Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/668

668 Ogyges. reading of the manuscripts, in assigning the name of Ogyges to the fortunate shepherd who descended into the bosom of the earth when it had been reft by rain and earthquake, and there found the magic ring which rendered him invisible at pleasure, we perceive nothing in all this that might not well have happened to Ogyges himself. For not only do the flood and the earthquake properly belong to him ; the power of becoming invisible is also an essential attribute of marine deities : and the hero of the legend only possesses this Pro- tean quality, and is not wrapt in perpetual darkness. Here however it may be proper to anticipate an objection which may possibly suggest itself to some readers, who are conversant with Homer, or who have read Mr Keightleys interesting chapter on Mythic cosmology. Homer speaks of Ocean as a river and according to the view which Mr Keightley has adopted (see his Mythology p. S5.) it was only by later poets that its waters were dilated into a sea. The writers however who have taken the greatest pains to explain Homer'^s cosmology have left it very uncertain how far his ideas were precisely fixed on this subject. He undoubtedly imagined the water on the edge of the earth to flow round in a perennial current^ but whether it was in any other sense a river, or sepa- rated by a bank from the inner sea, is not clear. Nor does it seem certain that Homer conceived the water of Ocean to be incapable of mingling with any other streams or floods. For this is too much to infer from the description of the Titaresius, which because it is a branch of the Styx, itself a part of Ocean, floats like oil on the surface of the Peneus (Iliad ii. 754.) I find no other proof of the proposition given in Voelcker'^s excellent work (Homerische Geographie). It seems probable that Calypso'^s island was called Ogygia because, though not in the current, it lay in the Ocean, and such also appears to have been the meaning of the epithet applied to the mountain in ApoUodorus. But however this may be there can be no doubt that in the imagination of the Greeks, even before ^ The reading t<m Fuy?? is recognized by Eudocia p. 99. In considering the cha- racter of Gyges we must not forget the perennial lake in Herodotus i. 93 Xlfxvr) ttjV XeyovdL Au6ot deivaov elvai* KaXeiraL oe auTtj Fuyan;, nor that yuytj? means a water fowl.