252 STRABO. [CHAR
geographical purposes this oblong area was supposed to be
inscribed within a parallelogram, the sides of which were drawn
so as to pass through its extreme limits. He also introduces a
number of remarks, of great interest from the point
of view of historical geography, on the shape of
the three continents into which this area was
divided, and the superiority of Europe to the other two as a
habitation for man. Europe, he remarks, is very varied in its
outline, and Africa forms a contrast to it from its uniformity,
while Asia in this respect holds an intermediate position between
them. The advantage of this multiplicity of form consists in the
facilities of communication which it affords to the inhabitants,
and from this the historical interest of such countries arises.
Europe is also more favourable to the development of character
from its temperate climate, its equal distribution into mountains
and plains, which supply respectively a warlike and a peaceful
element to the population, and its furnishing its occupants with
the necessaries of life rather than superfluities and luxuries1.
The second and third books treat of the western countries of
Europe—Spain, Gaul, and Britain. For Spain the
principal authorities on whom Strabo relies are
Polybius, Artemidorus, and Posidonius, all of whom
had visited that country, but Posidonius7 information was far the
most valuable, on account of his intimate acquaintance with the
remote parts of the interior. The same traveller furnished him
with the chief materials for his account of Gaul and Britain, but
these he was able to supplement from the writings of Csesar,
The geographer's idea of the coast-line of these countries was in
several respects faulty, for he regarded the Sacrum Promontorium
(Cape St. Vincent), instead of the Magnum Promontorium (Cabo
da Roca) near the mouth of the Tagus, as the westernmost point
of Spain, and he ignored the deep recess in the coast formed by
the Bay of Biscay, and the projection of the Armorican peninsula,
so that he conceived of the coast of Gaul in this part as stretching
along almost in a continuous line, with that of Britain opposite
to it. He also erroneously supposed, like the other geographers
of his time, that the direction followed by the Pyrenees was from
1 a. 5.18, a6.