NATURE 



Zil 



..THURSDAY, AUGUST, 12, 1880 



ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY 

 A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and 

 Romans from the Earliest Ages till the Fall of the 

 Roman Empire. By E. H. Bunbury, F.R.G.S. With 

 Twenty Illustrative Maps. Two Vols. (London : John 

 Murray, 1S79.) 



THIS is one of that class of monumental and scholarly 

 works which have almost died out in these days, of 

 multitudinous magazines and rapid publication, when 

 authors have not patience to wait the completion of a work 

 before they begin to publish. Mr. Eunbury's work is the 

 task of a lifetime, and he well deserves the laurels bestowed 

 upon him by the Geographical Society. It is both scholarly 

 and scientific, the product of patient, wide, and thorough 

 research, and treats a complicated subject with such com- 

 pleteness, clearness, and sound sense, that it is difficult 

 to see how it can be supplemented or superseded. Much 

 has been written on the subject of ancient, and especially 

 classical geography, in Germany and France, and with 

 all that has been written Mr. Bunbury is evidently 

 familiar ; his work, however, is in some respects superior 

 to anything that has preceded it. His method is 

 thoroughly scientific ; he wastes but little space in 

 endeavouring to extract a grain of sound geography from 

 a bushel of legendary chaff, as so many of his pedantic 

 predecessors have done. He weighs his evidence with 

 rigid impartiality, is never content with second-hand 

 authorities when the originals are attainable, and accepts 

 no conclusions of previous writers unless led thereto by 

 his own researches. He is thus compelled to reject much 

 that has been hitherto accepted by those who have written 

 on the subject. 



Mr. Bunbury's book is no light reading. To do it 

 justice requires long and patient study, and to review it 

 fuUy and fairly would require the scope of a Quarterly. 

 Every page bristles with learned notes, which cannot be 

 passed over except at the risk of losing some important 

 point in his well-knit narrative and close argument. 

 Besides the foot-notes there are appendages of larger 

 Notes to each chapter, in which disputed questions are 

 discussed, and the scattered fruits of long research 

 brought together. As the work is a Histoiy of Geo- 

 graphy among the Greeks and Romans, the geographical 

 knowledge of Egyptians, Jews, and Phoenicians is dis- 

 missed in a brief introduction. We should like to see Mr. 

 Bunbury treat the geography of these two last interesting 

 peoples in the same thorough manner as he has done that 

 ofc the Greeks and Romans, and free it from the accre- 

 tions of conjecture and fable that have encrusted it. 

 Indeed it v/ould be a matter of great interest if scholars 

 as competent as Mr. Bunbury has shown himself to be in 

 his own department would bring together for us in an 

 equally compact and accessible form all that is known of 

 the knowledge of geography possessed by all the old 

 peoples who have left a literature. The Chinese especially, 

 we believe, had a much more extensive knowledge of the 

 geography, not only of Continental Asia, but of the Asiatic 

 Archipelago, than any but a few special scholars have 

 Vol. x.xii.— No. 563 



an idea of. It is a pity also that our Celtic and Teutonic 

 forefathers had no permanent means of recording the 

 tale of their wanderings westwards from their Asiatic 

 fatherland ; but surely the experiences they met with 

 during these wanderings have left some impressions upon 

 their extensive folk-lore. Still the first beginnings of 

 solid geographical knowledge and theory rest with the 

 Greeks and Romans, and even in a complete History of 

 Ancient Geography everything must be made to centre 

 in them. 



Of course Mr. Bunbury in carrying out his weighty 

 task is compelled to speak of the knowledge which those 

 two peoples were likely to acquire from the nations 

 with whom they came into contact, the Egyptians, the 

 Carthaginians, the Persians, and the Indians. His dis- 

 cussion of the extent of the ancient Egyptian knowledge 

 of the Nile and of the African interior is broad and 

 interesting, and he shows a healthy scepticism as to the 

 extent of the wanderings of the Phcenicians. This 

 wholesome scepticism is a praiseworthy characteristic of 

 his work throughout, from the Voyage of the Argonauts 

 down to the Irish Annals. The Argonautic legend he 

 dismisses as of really no geographical importance, but 

 devotes considerable space to the geography of the Iliad 

 and Odyssey. This he reduces to a very narrow compass 

 of certainty, and dismisses as trivial the laboured attempts 

 to identify the many names of places introduced into the 

 Odyssean legend. Indeed the first certain knowledge of 

 any countries beyond their own immediate shores came 

 to the Greeks through the numerous colonies they 

 founded, and even this scarcely extended beyond the 

 environs of the settlements. The Greeks were doubtless 

 enterprising enough in certain directions, but as a people 

 they seem not to have been much given to exploration for 

 its own sake. The knowledge of the regions beyond the 

 confines of the Greek colonies on the Mediterranean and 

 Euxine was for the most part extremely vague, consisting 

 mainly of a multitude of names of tribes exceedingly 

 difficult now to identify. They had for centuries the 

 vaguest and most erroneous iiotions of the great physical 

 features of Europe, Asia, and Africa, beyond the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of the shores of these continents ; 

 though by the time of Hecataus of Miletus (520-500 B.C.) 

 a wonderful amount of information had been accumulated 

 in an unsystematic way. This knowledge had greatly 

 increased and become more definite and accurate by the 

 time of Herodotus in the next century. Mr. Bunbury's 

 treatment of this large-minded and cautious historian is 

 especially full and satisfactory, and betokens a vast 

 amount of original research and full and accurate know- 

 ledge of the geography of the countries concerned. He 

 clears away many erroneous opinions attributed to 

 Herodotus, clearly proving by reference to the original 

 that many statements attributed to Herodotus himself are 

 really given by him as only second-hand reports to be 

 received with caution. We all know how poor Living- 

 stone met his death in a Quixotic search for the fountains 

 in which the Nile was supposed to have its origin, an 

 idea he attributed to Herodotus ; but Mr. Bunbury shows 

 clearly that the cautious historian held no such opinion 

 himself, but merely related it as an incredulous story he had 

 heard when in Egypt. With regard to the famous story 

 of the circumnavigation of Africa by Necho, related by 



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