250 STRABO. [CHAP.

under the successors of Alexander, and of the additions which
were made to it by the advance of the Roman
urope, western Europe, Spain and Gaul as far

as the coast of the Atlantic, and the south-eastern part of Britain,
were fairly well known ; but towards the north the Elbe and the
Danube still marked the limit of accurate geographical know-
ledge. Something more might have been added concerning the
lands and seas in that direction from the narrative of Pytheas,
had not Strabo been strongly impressed with the untruthfulness
of that writer ; and a similar mistrust of Herodotus, whom he
regarded as a mere retailer of fiction, caused the same thing to
happen with regard to the countries northward of the Euxine,
from Strabo's account of which the valuable information furnished
by the old historian is excluded. The lands on
the further side of the Palus Maeotis were also
unexplored, but the chain of the Caucasus and the regions to
the southward of it between the Black Sea and the Caspian
had become known through the narrative of Theophanes. The
Caspian was still believed to communicate with the Northern
Ocean, and beyond it the Jaxartes remained, as it was in the days
of Alexander, the limit of discovery. In India the peninsula
of Hindostan continued to be unknown, and the Ganges was
regarded as flowing into the eastern ocean./ The
Cinnamon country and the territory of the Sem-
britae about the upper Nile were the southernmost points that
Strabo was acquainted with in Africa*, and no one had penetrated
into the interior of that continent beyond the land of the Gara-
mantes. The student of the geography of the Augustan age
requires further to be reminded, that not a little of the information
contained in Strabo's work dates from a period earlier than that
era, In some instances, as notably in that of Ravenna, which
we have already mentioned, this arises from the author not having
availed himself of the latest sources of evidence ; but to a great
extent it was unavoidable. In writing of India^ for instance, he
was obliged to follow the narrative of persons who wrote some
centuries before his age ; and the same thing was the case in a
lesser degree with regard to various other countries. Under such
circumstances the writer is not in fault, for he can but make the