62 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2>"» S. VI. 134., July 24. '58. 



alone and half dead in a ship. By the king's 

 command, the Indian was taught Greek ; where- 

 upon he offered to steer a ship to India : the 

 voyage was made under the guidance of this 

 Indian, and Eudoxus went out and returned with 

 the ship ; but the king took away all the precious 

 stones which he brought back. In the following 

 reign of Queen Cleopatra (117—89 n. c.) Eu- 

 doxus was sent on a second voyage to India 

 with a larger expedition ; but on his return he 

 was carried by adverse winds beyond Ethiopia, 

 along the eastern coast of Africa. Having landed 

 at different places, he communicated with the in- 

 habitants, and wrote down some of their words. 

 He here met with a prow of a ship, saved from a 

 wreck, with a figure of a horse cut in it ; and 

 having heard that it was a part of a vessel which 

 had come from the west, he brought it away. 

 On his return to Egypt, he found that Cleo- 

 patra had been succeeded by her son (Ptolemy 

 Soter II. Lathyrus, 89 — 81 B.C.), who again de- 

 prived him of all his profits in consequence of an 

 accusation of embezzlement. Eudoxus showed the 

 prow which he had brought with him to the mer- 

 chants in the harbour ; they immediately recog- 

 nised it as belonging to a ship of Gadeira ; and 

 one ship-captain identified it as having formed 

 part of a vessel which had sailed along the western 

 coast of Africa beyond the river Lixus, and had 

 never returned. Eudoxus hence perceived that 

 the circumnavigation of Africa was possible ; he 

 then took with him all his money, and sailed 

 along the coast of Italy and Gaul, touching at 

 Dicsearchia (or Puteoli), Massilia, and other ports, 

 on his way to Gadeira ; at all which places he 

 proclaimed his discovery, and collected subscrip- 

 tions : by these means he procured a large ship 

 and two boats, and having taken on board some 

 singing boys, physicians, and other professional 

 persons, he steered his course through the Straits 

 for India. After some accidents in the voyage, 

 they reached a part of the African coast, where 

 theyfoUhd men who used the same words as those 

 which he had written down in his former course 

 from the Red Sea ; whence he perceived that the 

 tribes which he had reached from the west were 

 of the same race as those which he had reached 

 from the east, and thai they were conterminous 

 with the kingdom of Bogus (Mauretania). Eu- 

 doxus, having ascertained this fact, turned back 

 his ship ; when he had arrived at Mauretania, he 

 attempted to persuade King Bogus to send out 

 another expedition. The final results of this 

 attempt were not, however, known to Posidonius. 

 (Strab. ii. 3, 4.) The King Bogus here men- 

 tioned is either the King of "Western Mauretania, 

 who, with Bocchus, was confirmed by Julius 

 Cassar in 49 b. c, or he is an earlier king of the 

 same name. The Latin writers call him Bogud ; 

 Die Cassius writes his name Boyoias. Pliny says 



that the two divisions of Mauretania, Eastern and 

 Western, were respectively named after their 

 kings Bocchus and Bogud. (" Namque diu regum 

 nomina obtinuere, ut Bogudiana appellaretur ex- 

 tima ; itemque Bocchi, qu» nunc Csesariensis." 

 N. H. V. 1.) Compare Strab. xvii. 3. 7. 



The voyage of Eudoxus was likewise reported 

 by Cornelius Nepos, who stated that, in his own 

 time, Eudoxus, in order to escape from Ptolemy 

 Lathurus, had sailed from the Red Sea, and had 

 reached Gades (Mela, iii. 9. ; Plin. N. H. ii. 67.). 

 The historian Caslius Antipater, who lived about 

 120 B.C., also declared that he had seen a man 

 who had made the voyage from Spain to ^Ethiopia 

 for commercial purposes (Plin. lb. repeated by 

 Marcianus Capella, lib. vi.). 



Before examining these accounts in detail, it is 

 necessary to ascertain the notion formed by the 

 ancients respecting the geography of Africa. 



Strabo says, that although the world is divided 

 into the three continents of Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, the division is unequal : for that Europe 

 and Africa put together are not equal in size to 

 Asia; and that Africa appears to be smaller even 

 than Europe. He describes Africa as forming a 

 right-angled triangle ; the base being the distance 

 from Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules ; the other 

 side of the right-angle being the line of the Nile 

 to the extremity of .Ethiopia, and the hypotenuse 

 being the line connecting the latter point with the 

 Pillars of Hercules (xviii. 3. 1.). 



Pillars of 

 Hercules. 



Mediterranean. 



Egypt. 



■Co, 



'«*t 



'"'4?, 



■■"•«. 



Nile. 



.(TEtlliopia, 



Elsewhere he likens Africa to a trapezium, 

 which figure is formed by supposing that the 

 eastern extremity of the south-western coast is 

 parallel to the northern coast (ii. 5. 33.) 



Mela has a similar notion of the form of Africa. 

 He says that its length from east to west is greater 

 than its width from north to south ; and that its 

 greatest width is the part where it adjoins the 

 Nile (i. 4.) 



As the ancients believed that the Northern 

 Ocean swept across the back of Europe, from the 

 vicinity of the Caspian and the Paius Majotis, 

 along the shores of Scythia, Germany, and Gaul, 

 to the Pillars of Hercules — thus suppressing the 

 Scandinavian peninsula and the chief part of 

 Russia — so they believed that the Southern 

 Ocean extended in a direct line from the Pillars 

 of Hercules to the extremity of iEthiopia beyond 

 Egypt ; and hence they called the Negro tribes 

 on the western coast of Africa .Ethiopians, and 



