THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS By HEINZ-GU¨ NTHER NESSELRATH

[half greek]

‘WHERE THE LORD OF THE SEA GRANTS
PASSAGE TO SAILORS THROUGH THE
DEEP-BLUE MERE NO MORE’: THE GREEKS
AND THE WESTERN SEAS
By HEINZ-GU¨ NTHER NESSELRATH


The fascination of the ancient Greeks with the vast seas to the west of
their areas of settlement already starts with Homer and lasts deep into
Imperial Roman times. The following remarks will try to highlight
some of the literary products of this fascination, tracing the development
from Okeanos as the home of mythical places (and dangers) to the
western ocean as the scarcely less mysterious abode of both Thule and
Atlantis.
Okeanos and the Atlantic Ocean
In the beginning, there was Okeanos: in the Iliad, Okeanos is twice introduced
as the begetter of the gods (14.201, 302, together with his divine
consort Tethys) and even as the origin of all things (14.246). This conception,
which reappears in later Orphic texts,1 has recognizable Near
Eastern precedents,2 something which also holds true for the idea of
Okeanos as a stream of water encircling all earth,3 as it is shown on
the famous shield of Achilles in Iliad book 18 and as it becomes important
for Odysseus’ fantastic journeys in the Odyssey. Okeanos is thus not
only a divine being of the highest importance, but also the absolute limit
beyond which no living human being can travel upon this earth. Earth is
more or less conceived as a well-rounded disc, in the middle of which
there is the Aegean with its adjacent lands (mainland Greece in the
west with the Ionic Isles and some vague hints about Sicily,4 Thrace in
the north, Asia Minor in the east, and Crete – as well as an inkling of
1 See Orphicorum Fragmenta 15. 16. 25. 107 Kern.
2 M. L. West, The east face of Helicon: West Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth (Oxford,
1997), 147.
3 West (n. 2), 144–6.
4 Od. 20.383, 24.211, 307 (‘Sikanie¨’), 366, 389.
Greece & Rome, Vol. 52, No. 2, # The Classical Association, 2005. All rights reserved
doi:10.1093/gromej/cxi003
Egypt – in the south). How soon beyond these lands the unknown
began, may be concluded from the description of the slain suitors’ last
journey, as they are led by Hermes into Hades at the beginning of
Odyssey book 24 (Od. 24.11-13): ‘And now they reach’d the earth’s
remotest ends, / And now the gates where evening Sol descends,
/ And Leucas’ rock, and Ocean’s utmost streams, / And now pervade
the dusky land of dreams, / And rest at last, where souls unbodied
dwell / In ever-flowing meads of asphodel’, as Alexander Pope translates.
5 The only familiar-sounding geographical point they pass before
reaching the ‘Gates of the Sun’ and the ‘People of Dreams’ is the
‘Leucadian Rock’. Though it has been argued6 that this too must be
taken as a mythical point already far in the West, it is difficult not to
be reminded of the island of Leucas, which lies not very far north of
Odysseus’ own island, Ithaca.

Full Text at :-

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