Abstract

Two main views of the country called in the Odyssey the Land of the Phaeacians or Scheria are current among Homeric scholars. Some think it is, or is in, the island known to the ancients as Corcyra, and that the people who are described as living in it were ordinary flesh and blood mortals. The other view, the belief of the majority, though of great variety, is that Scheria is in fairyland or some other supramundane sphere, and a creation of the poet's fancy. In Class. Rev. XXIV. 204 Mr. Evelyn-White says, after quoting Monro, that it ‘cannot be disputed’ that the Phaeacian and other adventures of Odysseus are Märchen, so the matter is as good as closed. But as many of the Homeric choses jugées of last century have been proved of recent years to be unsubstantial, it has seemed worth while to examine the fairyland theory afresh. I begin with a survey of the literature of the question, and shall then inquire in a second paper what Homeric foundation there is for the supernatural theory. Elsewhere I shall endeavour to show that Homer describes a real people, and that Scheria can be fitted into the Mediterranean world, as we now know it, of the latest Minoan or Mycenaean period, and is in fact a Minoan settlement in Corcyra.