THE MEDITERRANEAN LOOKS WEST 85 



vance because they were not afraid to be wrong or haul in an 

 empty net casting for the elusive truth. 



One of these pioneers was the great geographer Eratos- 

 thenes, born 276 b.c, who figured out, by the crudest kind of 

 sighting the angle of the sun, that the earth was 25,000 miles 

 in circumference. One of the first maps to give a reasonably 

 accurate picture of the European Atlantic coastline was Ital- 

 ian, probably made after the voyage of Pytheus. It shows the 

 Canary Isles labeled as the Fortunate Isles. On a larger scale 

 Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus, another learned Greek who 

 opposed him on many points, both made maps of the world 

 which were more symmetrical than accurate, but nevertheless 

 were the first attempts to measure the land by parallels and 

 meridians. Hipparchus started a mathematical method of geo- 

 graphic studies that was carried forward by Ptolemy. They 

 studied the positions of the stars, the orbit of the sun, and the 

 measurement of sidereal time; and between them might be 

 said to have founded the mathematics of astronomy that was 

 standard for more than a thousand years of the Christian era. 



These facts are noted here because there is such a mass of 

 legend and superstition current for the period we write about 

 that the reallv scientific advance is sometimes overlooked. Of 

 one thing we can be pretty certain — the pilots and navigators 

 of the time were well aware of whatever scientific knowledge 

 was available. The great merchants and the curious and 

 learned minds of the Mediterranean countries, particularly 

 the Phoenicians, were people of the sea. Alexandria, the cen- 

 ter of Mediterranean learning at the end of the pre-Christian 

 era, was also the crossroads for all eastern trade, and brought 

 to a focus both practical and scholastic learning. This was a 

 practical age. 



But after the fall of Carthage and the advent of the Chris- 

 tian era the religious rather than the scientific mind governed 



