Of the knowledge which the Greeks possessed at this time, on the subject of geography, we must draw our most accurate and fullest account from the writings of Homer and Hesiod.  The former represents the shield of Achilles as depicting the countries of the globe; on it the earth was figured as a disk surrounded by the ocean; the centre of Greece was represented as the centre of the world; the disk included the Mediterranean Sea, much contracted on the west, and the Egean and part of the Euxine Seas.  The Mediterranean was so much contracted on this side, that Ithaca, and the neighbouring continent, or at the farthest, the straits which separate Sicily from Italy, were its limits.  Sicily itself was just known only as the land of wonders and fables, though the fable of the Cyclops, who lived in it, evidently must nave been derived from some obscure report of its volcano.  The fables Homer relates respecting countries to the west of Sicily, cannot even be regarded as having any connection with, or resemblance to the truth.  Beyond the Euxine also, in the other direction, all is fable.  Colchis seems to have been known, though not so accurately as the recent Argonautic expedition might have led us to suppose it would have been.  The west coast of Asia Minor, the scene of his great poem, is of course completely within his knowledge; the Phoenicians and Egyptians are particularly described, the former for their purple stuffs, gold and silver works, maritime science and commercial skill, and cunning; the latter for their river Egyptos, and their knowledge of medicine.  To the west of Egypt he places Lybia, where he says the lambs are born with horns, and the sheep bring forth three times a year.

In the Odyssey he conducts Neptune into Ethiopia; and the account he gives seems to warrant the belief, that by the Ethiopians he meant not merely the Ethiopians of Africa, but the inhabitants of India:  we know that the ancients, even so late as the time of Strabo and Ptolemy, considered all those nations as Ethiopians who lived upon the southern ocean from east to west; or, as Ptolemy expresses it, that under the zodiac, from east to west, inhabit the inhabitants black of colour.  Homer represents these two nations as respectively the last of men, one of them on the east and the other on the west.  From his description of the gardens of Alcinous, it may even be inferred that he had received some information respecting the climate of the tropical regions; for this description appears to us rather borrowed from report, than entirely the produce of imagination.

    Close to the gates a spacious garden lies,
  From storms defended and inclement skies. 
  Four acres was th’ allotted space of ground,
  Fenc’d with a green enclosure all around,
  Tall thriving trees confess’d the fruitful mould;
  The red’ning apple ripens here to gold. 
  Here the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows,
  With deeper red the full pomegranate glows,