ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL CONCEPTIONS 



5 



Furthest South and Furthest East. Southward of it lies 

 the circumfluent Ocean Sea, boiling, impassable. And 

 South of it, unknown, unknowable (unless perchance 

 Ceylon is its " first part "), lies the great island-continent 

 of the South, a land interesting to men of science as a 

 curious speculation, to men of letters as a site for Utopias, 



RAINAUD'S INTERPRETATION OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL VIEWS OF POMPONIUS MELA. 

 (From Rainaud, Le Continent Austral.) 



and to rhetoricians as an illustration of the vanity of 

 human ambitions, and the smallness of the Empire to 

 which Jupiter had placed neither bounds nor end. 1 



This was the popular geography of the early Empire. 

 But Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria knew better. 2 

 By his time (A.D. 150) geographical science had made 

 great advance. He understood as none before him, 

 and as none after him for the next thirteen hundred 

 years the importance of making maps by the certain 

 rules of mathematics and astronomy. In his days also more 



1 Cicero made this use of those who " dwell directly opposite to you " 

 in his story of Scipio's dream (Justin Winsor, vol. i. p. 9). 



2 See map, p. 7. 



