270 GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 



Imperial Library at Vienna (Fig. 194). This precious document, consisting 

 of twelve maps representing the world as it was known in the third century, 

 forms, so to speak, the explanatory complement of the tract chart of the 

 provinces of the Roman empire, which has been handed down to us under 

 the title of "Antonini Augusti Itinerarium," and which appears to have 

 been drawn by the geographer Ethicus in the fourth century. 



These itineraries and maps, which were sold at Rome and in the principal 

 cities of the empire, and which must have often been copied as they passed 

 from hand to hand, were not, in all probability, foreign to the continuous 

 migration of the barbarian hordes which gradually moved upon Italy 

 from the different parts of the world, and systematically followed the same 

 method in order to reach Rome. These invaders, whether coming from the 

 North like the Lombards, the Suevi, the Yandals, and the Goths ; from the 

 heart of Asia, like the Huns ; or from the steppes of Caucacus, like the Alani 

 or the Heruli, had long been kept in awe by the Roman legions ; but, when 

 once they began to burst the barriers and to advance with sagacious caution 

 through the Roman provinces which they ravaged (Fig. 195), it was easy to 

 see that they had selected beforehand the territory which they intended to 

 occupy, by the way in which they created frontiers and military stations 

 with not less intelligence than boldness. They did not swerve from the 

 route which they had traced out, and paid implicit obedience to chiefs who 

 had been formed in the schools of Athens or Alexandria. 



Thus the study of geography was apparently fatal to the empire, because 

 it demonstrated to its enemies and rivals how vulnerable its very vast- 

 ness made it, and what facilities were afforded for an invasion by those 

 splendid military roads which enabled countless hosts to arrive by easy stages 

 under the very walls of Rome. The Emperors, it is true, endeavoured for 

 more than a century to stem the tide of invasion, and it is not unreasonable 

 to suppose that they had all the maps and itineraries which facilitated the 

 progress of the invasion destroyed. The teaching of geography was not, 

 however, neglected in the schools, for the historians of the fourth century, 

 Claudianus, Nemesianus, and Ausonius, the Emperor Julian, Ammianus 

 Marcellinus, and Macrobius, display very profound geographical knowledge, 

 which they must have acquired by travel and study. But the special treatises 

 on geography were very rare at this period, and the only works which are 

 known to have escaped a destruction which we may assume to have been a 



