110 
plint's natueal history. 
[Book VI. 
two hundred and fifty miles. ''^ But, as Agrippa, including its 
deserts, makes it from Cyrenaica, a part of it, to the country of 
the Garamantes, so far as was then known, a further distance of 
nine hundred and ten miles, the entire length, added together, 
will make a distance of four thousand six hundred and eight 
miles. The length of Asia is generally admitted to be six 
thousand three hundred and seventy-five miles, and the breadth, 
which ought, properly, to be reckoned from the Ethiopian Sea 
to Alexandria, near the river JN^ile, so as to run through Meroe 
and Syene, is eighteen hundred and seventy -five. It appears 
then that Europe is greater than Asia, by a little less than one 
half of Asia, and greater than Africa by as much again of Africa 
and one- sixth. If all these sums are added together, it will 
be clearly seen that Europe is one-third, and a little more than 
one-eighth part of one-third, Asia one-fourth and one-four- 
teenth part of one-fourth, and Africa, one-fifth and one- sixtieth 
part of one-fifth of the whole earth.^^ 
CHAP. 39. DIVISION OF THE EARTH INTO PARALLELS AND 
SHADOWS OF EQUAL LENGTH. 
To the above we shall add even another instance of ingenious 
discovery by the Greeks, and indeed of the most minute skil- 
fulness ; that so nothing may be wanting to our investigation of 
the geographical divisions of the earth, and the various countries 
thereof which have been pointed out; that it may be the 
better understood, too, what affinity, or relationship as it were, 
exists between one region and another, in respect to the length 
of their days and nights, and in which of them the shadows 
are of equal length, and the distance from the pole is the same. 
I shall therefore give these particulars as well, and shall 
state the divisions of the whole earth in accordance with the 
various sections of the heavens. The lines or segments which 
"^^ He means to say that the interior is not inhabited beyond a distance 
of 250 miles from the sea-coast. See B. v. c. 9. 
^0 He is probably speaking only of that part of Asia which included 
Egypt, on the eastern side of the river Nile, according to ancient geography. 
His mode, however, of reckoning the breadth of Asia, i.e. from south to 
north, is singular. See p. 104. 
81 On a rou^h calculation, these aliquot parts in all would make 42900 
parts of the unit. It is not improbable that the figures given above as the 
dimensions are incorrect, as they do not agree with the fractional results 
htve given by Pliny, 
