Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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HOMEIPS ABODE OF THE LIVING. 23 observed, if He seems to connect the extreme East with the farthest West,-sunset with sunrise,-as if he thought the earth's surface were wrapped Qso to speakj round a cylinder. Our if True Key to Ancient Cosmology, with its spheri- cal Homeric Earth, instantly solves these age-long con- tradictions. To recent writers, had they been attentive, V6lcker's disposition of the problem of Aiaie ought to have suggested the full-orbed truth. He found it neces- sary to assume the existence of two Aiaies,- one located in the far East, and one in the far West.2 Now, just as in the paper on f' Homer's Abode of the Dead we found that the true Homeric conception of the figure of the earth causes V6leker's two Hadean kingdoms to melt or merge at once into one, so here the same true conception of Homer's Earth merges, the two world-widely separated Aiaies into one located on the opposite side of the northern hemisphere, equidistant from the poet eastward .and west- ward. It is there that to the poet the westering sun begins to easter? Hence, though far to the West, it is at the same time far to the East,-the place of which he says, 'f There are the abodes and dance-grounds of Aurora, there the risings of the Sun. 4 How beautifully those mutually contradicting maps 771 1 P. 531. Comp. p. 325: The fact of the snn's sporting with the oxen night and morning goes far to show that Homer did not think of the Earth as a plane, but round, perhaps as upon a cylinder, and believed that the West and East were in com act. 2 To relieve the ineredibleness of his theory, he philosophically remarks. The poetic mind of the Greeks elaborated the conception of the Universe harmoniously, so that to the Sun-land in the East a similar one had to correspond in the West Ui --Hom. Gong., 5 66. Comp. also his Myllh- GOO!!- clelf Gricchea und Idiimer, Leipsic, 1832, p. 79. 3 The ancient Germans had the same habit of considering the sun-setting as extending until twelve o'cl0ek midnight. See the curious expressions in GRIMM, Deutsche lihyzhnlngira, Theil il. pp. 701, 705: Desshalh iingen die Alten den Tag nicht vom Aufgnng der S-onne, sondern schon von Mit- ternacht an, wie auch wir heute noch thun. -WOLFGANG Mrmzmr.: Die vorclir'istliclic Unsie:'blZchkeiLsleIw'c, Leipsie, 1870, Theil i. p. 77. 4 Odyssey, xii. 3, 4.

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22 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Heimreich formulates this charge of absent-mindedness or forgetfulness still more definitely as follows: ff All the hanging-back and hand-wringing of the interpreters avail nothing. The abodes and dancing-places of the early- born Aurora, and the risings of the Sun, are in the Eastg and to transport them to an island in the far West, is worse than absurd. I can explain it only as a thought- lessness on the part of the poet, who had in memory similar verses taken from the poem of the Argonauts, of which he made useg and for the moment he forgot, that, in consequence of his fiction that Odysseus also was come to Aiaie, the adoption into his poem of this perhaps formelhaften Wbndung had become impracticablef' 1 One of our latest mythographers first places the elusive islet in the East, as most in accord with Homeric tradi- tionsg but at length triumphantly explains all difficulties by identifying it with the Moon, which, naturally enough, ff is now in the East, and now in the West. 2 How would the wise old poet smile at such semi- accusatory, semi-apologetic criticism! On the actual earth, the East is reached by sailing Westg and if inter- preters had only been willing to concede to the ancient sages a little of their own abounding knowledge of the natural world, they would have spared themselves many a rnortifying mistake. They should have read, in Lanier's ff Psalm of the West, of that H Big, perilous theorem, hard for king and priest, - Pursue the West but long enough, 'tis East. 5 So plain is Homer's language, that some readers still ad- dicted to the traditional view have here and there seen its force, and only by a hair's-breadth missed the true Homeric geography. Thus Mr. Gladstone, in his Juventus Mundi, before his abandonment of the flat-earth theory, 1 HEIMREICH: Die Telcmachie und zlcr jtingcre Nostos, Flensburg,1S71, p. 20. 2 Ronmrr Bnowx, Jun.: The Myth of Kirkb, London, 1893, pp. 24 and 27. 3 Poems ofSi1.lncy Lanier, New York, 1884, p. 123.

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24 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. themselves confirm the truth when once the truth is found! Gladstone's, and others, place the mythic isle in the farthest Eastg Bunbury's, and others, in the farthest West, Viilcker's, and others, fix it in both the farthest East and farthest West. All are thus as contradictory as is well possible, yet all are unwittingly witnesses to the exact truth. The moment we take them from the flat disk of ignorant assumption, and wrap them around the sphere of true Homeric science, that moment all become congruent and correct. All now yield a common result, and confirm in the most striking manner the location above defined. This true solution of the position of Aiaie furthermore explains all the diiiiculties which commentators have found in the strange expression of Odysseus, that at that point he knew not where was East, or where was West, where the sun rose, or where it went behind the Earth COOZ. x. 190-l92j. Of this, and the passage xii. 1-4, Mr. Bun- bury says it seems impossible to reconcile the twof' Mr. Gladstone goes still farther, and suggests that Homer himself is embarrassingly involved in his own conceptions, and, under the fogginess of this blind statement, is seek- ing to escape! In the mouth of Mr. Gladstone, the most reverent of Homeric elucidators, this language is pecul- iarly surprising. But let one once conceive of Aiaie as we have placed it, and how perfectly natural the enigmati- cal expression! To the poet, Odysseus and his comrades are homeoscian antipodesg hence the setting sun is at the same moment the rising sun, West is one with East, 1 I have already shown that this island 1AiaicJ is absolutely fixed, according to the mind of Homer, in the East, as Alolie is in the West. It cannot be in the remote North, because no fire is used. It is not very likely to lie to the south of East, because of the neighborhood of the Kim- nierian fog. This is a difficulty for Homer, since his Dawn ought to be somewhat to the south of East. He tries fit may seemb to escape, like some of his Trojan heroes, in afoyg for he declares, that, on arriving here, Odysseus could make out nothing about his position relatively to tho Dark and the Dawn, the Sunset and the Sunrise. This difficulty cannot wholly be removed. - Juventus Mundi, p. 490.