V.] ACTAE OR PROJECTING TRACTS. 83
an idea of the conformation of that continent which is peculiar to
himself, by dividing it into Actae, or tracts of land
of a somewhat peninsular character. After noticing or Projecting
the four races which occupy the belt of country Tracts*
that intervenes between the southern sea on the hither side of
India and the Euxine—the Persians, the Medes, the Saspires and
the Colchians—he says that the land to the west of this may be
regarded as forming two separate areas. The northernmost of
these, starting from a line drawn through the Phasis and the gulf
of Issus, is bounded on the north by the Pontus and the Helles-
pont up to Sigeium, and on the south by the coast as far as the
Triopian promontory in Caria: it corresponds therefore nearly to
Asia Minor. The southern area, on the other hand, embraces
Persia, Assyria, and Arabia on the side towards the Erythraean sea,
and Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt in the direction of the
Mediterranean. Libya, notwithstanding the width to which it
spreads on the further side of Egypt, he regards as an appendage
to the second of these Actae1. It is not altogether easy to divine
the object which the historian had in view in this grouping of
countries, but it reveals to us the imperfection of his knowledge of
the relative size of these districts, and it suggests also, what was
undoubtedly the case, that he greatly underrated the size both of
Asia and of Africa. He was in ignorance, too, of the southward
extension of both those continents, for he does not include in his
survey the peninsula of Hindostan—an omission which continued
to prevail until long after his time—and he believed that the
African coast began to trend due west at no great distance from
the mouth of the Red Sea.
-7 As geography is a subject not systematically introduced into
Herodotus' work, but only as subordinate to history, Central and
except so far as he indulges in digressions on the Western
countries which are noticed in his narrative, we Europe'
cannot be surprised if his description of the centre and west of
Europe is scanty as compared with that of Asia, since those
regions were unconnected with the struggle between Greece and
Persia, which it was his purpose to commemorate. Yet^
1 4- 37--9.