Book 1
4.7
There has been much argument respecting the continents. Some, considering them to be divided by the rivers Nile and Tanais,The Nile being thought to separate Africa from Asia, and the Tanais, or Don, Europe. have described them as islands; while others suppose them to be peninsulas connected by the isthmuses between the Caspian and the Euxine Seas, and between the Erythraean SeaThe Red Sea. and Ecregma.The name of the mouth of the lake Sirbonis or Sebaket-Bardoil, which opens into the Mediterranean. A line drawn from this embouchure to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf, would give the boundary between Africa and Asia. He adds, that this question does not appear to him to be of any practical importance, but rather, as Democritus observed, a bone of contention for angry litigants. Where there are no precise boundary marks, columns, or walls, as at Colyttus and Melitè,Places in Attica. it is easy for us to say such a place is Colyttus, and such another Melitè, but not so easy to show the exact limits: thus disputes have frequently arisen concerning certain districts; that, for instance, between the Argives and Lacedaemonians concerning [the possession of] Thyrea,Probably Thyros, a place situated close to the sea, just at the boundary of the two countries. and that between the Athenians and Boeotians relative to Oropus.Oropo, on the confines of Attica and Boeotia. Further, in giving names to the three continents, the Greeks did not take into consideration the whole habitable earth, but merely their own country and the land exactly opposite, namely, Caria, which is now inhabited by the Ionians and other neighbouring tribes. In course of time, as they advanced further and daily became acquainted with new countries, this their division came to be general.”
