Note 185 — Chapter III · THE EXODUS OUT OF EGYPT

The event was first recorded by Kallisthenes, and Plutarch (Alex. 17) states that ‘many historians’ had described it. Arrian (i. 27) alludes to it, and Menander introduced a scoffing reference to the miracle in one of his plays. The actual facts are given by Strabo (Geog. xiv. 3, 9), who says that near Phasêlis Mount Klimax juts out into the sea, but that in calm weather a road runs round its base on the seaward side. If the wind rises, however, the road is submerged by the waves. Alexander ventured to march along it while still covered by the sea, and though the water was up to the waists of the soldiers, passed safely through it, the wind not being very strong. His success came to be regarded as a miracle, and the miraculous passage of the sea by his army is narrated with many embellishments in the fragment of an unknown historian in a lexicon discovered by Papadopoulos in 1892.