Part 3

The maps which existed among the Greeks at a very early period, were made in accordance with these notions. Herodotus’ account of Aristagoras, who laid a map before Cleomenes, king of Sparta, is certainly authentic. We may regard Hecataeus as the author of a map, on which the measures which Herodotus made use of, were already indicated. As the Hebrews regarded Jerusalem, so the Greeks considered Greece, and more especially Delphi and mount Olympus, which lie about the same degree of longitude, as the centre of the earth. When Herodotus went to Scythia, and there learned how many days the merchants who traded with the savage nations, had to travel to the Ural mountain, and when, on the other hand, he heard at Massilia how near it was from that city to the Garonne and the ocean, he naturally extended the form of the inhabited earth in different directions and to different points so far, that his conception did not at all harmonize with that of the circular plain. On the one hand, he found at Massilia, that the world-surrounding ocean was not very far from the Mediterranean, while on the other side it was at an immeasurable distance, so that in the south and west it was nearer to Delphi than in the north and east; hence he says, “I smile at those who conceive the earth to be circular, as if it were made by a turner, and to be surrounded by the ocean.” His tendency was quite different from that of his predecessors: it was the peculiarity of his nature minutely to examine the details, and not to be uneasy, if he did not find in the whole of his conception a place for every particular point. Some men feel the necessity of conceiving all things together as one whole, they cannot understand the parts otherwise than as portions of the whole, and in the part they even see the whole foreshadowed; but others, who are of an empirical nature, are the most fit persons to prosecute inquiries; they form distinct notions of details, distinguish that which they cannot yet comprehend, and discern the places where they must add something for the purpose of filling up a gap; they place one detail by the side of another, and put them in relation with each other, but are unconcerned about the place which every particular point occupies in the whole system. If they do reach the height from which they can command a general view, they survey accurately, but if not, they are aoristic. The latter might be called atomists, and the former dynamists. Herodotus belongs to the atomists, and in this respect my father bears a great resemblance to him; the highest perfection is implied in a complete combination of the idea of the whole with the most sober investigation of details, and this perfection we find in d’Anville. While, however, Herodotus wants to get rid of arbitrary outlines and fancies, he himself unconsciously invents some definite form in his own mind, though he does not set it forth externally. Hence, as I have shewn in the transactions of the Berlin Academy[5], he conceives the Ister and the Nile to flow parallel but in opposite directions, and according to him, the Ister flows from north to south into the Euxine, just as the Nile flows from the south into the Mediterranean; in like manner the Indus and Araxes, according to him, flow from west to east, and the latter river, as conceived by him, is almost entirely fictitious. Geography, therefore, at that time was not universally known; its changeableness and accidental character is no where more obvious than in Herodotus himself. His notion of the course of the Nile is, that above the first cataract it flows from west to east, and that near Elephantine it turns round; and yet he might without difficulty have informed himself of the true state of the case. From an inscription found near the cataract among the ruins of the temple at Ipsambul, and which belongs to some Ionians and Carians, who had gone into those parts either as soldiers or as ostrich-hunters[6], it is clear that those Greeks went far beyond the cataracts, and were very well aware that the Nile flowed from the south. Another proof is furnished by the Attic orators: when Alexander had crossed the frontier mountains of India, Aeschines[7] conceived that he had advanced as far as the polar circle. Such expressions about the polar circles do not occur in Herodotus, for he does not know that the earth is a globe; this notion was probably first formed in the East, whence Eudoxus, the astronomer, received it in forming his sphaera, even before the time of Aristotle; and many of the expressions referring to it may have found their way into the language of ordinary life. At Athens all this was very confused, and many men, according to their own experience, formed individually very different notions of the geography of the earth. But as Scylax was accurate in regard to the East, so others were well informed about other parts; and at Massilia, _e.g._, much was known about the north from the voyages of Pytheas and others. For a long time people did not know what conception to form of the sea beyond Massilia; at Athens many, in the time of Plato, still believed that the ocean commenced on the west of Italy: but Polybius is already well acquainted with the road from Narbonne to the Ligeris, and thence to Britain. We must, therefore, not believe that this country was unknown to the Romans until the conquests of Caesar, and that it had no place in the maps of Eratosthenes.

Such was the reputation which Strabo enjoyed among the later Greeks, that he was always simply called _the_ geographer (Eustathius never quotes him by any other name), just as Aristotle was simply styled _the_ philosopher. It is well known that he was a native of Amasia or Amasea, in a distant part of Pontus, and although his birth-place was not a Greek town, he seems to have belonged to a Greek family. He was born in the reign of Augustus, and wrote under Tiberius. We see, from his work, that he was one of those men who have not chosen their pursuit with a due regard to their real natural talents: for by profession he was a speculative philosopher, a Stoic, while in reality he had a genuine historical mind, and a true historical tact. He composed two great works, one of which has perished in such an inconceivable manner, that I very much doubt whether it was ever published. It was a continuation of Polybius which he wrote, because he was dissatisfied with that of Posidonius, and the task was one for which he was most eminently qualified. His geography is an excellent work, and considering the loss of that of Eratosthenes, it is invaluable, for he was a man of great judgment; but unfortunately it has not come down to us quite entire. Until a late period of the middle ages, it existed only in a single manuscript, which is probably now at Paris; its outward damages seem to indicate that it is the source from which all the later MSS. were taken. It is a remarkable fact, that several such MSS. of Greek authors, from which all others are derived, are still in existence, so that it is superfluous to collate the others. I may mention, for example, Athenaeus and the orator Aristides; the MS. of the latter is at Florence, the library of which city appears to have been particularly rich in such original MSS., and it is possible, that they were obtained directly from Constantinople. Eustathius and Stephanus of Byzantium still had complete copies of Strabo. This geographer has done all that his materials enabled him to do: the whole of geography, so far as it was known in his time, is laid down in his book, and that not only the contemporary geography, but also that of earlier ages with especial reference to the illustration of the poets, particularly Homer, whence from the very beginning we often meet with digressions, which do not seem to us to be in exact proportion to the whole work. We may assert that until the fourth and fifth century, the geography of the Romans did not extend beyond what had been known to Strabo; he did not indeed possess the information about Germany and Britain, which we find in Tacitus; but, generally speaking, we may say that, with few exceptions, geography during several centuries made no progress. In Ptolemy we see that the knowledge of the East, especially of India, had been advanced and extended by merchants, while in Strabo the knowledge about those countries is rather limited, commerce not having extended to them till a later period. The knowledge of the Romans about Egypt, though they had ruled over it for upwards of fifty years, was still very scanty. Strabo is altogether unmathematical, and Eratosthenes was farther advanced in this respect, so far indeed as it was possible for him, though he too, in regard to longitudes, was often satisfied with mere guesses, which sometimes entirely displaced the right point of view. All that Strabo knows on these points is derived from Eratosthenes, whose measurements were still highly imperfect. The division of the heavens into 360 degrees is very ancient, while that of the earth is of a very late date, Marinus of Tyre, who lived shortly before Ptolemy, being the first to introduce it into his maps. One great drawback in Strabo is an ungenerous hostility towards the great Eratosthenes; the cause of this desire to quarrel is unknown, and his censure is often very foolish.

Since the time that Bochart derived the name of Europe from the Phoenician ‎‏ערב‏‎, it has been generally assumed by all intelligent inquirers, that the name of our part of the world actually owes its origin to some Phoenician division of the countries of the earth; it is also well known that Europa is called a daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor. Owing to the ill-use which Bochart often makes of Phoenician etymologies, this one too has been disputed, but it is only those who throw away the wheat with the chaff that reject his derivation of the name Europe. Homer seems to have divided the earth into two parts, viz., πρὸς ἠῶ τ’ ἠέλιόν τε, and πρὸς ζόφον, but his not mentioning other parts may be merely accidental, and I should therefore not like to adopt Voss’ opinion, that Homer knew of no other division. The division, according to the quarters of the world, into Europe, Asia, Libya and Hesperia, seems to have been very ancient and general among the Greeks. Eratosthenes made the division according to the four great nations, which is less convenient, as these nations become mixed and amalgamated with one other. The opinion that Asia derived its name from the Asian marshes in Lydia appears to me unsatisfactory; for it was not customary with the Greeks first to use a name in a limited sense and afterwards to extend it in the manner in which the Latins[8] gave the name Italia to the smallest portion of the country, and afterwards extended it instead of applying it to the whole country at once. Libya is evidently a Phoenician name, as is clear from Lilybaeum, which signifies “opposite to Libya,”—a name which the Carthaginians would not have given to a place unless they had called Africa Libya. The opinion which regards Hesperia as a fourth part of the world is only a hypothesis, but it is a fact that the name was applied to the whole of western Europe. Afterwards it was united with Europe, just as Libya was for a time treated as a part of Asia, though afterwards it was again regarded as a separate part of the world, while Hesperia has ever since been considered as only a portion of Europe.

The boundaries of Europe accordingly likewise differed at different times. The most ancient mention of the name of Europe in Greek literature occurs in the hymn on Apollo (v. 251), where it is used in a very peculiar way: in the north, Europe is quite indefinitely separated from the barbarous countries, and seems to comprise only Greece exclusive of Peloponnesus, the islands, Macedonia, Illyricum and Italy. The poet accordingly applies the name to all the countries north of Peloponnesus. In Aristotle’s Politics the name is again used in quite a singular way: after having previously spoken of Asia, he mentions Europe as opposed to Greece. There may have been many more such designations, but they never acquired any great importance.

The river Phasis was probably the boundary between Europe and Asia at an early period: this remark of Voss appears to me to have a high degree of probability; in Herodotus, as we may see from his description of Scythia, the Tanais forms the boundary, but he entertains erroneous notions about its course, for he conceives that one-half of it flows from the north to the south. This boundary afterwards remained, as in Scylax of Caryanda and Eratosthenes, and in like manner the pillars of Heracles were commonly supposed to form the southern boundary between Europe and Libya. In regard to Asia and Libya, there existed various views as to how they should be divided; for a time, probably ever since the days of Hecataeus, they were regarded as separated by the Nile; in opposition to this Herodotus remarks, that by such a division Egypt was torn to pieces, and he justly asks to which of the two parts the Delta is to belong. The Arabian Gulf forms the true and natural boundary, and this is the view which was adopted even by Eratosthenes.

GREECE.

The geography of Greece presents great difficulties at the very outset. Hellas is not a country with natural boundaries; and the application of the name varies at different times. The ancients did not take it in the same sense in which we do; with them the names of countries are so intimately connected with those of the nations inhabiting them, that they called Hellas all the countries inhabited by Hellenes, including the Siceliot and Italiot towns as well as the colonies in Asia Minor, as far as Iberia and Scythia. The country to the east and south of Ambracia, until the time of the Romans, was not simply called Ἑλλάς, but ἡ συνεχὴς Ἑλλάς. This designation, however, so peculiar to the whole mode of thinking of the ancients, is too national, and for us inconvenient, and we unhesitatingly apply the name of Greece to the country called by the ancients ἡ συνεχὴς Ἑλλάς. It extends beyond the natural boundary of Mount Oeta and the Aetolian mountains which are connected with Oeta, because Thessaly must necessarily be included. We must choose the most convenient designation; and if in this we differ from the ancients, it is a necessary deviation made for the purpose of making ourselves understood.

The only countries which have natural boundaries are first Peloponnesus, and secondly those parts which are separated from Thessaly by mountains. But these boundaries are only partial, and the natural limits of the whole country ought to be extended as far as the north of Thrace, so as to include that country together with Macedonia and Illyricum as far as Mount Scardus, and the heights which separate Illyricum and Macedonia from Servia. But only a portion of this extensive territory was inhabited by Greeks. Originally it was one united country, being inhabited by the race of the Pelasgians, while in the historical times the Hellenes became separated from them; but how this nation arose is one of the most mysterious points in history. All we can do is carefully to distinguish between Pelasgians and Hellenes, although there was a relationship between the two, which is perfectly obscure to us. In the historical period the whole is already in a state of confusion. The Hellenic nation, like that of the Latins in Italy, seems to have proceeded from a small centre; but how this came to pass is a question involved in impenetrable darkness. A nation calling itself Σελλοί, Ἑλλοί, Ἕλληνες, is said to have inhabited the highest mountains of Epirus, and thence to have spread over the whole country which was inhabited by Pelasgians. This nation was called by its neighbours by the name of Γραικοί which however was never employed by the nation itself.

The divisions of Greece are partly natural and partly accidental; natural is that into Thessaly, Peloponnesus, and the country between the two. This last, however, has no common name, that of _Hellas proprie sic dicta_ is quite wrong, because it takes no notice of the islands and colonies. The question as to whether Greece in the earliest times had any common name or not, was discussed even by Strabo and others. My opinion is, that the Homeric names cannot be doubted; during the period represented by Homer, Argos is the name of the country from the coast of Peloponnesus as far as the frontiers of Macedonia, and we may therefore draw a distinction between Hellas and Argos. But that name lasted only till the development of the Hellenic character.[9] The name Ἀργεῖοι, applies to the Greeks, who had not yet separated themselves as Hellenes; and Δαναοί seems to be the name of the Pelasgian inhabitants of Peloponnesus. When we read in Thucydides that at the time of the Iliad, Greeks and barbarians were not yet separated, the expression may be variously interpreted; his opinion probably is, that in those times many parts of Greece were inhabited by nations, such as Caucones, Leleges, and others, which were not assimilated to the Greeks, but were distinct in language and manners; still, however, they are comprised under the name of Argives, i.e., Pelasgians, for Ἀργεῖοι is not a Hellenic name. The name Ἀχαιοί is not Hellenic either, and it must be remarked in general, that Hellenes and Pelasgians were not yet distinguished from each other, but were vaguely comprised under one name.

In the earliest times two of those natural divisions, Peloponnesus and Thessaly, though perfectly independent of each other, appear to have been of primary importance. We shall first direct our attention to Peloponnesus, as the purest Greek country, and the only one which forms a moral and naturally united community, and shows a vigorous nation, not only because it contained the seats and dominions of the ancient kings, but because for a long time after, Peloponnesians possessed the supremacy over the rest of Greece.

PELOPONNESUS.

The name Peloponnesus is singular; it is very ancient, and occurs as early as the Homeric hymn on Apollo. There can be no doubt that it has some reference either to a people or to some ruler; how far it may contain an allusion to the Pelasgians, is a question concerning which nothing can be said with certainty. Where names differ so widely, a healthy philology demands that we should abstain from any dangerous attempt. If we employ a rational method of exegesis, we cannot doubt that the Atreids were also called Pelopids, and that previously to the immigration of the Heracleids and Dorians into the peninsula, there existed an historical dynasty under that name. But whether Pelops is the historical ancestor of that race, or some kind of hero, whether he is different from the Pelasgus in the “Supplices” of Aeschylus, who, according to different genealogies in the Arcadian traditions, is sometimes called the first man, and sometimes a son of Zeus, are questions about which, if we judge soberly and thoughtfully, we can say nothing. The opinion prevalent in the time of the tragedians, that Pelops was a Phrygian, belongs to a much later period, in which the Trojans too were regarded as Phrygians, which according to the views of the epic poems they never could be.

Another very ancient name, which the Greeks regard as the earlier and native name, is Ἀπία, for there can be no doubt that it is a proper name, though some Alexandrians declared it to be an adjective; ἐξ ἀπίης γῆς does not signify “from a distant,” or “waterless country” (from πίνω), but from the country of Apia. Those who are anxious to manufacture history out of etymologies, may find in this name various allusions as, for example, to the Opicans, but they are all equally hazardous. In general etymology is necessary; but we cannot be sufficiently on our guard not to fall into quibbles and fancies. Not to neglect the later times, I will at once notice the subsequent change of the name into Morea (ὁ Μορέας). This too has given rise to various etymologies: it is a very common opinion among the modern Greeks, that the name Morea is derived from the shape of the country; as the ancients often compared it to the leaf of a plane tree, so the moderns compare it to the leaf of a mulberry tree (_mora_), according to which the name would be of Italian origin. But I am convinced that, at the time when the Bulgarians ruled in Greece, and when the Slavonians, being pushed onward by them, inundated Peloponnesus, the country, being the maritime province of the Bulgarian kingdom, was called Morea from _more_ (the Slavonian word for _sea_), and consequently, the name originally was in all probability not confined to Peloponnesus. In the time of the Achaean league, the Romans called it Achaia, from one of its provinces,—a name, which in fact wholly and properly belongs to Peloponnesus, until it was extended to the rest of Greece.

Peloponnesus, in a physical point of view, is a very remarkable country: it rests upon a volcanic foundation; and although our history knows nothing of any eruptions, still we hear of formidable earthquakes. The island of Thera, in the Greek Archipelago, is the central point from which a volcanic chain extends below the sea to Peloponnesus, and as far as Epirus and Thesprotia, while on the other side, it proceeds to Sicily, Ischia and Mount Vesuvius. Hence earthquakes were very frequent and eventful occurrences in the physical history of the peninsula. When you come down from the precipitous heights of Arcadia, or from the opposite heights of Parnassus and Helicon, you at once see that the country falls off, and has been formed by the ground sinking in consequence of this volcanic nature; and I have no doubt that the Corinthian Gulf was likewise the effect of such causes, for the land on both sides of it breaks down abruptly. The range of Taygetus, of which Taenarus forms the southern extremity, is particularly renowned for its internal convulsions; the most fearful ravages are nowhere so frequent as there, and about the time of the 80th Olympiad, in particular, the earth was there in violent agitation: whether this is still the character of that district, I do not know. The Peloponnesian coast of the Corinthian Gulf is another scene of earthquakes; there Helice and Bura were swallowed up by the earth, and as far as history can be traced, one town after another was destroyed by convulsions of the earth, whence Ποσειδῶν Ἐνοσίχθων was specially worshipped there, and on Mount Taenarus. Those earthquakes give rise to lakes discharging their waters through subterraneous canals, which at times are filled up, and at others are opened again; hence the lakes are of varying extent, as for example, the Stymphalian lake in Arcadia. Another effect is, that several rivers of Peloponnesus are interrupted in their course: they sometimes continue it under ground, as, for example, the Ladon, while at other times they change their beds, or disappear entirely in caverns or lakes. Hence also the quantity of water in some districts is different at different times; this was the case especially in Argolis, which in the days of Aristotle had lost all its waters.