SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
23 
geography. Although the Romans extended their rule over a great extent of coast 
bordering on the Atlantic, they never organised any voyages of discovery into 
this outer sea, after the manner of the Carthaginians and Greeks. They have given 
no definite information concerning the coasts of Africa, and relatively little about the 
shores of Europe. They were essentially a warlike and practical people, with politicians, 
jurists, encyclopaedists, and historians, but few philosophers who occupied themselves 
with the operations of nature ; the commercial stimulus was a wanting to induce them to 
undertake voyages of exploration. Horace’s system of winds, several passages of Virgil 
on astro-meteorology, the statements concerning geological phenomena in the works of 
Ovid, and notices of the action of water in modifying the surface of the globe in 
the work on architecture by Vitruvius, all show a spirit of observation ; but, generally 
speaking, if we deduct what the Romans had received from the Greeks, there is little 
relating to oceanograph}^ that can be regarded as original among the writings of Latin 
authors. As Vivien de St. Martin remarks, however, never was a period more favourable 
than the reign of Augustus for the composition of a great work on descriptive geography. 
The Roman rule, spread as it was over more than half of the then known world, and 
attached to the remainder by political and commercial relations, created a propitious 
state of matters for an undertaking of this kind by furnishing to the geographer a ready 
means of investigation. A man appeared to carry out this work, for which the time 
was ripe, but this man was a Greek, Strabo , 1 who produced the most important extant 
geographical work of antiquity. 
This celebrated geographer deals in a special way with problems relating to Strabo. 
oceanography . 2 All things on the crust of the earth, according to Strabo, are in a con- 
tinual state of change, and the present relief of the surface of the globe is due to these 
modifications. Under the influence of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions the land is 
subjected to movements, oceanic waters invade the land when the bed of the ocean rises, 
and they retire when the bed sinks ; besides, these movements can be more easily produced 
beneath the sea, where the earth is, as it were, kneaded and made plastic by the water. 
He states that pelagic islands are of volcanic origin ; the greater islands, situated near 
the land, have been detached from the continents by dislocations ; the continents 
themselves are subject to oscillations, and might have been raised from the bosoms of the 
various seas. Running water works profound modifications on the surface of the land, 
but these changes are conditioned by the nature of the country through which streams 
and rivers pass. Torrents descending from mountains have a great erosive power, and the H: Y ■ >n : 
same is the case with livers which flow over soft or sandy grounds; both spread out on^U 1 ^'*^..' 
the Mains and transport to the sea immense quantities of alluvial matter. The sediment 
1 Born about 60 b.c. The year of his birth cannot be determined with certainty. 
3 In this resume of Strabo’s doctrines we have followed H. Fischer, Ueber einige Gegenstande der physischen 
Geographic, bei Strabon, als Beitrag zur Geschichte der alten Geographic, Wernigerode, 1579. 
