Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/193

 LIBYA. the Nigir. Ptolemy moreover assigns to Africa a i;reater extent S. of the equator: but here his know- ledge becomes inexact, since he makes the land stretch into the Atlantic instead of curving eastward ; and he concluded that the southern parts of Libya joined the eastern parts of Asia, and consequently was either incredulous or ignorant of the Periplus of the Phoenicians in the reign of Pharaoh Neclio. Pliny adds little to our information respecting Libya beyond its northern and eastern provinces, although he contributes to its geography a number of strange and irrecognisable names of places. He had seen an abstract at least of the journal of Poly-- bius, and he mentions an expedition in A. d. 41 by Suetonius PauUinus, which crossed the Atlas range, and explored a portion of the desert beyond. But both Pliny and Pomponius Mela are at once too vague and succinct in their accounts to have added much to our knowledge of the interior. The persecutions which were mutually inflicted Tjy the Christian sects upon each other in the 3rd and 4th centuries A. d., the expulsion of the Dona- ti.sts, Montanists, Circumcellions, &c., from the ecclesiastical provinces of the Roman church, drove even beyond the Atlas region thousands of fugitives, and combined with the conquests of the Arabs in the 7 th century in rendering the interior more per- meable and better known. Yet neither the fugitives nor the conquerors have materially increased our acquaintance with these regions. The era of dis- covery, in any extensive sense of the term, com- mences with the voyages of the Portuguese at the close of the 15th and the commencement of the 1 6th century. But their observations belong to the geography of modern Africa. We have reserved an account of the two most me- morable expeditions of the ancients for the discovery of the form and dimensions of the Libyan continent, partly on account of their superior importance, if tiiey are authentic, and partly because the results of them have been the subject of much discussion. Herodotus (iv. 42) alleges as one reason for his belief that Libya, except at the isthmus of Suez, is surrounded by water, a story which he heard of its circumnavigation by the Phoenicians in the reign and by the command of Pharaoh Necho, king of Aegypt. This supposed voyage was therefore made between B.C. 610— 594. According to Herodotus, whose narrative is indeed meagre enough, Pharaoh Necho desired to connect the Mediterranean with the Red sea by a canal from Bubastis in the Delta to the Arsinoite bay near Suez. He abandoned this project at the bidding of the priests, and then ordered his pilots to attempt the passage from the one sea to the other by a dif- ferent channel. For this purpose his fleet, manned entirely by Phoenicians, set sail from the Red sea, coiisted Aegypt and Aetluopia, and passed into the Indian ocean. At the end of three years they entered the mouth of the Nile, having, as they affirmed, circumnavigated the continent. Twice they landed, — probably at the season of the monsoons, — laid up their ships, sowed the fields, and reaped the harvest, and then proceeded on their course. They alleged — and their assertion is remarkable, although Herodotus did not believe it — that as they were sailing westward the sun was on their right hand. The probability or improbability of this voyage has been canvassed by Mannert {Geograph. der Griech. und Romer, vol. x. pt. 2, pp. 491 — 511), by Gosseliu (^Geographie des Grecs Analyste, tom. VOL. II. LIBYA. 177 i. pp. 108, &c.), Rennell (Genqr. of Herod, vol. ii. pp. 348 — 363.), and Heeren (Ideen, vol. i. p. 364). We do not consider that its improbability is by any means fully established ; the voyage, however, was too tedious and difficult to be repeated by the navi- gators of antiquity, and its results for commerce and geographical knowledge were accordingly unimport- ant. The most striking argument for the circum- navigation having been accomplished is the reported phaenomenon of the sun appearing on the right hand, or to the north of the voyagers : nor were the Phoe- nician galleys less competent to the voyage than the carrels which conveyed Columbus across the Atlantic, or Di Gama round the Cape. On the other hand, we must admit the improbability of some of the cir- cumstances narrated. Herodotus heard the story 150 years after the supposed voyage had been made : in that time an extraordinary expedition beyond the Red sea may have been magnified into a complete Periplus. Again, for sowing and reaping on an unknown coast, for laying up the ships, &c. the time allowed — three years — is too short. More- over, no account is made for opposition from the inhabitants of the coast, or for the violent winds which prevail at the Cape itself. The notion which Herodotus entertained, and which long afterwards prevailed, that Libya did not extend so far S. as the equator, is not an ai-gument against the fact of the circumnavigation ; for the brevity of Herodotus's state- ment, in a matter so important to geography, shows that he had taken little pains in sifting the tra- dition. A second ancient voyage is better authenticated. This was rather an expedition for the promotion of trade than of geographical discovery. Its date is uncertain : but it was undertaken in the most flou- rishing period of the Punic Commonwealth, — i. e. in the interval between the reign of Darius Hy- staspes and the First Punic War (b.c. 521 — 264). Hanno, a sufietes or king, as he is vaguely termed, of Carthage (^Geogr. Graec. Minor, tom. i. Benihardy), with a fleet of 60 galleys, having on board 30,000 men, set sail from that city through the Siimits of Gibraltar with a commission to found trading- stations on the Atlantic coast, the present empire of Morocco. How far he sailed southward is the sub- ject of much discussion. Gosselin (^Geograpk. des A n- ciens, vol. i. p. 109, seq.) so shortens Hanno's voyage as to make Cape Nan, in lat. 28° N., its extreme southern terminus, while Rennell extends it to Sierra Leone, within 8° of the equator (^Geog. of Herod. vol. ii. p. 348). The mention of a river, where he saw the crocodile and the river-horse, renders it probable that Hanno passed the Senegal at least. Of the fact of the voyage there is no doubt. The record of it was preserved in an inscription in the temple of Kronos at Carthage. There it was copied and trans- lated into his own language by some Greek traveller or merchant. (Bochart, Geog. Sacr. i. 33 ; Cam- pomanes, Antiq. Maritim. de Carthago, vol. ii. ; Dodwell, Dissertat. I. in Geogr. Graec. Min., ed. Hudson ; Bougainville, Descouvertes d'Uanno M6m. de CAcad. des Inscript. tom. xxvi. xxviiL; Heeren, Ideen, vol. i. p. 654.) A third and much later Periplus is that which goes under the name of An-ian. It is probably a work of the first century a. d. It is the record or log-book of a trading- voyage on the eastern coast of Libya, and is chiefly valuable as a register of the articles of export and import in the markets of the Red sea, of the Arabian and Persian coast, of the N