Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/48

30 HISTORY OF GREECE. director o? the first emigrants, whose apprehensions of a danger- ous voyage and an unknown country were very difficult to over- come. Both of them affirmed that the original cekist Battus was selected and consecrated to the work by the divine command : both called Battus the son of Polymnestus, of the mythical breed called Minyae. But on other points there was complete divergence between the two stories, and the Kyrenseans themselves, whose town was partly peopled by emigrants from Krete, described the mother of Battus as daughter of Etearchus, prince of the Kretan town of Axus. 1 Battus had an impediment in his speech, and it was on his intreating from the Delphian oracle a cure for this in- firmity that he received directions to go as "a cattle-breeding rekist to Libya." The suffering Therajans were directed to assist him, but neither he nor they knew where Libya was, nor could they find any resident in Krete who had ever visited it. Such was the limited reach of Grecian navigation to the south of the ^Egean sea, even a century after the foundation of Syra- cuse. At length, by prolonged inquiry, they discovered a man employed in catching the purple shellfish, named Korobius, who said that he had been once forced by stress of weather to the island of Platea, close to the shores of Libya, and on the side not far removed from the western limit of Egypt. Some Theras- ans being sent along with Korobius to inspect this island, left him there with a stock of provisions, and returned to Thera to con- duct the emigrants. From the seven districts into which Thera was divided, emigrants were drafted for the colony, one brother being singled out by lot from the different numerous families. But so long was their return to Platea deferred, that the provis- ions of Korobius were exhausted, and he was only saved from starvation by the accidental arrival of a Samian ship, driven by contrary winds out of her course on the voyage to Egypt. K6- laeus, the master of this ship (whose immense profits made by the first voyage to Tartessus have been noticed in a former chapter), supplied him with provisions for a year, an act of kindness, which is said to have laid the first foundation of the alliance and good feeling afterwards prevalent between Thera, Kyrene, and Bamos. At length the expected emigrants reached the island, 1 Hcrodot. iv, 150-154.