An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients / by Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
- George Cornewall Lewis
- Date:
- 1862
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients / by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![west, in the middle of the ocean; and as hardly known even to a few persons. (15°) The campaigns of Csesar opened Gaul and Britain to the Romans, and after a time their knowledge extended to northern Germany and to the Scandinavian peninsula, which, however, they supposed to be a group of islands. The German Ocean was first navigated by Drusus, who in 12 B.C. reached the sea by the Rhine, and landed on the coast of Eriesland.(151) Six- teen years afterwards (4 a.d.) Tiberius sent a flotilla down the Rhine, with orders to follow the coast eastward, and to sail up the Elbe, until he himself effected a junction by his land forces with his naval armament. This junction was successfully ac- complished, and is celebrated with merited praises by Velleius, who speaks of this fleet sailing to the Elbe through a sea pre- viously unknown and unheard of. (152) Strabo declares that all the region beyond the Elbe, adjoin- ing the ocean, was unknown in his time. ' No one (he adds) is recorded to have navigated along this coast eastward as far as the mouths of the Caspian Sea; the Romans have not pene- trated beyond the Elbe; and no one has made the journey by land.'(153) It will be observed that Strabo seems quite igno- rant of any voyages of Phoenician ships to the west of the Elbe. The original belief was, that the ocean flowed from Scythia, round the north of Germany and Gaul, to Iberia and the Pillars of Hercules; and that in this northern ocean there were many large islands. Pliny mentions that islands of vast size, lying off the coast of Germany, had been recently discovered in his (150) i. 2. On the supposed situation of Tkule, see Humboldt, Examen de la Geogr. du Nouv. Cont. torn. ii. p. 214. (151) Tac. Germ. 34; Merivale's Romans under the Empire, vol. iv. p. 229. [Classis Romana] ab ostio Rheni ad solis orientis regionem usque ad [orbis extrem]a navigavit, quo neque terra neque mari quisquam Romanorum ante id tempus adit, Tab. Ancyr. (152) ii. 106 ; Merivale, ib. p. 309. (153) vii.2, 4.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21015855_0489.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
