VI.] THE PERIPLUS OF SCYLAX. 119
order to attract attention by its celebrity. The date of its com-
position can be determined within narrow limits by
internal evidence, for it mentions the foundation
of the Athenian colony at Neapolis on the Thracian
coast, which took place in 360 B.C., and, on the other hand, it
speaks of Olynthus, which was destroyed in 347 B.C., as still exist-
ing; whence we may infer that it was written in the interval
between those two events1. This coasting survey
starts from Gades and the Pillars of Hercules, and Ite Contents<
follows the sinuosities of the coast all round the Mediterranean,
the Euxine, and the other seas connected with them, commencing
with the northern shores, and returning by the way of Asia Minor,
Syria and Northern Africa; it continues also beyond the Pillars of
Hercules along the African coast as far as the island of Cerne.
The work is composed in the main of notices of the islands,
harbours and rivers, and of the towns and tribes which border on
the sea; the distances also from point to point are carefully given.
Here and there further information is added, but such remarks
are of somewhat rare occurrence. It is well, how- _ _
1 Doubts as to
ever, at once to intimate that serious doubts have its Genuine-
been raised as to the genuineness of the greater part ness>
of this narrative. Several of the most eminent authorities on the
subject, including Carl Miiller and Berger, are of opinion that,
though the original Pmplus was composed about the time already
mentioned, yet this was epitomised about the third or fourth
century of our era, and what we now possess is this epitome, after
it had been further altered and interpolated at a subsequent
period8. This view is chiefly based on the corrupt and mutilated
condition in which the work has come down to us, and on the
style of the Greek in which it is written, which is certainly later
than the time of Philip of Macedon. From the last point we
may at least infer that, if the Periplus is genuine, it must have
been recast by a later hand Still, these difficulties have not
prevented other good judges, like Kiepert and Bunbury, from
accepting it in substance as a work of the earlier period8; and it
1 Bunbury, Hist, of Am. Geography, i. pp. 404, 405.
8 Muller, op. eit., Prolegg., p. xlix; Berger, op. cit., 2. p. 79.
8 Kiepert, Lehrbuchd. a. Geographie^ p.-3; Bunbury, op. cit., x. pp.4O5,406.