The Only Great Poet Born in London from 1250–1500

Poets and Artists Born in London since 1500


The Small World of the Ancients

The most ancient records we possess from Assyria, Egypt, Palestine, and from the Homeric poems, show how very limited was the range of geographical knowledge possessed by that small civilised world from which our own civilisation has descended. Speaking roughly, that knowledge seems in the tenth century B.C. to have extended about one thousand miles in each direction from the Isthmus of Suez. However, the best point of departure for the peoples of antiquity is the era of Herodotus, who travelled and wrote B.C. 460–440. The limits of the world as he knew it were Cadiz and the Straits of Gibraltar on the west, the Danube and the Caspian on the north, the deserts of Eastern Persia on the east, and the Sahara on the south, with vague tales regarding peoples who lived beyond, such as Indians far beyond Persia, and pygmies beyond the Sahara. He reports, however, not without hesitation, a circumnavigation of Africa by Phœnicians in the service of Pharaoh Necho.