Strabo, Geography

Sicily is triangular in shape; and for this reason it was at first called "Trinacria," though later the name was changed to the more euphonious "Thrinacis." Its shape is defined by three capes: Pelorias, which with Caenys and Columna Rheginorum forms the strait, and Pachynus, which lies out towards the east and is washed by the Sicilian Sea, thus facing towards the Peloponnesus and the sea-passage to Crete, and, third, Lilybaeum, the cape that is next to Libya, thus facing at the same time towards Libya and the winter sunset.¹ As for the sides which are marked off by the three capes, two of them are moderately concave, whereas the third, the one that reaches from Lilybaeum to Pelorias, is convex; and this last is the longest, being one thousand seven hundred stadia in length, as Poseidonius states, though he adds twenty stadia more. Of the other two sides, the one from Lilybaeum to Pachynus is longer than the other, and the one next to the strait and Italy, from Pelorias to Pachynus, is shortest, being about one thousand one hundred and thirty stadia long. And the distance round the island by sea, as declared by Poseidonius, is four thousand stadia. But in the Chorography the distances given are longer, marked off in sections and given in miles: from Pelorias to Mylae, twenty-five miles; the same from Mylae to Tyndaris; then to Agathyrnum thirty, and the same to Alaesa, and again the same to Cephaloedium, these being small towns; and eighteen to the River Himera,² which flows through the middle of Sicily; then to Panormus thirty-five, and thirty-two to the Emporium of the Aegestes,³ and the rest of the way, to Lilybaeum, thirty-eight. Thence, on doubling Lilybaeum, to the adjacent side, to the Heracleium seventy-five miles, and to the Emporium of the Acragantini⁴ twenty, and another twenty⁵ to Camarina; and then to Pachynus fifty. Thence again along the third side: to Syracuse thirty-six, and to Catana sixty; then to Tauromenium thirty-three; and then to Messene thirty.⁶ On foot, however, the distance from Pachynus to Pelorias is one hundred and sixty-eight miles, and from Messene to Lilybaeum by the Valerian Way two hundred and thirty-five. But some writers have spoken in a more general way, as, for example, Ephorus: "At any rate, the voyage round the island takes five days and nights." Further, Poseidonius, in marking off the boundaries of the island by means of the "climata,"⁷ puts Pelorias towards the north, Lilybaeum towards the south, and Pachynus towards the east. But since the "climata" are each divided off into parallelograms, necessarily the triangles that are inscribed (particularly those which are scalene and of which no side fits on any one of the sides of the parallelogram) cannot, because of their slant, be fitted to the "climata."⁸ However this may be, one might fairly say, in the case of the "climata" of Sicily, which is situated south of Italy, that Pelorias is the most northerly of the three corners; and therefore the side that joins Pelorias to Pachynus will lie out⁹ towards the east, thus facing towards the north, and also will form the side that is on the strait. But this side must take a slight turn toward the winter sunrise,¹⁰ for the shore bends aside in this direction as one proceeds from Catana to Syracuse and Pachynus. Now the distance from Pachynus across to the mouth of the Alpheius¹¹ is four thousand stadia; but when Artemidorus says that it is four thousand six hundred stadia from Pachynus to Taenarum¹² and one thousand one hundred and thirty from the Alpheius to the Pamisus, he seems to me to afford us reason for suspecting that his statement is not in agreement with that of the man who says that the distance to the Alpheius from Pachynus is four thousand stadia. Again, the side that extends from Pachynus to Lilybaeum, which is considerably farther west than Pelorias, should itself also be made to slant considerably from its southernmost point¹³ towards the west, and should face at the same time towards the east and towards the south,¹⁴ one part being washed by the Sicilian Sea and the other by the Libyan Sea that reaches from Carthaginia to the Syrtes. The shortest passage from Lilybaeum across to Libya in neighborhood of Carthage is one thousand five hundred stadia;¹⁵ and on this passage, it is said, some man of sharp vision, from a look-out, used to report to the men in Lilybaeum the number of ships that were putting to sea from Carthage.¹⁶ Again, the side that extends from Lilybaeum to Pelorias necessarily slants towards the east, and faces towards the region that is between the west and the north,¹⁷ having Italy on the north and on the west the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Islands of Aeolus.