286 GEOGRAPHY FROM AUGUSTUS TO TRAJAN. [CHAP.
for some distance underground1. The direction followed by the
Indus is also carefully given, with the two branches into which it
divides as it approaches the sea, and the district of Patalene which
intervenes between them8. Of the fertility and valuable products
of India he gives an enthusiastic account; but in no part of his
poem is the writer's ignorance of recent discoveries more con-
spicuous than here, for he is unacquainted with the existence of
the peninsula of Hindustan and the Bay of Bengal, and he still
represents the Ganges as flowing into the Eastern Sea.
The geographical sketch of the world, which has thus been
described in outline, is interspersed with notices of
the peculiar features and products of the different
countries, and of the customs of various tribes,
together with legends and mythological stories which were asso-
ciated with them. As may be supposed, it is not altogether
homogeneous, for the store of facts which it contains has been
gathered from various quarters, and from authorities widely
differing in date, so that it does not represent the world as it
existed at any one particular period. Callimachus and Apollonius
Rhodius were among the author's geographical authorities. Still,
this medley of information, clothed as it is in easily flowing metre,
is even at the present day sufficiently pleasant reading, so that its
popularity at the time when it was composed is easily accounted
for. The permanent influence which it exercised is proved by its
having been translated into Latin verse in the fourth century, for
the benefit of readers unacquainted with the Greek language, by
Avienus, the author of the Ora Maritima, which work has already
attracted our attention as containing passages derived from the
narrative of the voyage of the Carthaginian explorer, Himilco8.
Another Latin translation, which was made at a later period by
Priscian the grammarian, became a geographical text-book for
school-boys in the middle ages*. The Periegesis was made the
subject of an elaborate commentary by Eustathius of Thessalonica
in the twelfth century, and in the West its statements reappear in
later writers. An edition of it was issued at an early date after
1 Dionys., Perieg*, w. 987 foil. s w. 1088 folL
8 v. supra^ p. 109.
4 Bevan and Phillott, Mediaeval Geography^ p. xxix.