PTOLEM.EUS, CLAUDIUS. 



PTOLKM^US, CLAUDIUS. 



1002 



exertion to obtain his restoration to his kingdom. In the following 

 year, B.C. 57, the senate passed a decree for his restoration ; but in 

 B.C. 56 there was much dispute respecting the manner in which and 

 the persons by whom he should be restored. In consequence of the 

 opposition which was made against him, nothing was done in that 

 year ; and we find that he retired in despair to Epheaus. (Dio., xxxix. 

 .2-16 ; Cic., ' Ep. ad Qu. Fr.,' ii. 2; 'Ad Fam.,' i. 1, 2.) Auletes how- 

 ever possessed a powerful friend in Pompey, and in consequence of his 

 support he prevailed upon Gabinius, in B.C. 55, to undertake his 

 restoration. (Dio., xxxix. 55; Strabo, xvii., p. 796; Liv., 'Epit.,' 

 105 ; Cic., ' in PiBon.,' 21.) 



Berenice, whom the Alexandrians placed upon the throne, first 

 married Seleucus, called Cybiosactes by Strabo, the pretended son of 

 Antiochus Eusebes, and afterwards Archelaus, the son of the Archelaus 

 who had carried on war against Sulla. Auletes, on his restoration in 

 B.C. 55, put to death both Archelaus and his daughter. (Strabo, xvii., 

 p. 796.) Auletes survived his restoration about three years and a 

 half, and died in the beginning of May, B.C. 51. (Clinton," voL iii., p. 

 395.) He left two sons, called Ptolemy, and two daughters, Cleo- 

 patra and Arsinoe. The history of his two eons is given under 

 CLEOPATRA. 



PTOLEM^EUS, CLAU'DIUS, a native of Egypt, but the place of 

 his birth is not ascertained : the surname of Pelusiota, which is given 

 to him in some editions of his works, appears to be a mistake of the 

 copyists or translators. He lived at Alexandria in the first half of the 

 2nd century of our era, under the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus 

 Pius. Nothing more is known of his life, except bis works. He was 

 an astronomer, chronologist, and geographer. Ptolemy's Geography 

 was for many centuries the text-book in that science for all the schools, 

 and was superseded only in the 15th century, in consequence of new 

 information derived from the discoveries of the Venetian, Portuguese, 

 and other travellers and navigators. 



Ptolemy and Strabo followed a different method in their respective 

 works. Strabo's work is a descriptive geography; Ptolemy's is a 

 mathematical geography. Strabo wrote mainly for the instruction of 

 persons engaged in administration : he describes the physical character 

 of each country, its extent and its political divisions ; he gives some his- 

 torical account of the various peoplis that had inhabited it ; and he then 

 proceeds to notice the subdivisions, the mountains, valleys, rivers, and 

 towns, with their respective distances from each other, and the objects 

 worthy of remark in them. He makes us acquainted with each place 

 in a manner resembling that of modern books of travels, or guide- 

 books. Ptolemy on the other hand applies himself to fix the astro- 

 nomical position of each place; he gives a bare list of names of 

 mountains, rivers, and towns, with their respective longitude and 

 latitude, without any description, or at least only a few words. 

 Strabo endeavours to ascertain the forms of the large masses of land 

 and of the seas by a combination of itinerary distances between 

 various points, referring only to a few positions which had been 

 ascertained by actual observation ; Ptolemy fixes the position of each 

 place as if it were ascertained by astronomical observation. Ptolemy 

 availed himself of the labours of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and the 

 other mathematicians of the Alexandrian school [HiPFARCHUs] ; but 

 by adopting the method of Hipparchus in the projection of the map, 

 in order to assimilate it to the spheroidal form of the earth, he com- 

 mitted a material error in his longitudes, all of which he places too 

 far to the east. Beginning from Calpe, he places it 5" east of the 

 Sacrum Promontorium of Iberia or Spain, an error of 1 50',- and 

 goes on increasing the excess of longitude as he advances to the east- 

 ward, making the length of the Mediterranean twenty degrees more 

 than it is. He proceeds through Asia in the same way, till he places 

 the mouths of the Ganges above forty-six degrees more to the east- 

 ward than the true position. Gosselin, at the end of his ' Ge"ographie 

 des Grecs analyse^,' gives tables which show the difference between 

 Ptolemy's positions and the true ones. Gosselin supposes that 

 Ptolemy was led into this material error by estimating the degree of 

 longitude at 500 stadia at the equator, and at 400 stadia in the parallel 

 ofKhodes; while Eratosthenes had reckoned the first at 700 stadia 

 and the second at 555. But Ptolemy retained Eratosthenes' s measure 

 of 700 stadia for a degree of latitude, because he found that if he were 

 to reckon the degree of latitude at 500, all his latitudes, several of 

 which had been fixed by observation, would be too high; and that 

 Alexandria, for instance, instead of being in 31, would be in 43, and 

 Marseille in 60. The different value given to the stadium by differ- 

 ent geographers was a cause of much confusion. " Eratosthenes," 

 ays Gosselin, " had fixed the distance between the Sacrum Promon- 

 torium of Spain and the eastern mouth of the Ganges at 70,000 stadia. 

 These 70,000 stadia being reduced into degrees of 700 stadia each, give 

 100 degrees for the whole longitudinal distance, which is not far from 

 the truth. But Ptolemy, by taking his degree of longitude too small, 

 made 146 degrees between the two points. But again, if we reduce 

 these 146 degrees at the rate of 500 stadia each, we shall have about 

 73,000 stadia." See also on this subject both Maunert and Ukert, in 

 their respective works, both entitled 'Geographic der Griechen und 

 KiJmer.' 



Dr. Brehmer, in his ' Entdeckungen im Alterthum,' 1822, pretends 

 that Ptolemy consulted some Phoenician charts, and he lays great 

 stress upon the geographical knowledge of the aucieut Phoenicians. 



Gosselin however, as well as Heeren (' Commentatio de Fontibus Geo- 

 graphicorum Ptolemaei, Tabularumque iis annexarum,' Qottingen, 

 1827), reject Brehmer's hypothesis : they reduce within very moderate 

 dimensions the supposed geographical and astronomical knowledge of 

 the Phoenicians, and trace the sources of Ptolemy's peculiar informa- 

 tion to other quarters, and especially to the discovrries and conquests 

 made by Roman commanders between the time of Augustus and the 

 age of the Antonines, to the long peace which subsisted between the 

 Romans and the Parthians under Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, and 

 the flourishing commerce which was carried on during that period 

 between the Roman empire and the remotest parts of India. Marinus 

 of Tyre, who lived about the year 100 of our era, had written a geo- 

 graphy and constructed maps of which Ptolemy availed himself. 



Ptolemy begins by stating in his first book the object of his work, 

 and explains the elements of mathematical geography. He then, after 

 mentioning with praise his predecessor Marinus of Tyre, notices, in 

 chapters vi. to xviii., the errors into which that geographer had fallen, 

 and corrects them. Mariuus had read the geographical works and 

 itineraries of most of those who had preceded him, and had constructed 

 maps which he repeatedly corrected in successive editions; but 

 Ptolemy, as he says, still found much to correct in the work of 

 Marinus. Ptolemy mentions several travellers from whose itineraries 

 Marinus had derived much of his information ; but he adds (chap. 17) 

 .that some of the information collected by Marinus had been super- 

 seded by the testimony of more recent travellers and navigators, 

 whom he, Ptolemy, had consulted, especially with regard to the 

 remote regions of India. In the last three chapters of the first book 

 Ptolemy describes the method of drawing maps adapted to represent 

 the spherical form of the globe. 



With book ii. begins the description of the known world, which in 

 the time of Ptolemy extended, from west to east, from the Fortunate 

 or Canary Islands, where Ptolemy places his first meridian, to the 

 vaguely defined regions of Serica and Sinse, near the western and 

 south-western borders of China, somewhere between 100 and 105 

 east of London, embracing altogether about 120 of longitude, or 

 one-third of the actual circumference of the globe, which extent how- 

 ever, through Ptolemy's error already noticed, was magnified by him 

 to 180, or a full hemisphere. To the northward Ptolemy's known 

 world extended to the sixty-third parallel of north latitude, in which 

 he places the island of Thule north of Caledonia, near the site of the 

 Shetland Islands. Some think that the Thule of Ptolemy was Norway. 

 To the south, Ptolemy's known world extends nearly to the equator, 

 but he places his latitudes about ten degrees too far south. He 

 places the sources of the true Nile, or Abiad, in about 7 S. lat., aud 

 the emporium of Rhapta, on the eastern coast of Africa, and that of 

 Cattigara, on the coast of the Sinse, in about 8. By comparing 

 Ptolemy's world with that of Strabo, it may be seen how much the 

 limits of the known world were extended during the century and a 

 quarter which elapsed from the time of Augustus and Tiberius to that 

 of the Antonines. Strabo's information did not extend northwards 

 beyond the Elbe ; of Britain he knew little, aud of Hibernia nothing ; 

 to the eastward it only extended as far as Taprobana (Ceylon) and the 

 mouth of the Ganges. Ptolemy added information, though it was 

 vague, of India beyond the Ganges, the Chersonesus Aurea, and the 

 countries of Serica and Sinse east of the Chersouesus Aurea. Strabo 

 had made the Hyrcanian or Caspian Sea a gulf of the Northern 

 Ocean, though Herodotus (i., c. 203) had described it as a lake. 

 Ptolemy aUo describes it as a lake, retaining however the error of his 

 predecessor as to making its length from east to west, instead of 

 from north to south. This mistake originated probably in some con- 

 fused notion of the existence of the Aral Lake east of the Caspian. 

 In one respect however Ptolemy's information was more remote from 

 truth than that of Strabo, for he made the Indian Sea a gulf, without 

 any communication with the Atlantic, and he supposed that the 

 south-eastern coast of Africa turned to the east and joined that of 

 Asia. This authority perpetuated for a long time the error of sup- 

 posing that Africa could not be circumnavigated by tho south. This 

 error is the more curious, as there was au old tradition, preserved by 

 Herodotus, of the circumnavigation of Africa. With regard to the 

 interior of Africa, Ptolemy's information extended considerably further 

 than that of his predecessors. 



Ptolemy proceeds in his description of the world from west to east. 

 He begins with Hibernia, and Albion or Britain, stating the bearing of 

 the great lines of coast, noticing the gulfs, actuaries of rivers and 

 capes, with the longitude and latitude of each ; and he mentions the 

 names of the various tribes and towns in succession, first those along 

 the coasts, and afterwards those in the interior. His latitudes in 

 Britain and Ireland are all too high by several degrees. He next 

 describes Iberia, or Spain, with its divisions into provinces, stating the 

 boundaries of each ; and then, following the coast, he names the 

 various towns, rivers, gulfs, and capes, fixing their respective positions. 

 Few other particulars are given. He afterwards describes Celto- 

 Gulatia, or Gaul, and then Germany. Ptolemy notices the Cherso- 

 nesus Cimbrica and the southern part of the Baltic as far eastward as 

 the river Chesinus, the modern JDuna. But he does not seem to have 

 known that the Baltic was an inland sea. East of the Chersonesus 

 Cimbrica he places four islands, under the name of Scauditc Islands. 

 Scandinavia in his time was supposed to be an island. After Germany 



