case communication was kept up between the colonies and the
mother-country.

Now, the one quality which has made the Greeks so distinguished
in the world's history was their curiosity; and it was natural
that they should desire to know, and to put on record, the large
amount of information brought to the mainland of Greece from the
innumerable Greek colonies. But to record geographical knowledge,
the first thing that is necessary is a map, and accordingly it is
a Greek philosopher named ANAXIMANDER of Miletus, of the sixth
century B.C., to whom we owe the invention of map-drawing. Now,
in order to make a map of one's own country, little astronomical
knowledge is required. As we have seen, savages are able to draw
such maps; but when it comes to describing the relative positions
of countries divided from one another by seas, the problem is not
so easy. An Athenian would know roughly that Byzantium (now called
Constantinople) was somewhat to the east and to the north of him,
because in sailing thither he would have to sail towards the rising
sun, and would find the climate getting colder as he approached
Byzantium. So, too, he might roughly guess that Marseilles was
somewhere to the west and north of him; but how was he to fix the
relative position of Marseilles and Byzantium to one another? Was
Marseilles more northerly than Byzantium? Was it very far away
from that city? For though it took longer to get to Marseilles,
the voyage was winding, and might possibly bring the vessel
comparatively near to Byzantium, though there might be no direct
road between the two cities. There was one rough way of determining
how far north a place stood: the very slightest observation of the
starry heavens would show a traveller that as he moved towards
the north, the pole-star rose higher up in the heavens. How much