Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/138

 EUKOPA. tiie islands of the Aegean sea, Pdoponnesns, Hellas, Thracia, Tfarinacria, or the three-cornered island Sicilj, and a small portion of the boot of Italy, sonth of a line drawn between the Sinns Scylaoeus aind the Sinns Hipponiatia. Near the western verge of the Great Sea were the isles of the Sirens and EIjBium, and far to the N£. the land of Ogygia- The ellipse was encompassed by the river Oosanns. This was the primitiTe Europe, as it was known to the con- temporaries of Homer. The author of the Homeric poems was indeed acquainted with the countries around the A^ean, and in some degree also with the southern coast of the Euxine. But when, as in the Odyssey, he mentions more westerly r^ons, he deals at best in vague rumours, which, if derived through investigation at aU, were probably the legends of Phoenician and Etruscan mariners, partly credulous themselves, partly desirous to exclude the Greeks from their trade and settlements in the west of Sicily. 2. Three hundx«d years afterwards the historian Hecataeus described the globe as an irregular circle, of which the northern hemisphere contained Europa, with a veiy uncertain frontier on the side of Ada. Some advance, however, in knowledge had been made in the meanwhile. The Iberians, Celts, and Scythians occupied respectively Spain, Southern Gaul, the dis- tricts between the sources of the Rhme and the Ister, and the S. Dannbian pkteau. The northern limit of Thrace was supposed to be eonterminoos with an nnexplored and uninhabitable Arctk region. Italy was not as yet known by any single name, but was designated, according to its races, as the Und of the Tyrrhenians, Ansonians, and Oenotrians. On the other hand, although the Mediterranean was still denominated the Great Sea, — by which name is implied ignorance of the Atlantic Ocean, — the Enzine, the Ionian, and Adriatic seas had attained their permanent titles. Northern Greece, Pelopon- nesus, and the Mediterranean islands were intimately known. The Cyclopes and Laestrygonians had vanished from the shares of the latter, and even, in the NE., the coasts of the Palus Maeotis were de- fined with tolerable accuracy. 3. Herodotus, who had both travelled extensively himself, and possessed the advantage of consulting the descriptions of his predecessors, Hellanicns, Heca- taeus, &e., surpassed them all in his knowledge of particular regions. Yet he was much better ac- quainted with Western Asia and Aegypt than with Europe generally, to which indeed, if he does not confound it with Asia, he assigns a breadth greatly disproportioned to its true dimensions. He places the region of firost far below the Baltic sea, and represents the river Oceanus as the general boun- dary of the land. He seems ahio to have given the Danube a southerly inclination, in order that it may corre s pond with the northerly course of the Nile. The globe itself he conceived as elliptical rather than spheroidal. 4. Even Eratosthenes, who composed his great work about b. c. 200, and Strabo^ who probably had before him the recent surveys of the Roman pro- vinces, made by order of Augustus after b. c. 29, entertained very imperfect notions of the extent of Europe i» the north. Of Russia and the Baltic regions generally they knew nothing. The Roman negotiatores, who nesit to the legions made their way into the heart of every conquered land, did not, imtil another generation had paused, venture beyond the £lbe or l£e Weser. The campaigns of Drusus Nero EUROPA. 879 in B. a 18 — ^9, and of his son Germanicns in 14 — 16 A. D., first contributed to a more exact acquaintance with central Europe. Pliny the elder was attached to one of the legions of Drusus, and both himself gives a lively account of the Regio Batavorum, and probably imparted to Tacitus many details which the historian inserted in his Treatise on the Ger- mans. It is worthy of remark that, in the interval between the composition of his Germania and the Annals, Tacitus extended and improved his know- ledge of the localities and manners of the TeutorJo races. His names of tribes and their weapons are amended frequently in the later of these works. Ptolraiy the geographer, who wrote about a. d. 135 and in the reign of Hadrian, mentions a considerable number of tribes and places N. of the Roman pro- vince of Dacia, as far N. apparently as Novogorod, which were unknown to former cosmograpben. But his notices of tliese regions scarcely extend b^ yond mere names, which, both as respects their orthography and their relative situations, cannot possibly be identified with any known districts or tribes. The work of Ptolemy itself is indeed both fingmentaiy and corrupt in its text: yet even if we possessed the whole of it, and more correct manu« scripts, we should probably gain little more accurate information. Hb statements were in the main, as n^;ards those obscure tracts, derived from the vague and contradictoiy reports of Roman trsders, who would naturally magnify the ferocity of the races they visited, and the dangers and privations they had undergone. During the progress of migration southward, as the barriers of the Roman em]rire successively receded, the population of the lands north of the Tanais, the Volga, and the Caspian sea, both in Europe and Asia, was constantly fluc- tuating, and its undulations stretched from China to the Atlantic. As race pressed upon race, with a general inclination towards the line of the Pyre- nees, the Alps, and the Balkan, the landmarks of geography were effiiced, and tribes which Pliny and Tacitus bad correctly seated between the Elbe and the Vistula were pushed onward, if they continued to exist independently, into the Alpine regions, or as fiur westward as the Loire and Garonne. The barbarians indeed, who seized upon Gaul and Iberia after the 4th century A. d., brought with them some knowledge of the regions which they had quitted. But this knowledge was scarcely available for geo- graphical purposes, even when it was not altogether vague and traditionary. It was needful that the great flood of migration should subside in fixed localities before certainty could be obtained. After the fall of the empire, two very difierent classes of men helped to complete the details of European geography: (1) the Scandinavian pirates, whoso voyages extended from the German Ocean to the Black sea; and (2) the missionaries of the Greek church, the first real explorers of the tracts vaguely designated by the ancients as Scythia and Sarmatia. About the 9th century a. d. these pious men had penetrated into the interior of Russia, and brought the Saimatian tribes into correspondence with the church of Constantinople. Civilisation, and with it a more regular survey of these regions, followed in their track. The preachers of the gospel were stimulated by their seal to fresh discoveries; and their converts were attracted by the luxuries of the capital. In the same century Charlemagne ex- tended the knowledge of Northern Europe by his crusade against the Saxon heathens; Alfred the