His Voyage Is Also Cited By
Aristotle, Pomponius Mela, And Pliny.
The era at which it was performed,
and the extent of the voyage, have given rise to much discussion.
Isaac
Vossius fixes the date of it prior to the age of Homer: Vossius the father,
subsequent to it: Wesseling doubts whether it was even prior to Herodotus.
Campomanes fixes it about the 93d Olympiad: and Mr. Dodwell somewhere
between the 92d and the 129th Olympiad. According to Pliny, Hanno and
Himilco were contemporaries; the latter author mentions the commentaries of
Hanno, but in such a manner as if he had not seen, and did not believe
them.
With respect to the extent of his voyage along the western coast of Africa,
some modern writers assert, without any authority, that he doubled the Cape
of Good Hope: this assertion is made in direct unqualified terms by Mickle
the translator of the Lusiad. Other writers limit the extent of his
navigation to Cape Nun; while, according to other geographers, he sailed as
far as Cape Three Points, on the coast of Guinea. That there should be any
doubt on the subject appears surprising; for, as Dr. Vincent very justly
remarks, we have Hanno's own authority to prove that he never was within 40
degrees of the Cape.
That the Carthaginians, before the voyage of Hanno, had discovered the
Canary Islands, is rendered highly probable, from the accounts of Diodorus
Siculus, and Aristotle: the former mentions a large, beautiful, and fertile
island, to which the Carthaginians, in the event of any overwhelming
disorder, had determined to remove their government; and Aristotle relates
that they were attracted to a beautiful island in such numbers, that the
senate were obliged to forbid any further emigration to it on pain of
death.
The voyages of the Carthaginians were, from the situation of their
territory, and the imperfect state of geography and navigation at that
period, usually confined to the Mediterranean and to the western shores of
Africa and Europe; but several years antecedent to the date usually
assigned to the voyages of Himilco and Hanno, a voyage of discovery is said
to have been accomplished by the king of a nation little given to maritime
affairs. We allude to the voyage of Scylax, undertaken at the command of
Darius the son of Hystaspes, about 550 years before Christ. There are
several circumstances respecting this voyage which deserve attention or
examination; the person who performed it, is said by Herodotus, (from whom
we derive all our information on the subject), to have been a native of
Caryandria, or at least an inhabitant of Asia Minor: he was therefore most
probably a Greek: he was a geographer and mathematician of some eminence,
and by some writers is supposed to have first invented geographical tables.
According to Herodotus, Darius, after his Scythian expedition, in order to
facilitate his design of conquest in the direction of India, resolved, in
the first place, to make a discovery of that part of the world.
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