Agatharchides of Cnidus

FGrH 86 (goldmines) — Agatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea — Egyptian-Nubian gold mines (Diodorus Siculus 3.12.1; FGrH 86, Diodoran recension) Converged + audit-sound

περὶ γὰρ τὰς ἐσχατιὰς τῆς Αἰγύπτου καὶ τῆς ὁμορούσης Ἀραβίας τε καὶ Αἰθιοπίας τόπος ἐστὶν ἔχων μέταλλα πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα χρυσοῦ, συναγομένου πολλοῦ πολλῇ κακοπαθείᾳ τε καὶ δαπάνῃ. τῆς γὰρ γῆς μελαίνης οὔσης τῇ φύσει καὶ διαφυὰς καὶ φλέβας ἐχούσης μαρμάρου τῇ λευκότητι διαφερούσας … οἱ προσεδρεύοντες τοῖς μεταλλικοῖς ἔργοις τῷ πλήθει τῶν ἐργαζομένων κατασκευάζουσι τὸν χρυσόν.

For at the farthest edges of Egypt, and of Arabia and Ethiopia bordering it, lies a region holding many great mines of gold, much of it gathered with great hardship and expense. For the earth there is black by nature and has seams and veins distinguished by a marble whiteness ... and those set over the mining works produce the gold through the multitude of labourers.

Apparatus — BNJ base vs open-corpus witness

Base text after Brill’s New Jacoby / Jacoby (FGrH). The apparatus records differences against the open-corpus witness (Diodorus 3.12.1 (Scaife/Perseus grc5)) within the overlapping span; encoding and orthography are folded. Collation codepoint-verified and adversarially audited (2026-06-26).

Lemma / locus	BNJ base	Witness	Type	Note
διαφερούσας … οἱ προσεδρεύοντες	διαφερούσας … οἱ προσεδρεύοντες (U+2026 editorial ellipsis elides an internal clause)	διαφερούσας καὶ πάσας τὰς περιλαμπομένας φύσεις ὑπερβαλλούσας τῇ λαμπρότητι, οἱ προσεδρεύοντες	editorial-ellipsis / internal omission-marker (NOT a textual variant): the elided clause 'καὶ πάσας τὰς περιλαμπομένας φύσεις ὑπερβαλλούσας τῇ λαμπρότητι,' is present verbatim in the witness; reconstruction partA+elided+partB == witness exactly	REAL and correctly classified, not fabricated — witness_reading independently confirmed present in witness_text. Not apparatus-eligible as a word-variant.

Witness: Diodorus 3.12.1 (Scaife/Perseus grc5). Verdict: CONVERGED.
Open-corpus witness family: urn:cts:greekLit. This is a BNJ/Jacoby-based edition with an open-corpus apparatus, not a verbatim copy of the witness edition. Source data: explorers/_build/editions/ecoed-agath-fgrh86-goldmines.json.