NOTES. IX 



causes. The globular form of the entire earth follows from the arrangement of 

 the whole, which is not altered by such minor disfigurements ; the little disap- 

 pears in the great." Subsequently it is said, following always Groskurd's very 

 successful version, that " the Earth, with the sea, is globular, the land and seas 

 forming but one surface ;" that " the rising of the land out of the water being 

 inconsiderable, in comparison with the whole extent, must remain unnoticed. 

 We do not suppose the form of the globe to be as if turned on a turning-lathe, 

 or conforming to the exact measurement which an artist might make of an 

 artificial ball ; but rather speak of its roundness as we might of the roundness 

 of such a ball, judged of more roughly by the eye." (Strabo, ii. p. 112.) " The 

 world is the work both of Nature and Providence : of Nature, inasmuch as all 

 tends together towards a point in the middle of the whole, around which it 

 arranges itself the less dense (water), outside that which is more dense (earth)." 

 (Strabo, xvii. p. 809.) When the form of the Earth is spoken of among the Greeks 

 (Cleom. Cycl. Theor. i. 8, p. 51), it is compared simply to a disc; flat, or having 

 a depression in the middle; to a cylinder (Anaximander) ; to a cube; or to a 

 pyramid ; and, finally (notwithstanding the long controversy of the Epicureans, 

 who denied the attraction to the centre), it came to be generally regarded as a 

 globe. The idea of the flattening at the poles, which we call compression or 

 ellipticity, did not, however, present itself. The " longish " Earth spoken of 

 by Democritus is only the " disc " of Thales, longer in one direction than in the 

 other. The TO (rx^/w rvfjnravoeities, an idea attributed particularly to Leu- 

 cippus (Plut. de Plac. Philos. iii. 10; Galen. Hist. Phil. cap. 21 ; Aristotl. de 

 Co3lo, ii. 13 ; Pag. 293, Bekker), is at the bottom of the representation of a 

 hemisphere, or half-globe, with an even base, which, perhaps, designates the 

 equator, while the curvature is regarded as the oiKov/j-evrj. A passage in Pliny 

 (ix. 54), on pearls, illustrates this form ; while, on the other hand, Aristotle, 

 Meteorol. ii. 5 a 10 (Ideler, t. i. p. 563), only offers a comparison of segments 

 of a globe with the tympanum, as also appears from the Commentary of Olym- 

 piodorus (Ideler, t. i. p. 301). I have purposely not noticed in this review two 

 passages very familiar to me (Agathemer, de Geographia, lib. i. cap. i. p. 2, 

 Hudson); Eusebius (Evangel. Prseparat. t. iv. p. 125, ed. Gaisford, 1843), be- 

 cause they show how inaccurately subsequent writers have often attributed to 

 the ancients opinions which were, in truth, entirely strange to them. According 

 to these passages, Eudoxus would have spoken of the Earth as a disc, having a 

 length twice as great as its breadth ; as would also Dicearchus, the disciple of 

 Aristotle, although he had actually proposed proofs of its globular form (Mar- 

 tian. Capella, lib. vi. p. 192) ; while Hipparchus would have regarded the Earth 

 as Tpa7reoei57js, and Thales would have held it to be spherical ! 



