How Long Spans the Inhabited World?
Chapter 3 of my book focuses on the classical and medieval estimations of the length of the oikoumene. 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 desert...