Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: avoid the perils of the deep; and Pindar’s account of their crossing the continent of Libya in twelve days, all combine to illustrate the inadequate ideas entertained by the early Greeks of the magnitude of the earth’s surface and of the ocean. The accurate geographical knowledge of the Greeks, in Homer’s time and the ages immediately succeeding, may, without much injustice, be stated as not extending far beyond Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and the islands. Beyond these limits all objects appear in the prismatic hues of wonder and enchantment; we find nothing but monsters, nations of dreams, and the abodes of bliss. These delusive forms were chiefly gathered in the western or rather north-western quarter of the hemisphere. All the early writers in Greece believed in the existence of certain regions situated in the West beyond the bounds of their actual knowledge, and as it appears, of too fugitive a nature to be ever fixed within the circle of authentic geography. Homer describes at the extremity of the Ocean the Elysian plain,
where, under a serene sky, the favourites of Jove, exempt from the common lot of mortals, enjoy eternal felicity. Hesiod, in like manner, sets the Happy Isles, the abode of departed heroes, beyond the deep ocean. The Hes- peria of the Greeks continually fled before them as their knowledge advanced, and they saw the terrestrial paradise still disappearing in the West. CHAP. III. GREEKS CONTINUED.?HISTORIC ABE. Systems of enrly Greek Philosophers.?Herodotuw.?Hi literary Ardour and Success.?His Travels.?Describes the Scythians.?Received Intelligence respecting the Arimasps and Griffons.?In vain sought the Hyperboreans. ? Effect of Climate on the Growth of Horns.?Extent or the Knowledge he acquired from the Scythians.?The Cimmerians of the Bosphoru…
