Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/140

 feUROPA. tbe nainknd had In his time reached the ciTilised portiona of the world, through the voyages of the Carthaginians to the Cassiterides, Oomwidl, and the Scillj islands. But these enterprising navigators, who oonld have given the Greeks so mncfa information respecting the western shores of the continent, jea- lously gtwrded the secrets of their voyages, and contributed hut little to the scienoe of geography. That Punic manuals of navigation existed is ren- dered probable by the facts that the Carthaginians possessed a literatuxv, and that their treatises on agriculture were deemed of sufficient importance by the Romans to be translated into the Latin lan- guage : and it is not likely that they should have entrusted their fleets to the mere traditionary and em]rfrical skill of successive generations of pilots. But their knowledge perished with them ; and the Greeks, excellent as they have been in all ages as navigaton of the narrow seas, were rarely ex- plorers of the main ocean. For diore-traffic, indeed, Europe is the best calculated of continents, since it presents by far the greatest extent of coast-line, and hence is diocribed by Strebo (ii. 126) as voAvo-xiffto- vtcrdn^f <»* the most variously figured of the earth's divisions. To a Greek, Europe, bounded on the north by a curve of mountains, and springing forth by three main projections into the seas southward of hs mountain-bases, presented the aspect of three pyramidal peninsulas of land, — Iberia, lUdia, Hellas (to which Polybius adds a fourth in Thrace and a fifth in the Crimea), — respectively resting upon the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkan range. This supposed configuration was the theme of frequent comment among the ancient cosmographers, and the source of many ingenious theories regarding the agencies of fire or water in producing them. But it u intelligible only when we remember the limits in which Europe, as known to the Greeks, was confined. To an ancient navigator, however, sailing from a port in Asia Minor to the Columns of Hercules, this con- figuration would necessarily be a subject of remark, since he would pass alternate projections of land and the deeply embayed gulfs of the Aegean, Ionian, and Tuscan seas, and witness, as it seemed to him, suc- cessive confirmations of his preconceived notions of the form of the continent. In these respects, as well as in the more undulating character of its shore, Europe presented a marked contrast to both Asia and Africa. Yet the Greeks, ever on the alert for physical analogies, discovered a similar distribution of hmd and water in the Arabian peninsuU and the seas which bound it, as well as in the long valley of the Nile; and they thus arrived at the conclusion, not only that this j^enomenon was repeated in every xone, but also that the earth was constructed on a system of parallelisms, so that the northern and southern hemispheres were nearly counterparts of each other. III. The Climate and Prodaeis of Europe,— The climate of central Europe a£fected the progress of discovery northward. The mean temperature of Spain, Italy, and Greece was lower than at the pre- sent day; while Gaul and Germany experienced al- most the rigours of an Arctic winter. In their wan with Rome we find Gaulish clans, accustomed to a colder and more biwang atmosphere, exhausted by the heat of modem Lombardy, although that region is not now sensibly warmer than the south of France. But central Europe was, for many centuries, as re- gards its climate, what Canada is at the present day. The vast forests and morasses of Gaul and VOL. L EUROPA. 881 Germany were, until nearly the 9th century of our era, unfelled and nndrained, and aggravated the cold and humidity of the northern sides of the Alps and Py- renees. Nor was the southern flank of these moun- tains unaflected by the same causes. The Romans, even in their Italian wara, rarely took the field before the month of April, since they dreaded en- countering the snow-storms of the Apennines, and the floods which at the melting of the ice converted the feeders of the Tiber into rapid torrents. The snow lay then periodically on Mt. Soracte, and the Sabellian herdsmen found fresh pastures as late as July in the upper valleys of the Abruzsi. Ovid, in the epistles which he wrote in exile, describes the cold of the Euxine and its adjacent coasts as a modem traveller would describe the tem- perature of Stockholm and the Baltic, and in the latitude of Saxony the l^ons cf Drusus and Germanicus endured many of the hardships of a Russian winter. (Tac. Atm, I 60, ii. 24.) We may indeed suspect that the legionaries owed some of their ill-success in the German wars less to the inclemency of the elements, than to the skill or valour with which they were oppoeed. Yet the horns of the moose 'deer which are occasionally dug up in the feus of Southern Germany attest the presence of Arctic animals in those regions, and the tribute of furs im- posed by the Romans upon their Rhenish provincials imply a tamperatUTB far below the ordinary climate of the same regions at the present time. Upon the cUmate and productions, however, of those portions of Europe with which they were better acqnaint<ed, of Europe south of the Alps and Pyrenees, the ancients expatiated with pride and admiration. They ascribed to its soil and tempera- ture generally, that golden mean which is most con- ducive to the increase, the health, and the physical and moral development of the human species. Europe, they alleged, was happily seated between the zones of insufferable heat and cold. It was exempt from the fiercer animals and the more noxious reptiles of the nttghbouring continents. Asia and Africa were more ^undantly endowed with the luxuries with which man can dispense — with gems, silks, aro- matics, and ivoiy; but Europe produced more nni- fomily than either of them the necessaries which are indispensable to his health, strength, and safety — com, wine, and oil, timber and stone, iron and copper, and even the more precious metals, gold and silver. (Strab. iL pp. 126, 127.) The Scythians and Germans, indeed, were but scantily provided with these adjuncts of life and civilisation ; nature had reserved her boons for the more refined and in- telligent natives of the south. Greece was in these respects highly favoured: the horses of Thessaly, the com of Boeotia, the figs and olives of Athens, the vineyards of Chios and Samoa, were celebrated throughout the world. But Italy, in the estimation of its children at least, was the garden, as well as the mistress, of the world. (Varro, H. IL i. 2; CdumeU. iZ. iZ. iii. 7 ; Plin. iiL 1, seq. ; Virg. Georff, i. 136, seq.) Its several provinces were distin- guished each by its peculiar gifts — Campania by its wines, Tarentum by its fleeces, Etraria by its rich pastures, and Cisalpine Gaul by its cerealia. By its central position in the Mediterranean, Italy was enabled to impart to less favoured regions its own products, and to attract to itself the gifts of other lands — the minenJs of Iberia, the hides, the timber, the herds, and horses of Gaul, the marbles and the fruits of Greece, and Uie beauty and strength dL