Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/44

20 mSTORY OF GREECE. carry the bridge nearest to the Euxine was three hundred and sixty ; the number in the other, three hundred and fourteen. In some of the words used by Herodotus there appears an obscurity : they run thus, — k^evywaav 61 tide* HsvTrjKovrcpovc Kal rpiTipeac avv&evTec, inb fiiv TTjv (these words are misprinted in Bahr's edition) npo^ rov Ev^- eivov IlovTov k^ijKovTa re Kai rpir^Koaiac, v-nb de rijv ETeprjv riaaepai Kal deKd Kal TpiTiKoaiac {roii (lev Hovtov, hniKapaiag, rov 6e 'E?.?iT]a~6vTov Kara fioov), Iva avuKux^vT} Tbv Tovov tuv oitXuv • avvdevTeg 6i; uyKvpag KaTTjKav nepift^' Keac, etc. There is a difficulty respecting the words iva avaKux^i^V "^*' '^ovov tuv on?Mv. — what is the nominative case to this verb 1 Bahr says in his note, sc. 6 pooc, and he constmes tuv oTr?Mv to mean the cables whereby the an- chors were held fast. But if we read farther on, we shall see that tu ottXo mean, not the anchor-cables, but the cables which were stretched across from shore to shore to form the bridge ; the very same words tuv ottIuv tov tovov] applied to these latter cables, occur a few lines afterwards. I think that the nominative case belonging to uvaKuxev^j is ij ye(pvpa (not 6 i!)6oc), and that the words from tov fiiv Hovtov do^vn to f)6ov are to be read parenthetically, as I have printed them above : the express object for which the ships were moored was, '• that the bridge might hold up, or sustain, the tension of its cables stretched across from shore to shore." I admit that we should naturally expect uvaKuxeiuai and not uvaKuxeii^, since the proposition would be true of both bridges ; but though this makes an awkward construction, it is not inadmissible, since each bridge had been previously described in the singu- lar number. Bredow and others accuse Herodotus of ignorance and incorrectness in this description of the bridges, but there seems nothing to bear out this charge. Herodotus (iv, 85), Strabo (xiii, p. 591), and Pliny (H. N. iv, 12; vi, 1) give seven stadia as the breadth of the Hellespont in its naiTowest part. Dr. Pocockc also assigns the same breadth : Toumefort allows but a mile (vol. ii, lett. 4). Some modem French measurements give the distance aa something considerably greater, — eleven hundred and thirty or eleven hundred and fifty toises (see Miot's note on his translation of Herodotus). The Duke of Ragusa states it at seven hundred toises (Voyage en Turquie, vol. ii, p. 164). If we suppose the breadth to be one mile, or five thousand two hundred and eighty feet, three hundred and sixty vessels at an average breadth of fourteen and two thirds feet would exactly fill the space. Ren- nell says, " Eleven feet is the breadth of a barge : vessels of the size of the smallest coasting-craft were adequate to the pui-pose of the bridge." (Ou the Geography of Herodotus, p. 127.) The recent measurements or estimates stated b Miot go much beyond Herodotus : that of the Duke of Ragusa nearly coincides with him. But we need not suppose that the vessels filled up entirely the whole breadth,