Excerpt from Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7: A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of the Lives of More Than 200 of the Most Prominent Personages in History
The plot of the Odyssey is admitted to be consecutive and regular in structure. There are certain differences in the mythology which have been made a ground for supposing a separate authorship. But, in the first place, this would do nothing to explain them; in the second, they find their natural ex planation in observing that the scene of the wanderings is laid in other lands, be yond the circle of Achaian knowledge and tradition, and that Homer modifies his scheme to meet the ethnical variations as he gathered them from the trading navigators of Phoenicia, who alone could have supplied him with the information required for his purpose.
That information was probably colored more or less by ignorance and by fraud. But we can trace in it the sketch of an imaginary voyage to the northern regions of Europe, and it has some remarkable features of internal evidence, sup ported by the facts, and thus pointing to its genuineness. In latitudes not de scribed as separate we have reports of the solar day apparently contradictory. In one case there is hardly any night, so that the shepherd might earn double wages. In the other, cloud and darkness almost shut out the day. But we now know both of these statements to have a basis of solid truth on the Norwegian coast to the northward, at the different seasons of the midnight sun in summer, and of Christmas, when it is not easy to read at noon.
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