STRABO
GEOGRAPHY
p111 Book I Chapter 2 (end)
24 (30) The same mistake is made by those who say that Homer is not acquainted with the isthmus that lies between the Egyptian Sea and the Arabian Gulf, and that he is in error when he speaks of “the Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the farthermost of men.” Men of later times are wrong when they censure Homer for saying that, for it is correct. Indeed, the reproach that Homer is ignorant of this isthmus is so far from being true, that I affirm not only that he knows about it, but that he describes it in express terms, and that the grammarians beginning with p113Aristarchus and Crates, the leading lights in the science of criticism, even though Homer speaks of it, do not perceive that he does. The poet says: “the Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the farthermost of men.” About the next verse there is a difference of opinion, Aristarchus writing: “Abiding some where Hyperion sets, and some where he rises”; but Crates: “abiding both where Hyperion sets and where he rises.” 31Yet so far as the question at issue is concerned, it makes no difference whether you write the verse one way or the other. For Crates, following the mere form of mathematical demonstration, says that the torrid zone is “occupied”78 by Oceanus and that on both sides of this zone are the temperate zones, the one being on our side, while the other is on the other side of it. Now, just as these Ethiopians on our side of Oceanus, who face the south throughout the whole length of the inhabited land, are called the most remote of the one group of peoples, since they dwell on the shores of Oceanus, so too, Crates thinks, we must conceive that on the other side of Oceanus also there are certain Ethiopians, the most remote of the other group of peoples in the temperate zone, since they dwell on the shores of this same Oceanus; and that they are in two groups and are “sundered in twain” by Oceanus. Homer adds the words, “abiding both where Hyperion sets and where he rises,” because, inasmuch as the celestial zodiac always lies in the zenith above its corresponding p115terrestrial zodiac and inasmuch as the latter does not by reason of its obliquity79 extend outside the territory of the two Ethiopias, we must conceive that the entire revolution of the sun takes place within the width of this celestial zone, and that his risings and his settings take place herein, appearing differently to different peoples, and now in this sign and now in that. Such, then, is the explanation of Crates, who conceives of the matter rather as an astronomer; but he might have put it more simply — still saving his point that this was the sense in which the Ethiopians are “sundered in twain,” as Homer has stated — namely, by declaring that the Ethiopians stretch along both shores of Oceanus from the rising to the setting of the sun. What difference, I say, does it make with respect to this thought whether we read the verse as Crates writes it, or as Aristarchus does — “abiding some where Hyperion sets and some where he rises”? For this, too, means that Ethiopians live on both sides of Oceanus, both towards the west and towards the east. But Aristarchus rejects this hypothesis of Crates, and thinks that the people referred to as divided “in twain” are the Ethiopians in our part of the world, namely, those that to the Greeks are most remote on the south; but he thinks these are not so divided “in twain” that there are two Ethiopias, the one lying towards the east and the other towards the west, but that there is just one, the one that lies south of the Greeks and is situated along Egypt; and he thinks that the poet, ignorant of this fact, just as he was ignorant of those other matters which p117Apollodorus has mentioned in the second book of his work entitled “On the Catalogue of Ships,” told what was not true about the regions in question.
25 To reply to Crates would require a long discourse, which would perhaps be irrelevant to my present purpose. As for Aristarchus, I approve of him in this, that he rejects the hypothesis of Crates, which is open to many objections, and inclines to the view that the words of Homer have reference to our Ethiopia. But let us examine Aristarchus on the other points; and, in the first place, take the fact that he too indulges in a petty and fruitless discussion of the text. For if the verse be written in either of the two ways, it can fit his thought on the subject. 32For what difference does it make whether we say: “On our side of Oceanus there are two groups of Ethiopians, some in the east and some in the west,” or, “both in the east and in the west”? In the second place, take the fact that Aristarchus champions a false doctrine. Well, let us suppose that the poet is ignorant of the existence of the isthmus, but is referring to Ethiopia on the confines of Egypt when he speaks of “Ethiopians that are sundered in twain.” What then? Are they not thus “sundered in twain”? And does the poet make that statement in ignorance? Is not Egypt also, are not the Egyptians also, from the Delta up to Syene, “sundered in twain” by the Nile, “some where Hyperion sets and some where he rises”? What is Egypt but a river valley, which the water floods? And this valley p119lies on both sides of the river, toward the east and toward the west. But Ethiopia lies directly beyond Egypt and it is analogous to Egypt in its relation both to the Nile and the other physical characteristics of the regions in question. For it, too, is narrow, long, and subject to inundations; and its parts that lie beyond the territory subject to inundations are desert, without water, and habitable only in spots, both on the east and on the west. Of course, then, Ethiopia also is “sundered in twain.” Or, again, did the Nile seem important enough for those who were drawing a boundary-line between Asia and Libya to serve as that boundary-line (since in length it stretches toward the south for more than ten thousand stadia, and is of such width that it contains islands with many thousands of inhabitants, the largest of which is Meroë, the residence of the King and the metropolis of the Ethiopians) and yet was not important enough to “sunder” Ethiopia itself “in twain”? And furthermore, the critics of the men who make the River Nile the boundary-line between the continents bring this against them as their most serious charge, that they dismember Egypt and Ethiopia, and that they reckon one part of each country to Libya and one part to Asia; or that, if they do not wish such dismemberment, then either they do not divide the continents at all, or else do not make the river the boundary-line.
26 But Ethiopia may be divided in still another way, quite apart from this. For all those who have made coasting-voyages on the ocean along the shores of Libya, whether they started from the Red Sea or from the Pillars of Heracles, always turned back, after they had advanced a certain distance, because p121they were hindered by many perplexing circumstances, and consequently they left in the minds of most people the conviction that the intervening space was blocked by an isthmus; and yet the whole Atlantic Ocean is one unbroken body of water, and this is particularly true of the Southern Atlantic. All those voyagers have spoken of the last districts to which they came in their voyagings as Ethiopic territory and have so reported them. 33Wherein, then, lies the absurdity, if Homer, too, was misled by a report of this character and divided the Ethiopians into two groups, placing the one group in the east and the other in the west, since it was not known whether the intervening people really existed or not? Furthermore, Ephorus mentions still another ancient tradition, and it is not unreasonable to believe that Homer also had heard it. Ephorus says the Tartessians report that Ethiopians overran Libya as far as Dyris,80 and that some of them stayed in Dyris, while others occupied a great part of the sea-board; and he conjectures it was from this circumstance that Homer spoke as he did: “Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the farthermost of men.”
27 These arguments one might urge in reply to Aristarchus and his followers, and also others still more convincing, and thus set the poet free from the charge of gross ignorance. I maintain, for example, that in accordance with the opinion of the ancient Greeks — just as they embraced the inhabitants of the known countries of the north under the single designation “Scythians” (“or “Nomads,” to use Homer’s term) and just as later, when the inhabitants of the west also were discovered, they were called p123″Celts” and “Iberians,” or by the compound words “Celtiberians” and “Celtiscythians,” the several peoples being classed under one name through ignorance of the facts — I maintain, I say, that just so, in accordance with the opinion of the ancient Greeks, all the countries in the south which lie on Oceanus were called “Ethiopia.” And there is the following testimony to this statement. Aeschylus, in his Prometheus Unbound, speaks thus: “The sacred flood of the Red Sea with its bed of scarlet sands, and the mere on the shore of Oceanus that dazzles with its gleam of brass and furnishes all nourishment to Ethiopians, where the Sun, who sees all things, gives rest to his tired steeds and refreshes his immortal body in warm outpourings of soft water.” For since Oceanus renders this service and maintains this relation to the sun along the whole southern belt, Aeschylus obviously places the Ethiopians also along this whole belt. And Euripides, in his Phaëthon, says that Clymene was given “to Merops, the king of this country which is the first country that the Sun, as he rises in his chariot and four, strikes with his golden flame. And the swarthy men who dwell upon the confines of that country call it the bright stables of Dawn and Sun.” In this passage Euripides assigns the stables jointly to Dawn and Sun, but in what immediately follows he says that these stables are near to the dwelling of Merops, and indeed this is woven into the whole structure of the play, 34not, I am sure, because it is a peculiarity of the Ethiopia which lies next to Egypt, but rather p125because it is a peculiarity of the sea-board that stretches along the entire southern belt.
28 Ephorus, too, discloses the ancient belief in regard to Ethiopia, for in his treatise On Europe he says that if we divide the regions of the heavens and of the earth into four parts, the Indians will occupy that part from which Apeliotes blows, the Ethiopians the part from which Notus blows, the Celts the part on the west, and the Scythians the part from which the north wind blows.81 And he adds that Ethiopia and Scythia are the larger regions; for it is thought, he says, that the nation of the Ethiopians stretches from the winter sunrise to sunset,82 and that Scythia lies directly opposite in the north. That Homer is in agreement with this view is also clear from his assertion that Ithaca lies “toward the darkness” — that is, of course, toward the north — “but those others face the dawning and the sun”; by which he means the whole country on the southern side. And again this is clear when he says: “Whether they fare to the right, to the dawn and to the sun, or to the left, to mist and darkness”; and from this passage too: “My friends, lo, now we know not where is the place of darkness or of dawning, nor where the sun that gives light to men goes beneath the earth, nor where he rises.” But about all these passages I shall speak more fully in my account of Ithaca.83 And so, when Homer says, “For Zeus went yesterday to Oceanus, unto the noble Ethiopians,” we p127must understand both words in a more general sense, “Oceanus” meaning the body of water that extends along the entire southern belt, and the “Ethiopians” meaning the people along this same extent; for upon whatever point of this belt you fix your attention, you will be both on Oceanus and in Ethiopia. And this is the meaning also of the words: “On his way from the Ethiopians he espied Odysseus from afar, from the mountains of the Solymi” — which is equivalent to saying “from the regions of the south”; for he does not mean the Solymi in Pisidia, but, as I said before,84 he invents a people of the same name whom he depicts as occupying the same position relatively to the sailor on his raft and the people to the south of him (who would be the Ethiopians) as the Pisidians occupy relatively to the Pontus and to the Ethiopians that lie beyond Egypt. And in like manner Homer puts his assertion about the cranes in general terms: “When they flee from the coming of winter and sudden rain, 35and fly with clamour toward the streams of Oceanus, bearing slaughter and doom to the Pygmy men.” For it is not the case that the crane is seen migrating toward the south only in Greek lands, and never in Italy or Iberia, or in the regions of the Caspian Sea and Bactriana. Since, then, Oceanus stretches along the entire southern sea-board, and since the cranes migrate in winter to this entire sea-board, we must admit that the Pygmies also are placed by mythology along the entire extent of that sea-board. And if p129men of later generations restricted the story about the Pygmies to the Ethiopians next to Egypt alone, that would have no bearing on the facts in ancient times. For nowadays we do not use the terms “Achaeans” and “Argives” of all who took part in the expedition against Troy, though Homer so uses them. Now what I contend in the case of the Ethiopians that are “sundered in twain” is similar to this, namely, that we must interpret “Ethiopians” as meaning that the Ethiopians extend along the whole sea-board of Oceanus from the rising to the setting sun. For the Ethiopians that are spoken of in this sense are “sundered in twain” naturally by the Arabian Gulf (and this would constitute a considerable part of a meridian circle) as by a river, being in length almost fifteen thousand stadia, and in width not much more than one thousand stadia, I mean at its greatest width; and to the length we must add the distance by which the head of this gulf is separated from the sea at Pelusium, a journey of three or four days — the space occupied by the isthmus. Now, just as the abler of the geographers who separate Asia from Libya regard this gulf as a more natural boundary-line between the two continents than the Nile (for he says the gulf lacks but very little of stretching from sea to sea, whereas the Nile is separated from Oceanus by many times that distance, so that it does not separate Asia as a whole from Libya), in the same way I also assume that the poet considered that the southern regions as a whole throughout the inhabited world were “sundered in twain” by this gulf. How, then, can the poet have been ignorant of the isthmus which the gulf forms with the Egyptian85 Sea?
This webpage reproduces a section of
The Geography
of
Strabo
published in Vol. I
of the Loeb Classical Library edition,
1917
The text is in the public domain.
PLs write more i’m an Ethiopian thx to you that I ave more knowledge about my country.