The Golden Wind

Eudoxos' "giant Indian mouse" is the black rat, rats not having been known in the West in classical times.

The "artemon" was a kind of foresail carried by large classical sailing ships from Hellenistic times on. It was flown from a spar at the bow, which was neither exactly a foremast nor a bowsprit, but something intermediate, standing up at an angle of about 45° to the deck.

The description of the Ptolemies' Nubian gold mines follows the account of Agatharchides, paraphrased by Diodoros (III, 12-14).

There is no evidence that Eudoxos invented the fore-and-aft sail, but he could have. Sails of this kind (either the short-luffed lug, as in the story, or the spritsail) began to appear on small coastal vessels, such as fishing boats, at just about the time of my story. See Lionel Casson's The Ancient Mariners In the West African episode, the Baga were a fishing tribe of former times, mentioned in the legends of Sierra Leone. The other tribes are fictitious. The customs attributed to the West Africans, however, are those found there by Europeans during the era of European exploration and conquest. 1500-1900. The Africans are shown in the story as more primitive than they were during the Age of Exploration, because they undoubtedly were more primitive at the time of the story. The semi-civilized kingdoms of West Africa—Ghana Mali, Ashanti, Dahomey, and the rest—did not. as far as is known, begin to arise until about the middle of the first millennium of the Christian Era, at the earliest.

The site of Hanno's Kernê has been the subject of much modern speculation. It has been located at several places, from modern Herné at the bay of Rio de Oro to the mouth of the Senegal River. This last assumption is that of Rhys Carpenter, in Beyond the Pillars of Heracles. Without wishing to take sides in this scholarly dispute, I have accepted Dr. Carpenter's theory for the purposes of my story.