192 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION 



caravan roads of the Aorsi, whose camels carried Indian and 

 Babylonian goods to theDon and to the Black Sea( 299 ) . If, con- 

 trary to the juster knowledge of Herodotus, Ptolemy believed 

 the length of the Caspian to be greatest in the east and west 

 direction, he may perhaps have been thus misled by some 

 obscure knowledge of the former greater extent of the 

 Scythian Gulf (Karabogas) ; and the existence of Lake Aral, 

 the first decided notice of which we find in a Byzantine au- 

 thor, Menander, who wrote a continuation of Agathias. ( 30 ) 

 It is to be regretted that Ptolemy, who reclosed the 

 Caspian Sea, (which the hypothesis of four gulfs sup- 

 posed to be the reflections or counterparts of similar ones in 

 the disk of the moon ( 301 ) had long kept open), did not at 

 the same time give up the fable of the " unknown southern 

 land " connecting Cape Prasum with Cattigara and Thinse, 

 (Sinarum metropolis) ; therefore connecting eastern Africa 

 with the land of Tsin, or China. This myth, which would make 

 the Indian Ocean an inland sea, was derived from views 

 which may be traced back from Marinus of Tyre to Hip- 

 parchus, Seleucus the Babylonian, and even to Aristotle. ( 302 ) 

 In these cosmical descriptions of the progressive advance of 

 the knowledge and contemplation of the Universe, it is suffi- 

 cient to recal by a few examples how in successive fluctuations 

 the already half recognised truth has often been again 

 obscured. The more the increased extent both of navigation 

 and of traffic by land seemed to render it possible to know 

 the whole of the earth's surface, the more actively, especially 

 in the Alexandrian period under the Lagidee, and under the 

 Roman empire, did the never slumbering Hellenic imagina- 

 tion seek by ingenious combinations to blend all previous 

 conjectures with the newly added stores of actual knowledge, 



