Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/75

 CHAP. ii. 31. INTRODUCTION. 61 not impossible,) but neither the mathematical hypothesis, nor yet the duration of the wandering, require such an explan- ation ; for he was both retarded against his will by accidents in the voyage, as by [the tempest] which he narrates five only of his sixty ships survived ; and also by voluntary delays for the sake of amassing wealth. Nestor says [of him], " Thus he, provision gathering as he went, And gold abundant, roam'd to distant lands." l [And Menelaus himself], " Cyprus, Phoenicia, and the Egyptians' land I wandered through." 2 As to the navigation of the isthmus, or one of the canals, if it had been related by Homer himself, we should have counted it a myth ; but as he does not relate it, we regard it as entirely extravagant and unworthy of belief. We say unworthy of belief, because at the time of the Trojan war no canal was in existence. It is recorded that Sesostris, who had planned the formation of one, apprehending that the level of the sea was too high to admit of it, desisted from the un- dertaking. 3 Moreover the isthmus itself was not passable for ships, and Eratosthenes is unfortunate in his conjecture, for he con- siders that the strait at the Pillars was not .then formed, 1 Thus far he, collecting much property and gold, wandered with his ships. Odyssey iii. 301. 2 Odyssey iv. 83. 3 Strabo here appears to have followed Aristotle, who attributes to Se- sostris the construction of the first canal connecting the Mediterranean, or rather the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, with the Red Sea. Pliny has followed the same tradition. Strabo, Book xvii., informs us, that other authors attribute the canal to Necho the son of Psammeticus ; and this is the opinion of Herodotus and Diodorus. It is possible these au- thors may be speaking of two different attempts to cut this canal. Sesos- tris nourished about 1356 years before Christ, Necho 615 years before the same era. About a century after Necho, Darius the son of Hystaspes made the undertaking, but desisted under the false impression that the level of the Red Sea was higher than that of the Mediterranean. Ptolemy Philadelphus proved this to be an error, by uniting the Red Sea to the Nile without causing any inundation. At the time of Trajan and Hadrian the communication was still in existence, though subsequently it became choked up by an accumulation of sand. It will be remembered that a recent proposition for opening the canal was opposed in Egypt oil similar grounds.