Lib.i.

7.
"Some of the epithets which Homer applies to the heavens seem to imply that he considered it as a solid vault of metal.

But it is not necessary to construe these epithets so literally, nor to draw any such inference from his description of Atlas, who holds the lofty pillars which keep earth and heaven asunder.

Yet it would seem, from the manner in which the height of heaven is compared with the depth of Tartarus, that the region of light was thought to have certain bounds.

The summit of the Thessalian Olympus was regarded as the highest point on the earth, and it is not always carefully distinguished from the aerian regions above The idea of a seat of the gods--perhaps derived from a more ancient tradition, in which it was not attached to any geographical site--seems to be indistinctly blended in the poet's mind with that of the real mountain."-- Thirlwall's Greece, vol.i.p.