Many of the particulars which we have given on the subject of the Roman
trade are supplied by Pliny, who wrote his natural history when Rome was in
its most flourishing state under the reign of Vespasian. His works consist
of thirty-seven books, the first six comprise the system of the world and
the geography as it was then known. After examining the accounts of
Polybius, Agrippa, and Artemidorus, he assigns the following comparative
magnitudes to the three great divisions of the earth. Europe rather more
than a third, Asia about a fourth, and Africa about a fifth of the whole.
With few exceptions, his geographical knowledge of the east and of the
north, the parts of the world of which the ancients were the most ignorant,
was very inaccurate: he supposes the Ganges to be the north-eastern limit
of Asia, and that from it the coast turned to the north, where it was
washed by the sea of Serica, between which and a strait, which he imagined
formed a communication from the Caspian to the Scythian ocean, he admits
but a very small space. According to the system of Pliny, therefore, the
ocean occupied the whole county of Siberia, Mogul Tartary, China, &c. He
derived his information respecting India from the journals of Nearchus, and
the other officers of Alexander; and yet such is his ignorance, or the
corrupt state of the text, or the vitiated medium through which he received
his information, that it is not easy to reconcile his account with that of
Nearchus.
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