He
Explained The Ebbing And Flowing Of The Sea, From The Motion Of The Moon,
And Seems To Have Been
The first who observed the law of this phenomenon.
In order to represent the appearance of the heavens, Cicero informs
Us that
he constructed a kind of planetarium, by means of which he exhibited the
apparent motion of the sun, moon, and planets round the earth. It is on the
authority of Posidonius, that Strabo relates the voyage of Eudoxus of
Cyzicum from the Persian Gulf round Africa to Cadiz, which we have already
mentioned.
Having thus exhibited a view of the discoveries in geography, the advances
in the sciences connected with it, and the commercial enterprises of the
Egyptians, while under the dominion of the Ptolemies, it will be proper,
before beginning an account of the geographical knowledge and commercial
enterprises of the Romans (who, by their conquest of Egypt, may be said to
have absorbed all the geographical knowledge, as well as all the commerce
of the world, at that period), to recapitulate the extent of the Egyptian
geography and commerce, especially towards the east We shall direct our
retrospect to this quarter, because the commodities of the east being most
prized, it was the grand object of the sovereigns and merchants of Egypt,
to extend and facilitate the intercourse with that quarter of the globe as
much as possible. And we are induced to undertake the retrospect, because
the exact limit of the geographical knowledge and commercial enterprise of
the Ptolemies is differently fixed by different authors:
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