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An historical disquisition concerning the knowledge which the ancients had of India : and the progress of trade with that country prior to the discovery of the passage to it by the Cape of Good Hope : with an appendix ... / by William Robertson ...
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NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

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NOTE XXVI. Sect. II. x.. 68.

Strabo acknowledges his neglect of the improvements ingeography which Hipparchus had deduced from astronomicalobservations , and justifies it by one of those logicalsubtleties which the ancients were apt to introduce into alltheir writings. A geographer, fays he, (i. e. adefcriber of the earth) ct is to pay no attention to whata is out of the earth; nor will men, engaged in conduct-<c ing the affairs of that part of the earth which is inhabit-cc ed, deem the distinction and divisions of Hipparchus worthy of notice Lib. ii. 194. C.

NOTE XXVII. Sect. II. p. 68-

What a high opinion thtz ancients had of Ptolemy ,we learn from Agathemerus, who flourished not long afterhim. Ptolemy, says he, who reduced geography into a regular system, treats of every thing relating toa it, not carelessly, or merely according to ideas of his own ; but attending to what had been delivered by more ancient authors, he adopted from them whatever he" found consonant to truth. Epitome Geogr. lib. i.c. 6. edit. Hudson. From the same admiration of hiswork, Agathodæmon, an artist of Alexandria, prepared aseries of maps for the illustration of it, in which theposition of all the places mentioned by Ptolemy, withtheir longitude and latitude , is laid down precisely accord-ing to his ideas. Fabric. Biblioth. Græc. iii. 412.