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For Moeris cp. c. 101 n., and for his date App. XIV. ὅτε τῶν . . . ἤκουον. These words seem to imply that some interval had elapsed between the time when H. heard the statement and when he wrote this passage; Meyer (F. i. 156) concludes that H. was in Egypt about 440 B. C., and wrote Bk. II about 430. The height of the Nile flood was measured at Memphis, just above Rodah near Cairo, where the Nilometer now stands. A scanty Nile rises 20 feet or less, a good one from 24 to 27. The sixteen child figures on the well-known Nile statue in the Vatican symbolize a rise of 16 cubits (24 feet), i. e. a good Nile. πήχεας: H. seems to take the cubit as 18 1/2 inches (as in Greece), not as 21 (the royal cubit, cf. i. 178. 3 n.). H. is wrong in saying the height of the inundations had altered so much in historic times; perhaps he has confused geographical variations (i. e. at different parts of the Nile) with historical ones (i. e. at different periods). εἰ μὴ . . . ἀναβῇ: for omission of ἄν cf. iv. 172. 2, and Goodwin, § 468.
ἢν οὕτω ἡ χώρη. Translate ‘If this land rises in height proportionately (to its rise in the past) and duly makes (ἀποδιδοῖ) a like increase in extent’, then it will be reached by the flood water with more difficulty. H. ignores the fact that the river-bed rises proportionately to the river-banks.
ἀποστροφή: properly an ‘escape from’, so a ‘resource’ (viii. 109. 5). Here used oddly with gen. = ‘a resource for getting water’. For the contrast between artificial irrigation and rainfall cf. Deuteronomy xi. 10-12. For rain in Egypt cf. iii. 10. 3 n.
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