Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/34

that if the depth of the earth were infinite,^[1] such a revolution could not take place.

Every information respecting the climata^{[q 1]} is contained in the “Treatises on Positions.”^[2]

21. Now there are some facts which we take to be established, viz. those with which every politician and general should be familiar. For on no account should they be so uninformed as to the heavens and the position of the earth,^[3] that when they are in strange countries, where some of the heavenly phenomena wear a different aspect to what they have been accustomed, they should be in a consternation, and exclaim,

“Neither westKnow we, nor east, where rises or where setsThe all-enlightening sun.”^{[q 2]}

Still, we do not expect that they should be such thorough masters of the subject as to know what stars rise and set together for the different quarters of the earth; those which have the same meridian line, the elevation of the poles, the signs which are in the zenith, with all the various phenomena which differ as well in appearance as reality with the variations of the horizon and arctic circle. With some of these matters, unless as philosophical pursuits, they should not burden themselves at all; others they must take for granted without searching into their causes. This must be left to the care of the philosopher; the statesman can have no leisure, or very little, for such pursuits. Those who, through carelessness and ignorance, are not familiar with the globe and the circles traced upon it, some parallel to each other, some at right angles to the former, others, again, in an oblique direction; nor yet with the position of the tropics, equator, and zodiac, (that circle through which the sun travels in his course, and by which we reckon the changes of season and the winds,) such persons we caution against the perusal of our work. For

1. Allusion is here made to the theory of Xenophanes of Colophon and Anaximenes his disciple, who imagined the earth bore the form of a vast mountain, inhabited at the summit, but whose roots stretched into infinity. The Siamese at the present day hold a similar idea.
2. Περὶ τῶν οἰκήσεων.
3. Meaning, the different appearances of the heavenly bodies at various parts of the earth.

1. See note ¹, p. 13.
2. Odyssey x. 190.