A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

io6
Economy and Colonization
A less favorable
ijeason.
There was no
insurance.
speed to return home again; neither wait the new wine and
autumn rain, the winter's onset and the dread blasts of
the southern wind, which, coming with the heavy autumn
rain of Zeus, stirreth the sea and maketh the deep perilous.
Also in spring may men sail; when first on the topmost
spray of the fig-tree leaves appear as the foot-print of a
crow for size, then is the sea navigable.
This is the spring
sailing, which I commend not, for it is not pleasing to my
mind, snatched sailing that it is. Hardly shalt thou escape
doom. Yet even this men do in ignorance of mind. For
money is life for hapless men: but dread is death amid the
waves, and I bid thee think of all these things in thy
heart, even as I say. Neither set thou all thy livelihood
in hollow ships, but leave the greater part and put on
board the less. For a dread thing it is to chance on doom
amid the waves.
III.
Tarentum
Topography
and art.
Strabo vi.
3. I.
Greece, 34;
Ancient
World, 107.
The Gulf of Tarentum is for the most part destitute of a
port, but here there is a large commodious harbor closed
in by a great bridge. . . . The site of the city is extremely
low. The ground rises slightly toward the citadel. The
old wall of the city has an immense circuit, but now the
greater portion—that toward the isthmus—is deserted;
but the part near the mouth of the harbor still
subsists
and constitutes a considerable city. It possesses a noble
gymnasium and a spacious forum, in which stands a
bronze colossus of Zeus, the largest ever made excepting
the one at Rhodes. The citadel, situated between the
forum and the entrance to the harbor, still preserves some
slight relics of the ancient magnificence of consecrated
ofiferings, but the best were destroyed either by the Carthaginians
when they took the city or by the Romans when