GEOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENTS
_Polybius devoted one book of his history to a separate treatise on the
geography of the continents. Strabo, 9, 1, 1._
+1.+ In their Greek histories Eudoxus gave a good, but Ephorus the
best, account of the foundations, blood connexions, migrations, and
founders of states; but I shall now give some information on the
position of countries and their distances, which are the subjects most
properly belonging to the science of Geography....
[Sidenote: Homer true to nature.]
+2.+ It is not Homer’s manner to indulge in mere mythological stories
founded on no substratum of truth. For there is no surer way of giving
an air of verisimilitude to fiction than to mix with it some particles
of truth. And this is the case with the tale of the wanderings of
Odysseus....
For instance, Aeolus, who taught the way of getting through the
straits, where there are currents setting both ways, and the passage
is rendered difficult by the indraught of the sea, came to be called
and regarded as the dispenser and king of the winds; just as Danaus,
again, who discovered the storages of water in Argos, and Atreus, who
discovered the fact of the sun’s revolution being in the opposite
direction to that of the heaven, were called seers and priest-kings.
So the priests of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Magi, being
superior to the rest of the world in wisdom, obtained rule and honour
in former generations. And on this principle, too, each one of the
gods is honoured as the inventor of something useful to man. I do not
allow therefore that Aeolus is wholly mythical, nor the wanderings of
Odysseus generally. Some mythical elements have been undoubtedly added,
as they have in the War of Ilium; but the general account of Sicily
given by the poet agrees with that of other historians who have given
topographical details of Italy and Sicily. I cannot agree therefore
with the remark of Eratosthenes that “we shall discover where Odysseus
wandered, when we find the cobbler who sewed up the leather bag of the
winds.” See for instance how Homer’s description of Scylla agrees with
what really happens at the Scyllaean rock, and the taking of the sword
fish:[216]
“And there she fishes, roaming round the rock,
For dog-fish and for dolphins, or what else
Of huger she may take that swims the sea.”
For the fact is that tunnies swimming in great shoals along the Italian
coast, if they are drifted from their course and are prevented from
reaching Sicily, fall a prey to the larger fish, such as dolphins,
dog-fish, or other marine monsters; and from hunting these the
sword-fish (called also xiphiae, or sometimes sea-dogs) are fattened.
The same thing happens at a rise of the Nile, and other rivers, as in
the case of a fire or a burning forest; the animals crowd together,
and, in their effort to escape the fire or the water, fall a prey to
stronger animals.
[Sidenote: Fishing for sword-fish.]
+3.+ Fishing for sword-fish at the Scyllaean rock is carried on in this
way. A number of men lie in wait, two each in small two-oared boats,
and one man is set to look out for them all. In the boat one man rows,
while the other stands on the prow holding a spear. When the look-out
man signals the appearance of a sword-fish (for the animal swims with
one-third of its body above water), the boat rows up to it, and the
man with the spear strikes it at close quarters, and then pulls the
spear-shaft away leaving the harpoon in the fish’s body; for it is
barbed and loosely fastened to the shaft on purpose, and has a long
rope attached to it. They then slacken the rope for the wounded fish,
until it is wearied out with its convulsive struggles and attempts to
escape, and then they haul it on to land, or, if its size is not too
great, into the boat. And if the spear-shaft falls into the sea it is
not lost; for being made of two pieces, one oak and the other pine, the
oak end as the heavier dips under water, the other end rises above it
and is easily got hold of. But sometimes it happens that the man rowing
is wounded, right through the boat, by the immense size of the animal’s
sword; for it charges like a boar, and hunting the one is very like
hunting the other.
This would lead us to conjecture that the wandering described by Homer
was near Sicily, because he has assigned to Scylla the kind of fishing
which is indigenous to the Scyllaean rock; and because what he says of
Charybdis correctly describes what does happen in the Straits. But the
“Thrice sends she up the darksome tide,”
[Sidenote: Island of Meninx, off the lesser Syrtis. See 1, 39.] instead
of twice “a day,” is an error to be ascribed to the copyist or the
geographer.[217] So also Meninx answers to his description of the
Lotophagi.
+4.+ Or if there are some points which do not answer, we must lay
the blame on ignorance or poetic licence, which uses real history,
picturesque detail, and mythological allusion. The object of history
is truth, as when in the catalogue of ships the poet describes the
features of the several localities, calling one city “rocky,” another
“frontier-placed,” another “with wealth of doves,” or “hard by the
sea.” But the object of picturesque detail is vividness, as when he
introduces men fighting; and that of mythological allusion is to give
pleasure or rouse wonder. But a narrative wholly fictitious creates
no illusion and is not Homeric. For all look upon his poetry as a
philosophical work; and Eratosthenes is wrong in bidding us not judge
his poems with a view to having any serious meaning, or to seek for
history in them.
It is better, again, to take the line[218]
“Thence for nine days the foul winds drave us on,”
to mean that he made but a short distance—for foul winds do not favour
a straight course—than to imagine him to have got into the open ocean
as running before favouring winds. The distance from Malea to the
Pillars is twenty-two thousand five hundred stades. If we suppose this
to have been accomplished at an even speed in the nine days, he would
make two thousand five hundred stades a day. Now, who has ever asserted
that any one made the voyage from Lycia or Rhodes to Alexandria in four
days, a distance of four thousand stades?
To those who ask how it was that Odysseus, though he came to Sicily
three times, never once went through the straits, I answer that all
subsequent sailors avoided that passage also....
[Sidenote: Cadiz to the Don.]
+5.+ In treating of the geography of Europe I shall say nothing of the
ancient geographers, but shall confine my attention to their modern
critics, Dicaearchus, Eratosthenes, who is the most recent writer on
geography, and Pytheas, who has misled many readers by professing to
have traversed on foot the whole of Britain, the coastline of which
island, he says, is more than forty thousand stades. And again by his
stories of Thule and the countries in its neighbourhood, “in which,”
he says, “there is neither unmixed land or sea or air, but a kind of
compound of all three (like the jellyfish or Pulmo Marinus), in which
earth and sea and everything else are held in suspense, and which
forms a kind of connecting link to the whole, through which one can
neither walk nor sail.” This substance, which he says is like the
Pulmo Marinus, he saw with his own eyes, the rest he learnt by report.
Such is Pytheas’s story, and he adds that, on his return thence, he
traversed the whole of the coast of Europe from Gades to the Tanais.
But we cannot believe that a private person, who was also a poor
man, should have made such immense journeys by land and sea. Even
Eratosthenes doubted this part of his story, though he believed what he
said about Britain, and Gades, and Iberia. I would much rather believe
the Messenian (Euhemerus) than him. The latter is content with saying
that he sailed to one country which he calls Panchaia;[219] while the
former asserts that he has actually seen the whole northern coast
of Europe up to the very verge of the world, which one would hardly
believe of Hermes himself if he said it. Eratosthenes calls Euhemerus
a Bergaean,[220] yet believes Pytheas, though Dicaearchus himself did
not.[221]... Eratosthenes and Dicaearchus give mere popular guesses as
to distances.
+6.+ For instance, Dicaearchus says that the distance from the
Peloponnese to the Pillars is ten thousand stades and still further to
the head of the Adriatic; and from the Peloponnesus to the Sicilian
straits three thousand; and therefore the remainder, from the Straits
to the Pillars, is seven thousand stades. I say nothing about the
three thousand stades, whether they are right or wrong; but the seven
thousand cannot be made out, whether you measure along the coast
or straight across the sea. The coast route is a kind of obtuse
angle, contained by two lines resting on the straits and the pillars
respectively; so that we have a triangle, of which the apex is Narbo,
and the base the straight line representing the course by the open
sea; of the two sides of the triangle which contain the obtuse angle,
that which extends from the straits to Narbo is more than eleven
thousand two hundred stades, the other from Narbo to the Pillars is
a little under eight thousand. The longest distance from Europe to
Libya across the Tuscan sea is allowed to be not more than three
thousand stades, that by the Sardinian sea is somewhat less; but let
us call it three thousand stades. Now suppose a perpendicular let down
through the gulf of Narbo to the base of the triangle, that is to the
straight sea-course, measuring two thousand stades; it requires only a
schoolboy’s geometry to prove that the coasting voyage is longer than
the direct sea voyage by nearly five hundred stades.[222] And when the
three thousand stades from the Peloponnese to the straits are added,
the whole number of the stades even of the straight sea course will
be more than double Dicaearchus’s reckoning. And if we measure to the
head of the Adriatic we must add still more by his own admission; that
is to say, from the Peloponnese to Leucas is seven hundred stades,
from Leucas to Corcyra seven hundred, from Corcyra to Ceraunia seven
hundred, and from Ceraunia along the Illyrian coast six thousand one
hundred and fifty.[223]
In talking such nonsense he might well be regarded as having gone
beyond even Antiphanes of Berga, and, in fact, to have left no folly
for his successors to commit....
+7.+ From Ithaca to Corcyra is more than nine hundred stades; from
Epidamnus to Thessalonica more than two thousand. From Marseilles to
the Pillars is more than nine thousand; from the Pyrenees, rather
less than eight thousand.... The Pagus from source to mouth is eight
thousand, not following its windings, but taking a direct line....
Eratosthenes is quite ignorant of the geography of Iberia, and
sometimes makes statements about it entirely contradictory. He says,
for instance, that its western coast as far as Gades is inhabited by
Gauls, since the whole western side of Europe, as far south as Gades,
is occupied by that people: and then, quite forgetting he has said
this, when taking a survey of the whole of Spain, he nowhere mentions
the Gauls.... The length of Europe is less than that of Libya and Asia
put together by the distance between the sunrise in summer and at the
point of the equinox; for the source of the Tanais is at the former,
and the Pillars are at the western equinox, and between them lies
Europe, while Asia occupies the northern semicircle between the Tanais
and equinoctial sunrise....
[Sidenote: Polybius’s fivefold division of the European peninsulas, as
opposed to the threefold division of Eratosthenes.]
Southern Europe is divided into five peninsulas—Iberia; Italy; a third
ending in the Capes Malea and Sunium, in which are included Greece and
Illyria, and a part of Thrace; a fourth called the Thracian Chersonese,
bounded by the strait between Sestos and Abydos; and a fifth along the
Cimmerian Bosphorus and the entrance to the Maeotis....
+8.+ In the sea off Lusitania acorn-bearing oaks grow, upon which the
tunnies feed and fatten themselves, which may, therefore, well be
called sea-hogs, as they feed like hogs on acorns....
These acorns are sometimes carried by the tide as far as the coast of
Latium, unless they may be thought to be the produce of Sardinia or
neighbouring islands....
In Lusitania both animals and man are extraordinarily productive, owing
to the excellent temperature of the air; the fruits never wither; there
is not more than three months in the year in which roses, white violets
(or gilly-flowers), and asparagus do not grow; while the fish caught in
its sea is far superior to what is found in our waters for quantity,
quality, and beauty. There, too, a Sicilian medimnus of barley is sold
for a drachma, and one of wheat for nine Alexandrine obols. A metreta
of wine costs a drachma, and a good kid or hare an obol, and a lamb
from three to four obols; a fat pig weighing a hundred minae costs five
drachmae, and a sheep two. A talent of figs is sold for three obols, a
calf for five drachmae, a draught-ox for ten. The flesh of wild animals
is not thought worth fixing a price upon at all, but the people give it
to each other for nothing and as a present.[224]...
[Sidenote: Tribes in Baetica.]
+9.+ The Turduli live on the immediate north of the Turdetani....
The fertility of their country has had a civilising influence on the
Turditani and on their Celtic kinsfolk, and taught them the art of
social life....
The Pillars are at either side of the straits....
[Sidenote: A tidal spring at Gades.]
There is a fountain in the Heracleum at Gades, the water of which is
sweet and is reached by steps. This fountain has a tide which rises and
falls exactly in the reverse order of the sea tide. When it is high
tide at sea it is low tide in the fountain, and high in the fountain
when it is low at sea. The explanation of this is that the wind, which
rises from the bowels of the earth to the surface, is prevented from
finding its natural egress when the earth is covered with water at
the rise of the tide, and being thus turned back into the interior of
the earth, it stops up the underground channels of the fountain and
produces a deficiency of water; but when the earth is again uncovered,
the wind having once more found an easy egress, sets the veins of the
fountain free again, and the water spurts up freely....
[Sidenote: The process of producing silver in the mines near New
Carthage.]
There are very large silver mines about twenty stades from New
Carthage, extending to a circuit of four hundred stades, in which forty
thousand men are continually employed, who produce for the benefit of
the Roman people twenty-five thousand drachmae a day. It would take too
long to describe the whole process of working them, but I may mention
that the alluvial soil containing the silver ore is first broken up,
and sifted in sieves held in water; that then the deposit is again
broken, and being again filtered with running water, is broken a third
time. This is done five times; the fifth deposit is smelted, and, the
lead having been run off, pure silver remains....
[Sidenote: The Guadiana and Guadalquivir.]
The Anas and Baetis both flow from Celtiberia, their streams being
about nine hundred stades apart....
Among other cities of the Vaccaei and Celtiberians are Segesama and
Intercatia....
[Sidenote: Homer, _Odyss._ 8, 248.]
One of the Iberian kings had such a magnificent and richly furnished
palace, that he rivalled the luxury of the Phaeacians, except that the
vessels standing in the interior of the house, though made of gold and
silver, were full of barley-wine....
[Sidenote: River Aude. The Tech and the Ruscino or Tet.]
[Sidenote: A mistake of Timaeus as to the Rhone.]
+10.+ From the Pyrenees to the river Narbo the country is flat; and
through it flow the Illeberis and Ruscinus, past some cities of the
same name inhabited by Celts. In this plain there are found what are
called underground fish. The soil is light, and produces a quantity of
grass called _agrostis_; and below this soil the earth is sandy for a
depth of two or three cubits, through which the overflow of the river
percolates; and with this water, as it makes its way, the fish also get
below the soil to feed, for they are exceedingly fond of the root of
the _agrostis_, and have thus made the whole plain full of subterranean
fish, which people dig up and take....
The Rhone has not five, but two mouths....
[Sidenote: The Loire between Poitou and Nantes. Coiron.]
[Sidenote: Britain is quite unknown to the southern Gauls.]
The Liger discharges itself between the Pictŏnes and Namnitae. There
was in ancient times an emporium on this river called Corbilo, but
none of its inhabitants, nor those of Massalia or Narbo, could give
Scipio[225] any information worth mentioning on the subject of Britain
when questioned by him, though they were the most important cities in
that part of the country; and yet Pytheas has ventured on all those
stories about it....
[Sidenote: The Elk.]
An animal is produced on the Alps of a peculiar form; its shape is that
of a stag except its neck and coat, which resemble that of a he-goat.
Beneath its chin it has an excrescence about a span long, hairy at the
end, about as thick as a colt’s tail....
[Sidenote: A gold mine near Aquileia.]
Near Aquileia, in the territory of the Noric Taurisci, in my own time
a gold mine was discovered, so easy to work, that by scraping away the
surface soil for two feet, gold could be found immediately. The seam
of gold was not more than fifteen feet; some of it was found unmixed
with alloy in nuggets of the size of a bean or lupine, only an eighth
of it disappearing in the furnace; and some wanted more elaborate
smelting, but would still pay thoroughly well. Accordingly, on the
Italians joining the barbarians in working this mine, in two months the
price of gold went down a third throughout Italy: and when the Taurisci
found out that, they expelled their Italian fellow-workers and kept the
monopoly themselves....
[Sidenote: The four passes of the Alps,—the Cornice, Argentière,
Genèvre (Val d’Aosta), Cenis.]
[Sidenote: Lago Maggiore.]
[Sidenote: Lago di Garda, Lago di Como.]
If we compare the mountains in Greece—Taygetus, Lycaeus, Parnassus,
Olympus, Pelion, Ossa, and those in Thrace—Haemus, Rhodope, Dunax,
with the Alps, we may state the case thus. Each one of the former may
be ascended or skirted by an active traveller in a single day; but no
one could ascend the Alps even in five days, the distance from the
plain being two thousand two hundred stades. There are but four passes,
one through Liguria, nearest the Tyrrhenian Sea; the next through the
Taurini, which was the one used by Hannibal; the third through the
Salassi; and the last by the Rhaeti,[226] all of them excessively
precipitous. There are several lakes in the mountains, three of great
size, the Benacus, five hundred by one hundred and thirty stades, out
of which the Mincius flows; the Larius, four hundred stades long, and
somewhat narrower than the Benacus, discharging the Addua; and thirdly,
the Verbanus, about three hundred stades by thirty, from which comes
a considerable river—the Ticinus. All these three rivers discharge
themselves into the Padus....
[Sidenote: Capuan wine.]
+11.+ There is an excellent wine made at Capua called _Anadendrites_,
or the “wine of the climbing vine,” with which no other can compare....
The length of the coast from Iapygia to the straits is three thousand
stades by land, and it is washed by the Sicilian sea. Sailing, however,
the distance is less than five hundred stades....
The largest distance of the Etrurian coast is from Luna to Ostia, a
distance of one thousand three hundred and thirty stades.[227]...
The island Lemnos is called Aethaleia....
[Sidenote: The Bay of Naples.]
The bay between the two promontories of Misenum and Minerva is called
the Crater (the Bowl). Above this coast lies the whole of Campania, the
most fertile plain in the country. Round the Bowl live the Opici and
the Ausones....
[Sidenote: Eastern coast-road from S. to N. of Italy.]
The north road from Iapygia has been marked out with miles, five
hundred and sixty to Sena, and one hundred and seventy thence to
Aquileia....
[Sidenote: The Lacinian promontory.]
Then comes Lacinium ... from the straits to this place is a distance
of one thousand three hundred stades, and thence to the Iapygian
promontory seven hundred....
[Sidenote: The craters in the volcanic Holy Island one of the Lipari
group.]
Of the three craters one has partly fallen in, the other two remain
perfect. The largest has a circular orifice with a circumference of
five stades, but it gradually contracts to a diameter of fifty feet;
it runs right down to the sea for a stade, so that the sea is visible
in clear weather. When a south wind is about to blow, a thick mist
envelopes the little island, so that even Sicily is invisible from it:
but if there is going to be a north wind, bright flames rise from the
crater and shoot up high, and louder rumblings are emitted; but a west
wind causes a medium display of both. The other two craters are of the
same shape, but their eruptions are less violent. From the difference
in the sound of the rumbling, and by observing from what point the
eruptions and flames and smoke begin, the wind which is to blow on the
third day from that time can be foretold. At least, some men in the
Lipari Islands when weather-bound have foretold what wind was coming
and have not been deceived. Therefore, it appears that Homer did not
speak without meaning, but was stating a truth allegorically when he
called Aeolus[228] “steward of the winds.”...
[Sidenote: The _Via Egnatia_.]
[Sidenote: Thessalonica half-way to the Hebrus from Apollonia.]
+12.+ The road from Apollonia to Macedonia is called the _Via Egnatia_,
which has been measured in miles and marked out with milestones as
far as Cypselus and the River Hebrus, a distance of five hundred
and thirty-five miles. Reckoning eight and one-third stades to a
mile, the number of stades will be four thousand four hundred and
fifty-eight.[229] The distance is exactly the same whether you start
from Apollonia or Epidamnus. The whole road is called the Egnatia, but
its first part has got a name from Candavia, a mountain of Illyria,
and leads through the town of Lycnidus, and through Pylon, which is
the point on the road where Illyria and Macedonia join. Thence it
leads over Mount Barnūs, through Heracleia, Lyncestia, and Eordea, to
Edessa and Pella, and finally to Thessalonica; and the number of miles
is altogether two hundred and sixty-seven.... And the whole distance
from the Ionian Gulf at Apollonia to Byzantium is seven thousand five
hundred stades....
[Sidenote: The Peloponnesus.]
The circumference of the Peloponnesus, if you do not follow the
indentations, is four thousand stades....
[Sidenote: From C. Malea to the Danube.]
The distance from Cape Malea to the Ister is ten thousand
stades.[230]...
+13.+ On matters concerning the country between the Euphrates and
India, Eratosthenes is a better authority than Artemidorus....
[Sidenote: State of Alexandria.]
+14.+ A personal visit to Alexandria filled me with disgust at the
state of the city. It is inhabited by three distinct races,—native
Egyptians, an acute and civilised race; secondly, mercenary soldiers
(for the custom of hiring and supporting men-at-arms is an ancient
one), who have learnt to rule rather than obey owing to the feeble
character of the kings; and a third class, consisting of native
Alexandrians, who have never from the same cause become properly
accustomed to civil life, but who are yet better than the second class;
for though they are now a mongrel race, yet they were originally Greek,
and have retained some recollection of Greek principles. But this
last class has become almost extinct, thanks to Euergetes Physcon, in
whose reign I visited Alexandria; for that king being troubled with
seditions, frequently exposed the common people to the fury of the
soldiery and caused their destruction. So that in this state of the
city the poet’s words only expressed the truth—[231]
“To Egypt ’tis a long and toilsome road.”