the Hellenes would at some time suffer: for
hearing that the whole land of the Hellenes has rain and is not watered
by rivers as theirs is, they said that the Hellenes would at some time
be disappointed of a great hope and would suffer the ills of famine.
This saying means that if the god 22 shall not send them rain, but shall
allow drought to prevail for a long time, the Hellenes will be destroyed
by hunger; for they have in fact no other supply of water to save them
except from Zeus alone.

14. This has been rightly said by the Egyptians with reference to
the Hellenes: but now let me tell how matters are with the Egyptians
themselves in their turn. If, in accordance with what I before said,
their land below Memphis (for this is that which is increasing) shall
continue to increase in height according to the same proportion as in
past time, assuredly those Egyptians who dwell here will suffer famine,
if their land shall not have rain nor the river be able to go over their
fields. It is certain however that now they gather in fruit from the
earth with less labour than any other men and also with less than the
other Egyptians; for they have no labour in breaking up furrows with a
plough nor in hoeing nor in any other of those labours which other men
have about a crop; but when the river has come up of itself and watered
their fields and after watering has left them again, then each man sows
his own field and turns into it swine, and when he has trodden the
seed into the ground by means of the swine, after that he waits for the
harvest; and when he has threshed the corn by means of the swine, then
he gathers it in.

15. If we desire to follow the opinions of the Ionians as regards Egypt,
who say that the Delta alone is Egypt, reckoning its sea-coast to be
from the watch-tower called of Perseus to the fish-curing houses of
Pelusion, a distance of forty schoines, and counting it to extend inland
as far as the city of Kercasoros, where the Nile divides and runs to
Pelusion and Canobos, while as for the rest of Egypt, they assign it
partly to Libya and partly to Arabia,--if, I say, we should follow this
account, we should thereby declare that in former times the Egyptians
had no land to live in; for, as we have seen, their Delta at any rate
is alluvial, and has appeared (so to speak) lately, as the Egyptians
themselves say and as my opinion is. If then at the first there was no
land for them to live in, why did they waste th