We come now to Rhadamanthus, who is thrice mentioned by Homer. Once[301], as born of the same parents with Minos[302]. Once, as enjoying like him honours from Jupiter beyond the term of our ordinary human life: for he is placed amidst the calm and comforts of the Elysian plain. The third passage is remarkable. It is where Alcinous[303] promises Ulysses conveyance to his home, even should it be farther than Eubœa, which the Phæacian mariners consider to be their farthest known point of distance, and whither they had conveyed Rhadamanthus,
on his way to visit, or inspect, or look after, Tityus. This Tityus we find in the νεκυία suffering torture for having attempted violence upon Latona[304], as she was proceeding towards Pytho, through Panopeus. Panopeus was a place in Phocis, on the borders of Bœotia, and on the line of any one journeying between Delos and Delphi.
There is in this legend the geographical indistinctness, and even confusion, which we commonly find where Homer dealt with places lying in the least beyond the range of his own experience or that of his hearers, as was the case with Phæacia. If Tityus was in Panopeus, the proper way to carry Rhadamanthus was by the Corinthian gulf. But from various points in the geography of the Odyssey, it may, in my opinion, be gathered, that Homer had an idea, quite vague and indeterminate as to distance, of a connection by sea between the north of the Adriatic, and the north of the Ægean, either directly, or from the sea of Marmora: and it suited his representation of the Phæacians, and best maintained their as it were aerial character, to give them an unknown rather than a known route. However that might be, if we look into the legend in order to conjecture its historic basis, it appears to suggest the inferences which follow:
1. That according to tradition, the empire or supremacy of Minos, which may in some points have resembled that afterwards held by Agamemnon, embraced both Corcyra and likewise middle Greece, where Panopeus and Pytho or Delphi lay.
We must, however, presume the empire of Minos to have been in great part insular. There were contemporary kingdoms on the mainland, which give no sign of dependence upon it.