760 GEOGRAPHICAL LATITUDE. 



ductiou of classical geography. As far as latitude is concerned the 

 theory is completely developed, while the practice remains extremely 

 imperfect. Though recognizing the usefulness of equally distant par- 

 allels,he makes his drawing moreeasily by adopting only those of known 

 places. Furthermore, he still clings to the old idea of divisions into 

 climates, the absurdity of which he would have appreciated if he could 

 have seen the modern isothermal lines. 



How much or how little geographical knowledge the Greeks derived 

 from the Orient or from Ancient Egypt, it is at this day impossible to 

 determine. Of one thing we may be certain, viz, that it was at best 

 only fragmentary. With this as a starting point, they, in the course 

 of centuries, developed a sound theory as to the form of the earth, 

 then proved it mathematically; though often going astray, as one does 

 in the beginning of every science, they arrived at a fair, almost an 

 accurate, computation of the earth's size. Though acquainted in 

 reality with only a small portion of the globe, they^ hit upon the only 

 truly scientific method of indicating position on a body which, having 

 neither breadth nor length, presents a puzzling problem. As far as 

 circumstances permitted they put their theories into practice,' and 

 laid down many of the lines on which modern scholarship is still de- 

 veloping the science. 



In the mean time a movement had begun in Palestine which was to 

 produce great changes in the civilized world and from whose influence 

 the subject now under consideration was not to remain free. Rejecting 

 almost as a whole the literature and art with which they were familiar, 

 as an inseparable part of that heathenism which they were struggling 

 to overcome, the church fathers sought to find in the Bible the only 

 source of true knowledge.^ They accordingly rejected the doctrine of 

 the Sj)hericity of the earth, which had become, at least among special- 

 ists, firmly established, and with childish religious arguments, settled 

 for themselves and their followers the whole matter, e. g.. by asking, 

 "How, on the day of judgment, could the people on the other side of 

 a ball see the Lord descending through the air?"'^ or maintaining that 

 if there were antipodes Christ would have gone to them.* They were 

 not united as to what form the earth really has, one believing it to be 

 square,^ another circular, because the Bible uses the expressions "the 

 four corners of the earth" and "circle of the earth." The latter being 

 the more popular, the so-called "wheel maps" were accordingly much 

 in vogue,*^ while again the Tabernacle was thought to be a mystic 



' "In fact, when we come to examine their geographical proficiency, we find it in 

 exact relation to the poverty of their geometrical means. " Leakes, Journ, E. G. S., 

 1839, IX, p. 14. 



2 Exceptions to be noted hifra. As to their rejection of Greek geography, see 

 Latronne, ()02. 



■'Kosmas, quoted by GUnther, Studien, etc., 3. 



••Doctrine of Procopins Ton Gaza, Zockler, Theol. und Natnrwiss., i. 127, 



*Santarem, L'histoire de la cosmographie, i, 107, 11'2. 



ePeschel, Gesch. d. Erdkuude, 100. 



