Geography

​Having said this, he describes the hunt of the swordfish, which takes place around Skyllaion; for a common lookout is stationed on high, while they lie at anchor below in many two-oared boats, two men to each boat. And one of them rows, and the other stands on the prow holding a spear, while the lookout signals the appearance of the swordfish. And the animal is carried along with a third part of its body out of the water. When the boat has closed in, the man strikes it close at hand, and then pulls the shaft of the spear out of the body, leaving the spear-head; for it has a barb and is purposely fitted loosely to the shaft, and has a long cord fastened to it. They let this cord slacken for the wounded beast for a while until it grows weary from struggling and trying to escape; and then they drag it to the land, or take it up into the boat, unless its body is completely huge. And even if the shaft falls into the sea, it is not lost; for it is joined together from oak and pine, so that even if the oak part is submerged by its weight, the remaining part is kept afloat and is easy to recover. And he says that it sometimes happens that even the oarsman is wounded through the boat, because of the size of the swordfish’s sword and because the fierceness of the animal and its hunt are like those of a wild boar. From such facts, then, he says, one might suppose that the wandering took place around Sicily according to Homer, because he attached to Scylla such a hunt which is especially local to Skyllaion, and from what is said about Charybdis, which is similar to the conditions of the strait. But as for the words “for thrice indeed she lets it loose,” instead of “twice,” he says it is a scribal error or a historical mistake.

​And he says that the events in Meninx also agree with what is said about the Lotus-eaters. But if some things do not agree, one must blame changes, or ignorance, or even poetic license, which consists of history, arrangement, and myth. Now, the end of history is truth, as when the poet mentions the characteristics of each place in the “Catalogue of Ships,” calling one city “rocky,” another “outermost,” another “abounding in doves,” and another “by the sea”; but the end of arrangement is vividness, as when he introduces men fighting; and that of myth is pleasure and wonder. But to invent everything is not plausible, nor is it Homeric; for everyone regards his poetry as a philosophical work, not as Eratosthenes says, commanding us not to judge the poems by their thought, nor to seek history from them. And it is more plausible to understand the words “and thence for nine days I was carried by destructive winds” as referring to a short distance (for destructive winds do not blow in a straight course) than to push him out into the Ocean, as if favorable winds had blown continuously. And having calculated the distance from Malea to the Pillars as twenty-two thousand five hundred stadia, if, he says, we assume that this was traversed with equal speed in the nine days, the voyage of each day would turn out to be two thousand five hundred stadia. Who, then, has recorded that anyone has arrived in Alexandria from Lycia or Rhodes on the second day, the distance being four thousand stadia? And to those who ask how Odysseus, having come thrice to Sicily, never once sailed through the strait, he replies in defense that all later people also avoided this voyage.