Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/60

46 STRABO. BOOK i. had not then been given to the river, and as to the mouths, if they were obscure and little known, will not every one excuse him for not being aware whether there were several or merely one ? At that time, the river, its rising, and its mouths were considered, as they are at the present day, amongst the most remarkable, the most wonderful, and most worthy of record- ing of all the peculiarities of Egypt : who can suppose that those who told our poet of the country and river of Egypt, of Egyptian Thebes, and of Pharos, were unaware of the many embouchures of the Nile ; or that being aware, they would not have described them, were it not that they were too ge- nerally known? "But is it not inconceivable that Homer should describe Ethiopia, and the Sidonians, the Erembi, and the Exterior Sea, 1 should tell us that Ethiopia was divided into two parts, and yet nothing about those things which were nearer and better known ?" Certainly not, his not describing these things is no proof that he was not acquainted with them. He does not tell us of his own country, nor yet many other things. The most probable reason is, they were so generally known that they did not appear to him worth recording. 2 23. Again, they are entirely wrong when they allege as a mark of Homer's ignorance, that he describes the island of Pharos 3 as entirely surrounded by the sea. On the contrary, it might be taken advantage of as a proof that our poet was not unacquainted with a single one of the points concerning Egypt which we have just been speaking of: and thus we River of Egypt, or the River Egyptus; by the latter of which titles he was acquainted with it. See Odyssey xvii. 448. 1 By this expression is intended the Atlantic. 2 Gosselin remarks that the arguments made use of by Strabo are not sufficiently conclusive. The country with which the Greeks were best acquainted was Greece, undoubtedly, and it is this land which Homer has described with the greatest exactness of detail. 3 An island opposite to Alexandria, and seven stadia distant therefrom. The Ptolemies united it to the main-land by means of a pier, named Hepta-stadium, in allusion to its length. The sands which accumulated against the pier became the site of the present city of Alexandria. It was not on this island that the celebrated Pharos of Alexandria was erected, but on a desolate rock a little to the N. E. It received the same name as the island, to which it was joined by another pier. As to the passage of Homer, (Odyssey iv. 354 357,) where he says that Pharos is one day's sail from the Egyptus, he does not mean Egypt, as Strabo fan- cies, but the mouth of the Nile, which river in his time was called the Egyptus, and probably fell into the sea about one day's sail from Pharos.