The Most Particular Information We Possess Respecting The Geographical
Knowledge, And The Indian Commerce Of The Ancients At The Beginning Of The
Sixth Century, Is Derived From A Work Of Cosmas, Surnamed Indico Pleustes,
Or The Indian Navigator.
He was originally a merchant, and afterwards
became a monk; and Gibbon justly observes, that his work displays the
knowledge of a merchant, with the prejudices of a monk.
It is entitled
_Christian Topography_, and was composed at Alexandria, in the middle
of the fifth century, about twenty years after he had performed his voyage.
The chief object of his work was to confute the opinions that the earth was
a globe, and that there was a temperate zone on the south of the torrid
zone. According to Cosmas, the earth is a vast plane surrounded by a wall:
its extent 400 days' journey from east to west, and half as much from north
to south. On the wall which bounded the earth, the firmament was supported.
The succession of day and night is occasioned by an immense mountain on the
north of the earth, intercepting the light of the sun. In order to account
for the course of the rivers, he supposed that the plane of the earth
declined from north to south: hence the Euphrates, Tigris, &c. running to
the south, were rapid streams; whereas the Nile, running in a contrary
direction, was slow and sluggish. The prejudices of a monk, are
sufficiently evident in these opinions; but, in justice to Cosmas, it must
be remarked, that he labours hard, and not unsuccessfully, to prove that
his notions were all the same as those of the most ancient Greek
philosophers; and, indeed, his system differs from that of Homer,
principally in his assigning a square instead of a round figure to the
plane surface, which they both supposed to belong to the earth. The
cosmography of Homer, thus adopted by Cosmas and most Christian writers,
modified in some respects by the cosmography they drew from the Scriptures,
is a strong proof, as Malte Brun observes, of the powerful influence which
the poetical geography of Homer possessed over the opinions even of very
distant ages.
Having thus briefly detailed those parts of Cosmas's work, which are merely
curious as letting us into the prevalent cosmography of his time, we shall
now proceed to those parts which, as Gibbon remarks, display the knowledge
of a merchant.
We have already noticed the inscription at Aduli for which we are indebted
to this author, and the light which it throws on the commercial enterprise
of the Egyptian sovereigns. According to Cosmas, the oriental commerce of
the Red Sea, in his time, had entirely left the Roman dominions, and
settled at Aduli: this place was regularly visited by merchants from
Alexandria and Aela, an Arabian port, at the head of the eastern branch of
the Red Sea. From Aduli, vessels regularly sailed to the East: here were
collected the aromatics, spices, ivory, emeralds, &c. of Ethiopia, and
shipped by the merchants of the place in their own vessels to India,
Persia, South Arabia, and through Egypt and the north of Arabia, for Rome.
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