Geography

​Now, to answer Crates would require a long discussion, and one which is perhaps of no relevance to our present purpose. But as for Aristarchus, on the one hand let us praise him because, setting aside the hypothesis of Crates which is open to many objections, he supposes that the passage was spoken about our Ethiopia; but on the other hand let us examine his other points. And first, that he himself also trifles in vain about the reading. For indeed, whichever way it is written, it can fit his meaning. For what difference does it make whether one says thus: ‘There are two groups of Ethiopians in our part, some toward the east, others toward the west,’ or thus: ‘For they are both toward the east and toward the west’? Next, that he champions a false doctrine. For suppose that the poet was indeed ignorant of the isthmus, but had in mind the Ethiopia next to Egypt when he says: ‘Ethiopians, who are divided in two.’ How so? Are they not thus divided in two, but did the poet speak so out of ignorance? Or is it that neither Egypt itself, nor the Egyptians, beginning from the Delta and extending as far as Syene, are divided in two by the Nile, ‘some at the setting of Hyperion, others at his rising’? And what else is Egypt but the river-land which the water inundates? And this lies on both sides of the river, toward the east and the west. Moreover, Ethiopia is in a straight line with Egypt and is similarly situated with respect both to the Nile and to the rest of the nature of the places. For this land too is narrow, long, and subject to inundation. And the parts outside the inundated area are desert, waterless, and capable of being inhabited only sparsely, some inclining toward the east and others toward the west. How, then, is it not also divided in two? Or was the Nile, which appeared to those who divide Asia from Libya as a noteworthy boundary—stretching in length toward the south for more than ten thousand stades, and in width so as even to enclose islands with tens of thousands of inhabitants, the largest of which is Meroe, the royal seat and metropolis of the Ethiopians—yet not sufficient to divide Ethiopia itself in two? And indeed, those who censure those who divide the continents by the river bring forward this as the greatest of their accusations against them, namely, that they tear Egypt and Ethiopia asunder, making one part of each of them Libyan, and the other Asiatic; or if they do not wish this, they must either not divide the continents, or not divide them by the river.