sited Rome in the
reign of Claudius, that the breadth of Ceylon was 10,000 stadia from
west to east; and Ptolemy fully developed the idea of his predecessors,
that it lay opposite to the "Cinnamon Land," and assigned to it a length
from north to south of nearly _fifteen degrees_, with a breadth of
_eleven_, an exaggeration of the truth nearly twenty-fold.[1]
Agathemerus copies Ptolemy; and the plain and sensible author of the
"Periplus" (attributed to Arrian), still labouring with the delusion of
the magnitude of Ceylon, makes it stretch almost to the opposite coast
of Africa.[2]

[Footnote 1: PTOLEMY, lib. vii. c. 4.]

[Footnote 2: ARRIAN, _Periplus_, p. 35. Marcianus Heracleota (whose
Periplus has been reprinted by HUDSON, in the same collection from which
I have made the reference to that of Arrian) gives to Ceylon a length of
9500 stadia with a breadth of 7500.--MAR. HER. p. 26.]

These extravagant ideas of the magnitude of Ceylon were not entirely
removed till many centuries later. The Arabian geographers, Massoudi,
Edrisi, and Aboulfeda, had no accurate data by which to correct the
errors of their Greek predecessors. The maps of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries repeated their distortions[1]; and Marco Polo, in
the fourteenth century, who gives the island the usual exaggerated
dimensions, yet informs us that it is now but one half the size it had
been at a former period, the rest having been engulfed by the sea.[2]

[Footnote 1: For an account of Ceylon as it is figured in the
_Mappe-mondes_ of the Middle Ages, see the _Essai_ of the VICOMTE DE
SANTAREM, _Sur la Cosmographie et Cartographie_, tom. iii. p. 335, &c.]

[Footnote 2: MARCO POLO, p. 2, c. 148. A later authority than Marco
Polo, PORCACCHI, in his _Isolario_, or "Description of the most
celebrated Islands in the World," which was published at Venice in A.D.
1576, laments his inability even at that time to obtain any authentic
information as to the boundaries and dimensions of Ceylon; and, relying
on the representations of the Moors, who then carried on an active trade
around its coasts, he describes it as lying under the equinoctial line,
and possessing a circuit of 2100 miles. "Ella gira di circuito, secondo
il calcole fatto da Mori, che modernamente l'hanno nauigato
d'ogn'intorno due mila et cento miglia et corre maestro e sirocco; et per
il mezo d'essa passa la linea equinottiale et e el principio del primo
clima al terzo paralello."--_L'Isol