THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 227
its northern shores from the days when a great land bridge
linked together the two continents, and when men of the same
stock could pass freely from north to south and from south to
north of the intervening lake. Nor is there any need to
suppose that such knowledge came through Egypt, for the men
of the Mycenean age were versed in seacraft, as has been
already seen from the legends of the Minyans, the Argo,
Nauplius, Ancaeus, Telephus, Minos, Ariadne, and Theseus.
Before now many a mariner sorely against his will has become
the discoverer of new lands, and so it was wuth Colaeus the
Samian, the first of all Greeks to pass between the Pillars
of Heracles. Shipmen who sought to double Cape Malea
(.Matapan), when the Boreas blew down from Thrace, were ever
liable to be carried far out of their true course, and this is the
natural phenomenon on which is founded one of the greatest
of epic poems. As Odysseus and hjs comrades on their return
from Trcjy were sailing along the east coast of Peloponnesus and
just rounding Malea, a violent north wind caught them and
carried them away to the southward for twenty days until they
at last reached the Libyan land, where he fell in with the
'
Lotus-eaters, who lived on a ' honey-sweet plant. Thence he
made his way to the land of the Cychjpes, who are always
represented as dwelling in Sicily or .South Italy. This story
can be readily paralleled
in classical history as well as in
legend. Sieaki!ig of the earliest settlements in Sicily and the
planting of St/gesta Thucydides says' that certain Trojans
whilst the capture
of Ti'oy was in progress escaped the
Acheans and made their way to Sicily where' in conjunction
with the nt.'ighbouring Sicani they orcuj)i(_'d l^i'yx and Egesta.
Later on sonie of the IMiocians from 'i'l-oy joined tiiem in the
settlement.
These men "had by reason of a storm been carried
Hrst to Libva, and later on liatl made their way
fruni that
countrv to Sicilv." This story
is not unlike that enilxxlied 1\-
\'irgil in the episode- of the wandei-iiigs of Aeneas. l!ut TJiue\-
didi's gi\-e> an inciih'Ut of his uwn time, whieii proves that the
legends arc based on tacts-. The i-cii)forcemcnt> sent to S\iaeusi'
by the Pejoponnesians. whii-h had sailed from the ea^t eoa>t
1
VI. -2. :{.
-
VII.
.")ii.
228 WHO WERE THE MAKERS?
of Peloponnesus, were driven by a storm to Libya, where the
Cyrenians gave them two triremes and a pilot, and as they
coasted along they entered the great town of Euesperides, which
they delivered from the Libyans who were beleaguering it.
From thence they coasted on to Neapolis, a port of the
Carthaginians, from which they crossed to Sicily by the shortest
route of two days and a night, and arrived at Selinus.
It would then seem that these Peloponnesian troops had
experienced the same misfortune and had traversed the same
course as Odysseus and the Phocians.
One is inclined to suggest that the mysterious Lotus plant,
about which the writers of the classical period knew nothing
save what was purely conjectural, was after all nothing but the
early and vague expression of the knowledge that a plant
unknown elsewliere and possessed of rare virtues grew in that
part of Libya fronting the Syrtis which as we have just
seen was the habitat of the silphium. This herb after the
planting of Gyrene became known to the Greeks under its
true Berber name. But wheth-er or not the silphium be the
lotus, sufficient evidence has been given to show that from the
natural phenomena
of storm and currents the natives of the
northern parts of the Mediterranean must have inevitably been
brought into contact with Libya from the time when they took
to ^seafaring,
and that in the Homeric period the Greeks had
a fairly definite knowledge of Libya as a fertile region to
which Phoenicians trafficked with slaves and other commodities.
But legends which go back to a time long anterior to the
ei)Och represented in the Odyssey and Iliad cluster round the
Libyan shore. The Argo had made her fateful voyage in the
generation before the Trojan war. She had entered the Euxine
through the Hellespont, had made her way to Colchis, and at
the Caucasus her crew had even heard the groans of Proniftheus
on his torment-bed; on her homeward voyage
ht.'r sentient ])i