Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/156

 142 STRABO. BOOK n. Colchis to the Sea of Hyrcania. These are points where we should not scrutinize him so narrowly as [when he describes] places situated in the heart of our continent, 1 or others equally well known ; and even these should be regarded from a geo- graphical rather than a geometrical point of view. Hippar- chus, at the end of the second book of his Commentaries on the Geography of Eratosthenes, having found fault with cer- tain statements relative to Ethiopia, tells us at the commence- ment of the third, that his strictures, though to a certain point geographical, will be mathematical for the most part. As for myself, I cannot find any geography there. To me it seems entirely mathematical ; but Eratosthenes himself set the example ; for he frequently runs into scientific specu- lations, having little to do with the subject in hand, and which result in vague and inexact conclusions. Thus he is a mathematician in geography, and in mathematics a geogra- pher ; and so lies open to the attacks of both parties. In this third book, both he and Timosthenes get such severe justice, that there seems nothing left for us to do; Hipparchus is quite enough. 1 The Greek has simply, Kara TTJV riireip&riv, in the continent, but Strabo, by this expression, only meant to designate those parts of the continent best known and nearest to the Greeks. The other countries, in regard to which he pleads for some indulgence to be shown to Eratos- thenes, are equally in the same continent. Kramer and other editors suspect an error in the text here.