At Present We Shall Merely Notice The Characteristic And Minute Picture Which Agatharcides Has Drawn Of The Sabeans, And The Just Notions He Had Formed On The Nature Of A Commerce, Of Which All The Other Writers Of Antiquity Seemed To Have Been Utterly Ignorant.

Beyond Sabaea to the east, Agatharcides possessed no information, though, like all the ancients, he is desirous of supplying his want of it by indulging in the marvellous:

It is, however, rather curious that, among other particulars, undoubtedly unfounded, such as placing the Fortunate islands off the coast beyond Sabaea, and his describing the flocks and herds as all white, and the females as polled; - he describes that whiteness of the sea, to which we have already alluded, as confirmed by modern travellers. From these unfounded particulars, our author soon emerges again into the truth; for he describes the appearance of the different constellations, and especially notices that to the south of Sabaea there is no twilight in the morning; but when he adds, that the sun, at rising, appears like a column - that it casts no shadow till it has been risen an hour, and that the evening twilight lasts three hours after it has set; it is obvious that the information of that age (of which we may justly suppose the library of Alexandria was the great depository) did not extend beyond Sabaea.

That Agatharcides had access to and made ample use of the journal of Nearchus (of which we have given such a complete abstract), is evident from various parts of his work; but it is also evident, by comparing his description of those countries and their inhabitants, which had been visited and described by Nearchus, that he had access to other sources of intelligence, by means of which he added to the materials supplied by the latter.

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