Message #20014

[Bianca]

180 The autumnal equinox.

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181 This assertion is attributed by Strabo to Poseidonius, not to the Phoenicians (cp. § 7 above).

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182 At the beginning of § 8 Strabo sets out, rather captiously, to prove inconsistency and injustice on the part of Poseidonius. The latter had accused the Phoenicians (the people of Gades) of having the foolish notion about the "reverse-behaviour," of being incapable of seeing the daily phenomena, and of believing in things that did not occur; nevertheless, Strabo means, Poseidonius bases his own remarks about the tides upon what he had learned from the people of Gades, for example, that "the retreat and the invasion grew greatest at the time of the summer solstice." Of course, Strabo denies neither Poseidonius's account of the tides, nor the relation that Poseidonius says exists between the tides and the motion of the moon, both of which, so far as they go, are substantially correct. Cp. Pliny, 2.99.

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183 The Chaldaean astronomer (1.1.9 and 16.1.6).

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184 That is, the comparative regularity or irregularity of the tides.

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185 That is, to the equinoctial or the solstitial signs. It is clear from this passage that Seleucus had solved the law which governs the diurnal inequality of the tide in Indian Ocean.

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