Strabon, Geographie XVII 1, 16 f.:

On the right of the Canobic Gate, as one goes out, one comes to the canal which is connected with the lake and leads to Canobus; and it is by this canal that one sails, not only to Schedia, that is, to the great river, but also to Canobus, though first to Eleusis (1).

Eleusis is a settlement near both Alexandria and Nicopolis, is situated on the Canobic canal itself, and has lodging-places and commanding views for those who wish to engage in revelry, both men and women, and is a beginning, as it were, of the “Canobic” life (2) and the shamelessness there current.

On proceeding a slight distance from Eleusis, and on the right, one comes to the canal which leads up to Schedia. Schedia is four schoeni [τετράσχοινον] (3) distant from Alexandria; it is a settlement of the city, and contains the station of the cabin-boats on which the praefects sail to Upper Aegypt. And at Schedia is also the station for paying duty on the goods brought down from above it and brought up from below it; and for this purpose, also, a schedia (4) has been laid across the river, from which the place has its name.

After the canal which leads to Schedia, one’s next voyage, to Canobus, is parallel to that part of the coast-line which extends from Pharos to the Canobic mouth (5); for a narrow ribbon-like strip of land extends between the sea and the canal, and on this, after Nicopolis, lies the Little Taposeiris, as also the Zephyrium, a promontory which contains a shrine of Aphroditê Arsinoê. In ancient times, it is said, there was also a city called Thonis here, which was named after the king who received Menelaus and Helen with hospitality. At any rate, the poet speaks of Helen’s drugs as follows: “goodly drugs which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, had given her [ἐσθλά, τά οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν Θῶνος παράκοιτις].” (6)

Canobus is a city situated at a distance of one hundred and twenty stadia from Alexandria, if one goes on foot, and was named after Canobus, the pilot of Menelaus, who died there. It contains the temple of Sarapis, which is honoured with great reverence and effects such cures that even the most reputable men believe in it and sleep in it – themselves on their own behalf or others for them. Some writers go on to record the cures, and others the virtues of the oracles there.

But to balance all this is the crowd of revellers who go down from Alexandria by the canal to the public festivals; for every day and every night is crowded with people on the boats who play the flute and dance without restraint and with extreme licentiousness, both men and women, and also with the people of Canobus itself, who have resorts situated close to the canal and adapted to relaxation and merry-making of this kind.

(Strabo; Geography. VIII vols. Ed. by Horace Leonard Jones. Vol. VIII. Cambridge (Mass.)/London ³1949, pp. 60-65)

(1) Vorort Alexandrias
(2) das sprichwörtliche luxuriöse Leben in Kanopus
(3) Landmaß bei den Ägyptern, wobei ein Schoinos unterschiedlich mit 30 oder 60 Stadien angegeben wird
(4) Pontonbrücke
(5) Mündung des kanobischen Nilarms
(6) Odyssee IV 228