(Σαλμώνη; Strabo usually writes Σαμώνιον, sometimes Σαλμώνἱον; Pliny, Sammonium)
Salmone is a promontory in the east of Crete (Acts 27:7). It is uncertain whether the modern Cape Sidero, in the extreme N.E., or Cape Plaka, about 7 miles farther S., was so named. The map of Crete in Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 gives the latter. It has been surmised that the ancient usage itself varied. On passing Cnidos, the S.E. corner of Asia Minor, St. Paul’s Alexandrian ship was beaten out of her course, which would have taken her straight to Cythera, north of Crete, and obliged to bear S.W. by S. till she came over against (κατά) Salmone, from which point she could work slowly westward under the lee of the island. The season was autumn, during which the Etesian (north-west) winds blow in the aegean for forty days, beginning at the rise of the dog-star (Herodotus, vi. 140, vii. 168); ‘perflant his diebus, quos Etesias vocant’ (Pliny, Historia Naturalis (Pliny) ii. 47). Aristotle describes them as μίξιν ἔχοντες τῶν τε ἀπὸ τῆς ἄρκτου φερομένων καὶ ζεφύρων (de Mundo, iv. 15).
Literature.-J. Smith, The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul4, 1880, pp. 74-81; W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, 1895, p. 320 f.; Conybeare-Howson, St. Paul, new ed., 1877, ii. 392 f.
James Strahan.