[202] For yesterday Jove went to Oceanus to the blameless Ethiopians, to a banquet. Iliad i. 423.
[203] The powerful shaker of the earth, as he was returning from the Ethiopians, beheld him from a distance, from the mountains of the Solymi. Odyssey v. 282.
[204] This would be true if Homer had lived two or three centuries later, when the Greeks became acquainted with the Ethiopians on the eastern and western coasts of Africa. But as the poet was only familiar with the Mediterranean, there is no question that the Ethiopians mentioned in this passage are those of Phœnicia and Palestine.
[205] Which, after they have escaped the winter and immeasurable shower, with a clamour wing their way towards the streams of the ocean, bearing slaughter and fate to the Pygmæan men. Iliad iii. 3.
[206] Gosselin is of opinion that this Iberia has no reference to Spain, but is a country situated between the Euxine and Caspian Seas, and forms part of the present Georgia. He assigns as his reason, that if Strabo had meant to refer to Spain, he would have mentioned it before Italy, so as not to interrupt the geographical order, which he is always careful to observe.
[207] Pygmy, (πυγμαῖος,) a being whose length is a πυγμὴ, that is, from the elbow to the hand. The Pygmæi were a fabulous nation of dwarfs, the Lilliputians of antiquity, who, according to Homer, had every spring to sustain a war against the cranes on the banks of Oceanus. They were believed to have been descended from Pygmæus, a son of Dorus and grandson of Epaphus. Later writers usually place them near the sources of the Nile, whither the cranes are said to have migrated every year to take possession of the field of the Pygmies. The reports of them have been embellished in a variety of ways by the ancients. Hecatæus, for example, related that they cut down every corn-ear with an axe, for they were conceived to be an agricultural people. When Hercules came into their country, they climbed with ladders to the edge of his goblet to drink from it; and when they attacked the hero, a whole army of them made an assault upon his left hand, while two made the attack on his right. Aristotle did not believe that the accounts of the Pygmies were altogether fabulous, but thought that they were a tribe in Upper Egypt, who had exceedingly small horses, and lived in caves. In later times we also hear of Northern Pygmies, who lived in the neighbourhood of Thule: they are described as very short-lived, small, and armed with spears like needles. Lastly, we also have mention of Indian Pygmies, who lived under the earth on the east of the river Ganges. Smith, Dict. Biog. and Mythol. Various attempts have been made to account for this singular belief, which however seems to have its only origin in the love of the marvellous.
[208] It must be observed that the Arabian Gulf, or Red Sea, does not run parallel to the equator, consequently it could not form any considerable part of a meridian circle; thus Strabo is wrong even as to the physical position of the Gulf, but this is not much to be wondered at, as he supposed an equatorial division of the earth into two hemispheres by the ocean.
[209] 15,000 of the stadia employed by Strabo were equivalent to 21° 25′ 43″ The distance from the Isthmus of Suez to the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, following our better charts, is 20° 15´. Strabo says nearly 15,000 stadia; and this length may be considered just equal to that of the Arabian Gulf. Its breadth, so far as we know, is in some places equal to 1800 stadia.
[210] The Arabian Gulf, or Red Sea.
[211] The Mediterranean.