Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/49

 SITUATION OF KYRENE. 31 having found the voyage so perilous and difficult, that they once returned in despair to Thera, where they were only prevented by force from relanding. The band which accompanied Battus was all conveyed in two pentekonters, armed ships, with fifty rowers each. Thus humble was the start of the mighty Kyrene, which, in the days of Herodotus, covered a city-area equal to the entire island of Platea. 1 That island, however, though near to Libya, and supposed by the colonists to be Libya, was not so in reality : the commands of the oracle had not been literally fulfilled. Accordingly, the settlement carried with it nothing but hardship for the space of two years, and Battus returned with his companions to Delphi, to complain that the promised land had proved a bitter disappoint- ment. The god, through his priestess, returned for answer, " If you, who have never visited the cattle-breeding Libya, know it better than I, who have, I greatly admire your cleverness." Again the inexorable mandate forced them to return ; and this time they planted themselves on the actual continent of Libya, nearly over against the island of Platea, in a district called Aziris, surrounded on both sides by fine woods, and with a running stream adjoining. After six years of residence in this spot, they were persuaded by some of the indigenous Libyans to abandon it, under the promise that they should be conducted to a better situation : and their guides now brought them to the actual site of Kyrene, saying, " Here, men of Hellas, is the place for you to dwell, for here the sky is perforated." 2 The road through which they passed had led through the tempting region of Irasa with its fountain Theste, and their guides took the precaution to carry them through it by night, in order that they might remain igno- rant of its beauties. Such were the preliminary steps, divine and human, which brought Battus and his colonists to Kyrene. In the time of Her- odotus, Irasa was an outlying portion of the eastern territory of this powerful city. But we trace in the story just related au 1 Herodot. iv, 1 55. 8 Herodot. iv, 1 58. iv&avra yap 6 ovpavbf TtTprjTat. Compare the jest -scribed to the Byzantian envoys, on occasion of the vaunts of Lysimachus iPlutarch, De Fortuna Alexandr. Magn. c. 3, p. 338).