Part 2

His example was followed by a no less distinguished man, who attempted to compose a chorography of Greece, which was even far more difficult than that of Italy. This undertaking was the more laborious, because there were scarcely any preparatory works that could be made use of; for Italy had been visited before, and the travels of Baptista Alberti furnished Cluver with a very good foundation. The maps of Greece, which were then in use, were very wretched; those of Ptolemy are badly projected, and only a few countries are treated with any degree of minuteness. In the middle ages, Greece was very little visited by Europeans, so that during that period it was almost as unknown as Ethiopia is now; and a geography of Greece was therefore a want that was seriously felt. Paulmier de Grentemesnil (Palmerius), a French nobleman of Normandy, undertook a journey to Greece. He, together with the two brothers Valois, closes the glorious array of the great French philologers, who combined the knowledge of language with that of things. Unfortunately he did not complete his work, because he had planned it on too grand a scale: his scheme also embraced Illyricum and Macedonia, and he completed only his account of these two countries, together with that of Epirus and Acarnania. He, too, has left much that requires to be rectified, but this does not detract from his greatness. The idea of continuing the work has occurred to no one, though at present there are men who possess all the qualifications for such a task. However, the completion of the work in the form given to it by its author is now no longer a desideratum.

In the reign of Louis XIV, when a friendly intercourse with the Ottoman Porte commenced, and when the relations with it became more intimate, Greece was first visited by French travellers; maps were then drawn, which were not indeed quite accurate, but still tolerably good. Thus De la Guilletiere described Peloponnesus, but his work, which contains many a valuable observation, has no maps. The first real journey of discovery to Greece was that undertaken by Spon and Wheler; light was afterwards thrown upon the geography of Peloponnesus, about the end of the 17th century, by the campaigns of the Venetian admiral Morosini, who, for the purpose of his military operations against the Porte, caused charts and plans to be made of several places by Coronelli; the struggle for the possession of Candia also was beneficial. Then followed the excellent travels of Tournefort; some natives of Greece likewise collected important materials for a description of their country: thus the archbishop of Janina, known under the name of Meletias, gave a description of Greece. Yet the materials brought together were never wrought out in the manner in which Palmerius would have done it.

Italy and Greece therefore are the only countries which were at all made the subjects of any learned inquiries. In the meantime books of travels, which combined ancient and modern geography, also furnished many materials to increase the knowledge of other countries. Much was gained by the voyages of the English to India: Egypt was thus brought to light; and Syria and some of the countries of Asia Minor were laid open, by Richard Pococke; and many a discovery was made accidentally during the active intercourse with those countries. The travels of Shaw are an excellent work for the ethnography of northern Africa, especially Numidia and the Roman province of Africa: he did for those countries what Cluver and Paulmier before him had done for others. During the eighteenth century, the great D’Anville, one of the most brilliant geniuses I know, without writing many books, contributed, by his maps, more than any other man to advance geographical knowledge at a gigantic rate. I cannot allow any opportunity to pass without avowing my admiration of that man’s greatness: by the light he has thrown upon ancient geography, he has acquired as much merit in historical philology as in ancient history. Major Rennell, who is still alive, has undeservedly been placed by the side of D’Anville; he has done much that is invaluable, he is diligent and indefatigable in collecting materials; but there is one point in which he differs from D’Anville, and in which he is far inferior to him. D’Anville possessed a peculiar power of divination and of estimating the value of his materials; he was not only extremely industrious in collecting them, but knew how to value each point most correctly, and how to use and combine his matter in the most sagacious manner, always clearly distinguishing between what he knew and what he did not know; while Major Rennell, on the other hand, has spoiled his best materials by his scrupulous attempts to reconcile what is incorrect with what is correct. D’Anville’s _Mémoire sur la Mer Rouge_, for example, is the most excellent chart of the Arabian Gulf. All the earlier ones were copied from the ancient Venetian ones; but all at once D’Anville furnished an accurate, detailed, and astronomically correct description of the coasts, islands, and countries, which he had compiled from the most different and wretched materials, furnished by Portuguese, Turkish, and other maps. He discerned with the most marvellous tact which statements were entitled to belief and which not. Any one knowing what geography was before the time of D’Anville, cannot sufficiently admire him. Two of his works, that on ancient and modern Egypt and that on Gaul, are particularly excellent; his little manual is of less value. But the whole series of maps in his Atlas of the ancient world will be unsurpassed, until another D’Anville arises who shall draw his maps according to the improved geographical knowledge we now possess. Southern Italy is not yet perfect in his map; but whenever his representations are incomplete, he himself points it out; as, for example, in his map of Epirus, which country has now become much better known in consequence of several military officers of learning having resided in it. After D’Anville’s death, Barbié du Bocage unjustly made several alterations in his maps, but in subsequent editions he has withdrawn them.

Chorography thus made constant progress, but ethnography did not keep pace with it. The German work of Mannert, which is extensively used and has acquired great celebrity, arose out of the materials then accumulated; the author has worked at it for a period of more than thirty years, and new and improved editions of the first volumes were published before the whole was completed. It contains many valuable materials, but they are by no means wrought out as they should be. The author commenced his work with very slender scholarship, such as it was at the time, and without extensive reading. These disadvantages became the more dangerous, because he was not sufficiently conscious of them, and because he wrote with animation and interest: he has no survey of his subject, he wants the real historical tact, and has not read the ancients thoroughly. He has made many hasty combinations, without sufficient foundation. If any one wished to review the work, mistakes might be discovered in great numbers. Thus, _e.g._, he sets up the hypothesis, that the Herodotus who during the insurrection against Persia was sent as ambassador from Ionia to Greece, was the same as the historian, without considering that, in this case, he must have been at least ninety years old when he began to write his history, and accordingly must have lived at least to the age of one hundred and twenty years. The maps of Reichardt are thoroughly bad[2].

A work on ancient topography is still a desideratum, and one of the many tasks which a good scholar might undertake; every year in our time furnishes means to make it more complete.

ANCIENT AUTHORITIES AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Ancient chorography is not, like Roman antiquities, a department of knowledge created by modern philology; the ancient authorities for it are not inconsiderable, for they not only furnish the materials, but the work of Strabo, for example, is an ample digest of them. The Greeks in general took an intense interest in geography, and were in this respect quite different from the Romans; there is no nation that could have done more and that actually did less for geography than the Romans; they shewed a perfect indifference in regard to the knowledge of their immense empire. If we except the Germania of Tacitus, and a few passages in Caesar about Britain and Germany, which are indeed excellent, Latin literature furnishes nothing. Pomponius Mela and Pliny give only abridged summaries of the knowledge possessed by their contemporaries. We know the extent of Latin literature so perfectly as to be able to assert, that nothing of importance is lost; the Romans never had a great chorographical work like that which Strabo wrote for the Greeks.

But even before Strabo, the Greeks had great works of this kind; nay, their earliest work in prose, of which we have any knowledge (if we except the genealogies of Pherecydes, Acusilaus and others, the simplicity of which is almost beyond our conception), the γῆς περίοδος of Hecataeus the Milesian, was devoted to chorography. Its character is not accurately described by any of the ancient authors, but we know that the titles of his works were “Asia” and “Europe;” and we know from Stephanus of Byzantium, that he mentioned an immense number of towns and nations, though probably not in a systematic manner. He seems to have connected separate narratives with one another, but his real objects were chorography and ethnography, and not history, whence he is scarcely ever quoted as an authority on historical matters. It is true, however, that he did not entirely exclude historical events; it is very possible also that he may have spoken of the revolt of the Ionians under Aristagoras, in which he himself had acted so unfortunate a part; and there can be little doubt that incidentally he also mentioned the history of the countries of which he was treating.

Descriptions or γῆς περίοδοι of this kind probably existed in Greece in great numbers; they were written in a lively manner to afford entertainment, and for such persons as wished to gain information about the earth and its inhabitants. But there also existed another kind of descriptions intended for the practical guidance of merchants and sailors; these men who had no ambition to investigate the interior of countries, could not but feel an interest in the descriptions of the coasts. As navigation was chiefly coasting, the want of such descriptions was felt, men being anxious to know in what manner town followed after town, harbour after harbour, and promontory after promontory. These are the περίπλοι: the most ancient is that by Scylax of Caryanda, a contemporary of Philip of Macedonia, as I have shewn by incontrovertible arguments[3]. Besides this description of the Mediterranean, there were others of the Euxine and the Erythraean Sea, which were composed at a much later period. Throughout the middle ages, these and similar περίπλοι were used, and the modern Greeks still have guides similar to those of their ancestors of old. Even till very recent times, sailors who confined themselves to the navigation of the Mediterranean, made use of what are called _Portolani del Mare_, which, previously to the invention of printing, were circulated in manuscript. The ancients accordingly had two kinds of materials, descriptions of coasts and descriptions of countries.

After the time of Hecataeus, 150 years passed away before a real geography was written by Eratosthenes, whose object was to furnish a scientific chorography. In Herodotus chorography and history are combined, both are equally his object. He rarely combats Hecataeus, and not by name, but he often attacks his system, being conscious that he can give more accurate information. His work shows us the limits of the science in his time.

It is a very interesting inquiry—first undertaken and carried out in an admirable manner by J. H. Voss—to trace the different notions entertained by the ancients about the form of the earth, and to examine their geographical knowledge at the different periods. His merits in this respect will never be forgotten; but the more I, for my own part, look with reverence and gratitude upon his inquiries as real models, the more do I consider myself entitled to make a few observations regarding the mistakes into which he has fallen. The first is his supposition, that a thing which is not mentioned by an author, although it is not opposed to his other statements, must be regarded as if it had been unknown to him; but the fact is, that authors often knew things without mentioning them. If Aristotle, during his walks in Piraeeus, a place frequented by men from all parts of the world, questioned the ναύκληροι, he might have written a geography, which would excite our astonishment, as it is excited by his history of animals: the fact that he chanced not to write a geography does not entitle us to draw a conclusion as to his knowledge of countries and nations. It is this manner of viewing things that gave rise to the opinion, that the Greeks knew nothing about Rome; but there can be no doubt that even Hecataeus spoke of Rome; he was however not much read,[4] and hence we cannot infer that Rome was unknown to the Greeks. This inference, however, that a man is ignorant of a thing, because he does not mention it, is common even in earlier times. The second mistake of Voss is that he considers the opinions of a great writer as the standard of the knowledge of his age. This may indeed be said of Eratosthenes, whose works were in the hands of all who wished to gain information; and Eratosthenes, moreover, stands already within the sphere of what may be called a learned or literary period; but before his time circumstances were very different. We can form a clear notion of this, if we contemplate nations which have not yet arrived at definite notions about geography. Eastern people, for example, never have any scruples about geography; I am acquainted with Asiatics and others, with whom I have conversed much about ethnography, and who had never had a geographical book in their hands; they scarcely ever possess any broad geographical views, but are deeply interested in it; the one has a knowledge of one thing, and another of another. There is indeed a certain average amount of knowledge, which every individual may be supposed to possess, but apart from this, the knowledge of persons who in other respects are equally well educated, is very different according to the circumstances in which they are placed. Every inhabitant of Tripoli and Morocco knows of Bournou, but many are ignorant of everything beyond its name, and few are acquainted with the interior. In like manner the knowledge possessed by the learned in ancient Greece was of a very different kind from that diffused among the people, and every one might for himself acquire a certain range of knowledge. Some persons who had travelled in distant lands possessed an extensive knowledge of countries, and those anxious to learn derived their information from them. It is therefore generally impossible to say how much geographical knowledge an otherwise well educated man may have possessed. That which in later times was to be found in books which were generally read, was known also to every well-read Greek. But the living knowledge among the people was far more extensive Herodotus became acquainted in Scythia with people who had made distant journeys, or had heard accounts from others extending as far as the Ural mountains; and in like manner, others who visited Massilia might have obtained equally accurate information from people that visited Britain; such knowledge, however, was not generally diffused, but was possessed only by navigators and some others. All knowledge was purely practical, until some curious inquirer in some much frequented port collected the scattered information, put together all the περίοδοι and περίπλοι, and thus formed a geography. Eratosthenes lived in a large port town, and possessing an extensive library, he was the first to draw up a general ethnography; before he wrote his work, the geographical knowledge of one man was immensely different from that of another.

The early Greeks and Asiatics entertained the notion that the earth was a circular plain, floating in the middle between heaven above and the nether world below. And this was the most natural conception: where there is no cause for assuming any other form, the circular is the most probable. The notion of Homer evidently is, that the plain is somewhat depressed in the centre, forming a basin in which the waters of the Mediterranean are collected, and that the world-river Oceanus flows round the upper edge of the plain. This opinion prevailed for a long time; it was entertained by Hecataeus as well as by Homer.

Another notion was, that warmth and cold were not to be explained by the relation of the sun to the earth alone. To this the ancients were led by the observations, so natural in the south, on the nature of the winds, which are altogether of a different character from our winds; their character cannot be traced to topographical causes. We in the north consider winds as currents of air which bring warmth or cold, according to the different quarters from which they blow; but a person who has lived in the south, or has conversed with southern people about the matter, knows that the winds there have something quite unaccountable. In order to explain the different peculiarities of the north winds at Rome (due north, north-west, and north-east), one must assume essentially different characters in them in regard to the dispersing of clouds, to brightness of the sky, to the moisture, the effect on the thermometer, &c. In like manner the three south winds have their peculiarities. It cannot be explained why the east wind, which blows across the land, produces rain at Rome, while the west wind, which comes from the sea, is mild and for the most part dry. Such differences also exist in Greece, and this led the ancients into speculations. They conceived the winds to be distinct powers, with original properties which belonged to them alone. The peculiarities of the winds as described by Pliny may be recognised even now; I have, however, observed at Rome, that they have shifted a few points of the compass further west. I am personally firmly convinced of this; in the present state of physical science one need not fear to be laughed at, as about 40 years ago: I have mentioned the subject to several natural philosophers, and requested them to investigate it.

Before the rise of mathematical and physical geography, which Aristotle understood perfectly, though he did not work it out for others, and down to the time of Eratosthenes, the notion of the ancients was, that the north wind, which was so disagreeable to them, came from mount Haemus; to this belief they were probably led by the fact, that they heard of terrific winds blowing on the coast of Thrace—the Greeks told one another things about those winds, which made their hair stand on ends;—they were further told, that in the more northern countries, in Bulgaria, Wallachia, and in general on the northern slopes of mount Haemus, the violence of the winds was not to be compared with what it was in Macedonia and Thrace. Those mountains, therefore, were regarded by them as the abode of Boreas, and the countries beyond them were believed to be mild and lovely; in this belief they were confirmed by the stories about the paradise-like climate in Wallachia. They did not take into consideration the height of the mountains, and conceived that countries were milder, the further they were removed from Boreas: the countries beyond Haemus were, in their opinion, protected against the Scirocco, which was the most troublesome to them. This is the simple and childlike story about the Hyperboreans. Herodotus thinks that, if they really did exist, there must also be Hypernotians, and this would be quite correct, if Notus had been believed, like Boreas, to dwell in a mountain; but the fact is, that Notus was conceived to roam over the endless sandy deserts of Africa which extend to the ends of the earth.