Note 547 — Chapter XVIII · PHENICIANS.

Strabo, iii, p. 170. Sataspês (the unsuccessful Persian circumnavigator of Libya, mentioned just above) had violated the daughter of another Persian nobleman, Zopyrus son of Megabyzus, and Xerxês had given orders that he should be crucified for this act; his mother begged him off by suggesting that he should be condemned to something “worse than death”—the circumnavigation of Libya (Herod. iv, 43). Two things are to be remarked in respect to his voyage: 1. He took with him a ship and seamen from Egypt; we are not told that they were Phenician: probably no other mariners than Phenicians were competent to such a voyage,—and even if the crew of Sataspês had been Phenicians, he could not offer rewards for success equal to those at the disposal of Nekôs. 2. He began his enterprise from the strait of Gibraltar instead of from the Red sea; now it seems that the current between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa sets very strongly towards the cape of Good Hope, so that while it greatly assists the southerly voyage, on the other hand, it makes return by the same way very difficult. (See Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. i, p. 343.) Strabo, however, affirms that all those who had tried to circumnavigate Africa, both from the Red sea and from the strait of Gibraltar, had been forced to return without success (i, p. 32), so that most people believed that there was a continuous isthmus which rendered it impracticable to go by sea from the one point to the other: he is himself, however, persuaded that the Atlantic is σύῤῥους on both sides of Africa, and therefore that circumnavigation is possible. He as well as Poseidonius (ii, pp. 98-100) disbelieved the tale of the Phenicians sent by Nekôs. He must have derived his complete conviction, that Libya might be circumnavigated, from geographical theory, which led him to contract the dimensions of that continent southward,—inasmuch as the thing in his belief never had been done, though often attempted. Mannert (Geog. d. G. und Röm. i, p. 24) erroneously says that Strabo and others founded their belief on the narrative of Herodotus.

It is worth while remarking that Strabo cannot have read the story in Herodotus with much attention, since he mentions Darius as the king who sent the Phenicians round Africa, not Nekôs; nor does he take notice of the remarkable statement of these navigators respecting the position of the sun. There were doubtless many apocryphal narratives current in his time respecting attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to circumnavigate Africa, as we may see by the tale of Eudoxus (Strabo, ii, 98; Cornel. Nep. ap. Plin. H. N. ii, 67, who gives the story very differently; and Pomp. Mela, iii, 9).