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+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: | | | | In this book many city names are spelled in different ways. | | When the correct spelling is obvious these have been corrected | | for the sake of consistency. See the list of modern spellings | | at the end of volume III. | +----------------------------------------------------------------+
LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCLVI.
The remaining parts of Macedonia are considered, and the whole of Greece; on this the author dwells some time on account of the great reputation of the country. He corrects minutely, and clears up, the confused and vague accounts respecting the cities contained therein, given by poets and historians, and especially in the Catalogue and in many other parts of the Poem.
1. After having described as much of the western parts of Europe as is comprised within the interior and exterior seas, and surveyed all the barbarous nations which it contains, as far as the Don[1] and a small part of Greece, [namely, Macedonia,][2] we propose to give an account of the remainder of the Helladic geography. Homer was the first writer on the subject of geography, and was followed by many others, some of whom composed particular treatises, and entitled them “Harbours,” “Voyages,” “Circuits of the Earth,”[3] or gave them some name of this kind, and these comprised the description of the Helladic country. Some, as Ephorus and Polybius, included in their general history a separate topography of the continents; others, as Posidonius and Hipparchus, introduced matter relating to geography in their writings on physical and mathematical subjects.
It is easy to form an opinion of the other writers, but the poems of Homer require critical consideration, both because he speaks as a poet, and because he describes things not as [CAS. 333] they exist at present, but as they existed anciently, and the greater part of which have been rendered obscure by time.
We must however undertake this inquiry as far as we are able, beginning from the point where our description ended.