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 Tropic of Hopes

University Press of Florida

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
This page intentionally left blank
 Tropic of Hopes
California, Florida, and the Selling
of American Paradise, 1869–1929

H e n r y K n i g ht

University Press of Florida

Gainesville/Tallahassee/Tampa/Boca Raton
Pensacola/Orlando/Miami/Jacksonville/Ft. Myers/Sarasota
 Copyright 2013 by Henry Knight
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter
Natures Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship
Council (FSC). It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer
waste and is acid free.

This book may be available in an electronic edition.

18 17 16 15 14 13 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Knight, Henry, 1982–
Tropic of hopes : California, Florida, and the selling of American paradise, 1869–1929 /
Henry Knight.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: An examination of how land barons, railroad kingpins, and journalists, among
others, “sold” Americans on the idea of Florida and California as a paradise within reach.
ISBN 978-0-8130-4481-1 (alk. paper)
1. Florida—Economic conditions. 2. California—Economic conditions. 3. Florida—
Population—History. 4. California—Population—History. 5. Florida—Social
conditions. 6. California—Social conditions. I. Title.
HC107.F6K58 2013
330.9759—dc23 2013015086

University Press of Florida

15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
For Rachel
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1
1. “Our” Tropical Lands: Reinventions of California and Florida
after the Civil War 17
2. A Climate for Health and Wealth: The Lure of Tropical
Leisure on American Soil 45
3. The Fruits of Labor: Boosterist Visions of Republican
Renewal and Semi-Tropical Agriculture 81
4. Desert and Swamp: The Conquest of Tropical Nature
in the Progressive Era 117
5. “New Edens of the Saxon Home-Seeker”: Los Angeles,
Miami, and Semi-Tropical Urban Life 155
Conclusion: Beyond America’s Tropic of Hopes 189

Notes 199
Bibliography 237
Index 255
This page intentionally left blank
 Figures

2.1. Promotional image of a palm drive in Los Angeles 53

2.2. Cover of Southern California: A Semi-Tropic Paradise 55
2.3. An 1890s promotional image of California that emphasized healthful
living 63
2.4. Cover of Land of Sunshine: Southern California 64
2.5. Cover of Illustrated Florida 69
2.6. Vistas on the Ocklawaha 74
2.7. Back Cover of Map of the Plant System pamphlet 77
2.8. Cover of Florida East Coast pamphlet 78
3.1. Cover of California, the Cornucopia of the World pamphlet 97
3.2. Inner cover of Semi-Tropical Florida pamphlet 109
4.1. Irrigation in California and Its Results 126
4.2. Part of map and land advertisement of the Semi-Tropic Land and
Water Company 128
4.3. Image promoting irrigation in California 132
4.4. Advertisement for California’s Imperial Valley 136
4.5. A 1902 postcard showing tourism in the Everglades 146
4.6. A 1911 photograph showing drained prairie lands in Florida 149
4.7. Advertisement for reclaimed lands in Florida 151
5.1. Photograph of a “semi-tropic crop” of southern California children 163
5.2. Boosterist image of a “typical” Los Angeles home in semi-tropic
California 166
5.3. Images of “typical” Miami residences 181
5.4. Promotional image from the Miami Chamber of Commerce 184
 Tables

1.1. Total population and population per square mile, California and
Florida, 1840–70 19
2.1. Percent population by gender, California and Florida, 1850–1900 70
5.1. Urban and rural population of California, 1870–1930 160
5.2. Urban and rural population of Florida, 1870–1930 173
 Acknowledgments

I am grateful to many people and institutions that have, in different ways, helped
make this book a reality. First of all, the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research
Council gave me funding to undertake a one-year MPhil in 2006. Without that
financial support or the subsequent three-year grant to complete a DPhil the
research for this book would never have gotten off the ground.
At the University of Sussex, I could not have asked for better supervisors and
mentors than Dr. Clive Webb and Dr. Sue Currell, who together guided and
constantly pushed me to consider new questions. Clive and Sue are experts in
different fields in American studies and history and were an ideal team, helping
me navigate interdisciplinary waters and recognizing the value of a comparative
approach to studying California and Florida. Most important, they shared my
enthusiasm for the project and always made themselves available to talk about
its progress.
From the study’s inception with my discovery as an undergraduate at the
University of California, San Diego, of the colorful and exotic landscapes of
California citrus labels, the body of archival research behind this book evolved
considerably and the output benefited from the work of a number of scholars.
On the research side, Dr. James Cusick, curator of the P. K. Yonge Library of
Florida History at the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida,
went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that I had a very productive
research stay in Gainesville. The archivists at the California State Library and
at the special collections departments at the University of California, Los An-
geles; the University of California, San Diego; and the Bancroft Library at the
University of California, Berkeley, were also universally helpful and friendly.
Thanks are due to all the institutions that have provided permission to reprint
images held in their archives.
xii Acknowledgments

On the output side, Dr. Richard Follett (University of Sussex) and Dr. Mar-
garet Walsh (University of Nottingham) provided a valuable interrogation at
an early stage of this book, as did Dr. Robert Cook (University of Sussex) and
Dr. David Nye (University of Southern Denmark) further down the line. Rich-
ard and Robert form part of a strong faculty of Americanists at Sussex, along
with Dr. Jarod Roll, who enabled me to present a small part of this project at
the Marcus Cunliffe Centre for the Study of the American South. My fellow
postgraduates Kate Nowicki, Roger Johnson, Zoe Hyman, Nadja Janssen, and
Matt Glazebrook critiqued earlier chapters in a supportive workshop. Other
elements of the work received useful feedback at conferences of the British
Association of American Studies and Historians of the Twentieth Century
United States. Finally, I am immensely grateful to the two readers assigned by
the University Press of Florida, whose insightful reviews and suggestions were
extremely helpful.
The University Press of Florida, especially director Meredith Babb, has been
supportive of this work since they first received the proposal. Since then Mer-
edith has walked me through the process of completing a book. Similarly, copy
editor Kate Babbitt has dedicated a great deal of time and ink to improving the
manuscript. Any errors remaining are entirely my own.
However inadequately, I would also like to acknowledge the support of my
mother, Lidia, and my father, Alan. They read passages of this work, but far
more important, they taught me more than anyone else about the value of re-
search and writing—and a few other things besides.
Lastly, my fiancée Rachel has probably heard more about things tropical
than she ever imagined or wanted. She has been with me every step on this
journey, and I am eternally grateful for her support, her patience, and her faith
in me. This book is dedicated to her.
 Introduction

In 1882, a journalist in the Los Angeles Times wrote, “There is no portion of

the United States which presents so interesting a study as that known as the
semi-tropical States.” Southern California and the U.S. South were soon to be
linked by railroad, and the writer explained that “semi-tropic California” and
“the semi-tropic States fringing the Gulf of Mexico” both had a “diversity of
climate, of products, of people and of customs, which is unknown to any other
portion of the habitable globe.” The two regions of “semi-tropic North America”
were both profoundly similar and distinctly different: “In many respects they
could not be more different if an ocean separated, instead of two great oceans
inclosing them. Again, in many other respects, their similarities are so great as
to strike one with the likeness.” One particular comparison stood out. Across
semi-tropic North America, the journalist wrote, “Florida more than any other
of these resembles Southern California.”1
Taking up the comparative theme articulated by the Times writer, this book
traces how, in the decades after the U.S. Civil War, promoters of California
and Florida created new images of those states that emphasized their tropical
qualities. California and Florida were not the only American states to be viewed
this way: Texas and Louisiana were also often described as tropical regions by
boosters and writers.2 However, California and Florida were the states about
which the words “tropical” and “semi-tropical” were used most often in promo-
tions and descriptions. While it lacked a fixed scientific or geographical defini-
tion, the term “semi-tropical” was applied to lands, climate, products (especially
citrus), and peoples that shared qualities with—even though they remained
2 Tropic of Hopes

outside of—the tropics. (“Sub-tropical” was similarly defined as bordering the

tropics). Such references proliferated in the titles of pamphlets promoting im-
migration, horticultural periodicals, and the marketing publications of land
companies and in countless magazine articles, state guides, and exhibitions. In
1890, thousands of visitors to the National Farmers’ Alliance Convention in
Ocala, Florida, attended the town’s promotional “Semi-Tropical Exposition,”
while the Panama-California Exposition, which was held in San Diego in 1915,
prompted the publication of Semi-Tropic California, a book that aimed to con-
firm “that here on the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean is today the garden
spot of the world.”3 At events and in publications, tropical ideas were used to
sell the two states to settlers, tourists, and investors, recasting California and
Florida from unwanted backwaters to renewing “tropics” that offered a range of
hopes for incoming Americans.
The book covers the period from 1869 to 1929, when both southern Califor-
nia and peninsular Florida were fundamentally transformed through promo-
tion and development. In 1869, when the first transnational railroad was com-
pleted, easterners dismissed remote and underpopulated southern California as
part of the Great American Desert and many northern Californians saw that
region of the state as the “cow counties” because of the vast cattle ranches that
had covered the region since the days of the Spanish empire.4 Mining had also
left a legacy of lawlessness that negatively influenced eastern perceptions of the
state. As one migrant to San Francisco wrote, the state was often “looked upon
as a place lawless in the extreme, without any security for life or property—
without any civilized institutions; . . . in fact, it is believed to be a place as much to
be shunned and avoided as the deserts of Africa, and about as soon to be thought
of with any view to settlement and a future home.”5 That same year, Florida
suffered also; northerners perceived it as a former Confederate state that had
just been readmitted to the Union. The peninsula was also viewed as a swampy
“wasteland.” As travel writer George Canning Hill wrote in 1888, “Of Florida
the people of . . . the North really knew nothing until long after the close of the
war of the sections. To the most of us it was as a forbidden land,” associated “in
the common imagination” with the Everglades, the bloody Seminole wars, and
“ever moist lowlands . . . heavy with the poisons of malaria.”6 In 1869, California
and Florida, the southwestern and southeastern corners of the nation, appeared
foreign, even “forbidden” zones to northeasterners.
In the following decades, however, the two states underwent major trans-
formations, eventually becoming leading destinations for American tourists,
settlers, and investors. By the 1920s, southern California and south Florida were
drawing many thousands of visitors each year and were experiencing real estate
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
point (pp. 146-173, and Handbuch der Chronol. pp. 215-220). Syncellus might
correctly say—Ἀπὸ Ναβονασάρου τοὺς χρόνους τῆς τῶν ἄστρων παρατηρησέως
Χαλδαῖοι ἠκρίβωσαν (Chronogr. p. 207).
We need not dwell upon the back reckonings of the Chaldæans for periods of
720,000, 490,000, 470,000 years, mentioned by Cicero, Diodorus, and Pliny
(Cicero, De Divin. ii, 46; Diod. ii, 31; Pliny, H. N. vii, 57), and seemingly presented
by Berosus and others as the preface of Babylonian history.
It is to be noted that Ptolemy always cited the Chaldæan observations as
made by “the Chaldæans,” never naming any individual; though in all the other
observations to which he alludes, he is very scrupulous in particularizing the
name of the observer. Doubtless he found the Chaldæan observations registered
just in this manner; a point which illustrates what is said in the text respecting
the collective character of their civilization, and the want of individual
development or prominent genius.
The superiority of the Chaldæan priests to the Egyptian, as astronomical
observers, is shown by the fact that Ptolemy, though living at Alexandria, never
mentions the latter as astronomers, and cites no Egyptian observations while he
cites thirteen Chaldæan observations in the years B. C. 721, 720, 523, 502, 491,
383, 382, 245, 237, 229: the first ten being observations of lunar eclipses; the
last three, of conjunctions of planets and fixed stars (Ideler, Handbuch der
Chronologie, vol. i, Ab. ii, pp. 195-199).

[555] Herodot. ii, 109.

[556] The ancient Ninus or Nineveh was situated on the eastern bank of the
Tigris, nearly opposite the modern town of Mousul or Mosul. Herodotus (i, 193)
and Strabo (xvi, p. 737) both speak of it as being destroyed; but Tacitus (Ann. xii,
13) and Ammian. Marcell. (xviii, 7) mention it as subsisting. Its ruins had been
long remarked (see Thevenot, Voyages, lib. i, ch. xi, p. 176, and Niebuhr, Reisen,
vol. ii, p. 360), but have never been examined carefully until recently by Rich,
Ainsworth, and others: see Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. iii, Abschn. i, s. 45,
pp. 171-221.
Ktêsias, according to Diodorus (ii, 3), placed Ninus or Nineveh on the
Euphrates, which we must presume to be an inadvertence,—probably of Diodorus
himself, for Ktêsias would be less likely than he to confound the Euphrates and
the Tigris. Compare Wesseling ad Diodor. ii, 3, and Bähr ad Ktesiæ Fragm. ii,
Assyr. p. 392.
Mannert (Geographie der Gr. und Röm. part v, c. 14, pp. 439-448) disputes
the identity of these ruins with the ancient city of Ninus or Nineveh, because, if
this had been the fact, Xenophon and the Ten Thousand Greeks must have
passed directly over them in the retreat along the eastern bank of the Tigris
upward: and Xenophon, who particularly notices the deserted cities of Larissa and
Mespila, says nothing of the great ruin of this once flourishing Assyrian capital.
This argument once appeared to me so forcible, that I came to the same negative
conclusion as Mannert, though his conjectures, as to the real site of the city,
never appeared to me satisfactory. But Ritter has removed the difficulty, by
showing that the ruins opposite Mosul exactly correspond to the situation of that
deserted city which Xenophon calls Mespila: the difference of name in this case is
not of very great importance (Ritter, ut sup. p. 175). Consult also Forbiger,
Handbuch der alten Geographie, sect. 96, p. 612.
The situation of Nineveh here pointed out is exactly what we should expect in
reference to the conquests of the Median kings: it lies in that part of Assyria
bordering on Media, and in the course of the conquests which the king Kyaxarês
afterwards extended farther on to the Halys. (See Appendix at the end of this
chapter.)

[557] Herodot. i, 193. Ἡ γῆ τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ὕεται μὲν ὀλίγῳ—while he speaks

of rain falling at Thebes in Egypt as a prodigy, which never happened except just
at the moment when the country was conquered by Cambysês,—οὐ γὰρ δὴ ὕεται
τὰ ἄνω τῆς Αἰγύπτου τὸ παράπαν (iii, 10). It is not unimportant to notice this
distinction between the little rain of Babylonia, and the no rain of Upper Egypt,—
as a mark of measured assertion in the historian from whom so much of our
knowledge of Grecian history is derived.
It chanced to rain hard during the four days which the traveller Niebuhr spent
in going from the ruins of Babylon to Bagdad, at the end of November 1763
(Reisen, vol. ii, p. 292).

[558] Herodot. i, 193; Xenophon, Anab. i, 7, 15; ii, 4, 13-22.

[559] About the date-palms (φοίνικες) in the ancient Babylonia, see

Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii, 6, 2-6; Xenoph. Cyrop. vii, 5, 12; Anab. ii, 3, 15;
Diodor. ii, 53: there were some which bore no fruit, but which afforded good
wood for house-purposes and furniture.
Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and produce of the
soil in Babylonia as Herodotus, though the two hundred-fold, and sometimes
three hundred-fold, which was stated to the latter as the produce of the land in
grain, appears in his statement cut down to fifty-fold, or one hundred-fold (Hist.
Plant. viii, 7, 4).
Respecting the numerous useful purposes for which the date-palm was made
to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and sixty), see Strabo, xiv, p.
742; Ammian. Marcell. xxiv, 3.

[560] Herodot. i, 178, Strabo, xiv, p. 738; Arrian, E. A. vii, 17, 7. Strabo does
not say that it was a stadium in perpendicular height: we may suppose that the
stadium represents the entire distance in upward march from the bottom to the
top. He as well as Arrian say that Xerxês destroyed both the temple of Bêlus and
all the other temples at Babylon (καθεῖλεν, κατέσκαψεν, iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 4); he
talks of the intention of Alexander to rebuild it, and of his directions given to level
new foundations, carrying away the loose earth and ruins. This cannot be
reconciled with the narrative of Herodotus, nor with the statement of Pliny (vi,
30), nor do I believe it to be true. Xerxês plundered the temple of much of its
wealth and ornaments, but that he knocked down the vast building and the other
Babylonian temples, is incredible. Babylon always continued one of the chief cities
of the Persian empire.

[561] What is stated in the text respecting Babylon, is taken almost entirely
from Herodotus: I have given briefly the most prominent points in his interesting
narrative (i, 178-193), which well deserves to be read at length.
Herodotus is in fact our only original witness, speaking from his own
observation and going into details, respecting the marvels of Babylon. Ktêsias, if
his work had remained, would have been another original witness; but we have
only a few extracts from him by Diodorus. Strabo seems not to have visited
Babylon, nor can it be affirmed that Kleitarchus did so. Arrian had Aristobulus to
copy, and is valuable as far as he goes; but he does not enter into many
particulars respecting the magnitude of the city or its appurtenances. Berosus
also, if we possessed his book, would have been an eye-witness of the state of
Babylon more than a century and a half later than Herodotus, but the few
fragments remaining are hardly at all descriptive (see Berosi Fragm. pp. 64-67,
ed. Richter).
The magnitude of the works described by Herodotus naturally provokes
suspicions of exaggeration; but there are good grounds for trusting him, in my
judgment, on all points which fell under his own vision and means of verification,
as distinguished from past facts, on which he could do no more than give what he
heard. He had bestowed much attention on Assyria and its phenomena, as is
evident from the fact that he had written (or prepared to write, if the suspicion be
admissible that the work was never completed,—Fabricius, Biblioth. Græc. ii, 20,
5) a special Assyrian history, which has not reached us (Ἀσσυρίοισι λόγοισι, i,
106-184). He is very precise in the measures of which he speaks; thus having
described the dimensions of the walls in “royal cubits,” he goes on immediately to
tell us how much that measure differs from an ordinary cubit. He designedly
suppresses a part of what he had heard respecting the produce of the Babylonian
soil, from the mere apprehension of not being believed.
To these reasons for placing faith in Herodotus we may add another, not less
deserving of attention. That which seems incredible in the constructions which he
describes, arises simply from their enormous bulk, and the frightful quantity of
human labor which must have been employed to execute them. He does not tell
us, like Berosus (Fragm. p. 66), that these wonderful fortifications were
completed in fifteen days,—nor like Quintus Curtius, that the length of one
stadium was completed on each successive day of the year (v, 1, 26). To bring to
pass all that Herodotus has described, is a mere question of time, patience,
number of laborers, and cost of maintaining them,—for the materials were both
close at hand and inexhaustible.
Now what would be the limit imposed upon the power and will of the old kings
of Babylonia on these points? We can hardly assign that limit with so much
confidence as to venture to pronounce a statement of Herodotus incredible, when
he tells us something which he has seen, or verified from eye-witnesses. The
Pyramids and other works in Egypt are quite sufficient to make us mistrustful of
our own means of appreciation; and the great wall of China (extending for twelve
hundred English miles along what was once the whole northern frontier of the
Chinese empire,—from twenty to twenty-five feet high,—wide enough for six
horses to run abreast, and furnished with a suitable number of gates and
bastions) contains more material than all the buildings of the British empire put
together, according to Barrow’s estimate (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic
Society, vol. i, p. 7, t. v.; and Ideler, Ueber die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, in the
Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1837, ch. 3, p. 291).
Ktêsias gave the circuit of the walls of Babylon as three hundred and sixty
stadia; Kleitarchus, three hundred and sixty-five stadia; Quintus Curtius, three
hundred and sixty-eight stadia; and Strabo, three hundred and eighty-five stadia;
all different from Herodotus, who gives four hundred and eighty stadia, a square
of one hundred and twenty stadia each side. Grosskurd (ad Strabon. xvi, p. 738),
Letronne, and Heeren, all presume that the smaller number must be the truth,
and that Herodotus must have been misinformed; and Grosskurd further urges,
that Herodotus cannot have seen the walls, inasmuch as he himself tells us that
Darius caused them to be razed after the second siege and reconquest (Herodot.
iii, 159). But upon this we may observe: First, the expression (τὸ τεῖχος περιεῖλε)
does not imply that the wall was so thoroughly and entirely razed by Darius as to
leave no part standing,—still less, that the great and broad moat was in all its
circuit filled up and levelled. This would have been a most laborious operation in
reference to such high and bulky masses, and withal not necessary for the
purpose of rendering the town defenceless; for which purpose the destruction of
certain portions of the wall is sufficient. Next, Herodotus speaks distinctly of the
walls and ditch as existing in his time, when he saw the place, which does not
exclude the possibility that numerous breaches may have been designedly made
in them, or mere openings left in the walls without any actual gates, for the
purpose of obviating all idea of revolt. But, however this latter fact may be,
certain it is that the great walls were either continuous, or discontinuous only to
the extent of these designed breaches, when Herodotus saw them. He describes
the town and its phenomena in the present tense: κ έ ε τ α ι ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ,
μέγαθος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον 120 σταδίων, ἐούσης τετραγώνου· οὗτοι
στάδιοι τῆς περιόδου τῆς πόλιος γ ί ν ο ν τ α ι συνάπαντες 480. Τὸ μὲν νῦν μέγαθος
τοσοῦτόν ἐ σ τ ι τοῦ ἄστεος τοῦ Βαβυλωνίου. Ἐκεκόσμητο δὲ ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο
πόλισμα τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν· ταφρὸς μὲν πρῶτά μιν βαθέα τε καὶ εὔρεα καὶ πλέη
ὕδατος π ε ρ ι θ έ ε ι· μετὰ δὲ, τεῖχος πεντήκοντα μὲν πηχέων βασιληΐων ἐ ὸ ν τὸ
εὖρος, ὕψος δὲ, διηκοσίων πηχέων. Ὁ δὲ βασιλήϊος πηχὺς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ
πήχεος μέζων τρισὶ δακτυλίοισι (c. 178). Again (c. 181),—Τοῦτο μὲν δὴ τὸ τεῖχος
θώρηξ ἐ σ τ ί· ἕτερον δὲ ἔσωθεν τεῖχος π ε ρ ι θ ε ῖ, οὐ πολλῷ τέῳ ἀσθενέστερον τοῦ
ἑτέρου τείχους, στεινότερον δέ. Then he describes the temple of Zeus Bêlus, with
its vast dimensions,—καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ τοῦτο ἔτι ἐὸν, δύο σταδίων πάντη, ἐὸν
τετράγωνον,—in the language of one who had himself gone up to the top of it.
After having mentioned the striking present phenomena of the temple, he
specifies a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high, which the Chaldæans told him
had once been there, but which he did not see, and he carefully marks the
distinction in his language,—ἦν δὲ ἐν τῷ τεμένεϊ τούτῳ ἔτι τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον καὶ
ἀνδριὰς δυώδεκα πήχεων, χρύσεος στέρεος. Ἐγὼ μέν μιν οὐκ εἶδον· τὰ δὲ λέγεται
ὑπὸ Χαλδαίων, ταῦτα λέγω (c. 183).
The argument, therefore, by which Grosskurd justifies the rejection of the
statement of Herodotus is not to be reconciled with the language of the historian:
Herodotus certainly saw both the walls and the ditch. Ktêsias saw them too, and
his statement of the circuit, as three hundred and sixty stadia, stands opposed to
that of four hundred and eighty stadia, which appears in Herodotus. But the
authority of Herodotus is, in my judgment, so much superior to that of Ktêsias,
that I accept the larger figure as more worthy of credit than the smaller. Sixty
English miles of circuit is, doubtless, a wonder, but forty-five miles in circuit is a
wonder also: granting means and will to execute the lesser of these two, the
Babylonian kings can hardly be supposed inadequate to the greater.
To me the height of these artificial mountains, called walls, appears even more
astonishing than their length or breadth. Yet it is curious that on this point the
two eye-witnesses, Herodotus and Ktêsias, both agree, with only the difference
between royal cubits and common cubits. Herodotus states the height at two
hundred royal cubits: Ktêsias, at fifty fathoms, which are equal to two hundred
common cubits (Diod. ii, 7),—τὸ δὲ ὕψος, ὡς μὲν Κτησίας φησὶ, πεντήκοντα
ὀργυιῶν, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι τῶν νεωτώρων ἔγραψαν, πηχῶν πεντήκοντα. Olearius (ad
Philostratum Vit. Apollon. Tyan. i, 25) shows plausible reason for believing that
the more recent writers (νεώτεροι) cut down the dimensions stated by Ktêsias
simply because they thought such a vast height incredible. The difference
between the royal cubit and the common cubit, as Herodotus on this occasion
informs us, was three digits in favor of the former; his two hundred royal cubits
are thus equal to three hundred and thirty-seven feet eight inches: Ktêsias has
not attended to the difference between royal cubits and common cubits, and his
estimate, therefore, is lower than that of Herodotus by thirty-seven feet eight
inches.
On the whole, I cannot think that we are justified, either by the authority of
such counter-testimony as can be produced, or by the intrinsic wonder of the
case, in rejecting the dimensions of the walls of Babylon as given by Herodotus.
 Quintus Curtius states that a large proportion of the inclosed space was not
occupied by dwellings, but sown and planted (v, 1, 26: compare Diodor. ii, 9).

[562] Herodot. i, 196.

[563] Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 3; Quint. Curtius, iii, 3, 16.

[564] Xenoph. Anab. i, 4, 11; Arrian. Exp. Al. iii. 16, 3. καὶ ἅμα τοῦ πολέμου
τὸ ἆθλον ἡ Βαβυλῶν καὶ τὰ Σοῦσα ἐφαίνετο.

[565] See the statement of the large receipts of the satrap Tritantæchmes
and his immense establishment of horses and Indian dogs (Herodot. i 192).

[566] There is a valuable examination of the lower course of the Euphrates,

with the changes which it has undergone, in Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii. Abtheil. iii,
Abschnitt i, sect. 29, pp. 45-49, and the passage from Abydenus in the latter
page.
For the distance between Terêdon or Diridôtis, at the mouth of the Euphrates
(which remained separate from that of the Tigris until the first century of the
Christian era), to Babylon, see Strabo, ii, p. 80; xvi, p. 739.
It is important to keep in mind the warning given by Ritter, that none of the
maps of the course of the river Euphrates, prepared previously to the publication
of Colonel Chesney’s expedition in 1836, are to be trusted. That expedition gave
the first complete and accurate survey of the course of the river, and led to the
detection of many mistakes previously committed by Mannert, Reichard, and
other able geographers and chartographers. To the immense mass of information
contained in Ritter’s comprehensive and laborious work, is to be added the farther
merit, that he is always careful in pointing out where the geographical data are
insufficient and fall short of certainty. See West-Asien, B. iii, Abtheilung iii,
Abschnitt i, sect. 41, p 959.

[567] Strabo, xiii, p. 617, with the mutilated fragment of Alkæus, which O
Müller has so ingeniously corrected (Rhenisch. Museum, i, 4, p. 287).

[568] Strabo, xvi, p. 740.

[569] Diodor. (i. 31) states this point justly with regard to the ancient kings
of Egypt—ἔργα μεγάλα καὶ θαυμαστὰ διὰ τ ὰ ς π ο λ υ χ ε ι ρ ί α ς κατασκευάσαντας,
ἀθάνατα τῆς ἑαυτῶν δόξες καταλιπεῖν ὑπομνήματα.

[570] See the description of this desert in Xenoph. Anab. i, 5, 1-8.

[571] The Ten Thousand Greeks passed from the outside to the inside of the
wall of Media: it was one hundred feet high, twenty feet wide, and was reported
to them as extending twenty parasangs or six hundred stadia (= seventy miles) in
length (Xenoph. Anab. ii, 4, 12). Eratosthenês called it τὸ Σεμιράμιδος διατείχισμα
(Strabo, ii, p. 80): it was seemingly about twenty-five miles north of Bagdad.
There is some confusion about the wall of Media: Mannert (Geogr. der G. und
R. v. 2, p. 280) and Forbiger also (Alte Geogr. sect. 97, p. 616, note 94) appear to
have confounded the ditch dug by special order of Artaxerxês to oppose the
march of the younger Cyrus, with the Nahar-Malcha or Royal canal between the
Tigris and the Euphrates: see Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 15.
It is singular that Herodotus makes no mention of the wall of Media, though
his subject (i, 185) naturally conducts him to it: he seems to have sailed down
the Euphrates to Babylon, and must, therefore, have seen it, if it had really
extended to the Euphrates, as some authors have imagined. Probably, however, it
was not kept up with any care, even in his time, seeing that its original usefulness
was at an end, after the whole of Asia, from the Euxine to the Persian gulf,
became subject to the Persians.

[572] Strabo, xvi, p. 744.

[573] Strabo, xvi, pp. 766, 776, 778; Pliny, H. N. vi, 32. “Arabes, mirum dictu,
ex innumeris populis pars æqua in commerciis aut latrociniis degunt: in
universum gentes ditissimæ, ut apud quas maximæ opes Romanorum
Parthorumque subsistant,—vendentibus quæ a mari aut sylvis capiunt, nihil
invicem redimentibus.”
The latter part of this passage of Pliny presents an enunciation sufficiently
distinct, though by implication only, of what has been called the mercantile theory
in political economy.

[574] To give one example: Herodotus mentions an opinion given to him by

the γραμματιστὴς (comptroller) of the property of Athênê at Sais, to the effect
that the sources of the Nile were at an immeasurable depth in the interior of the
earth, between Syênê and Elephantinê, and that Psammetichus had vainly tried to
sound them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length (ii, 28). In mentioning
this tale (perfectly deserving of being recounted at least, because it came from a
person of considerable station in the country), Herodotus expressly says: “This
comptroller seemed to me to be only bantering, though he professed to know
accurately,”—οὗτος δ᾽ ἐμοίγε παίζειν ἐδόκεε, φάμενος εἰδέναι ἀτρεκέως. Now
Strabo (xvii, p. 819), in alluding to this story, introduces it just as if Herodotus
had told it for a fact,—Πολλὰ δ᾽ Ἡρόδοτός τε καὶ ἄλλοι φλυαροῦσιν, οἷον, etc.
Many other instances might be cited, both from ancient and modern writers,
of similar carelessness or injustice towards this admirable author.

[575] Οἱ ἱρέες τοῦ Νείλου, Herod. ii, 90.

 [576] The seven mouths of the Nile, so notorious in antiquity, are not
conformable to the modern geography of the country: see Mannert, Geogr. der
Gr. und Röm. x, 1, p. 539.
The breadth of the base of the Delta, between Pelusium and Kanôpus, is
overstated by Herodotus (ii, 6-9) at three thousand six hundred stadia; Diodorus
(i, 34) and Strabo, at thirteen hundred stadia, which is near the truth, though the
text of Strabo in various passages is not uniform on this matter, and requires
correction. See Grosskurd’s note on Strabo, ii, p. 64 (note 3, p. 101), and xvii, p.
186 (note 9, p. 332). Pliny gives the distance at one hundred and seventy miles
(H. N. v, 9).

[577] Herod, i, 193. Παραγίνεται ὁ σῖτος (in Babylonia) οὐ, κατάπερ ἐν

Αἰγύπτῳ, αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἀναβαίνοντος ἐς τὰς ἀρούρας, ἀλλὰ χερσί τε καὶ
κηλωνηΐοισι ἀρδόμενος· ἡ γὰρ Βαβυλωνίη χώρη πᾶσα, κατάπερ ἡ Αἰγυπτίη,
κατατέτμηται ἐς διώρυχας, etc.
Herodotus was informed that the canals in Egypt had been dug by the labor of
that host of prisoners whom the victorious Sesostris brought home from his
conquests (ii, 108). The canals in Egypt served the purpose partly of
communication between the different cities, partly of a constant supply of water
to those towns which were not immediately on the Nile: “that vast river, so
constantly at work,” (to use the language of Herodotus—ὑπὸ τοσούτου τε
ποτάμου καὶ οὕτως ἐργατικοῦ, ii, 11), spared the Egyptians all the toil of irrigation
which the Assyrian cultivator underwent (ii, 14).
Lower Egypt, as Herodotus saw it, though a continued flat, was unfit either for
horse or car, from the number of intersecting canals,—ἄνιππος καὶ ἀναμάξευτος
(ii, 108). But lower Egypt, as Volney saw it, was among the countries in the world
best suited to the action of cavalry, so that he pronounces the native population
of the country to have no chance of contending against the Mamelukes (Volney,
Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. i, ch. 12, sect. 2, p. 199). The country has
reverted to the state in which it was (ἱππασίμη καὶ ἁμαξευομένη πᾶσα) before the
canals were made,—one of the many striking illustrations of the difference
between the Egypt which a modern traveller visits, and that which Herodotus and
even Strabo saw,—ὅλην πλωτὴν διωρύγων ἐπὶ διώρυξι τμηθεισῶν (Strabo, xvii, p.
788).
Considering the early age of Herodotus, his remarks on the geological
character of Egypt as a deposit of the accumulated mud by the Nile, appear to
me most remarkable (ii, 8-14). Having no fixed number of years included in his
religious belief as measuring the past existence of the earth, he carries his mind
back without difficulty to what may have been effected by this river in ten or
twenty thousand years, or “in the whole space of time elapsed before I was
born,” (ii, 11).
About the lake of Mœris, see a note a little farther on.
 [578] See note in Appendix to this chapter.

[579] Herodot. ii, 35. Αἰγύπτιοι ἅμα τῷ οὐρανῷ τῷ κατὰ σφέας ἐόντι ἑτεροίῳ,
καὶ τῷ ποτάμῳ φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἢ οἱ ἄλλοι πόταμοι, τὰ πολλὰ πάντα
ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι ἐστήσαντο ἤθεα καὶ νόμους.

[580] Theokritus (Idyll, xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy Philadelphus king of

Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three cities:
the manner in which he strings these figures into three hexameter verses is
somewhat ingenious. The priests, in describing to Herodotus the unrivalled
prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under Amasis, the last king
before the Persian conquest, said that there were then twenty thousand cities in
the country (ii, 177). Diodorus tells us that eighteen thousand different cities and
considerable villages were registered in the Egyptian ἀναγραφαὶ (i, 31) for the
ancient times, but that thirty thousand were numbered under the Ptolemies.

[581] Respecting the monuments of ancient Egyptian art, see the summary
of O. Müller, Archäologie der Kunst, sects. 215-233, and a still better account and
appreciation of them in Carl Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den
Alten, Düsseldorf, 1843, vol. i, book ii, chs. 1 and 2.
In regard to the credibility and value of Egyptian history anterior to
Psammetichus, there are many excellent remarks by Mr. Kenrick, in the preface to
his work, “The Egypt of Herodotus,” (the second book of Herodotus, with notes.)
About the recent discoveries derived from the hieroglyphics, he says: “We know
that it was the custom of the Egyptian kings to inscribe the temples and obelisks
which they raised with their own names or with distinguishing hieroglyphics; but
in no one instance do these names, as read by the modern decipherers of
hieroglyphics on monuments said to have been raised by kings before
Psammetichus, correspond with the names given by Herodotus.” (Preface, p. xliv.)
He farther adds in a note, “A name which has been read phonetically Mena, has
been found at Thebes, and Mr. Wilkinson supposes it to be Menes. It is
remarkable, however, that the names which follow are not phonetically written, so
that it is probable that this is not to be read Mena. Besides, the cartouche, which
immediately follows, is that of a king of the eighteenth dynasty; so that, at all
events, it cannot have been engraved till many centuries after the supposed age
of Menes; and the occurrence of the name no more decides the question of
historical existence than that of Cecrops in the Parian Chronicle.”

[582] Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 1, p. 403. The
opinion given by Parthey, however (De Philis Insulâ, p. 100, Berlin, 1830), may
perhaps be just: “Antiquissimâ ætate eundem populum, dicamus Ægyptiacum,
Nili ripas inde a Meroë insulâ usque ad Ægyptum inferiorem occupâsse, e
monumentorum congruentiâ apparet: posteriore tempore, tabulis et annalibus
nostris longe superiore, alia stirps Æthiopica interiora terræ usque ad cataractam
Syenensem obtinuit. Ex quâ ætate certa rerum notitia ad nos pervenit,
Ægyptiorum et Æthiopum segregatio jam facta est. Herodotus cæterique
scriptores Græci populos acute discernunt.”
At this moment, Syênê and its cataract mark the boundary of two people and
two languages,—Egyptians and Arabic language to the north, Nubians and Berber
language to the south. (Parthey, ibid.)

[583] Compare Herodot. ii, 30-32; iii, 19-25; Strabo, xvi, p. 818. Herodotus
gives the description of their armor and appearance as part of the army of Xerxês
(vii, 69); they painted their bodies: compare Plin. H. N. xxxiii, 36. How little
Ethiopia was visited in his time, may be gathered from the tenor of his
statements: according to Diodorus (i, 37), no Greeks visited it earlier than the
expedition of Ptolemy Philadelphus,—οὕτως ἄξενα ἦν τὰ περὶ τοὺς τόπους
τούτους, καὶ παντελῶς ἐπικίνδυνα. Diodorus, however, is incorrect in saying that
no Greek had ever gone as far southward as the frontier of Egypt: Herodotus
certainly visited Elephantinê, probably other Greeks also.
The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroê and its superior
civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo (xvii, p. 822), and Pliny (H. N.
vi, 29-33), much later than Herodotus. Diodorus seems to have had no older
informants before him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchidês and Artemidôrus, both
in the second century B. C. (Diod. iii, 10.)

[584] Wesseling ad Diodor. iii, 3.

[585] Herodot. ii, 37. Θεοσεβέες δὲ περισσῶς ἐόντες μάλιστα πάντων

ἀνθρώπων, etc. He is astonished at the retentiveness of their memory; some of
them had more stories to tell than any one whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109;
Diodor. i, 73).
The word priest conveys to a modern reader an idea very different from that
of the Egyptian ἱερεῖς, who were not a profession, but an order comprising many
occupations and professions,—Josephus the Jew was in like manner an ἱερεὺς
κατὰ γένος (cont. Apion. c. 3).

[586] Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the monastic

strictness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian king were measured out by
the priests: compare Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to Hekatæus
(probably Hekatæus of Abdêra) and Eudoxus. The priests represented that
Psammetichus was the first Egyptian king who broke through the priestly canon
limiting the royal allowance of wine: compare Strabo, xvii, p, 790.
The Ethiopian kings at Meroê are said to have been kept in the like pupillage
by the priestly order, until a king named Ergamenês, during the reign of Ptolemy
Philadelphus in Egypt, emancipated himself and put the chief priests to death
(Diodor. iii, 6).

[587] Herodot. ii, 82-83.

[588] Herodot. ii, 143.

[589] Herodot. ii, 113; στίγματα ἱρά.

[590] Herodot. ii, 30.

[591] Herodot. i, 165-166; Diodor. i, 73.

[592] Diodor. i, 73.

[593] Besides this general rent or land-tax received by the Egyptian kings,
there seem, also, to have been special crown-lands. Strabo mentions an island in
the Nile (in the Thebaid) celebrated for the extraordinary excellence of its date-
palms; the whole of this island belonged to the kings, without any other
proprietor: it yielded a large revenue, and passed into the hands of the Roman
government in Strabo’s time (xvii, p. 818).
 [594] Herodot. ii, 30-141.

[595] Herodot. ii, 164.

[596] Diodor. i, 74. About the Egyptian castes generally, see Heeren, Ideen
über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 2, pp. 572-595.

[597] See the citation from Maillet’s Travels in Egypt, in Heeren, Ideen, p.
590; also Volney’s Travels, vol. i, ch. 6, p. 77.
The expression of Herodotus—οἱ περὶ τὴν σ π ε ι ρ ο μ έ ν η ν Αἴγυπτον οἰκέουσι—
indicates that the portion of the soil used as pasture was not inconsiderable.
The inhabitants of the marsh land were the most warlike part of the
population (Thucyd. i, 110).

[598] Herodot. ii, 59-60.

[599] Herodot. ii, 35; Sophokl. Œdip. Colon. 332: where the passage cited by
the Scholiast out of Nymphodôrus is a remarkable example of the habit of
ingenious Greeks to represent all customs which they thought worthy of notice,
as having emanated from the design of some great sovereign: here Nymphodôrus
introduces Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, in order that the
Egyptians might be rendered effeminate.

[600] The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod. ii, 85-90); the
word which he uses for it is the same as that for salting meat and fish,—
ταρίχευσις: compare Strabo, xvi, p. 764.
Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone, and undeviating
obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of Egyptian
sculpture. There are yet seen in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock,
but having three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics; so certain
were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision (Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild.
Künste, i, p. 428).
All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their feelings
respecting animals: particular animals were worshipped in some nomes which in
other nomes were objects even of antipathy, especially the crocodile (Herod. ii,
69; Strabo, xvii, p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal).

[601] Herodot. ii, 65-72; Diodor. i, 83-90; Plutarch, Isid. et Osir. p. 380.
Hasselquist identified all the birds carved on the obelisk near Matarea
(Heliopolis), (Travels in Egypt, p. 99.)
 [602] Herodot. ii, 82-83; iii, 1, 129. It is one of the points of distinction
between Egyptians and Babylonians, that the latter had no surgeons or ἰατροί:
they brought out the sick into the market-place, to profit by the sympathy and
advice of the passers-by (Herodot. i, 197).

[603] Herodot. ii, 141.

[604] Herodot. iii, 177.

[605] Herodot. ii, 158. Read the account of the foundation of Petersburg by
Peter the Great: “Au milieu de ces réformes, grandes et petites, qui faisaient les
amusemens du czar, et de la guerre terrible qui l’occupoit contre Charles XII, il
jeta les fondemens de l’importante ville et du port de Pétersbourg, en 1714, dans
un marais où il n’y avait pas une cabane. Pierre travailla de ses mains à la
première maison: rien ne le rebuta: des ouvriers furent forcés de venir sur ce
bord de la mer Baltique, des frontières d’Astrachan, des bords de la Mer Noire et
de la Mer Caspienne. Il périt plus de cent mille hommes dans les travaux qu’il
fallut faire, et dans les fatigues et la disette qu’on essuya: mais enfin la ville
existe.” (Voltaire, Anecdotes sur Pierre le Grand, en Œuvres Complètes, ed. Paris,
1825, tom. xxxi, p. 491.)

[606] Herodot. ii, 124-129. τὸν λέων τετρυμένον ἐς τὸ ἔσχατον κακοῦ.

(Diodor. i, 63-64.)
Περὶ τῶν Πυραμίδων (Diodorus observes) οὐδὲν ὅλως οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς
ἐγχωρίοις, οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς συγγραφεῦσιν, συμφωνεῖται. He then alludes to some
of the discrepant stories about the date of the Pyramids, and the names of their
constructors. This confession, of the complete want of trustworthy information
respecting the most remarkable edifices of lower Egypt, forms a striking contrast
with the statement which Diodorus had given (c. 44), that the priests possessed
records, “continually handed down from reign to reign respecting four hundred
and seventy Egyptian kings.”

[607] It appears that the lake of Mœris is, at least in great part, a natural
reservoir, though improved by art for the purposes wanted, and connected with
the river by an artificial canal, sluices, etc. (Kenrick ad Herodot. ii, 149.)
“The lake still exists, of diminished magnitude, being about sixty miles in
circumference, but the communication with the Nile has ceased.” Herodotus gives
the circumference as three thousand six hundred stadia, = between four hundred
and four hundred and fifty miles.
I incline to believe that there was more of the hand of man in it than Mr.
Kenrick supposes, though doubtless the receptacle was natural.

[608] Herodot. ii, 38-46, 65-72; iii, 27-30: Diodor. i, 83-90.

 It is surprising to find Pindar introducing into one of his odes a plain mention
of the monstrous circumstances connected with the worship of the goat in the
Mendesian nome (Pindar, Fragm. Inc. 179, ed. Bergk). Pindar had also dwelt, in
one of his Prosodia, upon the mythe of the gods having disguised themselves as
animals, when seeking to escape Typhon; which was one of the tales told as an
explanation of the consecration of animals in Egypt: see Pindar, Fragm. Inc. p. 61,
ed. Bergk; Porphyr. de Abstinent. iii, p. 251, ed. Rhoer.

[609] Herodot. ii, 65. Diodorus does not feel the same reluctance to mention
these ἀπόῤῥητα (i, 86).

[610] Diodor. i, 86-87; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 377, seq.

[611] On this early trade between Egypt, Phenicia, and Palestine, anterior to
any acquaintance with the Greeks, see Josephus cont. Apion. i, 12.

[612] Herodotus notices the large importation of wine into Egypt in his day,
from all Greece as well as from Phenicia, as well as the employment of the
earthen vessels in which it was brought for the transport of water, in the journeys
across the desert (iii, 6).
In later times, Alexandria was supplied with wine chiefly from Laodikeia, in
Syria, near the mouth of the Orontes (Strabo, xvi, p. 751).

[613] Herodot. ii, 147-154. ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου,—πάντα καὶ τὰ ὕστερον

ἐπιστάμεθα ἀτρεκέως.

[614] See these differences stated and considered in Boeckh, Manetho und
die Hundssternperiode. pp. 326—336, of which some account is given in the
Appendix to this chapter.

[615] Herodot. ii, 149-152. This narrative of Herodotus, however little

satisfactory in an historical point of view, bears evident marks of being the
genuine tale which he heard from the priests of Hephæstos. Diodorus gives an
account more historically plausible, but he could not well have had any positive
authorities for that period, and he gives us seemingly the ideas of Greek authors
of the days of the Ptolemies. Psammetichus (he tells us), as one of the twelve
kings, ruled at Saïs and in the neighboring part of the delta: he opened a trade,
previously unknown in Egypt, with Greeks and Phenicians, so profitable that his
eleven colleagues became jealous of his riches and combined to attack him. He
raised an army of foreign mercenaries and defeated them (Diodor. i, 66-67).
Polyænus gives a different story about Psammetichus and the Karian mercenaries
(vii 3).

[616] Herodot. ii, 154.

 [617] Strabo, xvii, p. 801. καὶ τὸ Μιλησίων τεῖχος· πλεύσαντες γὰρ ἐπὶ
Ψαμμητίχου τριάκοντα ναυσὶν Μιλήσιοι κ α τ ὰ Κ υ α ξ ά ρ η (ο ὗ τ ο ς δ ὲ τ ῶ ν
Μ ή δ ω ν) κάτεσχον εἰς τὸ στόμα τὸ Βολβίτινον· εἶτ᾽ ἐκβάντες ἐτείχισαν τὸ λεχθὲν
κτίσμα· χρόνῳ δ᾽ ἀναπλεύσαντες εἰς τὸν Σαϊτικὸν νομὸν, καταναυμαχήσαντες
Ἴναρον, πόλιν ἔκτισαν Ναύκρατιν οὐ πολὺ τῆς Σχεδίας ὕπερθεν.
What is meant by the allusion to Kyaxarês, or to Inarus, in this passage, I do
not understand. We know nothing of any relations either between Kyaxarês and
Psammetichus, or between Kyaxarês and the Milesians. moreover, if by κατὰ
Κυαξάρη be meant in the time of Kyaxarês, as the translators render it, we have
in immediate succession ἐ π ὶ Ψαμμητίχου—κ α τ ὰ Κυαξάρη, with the same
meaning, which is, to say the least of it, a very awkward sentence. The words
ο ὗ τ ο ς δ ὲ τ ῶ ν Μ ή δ ω ν look not unlike a comment added by some early
reader of Strabo, who could not understand why Kyaxarês should be here
mentioned, and who noted his difficulty in words which have subsequently found
their way into the text. Then again, Inarus belongs to the period between the
Persian and Peloponnesian wars: at least we know no other person of that name
than the chief of the Egyptian revolt against Persia (Thucyd. i, 114) who is
spoken of as a “Libyan, the son of Psammetichus.” The mention of Kyaxarês,
therefore, here appears unmeaning, while that of Inarus is an anachronism:
possibly, the story that the Milesians founded Naukratis “after having worsted
Inarus in a sea-flight,” may have grown out of the etymology of the name
Naukratis, in the mind of one who found Inarus the son of Psammetichus
mentioned two centuries afterwards, and identified the two Psammetichuses with
each other.
The statement of Strabo has been copied by Steph. Byz. v. Ναύκρατις.
Eusebius also announces (Chron. i, p. 168) the Milesians as the founders of
Naukratis, but puts the event at 753 B. C., during what he calls the Milesian
thalassokraty: see Mr. Fynes Clinton ad ann. 732 B. C. in the Fasti Hellenici.

[618] Herodot. ii, 166

[619] Herodot. ii, 30: Diodor. i, 67.

[620] Ἀπρίης—ὃς μετὰ Ψαμμήτιχον τὸν ἑωϋτοῦ προπάτορα ἐγένετο

εὐδαιμονέστατος τῶν πρότερον βασιλέων (Herodot. ii, 161).

[621] Herodot. i, 105; ii, 157.

[622] The chronology of the Egyptian kings from Psammetichus to Amasis is

given in some points differently by Herodotus and by Manetho:—

According to Herodotus, According to Manetho ap. African.

Psammetichus reigned 54 years. Psammetichus reigned 54 years.
 Nekôs „ 16 „ Nechao II „ 6 „
Psammis „ 6 „ Psammathis „ 6 „
Apriês „ 25 „ Uaphris „ 19 „
Amasis „ 44 „ Amosis „ 44 „
Diodorus gives 22 years for Apriês and 55 years for Amasis (i, 68).
Now the end of the reign of Amasis stands fixed for 526 B. C., and, therefore,
the beginning of his reign (according to both Herodotus and Manetho) to 570
B. C. or 569 B. C. According to the chronology of the Old Testament, the battles of
Megiddo and Carchemisch, fought by Nekôs, fall from 609-605 B. C., and this
coincides with the reign of Nekôs as dated by Herodotus, but not as dated by
Manetho. On the other hand, it appears from the evidence of certain Egyptian
inscriptions recently discovered, that the real interval from the beginning of
Nechao to the end of Uaphris is only forty years, and not forty-seven years, as
the dates of Herodotus would make it (Boeckh, Manetho und die
Hundsternperiode, pp. 341-348), which would place the accession of Nekôs in
610 or 609 B. C. Boeckh discusses at some length this discrepancy of dates, and
inclines to the supposition that Nekôs reigned nine or ten years jointly with his
father, and that Herodotus has counted these nine or ten years twice, once in the
reign of Psammetichus, once in that of Nekôs. Certainly, Psammetichus can hardly
have been very young when his reign began, and if he reigned fifty-four years, he
must have reached an extreme old age, and may have been prominently aided by
his son. Adopting the suppositions, therefore, that the last ten years of the reign
of Psammetichus may be reckoned both for him and for Nekôs,—that for Nekôs
separately only six years are to be reckoned,—and that the number of years from
the beginning of Nekôs’s separate reign to the end of Uaphris is forty,—Boeckh
places the beginning of Psammetichus in 654 B. C., and not in 670 B. C., as the
data of Herodotus would make it (ib. pp. 342-350).
Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. B. C. 616, follows Herodotus.

[623] Herodot. ii, 158. Respecting the canal of Nekôs, see the explanation of
Mr. Kenrick on this chapter of Herodotus. From Bubastis to Suez the length would
be about ninety miles.

[624] Herodot. ii, 159. Diodorus makes no mention of Nekôs.

The account of Herodotus coincides in the main with the history of the Old
Testament about Pharaoh Necho and Josiah. The great city of Syria which he calls
Κάδυτις seems to be Jerusalem, though Wesseling (ad Herodot. iii, 5) and other
able critics dispute the identity. See Volney, Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. vol. ii, ch.
13, p. 239: “Les Arabes ont conservé l’habitude d’appeler Jerusalem la Sainte par
excellence, el Qods. Sans doute les Chaldéens et les Syriens lui donnèrent le
même nom, qui dans leur dialecte est Qadouta, dont Hérodote rend bien
l’orthographie quand il écrit Κάδυτις.”
 [625] Jeremiah, xlvi, 2; 2d book of Kings, xxiii and xxiv; Josephus, Ant. J. x,
5, 1; x, 6, 1.
About Nebuchadnezzar, see the Fragment of Berosus ap. Joseph. cont. Apion.
i, 19-20, and Antiqq. J. x, 11, 1, and Berosi Fragment. ed. Ritcher pp. 65-67.

[626] Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. Ἐπὶ Εἰθωβάλου τοῦ βασιλέως
ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτε δεκάτρια. That this siege of
thirteen years ended in the storming, capitulation, or submission (we know not
which, and Volney goes beyond the evidence when he says, “Les Tyriens furent
emportés d’assaut par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur l’Histoire Ancienne, vol.
ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldæan king, is quite certain from the mention
which afterwards follows of the Tyrian princes being detained captive in
Babylonia. Hengstenberg (De Rebus Tyriorum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of
arguments, most of them very inconclusive, to prove this point, about which the
passage cited by Josephus from Menander leaves no doubt. What is not true, is,
that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be
believed that that king conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even
Berosus, so far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,—the argument of
Larcher ad Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The defeat of the
Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping him of his foreign possessions in
Judæa and Syria, have been exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself.

[627] Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in the text;
while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king took Sidon by assault,
terrified the other Phenician towns into submission, and defeated the Phenicians
and Cyprians in a great naval battle, acquiring a vast spoil.
What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know; but the measured
statement of Herodotus is far the most worthy of credit.

[628] Herodot. iii, 19.

[629] Herodot. ii, 161; iv, 159.

[630] Herodot. ii, 162-169; Diodor. i, 68.

[631] Herodot. ii, 153.

[632] Herodot. ii, 178. The few words of the historian about these Greek
establishments at Naukratis are highly valuable, and we can only wish that he had
told us more: he speaks of them in the present tense, from personal knowledge—
τὸ μὲν νῦν μέγιστον αὐτέων τέμενος καὶ οὐνομαστότατον ἐὸν καὶ χρησιμώτατον,
καλεύμενον δὲ Ἑλλήνιον, αἵδε πόλις ε ἰ σ ὶ ν αἱ ἱδρυμέναι—Τουτέων μέν ἐστι τοῦτο
τὸ τέμενος, καὶ προστάτας τοῦ ἐμπορίου αὗται αἱ πόλις εἰσὶν αἱ παρέχουσαι. Ὅσαι
δὲ ἄλλαι πόλις μ ε τ α π ο ι ε ῦ ν τ α ι, οὐδέν σφι μετεὸν μεταποιεῦνται.
 We are here let into a vein of commercial jealousy between the Greek cities
about which we should have been glad to be farther informed.

[633] Herodot. ii, 179. Ἦ ν δ ὲ τ ο π α λ α ι ὸ ν μούνη ἡ Ναύκρατις ἐμπόριον,

καὶ ἄλλο οὐδὲν Αἰγύπτου.... Οὕτω δὴ Ναύκρατις ἐ τ ε τ ί μ η τ ο.

[634] The beautiful Thracian courtezan, Rhodôpis, was purchased by a

Samian merchant named Xanthês, and conveyed to Naukratis, in order that he
might make money by her (κατ᾽ ἐργασίην). The speculation proved a successful
one, for Charaxus, brother of Sappho, going to Naukratis with a cargo of wine,
became so captivated with Rhodôpis, that he purchased her for a very large sum
of money, and gave her her freedom. She then carried on her profession at
Naukratis on her own account, realized a handsome fortune, the tithe of which
she employed in a votive offering at Delphi, and acquired so much renown, that
the Egyptian Greeks ascribed to her the building of one of the pyramids,—a
supposition, on the absurdity of which Herodotus makes proper comments, but
which proves the great celebrity of the name of Rhodôpis (Herodot. ii, 134).
Athenæus calls her Dôrichê, and distinguishes her from Rhodôpis (xiii. p. 596,
compare Suidas, v. Ῥοδωπίδος ἀνάθημα). When Charaxus returned to Mitylênê,
his sister Sappho composed a song, in which she greatly derided him for this
proceeding,—a song which doubtless Herodotus knew, and which gives to the
whole anecdote a complete authenticity.
Now we can hardly put the age of Sappho lower than 600-580 B. C. (see Mr.
Clinton, Fasti Hellen ad ann. 595 B. C., and Ulrici, Geschichte der Griech. Lyrik, ch.
xxiii, p. 360): Alkæus, too, her contemporary, had himself visited Egypt. (Alcæi
Fragm. 103, ed. Bergk; Strabo, i, p. 63). The Greek settlement at Naukratis,
therefore, must be decidedly older than Amasis, who began to reign in 570 B. C.,
and the residence of Rhodôpis in that town must have begun earlier than Amasis,
though Herodotus calls her κατ᾽ Ἄμασιν ἀκμάζουσα (ii, 134). Nor can we construe
the language of Herodotus strictly, when he says that it was Amasis who
permitted the residence of Greeks at Naukratis (ii, 173).

[635] Herodot. ii, 181.

[636] Herodot. i, 77; iii, 39.

[637] Herodot. ii, 182, 154. κατοίκισε ἐς Μέμφιν, φυλακὴν ἑωϋτοῦ

ποιεύμενος πρὸς Αἰγυπτίων.

[638] Herodot. ii, 175-177.

[639] Thucyd. i, 13.

[640] Herodot. iii, 107.

 [641] The various statements or conjectures to be found in Greek authors
(all comparatively recent) respecting the origin of the Greek alphabet, are
collected by Franz, Epigraphicê Græca, s. iii, pp. 12-20: “Omnino Græci alphabeti
ut certa primordia sunt in origine Phœniciâ, ita certus terminus in litteraturâ
Ionicâ seu Simonideâ. Quæ inter utrumque a veteribus ponuntur, incerta omnia et
fabulosa.... Non commoramur in iis quæ de litterarum origine et propagatione ex
fabulosâ Pelasgorum historiâ (cf. Knight, pp. 119-123; Raoul Rochette, pp. 67-87)
neque in iis quæ de Cadmo narrantur quem unquam fuisse hodie jam nemo
crediderit.... Alphabeti Phœnicii omnes 22 literas cum antiquis Græcis congruere,
hodie nemo est qui ignoret.” (pp. 14-15.) Franz gives valuable information
respecting the changes gradually introduced into the Greek alphabet, and the
erroneous statements of the Grammatici as to what letters were original, and
what were subsequently added.
Kruse also, in his “Hellas,” (vol. i, p. 13, and in the first Beylage, annexed to
that volume,) presents an instructive comparison of the Greek, Latin, and
Phenician alphabets.
The Greek authors, as might be expected, were generally much more fond of
referring the origin of letters to native heroes or gods, such as Palamêdês,
Promêtheus, Musæus, Orpheus, Linus, etc., than to the Phenicians. The oldest
known statement (that of Stêsichorus, Schol. ap. Bekker. Anecdot. ii, p. 786)
ascribes them to Palamêdês.
Both Franz and Kruse contend strenuously for the existence and habit of
writing among the Greeks in times long anterior to Homer: in which I dissent
from them.

[642] See O. Müller, Die Etrusker (iv, 6), where there is much instruction on
the Tuscan alphabet.

[643] This question is raised and discussed by Justus Olshausen, Ueber den
Ursprung des Alphabetes (pp. 1-10), in the Kieler Philologische Studien, 1841.

[644] See Boeckh, Metrologie, chs. iv, v, vi; also the preceding volume of this
History.

[645] Utica is said to have been founded 287 years earlier than Carthage;
the author who states this, professing to draw his information from Phenician
histories (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 134). Velleius Paterculus states Gadês to be
older than Utica, and places the foundation of Carthage B. C. 819 (i, 2, 6). He
seems to follow in the main the same authority as the composer of the Aristotelic
compilation above cited. Other statements place the foundation of Carthage in
878 B. C. (Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr, etc., part ii, b. i, p. 29). Appian states
the date of the foundation as fifty years before the Trojan war (De Reb. Punic. c.
1); Philistus, as twenty-one years before the same event (Philist. Fragm. 50, ed.
Göller); Timæus, as thirty-eight years earlier than the 1st Olympiad (Timæi
Fragm. 21, ed. Didot); Justin, seventy-two years earlier than the foundation of
Rome (xviii, 6).
The citation which Josephus gives from Menander’s work, extracted from
Tyrian ἀναγραφαὶ, placed the foundation of Carthage 143 years after the building
of the temple of Jerusalem (Joseph. cont. Apion. i, c. 17-18). Apion said that
Carthage was founded in the first year of Olympiad 7 (B. C. 748), (Joseph. c.
Apion. ii, 2.)

[646] “Quamdiu Carthago invicta fuit, pro Deâ culta est.” (Justin. xviii, 6;
Virgil, Æneid, i, 340-370.) We trace this legend about Dido up to Timæus (Timæi
Frag. 23, ed. Didot): Philistus seems to have followed a different story;—he said
that Carthage had been founded by Azor and Karchêdôn (Philist. Fr. 50). Appian
notices both stories (De Reb. Pun. 1): that of Dido was current both among the
Romans and Carthaginians: of Zôrus (or Ezôrus) and Karchêdôn, the second is
evidently of Greek coinage, the first seems genuine Phenician: see Josephus cont.
Apion. i, c. 18-21.

[647] See Movers, Die Phönizier, pp. 609-616.

[648] Strabo, xvii, p. 826.

[649] Herodot. iii, 19.

[650] Thucyd. vi, 2; Philistus, Fragm. 3, ed. Göller, ap. Diodor. v, 6. Timæus
adopted the opposite opinion (Diodor. l. c.), also Ephorus, if we may judge by an
indistinct passage of Strabo (vi, p. 270). Dionysius of Halikarnassus follows
Thucydidês (A. R. i, 22).
The opinion of Philistus is of much value on this point, since he was, or might
have been, personally cognizant of Iberian mercenaries in the service of the elder
Dionysius.

[651] Pherekyd. Fragm. 85, ed. Didot; Hellanik. Fr. 53, ed. Didot; Dionys.
Halik. A. R. i, 11, 13, 22; Skymnus Chius, v. 362; Pausan. viii, 3, 5.

[652] Stephan. Byz. v. Χῖοι.

[653] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3. Ὤκουν δὲ τὸ πρὸς τὴν Ἰαπυγίαν καὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον
Χῶνες (or Χάονες) τὴν καλουμένην Σίριν· ἦσαν δὲ καὶ οἱ Χῶνες Οἰνωτροὶ τὸ γένος.
Antiochus Fr. 3, 4, 6, 7, ed. Didot; Strabo, vi, p. 254; Hesych. v. Χώνην,
Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 12.

[654] Livy, viii, 24.