Book 1
2.31
It is asked, What Ethiopians could he have met with on his voyage from Egypt? None are to be found dwelling by our sea,On the coasts of the Mediterranean. and with his vesselsStrabo intends to say that the ships of Menelaus were not constructed so as to be capable of being taken to pieces, and carried on the backs of the sailors, as those of the Ethiopians were. he could never have reached the cataracts of the Nile. Next, who are the Sidonians? Certainly not the inhabitants of Phoenicia; for leaving mentioned the genus, he would assuredly not particularize the species.Having mentioned the Phoenicians, amongst whom the Sidonians are comprised, he certainly would not have enumerated these latter as a separate people. And then the Erembi; this is altogether a new name. Our contemporary Aristonicus, the grammarian, in his [observations] on the wanderings of Menelaus, has recorded the opinions of numerous writers on each of the heads under discussion. It will be sufficient for us to refer to them very briefly. They who assert that Menelaus went by sea to Ethiopia, tell us he directed his course past Cadiz into the Indian Ocean;That is to say, that he made the entire circuit of Africa, starting from Cadiz, and doubling the Cape of Good Hope. Such was the opinion of Crates, who endeavoured to explain all the expressions of Homer after mathematical hypotheses. If any one were to inquire how Menelaus, who was wandering about the Mediterranean, could have come into Ethiopia, Crates would answer, that Menelaus left the Mediterranean and entered the Atlantic, whence he could easily travel by sea into Ethiopia. In this he merely followed the hypothesis of the mathematicians, who said that the inhabited earth in all its southern portion was traversed by the Atlantic Ocean, and the other seas contiguous thereto. with which, say they, the long duration of his wanderings agrees, since he did not arrive there till the eighth year. Others, that he passed through the isthmusThe Isthmus of Suez. This isthmus they supposed to be covered by the sea, as Strabo explains further on. which enters the Arabian Gulf; and others again, through one of the canals. At the same time the idea of this circumnavigation, which owes its origin to Crates, is not necessary; we do not mean it was impossible, (for the wanderings of Ulysses are not impossible,) but neither the mathematical hypothesis, not yet the duration of the wandering, require such an explanation; for he was both retarded against his will by accidents in the voyage, as by [the tempest] which he narrates five only of his sixty ships survived; and also by voluntary delays for the sake of amassing wealth. Nestor says [of him], Thus he, provision gathering as he went, And gold abundant, roam’d to distant lands.Thus far he, collecting much property and gold, wandered with his ships. Odyssey iii. 301.Odyssey iii. 301. [And Menelaus himself], Cyprus, Phoenicia, and the Egyptians’ land I wandered through.Odyssey iv. 83.Odyssey iv. 83.
