Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/90

 76 STRABO. BOOK I. excursions, or for the purposes of commerce, never ventured into the high seas, but crept along the coast, and instancing Jason, who leaving his vessels at Colchis penetrated into Ar- menia and Media on foot, he proceeds to tell us that formerly no one dared to navigate either the Euxine or the seas by Libya, Syria, and Cilicia. If by formerly he means pe- riods so long past that we possess no record of them, it is of little consequence to us whether they navigated those seas or not, but if [he speaks] of times of which we know any thing, and if we are to place any trust in the accounts which have come down to us, everj_one will admit that the anciejits appear to have made longer journeys both by sea ancLlan,d than_thir successors ; witness Bacchus, Hercules, nay Jason himself, and" again Uly_sses and Menelaus, of whom itomer tells us. It seems most probable thaF^Theseus and Pirithous are in- debted to some long voyages for the credit they afterwards obtained of having visited the infernal regions ; and in like manner the Dioscuri l gained the appellation of guardians of the sea, and the deliverers of sailors. 2 The sovereignty of the seaa-exeCJd by Minos, and the navigation carried on by thejPhoemciajja^is weljjiiiown. A little after the period of the Trojan war they had penetrated beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and founded cities as well there as to the midst of the African coast. 3 Is it not correct to number amongst the ancients "^cieas, 4 An tenor, 5 the Heneti, and all the crowd of warriors, who, after the destruction of Troy, wandered over the face of the whole earth ? For at the conclusion of the war 1 Castor and Pollux. 2 Castor and Pollux were amongst the number of the Argonauts. On their return they destroyed the pirates who infested the seas of Greece and the Archipelago, and were in consequence worshipped by sailors as tutelary deities. 3 The Phoenicians or Carthaginians despatched Hanno to found certain colonies on the western coast of Africa, about a thousand years before the Christian era. after the sack of Troy, a fact clearly disproved by Homer, Iliad xx. 307, who states that the posterity of JEneas were in his time reigning at Troy. To this passage Strabo alludes in his 13th book, and, contrary to his general custom, hesitates whether to follow Homer's authority or that of certain grammarians who had mutilated the passage in order to flatter the vanity of the Romans, who took pride in looking up to ^Eneas and the Trojans as their ancestors. 6 Antenor having betrayed his Trojan countrymen was forced to fly.
 * Strabo here follows the general belief that JEneas escaped to Italy