Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/61

 CHAP. ii. $ 24. INTRODUCTION. 47 demonstrate it : Every one is prone to romance a little in narrating his travels, and Menelaus was no exception to the rule. He had been to Ethiopia, 1 and there heard much dis- cussion concerning the sources of the Nile, and the alluvium which it deposited, both along its course, and also at its mouths, and the large additions which it had thereby made to the main-land, so as fully to justify the remark of Herodotus 2 that the whole of Egypt was a gift from the river ; or if not the whole, at all events that part of it below the Delta, called Lower Egypt. He had heard too that Pharos was entirely surrounded by sea, and therefore misrepresented it as entirely surrounded by the sea, although it had long ago ceased so to be. Now the author of all this was Homer, and we therefore infer that he was not ignorant concerning either the sources or the mouths of the Nile. 24. They are again mistaken when they say that he was not aware of the isthmus between the sea of Egypt and the Arabian Gulf, and that his description is false, " The Ethiopians, utmost of mankind, These eastward situate, those toward the west." 3 Nevertheless he is correct, and the criticism of the moderns is quite out of place : indeed, there is so little truth in the assertion that Homer was ignorant of this isthmus, that I will venture to affirm he was not only acquainted with it, but has also accurately defined it. But none of the grammarians, not 1 We have before remarked that the Ethiopia visited by Menelaus was not the country above Egypt, generally known by that name, but an Ethiopia lying round Jaffa, the ancient Joppa. 2 " The priests stated also that Menes was the first of mortals that ever ruled over Egypt ; to this they added that in the days of that king, all Egypt, with the exception of the Thebaic nome, was but a morass ; and that none of the lands now seen below Lake Moeris, then existed ; from the sea up to this place is a voyage by the river of seven days. I myself am perfectly convinced the account of the priests in this particular is correct ; for the thing is evident to every one who sees and has common sense, although he may not have heard the fact, that the Egypt to which the Hellenes navigate, is a land annexed to the Egyp- tians, and a gift from the river ; and that even in the parts above the lake just mentioned, for three days' sail, concerning which the priests relate nothing, the country is just of the same description." Herod, ii. 5. 3 The Ethiopians, who are divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting of the sun, others at the rising. Odyssey i. 23.