Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/92

 78 STRABO. BOOK i. instance, that about the temple ofAmmon. 1 and along the road to it for the space of SOOOstadia, there are yet found a vast amount of oyster shells, many salt-beds, and salt springs bub- bling up, besides which are pointed out numerous fragments of wreck which they say have been cast up througlisome opem!lg, and dolphins placed on pedestals with the inscription, Of the delegates from Gyrene. Herein he agrees with the opinion of Siralo the naturjd^^hilosppher, and Xanthus of Lydia. Xanthus mentioned that in the reign of Arfaxerxes tnere was so great a drought, that every river, lake, and well was dried up : and that in many places he had seen a long way from the sea fossil shells, some like cockles, others resembling scallop shells, "also salt lakes in Arjmenia, Matiana, 2 and LowexJPhrygia, which induced him to believe that sea had formerly been where the land now was. Sirato, who went more deeply into the causes of these phenomena, was of opinion that formerly there was np_exit to the Euxine as now at Byzan- tium, but that the rivers running into it had forced a way through, and thus let the waters escape into the Propontis, and thence to the Hellespont. 3 And that a like change had occurred in the Mediterranean. For the sea being overflowed by the rivers, had opened for itself a passage by the Pillars of Hercules, and thus, much that was formerly covered by water, had been left dry. 4 He gives as the cause of this, that An- ciently the levels of the Mediterranean and Atlantic werejnpt TGe same, and states that a bank of earth, the remains of tlifTancient separation of the two seas, is still stretched under water from Europe to ^Africa. He adds, that the Euxine is fEe~most shallow, and the seasof Crete, Sicily, and Sardinia much deeper, which is occasioned by the number of large 1 See book xvii. c. iii. 2 A country close upon the Euxine. 3 The Strait of the Dardanelles. 4 At the time of Diodorus Siculus, the people of the Isle of Samo- thracia preserved the tradition of an inundation caused by a sudden ris- ing of the waters of the Mediterranean, which compelled the inhabitants to fly for refuge to the summits of the mountains; and long after, the fishermen's nets used to be caught by columns, which, prior to the catas- trophe, had adorned their edifices. It is said that the inundation origin- ated in a rupture of the chain of mountains which enclosed the valley which has since become the Thracian Bosphorus or Strait of Constantinople, through which the waters of the Black Sea flow into the Mediterranean.