Egypt, Ethiopia, and the north coast of Africa. Strabo had travelled through the whole of Egypt, as far as Syene and Philæ, and writes with the decided tone of an eye-witness. Much verbal information, also, he collected at Alexandria. His most important written authorities are, for the Nile, Eratosthenes (who borrowed from Aristotle), Eudoxus, and Aristo. For the most remarkable events of Egyptian history, he had Polybius, and for later times probably Poseidonius, besides vivâ voce accounts.

For the oracle at Ammon, he had the historians of Alexander; for Ethiopia, the accounts of Petronius, who had carried on war there, Agatharchides, and Herodotus. Of Libya of Africa Proper he had nothing new or authentic to say. Besides Eratosthenes, Artemidorus, and Poseidonius, his chief authorities, he had Iphicrates, who wrote on the plants and animals of Libya. The whole concludes with a short notice of the Roman Empire.

The codices or manuscripts which exist of Strabo's work appear to be copies of a single manuscript existing in the middle ages, but now lost. From the striking agreement of errors and omissions in all now extant (with such differences only as can be accounted for, arising from the want of ability or carelessness of the copyist), it appears most probable that to this single manuscript we are indebted for the preservation of the work. Strabo himself describes the carelessness of bad scribes both at Rome and Alexandria, in the following expressive language: "Some vendors of books, also, employed bad scribes and neglected to compare the copies with the originals. This happens in the case of other books, which are copied for sale both here and at Alexandria."

STRABO

ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY

IF the scientific investigation of any subject be the proper avocation of the philosopher, Geography, the science of which we propose to treat, is certainly entitled to a high place; and this is evident from many considerations. They who first ventured to handle the matter were distinguished men. Homer, Anaximander the Milesian, and Hecatæus, (his fellow-citizen according to Eratosthenes,) Democritus, Eudoxus, Dicæarchus, Ephorus, with many others, and after these Eratosthenes, Polybius, and Posidonius, all of them philosophers.

Nor is the great learning, through which alone this subject can be approached, possessed by any but a person acquainted with both human and divine things, and these attainments constitute what is called philosophy. In addition to its vast importance in regard to social life, and the art of government, Geography unfolds to us the celestial phenomena, acquaints us with the occupants of the land and ocean, and the vegetation, fruits, and peculiarities of the various quarters of the earth, a knowledge of which marks him who cultivates it as a man earnest in the great problem of life and happiness.

Admitting this, let us examine more in detail the points we have advanced.

And first, we maintain, that both we and our predecessors, amongst whom is Hipparchus, do justly regard Homer as the founder of geographical science, for he not only excelled all, ancient as well as modern, in the sublimity of his poetry, but also in his experience of social life. Thus it was that he not only exerted himself to become familiar with as many historic facts as possible, and transmit them to posterity, but also with the various regions of the inhabited land and sea, some intimately, others in a more general manner. For otherwise he would not have reached the utmost limits of the earth, traversing it in his imagination.

First, he stated that the earth was entirely encompassed by the ocean, as in truth it is; afterwards he described the countries, specifying some by name, others more generally by various indications, explicitly defining Libya [Africa], Ethiopia, the Sidonians, and the Erembi (by which latter are probably intended the Troglodyte Arabians); and alluding to those farther east and west as the lands washed by the ocean, for in ocean he believed both the sun and constellations to rise and set.

Now from the gently-swelling flood profound
The sun arising, with his earliest rays,

In his ascent to heaven smote on the fields.

-Iliad vii, Cowper's translation.

And now the radiant sun in ocean sank,
Dragging night after him o'er all the earth.

-Iliad viii, Cowper's translation.

The stars also he describes as bathed in the ocean (Iliad v.)

He portrays the happiness of the people of the West, and the salubrity of their climate, having no doubt heard of the abundance of Iberia, which had attracted the arms of Hercules,1 afterwards of the Phoenicians, who acquired there an extended rule, and finally of the Romans. There the airs of Zephyr breathe, there the poet feigned the fields of Elysium, when he tells us Menelaus was sent thither by the gods :

Thee the gods

Have destined to the blest Elysian isles,

Earth's utmost boundaries. Rhadamanthus there
For ever reigns, and there the human kind

Enjoy the easiest life; no snow is there,

No biting winter, and no drenching shower,

But Zephyr always gently from the sea

Breathes on them, to refresh the happy race.
-Odyssey iv, Cowper's translation.

'The Phoenician Hercules, anterior to the Grecian hero by two or three centuries. The date of his expedition, supposing it to have actually occurred, was about sixteen or seventeen hundred years before the Christian era.

The Isles of the Blest1 are on the extreme west of Maurusia, near where its shore runs parallel to the opposite coast of Spain; and it is clear he considered these regions also Blest, from their contiguity to the Islands.

He tells us also, that the Ethiopians are far removed, and bounded by the ocean; far removed,

The Ethiopians, utmost of mankind,

These eastward situate, those toward the west.

-Odyssey i, Cowper's translation.

Nor was he mistaken in calling them separated into two divisions, as we shall presently show: and next to the ocean,—

For to the banks of the Oceanus,

Where Ethiopia holds a feast to Jove,

He journey'd yesterday.

-Iliad i, Cowper's translation.

Speaking of the Bear, he implies that the most northern part of the earth is bounded by the ocean:

Only star of these denied

To slake his beams in Ocean's briny baths.

-Iliad xviii, Cowper's translation.

Now, by the "Bear" and the "Wain," he means the Arctic Circle; otherwise he would never have said, "It alone is deprived of the baths of the ocean," when such an infinity of stars is to be seen continually revolving in that part of the hemisphere. Let no one any longer blame his ignorance for being merely acquainted with one Bear, when there are two. It is probable that the second was not considered a constellation until, on the Phoenicians specially designating it, and em

1 The Isles of the Blest are the same as the Fortunate Isles of other geographers. It is clear from Strabo's description that he alludes to the Canary Islands; but as it is certain that Homer had never heard of these, it is probable that the passages adduced by Strabo have reference to the Elysian Fields of Baïa in Campania.

2 The Maurusia of the Greeks (the Mauritania of the Latins) is now known as Algiers and Fez in Africa.

ploying it in navigation, it became known as one to the Greeks.1 Such is the case with the Hair of Berenice, and Canopus, whose names are but of yesterday; and, as Aratus remarks, there are numbers which have not yet received any designation. Heraclitus figuratively describes the Arctic Circle as the Bear," The Bear is the limit of the dawn and of the evening, and from the region of the Bear we have fine weather." Now it is not the constellation of the Bear, but the Arctic Circle, which is the limit of the rising and the setting

stars.

By the Bear, then, which he elsewhere calls the Wain, and describes as pursuing Orion, Homer means us to understand the Arctic Circle; and by the ocean, that horizon into which, and out of which, the stars rise and set. When he says that the Bear turns round and is deprived of the ocean, he was aware that the Arctic Circle always extended to the sign opposite the most northern point of the horizon. Adapting the words of the poet to this view, by that part of the earth nearest to the ocean we must understand the horizon, and by the Arctic Circle that which extends to the signs which seem to our senses to touch in succession the most northern point of the horizon. Thus, according to him, this portion of the earth is washed by the ocean. With the nations of the North he was well acquainted, although he does not mention them by name, and indeed at the present day there is no regular title by which they are all distinguished. He informs us of their mode of life, describing them as "wanderers," "noble milkers of mares," "living on cheese," and "without wealth.'

1 We are informed by Diogenes Laertius, that Thales was the first to make known to the Greeks the constellation of the Lesser Bear. Now this philosopher flourished 600 years before the Christian era, and consequently some centuries after Homer's death. The name of Phoinike, which it received from the Greeks, is proof that Thales owed his knowledge of it to the Phoenicians.

2 Iliad xiii. Thrace (the present Roumelia) was indisputably the most northern nation known to Homer. He names the people Hippēmolgoi, or living on mares' milk, because in his time they were a nomad race. Strabo evidently gives a forced meaning to the words