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151 MemyioUs 151 Paltus in Syria on the river Badas, which had been spoken of by Simonides in a poem called Memnon (Strabo xv. p. 728^) and another on the river Beleos two stadia distant from Ptolemais (Joseph. Bell. Jud. ii. 10. 2). The great majority of voices however agree in tracing the origin of Memnon to Ethiopia. The only notion at- tached to this word in the Homeric age seems to have been that it was a region extending to the utmost verge of the earthj bounded by the Ocean stream, and that its inhabitants, blest with the immediate presence of the rising and the set- ting sun, were the most innocent and the happiest of mortals. All that Homer could have had to relate about the march of Memnon, was that he came from a far country in the East. The Homeric distinction between the eastern and western Ethiopians (Od. i. 24), which was grounded on a view of geography that had long ceased to be understood in the age of Herodotus, was nevertheless probably the occasion of that which this historian adopted between the Asiatic Ethiopians on the borders of India and those of Africa (vii. 70). The name of Ethiopia however was gra- dually confined to Africa, and there to the upper course of the Nile; and the Greek travellers who were curious about the history of Memnon expected to find the fullest and surest information about him in Egypt, which appeared to have been either the country of his birth, or the scene of his earliest adventures. The Egyptians were probably consulted very early on this subject ; and their learned priests can have found no difficulty in satisfying the Greeks who inquired of them. But their answers would vary according to the nature of the question proposed. If Memnon was described as a royal conqueror who had traversed Asia and subdued all the nations he passed through, he would naturally be com- pared with some one or other of the mighty kings of Egypt, the fame of whose exploits had once resounded through the habitable world, and might have been preserved by the faint and confused echo of the Greek tradition. He might have 6 Hygin. 223. Domus Cyri regis in Ecbatanis, quam fecit Memnon lapidibus variis et candidis vinctis auro.