Strabo (c. 50 B.C.-A.D. 24) followed Eratosthenes rather than Aristotle, but with sympathies which went out more to the human interests than the mathematical basis of geography. He compiled a very remarkable work dealing, in large measure from personal travel, with the countries surrounding the Mediterranean. He may be said to have set the pattern which was followed in succeeding ages by the compilers of "political geographies" dealing less with theories than with facts, and illustrating rather than formulating the principles of the science. Ptolemy. Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. A.D. 150) concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning, and passed it across the gulf of the middle ages by the hands of the Arabs, to form the starting-point of the science in modern times. His geography was based more immediately on the work of his predecessor, Marinus of Tyre, and on that of Hipparchus, the follower and critic of Eratosthenes. It was the ambition of Ptolemy to describe and represent accurately the surface of the _oekumene_, for which purpose he took immense trouble to collect all existing determinations of the latitude of places, all estimates of longitude, and to make every possible rectification in the estimates of distances by land or sea. His work was mainly cartographical in its aim, and theory was as far as possible excluded. The symmetrically placed hypothetical islands in the great continuous ocean disappeared, and the _oekumene_ acquired a new form by the representation of the Indian Ocean as a larger Mediterranean completely cut off by land from the Atlantic. The _terra incognita_ uniting Africa and Farther Asia was an unfortunate hypothesis which helped to retard exploration. Ptolemy used the word _geography_ to signify the description of the whole _oekumene_ on mathematical principles, while _chorography_ signified the fuller description of a particular region, and _topography_ the very detailed description of a smaller locality. He introduced the simile that geography represented an artist's sketch of a whole portrait, while chorography corresponded to the careful and detailed drawing of an eye or an ear.[5]