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.
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