Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/330

 question was left, in ancient geography, with the great authority of Ptolemy on the negative side In fact, the progress of maritime discovery, proceeding independently in the two directions, led to the knowledge of the two great expanses of water, on the S. of Asia, and on the W. of Africa and Europe, while their connection around Africa was purely a matter of conjecture. Hence arose the distinction marked by the names of the Southern and the Western Seas, the former being constantly used by Herodotus for the Indian Ocean [], while, somewhat curiously, the latter, its natural correlative, is only applied to the Atlantic by late writers.

Herodotus had obtained sufficient knowledge to reject with ridicule the idea of the river Ocean flowing round the earth (ii. 2 1, 23, iv. 8, 36) ; and it deserves notice, that with the notion he rejects the name also, and calls those great bodies of water, which we call oceans, seas, In this he is followed by the great majority of the ancient writers; and the secondary use of the word Ocean, which we have retained, as its common sense, was only introduced at a late period, when there was probably a confused notion of its exact primary sense. It is found in the Roman writers and in the Greek geographers of the Roman period, sometimes for the whole body of water surrounding the earth, and sometimes with epithets which mark the application of the word to the Atlantic Ocean, which is also called simply Oceanus; while, on the other hand, the epithet Atlanticus is found applied to the Ocean in its wider sense, that is, to the whole body of water surrounding the three continents.

Herodotus speaks of the great sea on the W. of Europe and Asia, as the sea beyond the Pillars (of Hercules) which is called the Sea of Atlas (, — fem. adj. of, — : Her. i. 202.) The former name was naturally applied to it in contradistinction to the Mediterranean, or the sea within the Pillars (, Aristot. Meteor. ii. 1; Dion. Hal. i. 3; Plut Pomp. 25); and the latter on account of the position assigned to the mythical personage Atlas, and to the mountain of the same name, at the W. extremity of the earth []. (Comp. Eurip. Hippol. 3; Aristot. Prob. xxvi. 54.) Both names are constantly used by subsequent writers. The former name is common in the simpler form of the Outer Sea (, Mare Externum, Mare Exterius); outer, with reference sometimes to the Mediterranean, and sometimes to all the inner waters of the earth. Another name constantly used is that of the Great Sea (, Mare Magnum), in contradistinction to all the lesser seas, and to the Mediterranean in particular. It was also called the Western Sea or Ocean (, and, Hesperium Mare). The use of these names, and the ideas associated with than, require a more particular description.

The old Homeric notion of the river Ocean retained its place in the poets long after its physical meaning had been abandoned; and some indications are found of an attempt to reconcile it with later discoveries, by placing the Ocean outside of all the seas of the world, even of the outer seas. (Eurip. Orest. 1377.) Afterwards, the language of the old poets was adapted to the progress of geographical knowledge, by transferring the poetical name of the all-encircling river to the sea which was supposed (by most geographers, though not by all) to surround the inhabited world; and this encircling sea was called not only Ocean, but also by the specific names applied to the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, in the work de Mundo, falsely ascribed to Aristotle (c. 3), it is said that the whole world is an island surrounded by the Atlantic Sea (: and, again, ), and the same idea is again and again repeated in other passages of the work, where the name used is simply.

Similarly Cicero (Somn. Scip. 6) describes the inhabited earth as a small island, surrounded by that sea which men call Atlantic, and Great, and Ocean (illo mari, quod Atlanticum, quod Magnum, quem Oceanum, appellatis in terris). When he adds, that though bearing so great a name, it is but small, he refers to the idea that there were many such islands on the surface of the globe, each surrounded by its own small portion of the great body of waters.

Strabo refers to the same notion as held by Eratosthenes (i. pp. 56, 64, sub fin.; on the reading and, meaning of this difficult passage see Seidel, Fr. Eratosth. pp. 71, foll., and Groskurd's German translation of Strabo), who supposed the circuit of the earth to be complete within itself, "so that, but for the hindrance arising from the great size of the Atlantic Sea, we might sail from Iberia (Spain) to India along the same parallel"; to which Strabo makes an objection, remarkable for its unconscious anticipation of the great discovery of Columbus, that there may be two inhabited worlds (or islands) in the temperate zone. (Comp. i. p. 5, where he discusses the Homeric notion, i. p. 32, and ii. p. 112.) Elsewhere he says that the earth is surrounded with water, and receives into itself several gulfs "from the outer sea" (, where the exact sense of  is not clear: may it refer to the idea, noticed above, of some distinction between the Ocean and even the outer seas of the world?). Of the gulfs here referred to, the principal, he adds, are four: namely, the Caspian on the N., the Persian and Arabian on the S., and the Mediterranean on the W. Of his application of the name Atlantic to the whole of the surrounding Ocean, or at least to its southern, as well as western, portion, we have examples in i. p. 32, and in xv. p. 689, where he says that the S. and SE. shores of India run out into the Atlantic sea; and, in ii. p. 130, he makes India extend to "the Eastern Sea and the Southern Sea, which is part of the Atlantic". Similarly Eratosthenes had spoken of Arabia Felix, as extending S. as far as the Atlantic Sea (, Strab. xvi, p. 767, where there is no occasion for Letronne's conjectural emendation,, a name also which only occurs in the later geographers).

Of the use of the simple word Oceanus, as the name of the Atlantic Ocean, by writers about Strabo's time, examples are found in Cicero (Leg. Manil. 12), Sallust (Jug. 18), Livy (xxiii. 5), Horace (Carm. iv. 14. 47, 48), and Virgil (Georg. iv. 382); and the word is coupled with mare by Caesar (B. G. iii. 7, mare Oceanum), Catullus (Carm 114, 6), 