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βόες ἄγριοι τῶν ... ἐστὶ τὰ ἐς Ἕλληνας φοιτέοντα. The wild ox (βόνασος) of Aristot. Hist. An 9. 45= 630A there located in Paionia. The notice of the trade in horns is suggestive. The Greeks bought them rather for use than for ornament (inter alia, as drinking vessels? cp. Aristot. l.c.). φοιτέειν of commercial imports, 3. 115.
οὖρος δὲ τοῖσι λέουσι. Hdt.'s geographical limits for the lion are interesting. He does not of course deny the existence of the lion in Asia and Libya (4. 191). He is dealing here simply with the European lion, which he confines to the area between the Nestos and the Acheloos. How far south the lion wanders he does not clearly say, but he seems vaguely to think of the Nestos and the Acheloos, of Abdera and Akarnania, as due E. and W. of each other, or, we might say, in the same parallel of latitude. Perhaps they were so represented on the Ioniau maps of Hekataios and Anaximandros (cp. 5. 49). The eastern term of Europe, beyond the Nestos, is here problematic. Hdt. can hardly be thinking of a Europe extending indefinitely to the East, as in 4. 42 (probably a later passage in composition). Stein suggests the Pontos as the limit; but why not the conventional limit of the Ionians, viz. the Tanais? δι᾽ Ἀβδήρων (=διὰ τῆς Ἀβδηριτῶν Pausan. l.c.) does not contradict. c. 107 supra, where the Nestos flows κατὰ Ἄβδηρα. The city name may stand for the district. Stein cps. ἐς Μίλητον ἑσέβαλε 1. 15. Cp. 9. 17.
τῆς ἔμπροσθε Εὐρώπης indicates, as Rawlinson remarks, that “this part of the work was written in Asia,” or taken from an Asianic source (Hekataios)? The former inference would point to its early composition.
ἴδοι τις ἂν λέοντα: it was long since Peloponnesian Tartarins had seen live lions in their own land. Even the Mykenaian lions and wild oxen may be ‘Thracian.’ One need not suppose from this formula, or pbrase, that Hdt. had been looking for lions, or had even been in European Greece, before writing.
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