Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/55

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CHAP. II. § 20.
INTRODUCTION.
41
“And Juno starting from the Olympian height
O’erflew Pieria and the lovely plains
Of broad Emathia;[1] soaring thence she swept
The snow-clad summit of the Thracian hills[2]
Steed-famed, nor printed, as she pass’d, the soil,
*   *   *   *   *   *
From Athos[p 1] o’er the foaming billows borne.”[3]

In the Catalogue he does not describe his cities in regular order, because here there was no necessity, but both the people and foreign countries he arranges correctly. “Having wandered to Cyprus, and Phœnice, and the Egyptians, I came to the Ethiopians, and Sidonians, and Erembi, and Libya.”[q 1] Hipparchus has drawn attention to this. But the two tragedians, where there was great necessity for proper arrangement, one[4] where he introduces Bacchus visiting the nations, the other[5] Triptolemus sowing the earth, have brought in juxta-position places far remote, and separated those which were near.

“And having left the wealthy lands of the Lydians and Phrygians, and the sunny plains of the Persians and the Bactrian walls, and having come over the stormy land of the Medes, and the Happy Arabia.”[6] And the Triptolemus is just as inaccurate.

Further, in respect to the winds and climates, Homer shows the wide extent of his geographical knowledge, for in his

    Pelion. Odyssey xi. 314. The mountains Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus, bounded the eastern coasts of Thessaly.

  1. ↑ Pieria and Emathia, two countries of Macedonia.
  2. ↑ The mountains of Macedonia; this latter name was unknown to Homer, who consequently describes as Thracian, the whole of the people north of Thessaly.
  3. ↑ Juno, hastening, quitted the summit of Olympus, and having passed over Pieria, and fertile Emathia, she hastened over the snowy mountains of equestrian Thrace, most lofty summits. * * * * From Athos she descended to the foaming deep. Iliad xiv. 225.
  4. ↑ Euripides, Bacchæ, towards commencement.
  5. ↑ Sophocles.
  6. ↑ The inaccuracy of the description consists in this; that Bacchus leaving Lydia and Phrygia should have taken his course by Media into Bactriana, and returned by Persia into Arabia Felix. Perhaps too, for greater exactness, Strabo would have had the god mention particularly the intermediate countries through which he necessarily passed, as Cappadocia, Armenia, Syria, &c.
  1. ↑ The Mount Santo of the moderns.
  1. ↑ Odyssey iv. 83.
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