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The distance thence to Koptos, up the Nile, is three hundred and eight miles; the voyage is performed, when the Etesian winds are blowing, in twelve days. From Koptos the journey is made with the aid of camels, stations being arranged at intervals for the supply of fresh water.
And on this account it is that Etesian winds from Zeus cool the land for forty days, and in Ceos even now the priests offer sacrifices before the rising of the Dog-star. So the tale is told, but the chieftains stayed there by constraint, and every day the Thynians, doing pleasure to Phineus, sent them gifts beyond measure.
The most acute of the ancients ascribed the inundation with Strabo to summer rains in the south; others to snows melting on the Mountains of the Moon; others to the northern wind the Etesian breezes blowing directly against the mouth of the river and its current: others, with less reason, ascribed the inundation to its having its source in the ocean: Herodotus and Pliny to evaporation following the course of the sun.
Thales conjectures that the Etesian or anniversary northern winds blowing strongly against Egypt heighten the swelling of the Nile, the mouth of that river being obstructed by the force of the sea rushing into it. Euthymenes the Massilian concludes that the Nile is filled by the ocean and that sea which is outward from it, the last being naturally sweet.
Eporedorix, treacherously revolts from Caesar, G. vii. 54 Essui, a people of Gaul; the word seems to be a corruption from Aedui, C. v. 24 Etesian winds detain Caesar at Alexandria, which involves him in a new war, C. iii. 107 Eusubii, corrupted from Unelli, or Lexovii, properly the people of Lisieux, in Normandy
Democritus, that the snows which are in the northern climates when the sun enters the summer solstice are dissolved and diffused; from those vapors clouds are compacted, and these are forcibly driven by the Etesian winds into the southern parts and into Egypt, from whence violent showers are poured; and by this means the fens of Egypt are filled with water, and the river Nile hath its inundation.
XXXIX. In the first part of this chapter Plutarch continues his identification of Typhon with drought, and his ally Aso, Queen of Ethiopia, he considers to be the Etesian or north winds, which blow for a long period when the Nile is falling. As to what they relate of the shutting up of Osiris in a box, this appears to mean the withdrawal of the Nile to its own bed.
This is the more probable as this misfortune is said to have happened to Osiris in the month of Hathor, precisely at that season of the year when, upon the cessation of the Etesian or north winds the Nile returns to its own bed, and leaves the country everywhere bare and naked. At this time also the length of the nights increases, darkness prevails, whilst light is diminished and overcome.
But often the Etesian Winds fail and yet the Nile does the same work as it is wont to do; and moreover, if these were the cause, all the other rivers also which flow in a direction opposed to the Etesian Winds ought to have been affected in the same way as the Nile, and even more, in as much as they are smaller and present to them a feebler flow of streams: but there are many of these rivers in Syria and many also in Libya, and they are affected in no such manner as the Nile.
And after passing through a variety of confused and uncertain counsels, at last he let his servants carry him by sea to Capitae, where he had a house, an agreeable place to retire to in the heat of summer, when the Etesian winds are so pleasant.
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