event, to Herodotus.
The data are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One
thing, however, is clear. Even if the circumnavigation was
effected,--which, on the whole, seems improbable,--it remained quite
barren of results. It produced no abiding impression upon men's
minds[350] and added nothing to geographical knowledge. The veil of
mystery was not lifted from southern Africa. The story was doubted by
Strabo and Posidonius, and passed unheeded, as we have seen, by
Hipparchus and Ptolemy.

[Footnote 346: Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial
regions had never been visited by people from the northern
hemisphere: [Greek: Tines de eisin hai oikeseis ouk an echoimen
pepeismenos eipein. Atriptoi gar eisi mechri tou deuro tois apo
tes kath' hemas oikoumenes, kai eikasian mallon an tis e
historian hegesaito ta legomena peri auton.] _Syntaxis_, ii.
6.]

[Footnote 347: Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. iii. p. 29, note
8.]

[Footnote 348: The story is discredited by Mannert, _Geographie
der Griechen und Roemer_, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin,
_Recherches sur la geographie des Anciens_, tom. i. p. 149;
Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 508-515; Vincent,
_Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean_,
vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Leake, _Disputed
Questions of Ancient Geography_, pp. 1-8. It is defended by
Heeren, _Ideen ueber die Politik, den Verkehr_, etc., 3e aufl.,
Goettingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell,
_Geography of Herodotus_, pp. 672-714; Grote, _History of
Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 377-385. The case is ably presented in
Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i. pp. 289-296,
where it is concluded that the story "cannot be disproved or
pronounced to be absolutely impossible; but the difficulties
and improbabilities attending it are so great that they cannot
reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere
statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown
informants." Mr. Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has
reasons for believing that Mr. Grote afterwards changed his
opinion and came to agree with Sir George Lewis.]

[Footnote 349: In reading the learned works of Sir