Geography

​And Ephorus also indicates the ancient opinion concerning Ethiopia, who says in his treatise On Europe, since the parts of the heavens and the earth are divided into four parts, that the eastern part is held by the Indians, the southern by the Ethiopians, the western by the Celts, and the northern by the Scythians. And he adds that Ethiopia and Scythia are larger; for, he says, the nation of the Ethiopians seems to extend from the winter sunrises to the sunsets, and Scythia lies opposite to this. And that the poet is in agreement with these views is clear also from this: namely, that Ithaca lies ‘toward the gloom’ (which is toward the north), ‘but the others apart toward the dawn and the sun,’ speaking in this way of the whole southern side. And further, when he says: ‘whether they go to the right toward the dawn and the sun, or to the left toward the misty gloom.’ And again: ‘O friends, for we do not know where the gloom is, nor where the dawn is, nor where the sun that gives light to mortals goes beneath the earth, nor where he rises.’ Concerning which things it is also spoken more clearly in the discussions about Ithaca. Therefore, when he says, ‘For Zeus went yesterday to the ocean, to the noble Ethiopians,’ we must understand both the ocean as extending along the whole southern region and the Ethiopians in a more general sense; for to whatever part of this region you direct your mind, you will be both at the ocean and in Ethiopia. And in the same way he speaks of this: ‘but him, returning from the Ethiopians, he saw from afar from the Solymi mountains,’ which is equivalent to ‘from southern regions,’ meaning by Solymi not those in Pisidia, but, as I said before, some homonymous people invented by him, who bear an analogous relation both to the voyager on the raft and to the southern people there (the Ethiopians, as it were), just as the Pisidian Solymi do to the Pontus and to the Ethiopians beyond Egypt. In the same way, also, making the story about the cranes general, he says: ‘who, when they have fled from winter and unspeakable rain, fly with a clang toward the streams of Ocean, bringing slaughter and death to Pygmy men.’ For it is not only in the regions of Greece that the crane is seen flying toward the south, while in the regions of Italy or Iberia it is not seen at all, or in those of the Caspian and Bactria. Therefore, since the ocean extends along the whole southern coast, and they flee from winter to the whole of it, we must understand the legendary Pygmies also to be along the whole of it. And if later writers transferred the Ethiopians and the story about the Pygmies to those near Egypt alone, this would have nothing to do with ancient times. For indeed, we do not now call all those who campaigned against Ilium ‘Achaeans’ and ‘Argives,’ but Homer calls them all so. And what I am saying about the Ethiopians who are ‘divided in two’ is similar, namely, that we must understand those who extend along the whole ocean from the rising of the sun to its setting. For the Ethiopians so-called are naturally divided in two by the Arabian Gulf, as if by a noteworthy segment of a meridian circle, like a river in length of almost fifteen thousand stadia, and in width not much greater than a thousand at its widest part; and in addition to its length, there is also the fact that the innermost recess of this gulf is distant from the sea near Pelusium by three or four days’ journey, which space the isthmus occupies. Just as, therefore, the more elegant of those who divide Asia from Libya consider this gulf a more natural boundary for both continents than the Nile; for the former extends almost completely from sea to sea, whereas the Nile is distant many times as far from the ocean, so that it does not divide the whole of Asia from Libya; in this manner, I assume, the poet also believed that all the southern parts along the whole inhabited world were divided in two by this gulf. How, then, was he ignorant of the isthmus, which he himself makes toward the Egyptian sea?