[272] Geographia, vii. 5.
[273] 1° = 500 stadia = 88,700m, which is about one fifth smaller than the truth.
[274] Xenophanes is to be excepted, if, as M. Martin supposes, his doctrine of the infinite extent of the earth applied to its extent horizontally as well as downward.
[275] The domain of early Greek geography has not escaped the incursions of unbalanced investigators. The Greeks themselves allowed the Argonauts an ocean voyage: Crates and Strabo did valiant battle for the universal wisdom of Homer; nor are scholars lacking to-day who will demonstrate that Odysseus had circumnavigated Africa, floated in the shadow of Teneriffe—Horace to the contrary notwithstanding,—or sought and found the north pole. The evidence is against such vain imaginings. The world of Homer is a narrow world; to him the earth and the Ægean Sea are alike boundless, and in his thought fairy-land could begin west of the Lotos-eaters, and one could there forget the things of this life. There is little doubt that the author of the Odyssey considered Greece an island, and Asia and Africa another, and thought the great ocean eddied around the north of Hellas to a union with the Euxine.
Quinque tenent caelum zonae: quarum una corusco
Semper sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni;
Quam circum extremae dextra laevaque trahuntur
Caeruleae glacie concretae atque imbribus atris;
Has inter mediam duae mortalibus aegris
Munere concessae divom.
(Virgil, Georg. i. 233.)