Note 13 — Chapter I

For yesterday Jove went to Oceanus, to the blameless Ethiopians, to a banquet. Iliad i. 423. The ancients gave the name of Ethiopians, generally, to the inhabitants of Interior Africa, the people who occupied the sea-coast of the Atlantic, and the shores of the Arabian Gulf. It is with this view of the name that Strabo explains the passage of Homer; but the Mediterranean was the boundary of the poet’s geographical knowledge; and the people he speaks of were doubtless the inhabitants of the southern parts of Phœnicia, who at one time were called Ethiopians. We may here remark too, that Homer’s ocean frequently means the Mediterranean, sometimes probably the Nile. See also p. 48, n. 2.