Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/29

himself on having associated with the Lapithæ,^[1] to whom he went, “having been invited thither from the Apian^[2] land afar.”

So does Menelaus:—

“Cyprus, Phœnicia, Sidon, and the shoresOf Egypt, roaming without hope I reach’d;In distant Ethiopia thence arrived,And Libya, where the lambs their foreheads showWith budding horns defended soon as yean’d.”^[3]

Adding as a peculiarity of the country,

“There thrice within the year the flocks produce.”^{[q 1]}

And of Egypt: — “Where the sustaining earth is most prolific.”^[4] And Thebes,

“the city with an hundred gates,Whence twenty thousand chariots rush to war.”^{[q 2]}

Such information greatly enlarges our sphere of knowledge, by informing us of the nature of the country, its botanical and zoological peculiarities. To these should be added its marine history; for we are in a certain sense amphibious, not exclusively connected with the land, but with the sea as well. Hercules, on account of his vast experience and observation, was described as “skilled in mighty works.”^{[q 3]}

All that we have previously stated is confirmed both by the testimony of antiquity and by reason. One consideration however appears to bear in a peculiar manner on the case in point; viz the importance of geography in a political view. For the sea and the earth in which we dwell furnish theatres

1. A people of Thessaly, on the banks of the Peneus.
2. The former name of the Morea, and more ancient than Peloponnesus. Iliad i. 270.
3. Having wandered to Cyprus, and Phœnice, and the Egyptians, I came to the Ethiopians, and Sidonians, and Erembi, and Libya, where the lambs immediately become horned. Odyssey iv. 83.
4. Homer says,
   ———— τῇ πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουραφάρμακα. Odyssey iv. 229.
   

   Which Cowper properly renders:—

   “Egypt teemsWith drugs of various powers.”
   

   Strabo, by omitting the word φάρμακα from his citation, alters to a certain degree the meaning of the sentence.

1. Odyssey iv. 86.
2. Iliad ix. 383, et seq.
3. Odyssey xxi. 26.