CHAP. 36-39. CHIEF TRACTS OF ASIA. 31 truth in this matter I will now proceed to explain in a very few words, making it clear what the real size of each region is and what shape should be given them. 37. The Persians inhabit a country upon the southern or Erythræan sea; above them, to the north, are the Medes; beyond the Medes, the Saspirians; beyond them, the Colchians, reaching to the northern sea, into which the Phasis empties itself. These four nations fill the whole space from one sea to the other.9 38. West of these nations there project into the sea two tracts1 which I will now describe; one, beginning at the river Phasis on the north, stretches along the Euxine and the Hellespont to Sigeum in the Troas; while on the south it reaches from the Myriandrian gulf, which adjoins Phoenicia, to the Triopic promontory. This is one of the tracts, and is inhabited by thirty different nations.* 2 39. The other starts from the country of the Persians, and which Herodotus ridicules is not that of the world's spherical form, which had not yet been suspected by the Greeks, but a false notion of the configuration of the land on the earth's surface. The plan of the world, on the preceding page, according to Hecatæus, taken from Klausen, represents with tolerable accuracy the view which Herodotus censures. 8 Vide supra, Book i. ch. 104, note 5. Niebuhr (Geography of Herod. p. 25, and map) supposes that these four nations must have been regarded by Herodotus as dwelling in a direct line from south to north. This is to take his words too strictly. Even if he never visited Ecbatana, he could scarcely be ignorant that Media lay north-west of Persia. We have no single word for the Greek ἀκτή, which means a tract jutting out to a considerable distance into the sea, with one side joining the mainland. Attica (named probably from its shape, Attica being for Actica) and Iapygia were ȧkтaí-peninsulas joined to the main by an isthmus were χεῤῥόνησοι, 2 Or Bay of Issus. Myriandrus was a small Phoenician settlement on the southern side of the gulf. It is mentioned by Xenophon as πόλις οἰκουμένη TÒ Þоivíкwv (Anab. I. iv. § 6), and by Scylax as Μυρίανδρος Φοινίκων (Peripl p. 9). Though the reading in Herodotus is conjectural, it may, I think, be regarded as certain. 3 Concerning the Triopic promontory, see note on Book i. ch. 144, and note on Book i. ch. 174. 4 The thirty nations intended by Herodotus would seem to be the following:-The Moschi, Tibareni, Macrones, Mosynoeci, Mares, Alarodii, Armenians, Cappadocians, Matieni, Paphlagonians, Chalybes, Mariandynians, Bithynians, Thynians, Æolians, Ionians, Magnesians, Dorians, My. sians, Lydians, Carians, Caunians, Lycians, Milyans, Cabalians, Lasonians, Hygennes, Phrygians, Pamphylians, and Cilicians. (See i. 28, iii. 90-94, and vii. 72-79.) Or perhaps we should retrench the Hygennes, read very doubtfully in iii. 90, and add the Ligyes from vii. 72. 32 5 CHIEF TRACTS OF ASIA. Book IV. stretches into the Erythræan sea, containing first Persia, then Assyria, and after Assyria, Arabia. It ends, that is to say it is considered to end, though it does not really come to a termination, at the Arabian gulf-the gulf whereinto Darius conducted the canal which he made from the Nile. Between Persia and Phoenicia lies a broad and ample tract of country, after which the region I am describing skirts our sea, stretching from Phoenicia along the coast of Palestine-Syria till it comes to Egypt, where it terminates. This entire tract contains but three nations.8 The whole of Asia west of the country of the Persians, is comprised in these two regions. 40. Beyond the tract occupied by the Persians, Medes, Saspirians, and Colchians, towards the east and the region of the sunrise, Asia is bounded on the south by the Erythræan sea, and on the north by the Caspian and the river Araxes, which flows towards the rising sun.9 Till you reach India the country is peopled; but further east it is void of inhabitants,1 and no one can say what sort of region it is. Such then is the shape, and such the size of Asia. 41. Libya belongs to one of the above-mentioned tracts, for it adjoins on Egypt. In Egypt the tract is at first a narrow 5 Since Egypt adjoins Arabia. (See ch. 41.) 6 This was the completion of the canal which Neco found it prudent to desist from re-opening, through fear of the growing power of Babylon. It was originally a canal of Remeses II., which had been filled up by the sand, as happened occasionally in after times. (See note on Book ii. ch. 158.) Macrisi says very justly that it was re-opened by the Greek kings, Ptolemies; and it is singular that, though Herodotus expressly says it was open in his time, some have fancied that the Egyptians, the people most versed in canal. making, were indebted to the Greeks for the completion of this one to the Red Sea. The notion of Macrisi, that Adrian also re-opened this canal, was owing to a fresh supply of water having been conducted to it by the Amnis Trajanus.-[G. W.] 7 The Mediterranean. (See Book i. ch. 185.) 8 The Assyrians (among whom the Palestine Syrians were included), the Arabians, and the Phoenicians. 9 Niebuhr (Geograph. of Herod. p. 25-26) concludes from this passage, combined with ch. 202 of Book i., that Herodotus imagined the Araxes (Aras) to send a branch into the Caspian, while at the same time the main stream flowed onward in an easterly direction below and beyond the Caspian, and terminated on the confines of India in a marsh. I incline to suspect a mere lapsus, by which Herodotus has made the river run east, when he meant to say that it ran west. 1 Vide supra, iii. 98, note. CHAP. 39-42. BOUNDARIES OF ASIA. 33 neck, the distance from our sea to the Erythræan not exceeding a hundred thousand fathoms, or, in other words, a thousand furlongs; but from the point where the neck ends, the tract which bears the name of Libya is of very great breadth. 3 42. For my part I am astonished that men should ever have divided Libya, Asia, and Europe as they have, for they are exceedingly unequal. Europe extends the entire length of the other two, and for breadth will not even (as I think) bear to be compared to them. As for Libya, we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia. This discovery was first made by Necôs, the Egyptian 3 Herodotus made the Phasis, Caspian, and Araxes, the boundary between Europe and Asia. In this he departed from Hecatæus, who, as is clear, from his Fragments, regarded the Tanais as the boundary-line. (See especially Fragm. 166 and 168.) The later geographers, Scylax (Peripl. p. 74), Strabo (xi. 1, § 1), &c., followed Hecatæus and so the moderns generally. Recently, however, the Russians have determined to consider the Ural River, the Caspian, and their own Georgian frontier as the boundary. We may infer, from Neco's ordering the Phoenicians to come round by the "Pillars of Hercules," that the form of Africa was already known, and that this was not the first expedition which had gone round it. The fact of their seeing the sun rise on their right as they returned northwards, which Herodotus doubted, is the very proof of their having gone round the Cape, and completed the circuit. He afterwards mentions (ch. VOL. III. 4 43) another expedition which set out by the Mediterranean, but which was given up. But the Phoenicians sent by Neco were not the only successful circumnavigators of Africa; and Hanno, a Carthaginian, went round it, going through the Pillars of Hercules, and touching at Gades (Cadiz), and returning by the end of the Arabian Gulf. (Plin. ii. 67; and Arrian, Rer. Indic. at end.) He founded several towns on the coast, none of which remained in the time of Vespasian. Major Rennell (p. 738) thinks that he only navigated the western coast of Africa, and that the term of his Voyage was at Sierra Leone, or at Sherbro', and far more probably the latter." Pliny also mentions a certain Eudoxus, a contemporary of Ptolemy Lathyrus, by whom he was probably sent, rather than cum Lathurum regem fugeret," who went round from the Arabian Gulf to Gades; and others were reported to have performed the same voyage for commercial purposes (Plin. ib.). The expedition of Hanno dates some time after that of Neco, who has the credit of discovering the Cape and the form of Africa, 21 centuries before Diaz and Vasco de Gama. The former was for commercial purposes connected with India, the latter to settle a geographical question, as is our modern "N.W. passage."-[G. W.] D 66 34 CIRCUMNAVIGATION BY ORDER OF NECO. 6 Book IV. king, who on desisting from the canal which he had begun between the Nile and the Arabian Gulf,5 sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phoenicians, with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules, and return to Egypt through them, and by the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians took their departure from Egypt by way of the Erythræan Sea, and so sailed into the southern ocean. When autumn came, they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having sown a tract of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut. Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On their return, they declared-I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may— that in sailing round Libya they had the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya first discovered. 5 Vide supra, ii. 158. 6 They were so called, not from the Greek hero, but from the Tyrian deity, whose worship was always introduced by the Phoenicians in their settlements. Some suppose the two pillars in the Temple of Hercules (on the Spanish coast) had their name transferred by mistake to the two hills of Calpe and Abyla, on each side of the straits. Herodotus evidently considers them on the African as well as Spanish coast (iv. 181, 185; see Dion. Perieg. 64, seq. 73, and comp. Eustath. Plin. iii. Proem.; Strab. iii. 116 seq.). Strabo says the Pillars were thought by some to be at the end of the straits, by others at Gades (rádeipa), by some even beyond this; by others to be Calpe (Gibraltar), and Abila (Αβύλη, ̓Αβίλη, or ̓́Αβυλυξ), Abila (now Apes-hill) being the African mountain opposite Calpe. Many say these hills are at the straits; others that they are two brazen columns, 8 cubits high, in the Temple of Hercules at Gades, which Posidonius thinks most probable, Strabo not. Plato (Tim. p. 469) speaks of that mouth called Pillars of Hercules; Strabo (iii. 96) of the influx of the sea at the Pillars and the town of Calpe. (Cp. the Gaditanum fretum of Pliny, iii. 1.) The dollars of Spain have hence been called colonnate, and have two columns on them. Strabo says the Temple of Hercules at Gades was on the east side of the island nearest the mainland.-[G. W.] 7 In the original, "the northern sea -so called here as washing Libya upon the north, and in contrast with the "southern" or Indian Ocean. (Compare ii. 11.) 8 This is less surprising in an African climate, where barley, doora (holcus sorghum), peas, &c., are reaped in from 3 months to 100 days after sowing, and vegetables in 50 or 60 days. Even Tamerlane (as Rennell observes), in his preparations for marching into China, included corn for sowing the lands.-[G. W.] 9 Here the faithful reporting of what he did not himself imagine true has stood our author in good stead. Few would have believed the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa had it not been vouched for by this CHAP. 42, 43. VOYAGE OF SATASPES. 35 43. Next to these Phoenicians the Carthaginians, according to their own accounts, made the voyage. For Sataspes, son of Teaspes the Achæmenian, did not circumnavigate Libya, though he was sent to do so; but fearing the length and desolateness of the journey, he turned back and left unaccomplished the task which had been set him by his mother. This man had used violence towards a maiden, the daughter of Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus,1 and King Xerxes was about to impale him for the offence, when his mother, who was a sister of Darius, begged him off, undertaking to punish his crime more heavily than the king himself had designed. She would force him, she said, to sail round Libya and return to Egypt by the Arabian Gulf. Xerxes gave his consent; and Sataspes went down to Egypt, and there got a ship and crew, with which he set sail for the Pillars of Hercules. Having passed the Straits, he doubled the Libyan headland, known as Cape Soloeis, and proceeded southward. Following this course for many months over a vast stretch of sea, and finding that more water than he had crossed still lay ever before him, he put about and came back to Egypt. Thence proceeding to the court he made report to Xerxes, that at the farthest point to which he had reached, the coast was occupied by a dwarfish race, who wore a dress made from the palm-tree. These people, whenever he landed, left their towns and fled away to the mountains; his men, however, did them no wrong, only entering into their cities and taking some of their cattle. The reason why he had not sailed quite round Libya was, he said, because the ship stopped, and would not go any further.5 discovery. When Herodotus is blamed for repeating the absurd stories which he had been told, it should be considered what we must have lost had he made it a rule to reject from his History all that he thought unlikely. (See the Introductory Essay, vol. i. pp. 95.96.) 1 Vide supra, iii. 160. The modern Cape Spartel. (See n. ch. 32, Book ii.) This is the second mention of a dwarfish race in Africa (see above, ii. 32). The description is answered by the Bosjemans and the Dokos, who may have been more widely extended in early times. 4 So Larcher and Schweighæuser, Bähr and Beloe translate φοινικηίους by "red" or "purple." But Herodotus always uses powikeos, never povinios, in that sense. 5 It has been conjectured (Schlichthorst, p. 184), with much reason, that |