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101-605: While the Patala was well known to mariners and traders of the Ancient Mediterranean , by the European Middle Ages , mapmakers no longer knew its location. Regio Patalis appeared on late 15th and early 16th century maps and globes in a variety of increasingly erroneous locations, further and further east and south of India. It even appeared on some maps as a promontory of Terra Australis . Pliny

202-550: A circle ; assuming the Earth to be perfectly spherical, he concluded that its circumference was 50 times the known distance from Alexandria to Syene (5,000 stadia, a figure that was checked yearly), i.e. 250,000 stadia . Depending on whether he used the "Olympic stade" (176.4 m) or the Italian stade (184.8 m), this would imply a circumference of 44,100 km (an error of 10%) or 46,100 km, an error of 15%. A value for

303-434: A res publica as long as it continued to use Latin as its official language. Rome acquired imperial character de facto from the 130s BC with the acquisition of Cisalpine Gaul , Illyria , Greece and Hispania , and definitely with the addition of Iudaea , Asia Minor and Gaul during the 1st century BC. At the time of the empire's maximal extension during the reign of Trajan (AD 117), Rome controlled

404-536: A belfry in Dunkerque and Montjuïc castle in Barcelona to estimate the length of the meridian arc through Dunkerque. The length of the first prototype metre bar was based on these measurements, but it was later determined that its length was short by about 0.2 millimetres because of miscalculation of the flattening of the Earth, making the prototype about 0.02% shorter than the original proposed definition of

505-453: A city, it can be corrected to ‘Pattana’, that is, [Sanskrit for] a city or port city par excellence, a term applied in a later period to Thatta [onetime capital of Sindh ], which is ideally situated in the way the Greek historians describe”. The eighteenth century French geographer, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville , also identified Thatta with Patala:“Tatta is not only a town, but also

606-572: A deep well at that time in Syene blocked the reflection of the Sun on the water. Eratosthenes then measured the Sun's angle of elevation at noon in Alexandria by measuring the length of another gnomon's shadow on the ground. Using the length of the rod, and the length of the shadow, as the legs of a triangle, he calculated the angle of the sun's rays. This angle was about 7°, or 1/50th the circumference of

707-415: A group of Muslim astronomers led by Al-Khwarizmi to measure the distance from Tadmur ( Palmyra ) to Raqqa , in modern Syria . They calculated the Earth's circumference to be within 15% of the modern value, and possibly much closer. How accurate it actually was is not known because of uncertainty in the conversion between the medieval Arabic units and modern units, but in any case, technical limitations of

808-796: A large promontory bearing the name REGIO PATALIS . Schoener developed his globe from the globe made by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg in 1492. On Behaim's globe, India potalis is located south of the Equator on the Hoch India (High India, or India Superior) peninsula, the actual Indochina, on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus ("Great Gulf", the Gulf of Thailand ). An inscription on Behaim's globe explains that Hoch India (India Superior ),

909-480: A nautical mile as 6,080 feet, the length of one minute of arc at 48 degrees latitude. In 1793, France defined the metre so as to make the polar circumference of the Earth 40,000 kilometres. In order to measure this distance accurately, the French Academy of Sciences commissioned Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain to lead an expedition to attempt to accurately measure the distance between

1010-430: A new length unit based on the length of the meridian, as stated by Pliny, who writes about the stadion "according to Eratosthenes' ratio". Posidonius calculated the Earth's circumference by reference to the position of the star Canopus . As explained by Cleomedes , Posidonius observed Canopus on but never above the horizon at Rhodes , while at Alexandria he saw it ascend as far as 7 + 1 ⁄ 2 degrees above

1111-503: A one-time capital of Sindh . But the identity of Patala is much debated among scholars. However, as 'Regio' is Latin for 'region', one might expect that 'Patalis' may also be of Latin origin. This indeed appears to be the case, as in ancient Latin 'patalis' meant 'broad-horned', usually used in conjunction with 'bos', meaning an ox or a bull or all sorts of oxen [Thomas Morell, An Abridgement of Ainsworth's Dictionary, English and Latin, Camden Town, London: A. Wilson, 1817], rendering 'region of

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1212-565: A province of India, according to modern travellers; this town has taken the place of the ancient Patala or Pattala, which formerly gave name to the country included between the mouths of the Indus.” This opinion was shared by Alexander Burnes , who voyaged up the Indus on a diplomatic mission in 1831–32, and wrote:"The antiquity of Tatta is unquestioned. The Pattala of the Greeks has been sought for in this position, and, I believe, with good reason; for

1313-761: A result of the crisis of the third century . During Late antiquity Christianity became increasingly popular, finally ousting the Roman imperial cult with the Theodosian decrees of 393. Successive invasions of Germanic tribes finalized the weakening of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century, while the Eastern Roman Empire persisted throughout the Middle Ages , in a state called Romania by its citizens, and designated

1414-643: A series of conflicts of the 4th and 3rd centuries, the Samnite Wars , Latin War , and Pyrrhic War . Roman victory in the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars established Rome as a super-regional power by the 2nd century BC, followed by the acquisition of Greece and Asia Minor . This tremendous increase of power was accompanied by economic instability and social unrest, resulting in the Catiline conspiracy ,

1515-400: A shadow cast at Alexandria on the day of the summer solstice — eighty-three degrees — and deducting that from the ninety-degree right angle of the sun over Syene on the same day, from that deducing the acute angle — seven degrees — at the apex of the segment of the Earth's circumference represented by the known distance from Syene to Alexandria — 500 stadia — and then multiplying that distance by

1616-450: A single person from a single location. From the top of the mountain, he sighted the dip angle which, along with the mountain's height (which he determined beforehand), he applied to the law of sines formula. This was the earliest known use of dip angle and the earliest practical use of the law of sines. However, the method could not provide more accurate results than previous methods, due to technical limitations, and so al-Biruni accepted

1717-492: A wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealized vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe 's words, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome". The culture of the ancient Greeks , together with some influences from the ancient Near East , was the basis of art, philosophy, society, and education in

1818-483: Is certain that there is a land here, but its size and the limits of its boundaries are uncertain”). The outline of Fine's Regio Patalis, though shown as a promontory of this smaller Antarctic continent, is likewise unnamed. In 1564, Mercator's Flemish contemporary, Abraham Ortelius published a world map, Typus Orbis Terrarum , on which he identified the Regio Patalis with Locach as a northward extension of

1919-634: Is no more than a vestige of the original “Regio Patalis”. The cosmography of the Dieppe mapmakers, particularly as regards the Austral continent, developed from that of Johann Schoener, through the work of Oronce Fine. Albert Anthiaume wrote in 1911: “Whence had the Norman cartographers drawn the idea of this continent [la Terre Australe]? From the bicordiform [two-heart shaped] mappemonde of Oronce Fine (1531), which he in turn had borrowed from Schoener....Most of

2020-549: Is seen on Guillaume Le Testu ’s 1556 Cosmographie Universel, 4me projection, where the northward extending promontory of the Terre australle , called Regio Patalis by Schöner and Fine, is called Grande Jaue . French geographer Numa Broc has noted that the Dieppe cartographers, including Le Testu, replaced the Regio Patalis of Oronce Fine with a Grande Jave, more or less attached to an enormous austral land mass, and that their insistence on speaking of “la Grande Jave” permitted

2121-636: Is shown on the globe in an armillary clock made by Jean Naze  [ fr ] of Lyon in 1560, in a fashion similar to that on Schoener’s globe of 1523 and on Fine’s map of 1531. It is also shown on the Nancy Globe , made c.1535. The world maps of the school of cartographers centred in and around the Norman port of Dieppe (the Dieppe Maps ), include the Harleian, so-called after its former owner, Edward Harley, made by an unknown cartographer in

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2222-804: Is the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games , in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from ports in Canaan , by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean . Carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had established strongholds in Sicily , Italy and Sardinia , which created conflicts of interest with Etruria . A stele found in Kition , Cyprus commemorates

2323-561: The Byzantine Empire by later historians. Hellenistic philosophy was succeeded by continued development of Platonism and Epicureanism , with Neoplatonism in due course influencing the theology of the Christian Church Fathers . Many writers have attempted to name a specific date for the symbolic "end" of antiquity, with the most prominent dates being the deposing of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476,

2424-615: The Byzantine Papacy . The Eastern Roman empire's capital city Constantinople remained the only unconquered large urban site of the original Roman empire, as well as being the largest city in Europe. Yet many classical books, sculptures, and technologies survived there along with classical Roman cuisine and scholarly traditions, well into the Middle Ages, when much of it was "rediscovered" by visiting Western crusaders. Indeed,

2525-524: The Catholic Church in particular maintained Latin language, culture, and literacy for centuries; to this day the popes are termed Pontifex Maximus which during the classical period was a title belonging to the emperor, and the ideal of Christendom continued the legacy of a united European civilization even after its political unity had ended. The political idea of an Emperor in the West to match

2626-554: The Greco-Roman world , centered on the Mediterranean Basin . It is the period during which ancient Greece and ancient Rome flourished and had major influence throughout much of Europe , North Africa , and West Asia . Conventionally, it is often considered to begin with the earliest recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th-century BC) and ends with the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Such

2727-463: The Late Bronze Age collapse . The 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely protohistorical , with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing during the first half of the 8th century. The legendary poet Homer is usually assumed to have lived during the 8th or 7th century BC, and his lifetime is often considered as the beginning of classical antiquity. During the same period

2828-526: The Muslim conquests of the 7th century finalized the irreversible loss of all the largest Eastern Roman imperial cities besides the capital itself. The emperor Heraclius in Constantinople , who reigned during this period, conducted his court in Greek, not Latin, though Greek had always been an administrative language of the eastern Roman regions. Eastern-Western associations weakened with the ending of

2929-651: The Opus Majus , written around the year 1267 English monk and scholar Roger Bacon . With regard to the Regio Patalis, Bacon said: “the southern frontier of India reaches the Tropic of Capricorn near the Region of Patale and the neighbouring lands which are washed by a great arm of the sea flowing from the Ocean”. Patala was on or just south of the Tropic of Cancer, not south of the Equator, but somehow Roger Bacon had confused

3030-607: The Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, resulting the integration of Latins and Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, though settlements on the Palatine Hill may date back to the 10th century BC. According to legend, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus . As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and

3131-780: The Social War and the First Triumvirate , and finally the transformation to the Roman Empire during the latter half of the 1st century BC. The precise end of the Republic is disputed by modern historians; Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that the Republic had ceased to exist. The early Julio-Claudian Emperors maintained that the res publica still existed, albeit protected by their extraordinary powers, and would eventually return to its earlier Republican form. The Roman state continued to term itself

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3232-592: The Terra Australis : ”This tract is called by some Patalis"; and "The Region of Locach seems to be placed here by Marco Polo the Venetian". The great promontory terminated in the north with New Guinea , "recently discovered, so called because its nature and climate do not differ from the African Guinea; apparently this tract was called Terra de Piccinacoli by Andrea Corsali ". From that time on,

3333-517: The Western , and through it, the modern world. Surviving fragments of classical culture helped produce a revival beginning during the 14th century which later came to be known as the Renaissance , and various neo-classical revivals occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest period of classical antiquity occurs during a time of gradual resurgence of historical sources after

3434-588: The classical orders of architecture. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas was derived largely from that of Aristotle , despite the intervening change in religion from Hellenic Polytheism to Christianity . Greek and Roman authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen formed the basis of the practice of medicine even longer than Greek thought prevailed in philosophy. In the French theater , playwrights such as Molière and Racine wrote plays on mythological or classical historical subjects and subjected them to

3535-416: The poles , the circumference is 40,007.863 km (24,859.734 mi). Measurement of Earth's circumference has been important to navigation since ancient times. The first known scientific measurement and calculation was done by Eratosthenes , by comparing altitudes of the mid-day sun at two places a known north–south distance apart. He achieved a great degree of precision in his computation. Treating

3636-620: The red-figure style , developed by the Andokides Painter in about 530 BC. Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks , particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC , across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea . The Etruscans had established political control in the region by the late 7th-century BC, forming the aristocratic and monarchial elite. The Etruscans apparently lost power in

3737-566: The 19th century. John Milton and even Arthur Rimbaud received their first poetic educations in Latin. Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the frequent use of characters and themes from Greek mythology affected Western literature greatly. In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals , which seem more inspired in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Washington, DC has many large marble buildings with façades made to look like Greek temples , with columns constructed in

3838-666: The Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies , around 240 BC, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in Ptolemaic Egypt . Using a vertical rod known as a gnomon and under the previous assumptions, he knew that at local noon on the summer solstice in Syene (modern Aswan , Egypt), the Sun was directly overhead, as the gnomon cast no shadow. Additionally, the shadow of someone looking down

3939-653: The Dark Ages). In pottery, the Archaic period sees the development of the Orientalizing style , which signals a shift from the geometric style of the later Dark Ages and the accumulation of influences derived from Egypt, Phoenicia and Syria . Pottery styles associated with the later part of the Archaic age are the black-figure pottery , which originated in Corinth during the 7th-century BC and its successor,

4040-436: The Earth as a sphere , its circumference would be its single most important measurement. Earth deviates from spherical by about 0.3%, as characterized by flattening . In modern times, Earth's circumference has been used to define fundamental units of measurement of length: the nautical mile in the seventeenth century and the metre in the eighteenth. Earth's polar circumference is very near to 21,600 nautical miles because

4141-610: The Eastern Roman capital ( first in 674–78 and then in 717–18 ) severed the economic, cultural, and political links that had traditionally united the classical cultures around the Mediterranean, ending antiquity (see Pirenne Thesis ). The original Roman Senate continued to express decrees into the late 6th century, and the last Eastern Roman emperor to use Latin as the language of his court in Constantinople

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4242-675: The Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, 23-79 AD) referring to “the island of Patale, at the mouth of the Indus”, wrote in Historia Naturalis : “Also in India [as well as at Aswan in Egypt ] at the well-known port of Patale the sun rises on the right and shadows fall southward”. The geographer Strabo (c.64 BC–c.24 AD) had said: “The Indus falls into the southern sea by two mouths, encompassing

4343-461: The Elder mentions Posidonius among his sources and—without naming him—reported his method for estimating the Earth's circumference. He noted, however, that Hipparchus had added some 26,000 stadia to Eratosthenes's estimate. The smaller value offered by Strabo and the different lengths of Greek and Roman stadia have created a persistent confusion around Posidonius's result. Ptolemy used Posidonius's lower value of 180,000 stades (about 33% too low) for

4444-479: The Elder, and not on the accounts of any voyages to the unknown Austral continent, the Terra Australis Incognita . Jave la Grande on the Dieppe maps, which was derived from the ideas of Johann Schoener, can be seen to be a construct of the cosmographical concepts of the early 16th century and not derived from the discovery of the coasts of Australia made by unknown voyagers of that time. This

4545-583: The Emperor in the East continued after the Western Roman Empire's collapse; it was revived by the coronation of Charlemagne in 800; the self-described Holy Roman Empire ruled central Europe until 1806. The Renaissance idea that the classical Roman virtues had been lost as a result of medievalism was especially powerful in European politics of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reverence for Roman republicanism

4646-578: The Great in 323 BC. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias , son of Peisistratos . Cleomenes I , king of Sparta, established a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras . The Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC), concluded by the Peace of Callias ended with not only the liberation of Greece, Macedon , Thrace , and Ionia from Persian rule , but also with

4747-470: The Greeks. Fathers had great power over their children, and husbands over their wives. In fact, the word family, familia in Latin, actually referred to those who were subject to the authority of a male head of household. This included non-related members such as slaves and servants. By marriage, both men and women shared property. Divorce was allowed first during the first century BC and could be done by either man or woman. The Roman Empire began to weaken as

4848-407: The Indus here divides into two great branches; and these are the words of the historian:- ‘Near Pattala, the river Indus divides itself into two vast branches’ ( Arrian , lib.vi). Both Robertson and Vincent appear to have entertained the opinion of its identity with Tatta". The reason for Pliny mentioning Patala, or as he called it, Patale, was to indicate that it, like the other places mentioned in

4949-414: The Mediterranean and Near East until the Roman imperial period . The Romans preserved, imitated, and spread this culture throughout Europe, until they were able to compete with it. This Greco-Roman cultural foundation has been immensely influential on the language, politics, law, educational systems, philosophy , science, warfare, literature, historiography, ethics, rhetoric, art and architecture of both

5050-422: The Norman cartographers, and particularly Le Testu, knew the works of Oronce Fine”. In his study of Schöner's globes, Franz von Wieser, found that the derivation of Fine's mappemonde from them was “unmistakeable ( unverkennbar )”. Schoener's idea of the Regio Patalis developed, as explained above, from the earlier globe of Martin Behaim which itself was based on the works of Pierre d’Ailly, Roger Bacon and Pliny

5151-413: The Senate and had Superbus and the monarchy expelled from Rome in 510 BC. After Superbus' expulsion, the Senate in 509 BC voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government . The classical period of Ancient Greece corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, in particular, from the end of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander

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5252-418: The Tropic of Capricorn and beyond. For the island called the Regio Pathalis has a well-known port where the Sun’s shadow falls southward, therefore the inhabitants always have the Sun to their North… I say therefore that the southern side of India extends to the Tropic of Capricorn near the region of Pathalis”. In discussing the habitability of lands under the Torrid Zone and Tropic of Capricorn, D'Ailly drew on

5353-423: The Tropic of Capricorn with the Tropic of Cancer under which, on the day of the summer solstice, shadows at Patala were cast southward. D’Ailly's Ymago Mundi served as the standard text book on cosmography during the 15th and early 16th centuries and so made widely current the view that there was a part of India, or of what was later called Indo-China, where the sun's shadow always fell southward at noon: this part

5454-448: The Tropic of Capricorn: this promontory is named REGIO PATALIS (“Region of Patala”). Fine's TERRA AVSTRALIS with its REGIO PATALIS is apparently drawn from the globe of the German cosmographer Johann Schoener produced in Nuremberg in 1523. On this globe the Antarctic continent, called TERRA AVSTRALIS RECENTER INVENTA SED NONDUM PLENE COGNITA (“Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known”) also has

5555-412: The area by the late 6th-century BC, and at this time, the Italic tribes reinvented their government by creating republics , with greater restraints on the ability of individual rulers to exercise power. According to legend, Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas , Romulus and Remus . As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited

5656-425: The basis for a unit of measurement for distance and proposed the nautical mile as one minute or one-sixtieth ( ⁠ 1 / 60 ⁠ ) of one degree of latitude. As one degree is ⁠ 1 / 360 ⁠ of a circle, one minute of arc is ⁠ 1 / 21600 ⁠ of a circle – such that the polar circumference of the Earth would be exactly 21,600 miles. Gunter used Snellius's circumference to define

5757-424: The broad-horns (bulls)'. Siltation has caused the Indus to change its course many times since the days of Alexander the Great , and the site of ancient Patala has been subject to much conjecture. Ahmad Hasan Dani , director of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Islamabad, concluded: “There has been a vain attempt to identify the city of Patala. If ‘Patala’ is not taken as a proper name but only refers to

5858-430: The circumference has improved since then, but the physical length of each unit of measure had remained close to what it was determined to be at the time, so the Earth's circumference is no longer a round number in metres or nautical miles. The measure of Earth's circumference is the most famous among the results obtained by Eratosthenes , who estimated that the meridian has a length of 252,000 stadia , with an error on

5959-401: The closing of the last Platonic Academy in Athens by the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I in 529, and the conquest of much of the Mediterranean by the new Muslim faith from 634 to 718. These Muslim conquests, of Syria (637), Egypt (639), Cyprus (654), North Africa (665), Hispania (718), Southern Gaul (720), Crete (820), and Sicily (827), Malta (870), as well as the sieges of

6060-499: The country of Patalênê, which resembles the Delta in Egypt”. He noted: “All these [nations] were conquered by Alexander, and last of all he reduced Patalênê, which the Indus forms by splitting into two branches… Patalênê contains a considerable city, Patala, which gives its name to the island”. The 1507 Martin Waldseemüller map shows Patala in this location. In the late 2nd century BC, Agatharchides of Cnidus recorded merchants from Patala, or as he called it, Potana, coming to

6161-455: The creation of a new Greek state in 1832. After the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Russian Czars (a title derived from Caesar) claimed the Byzantine legacy as the champion of Orthodoxy ; Moscow was described as the " Third Rome ", and the Czars ruled as divinely appointed Emperors into the 20th century. Despite the fact that the Western Roman secular authority disappeared entirely in Europe, it still left traces. The Papacy and

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6262-494: The cultures of Persia , the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah , Central Asia and Egypt . Significant advances were made in the sciences ( geography , astronomy , mathematics , etc.), notably with the followers of Aristotle ( Aristotelianism ). The Hellenistic period ended with the increase of the Roman Republic to a super-regional power during the 2nd century BC and the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC. The Republican period of Ancient Rome began with

6363-421: The disappearance of imperial authority in the west. This tendency reached its maximum when Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" in the year 800, an act which resulted in the formation of the Holy Roman Empire . The notion that an emperor is a monarch who outranks a king dates from this period. In this political ideal, there would always be a Roman Empire, a state the jurisdiction of which extended through

6464-412: The dominance of Athens in the Delian League , which resulted in conflict with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League , resulting in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), ending with a Spartan victory. Greece began the 4th century with Spartan hegemony , but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers dismissed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost its naval supremacy. Athens , Argos , Thebes and Corinth ,

6565-675: The earth's circumference in his Geography . This was the number used by Christopher Columbus in order to underestimate the distance to India as 70,000 stades. Around AD 525, the Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata wrote Aryabhatiya , in which he calculated the diameter of earth to be of 1,050 yojanas . The length of the yojana intended by Aryabhata is in dispute. One careful reading gives an equivalent of 14,200 kilometres (8,800 mi), too large by 11%. Another gives 15,360 km (9,540 mi), too large by 20%. Yet another gives 13,440 km (8,350 mi), too large by 5%. Around AD 830, Caliph Al-Ma'mun commissioned

6666-411: The entire Mediterranean as well as Gaul, parts of Germania and Britannia , the Balkans , Dacia , Asia Minor, the Caucasus , and Mesopotamia . Culturally, the Roman Empire was significantly Hellenized , but also incorporated syncretic "eastern" traditions, such as Mithraism , Gnosticism , and most notably Christianity . Classical Rome had vast differences within their family life compared to

6767-465: The entire civilized western world. That model continued to exist in Constantinople for the entirety of the Middle Ages, where the Byzantine Emperor was considered the sovereign of the entire Christian world. The Patriarch of Constantinople was the Empire's highest-ranked cleric, but even he was subordinate to the emperor, who was "God's Vicegerent on Earth". The Greek-speaking Byzantines and their descendants continued to call themselves " Romioi " until

6868-437: The erection of the hypothesis of a Portuguese or French “pre-discovery” of Australia between 1520 and 1530. The Flemish cosmographer and map maker Gerard Mercator produced a map of the world in 1538 which, though modelled on that of Fine of 1531, departed from it by showing Fine's southern continent much smaller, unnamed and bearing the inscription, Terra hic esse certum est sed quãtus quibusque limitibus finitas incertum (“It

6969-429: The extended India Superior (Indochina) peninsula, and so depicted it on his 1523 globe. He also split the Region of Patala ( Regio Patalis ) off from this peninsula and transferred it across the ocean to become a promontory of the Terra Australis . In this he was followed by Oronce Fine, whose mappemonde of 1531 shows the large REGIO PATALIS promontory on the continent of TERRA AVSTRALIS . The REGIO PATALIS

7070-420: The fact that Eratosthenes' measure corresponds precisely to 252,000 stadia (according to Pliny) might be intentional, since it is a number that can be divided by all natural numbers from 1 to 10: some historians believe that Eratosthenes changed from the 250,000 value written by Cleomedes to this new value to simplify calculations; other historians of science, on the other side, believe that Eratosthenes introduced

7171-425: The fringes of India . The classical Greek period conventionally ends at the death of Alexander in 323 BC and the fragmentation of his empire, which was at this time divided among the Diadochi . Greece began the Hellenistic period with the increasing power of Macedon and the conquests of Alexander the Great . Greek became the lingua franca far beyond Greece itself, and Hellenistic culture interacted with

7272-407: The genitive form Patalis, as though its nominative case was Patale: hence, Regio Patalis not Regio Patalae. Syene is connected with the measurement of Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes of Cyrene in c.240 BC, although the method traditionally considered a used by Eratosthenes is actually a simplification of another author, Cleomedes , who proposed his readers to imagine to observe the angle of

7373-421: The horizon (the meridian arc between the latitude of the two locales is actually 5 degrees 14 minutes). Since he thought Rhodes was 5,000 stadia due north of Alexandria, and the difference in the star's elevation indicated the distance between the two locales was 1/48 of the circle, he multiplied 5,000 by 48 to arrive at a figure of 240,000 stadia for the circumference of the earth. It is generally thought that

7474-554: The inhabitants of Constantinople continued to refer to themselves as Romans, as did their eventual conquerors in 1453, the Ottomans (see Romaioi and Rûm .) The classical scholarship and culture that was still preserved in Constantinople were brought by refugees fleeing its conquest in 1453 and helped to begin the Renaissance (see Greek scholars in the Renaissance ). Ultimately, it was a slow, complex, and graduated change of

7575-569: The island of Socotra to trade with Alexandrian merchants. The 2nd century AD author Dionysios Periegetes said in his Orbis Descriptio : “This river [the Indus] has two mouths, and dashes against the island enclosed between them, called in the tongue of the natives, Patalênê”. Or, as Priscian put it in his popular rendition of Periegetes: “the River Indus... Patalene is girt by its divided waters.” Some scholars identify Patala with Thatta ,

7676-585: The latter two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War , which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. Later, in 371 BC, the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a victory at the Battle of Leuctra . The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban hegemony . Thebes sought to maintain its dominance until it

7777-527: The methods and tools would not permit an accuracy better than about 5%. A more convenient way to estimate was provided in Al-Biruni 's Codex Masudicus (1037). In contrast to his predecessors, who measured the Earth's circumference by sighting the Sun simultaneously from two locations, al-Biruni developed a new method of using trigonometric calculations, based on the angle between a plain and mountain top, which made it possible for it to be measured by

7878-533: The mid-1540s, that made by Pierre Desceliers in 1546, and also Guillaume Le Testu ’s Cosmographie Universelle of 1555. On these maps, Fine’s REGIO PATALIS has evolved into the great promontory of Jave la Grande (Greater Java) which extends, like the Regio Patalis, northward from the Austral continent. This development may have been influenced by the phrase used by the Italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema in describing Java which, he said, “ prope in inmensum patet (extends almost beyond measure)”. Although

7979-427: The nautical mile was intended to express one minute of latitude (see meridian arc ), which is 21,600 partitions of the polar circumference (that is 60 minutes × 360 degrees). The polar circumference is also close to 40,000 kilometres because the metre was originally defined to be one ten millionth (i.e., a kilometre is one ten thousandth) of the arc from pole to equator ( quarter meridian ). The accuracy of measuring

8080-526: The outline of the Regio Patalis/Jave la Grande/Locach promontory gradually faded from the maps of the world. Classical antiquity Classical antiquity , also known as the classical era , classical period , classical age , or simply antiquity , is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known together as

8181-750: The overthrow of the Monarchy c. 509 BC and lasted more than 450 years until its subversion through a series of civil wars , into the Principate form of government and the Imperial period. During the half millennium of the Republic, Rome increased from a regional power of the Latium to the dominant force in Italy and beyond. The unification of Italy by the Romans was a gradual process, brought about by

8282-461: The place where he made landfall was not Asia , but rather a New World . In 1617 the Dutch scientist Willebrord Snellius assessed the circumference of the Earth at 24,630 Roman miles (24,024 statute miles). Around that time British mathematician Edmund Gunter improved navigational tools including a new quadrant to determine latitude at sea. He reasoned that the lines of latitude could be used as

8383-549: The real value between −2.4% and +0.8% (assuming a value for the stadion between 155 and 160 metres; the exact value of the stadion remains a subject of debate to this day; see stadion ). Eratosthenes described his technique in a book entitled On the measure of the Earth , which has not been preserved; what has been preserved is the simplified version described by Cleomedes to popularise the discovery. Cleomedes invites his reader to consider two Egyptian cities, Alexandria and Syene (modern Aswan ): According to Cleomedes ' On

8484-451: The same chapter of his Natural History, particularly Syene ( Aswan , in Egypt), was situated on or below the Tropic of Cancer and so shadows there were cast southward in midsummer, thus demonstrating the rotundity of the Earth. Pliny, writing in Latin, used the form, Patale: in accordance with convention, he treats Patala, being for him a Greek-derived noun, as a third declension Latin noun with

8585-541: The socio-economic structure in European history that resulted in the changeover between classical antiquity and medieval society and no specific date can truly exemplify that. In politics, the late Roman conception of the Empire as a universal state, commanded by one supreme divinely appointed ruler, united with Christianity as a universal religion likewise headed by a supreme patriarch , proved very influential, even after

8686-640: The son-in-law of Servius Tullius , Superbus was of Etruscan birth. It was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock , enraging the people of Rome. The people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia , a patrician Roman, by his own son. Lucretia's kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus (ancestor to Marcus Brutus ), summoned

8787-405: The stadion of 157.7 metres has even been posited by L.V. Firsov, which would give an even better precision, but is plagued by calculation errors and false assumptions. In 2012, Anthony Abreu Mora repeated Eratosthenes's calculation with more accurate data; the result was 40,074 km, which is 66 km different (0.16%) from the currently accepted polar circumference. Eratosthenes' method

8888-461: The stadion used by Posidonius was almost exactly 1/10 of a modern statute mile. Thus Posidonius's measure of 240,000 stadia translates to 24,000 mi (39,000 km), not much short of the actual circumference of 24,901 mi (40,074 km). Strabo noted that the distance between Rhodes and Alexandria is 3,750 stadia, and reported Posidonius's estimate of the Earth's circumference to be 180,000 stadia or 18,000 mi (29,000 km). Pliny

8989-725: The state, as can be seen in the architecture of the Panthéon , the Arc de Triomphe , and the paintings of Jacques-Louis David . During the revolution, France transitioned from kingdom to republic to dictatorship to Empire (complete with Imperial Eagles) that the Romans had experienced centuries earlier. Classical antiquity is a general term for a long period of cultural history . Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many rather disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" often refers to an idealized vision of later people, of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe 's words, "the glory that

9090-429: The strict rules of the classical unities derived from Aristotle's Poetics . The desire to dance in a manner allegedly similar to the manner of the ancient Greeks caused Isadora Duncan to create her brand of ballet . Earth%27s circumference Earth's circumference is the distance around Earth . Measured around the equator , it is 40,075.017 km (24,901.461 mi). Measured passing through

9191-408: The value calculated the previous century by the al-Ma'mun expedition. 1,700 years after Eratosthenes's death, Christopher Columbus studied what Eratosthenes had written about the size of the Earth. Nevertheless, based on a map by Toscanelli , he chose to believe that the Earth's circumference was 25% smaller. If, instead, Columbus had accepted Eratosthenes's larger value, he would have known that

9292-544: The value of that angle and dividing it by the 360 degrees of the whole circumference of the Earth: 250,000 stadia (instead of the 252,000 actually measured by Eratosthenes), or 39,690 km, an error of less than one per cent. The map of the world by the French mathematician and cosmographer Oronce Fine published in 1531 shows a large promontory attached to the continent of TERRA AVSTRALIS and extending northward almost to

9393-577: The victory of King Sargon II in 709 BC over the seven kings of the island, marking an important part of the transfer of Cyprus from Tyrian rule to the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Archaic period followed the Greek Dark Ages , and saw significant advancements in political theory , and the beginnings of democracy , philosophy , theatre , poetry , as well as the revitalization of the written language (which had been lost during

9494-505: The word patet (“extends”) has no connection with Patala, the superficial resemblance may have misled them. Terra Java in the Vallard Atlas of 1547, another product of the Dieppe school, bears the vestigial toponym patallis inscribed on its west coast. “Patal(l)is” is the genitive form of Patala, and therefore simply means “of Patala” without specifying the “what” of Patala—region, land, kingdom, port, or city—indicating that it

9595-596: Was Greece , the grandeur that was Rome !" During the 18th and 19th centuries AD, reverence for classical antiquity was much greater in Europe and the United States than it is now. Respect for the ancient people of Greece and Rome affected politics , philosophy , sculpture , literature , theatre , education , architecture , and sexuality . Epic poetry in Latin continued to be written and circulated well into

9696-502: Was actually more complicated, as stated by the same Cleomedes, whose purpose was to present a simplified version of the one described in Eratosthenes' book. Pliny, for example, has quoted a value of 252,000 stadia. The method was based on several surveying trips conducted by professional bematists , whose job was to precisely measure the extent of the territory of Egypt for agricultural and taxation-related purposes. Furthermore,

9797-718: Was emperor Maurice , who reigned until 602. The overthrow of Maurice by his mutinying Danube army commanded by Phocas resulted in the Slavic invasion of the Balkans and the weakening of Balkan and Greek urban culture (resulting in the flight of Balkan Latin speakers to the mountains, see Origin of the Romanians ), and also provoked the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 in which all the great eastern cities except Constantinople were lost. The resulting turmoil did not end until

9898-669: Was finally ended by the increasing power of Macedon in 346 BC. During the reign of Philip II , (359–336 BC), Macedon expanded into the territory of the Paeonians , the Thracians and the Illyrians . Philip's son, Alexander the Great , (356–323 BC) managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states but also to the Persian Empire , including Egypt and lands as far east as

9999-571: Was situated so far to the South that the Pole Star was no longer visible: “because this land lies at the antipodes to our land”. Martin Behaim's source of knowledge of India Patalis was the Ymago Mundi of Pierre D'Ailly , a revised edition of earlier standard cosmographical works which d’Ailly wrote between 1410 and 1419. D’Ailly wrote: “according to Pliny we find there to be habitation under

10100-749: Was strong among the Founding Fathers of the United States and the Latin American revolutionaries; the Americans described their new government as a republic (from res publica ) and gave it a Senate and a President (another Latin term), rather than use available English terms like commonwealth or parliament . Similarly in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, republicanism and Roman martial virtues were promoted by

10201-675: Was the Region of Patala. This theory found expression on Martin Behaim 's globe of 1492, where India potalis is located south of the Equator on the Hoch India peninsula on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus , the actual Indochina. This concept of the Region of Patala is shown as Patalie regiã in the world map included in La Salade, a textbook of the studies necessary for a prince written by Antoine de La Sale and published in 1444. Following Magellan ’s circumnavigation voyage of 1519-1522, Johann Schoener identified South America with

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