THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The birthplace of Greek geographical theory is to be found, not in
Greece proper, but in Asia Minor. Miletus, a seaport of Ionia, near the
mouth of the Mæander, became the leading Greek city during the seventh
to the sixth centuries B.C., trading as far as Egypt and throwing off
colonies especially towards the north, on the shores of the Hellespont
and the Euxine. It was thus an obvious repository for geographical
knowledge, besides being a famous centre of learning in a wider sense.
Thales of Miletus (640–546 B.C.), father of Greek philosophers,
geometers, and astronomers, may have learnt astronomy from a Babylonian
master in Cos, and became acquainted with Egyptian geometry by
visiting that country; he applied geometrical theory to the practical
measurement of height and distance. He has been wrongly credited with
the conception of the earth as a sphere. That conception is actually
credited to Pythagoras, who, born in Samos probably in 582 B.C.,
settled in the Dorian colony of Crotona in Southern Italy about 529
and founded the Pythagorean school of philosophy. He (or his school),
however, evolved the correct conception of the form of the earth rather
by accident (so far as concerns any scientific consideration) than
by design, for the Pythagorean reasoning was abstract in nature, in
distinction from that of the Ionian school, which sought material
explanations for the phenomena of the universe. The Pythagoreans
(whose view does not greatly affect the later history of geographical
theory) conceived the earth as a globe revolving in space, with other
planets, round an unseen central fire whose light was reflected by the
sun, just as the moon reflects the sun’s light. Later the philosopher
Parmenides, of Elea in Italy (_c._ 500 B.C.), considered the universe
to be composed of concentric spheres or zones consisting of the primary
elements of fire and darkness or night. Anaximander (611-_c._ 547
B.C.), a disciple of the more practical Ionian school, and a pupil or
companion of Thales, conceived an earth of the form of a cylinder.
He is said to have introduced into Greece the gnomon, a primitive
instrument for determining time and latitude, and to have made a map.
The first actual record of a Greek or Miletan map, however, occurs
half a century after his time, when in 499 B.C. Aristagoras, tyrant of
Miletus, asked aid of Cleomenes of Sparta against Persia, and showed
him a map, engraved on bronze, of the route of his proposed expedition.
Anaximenes, of Anaximander’s school, gave the earth an oblong
rectangular form.
The physical division of land into continents, though obvious,
presupposes the existence of a certain measure of geographical theory.
Still more obvious as a primitive division would be a division simply
between “my land” and “yours.” But there was a clear necessity at a
very early period for names to distinguish, generally, the lands which
lay on one side and the other of the Ægean-Mediterranean waters. It may
well be that the names of Europe and Asia did not possess precisely
this application in their original forms. Their derivation has been
assigned to an Asiatic source; they signify on this view the lands
respectively of darkness or sunset and of sunrise or light--that is
to say, the lands towards west and towards east. The earliest known
Greek reference to Europe, moreover, does not indicate on the face of
it a distinction from Asia, though it does indicate a distinction from
lands separated from it partly or wholly by water. The Homeric hymn
to Apollo, which may be dated in the eighth or seventh century B.C.,
refers to dwellers in the rich Peloponnese and in Europe and in the
sea-girt islands--albeit in place of “Europe” some scholars would read
a word signifying simply “mainland.” The name of Europe, if admitted
here, is taken to mean no more than northern Greece, and would thus
lend some colour to an early tradition that it was derived from a
Macedonian city called Europus. However this may be, it is easy to
conceive that the name of Europe, being at no time given to a territory
with defined frontiers, was capable of an elastic application, which
would be gradually extended, or (as is more probable under primitive
conditions of geographical knowledge) would remain so vague as to
permit of no clear definition.
But when the names of continents emerge in Greek usage they afford
the necessary distinction between the lands on either side of the
Ægean-Mediterranean. They so emerge in the 6th–5th centuries B.C.,
and the distinction appears by that time to have been perfectly
familiar, though the precise application, as will be seen, was a matter
of controversy. The poet Æschylus (525–456 B.C.), who, by the way,
was also a traveller, possibly to Thrace, certainly to Sicily, was
acquainted with the distinction, as appears, for example, from passages
in the historical drama of the _Persæ_, which deals with the failure
of Xerxes’s invasion of Europe from Asia, and his retreat across the
Hellespont. The distinction would hardly have been introduced into
a stage-play if it had not been commonly recognized. In _Prometheus
Unbound_, again, Æschylus refers to the river Phasis (Aras) as the
boundary between Europe and Asia. Finally, Herodotus states in an early
chapter of his work that the Persians appropriate to themselves Asia
and the barbarian races inhabiting it, while they consider as separate
Europe and the Greek race, and he does not find it necessary to offer
any explanation of the names here. At a later stage the continental
distinction appears to have been based on or associated with a
distinction between temperate and hot lands.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--The World as supposed to have been conceived by
Hecatæus.]
Hecatæus of Miletus (_c._ 500 B.C.) has been hailed as the father of
geography on the ground of his authorship of a Periodos, or circuit
of the earth, the first attempt at a systematic description of the
known world and its inhabitants. But even if he wrote such a work,
evidence has been adduced that the extant fragments of it belong to
a later forgery. However, he was a Miletan and a traveller, besides
a statesman. The map which is supposed to have accompanied his work
maintained the old popular idea of the earth as a circular disc,
encircled by the ocean. Greece was the centre of the world, and the
great sanctuary of Delphi was the centre of Greece. If this Periodos
is taken as a forgery, there is a parallel case in the Periplus of
the Mediterranean attributed to Scylax of Caryanda, a contemporary of
Hecatæus. If Scylax wrote any such work, in its extant form it is a
century and a half later than his time. He is said to have explored the
Indus at the command of Darius Hystaspis, and to have returned by the
Indian Ocean to the Red Sea.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (_c._ 484–425 B.C.) was a historian, but was
widely travelled, and understood the importance of a knowledge of the
geography of a country, and its bearings on the history of its people.
He only introduces geographical information in so far as it throws
light on the history with which he is dealing, or because it seemed to
him of special interest, or as a report of curious information obtained
from the countries which he visited; but he has certainly some more
exact information about the restricted world of which Greece was the
centre than any of his predecessors. He visited Egypt and the Greek
colony of Cyrene, on the coast of what is now Tripoli. There is reason
to believe that in Asia he got as far as Babylon on the Euphrates, and
perhaps as far as Susa beyond the Tigris. He crossed the Euxine to
the northern shore as far as Olbia on the Borysthenes, and probably
went round to the south-east coast to the country of the Colchians,
whose characteristics he describes as if from personal knowledge.
He does not seem to have got very far west in the Mediterranean,
though he spent the latter part of his life in southern Italy. There
is little doubt that he visited several of the Grecian islands. But
apart from the information about the countries round the Mediterranean
which he collected personally, his history contains material from
various sources concerning the countries and peoples in Europe, Asia,
and Africa. This information, on the whole, is of the vaguest kind,
and shows that the Greeks whom Herodotus may be taken to represent
were only groping their way with regard to a knowledge of the world
outside the limits of their own restricted sphere. This vague knowledge
included a considerable section of western Asia as far as the Caspian
Sea and the river Araxes. Herodotus had also heard of India and of
the Indus river, and had a fair knowledge of the Persians, the Medes,
and the Colchians, as also of part at least of Arabia. Eastwards, in
what might be called Central Asia, he had heard of the Bactrians and
Sogdians to the south of the Jaxartes (Syr-darya, the northern of
the two great affluents of the Sea of Aral), and of the Massagetæ,
Issedones, Arimaspians, and other races or peoples; those to the north
of the Jaxartes being included, according to Herodotus, in Europe,
which he took to extend from the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of
Gibraltar) to the Hellespont and up the Phasis (Rion) river, from its
mouth in the Black Sea, to the Caspian. He also divided Asia from Libya
(Africa) along the axis of the Red Sea, and was thus in conflict with
others who had divided Europe from Asia at the Tanais, and Asia from
Libya at the Nile. He would not permit a theoretical boundary-line to
“bisect a nationality,” as the Nile does.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--The World according to Herodotus B.C. 450.]
It may be well to examine Herodotus’s geographical knowledge in some
detail, as representing the general knowledge possessed by a student
(increased by his own travels) as distinct from that possessed by
traders and colonists in different particular directions. His knowledge
of Europe proper was contained within rather narrow limits. He knew,
from personal knowledge, or from information obtained from merchants
and colonists familiar with the shores of the Euxine (Black Sea),
of the country lying to the north of that sea for some distance, of
the rivers which flowed into it from the north and from the west,
and of various peoples either settled in or wandering over the land
that is now mainly included in Russia. His notions of the comparative
dimensions of the Euxine and of the Mæotis Palus (Sea of Azov) are
altogether erroneous, as might have been expected; but he knew (though
in the main vaguely) of the Tanais (Don), the Borysthenes (Dnieper),
and other rivers which flow into those seas. The Ister (Danube) he knew
as a river of considerable importance, but he made it rise in Spain
and flow north-east and east through the greater part of Europe. He
conceived it as corresponding to some extent in the direction of its
course with that of the Nile on the other side of the Mediterranean. He
had some vague notion of the Iberians and of the Celts, as inhabiting
the country to the north of the Pillars of Hercules. He knew something
of the country lying to the north of Greece, Illyria, Thessaly, and
Thrace, and the Rhodope mountains. He has much to tell of the
Scythians inhabiting the country north of the Black Sea, but it is
difficult to make out exactly to what race they belonged and whither
they had wandered; they may have been the forerunners of the Slav
peoples. Of Europe to the north of the Danube, and of the Scythian
country, he had no information of any importance. He did not believe
in the Hyperboreans, nor did he credit the statement that there was
any sea north of Europe. He has a good deal to say about Africa. He
had been up the Nile as far as the first cataract to the old city
of Elephantine, but above that his information is vague and largely
erroneous. He knew of the great bend which the Nile takes to the west
above Elephantine, and had heard of Meroe on the other side of that
bend; but his notion of the length of Africa was so erroneous that,
instead of carrying the Nile south into the interior of the continent,
he made it rise far to the west and run eastwards before it turned
north at Meroe. But he at least controverted the view that it rose
in the ocean itself to the south--a belief based possibly on some
rumour, transmitted through many lips, of the existence of great lakes
towards its headwaters. As for a river flowing west-and-east, in the
west of the continent, he had heard of such a river in a story of five
Nasamonian youths who travelled south from the shore of the Syrtis,
crossed the desert for many days, and were at last taken captive by
black men of small stature, who carried them to a city on the banks of
this river, whence they were subsequently allowed to return. It has
been eagerly discussed what truth underlies this story, and whether
the river was the Niger in its upper course; but at best the account
added little to the knowledge of distant Africa. The idea of a pygmy
people dwelling towards the southern shore of the ocean is older than
the Iliad in which it is found (III, 3). Herodotus’s conception of the
shape of Africa did not carry its southward extension much beyond the
latitude of Cape Guardafui. He discarded the popular conception of the
round earth, regarding it as longer from east to west than from north
to south. The philosopher Democritus of Abdera (born _c._ 470–450)
exhibited the same conception in a map which he constructed.
An important episode in the progress of a more accurate knowledge of
the world of the Greeks was the Retreat of the Ten Thousand under
Xenophon in 401–400 B.C. The younger Cyrus had made a great expedition
from Sardis, in western Asia Minor, eastwards through the Cilician
Gates to the Euphrates, and along the course of that river to the
neighbourhood of Babylon. He was accompanied by a band of Greek
mercenaries, who, after his defeat at Cunaxa, began the retreat of
which Xenophon left a graphic account, containing what must have been
to the Greeks much new information concerning the region from the
junction of the Tigris and Euphrates northwards past Lake Van and
through the mountains of Armenia, north and west to the shores of the
Black Sea at Trapezus (Trebizond), and along the south coast of the
Black Sea, partly by sea and partly by water, to Byzantium. Xenophon’s
story is an illustration of the well-known fact that war is one of the
chief means of promoting geographical knowledge. This will appear more
clearly in the next important episode in the story of exploration--the
campaign of Alexander the Great.
In the interval there were one or two writers from whose work
something is to be gathered of Greek geographical knowledge and theory
about the middle of the fourth century. The philosopher Plato (427–347
B.C.) may be referred to here in connection with his story, based on an
Egyptian tradition, of the great island of Atlantis, that land which
plays so important a part in later mythical geography. In the Egyptian
story it lay just beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and adjacent to
it was an archipelago. This would aid its later identification with
the Canaries, though it came also to be connected with America and
other known lands besides, as well as giving name to an island in the
Atlantic Ocean, the disproof of whose existence may almost be called
modern. From Plato’s account of Atlantis as the home of a powerful
people who in early times invaded the Mediterranean lands, it has also
been sought to associate the tradition with Crete at the period of the
Ægean civilization mentioned in the first chapter.
Some fragments exist of the writings of the historian Ephorus of Cyme
in Æolis (_c._ 400–330 B.C.). He seems to have endeavoured to cover
the whole field of the world as known to the Greeks, and conceived the
four most distant regions of the earth to be occupied on the east by
Indians, on the south by Ethiopians, on the north by Scythians, and on
the west by Celts. The last he considered as occupying all Spain, as
well as Gaul. Strabo (p. 24) commended his geographical work and his
skill in separating myth from history. A document of this period is
the Periplus, already referred to as known under the name of Scylax.
This class of work became more and more common as navigation developed,
and corresponded in some measure to the modern Admiralty guide or
pilot. The Periplus is confined mostly to the regions known to the
Greeks bordering the Mediterranean. From the Pillars of Hercules the
writer follows the north coast eastwards, including the Adriatic and
the Euxine as far as the mouth of the Tanais, which he regards as the
continental boundary. He then follows the Levantine coast, the north
African coast westward, and the west African coast as far as the island
of Cerne. He incidentally makes what is regarded as the earliest extant
mention of Rome; but his notions of rivers and other features away from
the coast are generally erroneous.
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), in two of his extant works, the
_Meteorologica_ and the treatise on the Heavens, revealed something of
his ideas on physical geography and the figure of the earth and its
relations to the heavenly bodies. He believed the earth to be a sphere
in the centre of the universe, because that was a form which matter
gravitating towards a centre would necessarily assume, also because the
shadow cast by the earth on the moon during an eclipse is circular. He
accepted the conclusion that the circumference of the earth was 400,000
stadia (nearly 46,000 miles). His views with reference to the cosmical
relations of the earth were the same as those adopted by Eudoxus of
Cnidus (_fl._ middle fourth century), but he did his best to prove
them. He adopted, however, the prevalent view that the habitable world
was confined to the temperate zone between the tropics and the arctic
regions. He believed there must be a temperate zone in the southern
hemisphere, though he did not suggest that it must be inhabited. In
the _Meteorologica_ he treats of such subjects as weather, rain, hail,
earthquakes, etc., and their causes. He recognized that changes took
place in the relations of land and sea. His knowledge of the origin and
course of rivers and their relation to mountain systems was confused,
and mainly erroneous; and it would seem that little progress had been
made in geographical knowledge since the time of Herodotus. In the work
of Aristotle’s successor, Theophrastus of Lesbos (_c._ 372–287), an
important department of geographical study--that of distribution--finds
a place in its particular application to plants.
Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.), King of Macedon, however, during
the last few years of his life, made possible by his campaigns a
greater extension of Greek geographical knowledge than had taken
place almost since Homeric times. When he passed eastward through
Mesopotamia, by Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, and through Media to the
southern shore of the Caspian Sea, he was in a region which, though
an ancient cradle of civilization, had been till then only vaguely
known to the Greeks. Beyond that he entered new country, peopled by
Herodotus and others with dubious tribal names. He came almost into
the heart of Central Asia, founding a city on the upper course of the
Jaxartes. Passing southwards through Bactria and across formidable
ranges of mountains such as the Hindu Kush, he struck the upper course
of the Indus, made his way down to its delta, and would have proceeded
right into the heart of India and followed the Ganges to its mouth but
for his mutinous troops. He returned through the north of Baluchistan
and Persia to Ecbatana, and so homeward. He also sent a member of his
staff, Nearchus, by sea along the coast of Baluchistan and Persia, in
order to define it and to ascertain the extent of the Persian Gulf.
Dicæarchus of Messana, a pupil of Aristotle, who died early in the
third century B.C., used the geographical results of Alexander’s
expeditions, including the distances obtained by his bematists, or
measurers by pacing. Dicæarchus wrote a topography of Greece, and also
drew on a map a parallel or equator, for the first time, so far as is
known, along the length of the Mediterranean and, with a distorted idea
of their relative directions, along the Taurus and Himalayan ranges.
Before his time, and probably contemporaneously with Alexander’s
campaigns, Pytheas of Massilia (Marseilles) visited (practically
discovered) Britain, and made mention of Thule, six days’ voyage north
of it, having perhaps heard of the Orkneys and Shetlands. As these
islands, however, are at no such great distance as is here suggested
from the nearest point of Britain, the name of Thule has been variously
taken to represent some part of Norway, the Faeröe, or Iceland: it
certainly seems by some later writers to be applied to Scandinavia,
and in literary usage came to signify the uttermost north. Pytheas
also obtained an idea of the Baltic Sea, and is considered by some to
have entered it; he is stated to have reached the River Tanais; but
if that is to be considered as one of the north European rivers, and
not the known Tanais of the Black Sea basin, its identity is doubtful.
Pytheas was a trained astronomer; he was one of the first to calculate
latitudes, and had that of Massilia nearly correct; he heard of the
unbroken summer daylight and winter darkness of the far north, and he
noted various features of geographical interest, such as the decrease
in the number of different grain crops observed as he travelled
northward. He appears, in fact, from the references in other authors,
which alone furnish us with knowledge of his work, in the light of a
scientific traveller of a type rare in his time.
Mathematical geography was carried a long step forward by Eratosthenes
(_c._ 276–194 B.C.), a native of Cyrene, who became chief librarian at
Alexandria under Ptolemy III Euergetes. He calculated the circumference
of the earth. He considered Syene to be situated on the tropic (which
it was not, precisely), because at noon on the day of the summer
solstice the sun appeared to shine directly down a deep well there.
He therefore observed the zenith distance of the sun at Alexandria
at the same time, and obtained his result from this and the measured
distance between Alexandria and Syene. His result was to make the
earth’s circumference only about one-seventh greater than it actually
is. He also estimated the size of the habitable earth (œcumene), and
considered it, as a result, to be about double as long from west to
east as it was broad from north to south. But his estimate of the
distance from what is now the extremity of Brittany to the known
eastern limit of India was about one-third too great. On a map of
the world he drew seven parallels, using the few points of which the
latitudes had been worked out, and also seven meridians at irregular
distances apart. Hipparchus (middle and second half of the second
century), an astronomer, native of Nicæa in Bithynia, who worked in
Rhodes, drew an elaborate series of parallels, and made the division
into 360 degrees; the spaces between the lines he called climata, or
zones. The problem presented by meridians was more difficult, for there
was no instrument for the calculation of longitude like the gnomon for
that of latitude. A well-recognised line was that taken to lie from the
mouth of the Danube to that of the Nile--Herodotus had used this--and
southward up the latter river; but not only the line itself, but also
the ideas of intermediate points lying on it, were rather far from the
truth.
Eratosthenes in his writings also dealt with the history of geography
and with physical geography. This last branch attracted a number of
students about this period and later, as, for example, Agartharchides
or Agatharchus of Cnidus (middle of the second century B.C.). Crates of
Mallus, in the first half of the same century, expressed the view of
the Stoic philosophers that the spherical earth was divided into four
inhabited quarters--the Œcumene (the known world), the Antipodes, the
Periœci, and the Antœci. Posidonius the Stoic (_c._ 130–50 B.C.), among
his studies in various departments of knowledge, included such subjects
as the ocean, volcanoes, and earthquakes; he observed the interaction
of the sun and moon in their influence on tides. He recalculated the
circumference of the earth, but obtained an underestimate considerably
further from the truth than Eratosthenes’s overestimate; and, owing
to his high scientific reputation, his error persisted in much later
work. Posidonius, before settling at Rhodes, had travelled widely
in Africa, Spain, and western Europe generally; and both he and
Agartharchides, like other writers of this period, and Aristotle before
them, recognized the importance of the human side of geography, and the
influence of physical environment on the political and social _régime_.
Polybius (_c._ 204–122 B.C.) of Megalopolis in Arcadia, historian,
statesman, and military commander, was inspired by extensive travel
to introduce the results of topographical and geographical studies
throughout his history. Among travellers who rank more nearly among
explorers there may be mentioned at this period Eudoxus of Cyzicus
(fl. _c._ 130 B.C.), who went on a trading expedition to India, in
command of a fleet which was despatched by Ptolemy Euergetes of
Egypt with the specific object of exploring the Arabian Sea. Eudoxus
subsequently tried without success to circumnavigate Africa, making at
least two voyages along the east coast. Finally, it must be remembered
that at this period the extension of the knowledge of the world was
mainly due no longer to Greek, but to Roman, activities, and Roman
conquests were pushed beyond the confines of accurate Greek knowledge
in various directions. Much geographical material was made available
by writers on Roman military expeditions. Thus Pompey was accompanied
in the Caucasian region by Theophanes of Mytilene, as historian of his
campaigns; Julius Cæsar wrote his own account of lands into which he
carried his arms (Gaul, etc.).
From all this it appears that, according to the lights of knowledge at
the time, a fair conception existed of geographical study along the
main lines which it follows to-day. There was therefore occasion for a
general review of the whole subject; and this occasion was seized by
Strabo, a native of Amasia in Pontus, who was born _c._ 63 B.C., and
died in the second or third decade of the following century. He was
educated partly at Rome, but his language and outlook were Greek. He
travelled much, as far as Etruria, the Black Sea, and the borders of
Ethiopia, as well as in Asia Minor, though he knew comparatively little
of Greece. His geography, which was not finally completed till towards
the close of his life, was the first attempt at covering the whole
geographical field--mathematical, physical, and human--and his range
was thus wider than that of Eratosthenes. Strabo used the recent Roman
authorities to some extent, such as Cæsar’s Commentaries (in part)
and a map of the Roman Empire by M. Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of
Augustus, which was set up in Rome; and he also preferred the authority
of Polybius to that of Pytheas, but his sources were mostly Greek.
His appreciation of them was not always wise. He ranked the Homeric
poems highly, but discredited Herodotus, who on some points had better
information than he. He added nothing to the mathematical branch, in
which Eratosthenes was his master. He thus accepted the spherical
form of the earth, its dimensions as laid down by his predecessors,
and its division into five zones. He recognized Hipparchus’s view
that further astronomical observations were essential to precision in
earth-measurement and the position of points on the surface; but it was
outside his province to add to those existing. His work in the physical
field, however, improved upon that of his predecessors, and his surveys
of the features and products of the various lands must have been
singularly valuable for reference. The apportionment of the seventeen
books of his geography is not without interest as a rough guide to the
distribution of available material and to the author’s outlook. He
devoted two books to introductory matter, to Spain and France two, to
Italy two, to northern and eastern Europe one, to Greece and adjacent
lands three, to the main divisions and remoter parts of Asia one, to
Asia Minor three, to India and Persia one, to Syria and Arabia one, to
Egypt and the rest of Africa one.
Rome did not carry on the Greek tradition of the study of geographical
theory. H. F. Tozer, quoting J. Partsch, writes: “It has been aptly
remarked that the task which Eratosthenes set himself of measuring
the earth by means of the heavenly bodies, and that of Agrippa, who
measured the Roman provinces by milestones, may be taken as typical
of the genius of the two nationalities respectively.” Thus Pomponius
Mela, purporting to survey the world in his _De Chorographia_ (written
_c._ 50 A.D.), followed the coast and described various countries in
passing, but by no means all, and added very little to geographical
knowledge at large. Pliny the Elder (_c._ 23–79) devoted three books
and part of another of his _Historia Naturalis_ to geography; but
his geography may (at least in considerable part) be compared with
the arid text-book of a generation ago, though in some instances his
descriptions (as of features in Palestine, Syria, and Armenia) are
valuable. As bearing on the quotation made above, it may be said here
that the famous Roman system of road building gave rise to two classes
of road-books (as they may be termed), one consisting of lists of
stations and distances, such as the Antonine Itinerary (probably, in
its original form, of the late third or fourth century), the other
diagrammatic, such as the Peutinger Table (probably of the first half
of the third century, though named after a scholar of the sixteenth),
on which roads, stations, and other details were presented in a
map-like form, but independently of true scale or direction. The Roman
agrimensores were skilled surveyors.
It is not, then, surprising that the two great theoretical geographers
next to be considered are not associated with the capital of the
Roman Empire. Of the work of Marinus of Tyre nothing is known beyond
what is recorded by his immediate successor, Ptolemy, who used and
acknowledged his results--as far as concerned the Mediterranean fully,
and in respect of other countries to a modified extent. Ptolemy,
mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, was a native of Egypt, who
worked at or in the neighbourhood of Alexandria in the second century.
His geographical book was called _Geographike Syntaxis_. He carried
mathematical geography far beyond the standard of his predecessors.
He used the theoretical division of the globe into five zones by
the equator and the tropics, adopted Hipparchus’s division of the
equator into 360 degrees, and worked out a network of parallels of
latitude and meridians of longitude, first thus applying these terms
in their technical sense. In mapping the habitable world he used the
Fortunate Isles, beyond the western confines of Europe and Africa, as
the location of his prime meridian. The errors which resulted from
the vague idea as to the position of these islands (the Canaries
and Madeira), and from the fact that Ptolemy followed Posidonius’s
underestimate of the circumference of the globe and made his degree at
the equator equal to 500 instead of 600 stadia,[2] have been very fully
analysed, but cannot be even summarized here.
[2] Fifty instead of sixty geographical miles.
[Illustration: PTOLEMÆUS ROMÆ 1490.
Fig. 4.--The World according to Ptolemy.]
[Illustration: Fig. 4. (left side)]
[Illustration: Fig. 4. (right side)]
Ptolemy had a strong tendency to exaggerate the size of the great
land-masses--his Europe extended too far west (and the Mediterranean
was made too long in consequence); his Africa was too wide, especially
towards the south; his Asia was vastly exaggerated in its eastern
extension, and many details, even in the Mediterranean area, were made
too large. Ptolemy followed his predecessors in using the parallel of
36° N. as the axial line of the Mediterranean. It passes through the
Straits of Gibraltar, the island of Rhodes, and the Gulf of Alexandria,
and was theoretically prolonged eastward along the supposed line
of the Taurus mountains and the range known to lie north of India.
In respect to this line there were remarkable inaccuracies in laying
down the coasts of the Mediterranean and in fixing the position of the
points upon them. The sea itself was made not only too long, but too
broad; Byzantium and the Black Sea were carried too far north, and the
size of the sea of Azov was immensely exaggerated. On the other hand,
Ptolemy restored the correct view, held by Herodotus, of the Caspian
as an inland sea, and knew that the great river Volga entered it. Yet
again, he knew nothing of Scandinavia, or of the land-locked Baltic
Sea, marking only a small island of Scandia, possibly by confusion
between the Scandinavian mainland and some Baltic island. But his idea
of the British Isles may be taken as fairly correct, if allowance be
made for their remoteness. He laid down some parts of the coast very
fairly, but oriented the major axis of Scotland more nearly from east
to west than from north to south; he also placed Ireland wholly more
northerly than Wales. There is plenty of evidence in Ptolemy’s work
of a growth of knowledge of remote lands, though much of it is vague,
if not actually unintelligible to us. Thus in Asia he had an idea
of the great central mountain ranges (Pamir, Tian-shan, etc.), for
silk-traders had by now established trans-continental routes to China.
Ptolemy had also some conception of the south-eastern coasts, which
had probably been seen by Greek mariners as far as southern China. But
he wholly misunderstood the form of the east of the continent, for
beyond the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula) there lies a vast gulf,
the eastern shore of which represents his view of China, extending
southward far beyond the equator, and facing west. Again, he had no
conception of peninsular India--unless, indeed, his huge island of
Ceylon (Taprobane) was drawn so by some confusion with the peninsula,
as it was certainly also confused with Sumatra. Yet it would seem that
he might have gathered a more accurate idea of India from the Periplus
of the Erythræan Sea, a guide to navigators dated about the year 80.
This work furnished sailing directions from the Red Sea to the mouth
of the Indus and the coast of Malabar, following the Arabian coast,
although the possibility of crossing the open sea with the assistance
of the monsoon was realized at a still earlier date. And the Periplus
distinctly indicates the southward trend of the Indian coast-line.
Roman penetration of Africa gave Ptolemy some new details; he also
conceived the Nile as formed by two headstreams arising in two lakes,
possibly on the strength of some hearsay of the facts, and he marked
the Mountains of the Moon in remoter Africa, which again suggests
hearsay of the heights of Ruwenzori, Kenya, and others. The Romans had
penetrated Ethiopia, and possibly the region of Lake Chad, and Ptolemy
also used other sources of information about North Africa which are
unknown from previous writers, but are completely vague and impossible
to follow. Of the shape of the continent he was almost completely
ignorant; he just realized that an indentation occurs in the Gulf
of Guinea, but gave it nothing like its proper value, and carried
the coast thence south-westward till the continent is broader at the
southern limit of his knowledge than it is at the north.
Ptolemy’s work on physical features was on the whole poor, and he
neglected the human side of geography. Discarding the idea of the
circumfluent ocean, he supposed the extension of unknown lands
northward in Europe, eastward in Asia, and southward in Africa, beyond
the limits in which he attempted to portray their outlines; and he even
suggested a land connection between south-eastern Asia and southern
Africa. Before his time the precision of mathematical method had far
surpassed that of the topographical material to which it was applied.
Pausanias, a Greek probably of Lydia and about contemporary with
Ptolemy, wrote a description (_Periegesis_) of Greece, which, apart
from the archæological value which is its chief interest, contains
references to various phenomena of physical geography, while as a
detailed topographical work it stands alone in the literature of which
an outline has thus far been given.