Amongst other authors who in this period of literary degeneration compiled geographical descriptions may be named: Ammianus Marcellinus (second half of the fourth century) in his historical works, Macrobius[126] (circa 400 A.D.), the Spaniard Paulus Orosius, whose widely read historical work (circa 418 A.D.) has a geographical chapter, Marcianus of Heraclea (beginning of the fifth century), Julius Honorius (beginning of the fifth century), Marcianus Capella (about 470 A.D.), Priscianus Cæsariensis (about 500 A.D.) and others.
Their statements about the northern regions are repetitions of older authors and contain nothing new.
Much of the geographical knowledge of that time was included in the already mentioned (p. 116) "Itineraries," which were probably illustrated with maps of the routes. Partial copies of one of them are preserved in the so-called "Tabula Peutingeriana" [cf. K. Miller, vi. 1898, pp. 90 ff.], which came to be of importance in the Middle Ages.
Thus at the close of antiquity the lands and seas of the North still lie in the mists of the unknown. Many indications point to constant communication with the North, and now and again vague pieces of information have reached the learned world. Occasionally, indeed, the clouds lift a little, and we get a glimpse of great countries, a whole new world in the North, but then they sink again and the vision fades like a dream of fairyland. It seems as though no one felt scientifically impelled to make an effort to clear up these obscure questions.
Then followed restless times, with roving warlike tribes in Central Europe. The peaceful trading communication between the Mediterranean and the northern coasts was broken off, and with it the fresh stream of information which had begun to flow in from the North. And for a long time men chewed the cud of the knowledge that had been collected in remote antiquity. But Greek literature was more and more forgotten, and it was especially the later Roman authors they lived on.
[Illustration: Map of the World from a ninth-century MS. (in the Strasburg Library)]
Thus it came about that the geographical knowledge of later antiquity shows nothing but a gradual decline from the heights which the Greeks had early reached, and from which they had surveyed the earth, the universe and their problems with an intellectual superiority that inclines one to doubt the progress of mankind. The early Middle Ages show an even greater decline. Rome, in spite of all, had formed a sort of scientific centre, which was lost to Western Europe by the fall of the Roman Empire. To this must be added the introduction of Christianity, which, for a time at any rate, gave mankind new values in life, whereby the old ones came into disrepute. Knowledge of distant lands, or of the still more distant heavens, was looked upon as something like folly and madness. For all knowledge was to be found in the Bible, and it was especially commendable to reconcile all profane learning therewith. When, for instance, Isaiah says of the Lord that He "sitteth upon the circle of the earth" (i.e., the round disc of the earth), and "stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" [xl. 22], and that He "spread forth the earth" [xlii. 5, xliv. 24], and when in the Book of Job [xxvi. 10] it is said that "He has compassed the waters with bounds, where light borders on darkness," such statements did not agree with the doctrine of the spherical form of the earth; this was therefore regarded with disfavour by the Church; the circular disc surrounded by Ocean, which was the idea of the childhood of Greece, was more suitable, and according to Ezekiel [v. 5-6] Jerusalem lay in the centre of this disc. It was inevitable that knowledge of the earth and of its farthest limits should be still more crippled in such an age, and this is especially true of knowledge of the North.