PTOLEMY'S MAPS
And so we reach the days of Ptolemy--the last geographer of the Pagan
World. This famous Greek was born in Egypt, and the great Roman Empire
was already showing signs of decay, while Ptolemy was searching the
great Alexandrian library for materials for his book. Alexandria was
now the first commercial city of the world, second only to Rome. She
supplied the great population in the heart of the Empire with Egyptian
corn. Ships sailed from Alexandria to every part of the known world.
It was, therefore, a suitable place for Ptolemy to listen to the yarns
of the merchants, to read the works of Homer, Herodotus, Eratosthenes,
Strabo, Pliny, and others, to study and observe, and finally to write.
He begins his great geography with the north-west extremities of the
world--the British Isles, Iverna, and Albion as he calls Ireland and
England. But he places Ireland much too far north, and the shape of
Scotland has little resemblance to the original.[2] He realised that
there were lands to the south of Africa, to the east of Africa, and
to the north of Europe, all stretching far away beyond his ken. He
agrees with Pliny about the four islands in the neighbourhood of
Scandinavia, and draws the Volga correctly, He realises, too, that
the Caspian is an inland sea, and unconnected with the surrounding
ocean.
[Footnote 2: If Ptolemy's longitudes are adjusted, he becomes
extraordinarily correct.]
[Illustration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--II. THE WORLD AS KNOWN
TO PTOLEMY AND THE ROMANS.]
Perhaps the most remarkable part of Ptolemy's geography is that which
tells us of the lands beyond the Ganges. He knows something of the
"Golden Chersonese" or Malay Peninsula, something of China, where "far
away towards the north, and bordering on the eastern ocean, there is
a land containing a great city from which silk is exported, both raw
and spun and woven into textures."
The wonder is that Ptolemy did not know more of China, for that land
had one of the oldest civilisations in the world, as wondrous as those
of Assyria and Egypt. But China had had little or no direct intercourse
with the West till after the death of Ptolemy. Merchants had passed
between China and India for long centuries, and "the Indians had made
journeys in the golden deserts in troops of one or two thousand, and
it is said that they do not return from these journeys till the third
or fourth year." This was the Desert of Gobi, called golden because
it opened the way to wealth.
But perhaps the most interesting part of this great geography, which
was to inform the world for centuries yet to come, was the construction
of a series of twenty-six maps and a general map of the known world.
This was one of the most important maps ever constructed, and forms
our frontispiece from mediaeval copies of the original. The twelve
heads blowing sundry winds on to the world's surface are
characteristic of the age. The twenty-six maps are in sections. They
are the first maps to be drawn with lines of latitude and longitude.
The measurements are very vague. The lines are never ruled; they are
drawn uncertainly in red; they are neither straight nor regular,
though the spaces between the lines indicate degrees of fifty miles.
The maps are crowded with towns, each carefully walled in by little
red squares and drawn by hand. The water is all coloured a sombre,
greeny blue, and the land is washed in a rich yellow brown. A copy
can be seen at the British Museum.
It is only by looking back that we can realise the progress made in
earth-knowledge. Ptolemy wrote just a thousand years after Homer, when
the little world round the Mediterranean had become a great Empire
stretching from the British Isles to China.
Already the barbaric hordes which haunted the frontiers of the Roman
Empire were breaking across the ill-defended boundaries, desolating
streams were bursting over the civilised world, until at last the storm
broke, the unity of the Empire was ended, commerce broken up, and the
darkness of ignorance spread over the earth.
During this time little in the way of progress was made, and for the
next few centuries our only interest lies in filling up some of the
shadowy places of the earth, without extending its known bounds.