keeper of the famous library of Alexandria in 247 B.C., and died in that city in 195 B.C. He won fame as having been the first to determine the size of the earth by a scientific method. Having determined the difference of latitude between Alexandria and Syene which he erroneously believed to lie on the same meridian, and obtained the distance of those places from each other from the surveys made by Egyptian geometers, he concluded that a degree of the meridian measured 700 stadia.[1]
Eratosthenes is the author of a treatise which deals systematically with the geographical knowledge of his time, but of which only fragments have been preserved by Strabo and others. This treatise was intended to illustrate and explain his map of the world. In this task he was much helped by the materials collected in his library. Among the travellers of whose information he was thus able to avail himself were Pytheas of Massilia, Patroclus, who had visited the Caspian (285–282 B.C.), Megasthenes, who visited Palibothra on the Ganges, as ambassador of Seleucus Nicator (302–291 B.C.), Timosthenus of Rhodes, the commander of the fleet of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284–246 B.C.) who wrote a treatise “On harbours,” and Philo, who visited Meroe on the upper Nile. His map formed a parallelogram measuring 75,800 stadia from Usisama (Ushant island) or Sacrum Promontorium in the west to the mouth of the Ganges and the land of the Coniaci (Comorin) in the east, and 46,000 stadia from Thule in the north to the supposed southern limit of Libya. Across it were drawn seven parallels, running through Meroe, Syene, Alexandria, Rhodes, Lysimachia on the Hellespont, the mouth of the Borysthenes and Thule, and these were crossed at right angles by seven meridians, drawn at irregular intervals, and passing through the Pillars of Hercules, Carthage, Alexandria, Thapsacus on the Euphrates, the Caspian gates, the mouth of the Indus and that of the Ganges. The position of all the places mentioned was supposed to have been determined by trustworthy authorities. The inhabited world thus delineated formed an island of irregular shape, surrounded on all sides by the ocean, the Erythrean Sea freely communicating with the western ocean. In his text Eratosthenes ignored the popular division of the world into Europe, Asia and Libya, and substituted for it a northern and southern division, divided by the parallel of Rhodes, each of which he subdivided into sphragides or plinthia—seals or plinths. The principles on which these divisions were made remain an enigma to the present day.
This map of Eratosthenes, notwithstanding its many errors, such as the assumed connexion of the Caspian with a northern ocean and the supposition that Carthage, Sicily and Rome lay on the same meridian, enjoyed a high reputation in his day. Even Strabo (c. 30 B.C.) adopted its main features, but while he improved the European frontier, he rejected the valuable information secured by Pytheas and retained the connexion between the Caspian and the outer ocean. In the extreme east his information extended no further than that of Eratosthenes, viz. to India and Taprobane (Ceylon) and the Sacae (Kirghiz).
Hipparchus, the famous astronomer, on the other hand, (c. 150 B.C.) proved a somewhat captious critic. He justly objected to the arbitrary network of the map of Eratosthenes. The parallels or climata[2] drawn through places, of which the longest day is of equal length and the decimation (distance) from the equator is the same, he maintained, ought to have been inserted at equal intervals, say of half an hour, and the meridians inserted on a like principle. In fact, he demanded that maps should be based upon a regular projection, several descriptions of which he had adopted for his star maps. He moreover accuses Eratosthenes, (whose determination of a degree he accepts without hesitation) with trusting too much to hypothesis in compiling his map instead of having recourse to latitudes and longitudes deduced by astronomical observations. Such observations, however, were but rarely available at the time. A few latitudes had indeed been observed, but although Hipparchus had shown how longitudes could be determined by the observation of eclipses, this method was in reality not available for want of trustworthy time-keepers. The determination of an ocean surrounding the inhabited earth he declared to be based on a mere hypothesis and that it would be equally allowable to describe the Erythraea as a sea surrounded by land. Hipparchus is not known to have compiled a map himself.
About the same time Crates of Mallus (d. 145 B.C.) embodied the views of the Stoic school of philosophy in a globe which has become typical as one of the insignia of royalty. On this globe an equatorial and a meridional ocean divide our earth into four quarters, each inhabited, thus anticipating the discovery of North and South America and Australia.[3]
Fig. 2.—The Globe of Crates of Mallus.
The period between Eratosthenes and Marinus of Tyre was one of great political importance. Carthage had been destroyed (146 B.C.), Julius Caesar had carried on his campaign in Gaul (58–51 B.C.), Egypt had been occupied (30 B.C.), Britannia conquered (A.D. 41–79), and the Roman empire had attained its greatest extent and power under the emperor Trajan (A.D. 98–117). But although military operations added to our knowledge of the world, scientific cartography was utterly neglected.
Among Greek works written during this period there are several which either give us an idea of the maps available at that time, or furnish information of direct service to the compiler of a map. Among the latter a Periplus or coastal guide of the Erythrean Sea, which clearly reveals the peninsular shape of India (A.D. 90) and Arrian’s Periplus Ponti Euxeni (A.D. 131) which Festus Avienus translated into Latin. Among travellers Eudoxus of Cyzicus occupies a foremost rank, since, between 115–87 B.C. he visited India and the east coast of Africa, which subsequently he attempted in vain to circumnavigate by
- ↑ If, with W. Dörpfeld, we assume an Attic stadium of 200 steps (500 ft.) to be equal to 164 metres, a degree of 700 stad. would be equal to 114,800 metres, its actual length according to modern measurement being 110,808 metres.
- ↑ Climata based on the length of the longest day were introduced by Hippocrates (c. 400 B.C.). Zones similar to those already drawn out for the celestial sphere were first introduced by the Pythagoreans. Parmenides of Elea (544–430 B.C.) distinguishes five of these zones, viz. a torrid zone, between the tropics of summer and winter, which was uninhabitable on account of heat; two frigid zones, uninhabitable on account of cold, and two intermediate temperate zones.
- ↑ Celestial globes were made much earlier than terrestrial ones. In the museum of Naples there is a celestial globe, 2 metres in diameter, supported upon the shoulders of an Atlas, which E. Heis, judging by the constellations engraved upon it (Atlas coelestis novus, Bonn, 1872) judges to date from the 4th century B.C. It may even be the work of Eudoxus (d. 386 B.C.) the famous astronomer. Aratus of Soli in Cilicia, in his poetical Prognostics of Stars and the World, refers to a globe in his possession. Archimedes, the famous mathematician, had a celestial globe of glass, in the centre of which was a small terrestrial globe. Hero of Alexandria (284–221 B.C.), the ingenious inventor of “Hero’s Fountain,” is believed to have possessed a similar apparatus. The celestial globe of Hipparchus still existed in the Alexandrian library in the time of Ptolemy, who himself refers to globes in his Almagest, as also in the Geography. Leontius, who wrote a book on the manufacture of globes (first published at Basel in 1539), is identified by Fiorini with a bishop of Neapolis (Cyprus) of the time of Constantine III. (642–668).
