I'd like to share with you an extract where Strabo presents his ideas about the graphic representation of the known world and Eratosthenes offers his description of the "human planet".
Another argument that flared up the ancient community of
scholars referred to the extent of the oikoumene, i.e.” the world which we
inhabit and know.” (2). Strabo imposed upon a geographer the primary task of
understanding “our inhabited world-its size, shape, and character, and its
relation to earth as a whole”. (3) To achieve this goal, an explorer had to
focus on the “human planet”, omitting the fringes and unfamiliar regions: “the
geographer undertakes to describe the known parts of the inhabited world, but
he leaves out of consideration the unknown parts… as he does what is outside of
it”. (4) The "blank spots" on the map, confined within unsettled territories of deserts and steppes, seemed both unattainable and culturally underdeveloped.
They emitted warning signs not only in spatial, but also in existential sense.
The learned men figured out the oikumene
as a far-flung island which is encompassed by the treacherous waters of the Ocean Sea.
What lay beyond the shoreline was anyone's guess that should not bother a
qualified specialist since his expertise was derived from travel accounts
supported by scientific evidence. Another major source of data was military
campaigns: “The spread of the empires of the Romans and the Parthians has
presented to geographers of today a considerable addition to our empirical knowledge.”
(5)
One could draw this
spacious enclave by connecting its farthest points: “joining with a straight line the extreme
points reached on the coasting voyages made on both sides of the inhabited
world.” (6) A mapmaker would focus on the dry land, marking its major rivers
and main mountain ranges; he takes an interest in the sea only to spot populated islands.
Geography owes its name to
Eratosthenes of Kyrene who baptized a new discipline. An outstanding Greek
scholar and a curator of the Library of Alexandria, he adjusted his virtual
model of the Earth along the prime parallel and meridian, which intersected on
the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea.
His entire inhabited world lay
in the Northern Hemisphere. It resembled a soldier's cloak bound tight at the
top and loose at the bottom, with tapered ends in the east and west. Its
northern edge lay on the parallel of Thule (66 degrees North), a legendary
island in the extreme north, while its southern margin extended as far as the
Cinnamon country, (12 degrees North) in southern Sudan, close to the mouth of
the Red Sea, and a mysterious island of Taprobane (Sri Lanka), off the coast of
India. (7)
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