BOOK VI. XXXV. 181-184 



where there is a cataract of the Nile the noise of 

 which afFects people dwelling ncar it with deafness ; 

 he also sacked the town of Napata. The farthest 

 point he reached was 870 niiles from Syene ; but 

 nevertheless it was not the arms of llome that made 

 the country a desert : Ethiopia was worn out by 

 alternate periods of dominance and subjection in a 

 series of wars ^nth Egj^pt, having been a famous 

 and powcrful country even down to the Trojan 

 wars, when Memnon was king ; and the stories about 

 Andromeda show that it dominated Syria and the 

 coasts of the Mediterranean in the time of King 

 Cepheus. 



Simihn-ly there have also been various reports as 

 to the dimensions of the country, which were first 

 given by Dahon, who sailed up a long way beyond 

 Meroe, and then by Aristocreon and Bion and 

 Basilis, and also by the younger Simonides, who 

 stayed at Mci-oe for five years while writing his 

 account of Ethiopia. Furtlicr, Timosthenes, who com- 

 manded the navies of Philadelphus, has stated the 

 distance from Syene to Meroe as sixty days' journey, 

 without specifying the mileage per die?n, while 

 Eratosthencs gives it as 625 miles and Artemidorus 

 as 600 miles ; and Sebosus says that from the extreme 

 point of Egypt to Meroe is 1672 miles, whereas thc 

 authors last mentioncd giveit as 1250 " miles. But all 

 this discrepancy has recently been ended, inasmuch 

 as the expcdition sent by Ncro to explore the 

 country liave reported that the distance from Syene 

 to Meroe is 945 miles, made up as follows : froni 

 Syene to Holy Mulberry 54 miles, from there to 

 Tama 72 miles through the district of thc Ethiopian 

 Euonymites, to Primi 120 miles, Acina 64 miles, Pitara 



475 



