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Marcus Aurelius and the Small Earth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. O. Thomson
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Extract

Among the musings of Marcus Aurelius a recurrent theme is the narrow range of fame, which covers only a ‘corner’ of the entire earth, while the entire earth itself (the globe) is only a point in the universe. These ideas were not novel, but they are boldly worded and impressive as coming from a man who was obeyed from Clyde to Tigris. Just then ancient geography had reached its widest horizons: Ptolemy had stretched the known earth half-way round the globe from the Isles of the Blest (the Canaries) eastward to the capital of the Sinae beyond the port of Cattigara. One Alexander is named as sailing along this farthest eastern coast, and that there were other seamen like him is suggested by a Chinese notice of some merchants who arrived at the Tongking frontier in A.D. 166 and posed, or were mistaken, as envoys from An-tun, King of Ta-ts'in.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1-2 , November 1953 , pp. 47 - 48
Copyright
Copyright ©J. O. Thomson 1953. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Especially IV, 3, 3; VIII, 21: cf. also III, 10; VI, 36; IX, 30; XII, 32 (ed. Farquharson, 1944).

2 Published by L. Malleret at Saigon, 1946: G. Coedès, Les États hindouisés d'Indochine et d'Indonésie 2, 1948, 38, 71; J. Filliozat, Revue Historique, 1949, 23, etc.

3 See my History of Ancient Geography, 1948, 116 (later cited as HAG). For Plato, ibid. 90–3, 103–5. Niche, Phaedo, 108d–111c.

4 R. M. Jones, Class. Phil., 1923, 210; Neuenschwander, R., Mark Aurels Beziehungen zu Seneca und Poseidonios (Berne, 1951), 92 Google Scholar.

5 HAG 202–3 (the interpolar ocean should have been drawn wider).

6 HAG 212.

7 Tusc. Disp. I, 68; Jones, o.c., 211–12.

8 VI, 9–29. The order of the planets is not that of Posidonius, Neuenschwander, o.c., 90. Jones, o.c., 1926, 100 also argues against derivation from Posidonius.

9 Macrobius, in Somn. Scip. II, 10, 3Google Scholar; Boethius, , Cons. Phil. II, 7 Google Scholar; P. Courcelle, Les Lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore 2, 1948, 282.

10 Strabo 64–5; Pseudo-Arist. de Mundo, 392b; HAG 166, 213, 331.

11 NQ I prol. 13. Point, ibid. 8, ad Marciam de consolatione, 21, 2.

12 NH II, 174.