|
|
Herodotus
Coleridge claimed to have read all the Greek and Roman authors.
In fact, he seems
to have been particularly struck by the historian Herodotus' story of the Phoenicians
sailing from the Red Sea, down along the East coast of Africa, and around
the Cape of Good Hope, because then, when sailing north, the sailors
reported, awestruck, that the sun rose on the right, an image that Coleridge
may have echoed in "The Ancient Mariner."
Herodotus tried to find anyone who
might tell him about the source of the Nile.
He finally found one person, a
scribe in the city of Sais, who told him about fountains with no bottom,
which Lowes equates with the caverns "measureless to man," in Kubla Khan.
Caverns measureless to man had been associated with the Nile for 23
centuries.
Here's Herodotus' take on the story. |
 |