He certainly knew the real course of the Niger. On
the east coast of Africa he was well acquainted with the shores of the
Arabian Gulph; but though he sometimes mentions Carthage, and describes the
traffic carried on, without the intervention of language, between the
Carthaginians and a nation beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which we nave
already mentioned in treating of the commerce of the Carthaginians, yet he
seems to have been unacquainted with any point between Carthage and the
Pillars of Hercules.
In the history of Herodotus, there is an account of a map constructed by
Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, when he proposed to Cleomenes, king of
Sparta, to attack Darius, king of Persia, at Susa; from this account, the
vague, imperfect, and erroneous ideas entertained in his time of the
relative situations and distances of places, as well as of the extremely
rude and feeble advances which had been made towards the construction of
maps, may be inferred. Major Rennell, in his Illustrations of Herodotus,
has endeavoured to ascertain from his history the parallel and meridian of
Halicarnassus, the birth-place of the historian. According to him, they
intersect at right angles over that town, cutting the 37th degree of north
latitude, and the 45-1/2 of east longitude, from the Fortunate Islands.
For a considerable period after the time of Herodotus, the ancients seem to
have been nearly stationary in their knowledge of the world.
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