[515] If we may suppose this to have been actually the case, we might calculate the time of the year when Alexander visited this place and the length of his stay.
[516] We may presume, that our author means to say no more than that, in those places, they are occasionally invisible; literally the observation would not apply to any part of India.
[517] ἄσκια, shadowless.
[518] If this really were the case, it could have no relation to the astronomical position of the country.
[519] “In contrarium,” contrary to what takes place at other times, i. e. towards the south. This observation is not applicable to the whole of this country, as its northern and southern parts differ from each other by seven or eight degrees of latitude. For an account of Eratosthenes see Lemaire, i. 186.
[520] “Hora duodecim in partes, ut as in totidem uncias dividebatur. Octonas igitur partes horæ antiquæ, sive bessem, ut Martianus vocat, nobis probe repræsentant horarum nostratium 40 sexagesimæ, quas minutas vocamus.” Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 396.
[521] For a notice of Pytheas see Lemaire, i. 210. He was a geographer and historian who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus; but his veracity does not appear to have been highly estimated by his contemporaries.
[522] The Thule of Pliny has been generally supposed to be the Shetland Isles. What is here asserted respecting the length of the day, as well as its distance from Britain, would indeed apply much more correctly to Iceland than to Shetland; but we have no evidence that Iceland was known to the ancients. Our author refers to the length of the day in Thule in two subsequent parts of his work, iv. 30 and vi. 36.
[523] Supposed to be Colchester in Essex; while the Mona of Pliny appears to have been Anglesea. It is not easy to conceive why the author measured the distance of Mona from Camelodunum.