Gladstone saw Homer's world as a combination of actual and imagined geography. The third volume of his 'Studies' includes a 'Map of the World According to Homer' where a fictional landscape that includes places both real and imagined surrounds the geography of the Aegean Sea.

Writing in 1858, Gladstone seems to side with Eratosthenes when he cautions, "Do not let us engage in the vain attempt to construct the geography of the Odyssey upon the basis of the actual distribution of the earth's surface. Such a process can lead to no satisfactory result". But Gladstone still found some value in locating Homer's geographic and topographic references in the real world whenever possible; in doing so, he explained, we understand the extent and nature of Homer's worldview. While Homer describes territories that are easily recognizable as Greek isles with geographic accuracy, according to Gladstone, many other recognizable geographic features - the southern coast of Italy, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf - are fragmentary, transposed, or (often) both. Gladstone argues that these locations, described without precise features or travel times, were likely known to Homer only indirectly, so he could rearrange them to suit his whims.

Gladstone also identified parts of Homer's world that could never be found on a map of the Earth: the transcendent (the Underworld), as well as the merely mythical (Odysseus's journey from the land of the Lotus- eaters to Scheria, inclusive).

The Author
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), British statesman and liberal party politician, served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and is widely considered one of Britain's greatest leaders.

Throughout his lifetime, Gladstone authored six major works including 'The State in its 'Relations with the Church' (1841), 'Studies on Homer' and the 'Homeric Age' (1858), 'On Books and Housing of Them' (1890), and the 'Impregnable Rock of the Holy Scripture' (1890).