit. They take the essential and ignore the rest. They
say the Land of the Eyes, Opikia. The isle of the Cruiser, Kerkyra, the White Point, Iapyga, and not the Land of the
Round Eyes, Kyklopia, the isle of the Black Cruiser, Kerkyra Sheria, the Point of the White Lookout, Messapia Iapygia,
etc.; or, when they transcribe the two portions of the same term, they are inclined to separate them to make two things of
the Messapia and of the Iapygia, two coasts, two regions.
Compare again the translation “Small Isle” Nesos Lacheia, which the Odyssey gives us, and the translation “Islet”,
Nesis, which the popular usage has retained for us, for the name of the Cyclopian isle, the Semitic original of which we do
not know.
Compare the Hollow Port of the poem, Limen Glaphyros, and the Sickle of the Greek periples, Zanklon.
The Hellenes will name isles, which the poem names the Field of the Sirens, Sirenousai, Sirens. In all the Greek
nomenclature, we have none of the Fields which are frequently found in the onomasty of the Bible: Field of the Dance,
Field of the Acacias.

*
* *

Finally examine the very language of the Nostos. See how Semitic words, turns of phrase and idioms remain
discernable there. At each step, we have had to resort to the vocabularies, notions and theories of the Semites or of their
Egyptian masters, to understand the formulas and metaphores of the navigation. “Before” and “behind” designate the
Levant and the Occident; “houses” of the dawn, of the sun, of the sunset and of the zophos; “pillars” of the world: the
Semites and Egyptians spoke thusly.
It is true that, to measure the foreign influence on the language of our poet, we have perhaps needeed some texts
of comparison. It may be that all his contemporaries the Hellenes may then have used a similar language: in the mouth of
the Greek people, the Semitic words and expressions perhaps held in that epoch the place which the French words and
expressions hold today.
Take care nevertheless. The Nostos has retained for us some words whose usage the Hellenes appear to have never
known. Gaulos is a transcription of the Semitic g-u-l; the Hellenes will employ it to designate a vessel; the poet uses it to
designate a sort of pitcher: here is the true sense, the primitive sense, more or less, of the Semitic term.
Better yet: the Nostsos can deliver us some Semitic words, the signification of which the poet himself appeared to
have not known. Molu has never wished to say anything to the ears of the Hellenes, and the poet warns us that that it is
not a term of the language of men; only the gods know it:

μωλυ δέ μιν καλέουσι θεοί.

There, I believe, is a word transcribed from text to text, and not passed from person to person.

*
* *

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 “I say that the Phonecians will furnish him testimonies. For, before the Homeric times, they already occupied the
major portion of Iberia and Libya”, τους δε Φοίνικας λέγω μηνυτάς. και της Ιβηρίας και της Λιβύης την αρίστην ουτοι
κατέσχον προ της ‘Ομήρου. “The poet thus knew their multiple expeditions up to the extremities of Spain; he knew the
riches and the other advantages of the Occidental world: the Phoenicians had instructed him in it”, ‘ο τοίνυν Ποιητης τας
τοσαύτας στρατείας επι τα έσχατα της Ιβηρίας ‘ιστορηκως, πυνθανόμενος δε και πλουτον και τας άλλας αρετάς. οί γαρ
Φοίνικες εδήλουν τουτο.
Strabo is worth believing. I do not see how the Most Homerics can explain the knowledge and the very language
of the poem, if they do not suppose some Phoenician periple or fragments of periples at the origin.

CHAPTER II

PROCESSES AND INVENTION

τον σκυτέα τον συρράψαντα τον των ανέμων ασκόν.

Eratost. ap. Strab., I, p. 24.

From the periple to the poem, it can first appear that the passage was made directly, by a few simple procedures.
The entire periple is a necklace of proper names. Our poem is a gallery of personages. It is the names of the periple which
have become the personages of the poem. As Piraeus was made a man in the mouth of the ape of the fable, the Round Eye
in the verse of the Odyssey was made a giant, the Sparrowhawk a goddess, the Hideout a nymph, the Pillar a bearer of the
sky. The personified names have taken the ways, the speech and the life of veritable men or of almost divine heroes: they
eat and drink, speak and move themselves, are angered and appeased, argue and abuse.
They have taken the human affections and are grouped into families. The Hideout has become the daughter of the
Pillar: Atlas is father to Calypso. The Vulture has become the brother of the Sparrowhawk: Circe is sister of Aietes. They
also are grouped into communities: in each region, a chief has subordinated his neighbors and made servants or stooges of
them.
Around the principal name, the secondary names have become personages of second rank. Sometimes, they are
changed into simple attributes: the Sparrowhawk has taken the magic power and the prisons of Anxour, of the cape of the
Prison and of the Enchantment, in the manner of the beasts of Feronia; the Stone, Scylla, has become a monster, pelor,
facing cape Peloros.

*
* *

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 Each Adventure itself has for motivation only the setting of the toponymy in action. The land of the Sards, the
Fugitives, sees the flight of Ulysses; the land of the Sikeles, of the Orphans, sees his Isolation. Near the binding Sirens,
Ulysses is tied up. He disappears for seven years, hidden in the Isle of the Hideout, prisoner of Calypso.
When the entire adventure or such of its details do not come from the place names, we can still suspect that the
poet has invented almost nothing. It is then that he borrows from the text itself and the testimonies of the periple. The
tuna fishing on the coasts of Sardinia becomes the massacre of the Achaeans in his verse. The fishing for swordfish and
dogs of the sea on the coasts of Sicily merits the horrible fishing of Scylla the bitch to us. To flee the grotto of Calypso, if
the hero constructs a flat raft - not a ship - it is that in the waters of the Spanish strait, the natives use similar
embarkations. The hero comes two times to the High Isle, for the sole purpose of experiencing at first the welcoming
sweetness of Aeolos with the winds from the north, then his inhospitable furor with the winds from the south. At the end
of each chapter I have tried to set in view the probable text of the periple and the accommodations of the poem. I refer the
reader there. We can say, I believe, that all the invention can be summed up in a single process: from the stasis of the
periple, the poem draws the dynamic of the Nostos; it sets in human actions that which the periple gave in geographic
descriptions.
Let us reread for the Adventure of Calypso pages 295-297 ## of my first volume and for the Adventure of the
Pheacians pages 581 and following; let us take in the second volume the conclusion of each of the chapters: we will
retrieve everywhere in the work the same acting, vivifying force, which gives movement to the things and feeling to the
stones themselves.
We see the Rock of the Cruiser rise all at once from the waves. In truth, from all times, the rock existed to the
north of Corfu. The Vessel of stone merited for the great isle its name of Black Cruiser, Kerkyra Sheria; the poet cites us
the name of Sheria before the petrification of the Pheacian vessel: the Rock thus existed before the petrification. But from
the immobile, rooted Rock, the poet first made, by his habitual procedure, a living being, moving, almost endowed with
humanity - for the Pheacian vessels are almost beings - then he roots and petrifies it by the all-powerful hand of the god of
the sea.
We similarly see the circular mountain rise, which covered the bay of the Pheacians from all time. Only the
mountain had permitted the establishment of a foreign town at the foot of the bay. The mountain alone set the Pheacians
in shelter from the native attacks. But the poet takes the mountain, the rising or the leveling for the need of his story - as
he describes a marvelous trajectory of the two Rocks of Before and After in the sky of the Cyclops. Fixed in the periple,
all the rocks are moved in the poem.
In certain Adventures, we can follow stop by stop the setting in motion and the movement of the “animation”. We
see the different stages of it. The Cyclops has not entirely emerged from his mountainous crust. The man, who
nevertheless is wounded, speaks, eats and suffers, remains resembling “the shaggy summit of an isolated mountain”.
In other adventures, the thread of the periple remains still visible in the framework of the episodes. Among the
Pheacians, it is the topographic disposition of the River, of the Town and of the Cruiser of stone, stepping from south to
north, which explains to us the succession of acts and movements of Ulysses, of Nausicaa and of Alkinoös: the story
begins at the River, is continued in the town, and is ended at the petrification of the Cruiser. It would appear here that the
poem followed the periple paragraph by paragraph.

*
* *

The procedure thus appears easy to discover and recognize. And, the procedure being recognized, it could appear
at the very first that a very simple explanation should suffice to clarify everything. A Semitic periple on the one hand: a
Greek poem, on the other; in the interval, the anthropomorphic process: with the three elements, it would appear that we

594
can understand everything. Nevertheless, are we very sure that it may be a Greek poet who, upon an exact periple, bare of
all ornament and anything marvelous, had set the anthropomorphic process to work?

At the first thought, without doubt, those familiar with the Hellenes recognize in the anthropomorphism the proper
mark of the Greek genius. Our world is still populated with innumerable personages, divine or human, which the Hellenes
draw from its rocks, from its springs, from its rivers and from its mountains: Arethuse always lives on the Sicilian coins;
the hydra of Lerne still frightens our childhood; the marine Sparrowhawk, Nisos, and the Stone, her daughter, Scylla,
always guard the Megarian coast. It would appear that in the Nostos, the anthropomorphism may be the proper work, the
contribution of the Greek poet: the Semite had furnished the block; the Hellene had drawn the statue from it.
In support of the first hypothesis, the Greek literature can furnish us some indications.
Strabo, continuing the same work on the Nostos that the poet had begun on the periple, succeeds in giving a still
more complete humanity to this or that Odyssian personage, whom the poet had already animated, but not endowed with
all the attributes of man. Scyllla in the Nostos is a monster of the sea, and Charybdis, a mysterious swallower: Strabo
made of them pirates which infest the strait. And nevertheless the same Strabo had perceived the veritable explanation of
the Homeric monsters: “The accounts of the poet on the subject of Scylla are just the pictures of the fishing which is done
at the foot of the rock. When the tuna descend toward Sicily, they encounter dolphins, sea dogs and other cetacians which
await them at the doors of the strait: the ‘galeotes’ especially, which they also name ‘swords’ or ‘dogs of the sea’, ξιφίας
και κύνας, fatten themselves on the hunt.”
Pliny, better still, can furnish us a fine example. We have in the periple of Hannon a precise, exact, prosaic
description of the Occidental coast of Africa. If we should perhaps suspect a too-complacent display of monsters and
dangers in some passages there, the ensemble nevertheless remains a periple, not a story. See that which the Hellenes and
Romans made of it. Here on the one hand is the text of Hannon, and on the other that of Pliny.

Rounding the mountains for two days, we arrive

at a gigantic bay, of which a plain forms the other edge.
From there, we perceive fires which which moved from
place to place during the night and the brightness of
which varied from instant to instant.

From there, having taken on water,... we find a

wooded isle where nothing was visible except, at night,
fires in great number, and we heard the voice of flutes,
the playing of tambourines and cymbals, and a thousand
shouts.

TEXT OF HANNON

The last day, we reached large wooded

mountains. There were trees there with wood of varied
scents and essences.

595

TEXT OF PLINY
From the midst of the sands rises Atlas, rugged,
bare toward the Ocean, dark, wooded, irrigated by
springs toward Africa: the fruits of all species sprout
there in the wild state with such abundance that the
desires always find full satisfaction. During the day, no
trace of humans: the silence like in the horror of the
deserts; a mute religious terror seizes the voyager, who
contemplates the summit in the clouds, very near the
lunar circle. The night, it gleams with fires, it is filled
with mad dances of Aegipans and of Satyrs, with the
song of flutes and of pipes, and with the beating of
tambourines and cymbals. There is that which the
renowned authors relate, without speaking of the exploits
of Hercules and Persius. To get to the point, the interval
is immense and ill-definied.
There exist the commentaries of Hannon, chief
of the Carthaginians, who had received the order to
explore the African coast. Most of the Greek and Latin
authors have copied it and, among other fables, relate
that he founds numerous towns, of which neither traces
nor memories remain.

In the presence of similar texts, it appears that our first hypothesis takes all likelihood: the Semite appears to have
furnished the block; the Helene has carved the statue. But, at first, is it one block or several blocks which our Greek artist
received from the Semitic quarry?
It is not a continuous periple which the poet appears to have cut and set into work: it is fragments of periple which
he needs to join end to end; he has juxtaposed them with no tenon but the monotonous verse: “From there we navigate
farther... ”,

ένθεν δε προτέρω πλέομεν...

In the periple of Hannon, we would find a similar suture between the accounts of each stop: “Leaving from there,
we navigate toward... ”,
κάπειτα προς έσπέπαν αναχθέντες... συνήλθομεν... ,
κακειθεν δ’ αναχθέντες ήλθομεν επί... ,
εκειθεν πλέοντες ήλθομεν... ,
εκειθεν δε επλεύσαμεν...

But, from the periple of Hannon to the Homeric Nostos, we should note three or four essential differences.

First difference. The periple of Hannon almost always gives us the direction of the travel: “From there, we
navigated toward the south, εκειθεν επλέομεν εις επι μεσηβρίαν επλεύσαμεν... From there, we go forward, εκειθεν
επλέομεν εις τούμπροσθεν (forward appears to me here as the translation of thee semitic word which we know well and
which signifies toward the east).”
In the Nostos, only the stop of Circe after the Lestrygons is lodged for us in the “house” of the dawn. Everywhere
else, it does not appear that the poet had known the respective positions of the countries which he described to us.
Nevertheless, for the Land of the Dead, he knows that from Circe one goes there by winds from the north; he also knows
that the same winds from the north lead from Circe toward the Sirens. But nowhere does he give us the precise orientation
of the marches and countermarches of our hero: only the land of Clypso appears to him neatly in the Far West, completely
in the sunset; Ulysses, to return from there, needs to always keep the north to his left.

Second difference. The periple of Hannon most often records the the length of the travel: “For twelve days, we
cruise the land, επλεύσαμεν δώδεκα ‘ημέρας την γην παραλεγόμενοι... We parallel the desert toward the south for two

596
days, παρεπλέομεν την ερήμην προς μεσημβρίαν δύο ‘ημέρας... We round the mounts for two days... We go forward for
five days... , etc.”
The only measures of the route which we find in the Nostos are figures in numbers which appear ritual. Making an
exception of the Land of the Dead, which is one day from the isle of Circe, it is always ten days or seven days which
separate Aeolos from the Lestrygons, Aeolos from Ithaca, the Lotophages from Malea, Calypso from Scylla, etc.
Combining the two numbers, Calypso is seventeen days from Ithaca. I have catalogued the phenomena and the legends of
the primitive Mediterranian where the two figures seven and ten alternate entirely similarly. It appears to me needless to
go back there. (See in the first volume the chapter Rhythms and Numbers, p. 461 ##). Ordinarily, the poet does not know
the real distances between the stops of the hero.

Third difference. The periple of Hannon is continuous: it describes a coast to us - and all the periples are this way
- in setting out from one end, in ending at the other extremity. The periples travel the same as the navigators, without
interruption, without escape, without reversals other than the mistakes or accidents of the voyage.
The primary character of the Nostos is, to the contrary, a constant interruption of accustomed routes. From the
Lotophages to the Cyclops to return to Aeolos, to jump to the Lestrygons, to return to Circe and to the Land of the Dead
right next to the Cyclops, it is not a line of periple: it is a tangle of marches and countermarches, which at the first
approach has no logical reason, no rational explanation.

Fourth difference. The periple of Hannon without doubt points out the risks and dangers, the monsters and
enemies, which one should confront in the course of the voyage. It speaks “of savage men, clothed in the skins of beasts,
who seek to crush the ships under their throwing of stones”, and “shouts accompanied by flutes and tambourines”, and
“streams of fire which render the coast unboardable”. I even suspect some exaggeration somewhere in the account of the
terrifying meetings. But the periple does not only contain similar stories. It also describes to us pleasant waters, peaceful,
hospitable shores, adventures without pain and even embarkations without adventure.
The Odyssey is from one end to the other nothing but an anthology of abominations. Except for the Lotophages:
everywhere else, it is just murders, drownings, batterings, scenes of cannibalism or black magic, maws of monsters and
holes of death, to finally end in the shipwreck of the entire expedition and the survival of only the captain. It would
appear that the poet had only known the periple as terrifying episodes and passages.

*
* *

It is not a periple, it is only pieces of periple which the Nostos can give us, and the pieces do not appear to have
been cut apart, then sewn together again end to end without some intention. The refrain of the Nostos always leads the
reader to the same conclusion: “From there we navigate, the heart sorrowful, relieved to escape death, but weeping for our
dear companions.” I have said above (see book II, p. 88 and following ##) how the moaning refrain would appear to me to
little accord with the accounts and songs of navigators. In the periple, the Nostos has chosen only a litany of horrors.
Is it the Greek poet himself who made the triage among the documents which one or several Semitic periples set
in his hands?
Should we suppose, to the contrary, that our poet did not have the trouble of the choice, the Semites having
provided him, not a complete periple or periples, but an anthology biased and like a series of blocks already sorted and
trimmed, from which could have emerged a statue only in a certain pose, with a frightening posture?

597
 II

Under the apparent disorder of the anthology, perhaps some deep unity exists.
We have already believed to remark that a number of adventures occur in a “doorway” or, as our sailors say, in
some “Mouths” of the sea of the Sunset. Mouths of Gibraltar for Calypso; Mouths of Bonifacio for the Lestrygons;
Mouths of Nisida for the Cyclops; Mouths of Capri for the Sirens; Mouths of Messina for Charybdis and Scylla; Mouths
of Libya for the Lotophages; Mouths of the Adriatic for the Pheacians: it would appear that seven Adventures depict for
us the monsters, the peoples or the gods by which the seven mouths of the western sea are closed. Without great effort, it
also appears that we could relate all the other adventures to the Mouths. For the isle of Aeolos is the great signal of the
entrance of the Moths of Messina, and the isle of Circe is the lookout, where the navigators come to recognize the
mountains of Sardinia before leaving the cruising of the Italian land and setting out on the high sea toward the Mouths of
the Lestrygons. The Land of the Dead remains, which is just a dependance of the land of Circe, the spectre of that land:
the hero leaves Circe to arrive at Tiresias and, from the Land of the Dead, he comes back to Circe.
Taking all into account, it would appear that, in the Sunset sea, the hero having had ten great adventures
(Pheacians, Lotophages, strait of Messina, Aeolos, Sirens, Cyclops, Circe, Land of the Dead, Lestrygons, Calypso), seven
take place in the Mouths, and all ten can be grouped around the seven mouths.
Does the figure seven correspond to reality?
The Occidental sea does not have only seven Mouths. Along the Italian coast, the bordering isles Ischia, Procida,
Elbe, etc., also form Mouths. In the Adriatic or Sicilian, sardinian, Ligurian, Spanish, etc. seas, how many other passages
are there between the mainland and some coastal islet?
Is the figure seven Greek or Semitic?
Would it thus be, not a prosaic and precise periple of the Occidental sea, but some marvelous story and, to come
out with the word, some poem or story of the Seven Mouths, which the Semites would have furnished to our Greek poet?
The Egyptians, who had periples, already derived stories and novels of navigation from them. The Assyrians had
their epics of battles, but also their Voyages of the goddess Ishtar through the seven Doors of the Underworld, and their
Returns of the hero Gilgamesh across the Occidental world; an Assyrioligist of note, M. P. Jensen, believes to have
discovered a relationship, resemblances, more or less, between the Odyssey and the Assyrian epic of Gilgamesh. The
Phoenecians appear to have similarly had Voyages of Astarte, who “crossed the land wearing a bull’s head”, and Returns
of Melkart. Astarte had made the circular Nostos of the world, ‘η δε Αστάρτη περινοστουσα την οικουμένην. The
marvelous periple of Hercules in the Occidental sea is known to us through the Hellenic myths and legends; but the
Ancients knew that the voyager Hercules, the explorer of the coasts and the victor of the monsters in the sea of the Sunset,
was the Hercules of Tyre.
Hercules-Melkart appears to have frequented the same regions as Ulysses and perhaps to have used the same
instruments of navigation. The tradition would have it that he had fabricated rafts. It is mounted on a raft that Hercules of
Tyre had arrived at Erythria. Such an engraved stone, which I have reproduced as a frontspiece to this work, and which
bears in its celestial attributes - star, sphere and crescent - as a mark of Phoenician fabrication, represents to us Melkart
navigating on a raft, with a supply of jugs entirely resembling the provision of skins and amphoras which Ulysses
received from Calypso: I do not know of a better illustration to the text of the Odyssey (Cf. the first book of this work, p.
298 ##). It is in the waters of Calypso that the Tyrian Hercules had taken the herds of Geryon and it is from there that he
had returned, in making the whole tour of the Occidental sea. He followed, it is true, the land routes. But such and such of
his stops also figure among the Odyssian stops. In the land of the Cyclops, Hercules had constructed the dike of Lucrin
for the passage of his cattle, and he had driven the giants from the Kumean land.

*
* *

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 Perhaps the text of the Odyssey itself offers us in the words and inventions some foreign fantasies. We have, on
the Sardinian coast, figured out how the Semitic name of the Korses gave birth at the same time to “Eater” and
“Contradictor” to the voracious Antiphates, king of the Lestrygons. Similarly, on another of the routes described by Circe,
the Twin Rocks have at the same time become the “Two Stones” and the “Complete Doves”.
It is certain that the puns and plays on words are frequent in the borrowed toponymies, which may have been
transcribed from periple to periple or passed from people to people. In the bay of Pouzzoles, the Portulan of Michelot
tells us that they “load onto the vessels the earth which they call porcelan”: it is a pretty explanation of pouzzolane.
But if, at the first encounter, the anthropomorphism can resemble the favorite procedure of the Hellenes and their
great source of poetry, we are also tempted at first encounter to be reminded that the alliteration and the play on words
hold a preponderant place in the poetry of all the Semites. Alliteration and, to give it its proper name, the pun, are the
essential mark of their verse, as the rhyme is the essential mark of ours:

It is probable that the ancient Israelites have never known the metered art, such as is practiced by the Greeks... For rhyme
itself, the Hebrew poetry has not felt the need. If rhyme is encountered here and there in some verses, it is of no consequence... But
the poets have never disdained to know another musical form: assonance, that is to say, the frequent reproduction of the same
syllable in the composition of a piece. Those who can compare the original wish to reread well Psalm 124 and especially chapter V
of the Lamentations where the rhyming syllable is found forty times in the fifty-two distichs.

I imagine a Semitic author juggling thus with the words of his language more easily than a Greek poet playing
with the terms of a foreign language. Such wordplay supposes, I believe, the use of the mother language - at least that the
Greek poet would have had near at hand, like St. Jerome translating the Bible, his interpreter (“my Hebrew”, says St.
Jerome). The same St. Jerome explains to us clearly, at the head of his opuscule de Nominibus Hebraïcus, how many puns
or misinterpretations the transcriptions of Semitic names can take in the languages which do not have all the aspirates of
Hebrew: unde accidit ut eadem vocabula, quae apud illos non similiter scripta sunt, nobis videantur in interpretatione
variari. And St. Jerome gives us in the opuscule some fine examples of the “varieties of interpretation”:

Assur: dirigens, vel beatus, aut gradiens.

Bochor : primogenitus, vel in clitellis, aut ingressus est agnus.
Edom : rufus, sive terrenus.
Elissa : Deus meus, vel ejus salus, vel ad insulam, vel Dei mei salvatio.
Cades : sancta, sive mutata.
Naphes : refrigerium, vel anima.
Salem, pax, vel reddens, etc., etc.

*
* *

It is thus possible that, from the Semitic periple to the Greek poem, the passage might not have been made as
directly as it first appeared. It could have had an intermediary, perhaps even several intermediaries, the ones Semitic, the
others Greek.
We would understand that the Semites may have communicated some terrifying story or poem to the Hellenes
more willingly than an exact periple. From all times, the thalassocracies have kept secret their information of navigation.

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In his study of the Premiers voyages des Néerlandais dans l’Insulinde, prince Roland Bonaparte shows us the jealous care
with which the Venetians, then the Portuguese and the Hollanders in their turn will try to hide the routes of their fleets
toward the Far East. The Hollanders needed all the ruses of espionage to corrupt the archivists and cartographers of
Lisbon:

The history of the Europeans in Indonesia and the Philippines is particularly instructive. When the first Portuguese
navigators will arrive in the rich countries, there was a great agitation in Venice, which had started leagued with the Arabs for the
exploitation of the Far East. The Venetian diplomacy succeeded, for years, in sowing the route [of the Portuguese] with difficulties,
with inciting wars, in closing ports of call, in rendering commercial relations impossible with certain native sovereigns. The
Portuguese, on their side, in order to multiply their discoveries and their prizes of posession, will impose a European captain on
every Malay, Javanese, and Chinese commercial boat trafficking with Malacca. At the same time, the itineraries and the charts,
carefully hidden, would be defended against all indescretion, as documents of state. Following, on that point, the example of Spain,
Portugal punished with death whoever had furnished the least information on the subject to foreigners.
In spite of the precautions of all sort with which they surrounded themselves in Portugal, a Hollander, Van Linschoten, slips
himself past a Portugese squadron in April 1583 and furnished the first information to his country. Then the bookseller Claesz, of
Amsterdam, succeeded in procuring charts. The Houtmann brothers, sent as spies to Lisbon to complete the pieces obtained by
Claesz, were more or less found out and thrown in prison. Portugal made the mistake of allowing some Holland merchants to ransom
them by a fee in gold.
Once in posession of the precious documents, the Hollanders will keep themselves, also, from publishing them. Each ship’s
captain received copies of them for which he was responsible, and which he had to deposit in the archives of the admiralty upon his
return. In Holland also, the sentence of death punished the divulgence of the itineraries: the slightest indiscretions resulted in
flogging, branding or prison. At the end of the XVIIIth century, the Holland administration still denied pilots and aid to foreign ships
in distress in the seas of Indonesia and the Philippines. Would it be presumptuous to imagine that at times, in the XVIth and XVIIth
centuries, certain Portuguese or Holland agents had pushed their zeal up to causing shipwrecks?
In any case, for a long time, legends of the power of the foreigners wildly increased the storms of the Cape of Good hope,
the typhoons of the Indian Ocean, and the difficulties of navigation in the narrow passages of the coral seas.

“Originally,” says Strabo, “only the Phoenicians made the commerce of the Kassiterides, in leaving Gades and in
hiding all their navigation, κρύπτοντες ‘άπασι τον πλουν. Some Romans put themselves in the wake of a Phoenician pilot
in order to learn of the emporia, the pilot wrecks his vessel with full intention and at the same time caused the Romans
who followed him to also wreck. He escapes the shipwreck and received, as a result, from the public treasure, the value of
the merchandise which he had lost.”
In the Phoenician, Carthaginian periple, which the Hellenes knew under the name of the Periple of Hannon, it
well appears that the dangers and monsters may have a somewhat inhibiting place. In the other Phoenician periple of
Himilcon which the translation of Avienus has preserved for us, it similarly appears that the length and the risks of the
voyage up to the Kasserite isles may be a little exaggerated. Before arriving at the oceanic seas of the Far West, the
Phoenicians without doubt had populated the extremities of the Interior sea, the roads of which they jealously guarded,
with similar terrifiying fantasies: “The Carthaginians sank all the foreign ships which they met around Sardinia or the
Columns: whence the lack of certainty of the information which one can have concerning the sunset.”
Up to us, such terrifying inventions still hang over the Mediterranian regions which the Phoenicians discovered
and long monopolized. On the coast of our present Tripolitania, they had installed their Emporia: the traffic of the Sudan
had been assured them by the embarcaderos where the caravans of the desert already came to end. It appears that they had
related a thousand fables on the dangers of the Syrtes, on the terrible storms and the moving sands and the swallowed
ships and the consuming mud and the mirages of lake Triton: through the storytellers of the Greeks and the Romans, the
Phoenician inventions have passed down to us. In his excellent memoirs on the Trading Posts of the Syrtes (de Syrticis
Emporiis), A. Perroud has devoted an entire chapter to the terrors with which the Carthaginians surrounded their domain,
terrores quos Syrti minori Carthago circumdat. From Skylax to the end of the classical world, the little Syrte remains a
place of fear, and our children, from their professors of great literature, still learn that “the sea is savage, without ports,

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full of storms, of rocks, and of moving sands”, mare saevum, importuosum... ; limum arenamque et saxa ingentia fluctus
trahunt.

III

The existence of stories or poems of Semitic navigation thus appears probable to me. It appears even more difficlt
to me to deny the existence of Greek models anterior to the Odyssey. The Odysseia, being a masterwork, should not be a
first attempt: before le Cid, The French had acclimated the tragedy among themselves for a century; before the Odyssey,
the Helenes had acclimated the Nostos. The nostos, before the Homeric poet, was already a literary genre. It had its
language, its verse, its laws, its personages and its principal episodes. M. Paul Girard, wishing to show “how the Iliad
should have been made”, reëstablished the long serries of angers and disputes which will precede the Anger of Achilles
and the Dispute of Achilles and Agamemnon.

The quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon is not the only dispute among the Achaean chiefs of which the Greek epic has
retained a memory. The Odyssey mentions a disagreement which broke out between Achilles and Ulysses, and which formed the
material of one of the poems recited by Demodocos in the midst of the Pheacians.
Another quarrel, more known by moderns and even more famous in antiquity, is that of Ajax and Ulysses for the posession
of the arms of Achilles. We know how Sophocles is inspired by it in his Ajax. Before him, Eschylus had had recourse to the same
myth to compose his trilogy, lost today, of the Attribution of the Arms, Thracian Women, and Salaminian Women. The artists loved
to deal with the subject: the two pictures displayed at Samos, during a concourse, by Parrhasios and Timanthe prove, it appears, the
dramatic effects which it was able to draw from them. The quarrel of Ulysses and Ajax is related in the Nekyia. The poet does not
tell us expressly whether the quarrel formed the material of an epic poem: nevertheless, according to all appearances, such is the
sense of the allusion contained in the Nekyia. That which is certain - the grammarian Proclos instructs us - is that it figured in the
Aithiopis of Aretinos and in the Little Iliad of Lesches.
We know, finally, that after the capture of Troy, between Agamemnon and Menelaus, two quarrels will break out, of which
the Oddyssey brings us the echo. The account of it is placed in the mouth of Nestor relating to Telemachus the events which followed
the victory. There thus are, besides the quarrel of Agamemnon, four quarrels of which the literary existance is not doubtful. We can
enlarge the list by a certain number of examples which, although less pertinent, are still related to the singular literature whose
specimens we research. Here, in following the order of events, is the list which we can set up.
I. Quarrel of Philoctetes and some Achaean chiefs at Tenedos regarding the bite given Philoctetes by a serpent; subject
treated in the Cyprian Songs.
II. Enmity of Ulysses and Palamedes; subject treated in the Cyprian Songs.
III. Quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon on the subject of Briseis; the beginning point of the Iliad.
IV. Quarrel of Ulysses and Thersite in the assembly which follows the episode known under the name of the Test; subject
treated in the second canto of the Iliad.
V. Quarrel of Ulysses and Achilles after the death of Hector, regarding the means of taking Troy; material of one of the
poems recited by Demodocos at the court of Alkinoös; allusion to the poem in the eighth canto of the Odyssey.
VI. Quarrel of Achilles and Thersite, following the death of that personage, regarding the Amazon Penthesilea and the
passion which Achilles had conceived for her; perhaps allusion is made the quarrel in the Iliad, II, 220-221; subject treated in the
Aethiopis.
VII. Quarrel of Ulysses and Ajax, son of Telamon, for the posession of the arms of Achilles; allusion in the Odyssey, XI, 543
and following; subject treated in the Aethiopis and in the Little Iliad.
VIII. Quarrel of Ulysses and Diomedes regarding the Palladion; subject treated, it appears, in the Little Iliad.
IX. Enmity of Ulysses and Ajax, son of Oïleus, after the rape of Cassandra; allusion in Pausanias, X, 31, 2; the judgement of
Ajax by the Achaean chiefs formed one of the episodes of the Ilioupersis.
X. Quarrel of Agamemnon and Menelaus after the capture of Troy, on the occasion of the departure of the fleet; allusion in
the Odyssey, III, 130 and following; subject treated by Hagias of Trezena in his Returns.
XI. Quarrel of Nestor and Ulyssses on the subject of the return of the army; allusion in the Odyssey, III, 160 and following.

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 It appears to me that for the returns we can be even more affirmative. Nostos of Agamemnon, nostos of Menelaus,
nostos of Idomenea, nostos of Nestor: the Odyssey itself furnishes or summarizes three and four of the returns. Some
appear to have been introduced after the fact in the primitive text of our poem. I would not be far from believing that the
nostos of Menelaus, the story of Proteus, is an interpolation. The story is certainly regarding the same time as the rest: it is
perhaps not from the same hand.
In each of the nostoi, the episodes or travelings and the principal personages should have been the same. Among
the episodes, some are essential: such as the Recognition of the hero by his son or his kin, such again as the Account of
the Adventures by the hero, etc. Among the personages, some are also of almost indespensable types: the wife faithful
(Penelope), guilty (Clytemnestra) or repentant (Helen); the son helpful (Telemachus) or vengefrul (Orestes); the pretender
victorious (Egisthe) or vanquished (Antinoös); the good and the evil servant (Eumeus and Melanthios): the bard who by
his virtuous or perverse songs sustains or ruins the patience of the wife without news, etc. The nostos, like the tragedy,
like all the literary genres, had its “chief employees”, with their determined rôles. For several generations, perhaps for
centuries, the chief employees will appear in other nostoi, before figuring in our Odysseia.
M. Michel Bréal recently wrote on the subject of the Iliad:

To explain this marvel of the narrative genre, it is not enough to suppose a rare poetic genius: we are obliged, further, to
admit the existence of a form made supple by long practice. We need, at the same time, the poet and the tradition. To the poet is due
the grandeur of the framework, the verity of the characters, the interest of the action, the harmony of the ensemble; to the tradition is
due the measure of the verses, the abundance of the vocabulary, the richness of the grammatical forms, the habits of the formulas for
all the acts of the life, the usage of the invariable epithets and the hallowed periphrases. Without the tradition, a work of this scale
cannot be conceived, just as, without the genius, one ended with the banal versification of the cyclic poets.
A long period of epic attempts had to have preceeded. We have for proof the stereotypical locutions which roll the
continuous wave of the narration, the sufficiently strange fashions of speech whose habit prevents us from perceiving its surface...
Homer represents the maturity, and not the youth, of a poetic age. We cannot doubt it, when we see the hexameter, from
beginning to end, to be the form invariably adopted. As M. Wilamowitz observes, among the diverse meters which the Greek poetry
offers us, the hexameter is one of the most strictly regulated. The place of the long and short [syllables] is fixed in advance, a
somewhat small part being left to the liberty of the poet. No less rigorous are the laws of the prosody. The principle that one long is
equal to two short [syllables] evidently has something of the arbitrary. No less conventional is that which decides that two
consecutive consonants lengthen the syllable. If we apply the ear to the poetries truly coming from the people, we encounter there a
variety of measures and rhythms, we find lengthenings, shortenings, suppressions of entire syllables, which carry us far from the
regulated prosody of the epic hexameter. Like the Alexandrian French, this has the appearance of being the heir of a long evolution.

*
* *

I would even believe readily enough that before the Odysseaia, the Hellade had known other Ulyssiads, other
returns of Ulysses.
Take the beginning of the poem: “Muse, tell me of the Cunning Man.” The poet does not appear to experience the
need to name his hero. “The Cunning” suffices. Needless to pronounce the proper noun. The name of Ulysses will not
appear until the twenty-first verse. The Achaean listener knew “the Cunning”, as the people of the Middle Ages knew the
Virgin or the Precursor, as the audience of the Italian comedy knew the Jealous or the Scarred. Our poet only undertakes a
new portrait of the Cunning, a new account of some of his adventures; he prays for the Muse to tell him, him also, a part
of the stories:

των ‘αμόθεν γε, θεα θύγατερ Διος, ειπε και ‘ημιν.

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 The Muse thus had spoken to others before him. We could even perhaps underline such a curious word as
‘αμόθεν, which is encountered nowhere else in the Homeric poems, and which signifies, say the scholiasts, “in beginning
where you wish”. “Of the noble events of the cycle of Ulysses, tell us, us also, oh goddess daughter of Zeus, something,
that which you please, των περι τον Οδυσσέα ‘οπόθεν θέλεις πράξεων από τινος μ’ερους αρξαμένη διηγου και ‘ημιν.” In
the complete cycle of the adventures which the tradition attributes to the hero, our poet thus will only choose to embellish
some episodes... Before the Odysseia, there existed other Ulysses and other Ulyssiads, as before Michaelangelo there
existed in Italian art other Judgements, other Prophets and other Sibyls. But after the Homeric poet as after
Michaelangelo, a type, a definitive model ha been created, fixed: noöne tries again to recommence the Odyssey; noöne
tries again to recommense Moses.

*
* *

The proper work of the Homeric poet was the definitive portrait of the hero: the literary genre existed before him;
but, by virtue of him, having borne his perfect fruit, his masterwork, the genre had nothing to then do but disappear.
The masterwork appeared to be the “recutting”, if I can say, of the Greek tradition and the Semitic influence: thus,
in almost all the lands and almost all the times, the great works of art are the double product of a national tradition and a
foreign influence.
The Hellenes had their nostoi; the Semites had their periples and, perhaps, their tales, stories or poems of
navigation: the Homeric Odyssey is the result of a skilled mixing or crossing. I would willingly define it “the integration
into a Greek nostos of a Semitic periple or poem”. We can determine, I believe, that integration, if we would truly
consider the Odyssey complete, in reuniting the two primary parts of the present poem, those which deal with the voyages
and adventures, the Odysseia, properly speaking, and the Telemachea.
Between the Odysseia and the Telemachea, I see a definite separation: the Telemachea, to take up the word of a
critic, is a sort of “introduction”. But the introduction, properly weighed, appears to me necessary, indispensable to the
composition and to the cohesion of the work. The rôle, the personage and the story of Telemachus appears to me the
necessary compliment to the rôle, the personage and the story of Ulysses. As much as I admit with ease that we can, that
we even should omit the Mneresterophonia from the Odyssey, so much the removal of the Telemachea would appear to
me to mutilate the work - and my strongest reason is, as always, a geographic calculation.
For if the Odysseia properly speaking, the Nostos taken separately, is the poem of the Seven Mouths, it appears
that the Odyssey altogether, Odysseia and Telemachea reunited, may be the poem of the Ten Mouths. To the Seven
Mouths of the Occidental sea, the sea of savages and monsters, which are described in the Nostos and without doubt
borrowed from the poems of the Semites, should in effect be added the three Mouths which the Achaeans frequent, and
which lead their sailors from the archipelago up to the end of the “flour-eating” sea, to the threshold of the unknown sea:
Mouths of Cerigo, which the storm closes to the boat of Ulysses; Mouths of Zante, which the Pointed Isles bar; Mouths of
Ithaca, last port of the zophos, with the lookout and the pirates of Asteris.
Three Mouths in the “flour-eating” seas; seven Mouths in the unknown sea: to the total of ten dangerous doors or
Mouths. As a spectator placed on the shores of Ionia, the poet perceived ten Mouths, from the isle of Kythera, which
limits the Great Sea of the Ionians, the archipelago, to the foot of the Peloponnesus, up to the isle of the Hideout, Calypso,
which limits the world at the foot of the Occidental Pillar. The ten Mouths of the Odyssey, like the seven Mouths of the
Nostos above, would only be able to be a ritual or proverbial number. In the Semitic sea, the poet assuredly could only
have known of the seven Mouths whose portulan the Semites furnished him. But, in the Achaean seas, between Ionia and

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the end of the flour-eating seas, only on the periphery of the Hellade and the Peloponnesus, he should have been able to
describe other Mouths: such as, on the route which which had led the Neleides from Pylos into Ionia, the Mouths of the
Sapienza, celebrated among our accounts of voyage - the strait between the Messenian coast of the southwest and the
small Oinoussai isles of the Ancients, Sapienza of the Moderns.
We know how, to the Mediterranian of the Seven Isles, the Hellenes caused the Mediterranian of the Ten Isles to
succeed: I send the reader back to the chapter Rhythms and Numbers of the first volume (p. 461 and following##). We
have seen how Herodotus substituted the number ten of the Hellenes for the number seven of the Semites in the measures
of Libya, and how he substituted five days of travel across the isthmus of Asia Minor for the seven days which the
primitive proverbs and sayings set between the sea of Cyprus and the Black Sea, and how again he made of the Nile of
seven mouths a river of quintuple estuaries. Entirely similarly, in the hands of our Greek author, the seven Mouths of the
Semitic periple or poem will become the ten Mouths of Ulysses.

*
* *

I believe in the work of a great poet, laboring on the models and constructing artistically, knowledgeably, the
masterwork of the nostoi - not from all the pieces (there is no human creation which may be from all the pieces), but in
taking his good from everywhere he finds it. Before him, a long, almost unconscious labor of the multitude, then a very
conscious labor had prepared from the precursors the means of expression (language, verse, rhythm, episodes and scenes),
the types (the Cunning, the very wise but somewhat driveling old Man, the Wife, the Son, the Good Servant, etc.), and the
conventions of the genre: I do not see how a masterwork would ever have appeared without the preliminary labor, without
its experimentations, its half-successes and its failures from the multitude and from the precursors. The artisan of a
masterwork has need that others, before him, would have prepared the instruments and the material. Then he performs in
full freedom of genius. From the beginning of [this] work, I said how the Wolfian theories satisfied me little. Since then,
M. Michel Bréal wrote in February 1903:

If we were to believe the continuers of Wolf, the Homeric epic was presented in very extraordinary conditions. “It is not a
work which would have been conceived and executed: it took birth, it grew naturally.” Frederic Schlegel expresses himself thusly.
Each of the words in the phrase is clear in itself; but in combination, the thought is difficult to grasp. Jacob Grimm goes further:
“The veritable epic is that which composes itself; it should not be written by any poet.” We see a maxim erected here which had
previously been given as a fact once arrived. Then comes the great word which never is lacking when the idea ceases to be clear.
“The Greek epic is an organic production.” And finally (this is from the philosopher Steinthal): “it is dynamic”, which is to say,
without doubt, that it owes nothing outside of itself, it has its force of developoment in itself.
German lends itself marvelously to the formulas which, in their obscurity, have something of the imperious. The books of
Lachmann are full of them. The literary history has collected them for us for fifty years, and is greatly served by them. After they
had astonished our fathers, the following generation repeated them without thinking about them too much. The long discussions
which they had raised have spread little by little in leaving the spirits half convinced.

The most recent disciples of Wolf have invented an even more marvelous formation which M.Michel Bréal does
not mention. After the organic genesis and the dynamic production, here is the chemical “agglutination”. Do you wish to
understand the Iliad and the Odyssey? Imagine a bowl of curdled milk:

The Iliad, in resumé, is formed in the most natural fashion. Among all the peoples there have existed literary themes which
have been perpetuated across the ages, as they are perpetuated across the modifications of the language, the verbal roots. One of the
themes, among the Hellenes, was the epic quarrel between two heroes. Such is the source from which has sprung the Iliad. It has
come from this, not under the present form, but under an anterior form, impossible to reconstruct, the day when a poet, bored with

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the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon, imagines to show the results of it. That could not have been produced except in an epoch
when the ancient conception of the epic had given place to a new conception,, which demanded, in the depiction of heroic prowess, a
continuity, in which it had surpassed the primitive epic. That could have been produced only in a time when innumerable epic poems
circulated and when, to relate the consequences of the quarrel, it was less a matter of inventing than of grouping scattered traditions,
already elaborated by the poetry. The first which satisfied the new exigencies and was delivered from the work of synthesis was,
unconsciously, the instigator of the immense work which is the Iliad which has arrived to us.
If it is thusly that things have happened, it is not necessary, at least at the beginnings, to have genius intervene. The Iliad was
the result of the spontaneous development of the Hellenic thought and civilization, and its formation has no more place to surprise us
than whatever phenomenon of the natural order which manifests itself when conditions rendered it possible... That is why I would
be tempted to believe that, if the theme of the quarrel was not the only cause of the first epic groupings, it was one of the most active
and most effective causes; to employ an Homeric comparison, the “fig juice”, a few drops of which suffice to coagulate the milk.

*
* *

I would, with M. Michel Bréal, wish that we place the Odyssey in the series of human works and masterpieces of
art, not in some more or less secret museum of monsters, of “teratologies”, as Strabo says, of infants without a father and
spontaneous creations. Human work, masterwork, the Odyssey enters into the condition of all the human productions.
Here again, M. Michel Bréal has a hundred reasons:

There are literary theories on which we have been nourished, particularly the theory of an epic composed by the people, a
Volksepic...
Wolf is not the first who has thrown it into circulation. Before him, the Italian Vico and the Dane Zoega had already
presented it to the world, not without a certain eloquence: “In the distant ages,” they say, “the culture was almost the same for
everyone: that which one knew, the others knew. In each lived the joined forces of the entire nation. The same song arose here and
there. The poetry of it was like the language: it was the common work of all. There were entire populations of Homers. The
individual works were melted together to form an ensemble. Finally an assembler, a Homer, joined it all together.”
They are the same ideas which animate Herder in his enthusiasm and which Wolf confirms by the authority of his erudition.
There is - I repeat it - something seductive in these views. But we know a little better today than at the time of Zoega and Vico which
are the true characteristics of the popular poetry.
Above all, it is brief. To attribute a composition of twenty-four cantos to popular poetry, what folly! And even to suppose a
series of small independant poems still surpasses the measure of the popular muse. Read the songs truly coming from the people,
read the same ones lightly retouched, as in those collected by Percy or Brentano. The language of the popular poetry is uneven,
obscure, not narrative, even less descriptive, but sown with short dialogues and details in no way agreeable. The popular poetry
finds, without seeking them, some moving words; but it is not capable at all of setting before the eyes a scene which is prolonged and
which flows. In general, the sequence is what is the most lacking: one word, one allusion, one assonance suffices to turn it from its
path. The poetry of Homer is just the opposite.

*
* *

The Odyssey is the work of one man, one author, one artist. Now, look at that which is presumed to be a statue by
Phideas: would it exist if, during four, five or six centuries, the Hellenes had not apparently learned to hew the wood, then
the tuff, then the marble, to render little men, then men, then gods, to finally define the type of Apollo, of Athena, of
Zeus? The most resolute “Wolfians” are obliged to acknowledge:

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 Genius, ordinarily, is prepared by something; we hardly see it unexpectedly arise from ignorance or mediocrity: it had been
sixty years that they had made tragedies in Athens when Eschylus wrote his Perses, and the interval is even more considerable the
frieze of the Parthenon, so justly admired, and that of the treasury of the Cnidians at Delphi, with some parts of which the frieze of
the Parthenon presents such a sensible analogy.
If it were necessary to resort to the hypothesis of a poet of Genius, I would place him especially toward the end of the
evolution which ended in the present state of the Iliad. I would conceive him profiting from from all the efforts of the previous poets,
appropriating the fruits of their efforts and setting on them his mark, the seal of his personality, powerful as it might be, but
especially the creator in the detail, skilled in adapting the old heroic accounts to the taste of a refined public. For my part, I believe
little in the existance of such a poet, but, if he has ever existed, it would be necessary to make him the contemporary of the
accomplishment of the edifice. Such is, at least, the path which the human works, in general, follow; most often, they proceed like
nature, where everything is made without unevenness; it is insensibly that the fruit arrives at the point of maturity, before which it is
still sour, after which it loses its flavor.

In the marble which his masters had furnished him, with the instruments which he knew how to handle by virtue
of their lessons, Phideas definitively realizes their conceptions and their dreams; he fixes some types which the entire race
saw float before their eyes: he was the sculptor of the gods. The poet of the Odyssey, Homer, to give him a name, appears
to me as the Phideas of the Nostos.

*
* *

Having studied the works of Chateaubriand, the poems and prose which are the Voyage to America, the Genius of
Christianity, the Memories of the Outcast, etc., M. Joseph Bédier has been able to demonstrate that the poems had for
primary sources some accounts of voyagers, some terrestrial or fluvial periples (if I can speak thusly) of the New World.
It is probable that Chateaubriand did not see the countries, the peoples and the monsters which he describes to us. It is
almost certain that he has transposed the humble prose of of Charlevooix, Bartram, le Page, du Pratz, Bonnet, etc., into an
admirable language:

Nothing equals in splendor - in the work of Chateaubriand himself - the depiction of the Mississippi: “When all the rivers
[tributaries of the Mississippi] have swollen with the floods of winter, when the storms have destroyed entire stretches of forest, the
uprooted trees are assembled upon the floods. Presently the mud cements them, the vines bind them and the plants taking root in all
parts succeed in consolidating the debris. Borne by the foamy waves, they descend the Mississippi; the river seizes them, pushes
them to the gulf of Mexico, grounds them on the sand banks and thus increases the number of its mouths. At intervals, it raises its
voice in passing under the mounts and spreads its boundless waters around the colonnades of the forest and the pyramids of the
Indian tombs; it is the Nile of the deserts. But grace is always joined with magnificence in the scenes of nature: while the current of
the middle carries the bodies of pines and oaks toward the sea, one sees, on the two lateral currents arising along the shores, floating
islands of pistia and water lily, whose yellow roses rise like small flags. Green serpents, blue herons, flaming roses, young crocodiles
embark as passengers on the vessels of flowers, and the colony, deploying its golden sails to the wind, goes sluggishly to ground in
some secluded cove of the river... ”
They have vigorously contested the picturesque reality of the picture. All the geographers describe the action of the counter-
currents of the Mississippi, and as for the blocks of land which its waves carry, Chateaubriand had been able to remember the
passage of Bartram: “Portions of the banks, always undermined at their base by the ininterrupted force of the current, end by falling
into the river; its impetuous flow grasps them, divides them, and goes to deposit them on some other shore”. But we are strongly
entertained - Mersenne especially - by the floating isles of pistia and water lily where green serpents, blue herons, flaming roses and
young crocodiles would embark as passengers.

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 It was a mistake for the critics to have read Bartram. Chateaubriand has only transported to the Mississippi a phenomenon
observed by Bartram only three leagues from the Mississippi, on the St.-Jean river in eastern Florida: “I spent a good time sailing on
the St.-Jean river, and I saw that day great quantities of pistia stratiotes, a very singular aquatic plant. It forms floating isles, some of
which have a great extent and which move to the whim of the wind and the waters. The groups ordinarily begin either on the coast or
near the shore, in the quiet waters; from there, they extend by degrees toward the river, forming mobile fields, of a charming green,
which have several miles of length and sometimes a quarter mile of width... When the heavy rains, the great winds suddenly raise
the waters of the river, large portions of the floating isles are detached from the coast. The mobile islets offer the most amiable
spectacle: they are just a mass of the most humble products of nature, and nevertheless they trouble and deceive the imagination. The
illusion is even more complete, that, in the midst of the flowering plants one sees goups of bushes, old tree trunks blown down by the
winds and still covered with the long moss which hangs among their debris. They are even inhabited and populated by crocodiles,
serpents, frogs, otters, crows, herons, curlews, jackdaws.”
Confront the reworkings of the poet with their native models. It is at times literal translation or simple transcription: an
humble retouch of syntax, ellipsis or inversion; a word set in its place; a member of a phrase pruned; and the dry amorhous material
organizes itself and palpitates; a powerful word, a created image project there like a flow of sap; light insinuates itself there, and
numbers, and life. It still is only a rough shape: the poet takes it up two or three times again; it passes from the Voyage into
Americato the Genius of Christianity then to Memories of the Outcast: a process of painting; and each transformation is creation. At
the origin, it is just an ingenious aggregate of passages of Bartram, translated in complete rigor; but great sad images shine there
sometimes; a harmonious melancholy breathes there, and something of the soul of René. Then, from twenty-five years distance, the
poet comes back to the same pages to transport them into his Memoires: here and there we still touch the tuff, we rediscover phrases
such as Bartram’s; but the Floridian Sylvaines animate the passage, spread the perfumes emanating from them there, lighten it (and
perhaps at times patches it up) with their songs and their play; the setting sun changes rivers of lava into waves of diamonds and
sapphires there, and here is what shines, the hymn to the light which reaches and crowns, like the radiant final phrase of a strophe, a
rare idea of poetry: “The earth appeared to perfume the sky in adoration, and the amber exhalation of its breast hung over it in a mist,
as the prayer falls over the one who prays.”

Is Chateaubriand, for having copied Bartram, a less great poet? And has Corneille not made a masterpiece in
complete imitation of Guilhem de Castro?

*
* *

A similar conception of the Odyssey greatly risks displeasing two classes of readers: philologists and artists.
The disciples of Wolf, the Germanizing troupe of philologists, do not want to renounce their marvels of the
“popular epic”, of “spontaneous formation”. To cite M. Michel Bréal again: “The spirits inclined to mystery will perhaps
regret the poetry which emerges from the popular conscience like the lotus from a pond of India; but those who love the
clear ideas will appreciate the Homeric poems no less when they will know that they were composed in a time which was
already a time of culture and art.”
On the other hand, the Homeric “plaigerists” perhaps will scandalize our present artists, all our great artists of the
brush, the pen and the voice. In their eyes, the “creation”, as they say, is the first duty of the artist. The least among them
thinks to make ten or twelve “creations” during his career. All would believe themselves dishonored to produce
imitations, adaptations or copies... The Hellenes, who have been known in works of art, thought that the creation is
neither the primordial fact nor the principal duty of the great artist. They set the primary merit of a work of art in the
arrangement, in the combination, in the logic and harmony. They did not “create” a new form of temple or new
personages of tragedy every morning. They had no shame in in representing the ideas, the types, the plans of some
predecessor, in bringing them to a greater perfection, in fixing them in a definitive form, in finally raising them before the
admiration of the centuries in an impeccable attitude of force and beauty.

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 CHAPTER III

AGE AND HOMELAND OF THE POEM

‘Όμηρον ‘ηλικίην τετρακοσίοισι έτεσι δοκέω μεν πρεσβυτερο[ν] γενέσθαι και ου πλέοσι.

Herod., II, 53.

If we admit a similar mode of formation of the Odyssian poem, it should truly also be admitted that it does not
date to the bottomless antiquity of which we habitually speak. The Odyssey has nothing of the primitive, of the barbaric,
of the savage.
At the beginning of this work (see the first book, p. 144 ##), I already insisted on this idea. As. M. Michel Bréal
repeats very well on the subject of the Iliad, the Homeric epic belongs “to an age of humanity which is already far from
childhood; it represents a civilization in no way beginning... When Mme. Dacier, translating the Iliad, saw nobles and
princes everywhere, she was closer to the truth, she misunderstood the spirit of the society less than our modern
interpreters, when they make of the Greek and Trojan warriors the contemporaries of an age of blood, the coarse types of
an epoch of Barbary and murder.”
We need to renounce the fabulous date would make of Homer and the Homeric poems the precursors of all Greek
civilization. We should come back to the conceptions of Herodotus, who, there before, could have been better informed
than Wolf, Lachmann or Zoega: “I believe that the poet was my elder by only four centuries”. Should we nevertheless
exaggerate the new trend and have our poems derive from an even later date? On this point, I believe that the reforming
zeal has carried M. Michel Bréal a bit too far.
In the Iliad, M. Michel Bréal has vainly sought some indication of the times and the homeland. He nevertheless
believes that Asia Minor and the VIIth century B.C. were the land and the age of the poet:

A thing which disconcers the reader of Homer is the absolute silence on all which concerns the poet, his homeland, his
times. The silence is not a reason to set the personality of Homer outside of his time and his milieu. The Homeric poems cannot be
much anterior to the times when Thales inaugurated the Ionian philosophy, when Hecateus composes the first book of history, when
Alcman and Mimnerme create lyric poetry. We have wished to place Homer one or two centuries before the age of great literary
production. But such an interval is little likely. We know today that the oral transmission does not improve the works, but spoils and
deforms them. If the Iliad should have experienced two centuries of oral transmission by more or less versifying rhapsodists, it
would present more additions, more repititions, more epithets out of place; it would offer more suspect episodes and manifestly
interpolated parts.
A testimony - much contested, it is true - places under Pisistratus (561-528) the epoch when the two epics were collected at
Athens and fixed in writing. Whatever may be the value of the evidence, if we admit the approximate date and if we suppose a
hundred fifty years of oral transmission, which is enormous, we are led toward the times when the Greek colonies of Asia were in
full prosperity and still enjoyed their independance. It is thus at the beginning of the VIIth century that I can place the age of Homer
with probability.

In contrast to the Iliad, I believe that the Odyssey can furnish us some certain indications of the times and of the
place.

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 I

For the date, I have little confidance in the arguments invoked by M. Michel Bréal. The tradition of the rôle of
Pisistratus is doubtful. Even in admitting that Pisistratus had made, in the middle or the end of the VIth century, the first
Athenian edition of the Homeric poems, we know that antiquity was acquainted with, posessed, and transmitted to us in
fragments, three or four different editions of the poems, which all derived from very ancient times. Who can assure us that
the first Athenian edition was also truly the first Hellenic edition?
Even in admitting the second hypothesis: “The oral transmission,” says M. Bréal, “does not improve the works,
but spoils and deforms them.” I believe that the legend of the oral composition and transmission should be renounced.
The poet of the Odyssey has appeared to us as a writer. He was able to work only on written documents. Without writing,
it is impossible to understand the familiarity he had of Semitic models or models, and the Greek imitation or adaptation he
made of them. By the findings of Crete and of Orchomene, we know that writing is not of recent invention or importation
in the Hellenic lands. The Homeric poems are posterior to the Cretan civilization, whose inscribed tablets have currently
been revealed to us. - But the writing, they will say, is never mentioned in the Odyssian poem. - M. Michel Bréal himself
has found the decisive response to that old objection:

Ther are a certain number of objects, more or less precious products of the civilization, which are never spoken of, and to
which the narrator avoids making allusion. It is not to say that the objects may not have existed at all: no. They are long anterior to
the most remote date to which which we can assign the Greek epic; they can not have been unknown to the authors of the epic.
In the first place, the authors have need of never mentioning the art of writing. It nevertheless was a good while that the
world made usage of it. Not far from the coast of Asia Minor, the walls of the palaces of Egypt and of Assyria were covered with
inscriptions. Will we say that those had nothing to do with the Greek world? But the excavations of Crete have brought to light
thousands of bricks covered with writing, and have revealed, not one, but two graphic systems, not of monumental writings, destined
to perpetuate some proper names, but current writings, serving the ordinary usages of life.
I pray that the reader does not misunderstand my thought. I do not wish to say that the Iliad had been fixed in writing: I
believe, to the contrary, that it was transmitted by oral tradition for a long time. But writing existed, It spread before the eyes of the
bards, they were not able to ignore its existence, the occasion was offered many times to speak of it, and nevertheless they say
nothing of it, they avoid pronouncing its name.
Not only writing, no mention is made of statues or of paintings. Should it be believed that Greece, that the colonies of Asia
Minor did not yet have them? But in Crete, at Cnossos, in the edifice which they agree in calling the palace of king Minos, they
retrieve fragments of statues and painting deriving from an epoch which they should place at least six centuries before Homer.
When, at the beginning of the Iliad, the high priest Chryses invokes Apollo, on whose altar he has many times offered in sacrifice the
thighs of bulls and of goats, how to not believe that he designates, in these places and above the altars a present and visible god,
whether he was in wood, in stone or in marble? When Andromache climbs to the citadel, opens the temple of Athena, and goes to
spread a precious veil on the knees of the goddess, how to not understand, in spite of the vagueness of the text, that it was done to a
statue? All the world remembers the enthusiastic descriptions of jewels, of arms, of ornaments of all sorts spread in the poems. It
would be singular that the decorative art would have existed to the exclusion of the religious art: would those who sculpted so well
the shields not undertake the images of the gods? Nevertheless, in the forty-eight cantos, we do not find a single explicit mention of
some representation of divinity.
There is a third and final object the systematic paralipsis of which we wish to point out: it is money; the Iliad counts by head
of livestock. A cauldron in good condition, of a usual design, is worth one bullock; a large tripod of bronze is worth twelve of them.
The drachma and silver mine appear unknown to the poet, although they may be very ancient in the world, since we already find
them three thousand years before the Christian era, in the Babylonian code of Hammurabi. Who would suspect that one is in the
closest proximity of the very land where the Ancients place the invention of minted silver, to know the land of Lydia celebrated for
its riches? This realm, precisely at the same time, is at the high point of opulance under the kings Candaule, Gyges and Croesus. By a
bizarre inconsistency, the Homeric poems, which affect to be unaware of coins of silver or copper, speak a number of times of the
talent of gold, but in leaving in doubt whether it is counted by numbers or by weight.

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 In that which concerns money, I would perhaps not entirely accept the reasoning of M. Michel Bréal: the Homeric
poems appear to me far anterior to the times of Candaule, Gyges and Croesus, and the long catalogues, where the
Odyssian poet enumerates for us the six tripods, the twelve cauldrons, the seven amphoras, etc., which Ulysses received
or gave as presents, take us sraightaway back to the Cretan tablets. Such of the tablets appear to be, in effect, just entirely
similar catalogues: the first sign of the line represents either a man (a slave, without doubt), or a tripod or a cauldron, etc.,
and the other signs well appear to represent, by hundreds, tens and units, the total figure of the objects stored, sold,
received or given.
But in that which concerns writing, I do not see that we can pose a valid objection to the reasonings of our author.
Still, I make only one reservation: if the composition and the transmission of the Iliad can be explained outside of writing,
as M. Michel Bréal would have it, I am very certain that, for the Odyssey, we need to renounce the hypothesis of an oral
composition and transmission: the origin and the form of the Odyssian poem implies the usage of a writing.

*
* *

The Odyssey can furnish us, I believe, two dates minimum and maximum, between which the poem should have
taken birth.

Minimum date. We know from a certain source that the first Greek colonies in the Occidental sea are the Sicilian
colonies, whose foundation dates to the VIIIth century B.C. For one of the colonies, we have an almost cerrtain date:
Syriacuse should have been founded in the year 733 or 734. The ancient historians are definite on that, and we can believe
them: a town like Syriacuse should know its history, and conserve memories, monuments, archives, and such of the
written monuments, list of magistrates or of priests, could provide to the first historians the exact date of the foundation.
We know, additionally, that the towns of Sicily had had their very good historians: Hippys of Rhegium, contemporary of
the Medean wars, had composed a work on the colonization of Italy and five books of Sikelika, of which none remain, but
of which Thucydides should make use. Thucydides informs us that before Syriacuse, other points of the Sicilian coast had
been occupied by the Hellenes. Naxos, the first of the establishments, had been founded about a year before Syriacuse.
Thus it is about 735 or 736 B.C. that the Hellenes will arrive at the strait of Sicily to establish themselves there. I believe
that the Odyssey is surely anterior to that date.
From the day, in effect, when the Hellenes had, with their own eyes, seen Charybdis and Scylla, it appears to me
impossible that a poet would have been able to relate the frightening perils of the Occidental sea. If the Nostos is truly the
tendentious, but not imaginary, picture of the regions exploited by the Semitic thalassocracies, it can only be anterior to
the Greek thalassocracy in the same regions. After the foundation of Naxos, the Greek navigators would have been in the
situation and disposition to no longer accept the Phoenician legends and stories which would have reached them through
the intermediary of the Homeric poet. They would have directed to the narrator the language which Thucydides will direct
later to the repeaters of the legends: “Cyclops and Lestrygons, the oldest inhabitants, they say, of a canton of the earth! I
cannot say either the race or the land from which they come, or that to where they will disappear. I send the reader back to
the poets and to the acquaintance which each poet has with those peoples.
The Odyssey cannot be posterior to 736. But it is not in a single bound that the Hellenes will leap from their native
towns and seas to their Occidental colonies. Before fixing themselves on the shores of the Sicilian strait, they will need to
employ numerous years, a century perhaps, to clear the way, explore and occupy the routes of the Occident. The Odyssey
is still anterior to the explorations: it implies an Hellenic sea ending at the channel of Ithaca. I doubt, in consequence, that
our poem might have been composed after the middle or the end of the IXth century, after 850 or 800 B.C.

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 Maximum date. Our poem informs us that Hyperia has already been founded and destroyed. If Kumea of
Campania, Kumë of the Opics, is truly the Hyperia of the Cyclops, we already posess a date, if not certain and precise, at
least approximate and probable. The first foundation of Kumea should have dated from the ending XIth century. Helbig,
in the appendix to his Épopée Homéric (Trawinski translation), has discussed at length the date of 1049 B.C., which has
been transmitted to us by the Ancients for the event. He has very neatly established that the Hellenes were never able to
found a similar colony on the Campanian shore in the XIth century.
It is not doubtful, in effect, that the Kumea of the Hellenes could be founded only after Naxos and the Sicilian
towns. The Hellenes will frequent the strait of Messina, will establish themselves there, before arriving at the Campanian
lands and fixing themselves there. But the new Kumea of the Hellenes succeeded, I believe, the Hyperia of our Nostos.
Before the Hellenes, other peoples of the sea had already occupied the high lookout: here, as at Naxos and Syriacuse, the
Hellenes only took the succession from the predicessors. Pheacians, Leucadians or Leuternes (see the first volume, p. 579
##), the first founders had been expelled or subjugated by the natives, by the Opics, such as happens later for the second
Kumea, for the Kumea of the Greeks (see book II of this work, p. 128 ##).
The second time, in spite of the intrusion and implantation of the Barbarians, Kumë retains some traces of its
Hellenism and some descendats of its foreign colonists. The Campanian burg, formerly living in the fashion of the
Oscans, still followed the laws and spoke or understood the language of the Greeks, σώξεται πολλα ίχνη του ‘Ελληνικου
κόσμου και των νομίμων. The first Hyperia, I think, should have similarly retained, after the invasion of the Cyclops,
some memories, indications or evidence of its Semitic origin. The Hellenes only succeeded at the end of the VIIth
century; but they will be able to learn from the Kumeans themselves that the first foundation of their town went back
about ten generations, maybe three centuries before them: from that is the date of 1049, the precision of which is perhaps
a fantasy, but which perhaps should not be entirely rejected. Still, I would be disposed to take the figure of 1049 itself:
since the scripture existed, who tells us that the Kumeans had not retained some chronological documents, some list of
Kings or of eponyms which furnished them a cerrtain date?

Thus, it is between the two minimum and maximum dates, between the Semitic foundation of Kumea and the
Greek foundation of Naxos, between the end of the XIth and the end of the VIIIth centuries - between 1049 and 736, to
give the figures - that we can secure the appearance of the Odyssey. I have given the reasons which would make me go
back to a date a little earlier than the VIIIth century. There are others which force us to descend to a little later than the
XIth. For the Odyssian poem itself tells us that it is some years posterior to the first foundation of Hyperia. The foreign
village, founded on the Campanian beach, should have endured some time. Then the Opics occupied it. Then the
Pheacians, from cape to cape, came to Sheria, to Corfu. There they definitively installed themselves. The founder of the
new town, Nausithoös, is dead. In the Odyssian times, it is already his son, Alkinoös, who rules over the Pheacians. All
the events require a somewhat long interval of time, perhaps a century and more.
Thus, if I need to fix a precise date, I would purely and simply come back to the opinion of Herodotus: “Homer is
my elder by four centuries, no more”. Set Herodtus in the middle of the Vth century, about 450: Homer will flourish
toward the middle of the IXth, about 850.

*
* *

The Homeric chronology agrees with the Greek documents most worthy of belief. The Chronicle of Paros does
not merit complete belief of its events of primitive history. Its relatively ancient date nevertheless should have retained
some place in the chronological calculations of the erudites. The inscription appears to have been carved toward the years

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264-263 B.C.: even though the date may not be very early in the ancient history, it is still interesting to see what idea the
Alexandrian Hellenes could have made of their origins.
In the Chronicle of Paros, Greek history begins with Kekrops, at the beginning of the XVIth century B.C., about
1580.
Cadmus and Danaos arrive at the end of the XVIth century, toward 1520 and 1500. With Danaos and his fifty
sons, appears the vessel with fifty rowers. About the same epoch, the harnessed cart appears.
The first Minos rules over Crete in the first decades of the XVth century, around 1430.
The Mysteries of Eleusis date to 1400.
The cults and the games of the Lycea date from a later century, from 1320.
The second Minos and Theseus rule, and the Seven march against Thebes about 1250.
The war with Troy arrives in 1220.
The Greek colonization in Asia Minor takes place a hundred thirty or a hundred forty years later: Neleus founds Milet and
the Ionian towns about 1080.
Hesiod appears about 940, Homer about 900.
All the dates of the Chronicle of Paros are thirty or forty years in advance of the dates which the fragments of Eratosthene
furnish us. For Eratosthene, the capture of Troy is in 1180, and the Ionian colonization in 1044. The very precise dates can appear
fantastic when one still holds the old prejudices concerning the age of writing. If we do not admit the ancientness of writing in
Greece, we should not attach the least credit to the evidence. But we know today that the Cretans and the people of Orchomene wrote
in “Mycenaean” times”: why not admit the consequences of the discovery? The Greek towns could and should have lists of priests or
of magistrates which reached back very early. Milet, from its foundation, had been able and should have inscribed the names and the
reign of its kings. it thus should not surprise us that the Ancients might have known down to the precise year when the town is
founded. Similarly, the priests of Eleusis and the guardians of the Lycea could have and should have had a list of the eponymous
functionaries or of their victors.

*
* *

The dates furnished by the tradition of the Hellenes agrees very well with all that which the monuments teach us.
At the beginning of his “Mysteries of Eleusis”, M. P. Foucart established the parallelism of the first Greek history with
the history of Egypt, of which we have certain documents:

The Greek authors and the annalists of the epoch of the Ptolomies had the establishments of the Egyptians in Greece date to
the most remote antiquity. That which prevents the modern historians from taking account of the evidence is the belief that the
Egyptians had a horror of the sea, being considered by them the element of Typhon, the enemy of Osiris, and [our historians] have
conscluded from this that [the Egyptians] were not able to have a direct influence over the Greeks, since they did not dare risk
themselves on the Mediterranian. This is a deep-rooted error which it is time to make disappear. The documents and the facts show
in the most evident manner that, from the most ancient times, the pharaos had vessels on the Mediterranian; connections between
Egypt and the Greek world were able to exist, and, in effect, existed several centuries before the Trojan War.
The most ancient testimony goes back to the 6th dynasty. King Pepi Ist transports a corps of troops by sea, which he debarks
in a point probably situated between El-Arich and Gaza. A story which is conserved in the Musem of Berli, and which is supposed to
be to be passed under the 12th dynasty, mentions relations with the peoples of the north, Hanibu, those who are outside, a term
which later served to designate the Ionians. It is possible that the storyteller had sought to age the date of his story; but the writing on
the papyrus does not permit having it come from earlier than the 18th dynasty. At the end of this, and of the reign of Thutmes III, the
great conqueror, it is certain that the Egyptians were in contact with the populations of the Aegean sea, and even that they had
subjugated them to their domination. A stele found in the temple of Ammon at Karnak, kept at the museum of Cairo, has conserved
for us a poem composed to celebrate the victories of Thutmes III. The king is represented worshipping the god, who replies to him:
“I have come, I grant you the trampling of the land of the Orient; Phoenicia and Cypress are under the terror; I make them
see Your Majesty clothed in the raiment of war, when you seize your arms on the chariot.

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 “I have come, I grant you the trampling of the peoples who reside in your ports, and the coasts of Sicily tremble under the
terror; I make them see Your Majesty, etc.
“I have come, I grant you the trampling of the peoples who reside in your isles; those who live on the breast of the sea are
under your roars; I make them see Your Majesty, etc.
“I have come, I grant you the trampling of the Libyans (Tahennu); the isles of the Danaens are under the power of your will;
I make them see Your Majesty, etc.
“I have come, I grant you the trampling of the maritime countries; all the perimeter of the great zone of the waters is held in
your fist; I make them see Your Majesty, etc.
Other monuments show that the Egyptians will subjugate the isles of the Aegean sea under Thutmes III. In the tomb of
Rekhmara, prefect of Thebes, a series of pictures represents the bringing of tributes by the vassal nations of the empire. One of those
is accompanied by the following comment: “The princes of Phoenicia and of the isles which are in the middle of the Very Green
come and are welcomed”.
It is probable that the isles of the Aegean sea had been subjected by the Phoenicians and that they will pass, at the same time
as them [the Phoenicians] under the empire of the Pharaos. These will exercise a real domination in the archipelago; they sent
delagates, analogous to the missi dominici of Charlemagne, who went in his name to visit the subject lands, watch the vassal princes,
and expedite the tribute. We know of one of the envoys of Thutmes III, named Thutii. On a rosette of gold which the museum of the
Louvre posesses, he is called “delegate of the king in all foreign lands and in the isles which are in the middle of the Very Green”.
The Egyptian domination is maintained, during the 18th dynasty, over the Phoenicians and, accordingly, over the isles of the
archipelago, where the Phoenicians had been established. The expeditions of Ramses II will extend the empire of the Pharaos further
in the basins of the Mediterranian. Under Ramses III (20th dynasty), the peoples of the sea will form a coalition to seize Egypt. Their
defeat is related in the great inscription of Medinet-Abu. Among the invaders figures a tribe called Achaius, which well appears to be
the same as the Achaeans; they are already named in the monuments of Ramses II and of Memphis.
The material evidence of the relationships of Egypt and Greece are no more lacking. Unforseen discoveries have set before
our eyes the proof of the exchanges which took place between the two peoples. I leave aside the numerous objects over which the
archeologists have not set themselves in agreement, like the statuettes of bronze found at Mycenae, which some attribute to
Phoenicia, and others to Egypt.
But there is no argument for the ceiling of the tomb of Orchomene, known under the name of the Treasure of Minyas, and
which is certainly prior to the Trojan War. In the details (the spiral whorls, the networks, the slightly deformed flower of the lotus,
the rosettes, etc.) as well as in the general disposition of its ornaments, the decoration (of the ceiling) offers the most striking
resemblance to the decoration of the Egyptian tombs of the 18th and 19th dynasties. If we cannot affirm that it was executed by
Egyptian artists, we are at least certain that it was made on an Egyptian model.
On the other hand, we have remarked that several of the vases represented in the tomb of Reckhmara as having been brought
by the tributaries of Phoenicia and the isles of the Mediterranian are of the same form and of the same style as the potteries said to be
from the Aegean sea and of the Mycenaean vases. M. Flinders Petrie discovers potteries of the same type at Kahun (12th dynasty)
and at Gurob (16th dynasty). Botany even furnishes a somewhat curious connection. They have found in the tombs of Deir-el-Bahari
dried flowers and plants which Schweinfurth, the celebrated explorer of Africa, has studied. He has pointed out there a certain lichen,
having medicinal properties, which has never grown in Egypt, and which cannot grow there, because of conditions of temperature,
but which they find in Crete and in the isles of the archipelago. It is thus from there that it has been brought into Egypt. Still today,
the lichen is sold in the bazaars of Cairo, and it is from Crete that they bring it, as in the time of the 18th dynasty.
The decisive proofs have been furnished by the excavations which the Archeological Society of Athens has pursued in the
tombs of Mycenae, and which were completed in the last years. It suffices to enumerate the proofs:
In 1887, a scarab bearing the name of queen Tii, wife of Amenophis III;
In 1888, several fragments of vases of Egyptian faience; one one of them, the base of the cartouche of Amenophis;
In 1891, two fragments of an earthenware plaque, with the top and the bottom of the cartouche of Amenophis III.
Perhaps a certain effort should be made to be pursuaded that, since the times of the XIIth dynasty, certainly at the end of the
XVIIIth, the peoples established in the eastern basin of the Mediterranian were united by frequent communications. But, since once
we are familiarized with the idea of an Egyptian empire established in the basin of the Aegean sea and on a part of the coasts, and
having lasted from the XVIIth to the XVIIIth century before our era, we are led to seek some trace of that fact in the legendary parts
of Greek history. Such is, for example, the tradition of the Danaides...
Such again is the personage of Minos, who appears so strange to the epoch in which they have placed his reign. The sage
legislation which the traditions attribute to him and his actions in which Thucydides himself recognizes an historic reality, the

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establishment of a maritime empire and the suppression of piracy, have nothing which responds to the state of turbulent and half-
barbaric tribes which then occupied the Hellade; they nevertheless show the influence of a people well-policed and wishing to assure
the security of the seas. The Egyptian monuments prove that, in that epoch, the isles of the Great Sea were subjugated more or less
directly to the Pharaos, who sent delegates there and who received tributes from them. Is it not an hypothesis, without proof up to
now, but having nothing of the shocking, that Minos was a vassal prince of Egypt?

*
* *

The latest Oriental and Cretan discoveries have clearly established the synchronism of the Egyptian and Greek
histories from the end of the XVIth century up to the Xth or IXth centuries B.C.
The synchronism begins with Thutmes III. It is in the last decades of the XVIth century B.C., toward 1530, that
the historians of Egypt place the reign of Thutmes III, whose conquests extending from all parts of the valley of the Nile,
install the suzerainty of the Pharao over Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Cilicia and the isles of the Very Green. After
Thutmes III, from the XVIth to the XIIth centuries, directly or indirectly, by its own vassals and functionaries or by the
intermediary and the fleets of the Phoenician towns, its vassals, Pharao intervenes in all the affairs, political and
commercial, of the Aegean sea. From the XIIth to the IXth century, the supreme politic of Egypt diminished, then
disappeared; but the commercial influence of Phoenicia is maintained: the Levantine Mediterranian passes to the
obedience of the thalassocracies; it still remains for a long time with the clientel of Tyre or Sidon. We need to have in
mind the great lines of the primitive history to measure well the direct, imperious, prolonged, constant influence that
Egyypt and Phoenicia can exercise over the Greek civilization.
The long reign of Thutmes III (about 1530) had begun, it appears, with a regency of the queen Haitshopsitu. We
know of the expeditions of the queen toward the Puniat, by virtue of the periple and of the paintings of Deir-el-Bahari. It
is in the paintings of Deir-el-Bahari that we have found the veritable model of our Odyssian vessels: the Egyptian galley
is truly our “hollow vessel”, with a double castle fore and aft, entirely different from the decked galley, from the vessel
with several decks, which the Hellenes will use in the classical epoch. During the four or five centuries which follow
Thutmes III, the Egyptian galley can experience some modifications of detail, in the rigging, the armament and the
secondary forms. It will always retain its essential character of “hollow vessel”. It is not until the IXth century, among the
Assyrian fleets, that we will find the first models of decked galleys, of “covered vessels” (see the first volume of this
work, p. 163 and following##). The Chronicle of Paros tells us that Danaos, about 1520, had introduced the vessel with
fifty oars into Greece: the Pheacian vessel of Ulysses had fifty-two crewmen. The Chronicle reports at the same time the
introduction of carts: it is also at the departure of Thutmes III that the war chariot - such as the Homeric warriors already
knew - goes to rule over all the battlefields of Asia:

The old [Egyptian] army, that which had conquered Nubia for the Papis or the Usertasens, had formerly known only three
varieties of [soldiers]. The new army had been joined, since the invasion of the Shepherds, by a new troop: the charioteers... The
chariots were originally from a foreign province. But the Egyptian workers had promptly learned to fabricate them more elegant, if
not more solid, than their models. The lightness of them was the dominant quality: each man should have been able to carry his own
on his shoulders, without being fatigued... The Asiatics were installed three on a single chariot: the Egyptians always mounted only
two there, the soldier, sinni, who fought, and the driver, gazana, who held the shield during the action... The chariot was, like the
cavalry with us, the aristocratic arm where the prince of the royal family, such as the nobles and their children, was engaged. They
did not readily go on the back of the horse itself, and it was scarcely that even the the midst of combat, when the chariot was broken,
they decided to straddle one of the beasts to escape the melee.

Is it of Homeric warriors or Egyptian warriors that G. Maspero speaks to us thusly?

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 By the war chariots, Thutmes III extends his power over the previously Semitic world of Asia. By his hollow
vessels or by the entirely similar fleets of the Phoenicians, his founders, he extends his suzerainty over the Very Green.
The great Phoenician towns, Tyre, Beirut, Gebal, Sidon, etc., already existed. We encounter their names in the tablets of
Tell-el-Amarna. If we wished to discuss the race of their inhabitants in that epoch, the names of their kings would suffice
to testify to us: Abd-Asrat reigns at Amauru; Abimelek reigns at Tyre, etc. If these are not Semitic names, I do not know
where we will find any.
For about a century and a half (1530-1400), the Egyptian supremacy was maintained on land and sea. In the
interval of four hundred years, among the successors of Thutmes III, figure Amen-hetep or Amenophis III, of whom the
tombs of the Mycenaeans have delivered some cartouches, and of whom the famous Tii was the royal spouse. The reign
takes place around 1450 and lasts nearly forty years. It counts among the most prosperous which Theban Egypt had seen.
The war occupies very little place then. Amenophis III only undertook the ordinary raids against the negroes to the south
(these are the Homeric Ethiopians of the Levant). The rare expeditions which he leads in Asia would be for effect, not to
add new provinces, but to prevent the old ones from revolting. Egypt will prosper under the pacific regime. It was not
only the most powerful of the realms which might have been in the world; it was the most fortunate and richest. The
capitol, Thebes, naturally retains the bulk of the profit. Its kings, having become masters of the world, retained their
ordinary residences there. They came back there to celebrate their triumphs; they sent their prisoners and their booty
there.
Amenophis III, from the beginning of his reign, loves an Egyptian woman who was not of the blood of the
Pharaos, Tii. The Egyptian women of inferior rank, introduced into the royal harem, remained relegated to the last rank:
Amenophis marries Tii, gives her the town of Zalou for her realm, and made a queen of her, in spite of the lowness of her
extraction. She is occupied with the affairs of state, took precedence over the princesses of the solar family, figures beside
her husband in the ceremonies and on the monuments... Her son Amenophis IV succeeds. Tii, accustomed for a long time
to the management of the affairs, exercises an even stronger influence over him: without officially assuming the rank of
regent, she posesses the reality of power.
The Cretan and Mycenaean civilizations are either contemporary or posterior to the Egyptian reign. For the
excavations of Mycenae have furnished us a cartouche of the queen, Tii, and here it is that the latest Cretan excavations
have had the same result in 1903. Not far from Phaistos, at the place called Hagia-Triada (an ancient small house of the
Venetians, Santa Trinita), in the ruins of a domed tomb, among the objects of gold having made part of a necklace (of
which two small crouching lions, identical to those from tomb VI of Mycenae, form the clasps or the pendants) M.
Halbherr has found an Egyptian cartouche, of which he has wished to give me an imprint (April 1903). Having
communicated the imprint to my colleague M. A. Moret, here is the response which I received from him:

The imprint gives the name of the royal wife, Tii, souton himit Tii. The name is written very readably, very correctly. One
finds it, under an identical form, on the numerous scarabs engraved with the name of the queen, who was the wife of Amenophis III,
the eighth king of the 18th dynasty (about 1430 B.C.). We know by a scarab, engraved at the time of the marriage of Amenophis III,
that Tii was not of royal lineage. The king, who married her out of love, lavished her name on scarabs which they have found in
great number (cf. Wiedemann, Aegypt. Gesch., p. 390 and 393) and several of which are in the Louvre; two are reproduced by G.
Maspero, Hist. Anc., II, p. 298 and 345. Another of the scarabs, found at Mycenae, is reproduced in the Éphémèris ArchAeologikè of
1887, pl. XIII, nos. 21 and 21 a.

Found at the same time in Crete and Mycenae, in the same monuments, with the same objects, the cartouches of
the queen Tii appear to me to furnish a certain date: the Mycenaean and Cretan civilizations are not a thousand or five
hundred years anterior to the XVth or XIVth centuries B.C., as they have told us; the Chronicle of Paros has reason in
placing them about 1400.
In the same excavations, among the ruins of a small palace very nearby, at the bottom of a cave serving as a
storeroom, M. Halbherr discovered at the same time eighteen masses of copper or bronze, remarkable for their weights
and their form. Corroded or blistered by the humidity, the masses have not all retained exactly the same weight; but all

615
approached the Babylonian talent, and their place itself, as their careful alignment in the depths of the hiding place,
clearly show that the talents of bronze had been deposited in the treasure, as a reserve of wealth, a savings, a capital (cf.
the hiding place of the priest Maron in the Odyssey; see book II of this work, p. 16 and following ##). As for their form,
the masses present the sihouette of a rectangle with the faces curved, with incurved and concave lines. By virtue of the
discovery, we can today understand the significance of certain accessories in such Egyptian paintings, which represent to
us the tributaries of Pharao. In the tomb of Rekhmara, a tributary with the moustache shaved, with a pointed beard (the
Homeric Achaeans also wear a beard and shave the moustache), offers a vase in one hand, and with the other, holds on his
shoulder a rectangular object, which on first view one would take for a pillow: it is, in reality, one of the talents of bronze
or some other metal. The tablets ao Tell-el-Amarna make mention of talents of copper sent by the tributaries.
I would thus readily believe that the beginning of the “Minoan” period - the Chronicle of Paros places the two
Minos between the XVth and XVIIth centuries - corresponds to the reign of Amenophis III or the regency of Tii.
Amenophis II and his successors at first maintain, then allow to be enfeebled, the Egyptian suzerainty over the
Asiatic lands, over Phoenicia and its dependancies of the Very Green. The tablets of Tell-el-Amarna have given us the
diplomatic correspondance of the Pharao. They make us know exactly his relationships with the towns of Syria. Aziron,
son of Abdashirti, chief of the land of Amauron, was the most turbulant of the vassals of the living Amenophis III: he
desolated the small states of Oronte and of the littoral. He had taken and pillaged twenty towns. He menaced Byblos,
Beirut and Sidon. Many others sought to imitate him. All of Syria was just a vast closed plain where they quarreled with
each other incessantly. Tyre against Sidon, Sidon against Byblos, Jerusalem against Lakish, etc. All wrote to Pharao.
Their dispaches arrived by the hundreds, and one would say in reading them today that the supremacy of Egypt was on
the point of disappearing.
The eighteenth dynasty ended obscurely (about 1400 B.C.). The nineteenth reprieved the Egyptian prestige. Its
armies retake the road of Asia, but it is done in by the conquering Khati or Hittites, and on the sea appear the pirate
peoples, Luku, Danaouna, Shardanes, Aquiousha. It is to this epoch that G. Maspero relates the beginnings of Homeric
Troy: the Chronicle of Paros is always concordant.
The campaigns of Seti Ist (about 1360) reëstablish the Egyptian Suzerainty over Phoenicia, all of whose
commercial interests make, otherwise, a dependant of Egypt. The pirates are defeated in the delta and, captives, they are
enrolled for the royal guard. They recommence the exploitation of the gold mines near to Egypt: they collect charts and
plans of them on papyrus. Thebes takes again a life and splendor to which the enormous beauty of its temples testify
today. Ramses II (around 1330) enters an open battle with the Khati and their confederated vassals. “Dardanians,
Myseans, Trojans, people of Pedasos and Girgasha, Lycians”, etc.; he advances up to Oronte, where he sets the Khati to
flight. On his return, he wishes that they relate the characteristic episodes of the campaign on the pylons or the walls of
the temples. A poem in rhythmic strophes accompanies the pictures everywhere. If the poet had not assisted in combat, he
had received the description of it from the mouth of the sovereign; “but his work,” says G. Maspero, “has nothing of the
official coldness; a strong breath passes from one end to the other and still enlivens it after an interval of more than thirty
centuries”.
The Passage of the Oronte, the poem by Pentauirit (the name of the scribe who copies it), is an Iliad and not a
Passage of the Rhine... A second campaign was needed to lead the Khati to resignation. Still, the treaty of peace leaves
them continental Asia of the north; Egypt retained only the Phoenician coast, properly speaking, Kharu, Palestine, Sinai
and Arabia. The half century (1350-1300) which follows was an epoch of prosperity for the world. Syria breathes. It is set
back to commerce with the combined guarantee of both the Egyptian and Hittite powers. The caravans and the isolated
voyagers can cross it. It becomes a sort of common place in the Theban schools to describe the returns, the nostos, of an
Egyptian soldier or functionary. We still posess one of the accounts where the scribe leads his hero into the Phoenician
cities, to Byblos, to Beirut, to Sidon, to Tyre, “whose fish are more numerous than the grains of sand”. The Egyptian
galleys pour into the ports of Phoenicia, the Phoenician galleys into the waters of Egypt. The hollow vessels draw so little
water that they have no difficulty in descending and ascending the river. The pictures of a tomb show us the Phoenicians
arriving at Thebes.

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 It is the apogee of Thebes, if not of Theban power, at least of the Theban wealth, civilization and literature, of
which we have traced the picture (see book II of this work, p. 49 and following ##). But already the successor of Ramses
II, Mineptah is obliged (about 1300) to defend Egypt against the Mediterranian pillagers and corsairs; we have also
related the fortunate wars of Meneptah (book II, P. 35 and following ##) The victory of Pharao cannot stop the Egyptian
decadence, the violent or pacific invasion of the Peoples of the Sea, the installation of their colonies or of their trading
posts all along the river.
Thebes always remains the capitol, the richest town in the world; but it is peopled with Semite, Libyan and
barbarian functionaries. It consoles itself with the recitation of its ancient glories, in the admiration of its works of art, in
the reading of its stories, of its amorous poetries, of its fabulous tales: Pruti and the magicians charm its decadence.
The wars of Ramses III (about 1200) give a last gleam of glory to the twentieth dynasty and to the fall of the
Theban empire. The Egyptian suzerainty, restored over the Phoenician towns, is nevertheless more nominal than real. The
Libyans are driven from the delta. But a new attack by the peoples of the Very Green arrives by the Asiatic coast and by
sea: “The Aegeans, by dint of examining the Phoenician galleys, were instructed in the art of naval construction. They
had copied the lines, imitated the rigging, learned the maneuvers of sailing or of combat. They now could oppose to the
old navigators of the Orient a navy outfitted almost as well and navigated by captains almost as experienced”. They will
advance along the Asiatic coast up to the Phoenician waters. But there, they were defeated by the army and the flotilla of
Ramses III: “Which the woman sends out according to her whim,” he cries, in the account of the campaign: “with her
costume on her, that she directs its steps where it will please her”.
Eight or nine obscure Ramses then file over the throne. They hardly leave the Theban land, and their real power,
even in Egypt, is intermittent. The thirty-first dynasty (around 1100) then opens the irremediable misfortune of Great
Egypt and the Pharaonic power: the priests of Tanis and of Thebes usurp and divide the royalty. The Egyptian empire
over Asia is no more.

The domination of Egypt did not vanish without leaving deep traces on the mores and constitution [of the states]. While the
nobles and bourgeois of Thebes affected to worship the Astartes or Baals and to embellish their written or spoken language with
terrms borrowed from the Semitic languages, the Syrians did not remain at rest vis-s-vis their conquerors. They studied their major
arts, industry, the cults, and they borrowed at least as many things from them as they loaned them. The old Babylonian foundation of
their civilization did not undergo very appreciable modifications from them; but it was covered by a[n Egyptian] veneer. Phoenicia
shows itself disposed to receive it more than all other regions. The Phoenician merchants, installed in residences in most of the great
principalities of the Nile, imbued themselves there with local costumes and religions, then, on returning to their homeland after
years, they transport the foreign habits there and propagate them around themselves. They needed the same vessel which they had
had there, the same furniture, the same jewels, and the gods do not escape the fad of imitation.
Thoth the ibis is, after Osiris, the most considerable of those who emigrate [into Phoenicia]. He retains in his new homeland
all the power of his voice and all the subtlety of his spirit. He occupies there the same post of Scribe and enchanter... They consider
him as the inventer of letters. In fact, [his] Phoenician [naturalization] coincides with one of the most profound revolutions of the art
of writing. Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Arad had up until then practiced the most complicated [systems of writing]. Like most of the
rerfined nations of western Asia, they had written their diplomatic or commercial correspondance in cuneiform characters, on clay
tablets, and here it is that we suddenly find them in posession of a brief and convenient notation: [the alphabet], twenty-two small
signs in all, in place of the hundreds or thousands which they previously needed. The [alphabetic] inscription of the bowl dedicated
to Baal Liban probabably dates from the times of Hirom Ist, perhaps the Xth century. The reasons for which Winckler places the
monument under Hiram II have not appeared convincing up to the present. In placing the introduction of the alphabet between
Amenothes IV in the XVth century and Hiram Ist in the Xth, and in taking the median date, that is to say, the arrival of the XXIst
dynasty, around 1100, as a possible date for the invention or adoption of the alphabet, we should not be deceived very much one way
or the other.

In measure as the “Egyptian peace” disappeared form the Very Green, the pirates proliferate and embolden
themselves. The sailors of the archipelago free themselves from the Egyptian suzerainty and from the Phoenician
monopoly. The fleets of Tyre and Sidon should cede the eastern Mediterranian to the first Greek thalassocracies little by

617
little. The Phoenicians take themselves to seek more remunerative markets. The Hellenes, with their low-priced junk,
make an untenable competition for them in the Levantine waters. Fabricators of gold cups, the Phoenicians have need of a
rich clientel, petty kings exploiting their peoples, caciques or petty sultans living in luxury and pomp. Fabricators of
painted pottery, the Hellenes find a democratic clintele to serve in the Levant. It is, thinks G. Maspero, that the
Phoenicians will adventure into the regions of Hesperia: “I do not believe it too difficult to suppose that the lost children
and perhaps the regular ports of call of Tyre and Sidon had already been extended to the Ocean, and that the cities of
Lebanon had cemented relations with the caciques of Andalusia at the beginnings of the XIIth century before our era,
about the time when the Theban power vanished entirely.”
It is then that the first Greek civilization is formed around the archipelago, of which the Iliad and the Odyssey
furnish us the description. The beginnings of the civilization were, without any doubt, anterior - and very much so - to the
Homeric poems. It is apparent that the Odyssey, at least (the Iliad is not the object of this study) describes an already very
ancient society, with its classes and castes well-established, its traditions remote, its literature perfected, its mores handed
down and its history long. In placing - as the Chronicle of Paros would - the formation of the society at the beginning of
the XIth century (Neleid emigration to Ionia), then its development and its expanded flowering in the course of the XIth
and Xth centuries, we arrive at the beginning or the middle of the IXth, in the vicinity of the year 900 or 850, for the age
of our Homeric picture. It is again approximately the date which Herodotus and the Chronicle of Paros furnish us.

II

After the date of the poem, its homeland should be sought. But if we accept the proposed date, only the coasts of
Asia Minor, Ionia and the neighboring colonies can have been the seat of the civilization in that epoch. It is to Ionian
Greece that the appearance of the poem should be related. We are led to the hypothesis as much by the unanimous
tradition of the Ancients as by the very study of the Homeric verse. I would not insist on the tradition. It is presented in all
the memoirs: seven Asiatic towns dispute the birth of the poet.

*
* *

The language of the poem can furnish us a more secure argument.

The language of Homer is not made to provoke surprise. Since the studies made everywhere have multiplied the specimens of the
diverse Greek dialects a little, they have nowhere discovered the Homeric dialect. Partaking as much of Ionian as of Aeolian or of Cypriot,
or even of Attic, it throws the linguist off by the inconsistancy of its phonetics and by the medly of its grammatical forms. Various systems
have been proposed to explain the irregularity. Finally, they have supposed that the rhapsodist changed dialect according to the population
before which he produced his verse, and that, in the final redaction, there has remained something of the perpetual transposition. The
explanation is not without plausibility. But it should be added that the habit of transposition should have been very ancient, and that it had
given birth to a mixed language where the rhapsodists had permissioin to take the forms at their convenience. They composed in the mixed
dialect which was the language of the epics. It is thus that, for two centuries, our troubadours composed their poetries in a Limousin
[dialect], where Catalan, Provençal and Italian forms are found.

The “blended dialect”, the “mixed language of the epic” would not have been able to be born and gain the ear of
the public except in a region where the different dialects of the Hellade, Ionian, Aeolian, etc., were near and related.
Before being amalgamated into the language of the poets, it was necessary that the dialects mixed long, daily in the very
speeech of the people or in the conversations of the port and the agora. On the coasts of Asia Minor, with the proximity of

618
the towns and different tribes, with the blending of idioms produced by the maritime commerce, the amalgam of dialects
is easily understood. But nowhere else do I see a Greek region where the mixed language, conquering the particularist
resistances, would have achieved being understood and accepted.

*
* *

In certain encounters, it appears to us that the Odyssian text, its geographic expressions and certain of its
orientations could have given us a precious indication.
Eubea, in the poem, is situated at the very extremity of the sea; it is, they say, the farthest of the isles:

... τήν περ τηλοτάτω φάρ’ εμμεναι.

It can only be a language of Asiatics, of Anatolians, for whom Eubea is, in effect, the most distant pier of the insular
bridge. When they wish to pass from the Ionian or Aeolian shores to the ports of the Hellade, the Anatolian fleets cruise
from isle to isle, from Chios or Samos toward Amorgos, Naxos, Paros, Delos, Andros and Timos, up to Eubea, where
they truly “cut” directly straight across the open sea up to the Mouths of the Eubea, to the strait of Geraistos of which
Nestor speaks to Telemachus. The Eubean strait should have been celebrated, also, in the cycle of the returns, with its
temple of Poseidon, where the sailors come to give thanks for such a long traverse:

. . . . . πέλαγος μέσον εισ Εύβοιαν

τ’εμνιεν, ‘όφρα τάχιστα ‘υπεκ κακότητα φύγοιμεν.
. . . . . . . . . ες δε Γέραιστον
εννύχιαι κατάγοντο. Ποσειδάωνι δε ταύρων.
πόλλ’ επι μηρ’ έθεμεν, πέλαγος μέγα μετρήσαντες.

Similarly, we have seen that Syria was “outside” of Ortygia-Delos, toward the Sunset:

Ορτυγίης καθύπερθεν, ‘όθι τροπαι ηελίοιο.

There again is an expression of Asiatics, of Anatolians who, in their navigations toward the Sunset, first encounter
Ortygia, then, beyond, Syria. For the Hellenes of Greece proper, it is Delos which would be beyond Syria, and it is Chios
or Samos which would be at the extremity of the sea, the most distant of the isles. When, after the victory of Salamine, the
Greeks of Asia come to advise the Greeks of Europe to cross the archipelago and pursue the fleets of the Great King on
the Asiatic coast, the European Hellenes wish to advance only to Delos, ο’ί προήγαγον αυτους μόγις μέχρι Δήλου:
beyond, the inexperienced sailors imagine only terrors, το γαρ προσωτέρω παν δεινον ην τοισι ‘Έλλησι, and Samos
resembles the end of the world to them, as distant as the Columns of Hercules, την δε Σάμον επιστέατο δόξη και
‘Ηρακλέας Στήλασ ίσον απέχειν.

*
* *

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 In the poor and miserable Greece of Europe, which the Dorian invasions ravage in that epoch, in the sort of
Middle Ages, violent and without culture, which bring the invasions in their wake, I do not see where the poets would
have found their place, or the poems their listeners. The Dorians, who at that time appear under the traits of the ferocious
and ignorant Albanians, resemble in no way the gentlemen, protectors of the arts, which the Homeric poems reveal to us:

They have called the Odyssey the poem of the sailors and the Iliad that of the soldiers. I do not believe that the expression
may be just, at least it is not suitable to explain the origin of the compositions. Before sinking into the deep layers, it was necessary
that the works were first accepted and enjoyed by a somewhat different audience. The people are absent from the verse or, if they are
mentioned there, it is to say in a hemistich “that the people perish”, ‘ολέκοντο δε λαοί. The audience to whom the long tirade is
addressed is above all an audience which is not pressed: it has time to hear, not only the geneology of the personages, not only the
discourse of the orators of the public place or the council, but the history of a scepter which had passed from hand to hand, that of a
chest that belonged to several generations of heroes. It is an audience which wishes to be amused and distracted. Who could it have
been?
If we wish to make an idea of the audience for ourselves, the thing is simple, for we find the portrait up to three times in
Homer. The poet lingers there each time with complaisance, for the scene is well known to him, and it is himself which he makes
appear under the traits of Demodokos or Phemios. He heaps praise on his public: to believe him, it is no less than sceptered kings
who listen to him. The wise queen Arete, or rather the virtuous spouse of king Alkinoös, or rather again the queen of Sparta, the
divine Helen herself presides at the assembly. For there is no greater pleasure in the world than to be seated in long files at a table
loaded with dishes, while a bard inspired by heaven relates the adventures of the gods and heroes.
It is an instructed audience (if one can employ the term): the allusions to ancient histories are promptly understood; it
suffices to name the personages to them. It is an audience with a somewhat free spirit: if it is delighted by the tales of Olympos, it is
without greatly believing in them, for they permit the poet to imagine novelties of them. They even permit him to gently amuse them
at the expense of the immortal gods.
The tone is free, but it is never vulgar or base. An air of courtesy is spread over the assembly. The war has only suspended
the relations which should be between well-born men. the relations with the enemy are ruled by a code of politeness and loyalty... It
is without doubt not simple chance which determined that Hector has obtained a place in the number of typical figures of the Middle
Ages. I suppose that, through the translations and the imitations, a memory of the fine places in the Iliad has filtered down to our
romances of Chivalry. The sentiment which comes back the most often in the Iliad is the love of glory. All the warriors are assured
that posterity will be occupied with them. We have pretended that the sentiment of honor was modern; but that is an error. What is
true, is that, at that time, the expression to name the sentiment of honor is no longer found, and that the language is in search of it.
“Oh my friends,” says Ajax, “be men, and have shame for each other in the battle.” - “All that is in my heart,: replies Hector to the
supplications of Andromache, “but I have shame for the Trojans [men], and for the Trojans [women] with the long veils.” Are those
the ideas and sentiments of a people without culture? In the plumed warriors who get caught up in proud defiance and on both sides
set all the laws of honor first, I see above all the first apparition of chivalry. Except for the sentiment of love, which is the new
element added by the modern times, we could think of the personages of the Grail.
But, if I should say where for me resides the most curious aspect of the poems, I do not hesitate to proclaim that it is in the
portraits of women. First, Penelope: as an English critic says, the ablest contemporary novelist would not have described the
character more delicately. Andromache appears in only two places, but her character is unforgettable; the words which she directs to
her husband are the most touching that A wife has ever drawn from her heart. Finally, the marvelous character of Helen, with whom
the author of Faust is so struck that he has made her enter into his visions of the eternal feminine. We should begin to wonder for
what public the bard composes his odes. It cannot be a question of an audience assembled by chance, of a simple gathering of
passers-by: under those conditions, the verses of the singer would never have occurred. In reality, he addresses an elite audience, to
whom excellence itself appeals. If we place the scene at Smyrna or Milet, it would be the descendants of the old families, those who,
at the head of their geneology, inscibe some name of of a hero or divinity. And beside them, as is natural in the wealthy republics,we
can suppose the chiefs of war and of trade. A public blended, but active, intelligent, curious, loving arts. And, to remain in the
resemblance of the audiences depicted by the poet, one can suppose, in the place of the queen Arete, some Milesian or Smyrniote
woman already familiar with the charm of the old legends. An audience priviliged among all who might have the rare and unique
pleasure of first hearing, from the mouth of the poet, the song of the rage of Achilles or that of the wanderings of Ulysses.

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 In the towns of Asia, ruled by “heroic” dynasties and aristocrats, provided with a royal court and with “megara”,
with feudal palaces (still more exactly, with great halls, with salons), enriched by passages and caravans, civilized by the
traditional contact with the Phoenician and Egyptian thalassocracies or commerces, I easily imagine that our poems may
have been able to find the cultivated, courteous audience which was necessary for them.

*
* *

Between the Asiatic towns, the study of the Telemachea (see the first book of this work, p. 143 and following ##)
has led us to make some choice. The Ionian cities of Asia Minor had taken their royal families, Herodotus tells us, some
from among the Lycians descended from Glaukos, others from among the Pylian Kaukones, and others, finally, from
among the ones and the others. Hellanikos, tracing the geneology of the Pylian Kaukones, went back to Salmoneus,
Neleus and Nestor, whose descendant, Melanthos, was the founder of the Ionian dynasties. In comparing the traditional
history of Melanthos and the episodes of the Telemachea, we arrived at curious resemblances: the Tlemachea appeared to
us as the work of a courtesan of the Nelean royalties.
It is to one of the Nelean courts that I would refer the provenance of our Odyssian poem. Take Milet or one of the
Ionian towns, and you will explain, I believe, the blending of Greek nostos and Semitic periple or poem which is the
Odyssey.

*
* *

The literary genre of nostos should be very ancient. Nothing precludes that, in debarking on the Asiatic coast and
isles, the Ionians may have already had some terms, some models, perhaps, of the returns from which the Odyssey should
have issued, as they also had some seeds, some models of the disputes and rages, from which the Iliad sprang:

The Iliad, says M. Maurice Croiset, joins the Achaean traditions of Argos to that of the Thessalian Phthiotide. It is thus like
the natural poem of the Achaeans, who united themselves to found the Aeolian colonies of Asia Minor... Kumë, which is
represented to us as the homeland of Kretheis, mother of the poet, can be considered with credibility as the first home of heroic
poetry in the Greece of Asia. It is there, without doubt, that in the age immediately preceeding the Iliad, the first epic songs relating
to the Trojan war, to the king of Mycenae, Agamemnon, to the Achaean hero Achilles, were formed and circulated. It is in the
Aeolian lands that Homer was conceived... : the name of his mother, Kretheis, relates him to Kretheus, one of the sons of Aeolus,
one of the ancestors of the Aeolian tribes. Kumë was long the advanced position of the Aeolide before being its capitol (Strab., XIII,
3, 2): it took the leadership from the Pelasgians of Larissa; it builds the stronghold of Neon Teichos against them, which finishes by
reducing them. In the midst of the warrior populations, were born the rude and bellicose songs, which made the immediate source for
the great inspirations of the Iliad.

If the disputes and the rages were able to furnish the seeds of the Iliad, it is in Ionia, I believe, that the returns will
become an Odyssey. The historical relations between Pylos and Ionia would explain to us the exactitude of the
descriptions of the Telemachea and the birth of the Ulyssiads.
In the Ionian towns, among the Pylian emigres, the memories and the glory of the motherland persisted. Accounts,
periples or returns, brought from overseas, fixed, in the memory of the men and in the works of the poets, the Pylian
topography, the views of Pylos and the vicinity, its site, its harbor and its legends. To the authors of the nostoi, Pylos and

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its kings were a poetic material, a somewhat familiar given, as Thebes or Mycenae and their royal families will later be to
the authors of tragedies.
The glory of Pylos brought with it the renown of the Mouths of the Occident: Mouths of Zante and Mouths of
Ithaca. It was these which, formerly, conducted the Pylian navies to the extremities of the “flour-eating” sea. It was by the
Mouths and the Pointed Isles that the Pylians formerly went to the last port of the zophos. Beyond Ithaca, the Pylians
already knew by reputation - perhaps - a Thesprote shore, then a large isle, with two ports where they arrived, after having
passed the mouth of a river in cascade, and recognizing the silhouette of a mountain in a semicircle. Beyond that isle, they
had understood the story - perhaps - that the vessels were changed into rocks, such as the Rock of the Black Cruiser. Also,
the Pylians no longer ventured again toward the feared waters. Only the hero of Ithaca, the Cunning, had ever returned
from there.
In the tradition of Pylos, we understand the eminent place which the Cunning should have. The last Achaeans at
the threshold of the mysterious Ocean, only the people of Ithaca could have furnished the Pylians some information on
the terrors; only they dared risk themselves among the monsters and dangers. The Pylian periples should have attributed
to Ithaca a just preëminence over all the isles of the Sunset. The Pylian songs and poems should have accorded to the
heroes and heroines of Ithaca, Ulysses, Laertes, Telemachus and Penelope, etc., the first place after their Neleus, Nestor,
Pisistratus, etc. The Pylian returns thus became Ulyssiads. When our poet undertakes his Odyssey, the Pylian tradition of
Milet could thus have furnished him all the Greek sites and personages, which he went to set in play. The Phoenician
periple or poem remains, which he integrates into the Pylian Ulyssiads.

*
* *

Herodotus tells us that Thales of Milet, the first Ionian philosopher, descended from an originally Phoenician
family, Θάλεω ανδρος Μιλησίου το ανέκαθεν γένος εόντος Φοίνικος, which signifies that Thales belonged, not to a
family emigrating directly from Phoenicia in Asia Minor, but to one of the Cadmian families celebrated among the towns
of Asia. The same Herodotus, in effect, informs us that the Cadmians - that is to say, Phoenicians already Hellenized by a
long sojourn in Boeotia - had taken part in the emigration of the Ionians. The Cadmians will divide themselves in the
Nelean towns. Their descendants appear to have taken an important place there. At Priena, which the presence of the
Cadmians caused to also be called Kadme, another of the Seven Sages, Bias, had similarly issued from a Cadmian family.
At Milet, there was a Cadmus who, the first, wrote books of history; his Founding of Milet passed for the first book of the
Greeks in prose. Diogenes Laerce tells us to have copied in Herodotus, Douris and Democritus that the father of Thales, a
certain Examias or Examyoulos, belonged to the genos of the Thelides, “who are the most noble Phoenicians among the
descendants of Cadmus and of Agenor”, ο‘ί εισι Φοίνικες ευγενέστατοι των απο Κάδμου και Αφήνρος. Some authors
nevertheless related that, born outside of Milet, Thales had come there with an exile from Phoenicia, Neileus, συν Νειλέω
εκπεσόντι Φοινίκης. Thales had not had a master; but he had, they say, lived in Egypt among the priests.
They have sometimes wished to find a Semitic term under the Greek transcription Examias, Examyas, or
Examyoulos, which the Ancients transmit to us for the name of the father of Thales. I believe it is needless to resort to this
hypothesis. It suffices for me that the Cadmians should have retained the memory of their Phoenician origin: between
Phoenicia and their new Ionian homelands, they were able to play the same rôle as the Neleides between the same towns
and Pylos.

*
* *

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 The great bazaar of Anatolia, where all the routes of the land and the sea came to converge, Milet certainly saw
the Levantine vassals arrive in its port, and the Cilician, Phoenician, Egyptian, etc. merchants install a trading post or
even a foreign quarter there - they said then: a “camp”. Like the Memphis of Herodotus, Milet then had its Camp of the
Sidonians or Tyrians. The Phoenicians, who did not rule as absolute masters over the sea or over the commerce,
nevertheless retained a large part of the trading. They lived in residences in the Camp of Milet, around some national
sanctuary, περιοικέουσι δε το τέμενος τουτο Φοινικες τύριοι. καλέεται δε ‘ο χωρος ουτος ‘ο συνάπας Τυρίων
Στρατόπεδον. They retained their mores and their cults there, used the mother language among themselves, read or sang
the national writings and poems. Between the Phoenicians of the Camp and the Hellenes of the town or the vicinity, the
Cadmians were entirely designated to serve as intermediaries. The Cadmians, who prided themselves on their Phoenician
descendance, should set in fashion the products, the usages, the sciences and the arts of the superior “divine” race, of
which they proclaimed themselves the sons: perhaps they themselves use the language of the “gods”, as the Odyssian poet
says; perhaps they would instruct their children and be themselves entertained by the reading of Phoenician writings.

*
* *

At the court of the Nelean kings, in the entourage of the Cadmian aristocrats, there is how I imagine, about 900 or
850 B.C., the appearance of the admirable poem, work of a great artist, of a skilled and learned writer whom the centuries
have saluted by the name of Homer.

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