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.
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