DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0346
318 THE ISLES AND SHRINES OF GREECE
Mansell1 of the British navy, who says he has known
it to change five times in an hour, and that the water
driven north upon the Thessalian coast by strong
southern winds will rush down through these straits
against the wind at a velocity of eight knots an
hour. One of the poisonous legends which some-
times entwine themselves round a great man's
memory had an aquatic origin here. It was to the
effect that Aristotle drowned himself because he
could not fathom the secrets of these currents, say-
ing, " Inasmuch as I cannot take thee in, take thou
me in." It seems a literary cruelty to spoil such a
well-balanced antithesis even to save a philosopher
from drowning, but the story has a fishy odor; and
it is the man who swallows it who is taken in.
Wc arrived at the Euripus at seven a. m., and were
obliged to wait three and a half hours on account of
the tide. But that was not nearly so long as the
Grecian fleet bound for Troy was detained here by
adverse winds in the Bay of Aulis. Taking warn-
ing by the fate of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, we
did not go hunting, but climbed the height to
see just where a thousand Greek ships could find
anchorage in the harbor. I suspect that they must
have stretched out into the gulf, or that some of
them found their keel only in Homer's catalogue,
which by floating these hypothetical ships was more
easily floated itself.
Leaving Euripus, the channel widens into a gulf,
with the fertile fields of Euboea on the right and
the mountains of Bceotia on the left. Though too
late to catch a glimpse of Thermopylae, I fancied as
1 See Murray's Hand-Book.
Mansell1 of the British navy, who says he has known
it to change five times in an hour, and that the water
driven north upon the Thessalian coast by strong
southern winds will rush down through these straits
against the wind at a velocity of eight knots an
hour. One of the poisonous legends which some-
times entwine themselves round a great man's
memory had an aquatic origin here. It was to the
effect that Aristotle drowned himself because he
could not fathom the secrets of these currents, say-
ing, " Inasmuch as I cannot take thee in, take thou
me in." It seems a literary cruelty to spoil such a
well-balanced antithesis even to save a philosopher
from drowning, but the story has a fishy odor; and
it is the man who swallows it who is taken in.
Wc arrived at the Euripus at seven a. m., and were
obliged to wait three and a half hours on account of
the tide. But that was not nearly so long as the
Grecian fleet bound for Troy was detained here by
adverse winds in the Bay of Aulis. Taking warn-
ing by the fate of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, we
did not go hunting, but climbed the height to
see just where a thousand Greek ships could find
anchorage in the harbor. I suspect that they must
have stretched out into the gulf, or that some of
them found their keel only in Homer's catalogue,
which by floating these hypothetical ships was more
easily floated itself.
Leaving Euripus, the channel widens into a gulf,
with the fertile fields of Euboea on the right and
the mountains of Bceotia on the left. Though too
late to catch a glimpse of Thermopylae, I fancied as
1 See Murray's Hand-Book.