[658] Gosselin observes, that this steady westerly wind, so far from carrying him towards India, would be entirely adverse to him in coasting along Africa, and doubling Cape Bojador; and infers from hence that Eudoxus never really went that expedition, and that Strabo himself was ignorant of the true position of Africa.
[659] A name common to many sovereigns of the different parts of Mauritania; the king Bogus, or Bocchus, here spoken of, governed the kingdom of Fez.
[660] Round Africa.
[661] A term by which incredible narrations were designated. It owes its origin to Antiphanes, a writer born at Bergè, a city of Thrace, and famous for trumping up false and auld-world stories. Βεργαΐζειν, was a proverbial and polite term for lying.
[662] The wall mentioned in Iliad, vii. 436, et seq. Gosselin says that in the time of Aristotle the commentators of the Iliad, having vainly sought for the ruins or other traces of the wall, the Philosopher came to the conclusion that the wall was altogether a fiction of Homer’s. Strabo speaks further on this subject in the 13th Book.
[663] As the above assertion is at variance with the statement of Strabo, in his 7th Book, concerning Posidonius’s views on this subject, it seems probable that the passage as it stands is corrupt. It is more likely Strabo wrote, “It is the opinion of Posidonius that the emigration of the Cimbrians and other kindred races from their native territory was not occasioned by an inundation of the sea, since their departure took place at various times.”
[664] Odyssey i. 23.
[665] Aratus, who lived about B. C.270, was the author of two Greek astronomical poems, called Φαινόμενα and Διοσημεία. It is from the former of these that the above quotation is taken. Aratus, Phænom. v. 61.
[666] Evemerus, or Euhemerus, a Sicilian author of the time of Alexander the Great and his immediate successors, and a native of Messina. He is said to have sailed down the Red Sea and round the southern coasts of Asia to a very great distance, until he came to an island called Panchæa. After his return from this voyage, he wrote a work entitled Ἱερὰ Ἀναγραφή, which consisted of at least nine books. The title of this “Sacred History,” as we may call it, was taken from the ἀναγραφαί, or the inscriptions on columns and walls, which existed in great numbers in the temples of Greece; and Euhemerus chose it, because he pretended to have derived his information from public documents of that kind, which he had discovered in his travels, especially in the island of Panchæa. The work contained accounts of the several gods, whom Euhemerus represented as having originally been men who had distinguished themselves either as warriors, kings, inventors, or benefactors of mankind, and who, after their death, were worshipped as gods by the grateful people. This book, which seems to have been written in a popular style, must have been very attractive; for all the fables of mythology were dressed up in it as so many true narratives; and many of the subsequent historians adopted his mode of dealing with myths, or at least followed in his track, as we find to be the case with Polybius and Dionysius. Vide Smith.
[667] Every one will observe, that this criticism of Strabo is entirely gratuitous and captious. Polybius cites Dicæarchus as a most credulous writer, but states that even he would not believe Pytheas: how then could so distinguished a writer as Eratosthenes put faith in his nonsense?