Excerpt from On the Trapanese Origin of the Odyssey Men of science, so far as I have observed them, are apt in their fear of jumping to a conclusion, to, forget that there is such a thing as jumping away from one-wand Homeric students have taken a leaf out of their book in this respect. How many striking points of correspondence, I wonder, between an actual place and one described in a novel, should be enough for reasonable surmise that the one was drawn from the other? I should myself say that four would be ample, provided, of course, that no feature in the novel was contradicted by the place itself, and that no serious argument could be brought to show that the coincidences must be merely accidental. Suppose, for example, that a policeman is told to look out for an elderly gentleman of about sixty; he is a foreigner, speaks a little English, but not much, is lame in his left foot, has blue eyes, a bottle nose, and is about 5 ft. 10 in. High. How many of these features will the policeman require before he feels pretty sure that he. Has found his man? If he sees any foreigner he will look at him. If he finds one who is about 5 ft. To in. In height, he Wlll noté his age. If he finds this tally with the description and sees also that the man limps, he will probably arrest him on suspicion, and if on doing so he also finds, as he is pretty certain to do, that the man has blue eyes and a bottle-nose, and speaks broken English, he will take him before the magistrate. The prisoner may perhaps be able to show that in spite of so many points of correspondence he is not the person wanted, but what sensible magistrate would be satisfied with less than the most convincing proof that the case was one of mistaken identity? Mala/2's Trapani is now arrested and placed on trial as being the home and habitat of the Odyssey. It was accused of being the chief town of Scheria, for reasons that will follow in the body of this pamphlet, and since its arrest a. Number of additional and most suspicious circumstances have been found in connection with it. Strawberry mark after straw berry mark has been exhibited, but with the production of each one Homeric critics only cry out the more loudly that it cannot, cannot, be the long lost Scheria. Nevertheless, when asked for their objection they have none that they will themselves be prepared to stand by. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.