SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
7 
their progress in astronomy. Perhaps they also kept this knowledge secret, for there are 
many indications that they were possessed of many of its practical applications to the art 
of navigation. At the dawn of history, and before all the other peoples of antiquity, 
we find them sailing over the open sea without a compass or coast to guide them. They 
even navigated the open ocean at night. The Phoenicians did this before the time of 
Homer, while the Greeks and Romans, for a long time after that period, never lost sight 
of the coasts, and sailed only during the day. 1 
The notions with reference to the sea inherited by the Greeks from the Phoenicians The Oj. > k>. 
appear to have been extremely vague, even regarding the Mediterranean, which must have 
been the best known to them. Greek philosophers and navigators first directed attention 
to the scientific problems of the ocean, and aided in solving them by their progress in 
branches of knowledge connected with physical geography. Their influence was profound, 
and traces of the oceanographical ideas of the Greeks survived for centuries in literature. 
The Greeks, so admirably endowed in most respects, had not a sufficient number of 
accurate observations to form a solid basis for induction ; they did not possess the rigorous 
methods of modern science, which do not admit of deductions beyond tne range of the 
observations. Their theoretical conceptions cannot, however, be passed over, any more 
than the ancient Greek myths relative to the earliest voyages of their race. “ Popular 
myths,” says Humboldt, “ mixed with history and geography, do not altogether belong 
to the ideal world. If vagueness be one of their distinctive traits, if the symbols which 
cover the reality be wrapped in a veil more or less thick, the myths closely associated 
with them show, nevertheless, the first dawn of cosmography. The statements of 
primitive history and geography are not entirely ingenious fictions ; the opinions which 
have been formed about the actual world are reflected in them.” 2 
The first step in the geographical history of the Greeks is the legendary voyage of Mythical 
the Argonauts, although this myth gives no certain facts regarding the physical geography A p'‘.^ E T,^ 
of the sea. The poetical elaboration of the story took place, according to Grote, between 
600 and 500 years before the Christian era. If the voyage has any foundation in fact, 
it was probably as much a Phoenician as a Greek adventure in search of gold. 3 All that 
can be said with reference to the poetical accounts of the wars of Troy is that, at the Wars of Tro' 
period immortalised by the genius of Homer, the Greeks were so familiar with navigation 
as to be able to transport an army across the iEgean Sea as far as the Hellespont. 4 
1 The Phoenicians steered by the Pole star, which, from this circumstance, was named by the Greeks the Ph nician 
star (Enc. Brit., art. “Phoenicia’'). The Greeks, it is said, steered by the Great Bear (Bunbury, op cit., vol i. p. 34). 
2 Humboldt, op. cit., tom. i. p. 112. 
3 The name argo is possibly of Phoenician origin (the Semetic word circle, long), having reference to the “ long s', ;ps ” 
or fighting ships as distinguished from the round or cargo shifs. The argo may have been the first long ship bui't by 
the Greeks. The voyage of Argo is readily enough understood as the attempt of a people, ignorant of geography 
and physics, to combine in one narrative the Phoenician voyages in every quarter of the then known world, (pee John 
Kenrick, History and Antiquities of Phoenicia, p. 92, London, 1855). Alexandrian critics confused the story by ; mnslVr. 
the wanderings of Ulysses to the Outer Ocean, while retaining the idea of this ocean such as it was known to : 
4 Bunbury, op. cit., vol. i. p. 17. 
