Note 997 — Chapter XCVII · SICILIAN AND ITALIAN GREEKS. — AGATHOKLES.

From an incidental allusion in Strabo (xvii. p. 826), we learn this fact—that Ophellas had surveyed the whole coast of Northern Africa, to the straits of Gibraltar, and round the old Phenician settlements on the western coast of modern Morocco. Some eminent critics (Grosskurd among them) reject the reading in Strabo—ἀπὸ τοῦ Ὀφέλα (or Ὀφέλλα) περιπλοῦ, which is sustained by a very great preponderance of MSS. But I do not feel the force of their reasons; and the reading which they would substitute has nothing to recommend it. In my judgment, Ophellas, ruling in the Kyrenaica and indulging aspirations towards conquest westward, was a man both likely to order, and competent to bring about, an examination of the North African coast. The knowledge of this fact may have induced Agathokles to apply to him.