Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/479

 B. vii. c. in. 9. GETJ3. 465 men in their justice, these are mentioned by the poets : as Ho- mer, where he says that Jupiter beheld the land " Of the Galactophagi and Abii, justest of mankind ;" l and Hesiod, in his poem entitled " Travels round the World," who says that Phineus was taken by the Harpies " To the land of the Galactophagi, who have their dwellings in waggons." Ephorus then proceeds to state the causes of their justice, because they are frugal in their mode of life, not hoarders of wealth, and just towards each other; they possess everything in common, both their women, their children, and the whole of their kin ; thus when they come into collision with other nations, they are irresistible and unconquered, having no cause for which they need endure slavery, ije then cites Choerilus, who in his " Passage of the Bridge of Boats," which Darius 2 had made, says, " And the sheep-feeding Sacae, a people of Scythian race, but they inhabited Wheat-producing Asia : truly they were a colony of the nomades, A righteous race." And again Ephorus declares of Anacharsis, whom he desig- nates as " The Wise," that he was sprung from that race ; and that he was reckoned as one of the Seven Sages, on ac- count of his pre-eminent moderation and knowledge. He asserts too that he was the inventor of the bellows, the double- fluked anchor, and the potter's wheel. 3 I merely state this, although I know very well that Ephorus is not at all times to be relied on, especially when speaking of Anacharsis ; (for how can the wheel be his invention, with which Homer, who is anterior to him, was acquainted ; [who says], " as when, before his wheel Seated, the potter twirls it with both hands," &c. ; 4 ) 1 Iliad xiii. 5. See note * to page 460. 2 Kramer quotes Nsekius in proof that we should here read Xerxes instead of Darius ; and Groskurd refers to another passage in Strabo, book xiii. chap. i. 22. 3 Casaubon observes that Diodorus Siculus attributes the invention of the potter's wheel to Talus, a nephew of Daedalus, and that Theophrastus awards it to one Hyberbius of Corinth. 4 Iliad xviii. GOO. Posidonius chose to regard this passage as an inter- polation, and would not give the praise of the invention to any other than Anacharsis. VOL. i. 2 H