with the Arctic Circle, which is masculine; instead of the Arctic Constellation, which is feminine. The expression of Heraclitus is far more preferable and Homeric, who thus figuratively describes the Arctic Circle as the Bear,—"The Bear is the limit of the dawn and of the evening, and from the region of the Bear we have fine weather." Now it is not the constellation of the Bear, but the Arctic Circle, which is the limit of the rising and the setting stars.
By the Bear, then, which he elsewhere calls the Wain, and describes as pursuing Orion, Homer means us to understand the Arctic Circle; and by the ocean, that horizon into which, and out of which, the stars rise and set. When he says that the Bear turns round and is deprived of the ocean, he was aware that the Arctic Circle [always] extended to the sign opposite the most northern point of the horizon. Adapting the words of the poet to this view, by that part of the earth nearest to the ocean we must understand the horizon, and by the Arctic Circle that which extends to the signs which seem to our senses to touch in succession the most northern point of the horizon. Thus, according to him, this portion of the earth is washed by the ocean. With the nations of the North he was well acquainted, although he does not mention them by name, and indeed at the present day there is no regular title by which they are all distinguished. He informs us of their mode of life, describing them as "wanderers," "noble milkers of mares," "living on cheese," and "without wealth."[1]
7. In the following speech of Juno, he states that the ocean surrounds the earth.
"For to the green earth's utmost bounds I go,
To visit there the parent of the gods,
Oceanus."[2]
Does he not here assert that ocean bounds all its extremities, and does it not surround these extremities? Again, in the
- ↑ Iliad xiii. 5.Gosselin says, Thrace (the present Roumelia) was indisputably the most northern nation known to Homer. He names the people Ιππημόλγοι, or living on mares' milk, because in his time they were a nomade race. Strabo evidently gives a forced meaning to the words of the poet, when he attempts to prove his acquaintance with the Scythians and Sarmatians.
- ↑ For I go to visit the limits of the fertile earth, and Oceanus, the parent of the gods.Iliad xiv. 200.
