PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 1 lo 



the same direction of the course on which the early PhoBnician 

 navigators had adventured. 



Before the migrations of the Dorians and -Cohans, the Boeo- 

 tian Orchomenus, near the eastern extremity of the Lake of 

 Copais, was already a rich commercial city of the Minyans. 

 The Argonautic expedition hegan at lolcus, the principal seat 

 of the Thessalian Minyans, on the Pagasaean Gulf. The 

 locality of the myth, considered with respect to the aim of the 

 undertaking, after having been variously modified* at different 

 times, was finally associated with the mouth of the Phasis 

 (Rion), and with Colchis, a seat of ancient civilization, instead 

 of with the uncertain and remote land of ^a. The expedi- 

 tions of the Milesians and their numerous colonial cities on 

 the Euxine enabled them to obtain a more exact knowledge 

 of the eastern and northern limits of that sea, and thus gave 

 a more definite outline to the geographical portion of the myth. 

 A number of important new views was thus simultaneously 

 opened. The Caspian had long been known only on its west- 

 ern coast ; and even Hecatseus regarded this shore as the west- 

 ern boundary of the encircling Eastern Ocean. f The father 

 of history was the first who taught that the Caspian Sea was 

 a basin closed on all sides, a fact which, after him, was again 

 contested, for six centuries, until the time of Ptolemy. 



* Otfried Muller, Minyer, s. 247, 254, und 274. Homer was not ac- 

 quainted with the Phasis, or with Colchis, or with the Pillars of Her- 

 cules ; but the Phasis is named by Hesiod. The mythical traditions con- 

 cerning the return of the Argonauts through the Phasis into tlie Eastern 

 Ocean, and across the " double" Triton Lake, formed either by the 

 conjectured bifurcation of the Ister, or by volcanic earthquakes {A&ie 

 Centrale, t. i., p. 179 ; t. iii., p. 135-137 ; Otfr. MUller, Minyer, s. 357), 

 are especially important in arriving at a knowledge of the earliest views 

 regarding the form of the continents. The geographical phantasies of 

 Peisandros, Timagetus, and Apollonius of Rhodes were continued until 

 late in the Middle Ages, and showed themselves sometimes as bewilder- 

 ing and deterring obstacles, and sometimes as stimulating incitements 

 to actual discoveries. This reaction of antiquity on later times, when 

 men suffered themselves to be led more by opinions than by actual ob- 

 servations, has not been hitherto sufficiently considered in the history 

 of geography. My object is not merely to present bibliographical 

 sources from the literature of different nations for the elucidation of the 

 facts advanced in the text, but also to introduce into these notes, which 

 permit of gi-eater freedom, such abundant materials for reflection as I 

 have been able to derive from ray own experience and from long-con- 

 tinued literary studies. 



t Hecat(Ei, Fragm., ed. Klausen, p. 39, 92, 98, and 119. See, also, 

 my investigations on the history' of the geography of the Caspian Sea, 

 from Herodotus down to the Arabian El-Istachri, Edrisi, and Ibu-el- 

 Vardi, on the Sea of Anil, and on the bifurcation of the Oxus and the 

 Ara.xes, in my Asie Centrale. '. ii.. :'. H'.^^-^nr 



Vol. II.— G 



