Roman geographers did not exist until the end of this period, when they considerably extended the knowledge of the north and west. Indeed, the campaigns against Carthage, in Spain, B. C. 218; and under Julius Cæsar in Gaul and Britain, B. C. 58; and those of Drusus, Tiberius, Domitius Ahenobarbus, Varus, Germanicus, and others in Germany, B. c. 10, and subsequently, became the sources of a wider range of geographical information respecting those countries, just as the victories of Alexander had extended the knowledge of the East. But the most considerable advance arose from the measurement of all countries of the Roman empire under Augustus, made by M. Agrippa, through the instrumentality of several geometricians. This work was accompanied with maps and commentaries, which were placed in a portico near the forum for public use: and hence the later Roman geographers acquired much of their knowledge of the countries therein described. Of these Pomponius Mela, of Tingentera in Spain, was one of the most distinguished. He was born A. D. 40, and wrote the first Roman geographical work in three books: he took Eratosthenes for his model, but made use chiefly of the geographical accounts of Herodotus, which appear to agree best with his own opinions. He dealt somewhat freely in the marvellous. He was succeeded by C. Plinius Secundus, who lived between A.D. 23 and 79; and whilst geographical information is scattered throughout his large encyclopedic work, l. ii. -v. contain a compendium of this science. He, too, had a tendency to the marvellous. To these may be added the great C. Corn. Tacitus, towards the end of the first century A. D., who belongs to this place, on account of his work on Germany.

The immediate predecessor of Ptolemy was Marinus of

why, in Phoenician or earlier days, more was known about Thule than in later.

Tyre, who appears, by the testimony of Ptolemy, to have laboured carefully, and to have made use of and rectified, whatever former geographers had given. He flourished about A. D. 130, and invented a new kind of map, afterwards adopted by Ptolemy and all his successors. He made use of parallel lines to divide his maps, and drew his first meridian through the Fortunate Insulæ; still he retained many errors, and even added others of his own; and, by drawing the parallels and meridians by straight lines, and making the degree of latitude equal to that of longitude, he greatly distorted the true form of the countries.* He rejected the chlamys shape of the inhabited world, and is said to have received his information respecting the East from a Macedonian, Maës or Titianus who trafficked there.

IV. It has been already stated that the countries of the Roman empire, which now extended over the greater part of the known world, had been measured in the reign of Augustus, and represented in a map; but although, in one sense, geometry may be said to have been applied to geography from that period, yet, in the higher acceptation of the word, we cannot properly date the commencement of geometrical geography before the time of Claud. Ptolemy of Pelusium. This writer studied at Alexandria, and there wrote his numerous works: there, also, he died, A. D. 161, at a good old age. He was not only the greatest geographer of his time, but also a distinguished astronomer. His work on geography, in eight books, takes that of Marinus for its basis, and continued the usual authority upon geo

* Though he made the degrees of longitude the same in all latitudes, yet he made the degree of latitude 500, and the degree of longitude only 400 stadia, a very inefficient artificial attempt to compensate for the error introduced by drawing his meridians as parallel straight lines. Their principle is the same with those of Agathodæmon mentioned below.

graphy through about fourteen centuries, up to the revival of literature. The maps to this work were added by Agathodæmon in the fifth century, and are lost, but the principle on which they were drawn is retained in the projection of Mercator. The knowledge of geography shown by Ptolemy in this work is far more comprehensive than that of his predecessors. He is the first, by whom we find the expressions latitude (λáros) and longitude (μños) applied to the earth. In the extreme west, he has the Fortunatæ Insulæ, Juernia, or Ireland, the Cassiterides, or Tin islands, and Albion, or Britain. In the north, he mentions Thule and the island of Scandia, with the Danish islands. Towards Asia, he describes more correctly than had hitherto been done the Cimmerian peninsula. He considers the Caspian an inclosed sea, as Herodotus had stated, and not a gulf of the Northern Ocean, as Eratosthenes and Strabo had believed. In the east is an unknown land, forming the boundary of the Sinæ south-eastward; showing the communication with these countries to have been by land across Thibet, or more probably the Birman empire, and not by sea alone. The northern boundary of the Sinæ is Serica, their capital Thinæ; south of which is the large commercial city of Cattigara. Westward is the Golden peninsula, Maleia or Chrysa. It appears that Ptolemy imagined the large Indian Ocean to have been almost like the Mediterranean, an inclosed sea; being of opinion, like many of his predecessors, that still further to the south there was an unknown land connecting Asia with Africa. To the utmost south in Africa he places the Mountains of the Moon, with the two promontories of Rhaptum and Prasum. He recognises the spherical shape of the earth, the circuit of which consisted of 180,000 stadia, or 20,500 miles-a calculation considerably below the truth. The length and breadth of the inhabited earth he makes about the same, as his predecessors had represented. The

magnitude of the earth and the size of a degree were found by seeking two fixed stars at the distance of one degree by means of the diopter, and then finding two places upon the earth to which these stars stood in the zenith. When the distance of these two places was measured, it was found to be 500 stadia: the circumference of the earth would therefore be 500 x 360, or 180,000 stadia.

To Ptolemy succeeded Pausanias. He was said to have been born at Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, about a. D. 174. He was, perhaps, rather to be called a topographer, or describer of travels, than a geographer; for his work on Greece is properly only an itinerary continued from place to place, and interwoven with many interesting details in reference to the special history of particular places, and their works of art, &c.; he had also travelled in Italy and Asia, but may, with some justice, be charged with credulity.

In this period there were among the Romans only Itineraries, which were of two kinds. The first comprised lists of the most important places; of this sort are the Itineraria duo Antonini; Provinciarum Rom. Libellus; Indiculus Civitatum Galliarum, and the like: these Vegetius calls Itineraria adnotata. The second kind were, in a certain degree, post-maps, upon which the countries were represented adjacent to each other in the order in which the traveller saw them on the chief and by-roads, without reference to their form or geographical position: Vegetius calls these Itineraria picta. In the so-called Tabula Peutingeriana, a copy of this kind of Itinerary has been preserved. Of these the Roman emperors made use in their campaigns.

19

ANTIENT WORLD.

CHAPTER I.

ORBIS VETERIBUS NOTUS.

A. G. (Antient Geography) Pl. I.

THE antient Greeks and Romans knew only the three divisions of the world- Europe, Asia, and Africa. In Europe, they had little or rather no acquaintance with the countries north of Germany, now Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, which they called Scandia or Scandinavia, and thought to consist of a number of islands. East of Germany and north of the Black Sea, was Sarmatia, now Russia, equally unknown to them. In Asia they knew nothing north of the Caspian, but comprehended all the country under the general name of Scythia, divided into Scythia intra Imaum and Scythia extra Imaum; that is, on either side Mount Imaus, a general name for the central ranges of that continent, which connect the Himalaya with the Altai. Still eastward, they had a confused notion of Serica, or the north-western part of China, as an undefined continuation of Scythia. India they knew as far as the Ganges. The country beyond that river was comprised under the name of India extra Gangem, now the Birman Empire, and Assam, with the adjacent districts. They even mention a nation called Sinæ, now part of