Kitap 34
3
This would lead us to conjecture that the wandering described by Homer was near Sicily, because he has assigned to Scylla the kind of fishing which is indigenous to the Scyllaean rock; and because what he says of Charybdis correctly describes what does happen in the Straits. But the Thrice sends she up the darksome tide, in stead of twice a day, is an error to be ascribed to the copyist or the geographer. Island of Meninx, off the lesser Syrtis. See 1. 39. Odyss. 12, 105. So also Meninx answers to his description of the Lotophagi.
4
Or if there are some points which do not answer, we must lay the blame on ignorance or poetic licence, which uses real history, picturesque detail, and mythological allusion. The object of history is truth, as when in the catalogue of ships the poet describes the features of the several localities, calling one city rocky, another frontier-placed, another with wealth of doves, or hard by the sea. But the object of picturesque detail is vividness, as when he introduces men fighting; and that of mythological allusion is to give pleasure or rouse wonder. But a narrative wholly fictitious creates no illusion and is not Homeric. For all look upon his poetry as a philosophical work; and Eratosthenes is wrong in bidding us not judge his poems with a view to having any serious meaning, or to seek for history in them.
