nai.] Strabo, i. 3, Sec. 13.]

[Footnote 341: Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i.
p. 644.]

[Footnote 342: Strabo, ii. 3, Sec. 4; xvii. 3, Sec. 1.]

[Footnote 343: [Greek: Kathaper de kai tes Asias kai tes
Libyes, katho synaptousin allelais peri ten Aithiopian, oudeis
echei legein atrekos heos ton kath' hemas kairon, poteron
epeiros esti kata to syneches ta pros ten mesembrian, e
thalatte periechetai.] Polybius, iii. 38.]

[Footnote 344: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 15.]

[Footnote 345: See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 264.]

[Sidenote: Story of the Phoenician voyage, in the time of Necho.]

These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took no heed of the story told to
Herodotus of the circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician squadron at
some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt (610-595 B. C.).[346] The
Phoenician ships were said to have sailed from the Red Sea and to have
returned through the Mediterranean in the third year after starting. In
each of the two autumn seasons they stopped and sowed grain and waited
for it to ripen, which in southern Africa would require ten or twelve
weeks.[347] On their return to Egypt they declared ("I for my part do
not believe them," says Herodotus, "but perhaps others may") that in
thus sailing from east to west around Africa they had the sun upon their
right hand. About this alleged voyage there has been a good deal of
controversy.[348] No other expedition in any wise comparable to it for
length and difficulty can be cited from ancient history, and a critical
scholar is inclined to look with suspicion upon all such accounts of
unique and isolated events. As we have not the details of the story, it
is impossible to give it a satisfactory critical examination. The
circumstance most likely to convince us of its truth is precisely that
which dear old Herodotus deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to
the north of the mariners, is something that could hardly have been
imagined by people familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is
therefore almost certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the
equator.[349] But that is as far as inference can properly carry us; for
our experience of the uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough
to suggest that such an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour
into the story told, more than a century after the