Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/251

 , p. 180, col. 1); but Libya really forms a part of this same peninsula (c. 41). As to the boundary between Asia and Libya, he himself would place it on the W. border of Egypt; but he tells us that the boundary recognized by the Greeks was the Nile: the Ionians, however, regarded the Delta of Egypt as belonging neither to Asia nor to Libya (ii. 16, 17). On the other side of the central portion, the parts beyond the Persians, Medes, Saspeirians, and Colchians, extend eastward along the Red Sea (Indian Ocean), and northward as far as the Caspian Sea and the river Araxes (by which he seems to mean the Oxus). Asia is inhabited as far as India, to the east of which the earth is desert and unknown (c. 40). For this reason he does not attempt to define the boundary between Europe and Asia on the east; but he does not, at least commonly, extend the latter name beyond India.

From the time of Herodotus to that of Strabo, various opinions prevailed as to the distinction of the three continents. These opinions Eratosthenes divided into two classes: namely, some made rivers the boundaries, namely the Nile and the Tanais, thus making the continents islands; while others placed the boundaries across isthmuses, namely, that between the Euxine and the Caspian, and that between the Arabian gulf and the Serbonian lake, — thus making the continents peninsulas. Eratosthenes, like Herodotus, made light of the whole distinction, and cited this disagreement as an argument against it; but Strabo maintains its utility. (Strab. i. pp. 65—67.) The boundaries adopted by Strabo himself, and generally received from his time, and finally settled by the authority of Ptolemy, were, on the side of Europe, the Tanais (Don), Maeotis (Sea of Asov), Cimmerian Bosporus (Straits of Kaffa), the Pontus or Euxine (Black Sea), the Thracian Bosporus (Channel of Constantinople), Propontis (Sea of Marmora), Hellespont (Dardanelles), Aegean (Archipelago), and Mediterranean; and, on the side of Libya, the Arabicus Sinus (Red Sea) and the isthmus of Aisinoë (Suez). The opinion had also become established, in Strabo's time, that the E. and N. parts of Asia were surrounded by an ocean, which also surrounded the outer parts of Libya and Europe; but some, and even Ptolemy, reverted to the old notion, which we find in the early poets, that the south-eastern parts of Asia and of Libya were united by continuous land, enclosing the Indian Ocean on the E. and S.: this "unknown land" extends from Cattigara, the southmost city of the Sinae, to the promontory Prasum, his southmost point on the E. coast of Libya, in about the parallel of 20° S lat. (Ptol. vii. 3. § 6, 5. §§ 2, 5—8.) II. Particular Knowledge of Asia among the Greeks and Romans. — Such were the general notions attached by the Greeks and Romans at different times, to the word Asia, as one of the three great divisions of the then-known world. In proceeding to give a brief account of the more particular knowledge which they possessed of the continent, it will be necessary to revert to the history of their intercourse with its inhabitants, and the gradual extension of their sources of information respecting its geography.

The first knowledge which the Greeks possessed of the opposite shores of the Aegean Sea dates befor the earliest historical records. The legends respecting the Argonautic and Trojan expeditions and ether mythical stories, on the one hand, and the allusions to commercial and other intercourse with the peoples of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, on theother hand, Indicate a certain degree of knowledge of the coast, from the month of the Phasis, at the E. extremity of the Black Sea, to the mouth of the Nile. The Homeric poems show a familiar acquaintance with the W. coast of Asia Minor, and a vaguer knowledge of its N. and S. shores, and of the SE. coasts of the Mediterranean; as far as Colchis and the land of the Amazons on the former side, and Phoenicia and Lower Egypt on the latter. Hesiod had heard of the river Phasis, and of the Nile, which was known to Homer under the name of Aegyptus (Theog. 338, 339). The cyclic poets indicate a gradually increasing knowledge of the shores of western Asia. (For the details, see Ukert, vol. i., and Forbiger, vol. i.) This knowledge was improved and increased by the colonization of the W., N., and S. coasts of Asia Minor, and by the relations into which these Greek colonies were brought, first with the Lydian, and then with the Persian Empires. Under the former, their knowledge does not seem to have been extended beyond the W. parts of Asia Minor, as far as the Halys, — and that not in any accurate detail; but the overthrow of the Lydian empire by Cyrus, in B.C. 646, and the conquest of the Asiatic Greeks by the Persians, opened up to their inquiries all Asia, as far at least as the Caspian on the N. and the Indus on the E.; and their collision with the Persian Empire made it their interest to gain information of its extent and resources. The court of Persia was visited by Greeks, who there found, not only means of satisfying their curiosity, but of obtaining employment, as in the case of the physician Democedes. (Herod, iii. 129.) In B.C. 501 — 500 Aristagoras of Miletus was able to exhibit at Sparta a map, on copper, of the countries between Ionia and Susa. (Herod. V. 49.) The settlement of the Persian Empire under Dareios, the son of Hystaspes, was accompanied by the compilation of records, of which the still extant cuneiform inscriptions of Behistun may serve as an example. It must have been by the aidof such records that Herodotus composed his full account of the twenty satrapies of the Persian Empire (iii. 89, vii. 61); and his personal inquiries in Egypt and Phoenicia enabled him to add further details respecting the SW. parts of Asia; while, at the opposite extremity of the civilized world, he heard Euxine marvellous stories of the wandering tribes of from the Greek colonists on the N. shores of the Northern Asia. His knowledge, more or less imperfect, extends as far as the Caucasus and Caspian, the Sauromatae (Sarmatians), the Massagetae, and other northern peoples, the Oxus probably), Bactria, W. India, and Arabia. The care which Herodotus takes to distinguish between the facts he learnt from records and from personal observation, and the vague accounts which he obtained from travellers and traders, entitles him to the appellation of Father of Geography, as well as History.

The expedition of Cyrus and the retreat of the Ten Thousand added little in the way of direct knowledge, except with respect to the regions actually traversed; but that enterprise involved, in its indirect consequences, all the fruits of Alexander's conquests. Meanwhile, the Greek physician Ctesias was collecting at the court of Artaxerxes the materials of his two works on Persia and India, of which we have, unfortunately, only fragments.

A new epoch of geographical discovery in Asia was introduced by the conquests of Alexander. Besides the personal acquaintance which they enabled the Greeks to form with those provinces of