[2] At present we are to speak first of Crete. According to Eudoxus, it is situated in the Ægæan sea, but he ought not to have described its situation in that manner, but have said, that it lies between Cyrenaica and the part of Greece comprehended between Sunium and Laconia,1 extending in length in the direction from west to east, and parallel to these countries;2 that it is washed on the north by the Ægæan and Cretan seas, and on the south by the African, which joins the Egyptian sea. The western extremity of the island is near Phalasarna;3 its breadth is about 200 stadia, and divided into two promontories; of which the southern is called Criu-Metopon, (or Ram's head,) and that on the north, Cimarus.4 The eastern promontory is Samonium,5 which does not stretch much further towards the east than Sunium.6
1 τν̂ς ῾ελλάδος τν̂ς ἀπὸ σουνίου μέχοͅι λακωνικῆς.
2 Gossellin observes that the false position assigned to these countries, and the contradiction perceptible in the measures in stadia, given by Strabo, and above all the impossibility of reconciling them upon one given plan, is a proof that the author consulted different histories, and different maps, in which the distances were laid down in stadia differing in length.
3 The ruins are indicated as existing a little to the north of Hagios Kurghianis, in the Austrian map.
4 Cimarus is given in Kiepert, as the island Grabusa Agria, at the extremity of Cape Buso, and also in the Austrian map. Kramer remarks that the promontory Cimarus is mentioned by no other author. Corycus on the other hand is placed by Strabo below, § 5, in these parts, although the reading is suspicious, and in b. viii. c. v. § 1, and in b. xvii. c. iii. § 22; but the reading again in this last reference is doubtful. Cape Cimarus is now C. Buso or Grabusa.
5 In b. ii. c. iv. § 3, it is written Salmonium, (c. Salamoni,) in which passage Kramer has retained the spelling of the name, on the ground that this form is to be found in Apollonius, Arg. 4, 1693, and Dionys. Perieg. 110. Salmone in the Acts, xxvii. 7.
6 C. Colonna.
The Geography of Strabo. Literally translated, with notes, in three volumes. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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