Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/139

 880 EUROPA. Great contribaied to the same end by his expedition into the Baltic sea, and ctHnpiled from the joomals ai Other a succinct account of those coantries, as well as of the sea-coast of Pmssia. In the 13th oenturj ihat region was annexed to Christendom bj the victories of the knights of St John. From that epoch dates the complete discovery of the European continent from Lapland to the Straits of Gibraltar. To trace the course of geographical knowledge in Europe southward of its principal mountain-chains, we must revert to the series of Roman conquests in their chronological order. The Romans were, as we have remarked already, the first accurate surveyors of the continent In the interval between the fintt and second Punic wars, lUyricum was humbled (b. c 219) and the eastern shore of the Adriatic laid open to European intercourse. Their advance north of the Rubicon and the Magra was more gradual, yet colonies had been established as outposts am(«g the Boian and Insubrian Gauls before the commencement of the Second Punic War. Epirus and Macedonia were reduced to the f<»in of provinces in b. c. 1 67, and niyricum finally broken up into three cantons in the year following. Even in the most flourishing period of the Macedonian empire, Illyricum and Epirus had been very imperfectly explored, and were regarded by the Greek republics as but one degree re- moved from barbarism. Before b. a 1 49 the Romans had begun to attack the Gauls in the Alps, and gradually made themselves masters of the coasts of Dalmatia, of Liguria as far as Spun, and the entire island of Corsica. The Iberian peninsula was first completely subjugated by the Cantabrian wars of Augustus, B. c. 19, although Baetica and Tarra- Gonensis, with the greater portion of Lusitania, had long before received Roman praetors for their go- vernors. By far, however, the most important con- tributions to geographical knowledge ensued from Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, b. c. 58 — 50. These opened Europe from the maritime Alps to the At- lantic Ocean, and from the Massilian gulf to the Stnuta of Dover. Thenceforward the Rhine l^ecame one of the boundaries of the empire, and the German races were brought into direct collision with Borne. Beyond that river, indeed, the Romans made little or no progress, since it was the policy of the emperors, bequeathed to them by Augustus, and acted upon for nearly a centniy by the prudence or indolence of his successors, not to extend further the limits of their dominions. Noricum, Pannonia, Rhaetia, and Yin- delicia were, however, humbled or reduced by the lieutenants of Augustus, and the arts of Rome were carried into the Tyrd, Styria, and the territcxies of modem Austria. In the reigns of Claudius and Vespasian the Britbh islands were annexed to the circle of Roman provinces, and for nearly three cen • turies recruited its legions and paid tribute to its exchequer. The last important acquisition on the European mainland was Trajan's conquest of Dacia (a. d. 81), by which the frontiers of the empiro were carried beyond the Danube, and the yoke of Italy was so firmly Impressed upon the vanquished, that to this day the Wallachians entitle themselves in their own language the BomunL From the friths of Forth and Clyde, a line drawn across the modem Netherlands to the Crimea will pretty accurately re- present tlie north-eastern verge of the Roman empire in Transalpine Europe. Beyond it the conquerors possessed little, if any, knowledge of the various Teu- tonic, Celtic, and Sclavonian races who then roved over the great central plateau between the N. bank EUBOPA. of the Seine and the Carpatiiian bins ; but witUir that line their dominion was firmly seenred by for- tified camps, and flourishing colonies, and abcne all by the roads and bridges which connected the most distant provinces with Italy and the capitiL These acquisitions were indeed the froits of nx eeD- tnries of nearly uninterrapted war, and could havi been made only by a people who pi tfer red anu to commerce, and who, by fresh aicroachments npoo their neighbours, were perpetually impoemg upcn themselves the necessity of securing new nuliurj fttmUers for their dominions. The aspect of Eaiope, as known to the Greeks, was widely diffierent Of Gaul and Iberia they knew little more tiian the tnds oonUguons to Bfassilia and Emporia in the noctli, and to Gades and Tartessus in the sooth. Wiih tfa» Alpine tribes they were wholly wnarquMnted, and never more than temporarily subjugated the baila- rians on their own frontiers — the monntua-nctt who from Illyricum to the Enxine were consantljr at war with the kings of Epirus and Maoedoo. At its utmost extent, therefore, the Europe of the Gre^ was bounded by the moontain-chain which tubi north of Thrace, Italy, and Iberia, and constitated scarcely a third part of tiie modem continent The boundaries of this segment were on the eastern side long undefined. The Meditecranean and the Atlantic were indeed definite barriers; and theie> gions beyond the great mountain-chain were pre* sumed to be trackless wilds, uninhabitable firamooU. Even PoIybius(iii.37,xxxiv. 7, 8, seg.), in this respect, was not more enlightened than Herodotns; sod Strabo and his contemporaries in the Augustan ag9 conceived the German Ocean and the souUieni earn of the Baltic to be the proper limits of the oootincDt. In Pliny (iv. 13. s. 17, 16. s. 30) and in Ftokmj (ii. 11. § 33, iv. 6. § 4) we meet with the earliest hints of the Scandinavian regims, which, hovever, those geograi^ers r^ardod as groups of islands, rather than continuations of the nudnland. The boundary between Asia and Europe shifted, with the increase of knowledge, slowly to the west, thereby oxitracting the supposed breadth of the latter oooti- neiit It was originally phioed on the right bauk of the Caucasian Phssis or Hypanis, next at the Cimmerian Bosporus, and finally determined bj in imaginary line drawn along the river Tanab, aod across the Euxine, the Hellespont, and the A^ean sea. The Tanais and Hellespont^ says Diotijaos (JPerieg, 14, 15), divide Asia from Europe. Pro- copius, indeed (B, Goth. v. 6), recurs to the earlier opinion, that the Phasis was the proper eastern limit The dimensionsof Europe were, consequently, mocii misunderstood by the ancient geographers. Herodotiu imagined it to be of greater length than Asia and Libya combined. Even Strabo, with far superior means of ascertaining the fact at his disposal, repre- sents Africa as smaller tlian Europe, and Africa and Europe together as of less extent than Asia alcoe. Agathemerus ( Geogr. i. 7) was the first to assign roon correct relative proporUons to the subdivisions of the old continent These erroneous computations indeed arose, in some measure, from the exclusion of neariy the whole of modem Russia and Scandinavia from the calculation. We now know that Africa is mora than thrice the size of Europe, and Asia more than four times as large. Herodotus (iv.45) complains that no cne had dis- covered whether Europe were an island or not, inas- much as its northem and eastern portions were on- explored. Some rumours, indeed, of islands NW. d