1 According to Leaf (l.c., p. 135, the shortest course of a vessel between Abydus and the mouth of the Aesepus measures just about 700 stadia. Hence Strabo's authorities for his statement are in error if, as usual, the longer voyage is a coasting voyage, following the sinuosities of the gulfs, as against the shorter, or more direct, voyage. Leaf, however, forces the phrase "by straight sailing" to mean "a straight course wholly over the land," adding that "the meaning must be that it would be shorter if one would sail straight," and that "the expression is singularly infelicitous as applied to a journey by land in contrast to one by sea."
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.