72 EARLY GEOGRAPHICAL SPECULATIONS. [CHAP.
the * Survey* was not confined to dry statements like these, but
contained notices, occasionally of some length, of remarkable
objects which were found in different localities. Thus we learn
from Porphyry that the accounts of the phoenix, the hippopotamus,
and the hunting of crocodiles in the second book of Herodotus
were taken almost bodily from Hecataeus1. The work was
divided into two parts, the former of which treated
of Europe, *e *atter of As*a» under which Libya
was included. These parts must have been sub-
divided into sections, for in the quotations in Stephanus some
places are referred to under special headings, such as Helles-
pontus, Aeolica, Aegyptus, and Libya. Hecataeus maintained
the traditional view of the Ionian philosophers, that
Geography?*1 the Earth was a circular plane surrounded by the
stream of Ocean; and the land which was thus
enclosed was divided into two equal portions, the continent of
Europe towards the north, and that of Asia to the south. This
view, which Herodotus ridicules, is not, indeed, attributed by him
to Hecataeus by name, but it is highly probable that he is one of
those to whom the historian refers as having held itfl. The division
between the two continents was formed, first by the Mediterranean,
the Euxine and the Palus Maeotis, and afterwards by the Tanais,
and perhaps the Caspian Sea, for there is some reason to believe
that the lonians treated that sea as a bay of the eastern ocean8.
These geographical features he regarded as forming nearly a
continuous line running from west to east. The map of the
world on which these objects were represented was considered to
be an advance on that of Anaximander*.
The contents of Hecataeus's work on geography, so far as we
its contents. have the means of JudSinS of &> correspond in the
main to what we have seen to be the range of
1 Hecat Fragin. Nos. 292—4, in Muller's firagm. Hist. Gr.t i. p. ax, with
the editor's notes.
3 Herod. 4. 36.
* Berger, 0. «fc, r. p, 33.
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