40 



THE POPULAB EDUCATOR 



VOCABULARY. 



Dtflecto, 1 I delight. Orno, 1 I adorn. Vexo, 1 I grieve, 

 Educo, 1 I educate. Salto, 1 I dance. Vitupero, 1 I blame. 

 Laudo, 1 I praise. Tento, 1 I try. Vulnero, 1 I wound. 



EXERCISE 3. LATIN-ENGLISH. 



Laudo. Vituperas. Ornat. Educamus. Vexatis. Vulnerant. 

 Tentat. Tentat saltare. Vulneraris. Vexatur. Laudamur. Ornas. 

 Edueantur. Vexaris. Vulneramini. Delecto. Delectas. Delectat. 

 Delectamus. Delectatis. Delectant. Delector. Deleotaris. Delec- 

 tatur. Delectamur. Delectamini. Delectantur. 



EXERCISE 4. ENGLISH-LATIN. 



I praise. Thou praisest. He praises. We praise. You praise. 

 They praise. I am praised. Thou arc praised. He is praised. We 

 are praised. You are praised. They are praised. They delight. Thou 

 adornest. You are grieved. They are educated. He dances. You are 

 blamed. We try. You are tried. He is wounded. I am educated. 



Now, before you go forward in this exercise, and in every 

 other, ask yourself, and ascertain that you give the right 

 answers to the following or similar questions, namely : Of what 

 conjugation is the verb amo ? of what tense is amo ? of what 

 person is amo ? of what number is amo ? of what mood ia amo ? 

 of what voice is amo ? Do the same with all the rest. 



LESSONS IN" GEOGRAPHY. II. 



NOTIONS OF THE POETS. 



HOMER, who wrote his poems in the tenth century before the 

 Christian era, appears to have been acquainted with Greece, the 

 Archipelago, the island of Crete, and the coast of Asia on the 

 shores of the Mediterranean. Within these limits he appears 

 to have travelled, and he was, no doubt, personally acquainted 

 with some of the scenes which he describes. His works, how- 

 ever, show that the geographical 

 knowledge of the Greeks was at 

 that time more limited than that 

 of the Egyptians in the time of 

 Moses, who lived seven centuries 

 before him. On the south, the 

 Greeks only knew the valley o 

 tbe Nile, and that part of Africa 

 which extends from Egypt to the 

 west as far as Cape Bon, and the 

 commencement of the Atlas chain 

 of mountains ; and on the east, 

 the Syrian desert, Asia Minor, 

 Mesopotamia, and Persia. They 

 possessed only very confused no- 

 tions of the Adriatic Sea, of Sicily, 

 and of the south of Italy ; and 

 with the greater part of the Italian 

 peninsula they were wholly un- 

 acquainted. 



Previous to the Homeric epoch, 

 the Greeks believed in the exist- 

 ence of nations who inhabited the 

 countries situated behind the re- 

 gions where the sun appeared to 

 them to rise and to set. They 

 imagined that these nations lived 

 in perpetual darkness, and they 

 called them Cimmerians, a word 

 evidently derived from the He- 

 brew Cimeririm (pronounced Kimeririm), and signifying dark- 

 ness. In proportion as they became acquainted with more 

 regions that were enlightened by the sun (that is, as the limits 

 of the known world were extended by voyage and discovery), 

 they transported the Cimmerians and their dark abodes to a 

 greater distance. In those early times the Cimmerians were 

 supposed to inhabit the borders of the Black Sea, near the 

 Thracian Bosphorus, Italy, and the distant countries on the east 

 and west, where the world was supposed to terminate. The 

 people who were supposed to live the farthest north wero called 

 Hyperboreans, because they were placed beyond Boreas, or in the 

 extreme north ; and those who lived the farthest south were called 

 Ethiopians literally, sv.nburnt because they were situated more 

 directly under the sun's rays ; their country lay south of Egypt, 

 and was afterwards called JEtlviopia sub JZgypto, or Ethiopia 



THE WORLD ACCORDING TO THE GREEKS AT THE 

 HOMERIC EPOCH. 



under Egypt under evidently signifying farther to the south than 

 the latter country. The ancients generally believed that Africa 

 and Asia, or rather Ethiopia and India, were united by land 

 still farther to the south, and they consequently considered the 

 Ethiopians and Indiana as near neighbours. This is the ground 

 on which both Virgil and Lucan have supposed the Nile to take 

 its rise on the frontiers of India. 



At the Homeric epoch the Greeks generally considered that 

 the earth existed in the form of a disc. This disc was supposed to 

 be centrally divided by the Euxine or Black Sea, the JDgean Sea, 

 and the Mediterranean Sea into two parts, the one north and the 

 other south ; these parts were at a later period designated by 

 Anaximander under the names of Europe and Asia, names which 

 had been previously understood in a more restricted sense. The 

 river Phasis in Colchis, or Pontus, on the east, and the Pillars 

 of Hercules, or Strait of Gibraltar, on the west, were supposed 

 to mark the limits of the world. The country of the Cimmerians, 

 who were afterwards confounded with the Cimbri ; and of the 

 Macrobians, so called because they were supposed to be longer- 

 lived than other mortals ; Elysium, a happy country which had 

 no existence but in the fantasies of the mind ; the Fortunate 

 Isles, which at a later period, under the names of Atlantis and 

 Meropis, were the object of the philosophic fictions of Plato and 

 Theopompus ; the country of the Arimaspi, who saw BO clearly 

 because they had only one eye ; of the Gryphons, who guarded 

 the precious metals of the Ripliean mountains ; Colchis, the 

 country of magic, peopled with monsters and prodigies ; all 

 these and many other ingenious fables, the offspring of the 

 imaginations of the poets Homer and Hesiod, or rather of the 

 people among whom they lived, were mixed up with notions 

 purely geographical, and constituted the world at that period a 

 scene of marvels, a receptacle of agreeable delusions on the one 

 hand and formidable mysteries en the other. 



During the historic ages of 

 Greece cosmological systems were 

 multiplied to an endless extent. 

 Thales said that the earth was a 

 sphere ; his disciple Anaximander 

 taught that it was a cylinder. 

 Leucippus said that it was a drum, 

 and Heraclides that it was a boat. 

 Many and curious were the notions 

 the ancient philosophers held con- 

 cerning the globe until vovages of 

 discovery were begun. Herodotus 

 made a great step in the descrip- 

 tive geography of certain regions, 

 especially in the east of Europe. 

 Yet, notwithstanding his voyages 

 into the three parts of the old 

 world, he fills his narrative with 

 childish tales and dreamy details. 

 He only knew the names of Arabia, 

 Iberia (or Spain), Gallia (or France), 

 the islands of Albion (Great Bri- 

 tain), and the Cassiterides (or Scilly 

 Isles). He had correct notions on 

 Africa, and particularly on Egypt, 

 but the western part of this conti- 

 nent was unknown to him beyond 

 Tripoli. His details on India, 

 besides their uncertainty, are in- 

 termingled with fables taken from 

 the legends or popular creeds of the extreme East. Among the 

 tales more or less ingenious, we must not forget the ants that 

 were as large as foxes, and that collected heaps of gold mixed 

 with sand ! 



Herodotus appears to have been unacquainted with western 

 Europe. He does not speak of Massilia (Marseilles), a city 

 founded by the Phocaeans about 600 B.C., more than a century 

 before he was born. Home, which had been increasing in 

 grandeur for about three hundred years before his time, is not 

 even mentioned by name. Of Italy he only knew the south of 

 that part anciently called Magna Graecia. The extreme west of 

 Africa was equally unjaiown to the Greeks, yet the Phoenicians 

 had made discoveries in the Atlantic Ocean, and the periplus 

 (sailing round) or coasting voyage of Hanno was executed con- 

 siderably before Herodotus. The African voyage of the Cartha- 



