Geography (Geographicae Enarrationis Libri Octo)

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by five and one-third parts, as it is distant from the other side of the equinoctial line, and under a similar quality of cold, dwell the Scythians and Sarmatians, who inhabit the northern parts of the Maeotian Sea of Azov swamp. Therefore, he himself reduces the number of stated stadia units of distance to a sum half as large, that is, to 12,000 stadia, which is almost how far the winter tropic is distant from the equinoctial. He adds that the only causes for this contraction are deviations from direct paths and irregularities in the journeys, leaving aside the better and more direct routes, from which not only is a reduction necessary, but also that it be brought to such a small number. For first, concerning the journey from Garamas to Aethiopia, he says that Septimius Flaccus, who had served as a soldier in Libya, arrived from the Garamantes to the Aethiopians after having proceeded to the south for the space of three months. Julius Maternus, however, from Leptis Magna, when the Garamantes had invaded the Aethiopians from Garama, arrived in four months at Agisymba, a region of the Aethiopians, having directed his path always to the south, a place where rhinoceroses gather. Both of these accounts are incredible in themselves, and because the inner Aethiopians are not separated from the Garamantes to such an extent that they are separated by a three-month journey. Since they are rather the same Aethiopians, and they have the same king as the others. And because it is utterly ridiculous that an incursion of a king against his subjects was made over one single distance, namely from north to south. Since those peoples extend most widely on both sides, both to the east and to the west, and he made no delays anywhere worthy of mention. For this reason, it is certain that those men reported false information, or spoke of the south in the way the indigenous people are accustomed to speak of the south, or they misused the term for the south-west wind, because it is more well-known.

CHAPTER IX.

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AFTERWARDS, concerning the navigation between Aromata and Rapta, he speaks of a certain Diogenes, who had sailed into India and had returned a second time, when he had sailed near Aromata from the north

having been seized, and when he had kept Troglodytica on his right, he arrived in twenty-five days at the marshes from which the Nile flows, to which the Rapta promontory is a little further south. A certain Theophilus, from those who are accustomed to sail into Azania, departed from Rapta and, with a southern wind, arrived at Aromata on the twentieth day, but neither of them disclosed how many days that navigation was. But Theophilus said he arrived there on the twentieth day, and Diogenes said that he sailed past Troglodytica in twenty-five days, reporting only how many days they had sailed, not at all noting how long that navigation was, on account of the irregularity and change of winds in such a long time. Nor whether that whole navigation had been made to the north or to the south. But Diogenes reported that he was driven only by the north wind. Theophilus reported that he had sailed only with the south wind, but neither said that the rest of the navigation had maintained the same course. For it is by no means credible that those ships were driven by the same wind for so many days, and therefore the distance that Diogenes traveled in twenty-five days between Aromata and the marshes, by which the Rapta promontory is further south, Theophilus covered in twenty days from Rapta to Aromata, a much greater distance. And Theophilus supposed the navigation of a day and a night to be 1,000 stadia, to which matter although he himself agrees, he says nevertheless that the navigation from Rapta to the Prassum promontory, which is of many days, is supposed to be only 5,000 stadia from Dioscorus, when, as is proper, the winds change easily under the equinoctial, and therefore according to him, even the transits of the sun toward the oblique are placed as faster. For these reasons, therefore, it would have been more fitting that he did not place faith in the multitude of days. And therefore also, which is the most manifest of all, that he places the Aethiopians and the gathering of rhinoceroses opposite the frigid zone, when reason itself dictates that all things which are placed under the same quality of air are similar, whether they are plants or animals, and that they imitate the likenesses of the sky which are under the same parallels, or those which are equally distant from both poles. For this reason Marinus contracted the distance only as far as the winter tropic, with no reasonable cause given for the quantity of the contraction. For if one were to accept both the number of days and the series of travels, as he himself did, and he were to preserve the quantity of only the daily stadia