[568] Hipparchus found by this operation that the distance from the parallel of Babylon to that of the mountains of Armenia was 6795 stadia.
[569] See Humboldt, Cosmos ii. p. 556, note, Bohn’s edition.
[570] Eratosthenes estimated 252,000 stadia for the circumference of the earth.
[571] Odyssey ix. 291; Iliad xxiv. 409.
[572] Strabo estimated the length of the continent at 70,000 stadia from Cape St. Vincent to Cape Comorin, and 29,300 stadia as its breadth.
[573] The ancient geographers often speak of these kind of resemblances. They have compared the whole habitable earth to a soldier’s cloak or mantle, as also the town of Alexandria, which they styled χλαμυδοειδές. Italy at one time to a leaf of parsley, at another to an oak-leaf. Sardinia to a human foot-print. The isle of Naxos to a vine-leaf. Cyprus to a sheep-skin; and the Black Sea to a Scythian bow, bent. The earliest coins of Peloponnesus, struck about 750 years before the Christian era, bear the impress of a tortoise, because that animal abounded on the shores, and the divisions and height of its shell were thought to offer some likeness to the territorial divisions of the little states of Peloponnesus and the mountain-ridges which run through the middle of that country. The Sicilians took for their symbol three thighs and legs, arranged in such an order that the bended knees might resemble the three capes of that island and its triangular form.
[574] The chain of the Taurus.
[575] The Indus.
[576] The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.
[577] India.