drink from the lotus; and the Malchyes, near the river Triton and the lake Tritonis, to which his knowledge extended. Carthage he represents as a flourishing commercial city, and says that a people came thither from beyond the columns of Hercules and bought goods with gold. In the interior he knew Ammonia, with the oracle of Theban Jove, ten days' journey from Thebes. Ten days from thence is Augila, an oasis rich in dates. Ten days farther the palm country of the Garamantes. At the same distance, still westward, are the Atarantes; and in ten days more the Atlantes and Mount Atlas. Herodotus mentions the circumnavigation of Libya by Phœnician mariners, at the command of the Egyptian king Necho, about 150 years before his time. He also gives an account of some young men of the Nasamones visiting the southernmost countries of Libya.

To Herodotus succeeded Ctesias of Cnidus, about B. C. 400; and about forty years later, Xenophon, in his Anabasis, gave more trustworthy accounts of several parts of Asia, until then but little known. The knowledge of the East was greatly extended by the conquests of Alexander, about B. c. 330. The best geographical account of this period is that of Nearchus, commander of his fleet, preserved to us by Arrian. In the mean time, the geography of the West had gradually been extended; and Eudoxus, the mathematician and friend of Plato, wrote a geographical work in several books, about B. C. 366. Dicæarchus of Messana, in Sicily, a pupil of Aristotle, gave a large corrected map of the world, a description of Greece, with excellent maps of that country, and a work on surveying.

During this period we find the idea gradually extending, that the earth was a sphere. Of this Plato spoke with the least, Aristotle with the greatest, distinctness. In his work De Colo, c. 14. the latter says plainly, that it is spherical σχῆμα δὲ ἔχειν σφαιροειδὲς ἀναγκαῖον. And he proves this

by the eclipses of the moon, because the earth's shadow enters the disc of the moon like a black circle, and that in all positions. The same opinion was quite as firmly maintained by Dicæarchus, who also added astronomical reasons for it, and it was generally received by the Stoics. So that the doctrine of the spherical shape of the earth may now be considered as permanently established. Epicurus, indeed, and his school, still denied it, considering the earth as a disc resting upon coeval air. To the idea of a spherical form was superadded the conception of two poles, and also of an equator, and of meridian circles, divided into four quadrants of 90° each: the adoption of tropics (трOTIKOì) 24° from the equator, and of polar circles (ȧрктikoì and ȧνтаρктIKоì) 42° from the tropics, immediately followed: so that the whole earth could now be divided into five zones. Between the tropics was the hot and uninhabitable zone, ἀνακεκαυμένη οι ἀοίκητος. The two next north and south were the temperate (ypaтεîs). The most distant were the cold ones. Distances were now also better ascertained, and definite measurements recorded.*

III. The commencement of systematic or scientific geography cannot be dated earlier than the period of the Ptolemies in Egypt. Alexandria, the new capital, was the chief seat of the arts and sciences and commerce of the world; and the nature of the country was peculiarly adapted for practical geometry. The leader of this period was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who was born B. c. 272, educated at Athens, and was brought by Ptolemy Euergetes

* The great measure among the Greeks was the stadium, of which there were two kinds, the Olympic of 600, the Pythian of 500 Greek feet, the Greek foot very nearly corresponding to the English. The Persians measured by the parasang of 30 Olympic stadia, or about three miles and a half: the Egyptians by the schonus, which Heredotus calls sixty stadia, or nearly seven English miles.

to Alexandria as librarian. Of his geographical work, few fragments remain; we know it only on the authority of Strabo, from whose account we learn that Eratosthenes adopted one axis, around which the concentric spheres, earth and heaven, were placed: they were separated by an equator into two equal parts. All inhabited land, which, by his account, was hardly one eighth of the globe, was in the northern part of the earth, at the extremity of which was insufferable cold, while at its southernmost limits was the most intense heat. By his calculation, the circumference of the globe was 252,000 stadia, or about 28,640 English miles, an estimate not very greatly differing from the truth, the real circumference being about 24,869 miles. He divided the equator into 360 degrees, the degree into 700 stadia. The length of the inhabited earth he called 78,000 stadia, or 8860 English miles; the breadth about half these numbers. With the help of a parallel drawn through Rhodes, he divided all inhabited land into the north, or Europe, and the south, or Asia; whilst the whole assumed the form of a Macedonian chlamys.* On his map, Thule is the farthest point to the north; the Cinnamon Coast is the most remote southward; in the east, the Thine; and in the west the Sacrum Promontorium, in Iberia, are the limits.

Hipparchus lived B. C. 150, and wrote a critique upon Eratosthenes. His chief merit consisted in his insisting upon the application of astronomy to mathematical geography. According to him, the inhabited land was somewhat shorter and broader than Eratosthenes had represented. We learn from Strabo that, although he has stated the latitude more correctly, and amended other important errors, yet he has often done injustice to his predecessor.

*The Macedonian chlamys differed from that commonly in use, which was oblong, by having triangular pieces attached to each of the long sides. These were called πtépúyes, “gores.”

For instance, he represents the Ister to fall both into the Adriatic and Pontus Euxinus, although the truth had been known at least as early as the time of Herodotus. Like Eratosthenes, he considered the earth to be a sphere.

We may speak with greater certainty of the geographical knowledge of Polybius of Megalopolis, in Arcadia, who lived B. C. 140. Of his forty books of history, five are come down to us entire, and many fragments of the remainder are preserved. Taking the earth to be a sphere, he divided all known and inhabited land into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya. Europe he represented as bounded by the columns of Hercules and the Tanais; Libya, by the columns of Hercules and the Nile; all between the Nile and the Tanais eastward he called Asia. He marks the northern boundary of the known world by a line drawn from Narbo to the mouth of the Tanais. He is uncertain, whether Asia and Libya meet southward beyond the Ocean*, or whether, should it prove to surround them, there may be other unknown countries in that direction. He adopted six zones, two round the poles, two temperate, and two adjacent to, and on either side of, the equator.

Whether the geography in hexameters by Dionysius Periegetes, which contained a representation of the system of Eratosthenes, and became especially useful by the commentary of Eustathius, preceded or succeeded Strabo, opinions differ, but probably the former.

Nearer the end of this period is Strabo of Amasea, in Pontus, who was born in the reign of Augustus, and wrote at about the date of the Christian era; he died a. D. 26. Educated in the school of the Stoics, he travelled to distant countries, and visited Italy, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Little

*He therefore rejected the account of the circumnavigation of Africa given by Herodotus.

An

is known of his life; but of his work in seventeen books all is preserved, except a portion of the seventh, containing Thrace and Macedon. He takes the work of Eratosthenes, as his foundation; but makes use also of other earlier writers, and endeavours to correct their errors. We may justly take his geography as the best authority of the antients before the time of Ptolemy, on account of the great reading and critical skill which it displays, as well as because of the personal knowledge of its author. Asiatic by birth, he gave especial care to Asia. It is, however, remarkable that he takes the Caspian for a gulf of the Northern Ocean, although Herodotus knew it to be an inclosed sea. (Str. ii. 314. 322, 323.) Strabo, like Aristotle, thought the earth a sphere, around which was the vault of heaven. He considered it to be proved by the natural philosophers (ii. 95.) that heaven and earth had the same centre, round which heaven revolved from east to west: the fixed stars thus described circles of the same class with the tropics, polar circles, and equator. With respect to his geographical knowledge of countries, he differs but little from his predecessor, Eratosthenes. Thus, in the north, Scythia and Celtica are the most remote; in the south, Æthiopia: the extreme point westward is the Sacrum Promontorium, the extreme eastward Thinæ. It is, however, striking, that his view of the utmost north is more limited than that of Eratosthenes ; for Strabo considers Ierne as the northernmost land, whilst Eratosthenes rightly mentions Thule beyond Ierne; but whether he means Shetland, Iceland, the Feroe Isles, or even Norway, it is impossible to say. He calls the form of the known earth that of the chlamys.

*

* It may be observed that Ierne, or Hibernia, probably owes its derivation to the Phoenician Ewiron, or Heiron, the North. Thule, Bochart says, is from the Syrian Thule or Tule, darkness or shadows; and if these names be from the Phoenician, one may readily understand