Rubicon

From this, it can be seen that the Homeric conception of the surrounding ocean formed a chief determining feature in Hecatus's map.

For the rest, he was acquainted with the Mediterranean, Red and Black Seas, and with the great rivers Danube, Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, and Indus.

the next great name in the history of greek geography is that of herodotus of halicarnassus who might indeed equally be well called the father of geography as the father of history he travelled much in egypt babylonia persia and on the shores of the black sea while he was acquainted with greece and passed the latter years of his life in south italy on all these countries he gave his fellow-citizens accurate and tolerably full information and he had diligently collected knowledge about countries in their neighbourhood in particular he gives full details of scythia or southern russia and of the satrapies and royal roads of persia as a rule his information is as accurate as could be expected at such an early date and he rarely tells marvellous stories or if he does he points out himself their untrustworthiness almost the only traveller's yarn which herodotus reports without due scepticism is that of the ants of india that were bigger than foxes and burrowed out gold dust for their ant-hills one of the stories he relates is of interest as seeming to show an anticipation of one of mr stanley's journeys five young men of the nazimonians started from southern libya west of the sudan and journeyed for many days west till they came to a grove of trees when they were seized by a number of men of very small stature and conducted through marshes to a great city of black men of the same size through which a large river flowed this herodotus identifies with the nile but from the indication of the journey given by him it would seem more probable that it was the niger and that the nazimonians had visited timbuktu owing to this statement of herodotus it was for long thought that the upper nile flowed east and west after herodotus the date of whose history may be fixed at the easily remembered number of four forty four b c a large increase of knowledge was obtained of the western part of asia by the two expeditions of xenophon and of alexander which brought the familiar knowledge of the greeks as far as india but besides these military expeditions we have still extant several log-books of mariners which might have added considerably to greek geography one of these tells the tale of an expedition of the carthaginian admiral named hanno down the western coast of africa as far as sierra leone a voyage which was not afterwards undertaken for sixteen hundred years hanno brought back from this voyage hairy skins which he stated belonged to men and women whom he had captured and who were known to the natives by the name of gorillas Another logbook is that of a Greek named Skylax, who gives the sailing distances between nearly all ports on the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and the number of days required to pass from one to another.

From this it would seem that a Greek merchant vessel could manage on an average 50 miles a day.

With him, the history of geographical knowledge and discovery in the ancient world closes.

in this chapter i have roughly given the names and exploits of the greek men of science who summed up in a series of systematic records the knowledge obtained by merchants by soldiers and by travellers of the extent of the world known to the ancients of this knowledge by far the largest amount was gained not by systematic investigation for the purpose of geography but by military expeditions for the purpose of conquest we must now retrace our steps and give a rough review of the various stages of conquest by which the different regions of the old world became known to the greeks and the roman empire whose knowledge ptolemy summarizes chapter one II.

THE SPREAD OF CONQUEST IN THE ANCIENT WORLD in a companion volume of the series the story of extinct civilizations in the east will be found in account of the rise and development of the various nations who held sway over the west of asia at the dawn of history modern discoveries of remarkable interest have enabled us to learn the condition of men in asia minor as early as four thousand b c All these early civilizations existed on the banks of great rivers, which rendered the land fertile through which they passed.

We first find man conscious of himself and putting his knowledge on record along the banks of the great rivers Nile, Euphrates, Antigris, Ganges, and Yangtze Kyung.

Many of you

are familiar with the phrase crossing the Rubicon.

It means passing a point of no return, making a fateful and final decision from which there is no going back.

It comes from a pivotal moment in the life of Julius Caesar.

The Roman Senate commanded him to disband his legions and return to Rome as a private citizen, which threatened him and his family with prosecution, exile, and even death.

Everything hung on his next move.

The River Rubicon marked the northern boundary of Italy.

By law, no Roman general could take his army across the Rubicon without permission of the Roman Senate.

Money depended on slavery, borders had already failed from the inside, and power had already shifted to whoever happened to command the legions.

So the reforms collapsed, and 22 years later, Caesar crossed the Rubicon with a legion loyal to him rather than to Rome.

He was following a pattern Crassus and Pompey had already set for him.

Rome could win the war, it just couldn't survive winning it.

From this, it can be seen that the Homeric conception of the surrounding ocean formed a chief determining feature in Hecatus's map.

For the rest, he was acquainted with the Mediterranean, Red and Black Seas, and with the great rivers Danube, Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, and Indus.

the next great name in the history of greek geography is that of herodotus of halicarnassus who might indeed equally be well called a father of geography as the father of history he travelled much in egypt babylonia persia and on the shores of the black sea while he was acquainted with greece and passed the latter years of his life in south italy on all these countries he gave his fellow citizens accurate and tolerably full information and he had diligently collected knowledge about countries and their neighbourhood in particular he gives full details of scythia or southern russia and of the satrapies and royal roads of persia as a rule his information is as accurate as could be expected at such an early date and he rarely tells marvellous stories or if he does, he points out himself their untrustworthiness.

Almost the only traveler's yarn which Herodotus reports without due skepticism is that of the ants of India that were bigger than foxes and burrowed out gold dust for their ant hills.

With him, the history of geographical knowledge and discovery in the ancient world closes.

in this chapter i have roughly given the names and exploits of the greek men of science who summed up in a series of systematic records the knowledge obtained by merchants by soldiers and by travellers of the extent of the world known to the ancients of this knowledge by far the largest amount was gained not by systematic investigation for the purpose of geography but by military expeditions for the purpose of conquest we must now retrace our steps and give a rough review of the various stages of conquest by which the different regions of the old world became known to the greeks and the roman empire whose knowledge ptolemy summarizes chapter one II.

THE SPREAD OF CONQUEST IN THE ANCIENT WORLD in a companion volume of the series the story of extinct civilizations in the east will be found in account of the rise and development of the various nations who held sway over the west of asia at the dawn of history modern discoveries of remarkable interest have enabled us to learn the condition of men in asia minor as early as four thousand b c All these early civilizations existed on the banks of great rivers, which rendered the land fertile through which they passed.

We first find man conscious of himself and putting his knowledge on record along the banks of the great rivers Nile, Euphrates, Antigris, Ganges, and Yangtze Kyung.

These poems show an intimate knowledge of northern Greece and of the western coasts of Asia Minor, some acquaintance with Egypt, Cyprus, and Sicily, but all the rest, even of the eastern Mediterranean, is only vaguely conceived by their author.

where he does not know he imagines and some of his imaginings have had a most important influence upon the progress of geographical knowledge thus he conceives of the world as being a sort of flat shield with an extremely wide river surrounding it known as ocean the centre of this shield was at delphi which was regarded as the navel of the inhabited world According to Hesiod, who is but a little later than Homer, up in that far north were placed a people known as the Hyperboreani, or those who dwelt at the back of the north wind, whilst a corresponding place in the south was taken by the Abyssinians.

All these four conceptions had an important influence upon the views that men had of the world up to the times comparatively recent.

Homer also mentioned the Pygmies as living in Africa.

a curious point confirms this for the measurement of angles is by degrees and degrees are divided into sixty seconds just as minutes are now this division into sixty is certainly derived from babylonia in the case of time measurements and is therefore of the same origin as regards the measurement of angles we have no longer any copy of this first map of the world drawn up by but there is little doubt that it formed the foundation of a similar map drawn by a fellow-townsman of anaximander hecatus of miletus who seems to have written the first formal geography only fragments of this are extant but from them we are able to see that it was of the nature of a periplus or seaman's guide telling how many days sail it was from one point to another and in what direction we know also that he arranged his whole subject into two books dealing respectively with europe and asia under which latter terms he included part of what we now know as africa From the fragments, scholars have been able to reproduce the rough outlines of the map of the world as it presented itself to Hecatus.

From this, it can be seen that the Homeric conception of the surrounding ocean formed a chief determining feature in Hecatus's map.

For the rest, he was acquainted with the Mediterranean, Red and Black Seas, and with the great rivers Danube, Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, and Indus.

the next great name in the history of greek geography is that of herodotus of halicarnassus who might indeed equally be well called the father of geography as the father of history he travelled much in egypt babylonia persia and on the shores of the black sea while he was acquainted with greece and passed the latter years of his life in south italy on all these countries he gave his fellow citizens accurate and tolerably full information and he had diligently collected knowledge about countries and their neighbourhood in particular he gives full details of scythia or southern russia and of the satrapies and royal roads of persia as a rule his information is as accurate as could be expected at such an early date and he rarely tells marvellous stories or, if he does, he points out himself their untrustworthiness.

The Senate, now viewing Caesar as a mortal threat to the Republic, ordered him to relinquish control of his army.

Caesar, knowing that such an action would almost certainly lead to his arrest, made the fateful decision to cross the Rubicon River in 49 BC with his army into Italy, thus beginning a great civil war with Pompey and the Senate.

The decisive battle was fought a year and a half later at Pharsalus in Greece, where Caesar's legions won a decisive victory, forcing Pompey to flee to Egypt, where he was murdered.

In 48 BC, Julius Caesar was the master of Rome and of much of the civilized world.