Théophile Cailleux (1816–1890) was a Belgian lawyer, born in
Calais
Calais ( , , traditionally , ) is a port city in the Pas-de-Calais department, of which it is a subprefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's prefecture is its third-largest city of Arras. Th ...
in France and the author of a work on
Homeric geography published in 1878. The title is ''Pays atlantiques décrits par Homère: Ibérie, Gaule, Bretagne, Archipels, Amériques. Théorie nouvelle'' ("Atlantic lands described by Homer: the Iberian peninsula, Gaul, Britain, the Atlantic islands, the Americas. A new theory"). As the title suggests, Cailleux took the unusual view that the geographical background to the events described in the ''
Iliad'' and ''
Odyssey'' was the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, and not the shores of the
Aegean Sea and
Mediterranean Sea. The book was published in Paris by Maisonneuve.
Theoretical work
Cailleux wrote that
Troy was situated in
East Anglia
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
where he had discovered two huge war-dykes between
Cambridge and
the Wash. Here, he identified the
river Cam
The River Cam () is the main river flowing through Cambridge in eastern England. After leaving Cambridge, it flows north and east before joining the River Great Ouse to the south of Ely, at Pope's Corner. The total distance from Cambridge to ...
with the ''
Iliad's''
Scamander and the river
Great Ouse with
Homer's
Simoïs. He was convinced that Homeric Troy was once situated on the heights outside Cambridge known as the
Gog Magog Hills.
Ithaca, he believed, should be sought in south-west Spain, in the delta of the
Guadalete, somewhere between
Jerez and
Cadiz. He found the spring
Arethusa: the present Fuente Amarga near
Chiclana de la Frontera, well known for its therapeutic waters, and identified Ithaca's Mount Neriton with the Nertobriga (briga meaning mountain in
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
), a height figuring on a map of southern
Celtiberia by the 2nd century Greek geographer
Ptolemaeus.
Cailleux's work followed fairly soon after
Heinrich Schliemann's triumphant demonstration that Troy and
Mycenae existed as powerful cities at the right time and in the right place to have fought a
Trojan War such as the epics describe (see for example Schliemann's ''Ithaka, der Peloponnesus und Troja'', 1868). The need for geographical speculation had thus been to some extent removed, and Cailleux was not taken seriously by Homeric scholars or archaeologists.
Bibliography
*''Origine celtique de la civilisation de tous les peuples. Théorie nouvelle'', Paris, 1878.
*''Pays atlantiques décrits par Homère. Ibérie, Gaule, Bretagne, Archipels, Amérique'', Paris, 1878.
*''Poésies d'Homère faites en Ibérie et décrivant non la Méditerranée, mais l'Atlantique'', Paris, 1879.
*''Belges et Bataves, leur origine, leur haute importance dans la civilisation primitive, d'après les théories nouvelles'', Bruxelles, 1881.
*''Théorie nouvelle sur les origines humaines. Homère en Occident. Troie en Angleterre'', Bruxelles, 1883.
*''Troie en Angleterre. Ménélas à Paris. Résumé de huit conférences faites à Paris'', Paris, 1885.
*''La Judée en Europe : la vérité sur les Juifs, leur origine et leur religion'', Paris, 1894.
See also
*
Geography of the Odyssey
* ''
Where Troy Once Stood''
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cailleux, Theophile
19th-century French writers
People from Calais
French people of Belgian descent
1816 births
1890 deaths
French male writers
19th-century French male writers