Major Rennell, In His Illustrations Of Herodotus,
Has Endeavoured To Ascertain From His History The Parallel And Meridian Of
Halicarnassus, The Birth-Place Of The Historian.
According to him, they
intersect at right angles over that town, cutting the 37th degree of north
latitude, and the 45-1/2 of east longitude, from the Fortunate Islands.
For a considerable period after the time of Herodotus, the ancients seem to
have been nearly stationary in their knowledge of the world. About 368
years before Christ, Eudoxus, of Cnidus, whose desire of studying astronomy
induced him to visit Egypt, Asia, and Italy, who first attempted to explain
the planetary motions, and who is said to have discovered the inclination
of the moon's orbit, and the retrograde motion of her nodes, is celebrated
as having first applied geographical observations to astronomy; but he does
not appear to have directed his researches or his conjectures towards the
figure or the circumference of the earth, or the distances or relative
situations of any places on its surface.
Nearly about the same period that Eudoxus died Aristotle flourished. This
great philosopher, collecting and combining into one system of geographical
knowledge the discoveries and observations of all who had preceded him,
stamped on them a dignity and value they had not before possessed, as well
as rendered them less liable to be forgotten or misapplied: he inferred the
sphericity of the earth from the observations of travellers, that the stars
seen in Greece were not visible in Cyprus or Egypt; and thus established
the fundamental principle of all geography. But though this science, in its
most important branch, derived much benefit from his powerful mind, yet it
was not advanced in its details. He supposed the coasts of Spain not very
distant from those of India; and he even embraced a modified notion of
Homer's Ocean River, which had been ridiculed and rejected by Herodotus;
for he describes the habitable earth as a great oval island, surrounded by
the ocean, terminated on the west by the river Tartessius, (supposed to be
the Guadelquiver,) on the east by the Indus, and on the north by Albion and
Ierne, of which islands his ideas were necessarily very vague and
imperfect. In some other respects, however, his knowledge was more
accurate: he coincides with Herodotus in his description of the Caspian
Sea, and expressly states that it ought to be called a great lake, not a
sea. A short period before Aristotle flourished, that branch of geography
which relates to the temperature of different climates, and other
circumstances affecting health, was investigated with considerable
diligence, ingenuity, and success, by the celebrated physician Hippocrates.
In the course of his journeys, with this object in view, he seems to have
followed the plan and the route of Herodotus, and sometimes to have even
penetrated farther than he did.
Pytheas, of Marseilles, lived a short time before Alexander the Great: he
is celebrated for his knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and
geography, and for the ardour and perseverance with which either a strong
desire for information, or the characteristic commercial spirit of his
townspeople, or both united, carried him forward in the path of maritime
discovery. The additions, however, which he made to geography as a science,
or to the sciences intimately connected with it, are more palpable and
undisputed, than the extent and discoveries of his voyages.
He was the first who established a distinction of climate by the length of
days and nights: and he is said to have discovered the dependence of the
tides upon the position of the moon, affirming that the flood-tide depended
on the increase of the moon, and the ebb on its decrease. By means of a
gnomon he observed, at the summer solstice at Marseilles, that the length
of the shadow was to the height of the gnomon as 120 to 41-1/5; or, in
other words, that the obliquity of the ecliptic was 23:50. He relates, that
in the country which he reached in his voyage to the north, the sun, at the
time of the summer solstice, touched the northern part of the horizon: he
pointed out three stars near the pole, with which the north star formed a
square; and within this square, he fixed the true place of the pole.
According to Strabo, he considered the island of Thule as the most western
part of the then known world, and reckoned his longitude from thence.
With respect to the extent and discoveries of his voyage to the north,
there is great difference of opinion. The veracity of Pytheas is utterly
denied by Strabo and Polybius, and is strongly suspected by Dr. Vincent: on
the other hand, it has found able supporters in D'Anville, Huet, Gessner,
Murray of Goettingen, Gosselin, and Malte Brun; and in our opinion, though
it may not be easy to ascertain what was really the country which be
reached in his voyage, and though some of the particulars he mentions may
be fabulous, or irreconcileable with one another, yet it seems carrying
scepticism too far to reject, on these accounts, his voyage as altogether a
fiction.
The account is, that Pytheas departed from Marseilles, coasted Spain,
France, and the east or north-east side of Britain, as far as its northern
extremity. Taking his departure from this, he continued his voyage, as he
says, to the north, or perhaps to the north-east; and after six days'
navigation, he arrived at a land called Thule, which he states to be 46,300
stadia from the equator. So far there is nothing improbable or
inconsistent; but when he adds, that being there at the summer solstice, he
saw the sun touching the northern point of the horizon, and at the same
time asserts that the day and night were each of six months' continuance,
there is a palpable contradiction: and when he adds, that millet was
cultivated in the north of this country, and wheat in the south, and that
honey abounded, he mentions productions utterly incompatible with his
description of the climate and latitude.
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