Now Samothrace, According To The
Map, Appeared To Be Not Only Out Of All Seeing Distance From The
Troad, But To Be Entirely Shut Out From It By The Intervening
Imbros, Which Is A Larger Island, Stretching Its Length Right
Athwart The Line Of Sight From Samothrace To Troy.
Piously
allowing that the dread Commoter of our globe might have seen all
mortal doings, even from the depth
Of his own cerulean kingdom, I
still felt that if a station were to be chosen from which to see
the fight, old Homer, so material in his ways of thought, so averse
from all haziness and overreaching, would have MEANT to give the
god for his station some spot within reach of men's eyes from the
plains of Troy. I think that this testing of the poet's words by
map and compass may have shaken a little of my faith in the
completeness of his knowledge. Well, now I had come; there to the
south was Tenedos, and here at my side was Imbros, all right, and
according to the map, but aloft over Imbros, aloft in a far-away
heaven, was Samothrace, the watch-tower of Neptune!
So Homer had appointed it, and so it was; the map was correct
enough, but could not, like Homer, convey THE WHOLE TRUTH. Thus
vain and false are the mere human surmises and doubts which clash
with Homeric writ!
Nobody whose mind had not been reduced to the most deplorable
logical condition could look upon this beautiful congruity betwixt
the Iliad and the material world and yet bear to suppose that the
poet may have learned the features of the coast from mere hearsay;
now then, I believed; now I knew that Homer had PASSED ALONG HERE,
that this vision of Samothrace over-towering the nearer island was
common to him and to me.
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