Many Of The Particulars Which We Have Given On The Subject Of The Roman
Trade Are Supplied By Pliny, Who Wrote His Natural History When Rome Was In
Its Most Flourishing State Under The Reign Of Vespasian.
His works consist
of thirty-seven books, the first six comprise the system of the world and
the geography as it was then known.
After examining the accounts of
Polybius, Agrippa, and Artemidorus, he assigns the following comparative
magnitudes to the three great divisions of the earth. Europe rather more
than a third, Asia about a fourth, and Africa about a fifth of the whole.
With few exceptions, his geographical knowledge of the east and of the
north, the parts of the world of which the ancients were the most ignorant,
was very inaccurate: he supposes the Ganges to be the north-eastern limit
of Asia, and that from it the coast turned to the north, where it was
washed by the sea of Serica, between which and a strait, which he imagined
formed a communication from the Caspian to the Scythian ocean, he admits
but a very small space. According to the system of Pliny, therefore, the
ocean occupied the whole county of Siberia, Mogul Tartary, China, &c. He
derived his information respecting India from the journals of Nearchus, and
the other officers of Alexander; and yet such is his ignorance, or the
corrupt state of the text, or the vitiated medium through which he received
his information, that it is not easy to reconcile his account with that of
Nearchus. Salmasius, indeed, charges him with confounding the east and west
in his description of India. His geography, in the most important
particular of the relative distances of places, is rendered of very little
utility or authority, from the circumstance pointed out and proved by
D'Anville, that he indiscriminately reckons eight stadia to the mile,
without reference to the difference between the Greek and Roman stadium. He
has, however, added two articles of information to the geographical and
commercial knowledge of the east possessed before his time; the one is the
account of the new course of navigation from Arabia to the coast of
Malabar, which has been already described; the other is a description of
Trapobane, or Ceylon, which, though inaccurate and obscure in many points,
must be regarded as a real and important addition to the geographical
knowledge of the Romans.
Pliny's geography of the north is the most full and curious of all
antiquity. After describing the Hellespont, Moeotis, Dacia, Sarmatia,
ancient Scythia, and the isles in the Euxine Sea, and proceeding last from
Spain, he passes north to the Scythic Ocean, and returns west towards
Spain. The coast of part of the Baltic seems to have been partly known to
him; he particularly mentions an island called Baltia, where amber was
found; but he supposes that the Baltic Sea itself was connected with the
Caspian and Indian Oceans. Pliny is the first author who names Scandinavia,
which he represents as an island, the extent of which was not then known;
but by Scandinavia there is reason to believe the present Scandia is meant.
Denmark may probably be rcognised in the Dumnor of this author, and Norway
in Noligen.
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