Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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HOIllER'S ABODE OF THE LIVING. 29 any greater difficulty in finding the aaqmadg of that ter- restrial hemisphere which Homer makes his Abode of Living Men. It can be nothing else than the Pole. And as the sea was supposed to surround it Qas it doesj, and as the known countries around the Mediterranean were conceived of as little more than large islands in a sea which covered the 'greater part of the northern hemi- sphere Csee Straboj, it was the most natural thing in the world that the polar island should be called the 6,,tq5qJt5g Heade-0-179, ff the navel of the sea. 1 As if to make it im- possible to misunderstand his language, the poet calls the earth-picturing shield of Achilles not flat, but fiinvxaos, well-orbedg and by placing the Ocean-stream around its rim makes it, as on the earth of ancient East-Aryan mythology, everywhere equidistant from its 6,a4mA6g or Pole. In its application to the Pole of the heavens, the same metaphorical term has often been employed among other peoplesg2 and if, as Dr. Hayman .thinks, divine agency seems to supersede natural in its vicinity, it is 1 The term forcibly recalls the oft-recurring, not yet fully understood Avestan expression, apdm napzit, the Navel of the VVaters. Without claiming an entire correspondence in its meaning, we may yet note with interest, that, in the Middle Ages, the Parsees certainly associated this Navel of the Waters with their mythical, north-polar, world-mountain, and assigned to it somewhat of the divinity and sanctity of the latter: that Neriosengh, ln translating the Yaona into the Sanskrit, understood and ren- dered it in the same wayg and, finally, that such scholars as Spiegel and Bnrnouf have lent to the interpretation the authority of their great names, though the former, in his commentary, is inclined to change his opinion. See BLIEIECIUS Avesta, pt. il. pp. 30, 133,137,141g pt. iii. pp. 46, 91, 130, 145, 148.149, 152, etc. Wnsnisonivmnn, Zoroastrische Studicn, Yasht v. p. 177. Hovrznacqua, L' Avesta Zoroastre et le Mazdefisme, Paris, 1880, pp. 252-254. 2 Extremely interesting is the Vedic use of the terms navel of the heavens, navel of the world, and navel of the earth. See Rig Veda, i. 105, 110, l. 164, 1. 185, x. 90, 14, ct passim. Even Fontana, who finds the Vedic cosmology embryonai1'c, is impressed by the scientific attainments disclosed in one of these umbilical hymns. Qlrulc Vcfdiqile, Paris, 1881, p. 200.1 The name of the celestial Pole with the ancient Finns was tctivahan napanan, navel of the heavens. fCAs1JnizN, Finnische Mytholoyie, St. Petersburg, 1853, p. 320 Comp. GMMM, Deutsche Mylhologic, pp. 766, 1225, See chapters on The Eden Zenith, and The Navel of the Earth, in W. F. WAnanN's Paradise Found .' the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, Boston, 1885. ,

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Hayman, according to whom the poet did not intend that we should have any idea Whatever as to the real location, and 'hence deliberately and purposely locked up his mys- tery in a manner intended to be effectual. The passage in which he presents this view is curious enough to quote: Homer does not say the 'wind and water ' as elsewhere, but the 'gods,' brought him Cn-6AaaavD thitherg i.e., the whole course is regarded as due to their interposition. By this contrivance the poet seems to intimate that no prdinary reckoning of distance or rate is applicable. He thus breaks away from the group of eastern localities which lie in connection with Aiaie,-viz., the Sirens, Thrinacie, and Scylla,-and lands us in a new region. The name, if meaning, as Mr. Paley on Eschylos CEumen. 989D thinks, a dark gulf or chasm, suits well the idea. suggested by that of Calypso, 'the Concealerg' similarly Hesiod CTheogony, 803D applies it to the water of Styx. . . . Thus, by the very names Ogygia and Calypso, the poet may mean to hint that their whereabouts is not to be retraced, and that this part of the hero's course is not to be squared with previous notes of time or place. The same idea suits the 6fL4Jl1.lx.O9 dlamifrfrvle, i.e., the centre of the sea where it rose high, as land rises highest in some point far inland, and thus of unknown remoteness. So, from Ogygia reaching Scheric in twenty days Cvi. 170, vii. 268- 297j, he is from Scheric brought back into known regions by a supernatural machinery,-the magic galleys Cviii. 558-563D which knew not human laws, and therefore baffle calculation. Thus the poet locks up his mysteryg and all attempts to open it are idle in themselves, and are a violation of his idea. 1 That there is no need for such a hewing-asunder of the Gordian knot, the briefest glance at the true I-Iomeric earth sufiices to show. Nobody can fail to find the 6,1.4w.Mq of a hemispherical shield, and nobody can have 1 IIayman's Odyssey, vol. i., Appendix D, p. xlvii.

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30 BOSTON UNI VERSITY YEA IZ BOOK. entirely in keeping with the idea that about and above the Arctic Pole is peculiarly the home of the gods. So the fact that Calypso is the daughter of Atlas becomes at once significant, when it is remembered, that, in the oldest Greek mythology, the proper location of Atlas is not at the west, in Libya, but in the extreme north, at the Pole.1 The four-fold fount, fiowing in four opposite directions, further identities the place with the mythical polar Gotterberg of the Iranians, Hindus, and other peo- ples? The same must be said of the beauty of the isle, which was so adorned with groves, and 4' soft meadows of violets, that the poet closes his description by asserting, that, ff on beholding it, even an Immortal would be seized with wonder and delight. 3 Finally, as we should know in advance, it is apparently Notos which bears the voyager thither, and Boreas which brings him thence to the Phaeacians. All evidences, therefore, conspire to tix the location of the long-adrift isle at the Arctic Pole. The Nmuch-contriving Odysseus crowns all his other achievements in the most fitting inanncr. Anticipating the belated Kanes and Franklins and Payers of our day, he snatchcs the supreme prize of Polar exploration! In conclusion, then, the recovery of the true Homeric conception of the Abode of Living Men pours a flood of light over the entire Odyssey, showing what we stated more than three years ago, namely, that the wanderings of Odysseus are a representation, in highly poetical form, of an imaginary circnmnavigation of the mythical Earth in its upper or northern hemisphere, including a trzjo to the under or southern hemisphere, and a visit to the North Pole. W. F. W. 1 K. H. W. VESLUKER, Mythisehe Geographte, Leipsic, 1832, p. 133. 2 See P. F. Kremer., Die Sehlipfangsgeschichte und Lchre vom Paraalies, Basel, 1861, pp. 796-799. JULIUS GRILL, 1Jf8E7'Z7IiilCI'dB7' Menschheit, Leipsic, 1875, vol. i. pp. 223-279. W. Mimzrzn, Die ivorehri.-xtliche Unsterblichlceitslehre, vol. ii. pp. 11, 12. See chapter on The Quadrifuroate River, in WARREN, Paradise Found. 8 Odyssey, v. 63-75. Compare Paradise Found, pp. 235, 236.