[483] Herodot. i, 15-16.

[484] Strabo, xi, p. 511; xii, p. 552; xiii, p. 627.

The poet Kallinus mentioned both Cimmerians and Trêres (Fr. 2, 3, ed. Bergk; Strabo. xiv, pp. 633-647).

[485] Herodot. i, 105. The account given by Herodotus of the punishment inflicted by the offended Aphroditê on the Scythian plunderers, and on their children’s children down to his time, becomes especially interesting when we combine it with the statement of Hippokratês respecting the peculiar incapacities which were so apt to affect the Scythians, and the religious interpretation put upon them by the sufferers (De Aëre, Locis, et Aquis, c. vi, s. 106-109).

[486] See, in reference to the direction of this ditch, Völcker, in the work above referred to on the Scythia of Herodotus (Mythische Geographie, ch. vii, p. 177).

That the ditch existed, there can be no reasonable doubt; though the tale given by Herodotus is highly improbable.

[487] Herodot. i. 106. Mr. Clinton fixes the date of the capture of Nineveh at 606 B. C. (F. H. vol. i. p. 269), upon grounds which do not appear to me conclusive: the utmost which can be made out is, that it was taken during the last ten years of the reign of Kyaxarês.

[488] From whom Polyænus borrowed his statement, that Alyattês employed with effect savage dogs against the Cimmerians, I do not know (Polyæn. vii, 2, 1).

[489] Herodot. i, 20-23.

[490] Herodot. i, 18. Polyænus (vii, 2, 2) mentions a proceeding of Alyattês against the Kolophonians.

[491] Nikolaus Damasken. p. 54, ed. Orelli; Xanthi Fragment. p. 243, Creuzer.

Mr Clinton states Alyattês to have conquered Karia, and also Æolis, for neither of which do I find sufficient authority (Fasti Hellen. ch. xvii, p. 298).

[492] Aristoteles ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀδραμυττεῖον.

[493] Herodot. i, 92-93.

[494] Herodot. i, 92.

[495] Herodot. v, 28. κατύπερθε δὲ τουτέων, ἐπὶ δύο γενέας ἀνδρῶν νοσήσασα τὰ μάλιστα στάσει.

Alyattês reigned fifty-seven years, and the vigorous resistance which the Milesians offered to him took place in the first six years of his reign. The “two generations of intestine dissension” may well have succeeded after the reign of Thrasybulus. This, indeed, is a mere conjecture, yet it may be observed that Herodotus, speaking of the time of the Ionic revolt (500 B. C.), and intimating that Milêtus, though then peaceable, had been for two generations at an earlier period torn by intestine dissension, could hardly have meant these “two generations” to apply to a time earlier than 617 B. C.

[496] Herodot. i, 17; v, 99; Athenæ. vi, p. 267. Compare K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterthümer, sect. 77, note 28.

[497] See the remarkable case of Milêtus sending no deputies to a Pan-Ionic meeting, being safe herself from danger (Herodot. i, 141).

[498] Herodot. i, 141-170. χρηστὴ δὲ καὶ πρὶν ἢ διαφθαρῆναι Ἰωνίην, Θάλεω ἀνδρὸς Μιλησίου γνώμη ἐγένετο, etc.

About the Pan-Ionia and the Ephesia, see Thucyd. iii, 104; Dionys. Halik. iv, 25; Herodot. i, 143-148. Compare also Whitte, De Rebus Chiorum Publicis, sect. vii, pp. 22-26.

[499] If we may believe the narrative of Nikolaus Damaskenus, Crœsus had been in relations with Ephesus and with the Ephesians during the time when he was hereditary prince, and in the lifetime of Alyattês. He had borrowed a large sum of money from a rich Ephesian named Pamphaês, which was essential to enable him to perform a military duty imposed upon him by his father. The story is given in some detail by Nikolaus, Fragm. p. 54, ed. Orell.,—I know not upon what authority.

[500] Herodot. i, 26; Ælian, V. H. iii, 26; Polyæn. vi, 50. The story contained in Ælian and Polyænus seems to come from Batôn of Sinôpê; see Guhl, Ephesiaca. ii, 3, p. 26, and iv, 5, p. 150.

The article in Suidas, v. Ἀρίσταρχος, is far too vague to be interwoven as a positive fact into Ephesian history, as Guhl interweaves it, immediately consequent on the retirement of Pindarus.

In reference to the rope reaching from the city to the Artemision, we may quote an analogous case of the Kylonian suppliants at Athens, who sought to maintain their contact with the altar by means of a continuous cord,—unfortunately, the cord broke (Plutarch, Solon, c. 12).

[501] Herodot. i, 141. Ἴωνες δὲ, ὡς ἤκουσαν—τείχεά τε περιεβάλλοντο ἕκαστοι, etc.: compare also the statement respecting Phôkæa, c. 168.

[502] See the discussion in Dr. Prichard, Natural History of Man, sect. xvii, p. 152.

Μελαγχρόες καὶ οὐλότριχες (Herodot. ii, 104: compare Ammian. Marcell. xxii, 16, “subfusculi, atrati,” etc.) are certain attributes of the ancient Egyptians, depending upon the evidence of an eye-witness.

“In their complexion, and in many of their physical peculiarities (observes Dr. Prichard, p. 138), the Egyptians were an African race. In the eastern, and even in the central parts of Africa, we shall trace the existence of various tribes in physical characters nearly resembling the Egyptians; and it would not be difficult to observe among many nations of that continent a gradual deviation from the physical type of the Egyptian to the strongly-marked character of the negro, and that without any very decided break or interruption. The Egyptian language, also, in the great leading principles of its grammatical construction, bears much greater analogy to the idioms of Africa than to those prevalent among the people of other regions.”

[503] Homer, Iliad, vi, 290: xxiii, 740; Odyss. xv, 116:—

Tyre is not named either in the Iliad or Odyssey, though a passage in Probus (ad Virg. Georg. ii, 115) seems to show that it was mentioned in one of the epics which passed under the name of Homer: “Tyrum Sarram appellatam esse, Homerus docet: quem etiam Ennius sequitur cum dicit, Pœnos Sarrâ oriundos.”

The Hesiodic catalogue seems to have noticed both Byblus and Sidon: see Hesiodi Fragment. xxx, ed. Marktscheffel, and Etymolog. Magnum, v. Βύβλος.

[504] The name Adramyttion or Atramyttion—very like the Africo-Phenician name Adrumêtum—is said to be of Phenician origin (Olshausen, De Origine Alphabeti, p. 7, in Kieler Philologische Studien, 1841). There were valuable mines afterwards worked for the account of Crœsus near Pergamus, and these mines may have tempted Phenician settlers to those regions (Aristotel. Mirab. Auscult. c. 52).

The African Inscriptions, in the Monumenta Phœnic. of Gesenius, recognize Makar as a cognomen of Baal: and Movers imagines that the hero Makar, who figures conspicuously in the mythology of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kôs, Rhodes, etc., is traceable to this Phenician god and Phenician early settlements in those islands (Movers, Die Religion der Phönizier, p. 420).

[505] Strabo, xiv, pp. 754-758; Skylax, Peripl. c. 104; Justin, xviii, 3; Arrian, Exp. Al. ii, 16-19; Xenophon, Anab. i, 4, 6.

Unfortunately, the text of Skylax is here extremely defective, and Strabo’s account is in many points perplexed, from his not having travelled in person through Phenicia, Cœle-Syria, or Judæa: see Groskurd’s note on p. 755 and the Einleitung to his Translation of Strabo, sect. 6.

Respecting the original relation between Palæ-Tyrus and Tyre, there is some difficulty in reconciling all the information, little as it is, which we possess. The name Palæ-Tyrus (it has been assumed as a matter of course: compare Justin, xi, 10) marks that town as the original foundation from which the Tyrians subsequently moved into the island: there was, also, on the main land a place named Palæ-Byblos (Plin. H. N. v, 20; Ptolem. v, 15) which was in like manner construed as the original seat from whence the town properly called Byblus was derived. Yet the account of Herodotus plainly represents the insular Tyrus, with its temple of Hêraklês, as the original foundation (ii, 44), and the Tyrians are described as living in an island even in the time of their king Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon (Joseph. Ant. Jud. viii, 2, 7). Arrian treats the temple of Hêraklês in the island-Tyre as the most ancient temple within the memory of man (Exp. Al. ii, 16). The Tyrians also lived on their island during the invasion of Salmaneser king of Nineveh, and their position enabled them to hold out against him, while Palæ-Tyrus on the terra firma was obliged to yield itself (Joseph. ib. ix, 14, 2). The town taken (or reduced to capitulate), after a long siege, by Nebuchadnezzar, was the insular Tyrus, not the continental or Palæ-Tyrus, which had surrendered without resistance to Salmaneser. It is not correct, therefore, to say—with Volney (Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. ch. xiv, p. 249), Heeren (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, abth. 2, p. 11), and others—that the insular Tyre was called new Tyre, and that the site of Tyre was changed from continental to insular, in consequence of the taking of the continental Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar: the site remained unaltered, and the insular Tyrians became subject to him and his successors until the destruction of the Chaldæan monarchy by Cyrus. Hengstenberg’s Dissertation, De Rebus Tyriorum (Berlin, 1832), is instructive on many of these points: he shows sufficiently that Tyre was, from the earliest times traceable, an insular city; but he wishes at the same time to show, that it was also, from the beginning, joined on to the main land by an isthmus (pp. 10-25),—which is both inconsistent with the former position and unsupported by any solid proofs. It remained an island strictly so called, until the siege by Alexander: the mole, by which that conqueror had stormed it, continued after his day, perhaps enlarged, so as to form a permanent connection from that time forward between the island and the main land (Plin. H. N. v, 19; Strabo, xvi, p. 757), and to render the insular Tyrus capable of being included by Pliny in one computation of circumference jointly with Palæ-Tyrus, the main-land town.

It may be doubted whether we know the true meaning of the word which the Greeks called Παλαι-Τύρος. It is plain that the Tyrians themselves did not call it by that name: perhaps the Phenician name which this continental adjacent town bore, may have been something resembling Palæ-Tyrus in sound, but not coincident in meaning.

The strength of Tyre lay in its insular situation; for the adjacent main-land, whereon Palæ-Tyrus was placed, was a fertile plain, thus described by William of Tyre during the time of the Crusaders:—

“Erat prædicta civitas non solum munitissima, sed etiam fertilitate præcipuâ et amœnitate quasi singularis: nam licet in medio mari sita est, et in modum insulæ tota fluctibus cincta; habet tamen pro foribus latifundium per omnia commendabile, et planitiem sibi continuam divitis glebæ et opimi soli, multas civibus ministrans commoditates. Quæ licet modica videatur respectu aliarum regionum, exiguitatem suam multâ redimit ubertate, et infinita jugera multiplici fœcunditate compensat. Nec tamen tantis arctatur angustiis. Protenditur enim in Austrum versus Ptolemaidem usque ad eum locum, qui hodie vulgo dicitur districtum Scandarionis, milliaribus quatuor aut quinque: e regione in Septentrionem versus Sareptam et Sidonem iterum porrigitur totidem milliaribus. In latitudinem vero ubi minimum ad duo, ubi plurimum ad tria, habens milliaria.” (Apud Hengstenberg, ut sup. p. 5.) Compare Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 50, ed. 1749; and Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii, pp. 210-226.

[506] Justin (xviii, 3) states that Sidon was the metropolis of Tyre, but the series of events which he recounts is confused and unintelligible. Strabo also, in one place, calls Sidon the μητρόπολις τῶν Φοινίκων (i, p. 40); in another place he states it as a point disputed between the two cities, which of them was the μητρόπολις τῶν Φοινίκων (xvi, p. 756).

Quintus Curtius affirms both Tyre and Sidon to have been founded by Agênôr (iv, 4, 15).

[507] See the interesting citations of Josephus from Dius and Menander, who had access to the Tyrian ἀναγραφαὶ, or chronicles (Josephus cont. Apion. i, c. 17, 18, 21; Antiq. J. x, 11, 1).

[508] Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2.

[509] Diodor. xvi, 41; Skylax, c. 104.

[510] Strabo, xvi, p. 756.

[511] A Maltese inscription identifies the Tyrian Melkarth with Ἡρακλῆς (Gesenius, Monument. Phœnic. tab. vi).

[512] Herodot. ii, 44; Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 18; Pausan. x, 12, 2; Arrian, Exp. Al. ii, 16; Justin, xliv, 5; Appian, vi, 2.

[513] Herodot. i, 2; Ephorus, Fragm. 40, ed. Marx; Strabo, xvi, pp. 766-784; Justin, xviii, 3. In the animated discussion carried on among the Homeric critics and the great geographers of antiquity, to ascertain where it was that Menelaus actually went during his eight years’ wandering (Odyss. iv, 85)—

one idea started was, that he had visited these Sidonians in the Persian gulf, or in the Erythræan sea (Strabo, i, p. 42). The various opinions which Strabo quotes, including those of Eratosthenês and Kratês, as well as his own comments, are very curious. Kratês supposed that Menelaus had passed the straits of Gibraltar and circumnavigated Libya to Æthiopia and India, which voyage would suffice, he thought, to fill up the eight years. Others supposed that Menelaus had sailed first up the Nile, and then into the Red sea, by means of the canal (διωρὺξ) which existed in the time of the Alexandrine critics between the Nile and that sea; to which Strabo replies that this canal was not made until after the Trojan war. Eratosthenês started a still more remarkable idea: he thought that in the time of Homer the strait of Gibraltar had not yet been burst open, so that the Mediterranean was on that side a closed sea; but, on the other hand, its level was then so much higher that it covered the isthmus of Suez, and joined the Red sea. It was, he thought, the disruption of the strait of Gibraltar which first lowered the level of the water, and left the isthmus of Suez dry; though Menelaus, in his time, had sailed from the Mediterranean into the Red sea without difficulty. This opinion Eratosthenês had imbibed from Stratôn of Lampsakus, the successor of Theophrastus: Hipparchus controverted it, together with many other of the opinions of Eratosthenês (see Strabo, i, pp. 38, 49, 56; Seidel, Fragmenta Eratosthenis, p. 39).

In reference to the view of Kratês,—that Menelaus had sailed round Africa,—it is to be remarked that all the geographers of that day formed to themselves a very insufficient idea of the extent of that continent, believing that it did not even reach so far southward as the equator.

Strabo himself adopts neither of these three opinions, but construes the Homeric words describing the wanderings of Menelaus as applying only to the coasts of Egypt, Libya, Phenicia, etc; he suggests various reasons, more curious than convincing, to prove that Menelaus may easily have spent eight years in these visits of mixed friendship and piracy.

[514] See Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, West-Asien, Buch iii, Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, s. 29, p. 50.

[515] Strabo speaks of the earliest settlements of the Phenicians in Africa and Iberia as μικρὸν τῶν Τρωϊκῶν ὕστερον (i, p. 48). Utica is affirmed to have been two hundred and eighty-seven years earlier than Carthage (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 134): compare Velleius Paterc. i, 2.

Archaleus, son of Phœnix, was stated as the founder of Gadês in the Phenician history of Claudius Julius, now lost (Etymolog. Magn. v. Γαδεῖρα). Archaleus is a version of the name Hercules, in the opinion of Movers.

[516] Skylax, Periplus, c. 110. “Carteia, ut quidam putant, aliquando Tartessus; et quam transvecti ex Africâ Phœnices habitant, atque unde nos sumus, Tingentera.” (Mela, ii, 6, 75.) The expression, transvecti ex Africâ applies as much to the Phenicians as to the Carthaginians: “uterque Pœnus” (Horat. Od. ii, 11) means the Carthaginians, and the Phenicians of Gadês.

[517] Strabo, xvii, p. 836.

[518] Cape Soloeis, considered by Herodotus as the westernmost headland of Libya, coincides in name with the Phenician town Soloeis in western Sicily, also, seemingly, with the Phenician settlement Suel (Mela, ii, 6, 65) in southern Iberia or Tartêssus. Cape Hermæa was the name of the north-eastern headland of the gulf of Tunis, and also the name of a cape in Libya, two days’ sail westward of the Pillars of Hêraklês (Skylax, c. 111).

Probably, all the remarkable headlands in these seas received their names from the Phenicians. Both Mannert (Geogr. d. Gr. und Röm. x, 2, p. 495) and Forbiger (Alte Geogr. sect. 111, p. 867) identify cape Soloeis with what is now called cape Cantin; Heeren considers it to be the same as cape Blanco; Bougainville as cape Boyador.

[519] Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 78. It was termed Leptis Magna, to distinguish it from another Leptis, more to the westward and nearer to Carthage, called Leptis Parva; but this latter seems to have been generally known by the name Leptis (Forbiger, Alte Geogr. sect. 109, p. 844). In Leptis Magna, the proportion of Phenician colonists was so inconsiderable that the Phenician language had been lost, and that of the natives, whom Sallust calls Numidians, spoken: but these people had embraced Sidonian institutions and civilization. (Sall. ib.)

[520] Strabo, xvii, pp. 825-826. He found it stated by some authors that there had once been three hundred trading establishments along this coast, reaching thirty days’ voyage southward from Tingis or Lixus (Tangier); but that they had been chiefly ruined by the tribes of the interior,—the Pharusians and Nigritæ. He suspects the statement of being exaggerated, but there seems nothing at all incredible in it. From Strabo’s language we gather that Eratosthenês set forth the statement as in his judgment a true one.

[521] Compare Skylax, c. 111, and the Periplus of Hanno, ap. Hudson, Geogr. Græc. Min. vol. i, pp. 1-6. I have already observed that the τάριχος (salt provisions) from Gadeira was currently sold in the markets of Athens, from the Peloponnesian war downward.—Eupolis, Fragm. 23; Μαρικᾶς, p. 506, ed. Meineke, Comic. Græc.

Compare the citations from the other comic writers, Antiphanês and Nikostratus ap. Athenæ. iii, p. 118. The Phenician merchants bought in exchange Attic pottery for their African trade.

[522] About the productiveness of the Spanish mines, Polybius (xxxiv, 9, 8) ap. Strabo, iii, p. 147; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 135.

[523] Strabo, iii, pp. 156, 158, 161; Polybius, iii, 10, 3-10.

[524] Polyb. i, 10; ii, 1.

[525] Strabo, iii, pp. 141-150. Οὗτοι γὰρ Φοίνιξιν οὕτως ἐγένοντο ὑποχείριοι, ὥστε τὰς πλείους τῶν ἐν τῇ Τουρδιτανίᾳ πολέων καὶ τῶν πλήσιον τόπων ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνων νῦν οἰκεῖσθαι.

[526] Thucyd. vi, 3; Diodor. v, 12.

[527] See the reference in Joseph. Antiq. Jud. viii, 5, 3, and Joseph. cont. Apion. i, 18; an allusion is to be found in Virgil, Æneid, i, 642, in the mouth of Dido.—

[528] Respecting the worship at Salamis (in Cyprus) and Paphos, see Lactant. i, 21; Strabo, xiv, p. 683.

[529] Tarsus is mentioned by Dio Chrysostom as a colony from the Phenician Aradus (Orat. Tarsens. ii, p. 20, ed. Reisk.), and Herodotus makes Kilix brother of Phœnix and son of Agênôr (vii, 92).

Phenician coins of the city of Tarsus are found, of a date towards the end of the Persian empire: see Movers, Die Phönizier, i, p. 13.

[530] Herodot. i, 170.

[531] Herodot. iv, 151.

[532] Herodot. iv, 152. Θείῃ πομπῇ χρεώμενος.

[533] Herodot. iv, 152. Τὸ δὲ ἐμπόριον τοῦτο (Tartêssus) ἦν ἀκήρατον τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον· ὥστε ἀπονοστήσαντες οὗτοι ὀπίσω μέγιστα δὴ Ἑλλήνων πάντων, τῶν ἡμεῖς ἀτρεκέως ἴδμεν, ἐκ φορτίων ἐκέρδησαν, μετά γε Σώστρατον τὸν Λαοδάμαντος, Αἰγινήτην· τούτῳ γὰρ οὐκ οἷά τε ἐρίσαι ἄλλον.

Allusions to the prodigious wealth of Tartêssus in Anakreon, Fragm. 8, ed. Bergk; Stephan. Byz. Ταρτησσός; Eustath. ad Dionys. Periêgêt. 332, Ταρτησσὸς, ἣν καὶ ὁ Ἀνακρέων φησὶ πανευδαίμονα; Himerius ap. Photium, Cod. 243, p. 599,—Ταρτεσσοῦ βίον, Ἀμαλθείας κέρας, πᾶν ὅσον εὐδαιμονίας κεφαλαῖον.

[534] These talents cannot have been Attic talents; for the Attic talent first arose from the debasement of the Athenian money-standard by Solon, which did not occur until a generation after the voyage of Kôlæus. They may have been either Euboic or Æginæan talents; probably the former, seeing that the case belongs to the island of Samos. Sixty Euboic talents would be about equivalent to the sum stated in the text. For the proportion of the various Greek monetary scales, see above, vol. ii, part 2, ch. iv, p. 425 and ch. xii, p. 171 in the present volume.

[535] Strabo, xvii, p. 802; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 84-132.

[536] Herodot. i, 163. Οἱ δὲ Φωκαιέες οὗτοι ναυτιλίῃσι μακρῇσι πρῶτοι Ἑλλήνων ἐχρήσαντο, καὶ τὸν Ἀδρίην καὶ τὴν Τυρσηνίην καὶ τὴν Ἰβηρίην καὶ τὸν Ταρτησσὸν οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ καταδείξαντες· ἐναυτίλλοντο δὲ οὐ στρογγύλῃσι νηυσὶν, ἀλλὰ πεντηκοντέροισιν,—the expressions are remarkable.

[537] Herodot. i, 164-165, gives an example of the jealousy of the Chians in respect to the islands called Œnussæ.

[538] Ephorus, Fragm. 52, ed. Marx; Strabo, vi, p. 267.

[539] Herodot. i, 165.

[540] Ἡ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς θάλασσα (Strabo); τῆσδε τῆς θαλάττης (Herod. iv, 41).

[541] The geographer Ptolemy, with genuine scientific zeal, complains bitterly of the reserve and frauds common with the old traders, respecting the countries which they visited (Ptolem. Geogr. i, 11).

[542] Strabo, iii, pp. 175-176; xvii, p. 802.

[543] Herodot. iv, 42. Καὶ ἔλεγον, ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐ πιστὰ, ἄλλῳ δὲ δή τεῳ, ὡς περιπλώοντες τὴν Λιβύην, τὸν ἡέλιον ἔσχον ἐς τὰ δεξιά.

[544] Herodot. Οὕτω μὲν αὐτὴ ἐγνώσθη τοπρῶτον· (i. e. ἡ Λιβύη ἐγνώσθη ἐοῦσα περίῤῥυτος·) μετὰ δὲ, Καρχηδόνιοί εἰσιν οἱ λέγοντες. These Carthaginians, to whom Herodotus here alludes, told him that Libya was circumnavigable; but it does not seem that they knew of any other actual circumnavigation except that of the Phenicians sent by Nekôs; otherwise, Herodotus would have made some allusion to it, instead of proceeding, as he does immediately, to tell the story of the Persian Sataspês, who tried and failed.

The testimony of the Carthaginians is so far valuable, as it declares their persuasion of the truth of the statement made by those Phenicians.

Some critics have construed the words, in which Herodotus alludes to the Carthaginians as his informants, as if what they told him was the story of the fruitless attempt made by Sataspês. But this is evidently not the meaning of the historian: he brings forward the opinion of the Carthaginians as confirmatory of the statement made by the Phenicians employed by Nekôs.

[545] Diodorus (iii, 40) talks correct language about the direction of the shadows southward of the tropic of Cancer (compare Pliny, H. N. vi, 29),—one mark of the extension of geographical and astronomical observations during the four intervening centuries between him and Herodotus.

[546] Skylax, after following the line of coast from the Mediterranean outside of the strait of Gibraltar, and then south-westward along Africa as far as the island of Kernê, goes on to say, that “beyond Kernê the sea is no longer navigable from shallows, and mud, and sea-weed:” Τῆς δὲ Κέρνης νήσου τὰ ἐπέκεινα οὐκέτι ἐστὶ πλωτὰ διὰ βραχύτητα θαλάττης καὶ πηλὸν καὶ φῦκος. Ἐστὶ δὲ τὸ φῦκος τῆς δοχμῆς τὸ πλάτος καὶ ἄνωθεν ὀξὺ, ὥστε κεντεῖν (Skylax, c. 109). Nearchus, on undertaking his voyage down the Indus, and from thence into the Persian gulf, is not certain whether the external sea will be found navigable—εἰ δὴ πλωτός γέ ἐστιν ὁ ταύτῃ πόντος (Nearchi Periplus, p. 2: compare p. 40, ap. Geogr. Minor. vol. i, ed. Hudson). Pytheas described the neighborhood of Thulê as a sort of chaos—a medley of earth, sea, and air, in which you could neither walk nor sail: οὔτε γῆ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν ὕπηρχεν ἔτι οὔτε θάλασσα οὔτε ἀὴρ, ἀλλὰ σύγκριμά τι ἐκ τούτων πλεύμονι θαλασσίῳ ἐοικὸς, ἐν ᾧ φησὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν αἰωρεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ σύμπαντα, καὶ τοῦτον ὡς ἂν δεσμὸν εἶναι τῶν ὅλων, μήτε πορευτὸν μήτε πλωτὸν ὑπάρχοντα· τὸ μὲν οὖν τῷ πλεύμονι ἐοικὸς αὐτὸς (Pytheas) ἑωρακέναι, τἄλλα δὲ λέγειν ἐξ ἀκοῆς. (Strabo, ii, p. 104). Again, the priests of Memphis told Herodotus that their conquering hero Sesostris had equipped a fleet in the Arabian gulf, and made a voyage into the Erythræan sea, subjugating people everywhere, “until he came to a sea no longer navigable from shallows,”—οὐκέτι πλωτὴν ὑπὸ βραχέων (Herod. ii, 109). Plato represents the sea without the Pillars of Hêraklês as impenetrable and unfit for navigation, in consequence of the large admixture of earth, mud, or vegetable covering, which had arisen in it from the disruption of the great island or continent Atlantis (Timæus, p. 25; and Kritias, p. 108); which passages are well illustrated by the Scholiast, who seems to have read geographical descriptions of the character of this outer sea: τοῦτο καὶ οἱ τοὺς ἐκείνῃ τόπους ἱστοροῦντες λέγουσιν, ὡς πάντα τεναγώδη τὸν ἐκεῖ εἶναι χῶρον· τέναγος δὲ ἐστὶν ἰλύς τις, ἐπιπολάζοντος ὕδατος οὐ πολλοῦ, καὶ βοτάνης ἐπιφαινομένης τούτῳ. See also Plutarch’s fancy of the dense, earthy, and viscous Kronian sea (some days to the westward of Britain), in which a ship could with difficulty advance, and only by means of severe pulling with the oars (Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunæ, c. 26, p. 941). So again in the two geographical productions in verse by Rufus Festus Avienus (Hudson, Geogr. Minor. vol. iv, Descriptio Orbis Terræ, v, 57, and Ora Maritima, v, 406-415): in the first of these two, the density of the water of the western ocean is ascribed to its being saturated with salt,—in the second, we have shallows, large quantities of sea-weed, and wild beasts swimming about, which the Carthaginian Himilco affirmed himself to have seen:—

Compare also v, 115-130 of the same poem, where the author again quotes from a voyage of Himilco, who had been four months in the ocean outside of the Pillars of Hercules:—

The dead calm, mud, and shallows of the external ocean are touched upon by Aristot. Meteorolog. ii, 1, 14, and seem to have been a favorite subject of declamation with the rhetors of the Augustan age. See Seneca, Suasoriar. i, 1.

Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when navigation had made such comparative progress, still retained much of these fears respecting the dangers and difficulties of the unknown ocean: “Le tableau exagéré (observes A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii, p. 95) que la ruse des Phéniciens avait tracé des difficultés qu’opposaient à la navigation au delà des Colonnes d’Hercule, de Cerné, et de l’Ile Sacrée (Ierné), le fucus, le limon, le manque de fond, et le calme perpétuel de la mer, ressemble d’une manière frappante aux récits animés des premiers compagnons de Colomb.”

Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso, or area of the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it is covered by an immense mass of sea-weed for a space six or seven times as large as France: the alarm of his crew at this unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea-weed is sometimes so thickly accumulated, that it requires a considerable wind to impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M. von Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, are highly interesting. (Examen, ut sup. pp. 69, 88, 91, etc.)

J. M. Gesner (Dissertat. de Navigationibus extra Columnas Herculis, sects. 6 and 7) has a good defence of the story told by Herodotus. Major Rennell also adopts the same view, and shows by many arguments how much easier the circumnavigation was from the East than from the West (Geograph. System of Herodotus, p. 680); compare Ukert, Geograph. der Griechen und Römer. vol. i, p. 61; Mannert, Geog. d. G. und Römer, vol. i, pp. 19-26. Gossellin (Recherches sur la Géogr. des Anc. i, p. 149) and Mannert both reject the story as not worthy of belief: Heeren defends it (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, i, 2, pp. 86-95).

Agatharchides, in the second century B. C., pronounces the eastern coast of Africa, southward of the Red sea, to be as yet unexamined: he treats it as a matter of certainty, however, that the sea to the south-westward is continuous with the Western ocean (De Rubro Mari, Geog. Minores, ed. Huds. v, i, p. 11).

[547] Strabo, iii, p. 170. Sataspês (the unsuccessful Persian circumnavigator of Libya, mentioned just above) had violated the daughter of another Persian nobleman, Zopyrus son of Megabyzus, and Xerxês had given orders that he should be crucified for this act; his mother begged him off by suggesting that he should be condemned to something “worse than death”—the circumnavigation of Libya (Herod. iv, 43). Two things are to be remarked in respect to his voyage: 1. He took with him a ship and seamen from Egypt; we are not told that they were Phenician: probably no other mariners than Phenicians were competent to such a voyage,—and even if the crew of Sataspês had been Phenicians, he could not offer rewards for success equal to those at the disposal of Nekôs. 2. He began his enterprise from the strait of Gibraltar instead of from the Red sea; now it seems that the current between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa sets very strongly towards the cape of Good Hope, so that while it greatly assists the southerly voyage, on the other hand, it makes return by the same way very difficult. (See Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. i, p. 343.) Strabo, however, affirms that all those who had tried to circumnavigate Africa, both from the Red sea and from the strait of Gibraltar, had been forced to return without success (i, p. 32), so that most people believed that there was a continuous isthmus which rendered it impracticable to go by sea from the one point to the other: he is himself, however, persuaded that the Atlantic is σύῤῥους on both sides of Africa, and therefore that circumnavigation is possible. He as well as Poseidonius (ii, pp. 98-100) disbelieved the tale of the Phenicians sent by Nekôs. He must have derived his complete conviction, that Libya might be circumnavigated, from geographical theory, which led him to contract the dimensions of that continent southward,—inasmuch as the thing in his belief never had been done, though often attempted. Mannert (Geog. d. G. und Röm. i, p. 24) erroneously says that Strabo and others founded their belief on the narrative of Herodotus.

It is worth while remarking that Strabo cannot have read the story in Herodotus with much attention, since he mentions Darius as the king who sent the Phenicians round Africa, not Nekôs; nor does he take notice of the remarkable statement of these navigators respecting the position of the sun. There were doubtless many apocryphal narratives current in his time respecting attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to circumnavigate Africa, as we may see by the tale of Eudoxus (Strabo, ii, 98; Cornel. Nep. ap. Plin. H. N. ii, 67, who gives the story very differently; and Pomp. Mela, iii, 9).

[548] Arrian, Exp. Al. vii, 1, 2.