

 1S8 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OP THE CONTEMPLATION 



more than Alexander's expeditions, on which Eratosthenes 

 had rested/' The commerce of India was no longer in the 

 hands of the Arabians : Strabo saw in Egypt with surprise 

 the increased number of ships which sailed direct from Myos 

 Hormos to India; ( 291 ) and his imagination led him beyond 

 India itself to the eastern coasts of Asia. In the parallel 

 of latitude which passes through the pillars of Hercules and 

 the Island of Ehodes, and in which Strabo believed that a 

 connected chain of mountains traversed the old continent in 

 its greatest breadth, he conjectured the existence of " another 

 continent " between the western coast of Europe and Asia. 

 He says, ( 292 ) " it is very possible that there may be, besides 

 the world which we inhabit, in the same temperate zone, 

 about the parallel of Thinae (or Athens ?) which passes 

 through the Atlantic Sea, one or more other worlds inhabited 

 l>y men different from ourselves." It is surprising that the 

 attention of Spanish writers in the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century, who thought that they found everywhere in the 

 Classics traces of a knowledge of the new world, should not 

 have been attracted by this passage. 



" Since," as Strabo finely says, "in all works of art 

 which would represent something great, the object is not the 

 finish and completeness of separate parts," so in his " gigantic 

 work" it was his wish to fix his attention primarily 

 n the form of the whole. This predilection for gene- 

 ralisation has at the same time not prevented him from 

 bringing forward a great number of excellent physical ob- 

 servations, and particularly many concerning the structure 

 of the earth. ( 293 ) Like Posidonius and Polybius, he 

 discusses the influence of the shorter or longer interval 

 between successive passages of the sun through the zenith 



