12 INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP.
assigned by nature, and that both their occupations and their
sphere of action were determined by their local position.
It is not unreasonable to dwell at some length on the
character of the Greeks and the influence exercised
Ge?geraSphyya?.f uPon them by the land which thcy inhabited,
most confined because the study of geography in ancient times
was from first to last almost entirely in their
hands. We might have expected that a people like the Romans,
whose conquests were widely extended, and whose interests in
distant countries were numerous on account of their commerce
and the needs of their administration, would have borne their
part in cultivating a subject of so great practical importance.
But this was not the case. Not only were the foundations of
the science laid by the Greeks, but it was mainly through them
that the observations made in the course of military campaigns,
and the knowledge gained through the spread of trade, were
recorded. The first explorer who brought back in-
Ex~ formation with regard to the north-western portions
of Europe was Pytheas, a Greek of Massilia; and
his discoveries in the ocean to the northward of Britain, though
they were made at a period nearly coeval with Alexander the
Great, were hardly superseded even when the greater part of that
island was in the power of the Romans. Almost everything
that was known in antiquity concerning the interior of India was
derived, either from the companions of Alexander, or from
Megasthenes, who was sent by Seleucus Nicator as ambassador
to Chandragupta at Pataliputra on the Ganges./ The shores of
the western part of the Mediterranean, both on the side of
Europe and of Africa, were investigated, and their noticeable
features recorded, by Artemidorus and Polybius; while the
interior of Spain, of Gaul, and of the southern part of Britain
was visited by Posidonius, who devoted especial attention to the
races that inhabited those countries, and to their occupations,
customs, and religious rites. When Pompey in the course of his
campaigns against Mithridates opened out the countries that lay
between the Euxine and the Caspian, it was his Greek companion
and friend, Theophanes of Mytilene, who collected and published
the results of his discoveries. ^Meanwhile the study of mathe-