It was reserved for the demands of commerce to reveal the secrets of the west. But when the veil was finally removed it was easy for men to see that it had never been quite opaque. The learned turned naturally to their new-found classics, and were not slow to find the passages which seemed prophetic of America. Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle, and Theopompus, were soon pressed into the service, and the story of Atlantis obtained at once a new importance. I have tried to show in this chapter that these patrons of a revived learning put upon these statements an interpretation which they will not bear. The summing up of the whole matter cannot be better given than in the words applied by a careful Grecian historian to another question in ancient geography: “In some future time perhaps our pains may lead us to a knowledge of those countries. But all that has hitherto been written or reported of them must be considered as mere fable and invention, and not the fruit of any real search, or genuine information.”[329] CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. THE views of the ancient Mediterranean peoples upon geography are preserved almost solely in the ancient classics. The poems attributed to Homer and Hesiod, the so-called Orphic hymns, the odes of Pindar, even the dramatic works of Æschylus and his successors, are sources for the earlier time. The writings of the earlier philosophers are lost, and their ideas are to be found in later writers, and in compilations like the Biographies of Diogenes Laertius (3d cent. A.D.), the _De placitis philosophorum_ attributed to Plutarch, and the like. Among the works of Plato the _Phaedo_ and _Timaeus_ and the last book of the _Republic_ bear on the form and arrangement of the earth; the Timaeus and _Critias_ contain the fable of Atlantis. The first scientific treatises preserved are the _De Caelo_ and _Meteorologica_ of Aristotle.[330] It is needless to speak in detail of the geographical writers, accounts of whom will be found in any history of Greek and Roman literature. The minor pieces, such as the _Periplus_ of Hanno, of Scylax of Caryanda, of Dionysius Periegetes, the Geography of Agatharcides, and others, have been several times collected;[331] and so have the minor historians, which may be consulted for Theopompus, Hecataeus, and the mythologists.[332] The geographical works of Pytheas (B.C. 350?), of Eratosthenes (B.C. 276-126), of Polybius (B.C. 204-122), of Hipparchus (flor. circ. B.C. 125), of Posidonius (1st cent. B.C.), are preserved only in quotations made by later writers; they have, however, been collected and edited in convenient form.[333] The most important source of our knowledge of Greek geography and Greek geographers is of course the great _Geography_ of Strabo, which a happy fortune preserved to us. The long introduction upon the nature of geography and the size of the earth and the dimensions of the known