Note 24 — PART SECOND. NOTES ON THE ILLUMINATION OF LIGHTHOUSES, WITH SHORT NOTICES OF THEIR EARLY HISTORY.
Reading edition
This spirit of etymological conjecture has converted Cyclops, Proteus, Cneph, Phanes, Canobus, Chiron, Tithonus, Thetis, Amphitrite, Minotaurus, Chronus, Phrontis, and other demigods, into celebrated lighthouses, or, at all events, has imagined that those mythological personages were worshipped under the emblem of fire or light in buildings, which, at the same time, served as guides to the benighted mariner. On the faith, also, of similar obscure and finely drawn etymologies, various places, such as Calpe and Abyla, the opposite points of Africa and Europe, at the Straits of the Mediterranean, have been unhesitatingly recognized as the sites of celebrated light-towers; and the Latin words turris and columna have been supposed primarily to signify a lighthouse, the first being written Tor-is, the Tower of fire, and the Col-on, the Pillar of the Sun.
[25]
Ἔνθ’ ὄυτις τὴν νῆσον ἐσέδρακεν ὀφθαλμοῒσιν Ὅυτ’ οὖν κύματα μακρὰ κυλινδόμενα ποτὶ χέρσον Ἐισίδομεν πρὶν νῆας ἐϋσσέλμους ἐπικελσαι.
Odyss., ix., 146.