Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/346

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332
STRABO.
CASAUB. 223.

summit [of the cape] there is a look-out for thunnies.[1] From this city there is an indistinct and distant view of Sardinia. Cyrnus,[p 1] however, is nearer, being distant from Sardinia about 60 stadia. While Æthalia[p 2] is much nearer to the continent than either, being distant therefrom only 300[2] stadia, and the same number from Cyrnus. Poplonium is the best starting-place to any of the three mentioned islands. We ourselves observed them from the height of Poplonium, in which place we saw certain mines which had been abandoned, we also saw the craftsmen who work the iron brought from Æthalia; for they cannot reduce it into bars in the furnaces on the island, and it is therefore transferred direct from the mines to the continent. There is another remarkable circumstance, that the exhausted mines of the island in course of time are again refilled similarly to what they say takes place at the platamones[3] in Rhodes, the marble-quarries in Paros, and the salt-mines in India, mentioned by Clitarchus. Eratosthenes was therefore incorrect in saying that from the mainland you could neither see Cyrnus nor Sardinia; and so was Artemidorus in his assertion, that both these places lay in the high sea at a distance of 1200 stadia. For whatever others might, I certainly could never have seen them at such a distance, however carefully I had looked, particularly Cyrnus. Æthalia has a harbour named Argoüs,[p 3] derived, as they say, from the [ship] Argo, Jason having sailed hither, seeking the abode of Circe as Medea wished to see that goddess; and that from the sweat scraped off by the Argonauts and hardened, are formed the variegated pebbles now seen on the beach.[4] This and similar traditions prove what we before stated, that Homer did not invent them all himself, but, hearing the numerous current stories, he merely transferred the scenes to other localities and exaggerated the distances: as he makes Ulysses wander

  1. ↑ This was a regular business. A man was posted on a high place, from which he could see the shoals coming, and make a sign to the fishermen.
  2. ↑ The French translation has 200 in text, while it states in a note that all manuscripts give 300, and continues to discuss the real distance at some length. Kramer says, in a note, that MS. Vatic. No. 482, has 200.
  3. ↑ Πλαταμῶνας is here adopted is preference to any attempt at translation. It is probable they were quarries of the cream-coloured limestone of the island.
  4. ↑ Gosselin supposes that the crystals of iron, abundant in the island of Elba, are here alluded to.
  1. ↑ Corsica.
  2. ↑ The island of Elba.
  3. ↑ Porto Ferrajo.
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