with the correct ideas on both subjects possessed by Herodotus. The
later Geographers no doubt knew his statements, but did not appreciate
them, probably from not possessing the evidence on which they were based.

[Sidenote: General characteristics of Mediaeval Cosmography.]

80. As regards the second cause alleged, we may say that down nearly to
the middle of the 15th century cosmographers, as a rule, made scarcely any
attempt to reform their maps by any elaborate search for new matter, or by
lights that might be collected from recent travellers. Their world was in
its outline that handed down by the traditions of their craft, as
sanctioned by some Father of the Church, such as Orosius or Isidore, as
sprinkled with a combination of classical and mediaeval legend; Solinus
being the great authority for the former. Almost universally the earth's
surface is represented as filling the greater part of a circular disk,
rounded by the ocean; a fashion that already existed in the time of
Aristotle and was ridiculed by him.[1] No dogma of false geography was
more persistent or more pernicious than this. Jerusalem occupies the
central point, because it was found written in the Prophet Ezekiel: "_Haec
dicit Dominus Deus: Ista est Jerusalem_, in medio gentium _posui eam, et
in circuitu ejus terras_;"[2] a declaration supposed to be corroborated by
the Psalmist's expression, regarded as prophetic of the death of Our Lord:
"_Deus autem, Rex noster, ante secula operatus est salutem_ in medio
Terrae" (Ps. lxxiii. 12).[3] The Terrestrial Paradise was represented as
occupying the extreme East, because it was found in Genesis that the Lord
planted a garden east ward in Eden.[4] _Gog and Magog_ were set in the far
north or north-east, because it was said again in Ezekiel: "_Ecce Ego
super te Gog Principem capitis Mosoch et Thubal ... et ascendere te faciam
de lateribus Aquilonis_," whilst probably the topography of those
mysterious nationalities was completed by a girdle of mountains out of the
Alexandrian Fables. The loose and scanty nomenclature was mainly borrowed
from Pliny or Mela through such Fathers as we have named; whilst vacant
spaces were occupied by Amazons, Arimaspians, and the realm of Prester
John. A favourite representation of the inhabited earth was this [Symbol];
a great O enclosing a T, which thus divides the circle in three parts; the
greater or half-circle being Asia, the two quarter circles Europe and
Africa.[5] These