60 STRABO. BOOK i. In distant Ethiopia thence arrived, And Libya." l It is asked, What Ethiopians cou'd he have met with on his voyage from Egypt ? None are to be found dwelling by our sea, 2 and with his vessels 3 he could never have reached the cataracts of the Nile. Next, who are the Sidonians ? Cer- tainly not the inhabitants of Phoenicia ; for having mentioned the genus, he would assuredly not particularize the species. 4 And then the Erembi ; this is altogether a new name. Our contemporary Aristonicus, the grammarian, in his [observ- ations] on the wanderings of Menelaus, has recorded the opinions of numerous writers on each of the heads under discussion. It will be sufficient for us to refer to them very briefly. They who assert that Menelaus went by sea to Ethiopia, tell us he directed his course past Cadiz into the Indian Ocean ; 5 with which, say they, the long duration of his wanderings agrees, since he did not arrive there till the eighth year. Others, that he passed through the isthmus 6 which enters the Arabian Gulf; and others again, through one of the canals. At the same time the idea of this circumnaviga- tion, which owes its origin to Crates, is not necessary ; we do not mean it was impossible, (for the wanderings of Ulysses are 1 Certainly having suffered many things, and having wandered much, I was brought in my ships, and I returned in the eighth year ; having wandered to Cyprus, and Phoenice, and the Egyptians, I came to the Ethiopians and Sidonians, and Erembians, and Libya. Odyssey iv. 81. 2 On the coasts of the Mediterranean. 3 Strabo intends to say that the ships of Menelaus were not constructed so as to be capable of being taken to pieces, and carried on the backs of the sailors, as those of the Ethiopians were. 4 Having mentioned the Phoenicians, amongst whom the Sidonians are comprised, he certainly would not have enumerated these latter as a separate people. 5 That is to say, that he made the entire circuit of Africa, starting from Cadiz, and doubling the Cape of Good Hope. Such was the opinion of Crates, who endeavoured to explain all the expressions of Homer after mathematical hypotheses. If any one were to inquire how Menelaus, who was wandering about the Mediterranean, could have come into Ethiopia, Crates would answer, that Menelaus left the Mediterranean and entered the Atlantic, whence he could easily travel by sea into Ethiopia. In this he merely followed the hypothesis of the mathematicians, who said that the inhabited earth in all its southern portion was traversed by the Atlantic Ocean, and the other seas contiguous thereto. 6 The Isthmus of Suez. This isthmus they supposed to be covered by the sea, as Strabo explains further on.
