DOCSLIB.ORG

3P OHIO. Beyond the Dreamers, and the Approach to the Infernal Regions

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
3P OHIO. Beyond the Dreamers, and the Approach to the Infernal Regions beyond the dreamers, and the approach Iona or the Irish were not, perhaps, the Sfcakcspcaro at Sohpol.' of London, has recently proposed a what chance there would be in the to the infernal regions was neiir at hand. first tishers or oven forgotten colonists plan for the abolition of tho liver. It is citv for .him. The country seems small Froni various sources, contemporary & well-known principle of the develop­ to him; the city large. He feels the 3P The polar ico* snow and darkness were at that strange island. According to nndyquasi-oontemporary, we may form naturally supposed to be pretty near Tacitus an expedition sent by Agricola ment, theory that an organ or limb gqsjsip that-flutters ,about his ears to-be a/trustworthy -general estimate of which is notused-grMual&disappears. disgusting and degrading; and chafes the point where extremes meet. Turn­ conquered the inhabitants of the Ork­ Shakespeare's course of inatructioa. ing away from this awful country, the neys -And proceeded so far into the Thus; the ancestral tail of the human under ~the Bondage^ imposed -by Bis OHIO. during his school days. At that time, species disappeared affervprimeval man neighbors through .their surveillance'of Argonauts, with favoring winds, 'sailed Northern Ocean as even to see Thulo as we nave seen, boys usually^ went to into tha ocean of the west, passing (Icelandic a nlace of show and winjtry ceased tQ use it in climbuuzixaaa. ami JUxaLnrltlainm txrwcm^WlLUiaotuma Ha ror^somerea- the latesVsevenuyears or age, BJRTCTP »>M'>T» mj auuvuia -xatxm- vrnv xivsuu Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gib­ the land of the Sviones (SoandinavTans) the practice of cramping tnemvcogetn "— —1 hn tered at once upon the. Accidence. In er with iron shoes came in fashion. If Hons WUUIU *r-«v#*ij raltar). The strange darkness of the is a. sea strangely languid and; motion­ his first year, therefore, Shakespeare is. less known, and less cared for. ~ %IOK the earliest days of the Arian far North was believed to bo caused less, and that the light of the night is We accustom- ourselves to living with­ would be occupied with the Accidence. out giving any employment to the liver,, - There is still another class of country the march of enterprise has been somehow by the peculiar shadows of far greater than the luster of the stars. In his second year, with the elements people who long for a city life, and . J^s£Sa^ely .and steadily to the West great mountains. The darkness of the. The noise of the sun's Ught^when that wejnallJi(^_fedthat orgfta shrinking wh"Hft n*ni'iitti«Mift.M.iid- riignnsiliraagjtra ., £__^x3pQ5eil^^ muMTe^'^eMitenaWlre'asona^re^' naiof short phraser and TamuiaFuia- 1,w3 sctlvity and aiaoovery has now become led^the voyagers of ancient times to be? heard, and tho gods could almost be logues, and these, committed to memo­ onlyrem^m~8"to nW^ome^metnoa oircmnreuoro^^±rr^^ Ad- a oircJeV-BeWng^the earth. All mun­ lieve that an the farthest parts of the seen as they moved about crowned with ry, would be colloouially employed,"in. dispensing with the liver, and we shall [They arejnot so Tj^rtim^w.viSS^-TR^-- dane questions are answered or in hand ocean were shrouded in gloom; henco glorious lighj*^ Here we ha.ve a poeti- *i / - . -^^^xjiaraaasAnesffTjr"about wealffi^ot.do.they.care „»^» _^. —..». .—. - —— — — - iu<rirsm~ui - »m> ouiiuat.~ "m joiiFxnirfl om ttucuuiyt or tne aurora' noreaus, of yoke. ^efinitely_about• L -1 « .8uperio. - r socia• 1l privil• M­ year, if not. before, he. would take up Anatotni eges, or about^ih^jW?J^&.^^2^i^^ "xion&u' The poles alone now reserve I west of the pillars of Hercules was far the pecniiar rustling^ouad jpften Jieard CaWs "Maxims" and"2Esop's "Fa­ inform""iis that we have J •» "*~*^^r^^.>^^"^tp#~^yoMir*^jf"^6iji^^^c^tt^s^^^^^' '" during the most brilliant exhibitions of '5£m£&rt£htoklfcf ttan in "the country; ^Eveh-lnto the bles." In his fourth, wfege^ 1 pfcy8ic2©ndeaYor to reach andrev&i latter part of the-Middle Ages this idaa the phenomenon of " northern lights," '^Vt'-a^v ^dreiy ^'btnamenfcatr The They are simply gregarious. They like the "Fables," he wdula reaa tl Frenchman believes that, the ,. spleen Every high quality in man's constitu­ western Sea of Darkness pre- a suggestion of the remarkable bright- logues of Mantuanus," parts' of Ovid, a orowd, even if they have to live in a tion is demanded in the work that shall among geographers and naviga­ ness of the greater part of the Arctic auses the average Englishman to use "mess." Th«y are BO-fpnd'-ofiliving some of Cicero's '«Epistles," and,prob- strong language every day in the year, in a multitude that they are' willing to complete our knowledge of the world tors. Herodotus, called the "Father night, and the remarkable calmness of ably one of his shorter treatises ;'in his we'ltve on. The Polar regions are of HjstoryT^^hearing at least four hun­ the nerthernseas when sprinkled'with and to commit suicide every November, sacrifice many comforts to do it. Once fifth year he wonld continue the read­ but this is a mistake. The spleen is a in the city no.poverty will induce them now* as for «ges past, >he field of un­ dred and fortftfefi^e years before the floating ice. * ing of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," wjth finished research and adventure. Will Christian era of theiong nights at the Ptolemy (born at Pelesium, in Egypt, modest and unassuming-organ, which to leave it. They have no interest in^ the indomitable energy and efforts of Pole, could not believe that the people A. D., 70) in his great geography men­ parts of Vergil and Terrence; and in passes an existence of elegant leisure life outside of the city. These usually our age conquerthe terrible difficulties there could sleep for six months. tions Soania (Scandinavia). After the sixth, Horace, Plautus and proba- but there is every reason to suppose get to^the city in some way without and break through the obstacles barring Pytheas, a distingushed Greek navi- bly part of Juvenal and Fersus, with thalPwere it assigned any active duty it writing letters of inquiry. Ptolemy, in the second century, pre- s afcomplet© knowledge of the North ^ator, who lived at Marseilles, In pared his geography little was reported | BO?^J?C*!£! »{ e*l would perform it faithfully and well. Now,'it has probably surprised most lands and the Antarctic regions of the ^rance, when it was the seat of a flour­ hx regard to tie northern region/offH^ TraSedies- , 1x1. £oinS ^ugfa As Mr. Edmonds points out, the liver inquirers to receive uniformly discour­ S such a course, unless the teaching at is situated^>g.jjhe direct line of comma- aging answers to their questions. For<' 'world? A glance at some of the an­ ishing Greek colony, about S00 B. C, world for more than six hundred years. Stratford was exceptionally inefficient, cient voyages and later discoveries was perhaps the earliest known navi­ King Alfred of England, who reigned nica^jff* throag^whioh, the food from indeed, no man knows the trials of city the boy must have made some progress tjaSmomach passes-on its way to nour- life but those who have left quiet homes 'toward the North Pole, snch as may gator of the North Seas whose voyage from 871 to 901, translated the geogra­ in several of these authors, and ac­ not be generally well known, will doubt­ is now generally accepted as 'mainly phy of the Spanish monk Orosfus into $8jt£ xho body. The mraifcgeaes upon in the country and tried it. The great quired sufficient knowledge of the laujj •mis food, and by its means keeps itself trial that every man from- the country less be of interest The sea does not genuine. Pytheas sailed to Al-fionn the Anglo-Saxon language. Orosius guage to read fairly well at sightjpi? begin where we, standing upon tbe (Albion, the White Land, from its chalk prepared his famous work in the fifth in a state of .aggressive vigor. Over experiences on coming toihe city,even more popular poets and proseJpflSers, the same line pass the various medi­ supposing he has found employment, shore, seem first to behold a ship's cliffs,) and six days' sail beyond the century. Alfred added to his transla­ such as Ovid and CiceroTT^^masters faint and partial appearance at the dis­ farthest part thereof he reached Thule, tion of Orosius the narrative of a Nor­ cines oi which the liver is insatiable, or gone into business, relates to his of the school during tb^ftme Shakes­ and which are a source of such con­ home. His thousand dollars a year, tant horizon. The filmy and almost in the Northern Sea. There he found wegian noble named Other, who had peare attended itwpwfiS'seem, however, indistinguishable traco of the far-away fogs and wild coasts, and saw that made a voyage for discovery and wal­ stant and unsatisfactory expense. Were which in the country would give him a to have been at least of-average attain­ this line of communication to be out, snug littlehous'e and comfortable pro­ sails and th>m the blur of the rising the light of day did not altogether rus hunting to the North Cape of Nor­ ments and abRfty, as they rapidly hull are to theVeye as the myths and disappear for twenty-four hours. This way, and so along the coast eastward tbe liver would be isolated, and could vision, Would get him in a city only a gained pKjmotion.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Marine News Iucn Global Marine and Polar Programme
    MARINE NEWS IUCN GLOBAL MARINE AND POLAR PROGRAMME ISSUE 12 - NOVEMBER 2015 Climate Change Adaptation Special MARINE NEWS Issue 12 -November 2015 In this Issue... IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme 1 Editorial Rue Mauverney 28 By Pierre-Yves Cousteau 1196 Gland, Switzerland Tel +4122 999 0217 Fax +4122 999 0002 2 Overview of the GMPP www.iucn.org/marine 4 Global Threats Editing and design: Oceans and Climate Change, Alexis McGivern © Pierre-Yves Cousteau Ocean Warming, Ocean Acidifi- Back issues available cation, Plastic pollution The ocean is our future; for better or externalisation of environmental costs beginning of the “digitization of the at: www.iucn.org/about/ for worse. (to abolish the business practice of Earth”. How will Big Data shape con- work/programmes/marine/ deferring onto society and natural servation, sustainable development gmpp_newsletter “There are no passengers on space- capital all the negative impacts of and decision making? 12 Global Coasts ship Earth. We are all crew.” - Mar- economic activities), and the cogni- Front cover: © XL Catlin shall McLuhan, 1965. tive frameworks and values that we We are living a fascinating time, where Blue Solutions and Blue Forests, are conditioned for by mainstream the immense challenges mankind fac- Seaview Survey The advent of agriculture over 10,000 media and politicians (obsession with es are matched by the technological Vamizi, Maldives, WGWAP, BEST years ago had a profound socio-eco- financial success, personal image ability to innovate and adapt. The bar- Top picture: A fire coral be- Initiative nomic impact on mankind. Today and hedonism). These challenges riers that hold us back from designing fore and after bleaching.
    [Show full text]
  • The Extent of Indigenous-Norse Contact and Trade Prior to Columbus Donald E
    Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research Volume 6 | Issue 1 Article 3 August 2016 The Extent of Indigenous-Norse Contact and Trade Prior to Columbus Donald E. Warden Oglethorpe University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ojur Part of the Canadian History Commons, European History Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Medieval History Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, and the Scandinavian Studies Commons Recommended Citation Warden, Donald E. (2016) "The Extent of Indigenous-Norse Contact and Trade Prior to Columbus," Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 6 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ojur/vol6/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Extent of Indigenous-Norse Contact and Trade Prior to Columbus Cover Page Footnote I would like to thank my honors thesis committee: Dr. Michael Rulison, Dr. Kathleen Peters, and Dr. Nicholas Maher. I would also like to thank my friends and family who have supported me during my time at Oglethorpe. Moreover, I would like to thank my academic advisor, Dr. Karen Schmeichel, and the Director of the Honors Program, Dr. Sarah Terry. I could not have done any of this without you all. This article is available in Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ojur/vol6/iss1/3 Warden: Indigenous-Norse Contact and Trade Part I: Piecing Together the Puzzle Recent discoveries utilizing satellite technology from Sarah Parcak; archaeological sites from the 1960s, ancient, fantastical Sagas, and centuries of scholars thereafter each paint a picture of Norse-Indigenous contact and relations in North America prior to the Columbian Exchange.
    [Show full text]
  • 9 · the Growth of an Empirical Cartography in Hellenistic Greece
    9 · The Growth of an Empirical Cartography in Hellenistic Greece PREPARED BY THE EDITORS FROM MATERIALS SUPPLIED BY GERMAINE AUJAe There is no complete break between the development of That such a change should occur is due both to po­ cartography in classical and in Hellenistic Greece. In litical and military factors and to cultural developments contrast to many periods in the ancient and medieval within Greek society as a whole. With respect to the world, we are able to reconstruct throughout the Greek latter, we can see how Greek cartography started to be period-and indeed into the Roman-a continuum in influenced by a new infrastructure for learning that had cartographic thought and practice. Certainly the a profound effect on the growth of formalized know­ achievements of the third century B.C. in Alexandria had ledge in general. Of particular importance for the history been prepared for and made possible by the scientific of the map was the growth of Alexandria as a major progress of the fourth century. Eudoxus, as we have seen, center of learning, far surpassing in this respect the had already formulated the geocentric hypothesis in Macedonian court at Pella. It was at Alexandria that mathematical models; and he had also translated his Euclid's famous school of geometry flourished in the concepts into celestial globes that may be regarded as reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.). And it anticipating the sphairopoiia. 1 By the beginning of the was at Alexandria that this Ptolemy, son of Ptolemy I Hellenistic period there had been developed not only the Soter, a companion of Alexander, had founded the li­ various celestial globes, but also systems of concentric brary, soon to become famous throughout the Mediter­ spheres, together with maps of the inhabited world that ranean world.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cimbri of Denmark, the Norse and Danish Vikings, and Y-DNA Haplogroup R-S28/U152 - (Hypothesis A)
    The Cimbri of Denmark, the Norse and Danish Vikings, and Y-DNA Haplogroup R-S28/U152 - (Hypothesis A) David K. Faux The goal of the present work is to assemble widely scattered facts to accurately record the story of one of Europe’s most enigmatic people of the early historic era – the Cimbri. To meet this goal, the present study will trace the antecedents and descendants of the Cimbri, who reside or resided in the northern part of the Jutland Peninsula, in what is today known as the County of Himmerland, Denmark. It is likely that the name Cimbri came to represent the peoples of the Cimbric Peninsula and nearby islands, now called Jutland, Fyn and so on. Very early (3rd Century BC) Greek sources also make note of the Teutones, a tribe closely associated with the Cimbri, however their specific place of residence is not precisely located. It is not until the 1st Century AD that Roman commentators describe other tribes residing within this geographical area. At some point before 500 AD, there is no further mention of the Cimbri or Teutones in any source, and the Cimbric Cheronese (Peninsula) is then called Jutland. As we shall see, problems in accomplishing this task are somewhat daunting. For example, there are inconsistencies in datasources, and highly conflicting viewpoints expressed by those interpreting the data. These difficulties can be addressed by a careful sifting of diverse material that has come to light largely due to the storehouse of primary source information accessed by the power of the Internet. Historical, archaeological and genetic data will be integrated to lift the veil that has to date obscured the story of the Cimbri, or Cimbrian, peoples.
    [Show full text]
  • PEOPLE in the POLAR Regions
    TEACHING DOSSIER 2 ENGLISH, GEOGRAPHY, SCIENCE, HISTORY PEOPLE IN THE POLAR REGIONS ANTARCTIC, ARCTIC, PEOPLES OF THE ARCTIC, EXPLORATION, ADVENTURERS, POLAR BASES, INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR, SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, FISHING, INDUSTRY, TOURISM 2 dossier CZE N° 2 THEORY SECTION Living conditions in the Polar Regions are harsh: very low temperatures, violently strong winds, ground often frozen solid, alternation between long nights in winter and long days in summer and difficult access by any means of transportation. Yet despite everything, people manage to live either permanently or temporarily in these regions, which are unlike any other. Who are these people? PEOPLE IN THE ANTARCTIC Antarctica is a frozen continent surrounded by an immense ocean. The climate is so extreme that there is virtually no life at all on land; any life there is concentrated on the coast (seals, penguins, whales, etc.)1. No human beings live in Antarctica on a permanent basis; however people have managed to endure short and extended stays on the continent during the past 200 years. THE EXplorers: A BALANCE BETWEEN PHYSICAL ACHIEVEMENT AND science Because it was so difficult to reach, the Antarctic was the last region of the world to be explored. Until the 18th century, the frozen continent remained very much a figment of people’s imaginations. Then in 1773, the English navigator and explorer James Cook became the first man to reach the southernpolar circle (Antarctic Circle). Yet it was not until 1820 that the Russian navigator F.F. Bellingshausen and his men discovered that Antarctica was not just made entirely of sea ice, but a continent in its own right, because they saw a mountain there.
    [Show full text]
  • ROLF Gilbergl Numerous Place Names in Greenland Are Beset With
    Thule ROLF GILBERGl Numerous place names in Greenland are beset with some confusion, and Thule is possibly the most nonspecific of them all. An attempt has been made in the following paper, therefore, to set out some of the various meanings which have been attached to the word. ULTIMATHULE In times of antiquity, “Thule” was the name given to an archipelago far to the north of the Scandinavian seas.The Greek explorer Pytheas told his contemporaries about this far-awayplace, and about the year 330 B.C.he sailed northward from Marseilles in France in search of the source of amber. When he reached Britain, heheard of an archipelagofurther north known as “Thule”.The name was apparently Celtic;the archipelago what are now known as the Shetland Isles. AfterPytheas’ time, the ancientscalled Scandinavia “Thule”. In poetry,it became“Ultima Thule”, i.e. “farthest Thule”, a distantnorthern place, geo- ‘ graphically undefined and shrouded in esoteric mystery. As the frontiers of man’s exploration gradually expanded, the legendary Ultima Thule acquired a more northerly location. It moved with the Vikings from the Faroe Islands to Iceland, and, when Iceland was colonized in the ninth century A.D., Greenland became “Thule” in folklore. THULESTATION Perhap Knud Rasmussen had these historical facts in mind when he founded a trading post in 1910 among the Polar Eskimos and called the store “Thule Station”. The committee managing Rasmussen’s station was, incidentally, always referred to as the Cape York Committee, and the official name of the station was “Cape York Station, Thule”. Behind the pyramid-shaped base of the rock called Mount Dundas by British explorers, but generally known as Thule Mountain, on North Star Bay, the best natural harbour in the area, the Polar Eskimos hadplaced their settlement, Umanaq (meaning heart-shaped).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 TITLE: World According to Dicæarchus DATE: 300 BC AUTHOR
    World view according to Dicæarchus #111 TITLE: World according to Dicæarchus DATE: 300 B.C. AUTHOR: Dicæarchus of Messana DESCRIPTION: Pytheas (ca. 320-305), a contemporary of Alexander the Great, is significant for extending geographic knowledge of Western Europe, especially the coasts along the English Channel, and for his use of astronomical observations to compute latitudes. A navigator and astronomer from the Greek colony of Massalia [Marseilles], he explored the Ocean west of the European mainland and recorded his journey and observations in the work entitled On the Ocean, now lost but quoted and criticized by Strabo. Pytheas’ claim to have explored “in person” the entire northern region of Europe “as far as the ends of the world” met with disbelief by Strabo who accused him of shameless mendacity. Nonetheless, other writers used his observations. Most modern scholars agree that his journey in fact occurred, yet there is no consensus regarding its date or time or scope—perhaps reaching to islands north of Scotland, to Norway, to Jutland, or even to Iceland. Pytheas sailed from Massalia through the Pillars of Hercules {Straits of Gibraltar] up the Iberian coast to the Tin Islands (Cassiterges, whose location is contested) and across to Britain; next probably the coast to Scotland, its Northern Isles, and the island of Thule; then back east to the Baltic, where he found the source of amber on the island of Abalus. He described Britain as a triangle, and with reasonable accuracy he estimated the island’s circumference at more than 40,000 stadia, a length considered excessive by Strabo but accepted by Eratosthenes.
    [Show full text]
  • The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek Free
    FREE THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS THE GREEK PDF Professor of European Archaeology Barry Cunliffe | 208 pages | 04 Mar 2003 | Penguin Books | 9780142002544 | English | New York, NY, United States The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry W. Cunliffe Over 2, years ago, Pytheas of Massalia now Marseille embarked on an unprecedented journey to lands beyond the known boundaries of his world: the wilds of northern Europe. He was the first Greek to do so, and upon his return, he chronicled his adventures in On the Ocean —alas, no longer extant. Many ancient writers put little stock in its revelations. The Roman geographer Strabo and the Roman historian Polybius, for instance, questioned whether Pytheas even made the voyage The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek all. But Oxford archeologist Cunliffe The Ancient Celts argues that there is enough evidence to prove that Pytheas discovered tin fields in Brittany, amber forests in the Baltic region and Ultima Thule, or Iceland. In this dramatic piece of historical detective work, Cunliffe employs archeology, literary studies, geography and imagination The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek recreate Pytheas's possible routes from the Mediterranean to Iceland and back home again. Cunliffe also draws on the writings of Pliny the Elder and the geographer Dicaearchus to demonstrate that several of Pytheas's near contemporaries welcomed his discoveries about the nature of the solstice and the influence of the moon on the tides. Although Cunliffe often has to speculate in the absence of Pytheas's own words, he nevertheless amasses strong evidence that Pytheas did indeed make his voyage.
    [Show full text]
  • Linux Performance Analysis in 60,000 Milliseconds
    67 More Next Blog» [email protected] New Post Sign Out Monday, November 30, 2015 Links Linux Performance Analysis in 60,000 Milliseconds Netflix US & Canada Blog Netflix America Latina Blog You login to a Linux server with a performance issue: what do you check in the first minute? Netflix Brasil Blog At Netflix we have a massive EC2 Linux cloud, and numerous performance analysis tools to monitor and Netflix Benelux Blog investigate its performance. These include Atlas for cloud­wide monitoring, and Vector for on­demand instance analysis. While those tools help us solve most issues, we sometimes need to login to an instance Netflix DACH Blog and run some standard Linux performance tools. Netflix France Blog In this post, the Netflix Performance Engineering team will show you the first 60 seconds of an optimized Netflix Nordics Blog performance investigation at the command line, using standard Linux tools you should have available. Netflix UK & Ireland Blog Netflix ISP Speed Index First 60 Seconds: Summary In 60 seconds you can get a high level idea of system resource usage and running processes by running the Open positions at Netflix following ten commands. Look for errors and saturation metrics, as they are both easy to interpret, and then Netflix Website resource utilization. Saturation is where a resource has more load than it can handle, and can be exposed either as the length of a request queue, or time spent waiting. Facebook Netflix Page Netflix UI Engineering uptime dmesg | tail RSS Feed vmstat 1 mpstat -P ALL 1 pidstat 1 iostat -xz 1 About the Netflix Tech Blog free -m sar -n DEV 1 This is a Netflix blog focused on sar -n TCP,ETCP 1 technology and technology issues.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Landmarks in Icelandic Cartography Down to the End of The
    ARCTIC VOL. 37, NO. 4 (DECEMBER 198-4) P. 389-401 Some Landmarks in.keland-ic. Cartography down to the End of the Sixteenth Century HARALDUR. SIGURDSSON* Sometime between 350.and 310 B.C., it is thought, a Greek Adam of Bremen,and Sax0 ,Grammaticus both considered navigator, F‘ytheas of Massilia .(Marseilles), after a sail of six Iceland and Thule to be the same country. Adam is quite ex- daysfrom the British Isles, came to anunknown country plicit on the point:“This Thule is now named Iceland from the which hemmed Thule. The sources relating.to this voyageare ice which bind the sea” (von .Bremen, 1917:IV:36; Olrik and fragmentary and less explicit than one might wish. ‘The infor- Raeder, 1931:7). When the ,Icelanders themselves.began to mationis taken from its original contextand distorted in write about their country (Benediktsson, 1968:31) they were various ways. No one knows what country it wasthat F‘ytheas quite certain that Iceland was the same country as that which came upon farthest from his native shore, and most of the the Venerable Bede called by the name of Thule. .North Atlantic countries have been designated as .candidates. Oldest among .the maps on which Iceland is shown is the But in the.form in which it has come downto us, Pytheas’sac- Anglo-Saxon map, believed to have been made somewhere count does not, in reality, fit ,any of them. His voyage ‘will around the year 1OOO. If that dating is approximatelyright, this always remain one of the insoluble riddles of geographical is the first knownOccurrence in writing of the name history.
    [Show full text]
  • The Obliquity of the Ecliptic Pytheas Measures
    PYTHEAS MEASURES LOCATING THE OBLIQUITY OF THE ECLIPTIC Pytheas of Marseille (about 300 BC), sailor and astronomer. He made a famous trip to the limits of Northern Europe and made several astronomical measurements. The obliquity of the ecliptic is the angle between the Earth's orbital plane and the plane of the Earth's axis of rotation Evocation of Marseille at the time of Pytheas © J-M.Gassend equator. This angle allows astronomers to detect the obliquity movement of stars and planets in the sky. plane of equator What is the process of Pytheas ? summer solstice ecliptic plane of orbit equinox obliquity gnomon horizontal plane Pytheas uses a gnomon (vertical obelisk) measuring its shadow at the South North summer solstice and then at the equinox. The angle between the two radii is the looked-for angle. shadows of gnomon How Pytheas calculated the angle ? The vertical figure is first transferred to the ground in order to make the measurements more easy. The angle is measured as a fraction of total circumference, which was equinox shadow common at the time. solstice shadow South North The angle can be put 15 times in the circumference and there is a remainder. This remainder can be put 11 times in the angle, we neglect the second rest appearing. The circumference contains 15x11 + 1 = 166 times the rest, the angle is thus 11/166, which is 23°51', slightly higher than the current value 23°27' because of the long-term variations of the inclination of the axis of the Earth. 11 1 The writing = 1 11 166 15 + 10 11 9 is what is named now a 8 continued fraction 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 IREM Aix-Marseille http://www.irem.univ-mrs.fr/expo2013.
    [Show full text]
  • An Analysis of the Latitudinal Dataof Eratosthenes and Hipparchus
    NISSUNA UMANA INVESTIGAZIONE SI PUO DIMANDARE VERA SCIENZIA S’ESSA NON PASSA PER LE MATEMATICHE DIMOSTRAZIONI LEONARDO DA VINCI vol. 3 no. 4 2015 Mathematics and Mechanics of Complex Systems CHRISTIAN MARX AN ANALYSIS OF THE LATITUDINAL DATA OF ERATOSTHENES AND HIPPARCHUS msp MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS Vol. 3, No. 4, 2015 dx.doi.org/10.2140/memocs.2015.3.309 ∩ MM AN ANALYSIS OF THE LATITUDINAL DATA OF ERATOSTHENES AND HIPPARCHUS CHRISTIAN MARX The extant data on latitudes ascribed to Eratosthenes and Hipparchus have been compiled and tested for consistency using adjustment theory. For the detected inconsistencies new explanations are given concerning the origin of the data. Several inconsistent data can be ascribed to Strabo. Differences in Hipparchus’ data can often be explained by the different types and precision of the data. Gross errors in Eratosthenes’ data are explained by their origin in lengths of sea routes. From Eratosthenes’ data concerning Thule a numerical value for Eratosthenes’ obliquity of the ecliptic is deduced. 1. Introduction A precise specification of positions on the earth surface became possible in ancient geography by the introduction of reference systems and physical quantities for the description of positions. Eratosthenes (ca. 276–194 BC), founder of mathematical geography, introduced a grid of non-equidistant parallels and meridians for the positions of selected places. In his Geography he described the inhabited world using distance data and expressed his latitudinal data probably using meridian arc lengths. The astronomer and mathematician Hipparchus (ca. 190–120 BC) proba- bly introduced the division of the full circle into 360◦ into Greek astronomy and geography (e.g.,[Dicks 1960, p.
    [Show full text]