ἱστορίαι Historiai
Plb. 34.11 The Histories, Polybius; served verbatim
There is an excellent wine made at Capua called Anadendrites, or the “wine of the climbing vine,” with which no other can compare.... The length of the coast from Iapygia to the straits is three thousand stades by land, and it is washed by the Sicilian sea. Sailing, however, the distance is less than five hundred stades.... The largest distance of the Etrurian coast is from Luna to Ostia, a distance of one thousand three hundred and thirty stades.... The island Lemnos is called Aethaleia.... The bay between the two promontories of Misenum and Minerva is called the Crater (the Bowl). Above this coast lies the whole of Campania, the most fertile plain in the country. Round the Bowl live the Opici and the Ausones.... The north road from Iapygia has been marked out with miles, five hundred and sixty to Sena, and one hundred and seventy thence to Aquileia.... Then comes Lacinium... from the straits to this place is a distance of one thousand three hundred stades, and thence to the Iapygian promontory seven hundred.... Of the three craters one has partly fallen in, the other two remain perfect. The largest has a circular orifice with a circumference of five stades, but it gradually contracts to a diameter of fifty feet; it runs right down to the sea for a stade, so that the sea is visible in clear weather. When a south wind is about to blow, a thick mist envelopes the little island, so that even Sicily is invisible from it: but if there is going to be a north wind, bright flames rise from the crater and shoot up high, and louder rumblings are emitted; but a west wind causes a medium display of both. The other two craters are of the same shape, but their eruptions are less violent. From the difference in the sound of the rumbling, and by observing from what point the eruptions and flames and smoke begin, the wind which is to blow on the third day from that time can be foretold. At least, some men in the Lipari Islands when weather-bound have foretold what wind was coming and have not been deceived. Therefore, it appears that Homer did not speak without meaning, but was stating a truth allegorically when he called Aeolus “steward of the winds.”...

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

The Histories, Polybius — translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, 1889
Apparatus shelf — Polybius, The Histories (Evelyn S. Shuckburgh translation; Musaicum ebook) · Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, The Histories of Polybius, 2 vols (Macmillan, 1889); Musaicum Books ebook, 2018
license: public-domain (US: the translation is pre-1890 by the epub's own front matter — its preface opens 'This is the first English translation of the complete works of Polybius', carries the dedication 'TO F. M. S.', and cites nothing later than the 1880s; identified as Shuckburgh 1889, this lane's bibliographic judgment, since the ebook nowhere names its translator; the Musaicum 2018 packaging is not extracted and not served)