CHAPTER XIII 



THE NORTH IN MAPS AND GEOGRAPHICAL WORKS 

 OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



AT the beginning of the Middle Ages and down to the 

 fifteenth century the cartography of the Greeks, which 

 had reached its summit in the work of Ptolemy, was entirely 

 unknown in Europe; while the early Greek conceptions (those 

 of the Ionian school) of the disc of the earth or " cEcumene " as 

 a circle (called by the Romans " orbis terrarum," the circle of 

 the earth) round the Mediterranean — and externally surrounded 

 by the universal ocean — had persisted through the late Latin 

 authors, and probably also through Roman maps. At the 

 same time Parmenides's doctrine of zones (cf. Vol. I, pp. 12, 123), 

 remained prevalent owing to its enunciation by Macrobius, 

 and maps exhibiting this doctrine were common until the 

 sixteenth century. These two conceptions became the founda- 

 tion of the learned view and representation of the world, and 

 consequently also of the North, throughout the greater part of 

 the Middle Ages. It was the age of speculation, not of observa- 

 tion. The Scandinavians were the first innovators in geography, 

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