Xerxes' Okapi and Greek GeographyAuthor(s): L. Sprague de CampSource: Isis, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Mar., 1963), pp. 123-125Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/228734 .

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XERXES' OKAPI AND GREEK GEOGRAPHY

By L. Sprague de Camp *

From the fifth century B. C. to the beginning of the Christian era, learned men in the eastern Mediterranean heard that the Nile had its source in rain that fell on countries far to the south of Egypt, or in snows melting on high mountains in those lands. Hence Aischylos: Proceed along the banks of this river [Aithiops] until you reach the waterfall where the Nile sends his holy grateful stream from the Bybline mountains.1

and Anaxagoras (according to Diodorus of Sicily) declared that: . . . the cause of the rising [of the Nile] is the melting of the snow in Ethiopia, and the poet Euripides, a pupil of his, is in agreement with him .. .2

and Herodotos:

Then the third explanation, though it appears most reasonable, is the most false; for this also is no explanation at all, alleging as it does that the Nile flows from the melting snow - the Nile which flows from Libya through the midst of the Ethiopians and only then pours into Egypt! 3

and Aristotle:

Likewise also in Libya some [rivers], namely the Aegon and the Nyses, flow from the Ethi- opian mountains; while the greatest of its named rivers, the one called Chremetes, which flows into the Outer Sea, and the first portion of the Nile's stream, flow from the so-called Silver Mountain.4

and so on through Agatharchides, Po- seidonios, Strabon, and Diodoros.5

Learned Hellenes had also heard other accounts of the source of the Nile. They heard that it flowed from the Outer Sea, or that it originated in a pair of conical mountains not far south of Syene (Aswan). Some rejected the

* Villanova, Pa. 1Aischylos: Prom. Vinct., 810-814. 2 Diodoros of Sicily: I, xxxviii, 4. 3 Herodotos: II, 22. 4 Aristotle: Meteorologica, 350a. 5 Diodoros: I, xxxvii, 6; xli, 4; Strabon, II,

iii, 1-3; XVII, i, 2, 5; Hippolytus: Ref. Haer., I, viii, 3 ff.

ISIS, 1963, VOL. 54, PART 1, NO. 175.

notion of snow on the equator out of hand. As Herodotos put it: "How could it possibly flow from snow, since it flows from the hottest regions to colder? " 6

In the second century A. D., Claudius Ptolemaeus obtained more information from Marinus of Tyre, who seems to have gathered a confused account of the Central African Lake District from the trader Diogenes. Ptolemaeus said that: "Around this bay [on the east coast of Africa] the cannibal Ethiopians dwell, and from these toward the west are the Mountains of the Moon from which the lakes of the Nile receive snow water. . . .7 Diogenes had re- ported that: "... after having sailed with Trogloditica on his right, [he] came in twenty-five days to the lake from which the Nile flows...." 8 These lakes- Lakes Albert, Kyoga, Victoria, and Edward in Uganda - are not men- tioned by Ptolemaeus' predecessors whose works have survived.

Some nineteenth-century geographers refused to believe in snow-capped equa- torial mountains for the reason given by Herodotos: namely, that such a country would be too hot. But the discovery of the Ruwenzori range south of Lake Albert by Stanley in the 1880's confirmed the hints of Anaxagoras and his colleagues.

As the heat of Ethiopia was known in the classical world, the existence of such a snowy range is not likely to have been made up out of whole cloth. It is a reasonable inference that Aristotle's "Silver Mountain" is, forsooth, the real Ruwenzori, the name (like " Moun- tains of the Moon ") referring to the whiteness of its peaks.

But how, then, did news of the exist- ence of this range ever get to the Greek world of the fifth century B. C.?

6 Herodotos: II, 31; Diodoros: I, xxxvii-xli; Strabon: VI, ii, 9; XVII, iii, 4.

7 Claudius Ptolemaeus: Geog., IV, viii, 3. 8 Ibid., I, ix.

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L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

Nothing in the surviving literature tells of any expedition, before the first cen- tury C. E., up the Nile to its headwaters. The first known such attempt is the safari of two centurions sent up the Nile by Nero. These, however, failed to get past the sadd - the great swamp through which the White Nile flows between latitudes 5? and 10? N.9

There is, however, evidence of an- other kind of such an expedition. When King Xerxes built his great Apa- dana or audience hall at Persepolis, around 470 B. C., the decorations in- cluded two sets of bas-reliefs sculptured on the retaining walls on the north and east sides of the platform. These two sets of reliefs are near-duplicates. Each shows twenty-three groups of delega- tions from the various subject peoples of the Archaemenid Empire, bearing tribute to the Great King.

The last group of each set consists of three long-robed African Pygmies led by a Persian usher, who is more than a head taller than those whom he leads. Of the Pygmies, the first holds a pot (of honey?); the second bears the tusk of a cow elephant over his shoulder; and the third leads an okapi by a bridle.10

Although this relief has been known for decades, not until recently was its true nature realized. Even Olmstead's monumental History of the Persian Empire describes the animal depicted as " a curiously foreshortened giraffe." 11

Professor Bryan Patterson of Har- vard University has stated that, while the animal is an unmistakable okapi, it differs in minor respects from the present Okapi johnstoni of the Ituri Forest, rediscovered by Sir Harry John- ston in 1900. Patterson adds that these differences might be due either to the fact that the animal belonged to a now extinct species or subspecies of the okapi, or to the artist's unfamiliarity with the beast.12

9 Pliny: Nat. Hist., VI, xxxv (181, 184); XII, viii (19); Seneca: Quaest. Nat., VI, 8.

10 Erich F. Schmidt: Persepolis (Chicago, 1953), Vol. I, Plate 49b.

11 A. T. Olmstead: History of the Persian Empire (Chicago, 1949), p. 244.

12 Schmidt: op. cit., p. 90, n.

Evidently, then, in the reign of Xerxes (486-465 B. C.) somebody trav- eled from the Persian Empire to a country where Pygmies and okapis dwelt and returned to tell the tale, bringing some of the small brown folk with him to prove that he spoke the truth. At least, it is hard to imagine an Akka chieftain setting out on the 3,000-mile journey to Persepolis on his own initiative.

Today this would mean that the traveler reached the Ituri Forest of the northeastern Congo. In Xerxes' time, to judge from allusions in classical literature, Pygmies - or at least pyg- moid peoples - were more widely spread about Africa than they now are. They dwelt not only in the Congo, but also on the upper Nile, on the upper courses of the Niger or the Bahr el- Ghazal, on the west coast of Africa, and on islands in the Red Sea.13

The okapi may also have had a wider range then than it now has. But, as the okapi is adapted to life in a dense tropical rain forest, it cannot have ranged very far outside the present Congo, at least to the north and east, because outside the northern and east- ern boundaries of the Congo the coun- try becomes open parkland except for gallery forests along the streams. (In ancient times, however, the forest may have been somewhat more extensive be- cause the Africans had not yet de- forested large areas by annual grass- burnings.)

In any case, Anaxagoras' Ethiopian snows, Aristotle's Silver Mountain, and Xerxes' okapi all combine to imply that an ancient expedition up the Nile did win to within sight of the Ruwen- zori range, presumably passing through the kingdom of Kush and around Lake Albert on its way. Who did it and when?

The journey probably took place in Xerxes' reign, but nothing is known of who did it. It is not unlikely that Xerxes sent out such an expedition, as

13 Homer: Iliad, III, 6, & Hekataios selon Schol. on this passage; Herodotos: II, 32 f.; IV, 43; Nonnosus apud Photius, III (ed. J. H. Freese, Vol. I, pp. 19 f.).

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PARLIAMENT AND THE METRIC SYSTEM PARLIAMENT AND THE METRIC SYSTEM

Darius I had sent Skylax of Karyanda was closed when the Nilotic Negroes down the Indus and as Xerxes dis- of the southern Sudan learned - as they patched Sataspes on an unsuccessful did some time in the classical period -

attempt to circumnavigate Africa.14 to smelt iron and put iron heads on But the names of the discoverers of the their spears. They thus became more Silver Mountain, who effected one of formidable than when their spears were the most striking of all feats of explora- tipped only with horn. Having been tion, are lost. raided by slavers, they probably at-

We do not know whether there was tacked any outsiders on sight. one expedition or several; nor, in the For many centuries thereafter, the latter case, which one brought back the Nilotics kept all foreigners at bay, until Pygmies and the okapi. However, we the gun gave the outlanders another can infer that the route between the advantage. Then slave raiding on the Mediterranean world and Central upper Nile was resumed by Arabs, Africa did not remain open long. If it Turks, and Egyptians, and by the riff- had, knowledge of the sources of the raff of many nations. And at last, a Nile would have become commonplace century ago, the headwaters of the Nile and would have ousted the more fan- were brought back into the light of tastic theories about that river, literate knowledge by the explorations

My own surmise is that the route of Burton, Speke, Grant, Baker, and Stanley.

14 Herodotos: IV, 43 f.

PARLIAMENT AND THE METRIC SYSTEM1

By Bernard Semmel *

Darius I had sent Skylax of Karyanda was closed when the Nilotic Negroes down the Indus and as Xerxes dis- of the southern Sudan learned - as they patched Sataspes on an unsuccessful did some time in the classical period -

attempt to circumnavigate Africa.14 to smelt iron and put iron heads on But the names of the discoverers of the their spears. They thus became more Silver Mountain, who effected one of formidable than when their spears were the most striking of all feats of explora- tipped only with horn. Having been tion, are lost. raided by slavers, they probably at-

We do not know whether there was tacked any outsiders on sight. one expedition or several; nor, in the For many centuries thereafter, the latter case, which one brought back the Nilotics kept all foreigners at bay, until Pygmies and the okapi. However, we the gun gave the outlanders another can infer that the route between the advantage. Then slave raiding on the Mediterranean world and Central upper Nile was resumed by Arabs, Africa did not remain open long. If it Turks, and Egyptians, and by the riff- had, knowledge of the sources of the raff of many nations. And at last, a Nile would have become commonplace century ago, the headwaters of the Nile and would have ousted the more fan- were brought back into the light of tastic theories about that river, literate knowledge by the explorations

My own surmise is that the route of Burton, Speke, Grant, Baker, and Stanley.

14 Herodotos: IV, 43 f.

PARLIAMENT AND THE METRIC SYSTEM1

By Bernard Semmel *

There have been three periods when it seemed as if Great Britain might adopt the metric system. The first ran roughly from the introduction of that system in France, in 1806, to the first few years after Waterloo. It was to be expected that the nation which was one of Europe's leaders in science and in- dustry would show an early interest in the meter. In January 1807, John Playfair, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the University

*State University of New York, at Stony Brook.

1The eminent historian of science, George Sarton, wrote in 1936: "It is easy enough to explain some facts retrospectively, especially if one be free to select the convenient facts and to abandon the inconvenient ones. Why did the most industrial and mercantile nation of Europe reject the metric system, while its use would have caused great economies in time and money? Suppose the situation had been reversed, how tempting it would have been to explain the creation of the metric system as a necessary result of the superior mer- cantilism of England." The Study of the His- tory of Mathematics (New York, 1957), p. 15. (First edition 1936.)

There have been three periods when it seemed as if Great Britain might adopt the metric system. The first ran roughly from the introduction of that system in France, in 1806, to the first few years after Waterloo. It was to be expected that the nation which was one of Europe's leaders in science and in- dustry would show an early interest in the meter. In January 1807, John Playfair, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the University

*State University of New York, at Stony Brook.

1The eminent historian of science, George Sarton, wrote in 1936: "It is easy enough to explain some facts retrospectively, especially if one be free to select the convenient facts and to abandon the inconvenient ones. Why did the most industrial and mercantile nation of Europe reject the metric system, while its use would have caused great economies in time and money? Suppose the situation had been reversed, how tempting it would have been to explain the creation of the metric system as a necessary result of the superior mer- cantilism of England." The Study of the His- tory of Mathematics (New York, 1957), p. 15. (First edition 1936.)

of Edinburgh, writing for the Edin- burgh Review, hailed the new system with its "natural standard" and its decimal character and declared that " the wisest measure . . . for the other nations of Europe, is certainly to adopt the metrical system of the French." Playfair bemoaned the confusion of English and European weights and measures, a confusion which "had nothing to support it but the authority of past time," and which appeared to be "connected with all the abomina- tions of feudal times." A child of the Enlightenment, Playfair naively assert- ed that " the difficulty is not so great as we are apt to think"; nothing was necessary "but for the legislature to say, it shall be done." He urged Eng- lishmen to make "a certain sacrifice of national vanity" and not to allow the association of the metric system with the terrors of a revolutionary and a Napoleonic France to prevent its adop- tion. " On a matter that concerns the arts and sciences only," he concluded,

of Edinburgh, writing for the Edin- burgh Review, hailed the new system with its "natural standard" and its decimal character and declared that " the wisest measure . . . for the other nations of Europe, is certainly to adopt the metrical system of the French." Playfair bemoaned the confusion of English and European weights and measures, a confusion which "had nothing to support it but the authority of past time," and which appeared to be "connected with all the abomina- tions of feudal times." A child of the Enlightenment, Playfair naively assert- ed that " the difficulty is not so great as we are apt to think"; nothing was necessary "but for the legislature to say, it shall be done." He urged Eng- lishmen to make "a certain sacrifice of national vanity" and not to allow the association of the metric system with the terrors of a revolutionary and a Napoleonic France to prevent its adop- tion. " On a matter that concerns the arts and sciences only," he concluded,

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