Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/194

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180
STRABO.
BOOK II.

also loses something in breadth. This we know from those who have sailed round its eastern and western points. They inform us that the island called Taprobana[p 1] is much to the south of India, but that it is nevertheless inhabited, and is situated opposite to the island of the Egyptians and the Cinnamon Country, as the temperature of their atmospheres is similar. On the other side the country about the embouchure of the Hyrcanian Sea[1] is farther north than the farthest Scythians who dwell beyond India, and Ierna still more so. It is likewise stated of the country beyond the Pillars of Hercules, that the most western point of the habitable earth is the promontory of the Iberians named the Sacred Promontory.[p 2] It lies nearly in a line with Gades, the Pillars of Hercules, the Strait of Sicily, and Rhodes;[2] for they say that the horologes accord, as also the periodical winds, and the duration of the longest nights and days, which consist of fourteen and a half equinoctial hours. From the coast of Gades and Iberia … is said to have been formerly observed.[3]

Posidonius relates, that from the top of a high house in a town about 400 stadia distant from the places mentioned, he perceived a star which he believed to be Canopus, both in consequence of the testimony of those who having proceeded a little to the south of Iberia affirmed that they could perceive it, and also of the tradition preserved at Cnidus; for the observatory of Eudoxus, from whence he is reported to have viewed Canopus, is not much higher than these houses; and Cnidus is under the same parallel as Rhodes, which is likewise that of Gades and its sea-coast.

15. Sailing thence, Libya lies to the south. Its most western portions project a little beyond Gades; it afterwards

  1. ↑ The island of Ceylon.
  2. ↑ Cape St. Vincent.
  1. ↑ Strabo supposed the Hyrcanian or Caspian Sea communicated with the northern ocean.
  2. ↑ Cape St. Vincent is north of Cadiz by 30′ 30″, north of the Strait of Gibraltar, or Pillars of Hercules, by 1° 2′, south of the Strait of Messina by 1° 10′, and north of Rhodes by 33′ 30″.
  3. ↑ Casaubon conjectures that the words τὸν Κάνωβον originally occupied the space of the lacuna. The passage would then stand thus—From the coast of Cadiz and Iberia the star Canopus is said to have been formerly observed. Groskurd rejects this, and proposes to read τοὺς πλησιαιτάτους τοῦ Κανώβου ἀστέρας, “the stars nearest to Canopus.” But this too is not certain, and the passage is otherwise evidently corrupt.
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