CHAPTER XIIL
GEOGRAPHY FROM THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS TO THAT
OF TRAJAN (14—II/AJD.).
Roman Writers on Geography—Pomponius Mela—Pliny —His Historia
Naturali$—\i$ Deficiencies—Its Statistical Geography—Notices of Places
in Asia—The Jordan—The Dead Sea—The Essenes—Palmyra—The
Tigris—Its Upper Course—Strabo's Account—The Lake of Van-
Criticisms of the Ancient Accounts—Strabo's and Pliny's Stories—Disap-
pearance of the Tigris—Common Source of the Tigris and Euphrates
—Possible Explanation of the Fable—Pliny's Information about Tapro-
bane—Ambassadors sent thence to Rome—Their Account of the In-
habitants—The Ptriplus Maris Erytkraei— African Coast—Aromata
Prom. (Cape Guardafui)—Menuthias (Zanzibar)—Arabian Coast—Arabia
Eudaemon f Aden)—Syagrus Prom. (Cape Fariak)—Island of Dioscorides
(Socotra)—Indian Coast—Baraces and Eirinon Inlets (Gulf and Runn of
Cutch)—Barygaza (Baroche)—Bore of the Nerbudda—Nelcynda—The
Direct Route to India—Voyage of Hippalus—Notices of Eastern Asia—
This (China)—Dionysius Pericgetes—His Date—His Geographical Poem
—Its General Geography—Description of Africa—Of Europe—Of the
Islands—Of Asia—General Remarks upon it—Progressive Knowledge of
Britain—Conquests of Claudius, Suetonius Paullinus, Agricola, and
Antoninus Pius—Germany and Scandinavia—Dacia conquered by Trajan
—Suetonius Paullinus crosses the Adas—Nero's Expedition to the Nile—
The Marshy Region.
THE writers on geography of the period which immediately
followed the Augustan age—Mela and Pliny—are
of a completely different type from those of whom Writers on
we have hitherto been speaking. They are the only Gco«iaPhy-
Roman writers on this subject whose works we possess, and they
forcibly illustrate the inferiority of the Roman to the Greek intellect
in its manner of dealing with such a theme. It has been aptly
remarked, that the task which Eratosthenes set himself of measur-
ing the earth by means of the heavenly bodies, and that of Agrippa,
who measured the Roman provinces by milestones, may be taken
as typical of the genius of the two nationalities respectively1; and
1 J. Partsch, quoted by Berger, Gachichie d# Erdkunfk^ 4. p, 30,