80 HERODOTUS. [CHAP.
a town in the interior of a country by means of its relation to
another on the nearest coast; as where he speaks of Fteria in
Cappadocia as being "over against Sinope V that place being due
north of it.
In one of his digressions Herodotus has communicated to us
f . his conception of the general features of the world3,
tionoftheMap and by a comparison of this with other passages we
of the world. can fonn a tolerabiy ciear idea of his views on the
subject. In respect of the limits of the northern continent, while
endeavouring to confine himself to ascertained facts in opposition
to the guesswork of his predecessors, he really deviated further
from the truth than they had done, for he professes
^ NO Northern ^fe scept;cjgm as to the existence of a sea either to
the north or to the cast of Europe. He could not
discover the evidence, he says, of anyone having visited the
supposed northern sea; and for the same reason he disbelieved in
the Cassiterides islands, from which tin was reported to come, and
in a river Eridanus, from which amber was brought3. On the
Continuity of °PP°sl'te s^e of the world, however, he considered
the southern that the ocean extended continuously from the coast
of India to that of Spain; this he regarded as
sufficiently proved by two expeditions, which had accomplished
between them the entire circumnavigation of the intervening con-
Jinenij One of these was the voyage of Scylax of Caryanda, who
had sailed by the orders of Darius from the mouth of the Indus
to the Red Sea; the other was the expedition which was despatched
by Necho from Egypt to explore the coast of Africa, and had suc-
ceeded in reaching the Pillars of Hercules by the southern route.
The first part of this sea to the eastward of Africa, which we now
call the Indian Ocean, was known to him as the Erythraean sea,
while that to the west he names the Atlantic—an appellation
which here occurs for the first time, though he implies that it
was already in familiar use4. He only believes in two great
1 I. 76; Kara Su'tfrip' ir6\u> r^v Iv Etfjefoy qrjrry pdXtortt KIJ KUjifri],
* 4- 3<5-45-
8 3- "5-
4 I. 203; 4 f{w ffrfifav 0d\<w<ra ^ '