But To Return From This Digression To The Geographical Knowledge Of
Herodotus, As Derived From His Own Travels, He Visited Babylon And Susa,
And While There, Or Perhaps In Excursions From Those Places, Made Himself
Well Acquainted With The Persian Empire.
The whole of Egypt was most
diligently and thoroughly explored by him, as well as the Grecian colonies
planted at Cyrene, in Lybia.
He traced the course of the river Ister, from
its mouth nearly as far as its source. The extent of his travels in Greece
is not accurately known; but his description of the Straits of Thermopylae
is evidently the result of his own observation. All these countries,
together with a portion of the south of Italy, were visited by him. The
information which his history conveys respecting other parts of the world
was derived from others: in most cases, it would seem, from personal
enquiries and conversation with them, so that he had an opportunity of
rendering the information thus acquired much more complete, as well as
satisfactory, than it would have been if it had been derived from their
journals.
Herodotus trusted principally or entirely to the information he received,
with respect to the interior of Africa and the north of Europe, and Asia to
the east of Persia. While he was in Egypt he seems to have been
particularly inquisitive and interested respecting the caravans which
travelled into the interior of Africa; and regarding their equipment,
route, destination, and object, he has collected a deal of curious and
instructive information. On the authority of Etearchus, king of the
Ammonians, he relates a journey into the interior of Africa, undertaken by
five inhabitants of the country near the Gulf of Libya; and, in this
journey, there is good reason to believe that the river Niger is accurately
described, at least as far as regards the direction of its course.
It is evident from the introduction to his third book that the Greek
merchants of his time were eminently distinguished for their courage,
industry, and abilities; that in pursuit of commercial advantages they
visited very remote and barbarous countries in the north-eastern parts of
Europe, and the adjacent parts of Asia; and that the Scythians permitted
the Greek merchants of the Euxine to penetrate farther to the east and
north "than we can trace their progress by the light of modern
information." To them Herodotus was much indebted for the geographical
knowledge which he displays of those parts of the world; and it is by no
means improbable that the spirit of commercial enterprize which invited the
Greek merchants on the Euxine to penetrate among the barbarous nations of
the north-east, also led them far to the east and south-east; and that from
them, as well as from his personal enquiries, while at Babylon and Susa,
Herodotus derived much of the information with which he has favoured us
respecting the country on the Indus, and the borders of Cashmere and
Arabia. Having thus pointed out the sources from which Herodotus derived
his geographical knowledge, we shall now sketch the limits of that
knowledge, as well as mention in what respects he yielded to the fabulous
and absurd notions of his contemporaries.
He fails most in endeavouring to give a general and combined idea of the
earth; even where his separate sketches are clear and accurate, when united
they lose both their accuracy and clearness. He seems to doubt whether he
should divide the world into three parts; and at last, having admitted such
a division, he makes the rivers Phasis and Araxes, and the Caspian Sea, the
boundaries between Europe and Asia; and to Europe he assigns an extent
greater than Asia and Libya taken together. His knowledge of the west of
Europe was very imperfect: in some part he fixes the Cassiterides, from
which the Phoenicians derived their tin. The Phoenician colony of Gadez was
known to him. His geography extended to the greater part of Poland and
European Russia. Such appear to have been its limits with respect to
Europe; and such the general notion he entertained of this quarter of the
world. As to Asia, he believed that a fleet sent by Darius had
circumnavigated it from the Indus to the confines of Egypt; but though his
general idea of it was thus erroneous, he possessed accurate information
respecting it from the confines of Europe to the Indus. Of the countries to
the east of that river, as well as of the whole of the north and southern
parts of it, he was completely ignorant. He particularly notices that the
Eastern Ethiopians, or Indians, differ from those of Africa by their long
hair, as opposed to the woolly head of the African. In his account of India
he interweaves much that is fabulous; but in the same manner as modern
discoveries in geography have confirmed many things in Herodotus which were
deemed errors in his geography, so it has been ascertained that even his
fables have, in most instances, a foundation in fact. With regard to
Africa, his knowledge of Egypt, and of the country to the north of it,
seems to have been very accurate, and more minute and satisfactory than his
knowledge of any other part of the world. It is highly probable that he was
acquainted with the course of the western branch of the Nile, as far as the
11th degree of latitude. He certainly knew the real course of the Niger. On
the east coast of Africa he was well acquainted with the shores of the
Arabian Gulph; but though he sometimes mentions Carthage, and describes the
traffic carried on, without the intervention of language, between the
Carthaginians and a nation beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which we nave
already mentioned in treating of the commerce of the Carthaginians, yet he
seems to have been unacquainted with any point between Carthage and the
Pillars of Hercules.
In the history of Herodotus, there is an account of a map constructed by
Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, when he proposed to Cleomenes, king of
Sparta, to attack Darius, king of Persia, at Susa; from this account, the
vague, imperfect, and erroneous ideas entertained in his time of the
relative situations and distances of places, as well as of the extremely
rude and feeble advances which had been made towards the construction of
maps, may be inferred.
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