Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/217

 CHAP. v. 43. INTRODUCTION. 203 horizon only the half and the twelfth part of a sign l [of the zodiac], and this therefore is the greatest distance of the sun below the horizon at midnight. With us when the sun is at this distance from the horizon before sunrise and after sunset, the atmosphere is enlightened to the east and west respect- ively. In the winter the sun when at the highest is nine cubits above the horizon. 2 These places, according to Era- tosthenes, are distant from Meroe rather more than 23,000 stadia, 3 for he says that [from the parallel of Meroe] to the Hellespont 4 there are 18,000 stadia, and thence to the Dnieper 5000 more. In regions distant 6300 stadia from Byzan- tium, and north of the Maeotis, the sun during the winter time is, when highest, six cubits [above the horizon]. The longest day consists of seventeen hours. 43. The countries beyond this which border upon the regions uninhabitable on account of their cold, have no inter- est to the geographer. He who desires to learn about them, and the celestial phenomena which Hipparchus has de- scribed, but which we pass over as being too much 'in detail for our present undertaking, must seek for them in that author. The statements of Posidonius concerning the periscii, the am- phiscii, and the heteroscii are likewise too detailed. Still we must touch on these points sufficiently to explain his view, and to point out how far such matters are serviceable in geo- graphy, and how far not. The terms made use of refer to the shadows cast from the sun. The sun appears to the senses to describe a circle parallel to that of the earth. 5 Of those people for whom each revolution of the earth produces a day and a night, the sun being carried first over, then under, the earth, some are denominated amphiscii, others hete- roscii. The amphiscii are the inhabitants of countries in which when a gnomon is placed perpendicularly on a plane surface, the shadow which it casts at mid-day, falls first to one side then to the other, as the sun illumines first this side, then that. This however only occurs in places situated be- tween the tropics. The heteroscii are those amongst whom the shadow always falls to the north, as with us ; or to the 1 Or 17 30'. This would indicate a latitude of 48 38' 40". 8 The astronomical cubit was equal to two degrees. 3 Read 23,100. * The northern extremity of the Hellespont, the universe.