Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/288

 274 STRABO. CASAUB. 183. rained down these stones upon the Ligurians themselves, and thus have destroyed them all, than to make Hercules in need of so many stones ? As for the number, they were necessary against so vast a multitude ; so that in this respect the writer of the myth seems to me deserving of more credit than he who would refute it. Further, the poet, in describing it as fated, secures himself against such fault-finding. For if you dispute Providence and Destiny, you can find many similar things both in human affairs and nature, that you would suppose might be much better performed in this or that way ; as for instance, that Egypt should have plenty of rain of its own, without being irrigated from the land of Ethio- pia. That it would have been much better if Paris had suf- fered shipwreck on his voyage to Sparta, instead of expiating his offences after having carried off Helen, and having been the cause of so great destruction both amongst the Greeks and Barbarians. Euripides attributes this to Jupiter : " Father Jupiter, willing evil to the Trojans and suffering to the Greeks, decreed such things." 8. As to the mouths of the Rhone, Polybius asserts that there are but two, and blames Timaeus 1 for saying five. Ar- temidorus says that there are three. Afterwards Marius, observing that the mouth was becoming stopped up and diffi- cult of entrance on account of the deposits of mud, caused a new channel to be dug, which received the greater part of the river into it. 2 This he gave to the people of Marseilles in recompense for their services in the war against the Ambrones and Toygeni. 3 This canal became to them a source of much revenue, as they levied a toll from all those who sailed up or down it : notwithstanding, the entrance [to the river J still continues difficult to navigate, on account of its great impetu- osity, its deposits, and the [general] flatness of the country, so that in foul weather you cannot clearly discern the land 1 The historian, son of Andromachus. 2 The mouths of the Rhone, like those of other impetuous rivers, are subject to considerable changes, and vary from one age to another. Ptole- my agrees with Polybius in stating that there are but two mouths to the Rhone, and those which he indicates are at the present day almost en- tirely filled up ; the one being at Aigues-Mortes, the other the canal now called the Rhone-Mort. 3 Two Helvetian tribes who united themselves to the Cimbri to pass into Italy, and were defeated near Aix by Marius.