Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/102

 STRABO. BOOK i. 14. But, Eratosthenes would reply, I never said that, in con- sequence of the repletion of the Mediterranean, it actually flowed into the Erythraean Sea, but only that it approached very near thereto : besides, it does not follow, that in one and the self-same sea, the level of its surface must be all the same; to instance the Mediterranean itself, no one, surely, will say it is of the same height at Lechjeum l and at Cenchrea. 2 This answer Hipparchus anticipated in his Critique ; and being aware of the opinion of Eratosthenes, was justified in attacking his arguments. But he ought not to have taken it for granted, that when Eratosthenes said the exterior sea was all one, he necessarily implied that its level was every where the same. 15. Hipparchus rejects as false the [account] of the inscrip- tion on the dolphins " by the delegates from Gyrene," but the reason he assigns for this is insufficient, viz. that though Gyrene was built in times of which we have record, no one mentions the oracle, 3 as being situated on the sea-shore. But what matters it that no historian has recorded this, when amongst the other proofs from which we infer that this place was formerly on the sea-shore, we number this of the dolphins which were set up, and the inscription, "by the delegates from Gyrene ?" 4 Hip- parchus agrees that if the bottom of the sea were raised up, it would lift the water with it, and might therefore overflow the land as far as the locality of the oracle, or more than 3000 stadia from the shore ; but he will not allow that the rising would be sufficient to overflow the Island of Pharos and the major portion of Egypt, since [he says] the elevation would not be sufficient to submerge these. He alleges that if before the opening of the passage at the Pillars of Hercules, the Mediterranean had been swollen to such an extent as Eratos- thenes affirms, the whole of Libya, and the greater part of Europe and Asia, must long ago have been buried beneath its 1 The western part of the town of Corinth, situated in the sea of Crissa. Its modern name is Pelagio. 2 Kankri. 3 Viz. the temple of Jupiter Ammon, mentioned above. 4 Gosselin remarks, Gyrene was founded 631 years before the Christian era, and at that time the limits of the Mediterranean were the same as they are now. Amongst the Greeks, dolphins were the ordinary symbols of the principal seaport towns ; and if the delegates from Gyrene set up this symbol of their country in the temple of Ammon, I see no reason why Eratosthenes and Strabo should regard the offering as a proof that the temple was on the sea-shore.