Book 34
4
It is better, again, to take the lineOdyss. 9, 82. Thence for nine days the foul winds drave us on, to mean that he made but a short distance—for foul winds do not favour a straight course—than to imagine him to have got into the open ocean as running before favouring winds. The distance from Malea to the Pillars is twenty-two thousand five hundred stades. If we suppose this to have been accomplished at an even speed in the nine days, he would make two thousand five hundred stades a day. Now, who has ever asserted that any one made the voyage from Lycia or Rhodes to Alexandria in four days, a distance of four thousand stades?
4
To those who ask how it was that Odysseus, though he came to Sicily three times, never once went through the straits, I answer that all subsequent sailors avoided that passage also. . . .
