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The view that the Nile rose because of melting snow is called by H. by far the ‘most attractive’, but also ‘especially inaccurate’. It was held by Anaxagoras (Diod. i. 38) and his pupil, Euripides (fr. 230), but can be traced further back, in Aeschylus (fr. 304) “ἐν δ᾽ ἥλιος πυρωπὸς ἐκλάμψας χθονι
τήκει πετραίαν χιόνα: πᾶσα δ᾽ εὐθαλὴς
Αἴγυπτος ἁγνοῦ νάματος πληρουμένη.
” It is very near the truth. The Nile rises partly because of the heavy rains on the Abyssinian plateau, partly from the melting snow on the mountains round the Great Lakes; the former are brought down by the Blue Nile, the latter by the White Nile, which meet at Khartoum. H. rejects the theory because: (1) ‘It flows from the hottest lands to those of which most are colder’, as is shown by the warmth of the winds. (2) Upper Egypt was rainless (cf. iii. 10. 3 n.), and Aethiopia must also be so; but snow is always followed by rain within five days (§ 3). (3) The inhabitants are black from the heat （§ 3). (4) The birds do not migrate from Aethiopia, as they would do were there winter there (§ 4). H. tries to apply critical tests to a fact which seems to him insufficiently supported by evidence, and so arrives at a wrong conclusion (cf. iii. 115. 1 n. for similar criticism).
καὶ ὅσον ὦν, ‘ever so little.’
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