Many tolerably accurate surveys resulted from the conquests of the Romans; and we learn from Vegetius that their generals were always furnished with the maps of the provinces which were to be the scenes of their operations. Julius Cæsar ordered a general survey to be made of the whole empire, which occupied twenty-five years; and the Itinerary of Antonine, as well as that which was constructed in the reign of Theodosius the Great, commonly called the Peutingerian table, are well known as valuable authorities.
“The expedition of Alexander” (says Major Rennell, in the preliminary remarks attached to his Illustrations of Herodotus,) “besides the éclat of the military history belonging to it, furnished in Greece and Egypt an epoch of geographical improvement and correction, which may not unaptly be compared with that of the discoveries of the Portuguese along the coasts of Africa and India; or of that of the present time, in which geography has been improved in every quarter of the globe.”
“To a philosopher,” (observes the same author,) “the changes in the comparative state of nations, in different ages of the world, are very striking, and lead one to reflect what may be the future state of some now obscure corner of New Holland or of North America; since our own island was known only for its tin-mines by the most celebrated of ancient nations, whose descendants, in turn, rank no higher with us than as dealers in figs and currants!”
[9]“Variations ever did and ever will exist (continues the Major) on computed distances; instances of which existed on our own public roads previous to their improvement, and which do yet exist on many of the cross-roads.” “It is probable,” he adds, “that Herodotus, Xenophon, Nearchus, Strabo, &c., all intended the same stade, but may have given occasion to different results, by reporting the numbers on the judgment of different persons.”
[10]Hipparchus of Nicæa (“who can never,” says Pliny, “be sufficiently commended,”) appears to have been the first who united geography with astronomy, by determining the position of some of the places which he described, according to their latitude and longitude[a]. He died about one hundred and twenty-five years before Christ, and his important discoveries remained neglected, or at least unapplied, for nearly three hundred years, till they were adopted by Ptolemy in his Geographical Treatise.
[a]See Ptolemy, Geog. lib. i. c. 4, and Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. ii. c. 12—26.
[11]——— Una campagna diserta et aspera, dove non si trova nè acqua nè terreno da coltivare.—(Leo Afr. in Ram. 5ta parte, p. 72.)
[12]Prima che gli Arabi venissero in Africa fu il detto diserto dishabitato: ma poi che, &c.
There can be no doubt that the desert of Barca, here described, is the whole tract of country bordering on the Mediterranean, from Mesurata to Alexandria; for, after having described Mesurata as situated on the coast, the author proceeds to observe—“This desert (that of Barca) begins from the confines of the district of Mesurata, and extends itself eastward as far as the confines of Alexandria, a space of about one thousand three hundred miles in length, and about two hundred in breadth.” The dimensions of Barca here given appear to be as singular as the description already noticed of it which follows; for besides that the length is much too great, the two hundred miles of breadth which is allotted to it would carry us far to the southward of Augila, into the desert of Libya, which does not seem, from other passages, to have been intended by Leo. We were ourselves, at one time, in passing along the eastern side of the Gulf of Syrtis, only four days’ journey from Augila; and it then bore to the eastward of the south; so that it could not be anything like two hundred miles from the coast, even reckoning from the most northern part of the Cyrenaica.
The place mentioned by Strabo in the following passage, as being four days’ easy journey from the bottom of the Syrtis, could scarcely be any other than Augila.