the Eastern portion, and Honorius, the younger, the Western. [Jan. 17,
395 A.D.] But the Roman power had been thus divided as far back as the
time of Constantine and his sons; for he transferred his government to
Byzantium, and making the city larger and much more renowned, allowed it
to be named after him.

Now the earth is surrounded by a circle of ocean, either entirely or for
the most part (for our knowledge is not as yet at all clear in this
matter); and it is split into two continents by a sort of outflow from
the ocean, a flow which enters at the western part and forms this Sea
which we know, beginning at Gadira[1] and extending all the way to the
Maeotic Lake.[2] Of these two continents the one to the right, as one
sails into the Sea, as far as the Lake, has received the name of Asia,
beginning at Gadira and at the southern[3] of the two Pillars of
Heracles. Septem[4] is the name given by the natives to the fort at that
point, since seven hills appear there; for "septem" has the force of
"seven" in the Latin tongue. And the whole continent opposite this was
named Europe. And the strait at that point separates the two
continents[5] by about eighty-four stades, but from there on they are
kept apart by wide expanses of sea as far as the Hellespont. For at this
point they again approach each other at Sestus and Abydus, and once more
at Byzantium and Chalcedon as far as the rocks called in ancient times
the "Dark Blue Rocks," where even now is the place called Hieron. For at
these places the continents are separated from one another by a distance
of only ten stades and even less than that.

Now the distance from one of the Pillars of Heracles to the other, if
one goes along the shore and does not pass around the Ionian Gulf and
the sea called the Euxine but crosses from Chalcedon[6] to Byzantium and
from Dryous[7] to the opposite mainland,[8] is a journey of two hundred