[114] Claudius Ptolemæus, an Egyptian astronomer and geographer, lived, in the second century at Alexandria. His System of Geography, (Γεωγραφική Ἀφήγησις,) contained in eight books, was a standard work for fourteen centuries. During the first part of the sixteenth century twenty-one editions of the geography, with editions and emendations, were published. According to Ptolemy, all the known part of the earth, from the first meridian, or the Canary Islands, eastwardly, on the parallel of Rhodes, measured seventy-two thousand stadia, or one hundred and eighty degrees, which he deemed to be the half of the circumference of the globe. But the extent he was acquainted with was really measured by one hundred and twenty degrees, which made the circumference one third less than it is.
Marinus of Tyre, a Greek geographer, lived about 150 A.D. This cosmographer supposed that the country of the Seres, or Sinae (China), the farthest part of India known to the ancients, was fifteen hours, by the course of the sun, or two hundred and twenty-five degrees east of the first meridian passing through the Fortunate (Canary) Islands. According to our present geographical measurements, the distance given by Marinus was not more than one hundred and thirty degrees, leaving two hundred and thirty the remaining distance from China eastwardly to the Canary Islands. Following the deductions of Marinus, there were only one hundred and thirty-five degrees of distance between China, going eastwardly, and the Fortunate Islands.
[115] “Marinus, the Tyrian, misled by the length of time occupied in the navigation from Myos Hormos to India, by the erroneously assumed direction of the major axis of the Caspian from west to east, and by the over-estimation of the length of the land route to the country of the Seres, gave the old continent a breadth of 225°, instead of 129°. The Chinese coast was thus advanced to the Sandwich Islands. Columbus naturally preferred this result to that of Ptolemy, according to which Quinsay should have been found in the meridian of the eastern part of the archipelago of the Carolinas. Ptolemy, in the Almagest (ii. 1), places the coast of Sinae at 180°, and in his Geography (lib. i. cap. 12) at 177¼°.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 645. Note.
[116] Alfraganius or Al Fergani, an Arabian astronomer, lived in the earlier part of the ninth century.
[117] Medea, act. ii.
Lucius Annæus Seneca, a Stoic philosopher and tragic poet, was born at Corduba, Spain, about 5 B.C., and died 65 A.D.
Tiphys was the name of the pilot of the ship of the Argonauts.
Thule, an island in the extreme part of Northern Europe, as known in the time of Ptolemy. The island is supposed by some to have been the Shetland Islands, by others the Faroe group, and by others Iceland.
[118] Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo. cap. vi, vii.
[119] Porto Santo, a small island northeast of the island of Madeira.