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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1884.
months and 14 days, since such a march could not and Sèra lying farther south than the parallel possibly have been accomplished without halting. through the Hellespont) it would appear but The necessity for halting would be still more reasonable in this case also to diminish by not urgent when the march was one which occupied less than a half the distance altogether traver7 months. $ 6. But the former march was ac- bed in the 7 months' journey, computed at 36,200 complished even by the king of the country him- stadia, and so let us reduce the number of self, who would naturally use every precaution,
stadia which these represent at the equator and the weather besides was all throughout by one-half only, and we thus obtain (22,625) most propitious. But the route from the Stone stadia or 451 degrees.18 $ 2. For it would Tower to Sêra is exposed to violent storms, for be absurd, and show a want of proper judgas he himself assumes, it lies under the parallels ment, if, when reason enjoins us to curof the Hellespont and Byzantium," so that tail the length of both routes we should the progress of travellers would be frequently follow the injunction with respect to the interrupted. $ 7. Now it was by means of African route, to the length of which there commerce this became known, for Marinos tells is the obvious objection, vis., the species of us that one Maës, a Makedonian, called also animals in the neighbourhood of Agisymba, Titianus, who was a merchant by hereditary which cannot bear to be transplanted from profession, had written abook giving the their own climate to another, while we refuse measurement in question, which he had obtained to follow the injunction with regard to the not by visiting the Sères in person, but from route from the Stone Tower, because there is the agents whom he had sent to them. But not a similar objection to its length, seeing that Marinos seems to have distrusted accounts the temperature all along this route is uniform, hoxrowed from traders. $ 8. In giving, for quite independantly of its being longer or instanse, on the authority of Philémon, the shorter. Just as if one who reasons according length of Ivernia (Ireland) at a 20 days' journey, to the principles of philosophy, could not, he refuses to accept this estimate, which was unless the case were otherwise clear, arrive at got, he tells us, from merchants, whom he a sound conclusion." reprobates as a class of men too much engrossed $ 3. With regard again to the first of the two with their own proper business to care about Asiatic routes, that, I mean which leads from ascertaining the truth, and who also from mere the Euphrates to the Stone Tower, the estimate vanity frequently exaggerated distances. Sol of 870 schceni must be reduced to 800 only. or too, in the case before us, it is manifest that 24,000 stadia, on account of deviations. § 4. We nothing in the course of the 7 months' journey may accept as correct his figures for the entire was thought worthy either of record or remem- distance as the several stages had been frebrance by the travellers except the prodigious quently traversed and had therefore been time taken to perform it.
measured with accuracy. But that there CAP. 12.
were numerous deviations is evident from § 1. Taking all this into consideration, to- what Marinos himself tells us. $ 5. For the gether with the fact that the route does not lie route from the passage of the Euphrates at along one and the same parallel (the Stone Tower Hierapolis through Mesopotamia to the being situated near the parallel of Byzantium, Tigris, and the route thence through the
expedition against the Ethiopians, and their combined armies after marching for four months towards the south,' arrived at & country inhabited by Ethiopians, called Agisymba, in which rhinocerobes abounded."Bunbury, Hist. of Ane. Geog., vol. II, pp. 522-3.
1. Lat. 40° 1-Lat. of T&sh-kurghån.
13 36,200 stadia along the parallel of Rhodes are equivalent according to Ptolemy's system to 45,250 stadia along the equator, and this sum reduced by a half gives the figures in the text.
* Marinos was aware that Agisymba lay in a hot climate, from the fact that its neighbourhood was reported to be a favourite resort for rhinocerobes, and he was thus compelled to reduce his first estimate of its distanon. which would have placed it in far too cold a latitude
for these animals, which are found only in hot regions. But no such palpable necessity compelled him to reduce his estimate of the distance from the Stone Tower to the Metropolis of the Sères, for here the route had an equable temperature, as it did not recede from the equator but lay almost uniformly along the same phrallel of latitude. A little reflexion, however, might have shown Marinos that his enormous estimate of the distance to the Serio Metropolis required reduction as much as the distance to Aginymba, though such a cogent argument that which was based on the habitat of the rhinoceros was not in this instance available. It is on the very face of it absurd to suppose that a ravan oould have marched through a difficult and unknown country for 7 months consecutively at an average progress of 170 stadia (about 20 miles) daily.
