8) founded on the fourth apocryphal book of Esdras.
Columbus, who derived a great portion of his cosmographical knowledge from
the cardinal's work, was much interested in upholding this idea of the
smallness of the sea, to which the misunderstood expression of "the ocean
stream" contributed not a little. See Humboldt, 'Examen Critique de l'Hist.
de la Geographie', t. i.,
p. 186.
The horizontal configuration of continents in their general relations of
extension was already made a subject of intellectual contemplation by the
ancient Greeks. Conjectures were advanced regarding the maximum of the
extension from west to east, and Dicaearchus placed it, according to the
testimony of Agathemerus, in the latitude of Rhodes, in the direction of a
line passing from the Pillars of Hercules to Thine. This line, which has
been termed 'the parallel of the diaphragm of Dicaearchus', is laid down
with an astronomical accuracy of position, which, as I have stated in
another work, is well worthy of exciting surprise and admiration.*
[footnote] *Agathemerus, in Hudson, 'Geographi Minores', t. ii., p. 4. See
Humboldt, 'Asie Centr.', t. i., p. 120-125.
Strabo, who was probably influenced by Eratosthenes, appears to have been so
firmly convinced that this parallel of 36 degrees was the maximum of the
extension of the then existing world, that he supposed it had some intimate
connection with the form of the earth, and therefore places under this line
the continent whose existence
p 290
he divined in the northern hemisphere, between Theria and the coasts of
Thine.
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