A Book of Discovery / The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole

by M. B. Synge

STRABO'S GEOGRAPHY

Strabo wrote his famous geography near the beginning of the Christian era, but he knew nothing of the north of England, Scotland, or Wales. He insisted on placing Ireland to the north, and scoffed at Pytheas' account of Thule.

And yet he boasted a wider range than any other writer on geography, "for that those who had penetrated farther towards the West had not gone so far to the East, and those on the contrary who had seen more of the East had seen less of the West."

Like Herodotus, Strabo had travelled himself from Armenia and western Italy, from the Black Sea to Egypt and up the Nile to Philæ. But his seventeen volumes—vastly important to his contemporaries—read like a romance to us to-day, and a glance at the map laid down according to his descriptions is like a vague and distorted caricature of the real thing. And yet, according to the men of his times, he "surpasses all the geographical writings of antiquity, both in grandeur of plan and in abundance and variety of its materials."

Strabo has summed up for us the knowledge of the ancient world as it was in the days of the Emperor Cæsar Augustus of the great Roman Empire, as it was when in far-off Syria the Christ was born and the greater part of the known earth was under the sway of Rome.

A wall-map had already been designed by order of Augustus to hang in a public place in Rome—the heart of the Empire—so that the young Romans might realise the size of their inheritance, while a list of the chief places on the roads, which, radiating from Rome, formed a network over the Empire, was inscribed on the Golden Milestone in the Forum.

A PORTION OF AN OLD ROMAN MAP OF THE WORLD, SHOWING THE ROADS THROUGH THE EMPIRE, RIVERS, MOUNTAINS, AND THE SURROUNDING SEAS. This is a portion—a few inches—taken from the famous Peutinger Table, a long strip map on parchment, of the fourth century, derived from Augustan maps according to the measurements of Cæsar Augustus Agrippa. It will be noticed how the roads, beginning with the Twelve Ways, which start from Rome in the centre, go in straight lines over all obstacles to the towns of the Empire. Distances are marked in stadia (about 1/9 mile).

We may well imagine with what keen interest the schoolmen of Alexandria would watch the extension of the Roman Empire. Here Strabo had studied, here or at Rome he probably wrote his great work toward the close of a long life. He has read his Homer and inclines to take every word he says as true. Herodotus he will have none of.