Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/301

 CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFIJICA. 285 v outers, they must have experienced the phenomenon during the southern portion of their transit. Some critics disbelieve this circumnavigation, from supposing that if so remarkable an achievement had really taken place once, it must have been repeated, and practical application must have been made of it. But though such a suspicion is not unnatural, with those who recollect how great a revolution was operated when the passage was rediscovered during the fifteenth century, yet the reasoning will not be found applicable to the sixth century before the Christian era. Pure scientific curiosity, in that age, counted for nothing : the motive of Nekos for directing this enterprise was the same as that which had prompted him to dig his canal, in order that he might procure the best communication between the Mediterranean and the Red sea. But, as it has been with the north-west pas- sage in our time, so it was with the circumnavigation of Africa in his, the proof of its practicability at the same time showed that it was not available for purposes of traffic or communication, looking to the resources then at the command of navigators, u fact, however, which could not be known until the experiment was made. To pass from the Mediterranean to the Red sea by means of the Nile still continued to be the easiest way ; either by aid of the land-journey, which in the times of the Ptolemies was usually made from Ivoptos on the Nile to Bereuike on the Red sea, or by means of the canal of Nekos, which Darius after- wards finished, though it seems to have been neglected during the Persian rule in Egypt, and was subsequently repaired and put to service under the Ptolemies. Without any doubt the sue cessful Phenician mariners underwent both severe hardship and great real perils, besides those still greater supposed perils, the apprehension of which so constantly unnerved the minds even of experienced and resolute men in the unknown ocean. Such was the force of these terrors and difficulties, to which there was no known termination, upon the mind of the Achaemenid Sataspes (upon whom the circumnavigation of Africa was imposed as a penalty " worse than death " by Xerxes, in commutation of a capital sentence), that lie returned without having finished the circuit, though by so doing he forfeited his life. He affirmed that he had sailt-d u until his vessel stuck fast, and could move