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102
STRABO.
BOOK I.

Here too his reasoning is incorrect. For this speculation respecting the temperate zone which we inhabit, and whereof the habitable earth is a part, devolves properly on those who make mathematics their study. But it is not equally the province of one treating of the habitable earth. For by this term we mean only that portion of the temperate zone where we dwell, and with which we are acquainted. But it is quite possible that in the temperate zone there may be two or even more habitable earths, especially near the circle of latitude which is drawn through Athens and the Atlantic Ocean. After this he returns to the form of the earth, which he again declares to be spheroidal. Here he exhibits the same churlishness we have previously pointed out, and goes on abusing Homer in his old style. He proceeds:

7. “There has been much argument respecting the continents. Some, considering them to be divided by the rivers Nile and Tanais,[1] have described them as islands; while others suppose them to be peninsulas connected by the isthmuses between the Caspian and the Euxine Seas, and between the Erythræan Sea[p 1] and Ecregma.”[2] He adds, that this question does not appear to him to be of any practical importance, but rather, as Democritus observed, a bone of contention for angry litigants. Where there are no precise boundary marks, columns, or walls, as at Colyttus and Melitè,[p 2] it is easy for us to say such a place is Colyttus, and such another Melitè; but not so easy to show the exact limits: thus disputes have frequently arisen concerning certain districts; that, for instance, between the Argives and Lacedæmonians concerning [the possession of] Thyrea,[3] and that between the Athenians and Bœotians relative to Oropus.[p 3] Further, in giving names to the three continents, the Greeks did not take into consideration the whole habitable earth, but merely their own country and the land exactly opposite, namely, Caria, which is now inhabited by

  1. ↑ The Nile being thought to separate Africa from Asia, and the Tanais, or Don, Europe.
  2. ↑ The name of the mouth of the lake Sirbonis or Sebaket-Bardoil, which opens into the Mediterranean. A line drawn from this embouchure to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf, would give the boundary between Africa and Asia.
  3. ↑ Probably Thyros, a place situated close to the sea, just at the boundary of the two countries.
  1. ↑ The Red Sea.
  2. ↑ Places in Attica.
  3. ↑ Oropo, on the confines of Attica and Bœotia.
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