Chapter 24

224That is to say, that he made the entire circuit of Africa, starting from Cadiz, and doubling the Cape of Good Hope. Such was the opinion of Crates, who endeavoured to explain all the expressions of Homer after mathematical hypotheses. If any one were to inquire how Menelaus, who was wandering about the Mediterranean, could have come into Ethiopia, Crates would answer, that Menelaus left the Mediterranean and entered the Atlantic, whence he could easily travel by sea into Ethiopia. In this he merely followed the hypothesis of the mathematicians, who said that the inhabited earth in all its southern portion was traversed by the Atlantic Ocean, and the other seas contiguous thereto.

225The Isthmus of Suez. This isthmus they supposed to be covered by the sea, as Strabo explains further on.

226Thus far he, collecting much property and gold, wandered with his ships. Odyssey iii. 301.

227Odyssey iv. 83.

228Strabo here appears to have followed Aristotle, who attributes to Sesostris the construction of the first canal connecting the Mediterranean, or rather the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, with the Red Sea. Pliny has followed the same tradition. Strabo, Book xvii., informs us, that other authors attribute the canal to Necho the son of Psammeticus; and this is the opinion of Herodotus and Diodorus. It is possible these authors may be speaking of two different attempts to cut this canal. Sesostris flourished about 1356 years before Christ, Necho 615 years before the same era. About a century after Necho, Darius the son of Hystaspes made the undertaking, but desisted under the false impression that the level of the Red Sea was higher than that of the Mediterranean. Ptolemy Philadelphus proved this to be an error, by uniting the Red Sea to the Nile without causing any inundation. At the time of Trajan and Hadrian the communication was still in existence, though subsequently it became choked up by an accumulation of sand. It will be remembered that a recent proposition for opening the canal was opposed in Egypt on similar grounds.

229Mount El Kas.

230Tineh.

231But the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain, and the boundaries of the earth. Odyssey iv. 563.

232But ever does the ocean send forth the gently blowing breezes of the west wind. Odyssey iv. 567.

233Odyssey iv. 73. See Strabo’s description of electrum, Book iii. c. ii. § 8.

234Blessed.

235The name of Arabia Felix is now confined to Yemen. A much larger territory was anciently comprehended under this designation, containing the whole of Hedjaz, and even Nedjed-el-Ared. It is probable that Strabo here speaks of Hedjaz, situated about two days’ journey south of Mecca.

236Iliad xi. 20.

237Of the Mediterranean.

238Philæ was built on a little island formed by the Nile, now called El-Heif.

239This is evidently Strabo’s meaning; but the text, as it now stands, is manifestly corrupt.

240El-Baretun. A description of this place will be found in the 17th book.

241At this port it was that Agesilaus terminated his glorious career.

242Iliad xiii. 1. Strabo means that Homer, after having spoken of the Trojans in general, mentions Hector in particular.

243Iliad ii. 641. Having mentioned the sons of Œneus collectively, he afterwards distinguishes one of them by name.

244Iliad viii. 47. Gargarus was one of the highest peaks of Ida.

245Iliad ii. 536. Chalcis and Eretria were two cities of Eubœa.

246We have here taken advantage of Casaubon’s suggestion to read ἡ πάνορμος instead of ἢ Πάνορμος, the Greek name for Palermo in Sicily, which was not founded in the time of Sappho.

247Odyssey iv. 83.

248Paris.

249Where were her variously embroidered robes, the works of Sidonian females, which godlike Alexander himself had brought from Sidon, sailing over the broad ocean, in that voyage in which he carried off Helen, sprung from a noble sire. Iliad vi. 289.

250I will give thee a wrought bowl: it is all silver, and the lips are bound with gold; it is the work of Vulcan: the hero Phædimus, king of the Sidonians, gave it [to me], when his home sheltered me, as I was returning from thence. I wish to give this to thee. Odyssey xv. 115.

251But in beauty it much excelled [all] upon the whole earth, for the ingenious Sidonians had wrought it cunningly, and Phœnician men had carried it. Iliad xxiii. 742.

252The Armenians.

253The Arabs.

254The Syrians.

255Dwelling in caverns.

256He saw the cities of many men, and learned their manners. Odyssey i. 3.

257Having suffered many things, and having wandered much, I was brought. Odyssey iv. 81.

258See Hesiod, Fragments, ed. Loesner, p. 434.

259This derivation of Arabia is as problematical as the existence of the hero from whom it is said to have received its name; a far more probable etymology is derived fromereb, signifying the west, a name supposed to have been conferred upon it at a very early period by a people inhabiting Persia.

260That is, that the Phœnicians and Sidonians dwelling around the Persian Gulf are colonies from those inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean.

261As to this fact, upon which almost all geographers are agreed, it is only rejected by Strabo because it stands in the way of his hypothesis.

262Half men, half dogs.

263Long-headed men.

264A celebrated poet who flourished about seven centuries before the Christian era, said to have been a native of Sardis in Lydia. Only three short fragments of his writings are known to be in existence.

265Men who covered themselves with their feet.

266Dog-headed men.

267People having their eyes in their breasts.

268One-eyed.

269The Strait of Messina.

270For thrice in a day she sends it out, and thrice she sucks it in. Odyssey xii. 105.

271For thrice in a day she sends it out, and thrice she sucks it in terribly. Mayest thou not come hither when she is gulping it; for not even Neptune could free thee from ill. Odyssey xii. 105.

272She gulped up the briny water of the sea; but I, raised on high to the lofty fig-tree, held clinging to it, as a bat. Odyssey xii. 431.

273Odyssey v. 306.

274Iliad viii. 488.

275Iliad iii. 363.

276But I held without ceasing, until she vomited out again the mast and keel; and it came late to me wishing for it: as late as a man has risen from the forum to go to supper, adjudging many contests of disputing youths, so late these planks appeared from Charybdis. Odyssey xii. 437.

277Gaudus, the little island of Gozo near Malta, supposed by Callimachus to have been the Isle of Calypso.

278It seems more probable that Callimachus intended the island of Corsura, now Pantalaria, a small island between Africa and Sicily.

279The Atlantic.

280A river of Colchis,hodieFasz or Rion.

281Cybele, so named because she had a temple on Mount Ida.

282An island in the Ægæan, now Meteline.

283HodieLemno or Stalimene.

284Euneos was the eldest of the children which Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, king of Lemnos, had by Jason during his stay in that island.

285A town situated at the bottom of the Pelasgic Gulf,hodieVolo.

286A country of Thessaly, which received its designation of Achæan, from the same sovereign who left his name to Achaia in Peloponnesus.

287Eumelus, whom Alcestis, divine amongst women, most beautiful in form of the daughters of Pelias, brought forth to Admetus. Iliad ii. 714.

288Named Ideessa in the time of Strabo. Strabo, book xi. c. ii. § 18.

289Sinub.

290Candia.

291HodieThe Isle of Nanfio.

292Now the Island of Callistè, founded by Theras the Lacedæmonian more than ten centuries before the Christian era.

293A name of Thessaly.

294The Gulf of Venice.

295The erroneous opinion that one of the mouths of the Danube emptied itself into the Adriatic is very ancient, being spoken of by Aristotle as a well-known fact, and likewise supported by Theopompus, Hipparchus, and many other writers.

296Odyssey x. 137.

297Odyssey xii. 70.

298Antiphanes of Berga, a city of Thrace. This writer was so noted for his falsehoods, that βεργαίζειν came to be a proverbial term for designating that vice.

299Thirty years before the time of this Damastes, Herodotus had demonstrated to the Greeks the real nature of the Arabian Gulf.

300This river, called by the Turks Karasu, rises somewhere in Mount Taurus, and before emptying itself into the sea, runs through Tarsus.

301The Ab-Zal of oriental writers.

302The ancient capital of the kings of Persia, now Schuss.

303The very idea that Diotimus could sail from the Cydnus into the Euphrates is most absurd, since, besides the distance between the two rivers, they are separated by lofty mountain-ridges.

304Now the Bay of Ajazzo.

305Iskuriah.

306Gosselin justly remarks that this is a mere disputing about terms, since, though it is true the Mediterranean and Euxine flow into each other, it is fully admissible to describe them as separate. The same authority proves that we ought to read 3600 and not 3000 stadia, which he supposes to be a transcriber’s error.

307Castor and Pollux.

308Castor and Pollux were amongst the number of the Argonauts. On their return they destroyed the pirates who infested the seas of Greece and the Archipelago, and were in consequence worshipped by sailors as tutelary deities.

309The Phœnicians or Carthaginians despatched Hanno to found certain colonies on the western coast of Africa, about a thousand years before the Christian era.

310Strabo here follows the general belief that Æneas escaped to Italy after the sack of Troy, a fact clearly disproved by Homer, Iliad xx. 307, who states that the posterity of Æneas were in his time reigning at Troy. To this passage Strabo alludes in his 13th book, and, contrary to his general custom, hesitates whether to follow Homer’s authority or that of certain grammarians who had mutilated the passage in order to flatter the vanity of the Romans, who took pride in looking up to Æneas and the Trojans as their ancestors.

311Antenor having betrayed his Trojan countrymen was forced to fly. It is generally stated that, taking with him a party of the Heneti, (a people of Asia Minor close to the Euxine,) who had come to the assistance of Priam, he founded the city of Padua in Italy. From this people the district in which Padua is situated received the name of Henetia, afterwards Venetia or Venice.

312The coasts of Italy.

313It is generally admitted that the events of the Trojan war gave rise to numerous colonies.

314The word λιμνοθάλασσα frequently signifies a salt marsh. The French editors remark that it was a name given by the Greeks to lagoons mostly found in the vicinity of the sea, though entirely separated therefrom. Those which communicated with the sea were termed στομαλίμναι.

315See book xvii. c. iii.

316A country close upon the Euxine.

317The Strait of the Dardanelles.

318At the time of Diodorus Siculus, the people of the Isle of Samothracia preserved the tradition of an inundation caused by a sudden rising of the waters of the Mediterranean, which compelled the inhabitants to fly for refuge to the summits of the mountains; and long after, the fishermen’s nets used to be caught by columns, which, prior to the catastrophe, had adorned their edifices. It is said that the inundation originated in a rupture of the chain of mountains which enclosed the valley which has since become the Thracian Bosphorus or Strait of Constantinople, through which the waters of the Black Sea flow into the Mediterranean.

319Now Midjeh, in Roumelia, on the borders of the Black Sea. Strabo alludes rather to the banks surrounding Salmydessus than to the town itself.

320The part of Bulgaria next the sea, between Varna and the Danube, now Dobrudzie.

321Tineh.

322El-Kas.

323Lake Sebaket-Bardoil.

324Probably the present Maseli. Most likely the place was so named from the γέῤῥα, or wattled huts, of the troops stationed there to prevent the ingress of foreign armies into Egypt.

325This city of Calpe was near Mount Calpe, one of the Pillars of Hercules.

326Sea of Marmora.

327The Ægæan.

328Danube.

329Mingrelia.

330The river Fasz.

331Now Djanik.

332The river Thermeh.

333The Jekil-Irmak.

334Sidin, or Valisa, is comprised in the territory of Djanik, being part of the ancient kingdom of Pontus.

335The river Geihun.

336Gosselin remarks that the alluvial deposit of this river is now no nearer to Cyprus than it was at the time of the prediction.

337Cilicia and Cataonia are comprised in the modern Aladeuli.

338Iliad ix. 7.

339Being swollen it rises high around the projecting points, and spits from it the foam of the sea. Iliad iv. 425.

340The lofty shores resound, the wave being ejected [upon the beach]. Iliad xvii. 265.

341The word ὄργυια, here rendered fathoms, strictly means the length of the outstretched arms. As a measure of length it equals four πήχεις, or six feet one inch. Gosselin seems to doubt with reason whether they ever sounded such a depth as this would give, and proposes to compute it by a smaller stadium in use at the time of Herodotus, which would have the effect of diminishing the depth by almost one half.

342A city of Achaia near to the Gulf of Corinth. Pliny tells us it was submerged during an earthquake, about 371 years before the Christian era. According to Pausanias, it was a second time destroyed by the shock of an earthquake, but again rebuilt by the inhabitants who survived.

343A city placed by some in Thrace, but by others in Pontus; a more probable opinion seems to be that Bizone was in Lower Mœsia, on the western side of the Euxine. Pomponius Mela asserts that Bizone was entirely destroyed by an earthquake, but according to Strabo, (lib. vii.,) who places it about 40 stadia from the sea, it was only partially demolished.

344Ischia.

345We have here followed the earlier editions, as preferable to Kramer, who supplies μὴ before μαθηματικὸς.

346Demetrius Poliorcetes: the same intention is narrated by Pliny and other historians of Julius Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero.

347Kankri.

348Strait of Messina.

349The sea which washes the shores of Tuscany. Strabo applies the term to the whole sea from the mouth of the Arno to Sicily.

350Strait of Messina.

351Gosselin observes that Le Père Babin, who had carefully examined the currents of the Euripus of Chalcis, says that they are regular during eighteen or nineteen days of every month, the flux and reflux occurring twice in the twenty-four hours, and following the same laws as in the ocean; but from the ninth to the thirteenth, and from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth, of each lunar month they become irregular, the flux occurring from twelve to fourteen times in the twenty-four hours, and the reflux as often.

352See Plutarch, de Plac. Philos. lib. i. c. 14, and Stobæus, Ecl. Phys. lib. i. c. 18.

353El-Kas.

354The Arabian Gulf. Mr. Stephenson, while examining the Temsah Lakes, anciently called the Bitter Lakes, discovered recent marine remains similar to those on the shores of the present sea, clearly showing that the basin of the Temsah Lakes was the head of the Arabian Gulf at a period geologically recent.

355We have here followed MSS. which all read συνελθούσης δὲ τῆς θαλάττης. The French editors propose συνενδούσης δὲ τῆς θαλάττης, with the sense of “but on the retiring of the Mediterranean,” &c.

356This accusation may not seem quite fair to the English reader.Touchis the nearest term in our language by which we can express the Greek συνάπτω, the use of which Strabo objects to in this passage; still the meaning of the English word is much too definite for the Greek.

357The Atlantic.

358Viz. the Mediterranean.

359The western part of the town of Corinth, situated in the sea of Crissa. Its modern name is Pelagio.

360Kankri.

361Viz. the temple of Jupiter Ammon, mentioned above.

362Gosselin remarks, Cyrene was founded 631 years before the Christian era, and at that time the limits of the Mediterranean were the same as they are now. Amongst the Greeks, dolphins were the ordinary symbols of the principal sea-port towns; and if the delegates from Cyrene set up this symbol of their country in the temple of Ammon, I see no reason why Eratosthenes and Strabo should regard the offering as a proof that the temple was on the sea-shore.

363We have thought it necessary, with the French translators, to insert these words, since although they are found in no MS. of Strabo, the argument which follows is clearly unintelligible without them.

364Hipparchus, believing that the Danube emptied itself by one mouth into the Euxine, and by another into the Adriatic Gulf, imagined that if the waters of the Mediterranean were raised in the manner proposed by Eratosthenes, the valley through which that river flows would have been submerged, and so formed a kind of strait by which the Euxine would have been connected to the Adriatic Gulf.

365The Lipari Islands.

366There is some mistake here. Strabo himself elsewhere tells us that the islands of Thera and Therasia were situated in the Ægæan Sea, near to the island of Nanfio.

367“Defending from danger.” More probably, in this instance, the Securer of Foundations.

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