DISCOVERY 



211 



planted them in the neighbouring cities. Clearly his 

 army got to know the valley of Lake Trogitis very 

 thoroughly. About 6 B.C. Quirinius returned to 

 Rome, where he was honoured as a conqueror, and no 

 doubt many of his officers accompanied him. Ovid, 

 who moved in the best society, would have ample 

 opportunity of hearing the story of Lake Trogitis. 



Strangely enough, we can prove a good knowledgr 

 of the topography of Lake Trogitis in the case of at 

 least one Roman officer. It has always puzzled those 

 students of Strabo who know the country he is describ- 

 ing that he twice makes reference to Lake Trogitis. 

 without being aware that on both occasions he is 

 referring to the same lake. Strabo travelled widely 

 in Asia Minor, and in the first of the two passages he 

 lets fall a hint which shows us the route by which he 

 crossed Lycaonia. He mentions the city Savatra, 

 where the wells are so deep that you buy water at so 

 much a bucket, and the sheep are fat and fleecy — 

 obviously an eyewitness account, proving that he had 

 passed by Savatra, and therefore along the northern 

 branch of the Syrian Highway, which does not touch 

 Iconium. But he is quite explicit on the point himself. 

 He goes on to say, " and in that region lie Lakes 

 Caralis and Trogitis, and somewhere hereabouts 

 Iconium " — evidently he had not been to Iconium or 

 the lakes. Now this is strange, for a few pages farther 

 on he gives us an admirably e.xact description of the 

 military topography of the vaUey of Trogitis. He is 

 now describing the Homanadensian War, and says 

 that it was fought in a region of crags and precipices 

 surrounding a fertile plain, divided into several canyons, 

 and defended on all sides by mountains. This is 

 obviously the description of a military eyewitness, 

 and Ramsay acutety discerned that Strabo got it from 

 one of Quirinius' officers, and used it without being 

 aware that it referred to Lake Trogitis which he had 

 already mentioned. 



If information regarding Lake Trogitis was accessible 

 to Strabo (wherever he wrote ; there is doubt on the 

 point), it was accessible to Ovid in Rome when he was 

 collecting materials for his Metamorphoses. We have 

 now seen that Lake Trogitis — that mysterious lake 

 which accords so well with Ovid's story — was the one 

 lake in Asia Minor which is certain to have been much 

 talked of in Rome after the year 6 B.C. And we have 

 seen that Ovid's story of Philemon and 3aucis — an 

 eyewitness story — is a genuine Anatolian legend, 

 answering to every test of local veracity that we can 

 apply to it. I venture to think that few cases whicli 

 have been made out for an ancient literary origin are 

 more substantial. 



But this is not all. So far I have set out the case for 

 the location of Ovid's legend at Lake Trogitis as it 

 can be estabUshed by independent witnesses. One 



day in 1909 our party visited the lake, and in the even- 

 ing (to avoid the mosquitoes) we rode up the long slope 

 to the high ledge which overlooks the lake on the east. 

 By such trivial considerations is discovery often 

 guided. We passed the night in a village which had 

 already been visited by the American Sterrett, who 

 found evidence that it was one of the villages of the 

 Homanadeis, called Sedasa. Near Sedasa we were 

 fortunate enough to find an inscription which told us 

 that on this ledge, in the Greek and Roman periods, 

 there had stood a temple of Jupiter and Mercury.^ 



The writer's realisation of the bearing of this dis- 

 covery on Ovid's story has followed from Ramsay's - 

 brilliant reconstruction of the topography of the 

 Homanadensian War, recently published. Its bearing 

 on another story told of this neighbourhood was plain 

 to us at once. One of the series of garrison cities 

 founded by Quirinius to control the Pisidians, and the 

 nearest of the whole series to Lake Trogitis, was 

 Lystra. Lystra was visited some fifty years later by 

 Paul and Barnabas, and there Paul healed a lame 

 man. " And when the people saw what Paul had 

 done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech 

 of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the 

 likeness of men. And they called Barnabas Jupiter, 

 and Paul Mercurius." 



For the story of Philemon and Baucis see Ovid's Metamor- 

 phoses, viii, 11. 611-724; trans, by F. J. Miller in the Loeb 

 Classics. (Heinemann.) 



The British Association 



A Retrospect' 



To many people the British Association still conjures 

 up an image of the tame scientist, a curious kind of 

 fellow who may be suffered to live, but who in life may 

 be safely ignored. It is well known that this is no 

 longer a true image, but once it was ; and it e.xists 

 to-day because it is an inheritance of tlie past. In 

 1831 when the British Association was founded the 

 scientist was indeed a tame scientist, a harmless 

 curiosity, not only in England but wherever he 

 flourished. A remark by a lounger in a Hamburg 

 cafe in 1830 that a scientist was passing up the street 

 led to an animated scene of which we have a record. 

 Immediately after it was made there was a " hustling 

 and a justling, a knocking over of chairs and tables, 

 and a scrambling for hats, as everyone hurried to the 

 door to see what the animal was like, and if it walked 



' Published by the writer in Classical Review, 1910, pp. 76 B., 

 and Expositor, July 1910, pp. i ff. 



^ Journal of Roman Studies, vii. pp. 229 £f. 



^ The British Association for the Advancement of Science. 

 A Retrospect, 1831-1921. By O. J. R. Howarth, O.B.E., M.A. 

 (London : The British Association, ys. 6d.} 



