BOOK II. Lxvi. 166-LXV11. 168 



do not increase in bulk with the daily accession of so 

 many rivers. The consequence is that the earth at 

 every point of its globe is encircled and engirdled by 

 sea flowing round it, and this does not need theoretical 

 investigation, but has already been ascertained by 

 experience. 



LXVII. Today the whole of the West is navigated Circum- 

 from Cadiz and the Straits of Gibraltar all round Spain ^e^ZT "' 

 and France. But the larger part of the Northern 

 Ocean was explored under the patronage of his late 

 Majesty Augustus, w^hen a fleet sailed round Germany 

 to the promontory of the Cimbri," and thence seeing a 

 vast sea in front of them or learning of it by report, 

 reached the region of Scythia and locaUties numb 

 with excessive moisture. On this account it is 

 extremely improbable that there is no sea in those 

 parts, as there is a superabundance of the moist 

 element there. But next, on the Eastward side, the 

 whole quarter under the same star stretching from 

 the Indian Ocean to the Caspian Sea ^ w^as navigated 

 throughout by the Macedonian forces in the reigns 

 of Seleucus and Antiochus, who desired that it should 

 be called both Seleucis and Antiochis after them- 

 selves. And many coasts of Ocean round the 

 Caspian have been explored, and very nearly the 

 whole of the North has been completely traversed 

 from one side to the other by galleys, so that similarly 

 also there is now overhwelming proof, leaving no 

 room for conjecture, of the existence of the Maeotic 

 Marsh, whether it be a gulf of that Ocean, as I notice 

 many have beheved, or an overflow from it from which 

 it is separated off by a narrow space. On the other 

 side of Cadiz, from the same Western point, a great 

 part of the Southern gulf is navigated today in the 



303 



