Three Geographic Divisions of the World
This principle established as universally applicable to
note
the world, the next point will be to make the
geography of our own part of it intelligible by a
corresponding division.
It falls, then, into three divisions, each distinguished by a
particular name,—Asia, Libya, Europe. note The boundaries are
respectively the Don, the Nile, and the Straits of the Pillars of
Hercules. Asia lies between the Don and the Nile, and lies
under that portion of the heaven which is between the northeast and the south. Libya lies between the Nile and the Pillars
of Hercules, and falls beneath the south portion of the heaven,
extending to the south-west without a break, till it reaches the
point of the equinoctial sunset, which corresponds with the
Pillars of Hercules. These two divisions of the earth, therefore, regarded in a general point of view, occupy all that part
which is south of the Mediterranean from east to west.
Europe with respect to both of these lies to the north facing
them, and extending continuously from east to west. Its most
important and extensive part lies under the northern sky
between the river Don and the Narbo, which is only a short
distance west of Marseilles and the mouths by which the Rhone
discharges itself into the Sardinian Sea. From Narbo is the
district occupied by the Celts as far as the Pyrenees, stretching
continuously from the Mediterranean to the Mare Externum.
The rest of Europe south of the Pyrenees, to the point where
it approaches the Pillars of Hercules, is bounded on one side
by the Mediterranean, on the other by the Mare Externum:
and that part of it which is washed by the Mediterranean as
far as the Pillars of Hercules is called Iberia, while the part
which lies along the Outer or Great Sea has no general name,
because it has but recently been discovered, and is inhabited
entirely by barbarous tribes, who are very numerous, and of
whom I will speak in more detail hereafter.
