22 GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOMERIC PERIOD. [CHAP.
neighbouring mainland, are introduced into the narrative with
due observance of their relative position. All these are mentioned
in the description of the course pursued by Hera, when she passed
from Olympus to Ida to meet Zeus on the summit of that
mountain. There we are told that she first visited the Thracian
mountains and Athos, and thence took her flight by way of
Lemnos and Imbros to Lectum, where she left the sea and
ascended over the ridges to Gargarus, the highest point of Ida,
leaving the God of Sleep, who had accompanied her, to keep
watch on one of the lofty pines1. Samothrace, which reaches the
greatest elevation of all the islands in these parts, and commands
a view of the plain of Troy, is selected for the station from which
Poseidon viewed the combats of the Greeks and Trojans15, as
Zeus did from Gargarus. Olympus itself is rightly designated
as a long and snowy and many-crested mountain3. Along the
coast of Asia Minor to the south of Mt. Ida, and in the neigh-
bouring inland districts, various features of the ground are men-
tioned, either incidentally, or in connexion with the tribes who
furnished contingents to the army of the Trojans. Thus we hear
of Mt. Tmolus and the Gygaean lake as being in the territory
of the Maeonians, the river Maeander and the heights of Mycale
in that of the Carians, and the Xanthus in Lycia4; while the
Cayster is introduced in a simile as being the haunt of innumerable
waterbirds', and Mt. Sipylus figures in the story of Niobc0-
But there is no intimation of Greek colonies existing on the
mainland of this country, though Rhodes and the islands in its
vicinity, as well as parts of Crete, were occupied by them7. Of the
districts of Asia Minor that lay further to the east
AsiaM°nor. very Kttle knowledge is shown; the Halys is not
mentioned, and the Paphlagonians, and beyond
them the Halizones, are only noticed as being allies of the
Trojans8. It is worthy of remark that in the Odyssey also, though
the scene of that poem is laid in western Greece, quite the most
1 //. 14.225—230,280-291.
a H. 13.10—14.
8 tutxpbs &ydwi<f>o$ iroXuffetpds, //. i. 402, 420, 499.
4 //. 2. 865, 866, 869, 877. 6 n tt. 46lt « & 6
7 II. a. 645-680, « //, «, 851, 856.