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ἀπέπεμψε. On this famous voyage cf. Bunbury, i. 289 seq., 317 (who leaves the question open), E. J. Webb, E. H. R., Jan. 1907 (strongly adverse), and H. Berger, pp. 62-5, who formerly rejected the story, but now ‘reserves a final judgement till circumstances are more favourable’. The arguments for its truth are: (1) The time is adequate. (2) The currents would be favourable all the way, while on the east coast the voyage would be assisted by the north monsoon, and in the west by the south trade-wind. (3) The circumstance disbelieved by H. is a strong confirmation; the sun (not ‘the sunrise’) in the southern hemisphere would actually be ‘on the right’, so long as they sailed west, and from the Equator to the Cape of Good Hope the course would be south-west and then west, while on the return journey it would be slightly northwest. (4) The voyage was undertaken for a practical purpose, to facilitate communication between Mediterranean and Red Seas; as its result was useless for this purpose it was forgotten, just as the discovery of America by the Northmen in the eleventh century was forgotten till the nineteenth. On the other hand: (1) Later geographers rejected the story, e.g. Posidonius (Strabo, 98), Strabo (ib.), Polybius (iii. 37); the last-named doubted if the sea were continuous round Africa, and Aristotle (Meteor. ii. 1, 354 a) also denied its continuity. (2) It is strange that H. tells no stories of the marvels of the South, of the change of seasons, &c. [But this argument is of little value.] (3) The change in the position of the sun was an easy guess for any one who had seen the vertical sun at Syene. (4) Exaggeration was easy; so the voyage of Hanno, who perhaps reached as far as Sierra Leone (Bunbury, i. 318 seq.), is represented by Pliny (ii. 67. 169) as having been extended to Arabia. (But Pliny's inaccurate and contradictory statements are no parallel to H.'s plain and straightforward narrative.) On the whole it seems best to accept the story, as Meyer (iii. 60) unhesitatingly does. In 1906 two scarabs were communicated to the French Academy, which professed to commemorate this circumnavigation; it was soon shown, however, by the Berlin Egyptologists that they were forgeries. τὴν βορηίην: the Mediterranean; for the ‘Pillars’ cf. ii. 33. 3 n.
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