anaximander's book. 285 



Eratosthenes a literature dealing with the progress of geography, even 

 if, as is perhaps most likely, it did not take the form of disinterested 

 learned comparison, but consisted of the works of successive geo- 

 graphers who took cognizance of the opinions and charts of their 

 predecessors. Just such criticism is in fact abundant in Strabo, 

 drawn in good part (with express citations) from his predecessors. 

 In other words, there must have existed before Eratosthenes a geo- 

 graphical tradition in all essentials like that which we know from 

 Strabo existed after his time. 



It is to this tradition, then, that we owe the record of Anaximander's 

 map. As we have seen, Eratosthenes did not know enough of 

 Anaximander's book to he sure that it was genuine. His own treatise 

 marked the beginning of a new epoch; for it was the first in which a 

 serious, if somewhat too confident, effort was made to descril)e and 

 chart the inhabited earth on the basis of the newly established shape 

 and dimensions of the earth. We know from Strabo that Hip- 

 parchus at many points recurred to the old maps for things which 

 Eratosthenes had discarded. This is hardly explicable except on 

 the hypothesis that the procedure of Eratosthenes was characterized 

 by a radical departure from tradition, which his keen critic could not 

 justify. Such being the case, we can readily believe that Eratosthenes 

 was not an altogether sympathetic student of the earlier geographers. 

 In the first flush of enthusiasm over the new geography the old was 

 naturally neglected. It was only after a generation or two had passed 

 that the texts of Anaximander and Hecataeus were again brought 

 forth from the archives and studied with intelligent interest by Deme- 

 trius of Scepsis and Apollodorus,^°° while Hipparchus, like Eratosthenes 

 but apparently in greater measure, displayed a keen intei-est in die 

 ancient charts. Thus the geographical tradition was assured of a 

 continuity, which for a moment seemed threatened. This continuous 

 tradition makes it possible even now in part to prove, in part to divine, 

 the character of Anaximander's book. 



However much prose literature may or may not have existed in 

 Ionia before the da}s of Anaximander, his book is for us at once the 

 earliest known prose treatise and the earliest known literary document, 

 whether in verse or prose, of the scientific interests of Ionia. As 

 such it naturally possesses a peculiar fascination for us, and we could 



100 We know that Demetrius used Hecataeus' book, and was in turn used by 

 ApoUodorus. This comports well with the well-known antiquarian interests 

 which e.xperienced a marked revival at Alexandria and Pergamum in the third 

 and second centuries B.C. 



