[344] The Periplus of Skylax enumerates every section of the
Greek name, with the insignificant exceptions noticed in the
text, as partaking of the line of coast; it even mentions
Arcadia (c. 45), because at that time Lepreum had shaken off the
supremacy of Elis, and was confederated with the Arcadians (about
360 B. C.): Lepreum possessed about twelve miles of coast, which
therefore count as Arcadian.
[345] Cicero (De Republicâ, ii. 2-4, in the Fragments of that
lost treatise, ed. Maii) notices emphatically both the general
maritime accessibility of Grecian towns, and the effects of that
circumstance on Grecian character: “Quod de Corintho dixi, id
haud scio an liceat de cunctâ Græciâ verissime dicere. Nam et
ipsa Peloponnesus fere tota in mari est: nec prætor Phliuntios
ulli sunt, quorum agri non contingant mare: et extra Peloponnesum
Ænianes et Dores et Dolopes soli absunt a mari. Quid dicam
insulas Græciæ, quæ fluctibus cinctæ natant pæne ipsæ simul cum
civitatium institutis et moribus? Atque hæc quidem, ut supra
dixi, veteris sunt Græciæ. Coloniarum vero quæ est deducta a
Graiis in Asiam, Thraciam, Italiam, Siciliam, Africam, præter
unam Magnesiam, quam unda non alluat? Ita barbarorum agris quasi
adtexta quædam videtur ora esse Græciæ.”
Compare Cicero, Epistol. ad Attic. vi. 2, with the reference to
Dikæarchus, who agreed to a great extent in Plato’s objections
against a maritime site (De Legg. iv. p. 705; also, Aristot.
Politic. vii. 5-6). The sea (says Plato) is indeed a salt and
bitter neighbor (μάλα γε μὴν ὄντως ἁλμυρὸν καὶ πικρὸν γειτόνημα),
though convenient for purposes of daily use.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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