Thus we have found geographical knowledge, so far as it is possible to trace its acquisition at all, to have been acquired for purely commercial purposes, and it remained for the Greeks to seek for such knowledge for its own sake. It has been well said that the science of geography was the invention of the Greeks.
The birthplace of Greek geographical theory is to be found, not in Greece proper, but in Asia Minor. Miletus, a seaport of Ionia, near the mouth of the Mæander, became the leading Greek city during the seventh to the sixth centuries B.C., trading as far as Egypt and throwing off colonies especially towards the north, on the shores of the Hellespont and the Euxine. It was thus an obvious repository for geographical knowledge, besides being a famous centre of learning in a wider sense. Thales of Miletus (640–546 B.C.), father of Greek philosophers, geometers, and astronomers, may have learnt astronomy from a Babylonian master in Cos, and became acquainted with Egyptian geometry by visiting that country; he applied geometrical theory to the practical measurement of height and distance. He has been wrongly credited with the conception of the earth as a sphere. That conception is actually credited to Pythagoras, who, born in Samos probably in 582 B.C., settled in the Dorian colony of Crotona in Southern Italy about 529 and founded the Pythagorean school of philosophy. He (or his school), however, evolved the correct conception of the form of the earth rather by accident (so far as concerns any scientific consideration) than by design, for the Pythagorean reasoning was abstract in nature, in distinction from that of the Ionian school, which sought material explanations for the phenomena of the universe. The Pythagoreans (whose view does not greatly affect the later history of geographical theory) conceived the earth as a globe revolving in space, with other planets, round an unseen central fire whose light was reflected by the sun, just as the moon reflects the sun’s light. Later the philosopher Parmenides, of Elea in Italy (_c._ 500 B.C.), considered the universe to be composed of concentric spheres or zones consisting of the primary elements of fire and darkness or night. Anaximander (611-_c._ 547 B.C.), a disciple of the more practical Ionian school, and a pupil or companion of Thales, conceived an earth of the form of a cylinder. He is said to have introduced into Greece the gnomon, a primitive instrument for determining time and latitude, and to have made a map. The first actual record of a Greek or Miletan map, however, occurs half a century after his time, when in 499 B.C. Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, asked aid of Cleomenes of Sparta against Persia, and showed him a map, engraved on bronze, of the route of his proposed expedition. Anaximenes, of Anaximander’s school, gave the earth an oblong rectangular form.