IN the Third Book of his Geography Eratosthenes furnishes us with a chart of the habitable earth. This he divides into two portions, by a line running from east to west parallel to the equator. He makes the Pillars of Hercules the boundary of this line to the west, and to the east the farthest ridges of those mountains which bound India on the north. From the Pillars he draws the line through the Strait of Sicily,1 and the southern extremities of Peloponnesus and Attica, to Rhodes and the Gulf of Issus.2 He says, ‘Through the whole of this distance the line mentioned is drawn across the sea 3 and adjacent continents; the whole length of the Mediterranean as far as Cilicia extending in that direction. Thence it runs nearly in a straight line along the whole chain of the Taurus to India. The Taurus continuing in a straight line from the Pillars divides Asia through its whole length into two halves, north and south. So that both the Taurus and the sea from the Pillars hither 4 lie under the parallel of Athens.’
The Geography of Strabo. Literally translated, with notes, in three volumes. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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