The geography of Herodotus

Front matter

:CN cn

CO

■CD

Preface

The object of the accompanying work is to present the student with a full development and explanation of the Geography of Herodotus ; and at the same time to enable the general reader to survey the ancient world at one of the most important periods of its history. Accordingly, in the first place, all the geographical notices and allusions throughout Herodotus have been brought together and digested into one continuous system ; and secondly, such descriptions and illustrations have been borrowed from modern geography, as would correct his errors, reconcile his contradictions, explain his obscurities, and enable us to identify ancient sites with existing localities.

The want of such a work has long been felt both by the Classical and the Biblical student. Herodotus tells of the glorious deeds of Hellas at Marathon and at Thermopylae, at Salamis and at Plataea ; * and at the same time he describes Babylon and the great Persian empire as they were in the days of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and Aegypt as she probably appeared in the primeval times of the patriarchs and Pharaohs. But he relates the story in his own way, and follows a far more natural but

VI PREFACE.

intricate arrangement than would have been adopted by the modern historian. His geographical descriptions are scattered about in the form of digressions, and a vast body of information also exists in the shape of brief notices, allusions, or illustrations.^ It was therefore impossible for the student to avail himself of Herodotus' s stock of geographical knowledge, unless he had thoroughly mastered the entire history ; whilst a real comprehension of its character, as compared with modern geography, was only to be attained by a labour similar to that which has been expended on the present volume.

It would be invidious for the author to mention the defects of his predecessors, but he must confess that from Rennell's Geography of Herodotus,^ and from Niebuhr's two well-known Dissertations,^ he has been unable to derive the assistance he had expected. Rennell omits the geography of European and Asiatic Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Aegypt, Aethiopia, and the isles of the Aegean, whilst much

^ It may be remarked that the Herodotean geogi-aphy of Greece mainly consists of these brief and scattered notices, for as Herodotus presumed that its various countries were famiUar to his readers, he rarely alludes to them, excepting when he seeks to illustrate the geography of other regions.

"^ The Geographical System of Herodotus examined and illusti'ated, by Major James Rennell, F. R. S. Explained by eleven maps. 2 vols. 8vo, second edition, revised, London, 1830. Rennell's work is not a development of the Geography of Herodotus, but a series of disquisitions upon certain portions of it. It thus comprises dissertations upon the itinerary stade of the Greeks, the Scythian expedition of Darius Hystaspes, the site and remains of ancient Babj^lon, the captivity of the ten tribes, the floods, alluvions, and mouths of the Nile, etc. The most valuable are those on Scythia, the twenty satrapies of Darius, the Libyan tribes, and the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians.

^ Dissertation on the Geography of Herodotus, with a map ; and Researches into the History of the Scythians, Getae, and Saraiatians. Translated from the German of B. G. Niebuhr, 8vo, Oxford, 1830.

PREFACE. VU

of his information concerning other regions is either imperfect or obsolete. Niebuhr's Dissertations are more valuable, but exceedingly meagre ; and it will also be seen that his theory concerning the supposed course of the Ister and the Scythian square, is no more to be reconciled with the description of Herodotus than with the actual geography of the country. The '^ Greographie des Herodot," by Hermann Bobrik,^ is a far more important contribution to this branch of science, but unfortunately so limited in its design as to be of little use to the English student. It consists of an admirable arrangement of Herodotus's geographical notices, but borrows no illustration from any other ancient or modern author. It also omits the mythology, manners, and peculiar institutions of the Aegyptians, and numerous other particulars which it has been thought advisable to include in the present volume. Indeed the one object of Hermann Bobrik has been to develope the Herodotean ideas, without attempting to reconcile them with modern geography ; and thus far the present author has derived much advantage from comparing and verifying his own digestion of Herodotus's geographical notices, with the labours of Bobrik. Other small works have likewise been consulted, but with much less advantage. Of these may be specified the '' Greographia et Uranologia Herodoti," by Bredow; the ^^ Commentatio de Geographia Herodoti," by Donniges ; a little '' Geography of Herodotus, with Maps," published at Cambridge ;

Viil PREFACE.

and the '^ Maps and Plans illustrative of Herodotus," j^ublislied at Oxford.

In preparing tlie present Geography, the author has thus found it necessary to proceed independently of the labours of any of his predecessors. In the first place, he was obliged to make for himself a complete geographical index of Herodotus, arranged according to subjects ; for though this task had been already executed by Bobrik, yet the latter had laboured for a different object, and had therefore excluded from his work many topics which belonged to the present design. When this mass of material had been sufficiently digested and classified, the whole had to be explained and illustrated by the light of modern geography. Accordingly general surveys and descriptions of each country have been introduced as prefaces to the accounts of Herodotus, and explanatory matter has been incorporated wherever it was deemed necessary ; but in order to prevent confusion in the mind of the reader, those portions which were derived from Herodotus have been generally separated from the results of modern researches. The references at the foot of each page will in most cases indicate the authorities which have been consulted ; but a laro^e bodv of information has been long regarded as the common property of all geographers, and it is impossible to give the original authority for every statement. The following works however may be generally specified as those to which the writer has been chiefly indebted. The several commentaries upon Herodotus, especially those of Baehr and Larcher ; the geographies of Macculloch, Tvlurray, Malte Brun, and Ritter;

PREFACE. IX the researches of Rennell, Niebuhr, Leake, Cramer, Kiepert, Thirlwall, Grote, Miiller, Chesney, Ainsworth, Hamilton, Rich, Porter, Heeren, Eawlinson, Cooley, Wilkinson, Vyse and Perring, Kenrick, Long, Hoskins, and Belzoni ; the classical and geographical dictionaries edited by Dr. W. Smith, the Joui*nal of the Royal Geographical Society, and some valuable articles in the different Cyclopaedias, and the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. The works of other authors might likewise be named as having been referred to ; but the student who wishes to go over the ground by the aid of original authorities, will find the above amply sufficient for his purpose.^ The author's larger maps of Greece and the Ancient World, are intended, like his letter-press, to illustrate Herodotus by the light of modern discovery. The outlines have been drawn in accordance with actual geography, and every reasonable effort has been made to ^x approximate positions for the nations which Herodotus has described. In addition to these, a novelty has been introduced in the shape of historical map diagrams. In various parts of the present work the author has employed straight lines, such as could be produced by the printer's brass rule, as the easiest method for giving a general idea of continents and regions, and for placing the several countries within arbitrary, but

' A valuable manual of modern geography has been recently published by Mr. William Hughes, (London : Longman and Co.,) and is the only one which contains all the more important results of recent geographical researches within a moderate compass. The author has much pleasure in stating this fact, as he has derived much benefit from Mr. Hughes's experience in preparing the maps of Greece and of the World, in illustration of Herodotus, which are included in the present volume.

X PREFACE.

sharply defined, boundaries. In these diagrams it has of course been necessary to sacrifice strict correctness of detail, for the sake of a clear and bold mapping out of races and peoples ; and it is hoped that they will not only assist the reader in retaining in his memory the relative positions of the more confusing localities, but also enable him to refer to the larger maps with greater ease and interest. Indeed, whatever objections may be made to their rough simplicity, the author feels satisfied that they will generally convey his meaning with far greater precision than the most elaborate description. For instance, every scholar has experienced the difficulty of comprehending and of explaining the relative position of the Peloponnesian races, both before and after the Dorian invasion ; and yet by a reference to the diagrams on pages 35 — 37, the reader will find them plainly mapped out in a way which requires no study, and scarcely any explanation.

It may possibly be regarded as an omission, that whilst the author has pointed out in the letter-press all the geographical mistakes of Herodotus, he has not thought proper to represent those errors by means of a distorted map. It is true that previous geographers, including Ukert, Niebuhr, Bobrik, and almost every writer on Herodotean geography, have endeavoured, with more or less success, to construct maps according to the imperfect data supplied by Herodotus himself. Bobrik especially has drawn an entire series of maps, in strict accordance with Herodotus's apparent views and measurements, omitting all reference to later geograjDhical researches, and adopting the Greek orthography and cliaracters

PREFACE. XI

in the writing of the proj^er names. So far there can be no doubt but that Bobrik has been more successful than Niebuhr, or any other of his predecessors, in representing Herodotus' s peculiar notions ; and a small map of the World, embodying his results, will be found in a section of the larger map of the World in the present volume. But at the same time it must be remarked that all such efforts are necessarily incomplete and unsatisfactory. The hydi^ographer may represent in a sharply defined map all the loose observations of Herodotus concerning the bearings of different places, all the historian's incorrect measurements, and all the errors of his copyists ; but no geographer can map out with any certainty those immense, regions, and long coast lines, with which Herodotus was undoubtedly acquainted, but of which he furnishes us with no measurements or available descriptions. In Bobrik' s Atlas, Greece is strangely distorted, because Herodotus apparently supposed that Megara was farther to the west than Delphi.^ The river Araxes is drawn in the most extraordinary manner in order to reconcile all Herodotus's statements, which however evidently apply to different streams bearing a generic name. The neck of Asia Minor is painfully throttled, because Herodotus happened to say that a well-girt man could walk across it in five days ; and yet will any geographer assert that Herodotus was ignorant of the real

^ Herodotus merely observes that Megara was the farthest point towards the west which was ever reached by the Persians, (ix. 14,) whilst in another place he mentions the expedition against Delphi, (viii. 35 — 37,) which is still farther to the west ; but it is evident that Herodotus is not alluding to the relative positions of Delphi and Megara, but to the general course of the Persian invaders.

xii PREFACE.

breadth of tliat portion of tlie peninsula ? Western Europe and Soutliern Africa are mere fanciful sketches, which indeed they must be, for Herodotus could know nothing of the coast, and in fact was not at all sure that there was a coast to Southern Africa at all.

But in truth Herodotus was more of an historian than a geographer. His world was not a mere chart of coast-lines and land-marks, but a vast pictm'e crowded with living men. Hellas, her countless cities and her thousand isles. Young Athens with her restless fleets ; haughty Sparta with her soldier citizens ; luxurious Corinth with her crowded marts ; fair Ionia with her blue skies and impassioned bards. Long processions to national temples. Young men with gleaming arms ; noble maidens laden mth flowers; rich sacrifices, pious hymns, and choral dances. Immense gatherings to national festivals. Horse and chariot races ; contests of poets, musicians, and athletae; olive crowns, and Pindaric songs. The holy mysteries of the venerable Eleusinia ; the extravagant orgies of the boisterous and drunken Dionysia. The spacious theatre open to the sky. The stately tragedy, and the satirical comedy; the trained chorus, and the crowded audience. These were the mere centre of his world. Far away to the beaming sunrise he saw the vast empire of the Great King, a hundred nations swayed by a single sceptre. Shushan, the throne of Xerxes and Ahasuerus. Nineveh, with her winged bulls, her painted palaces, and her sculptured halls. Babylon, with her lofty towers, her stupendous walls, her gorgeous temples, and her brazen gates. Regions

PREFACE. Xlll

of gold, frankincense^ and myrrh. Far away to the setting sun he could see in his mind's eye the fabled Pillars of Heracles, tlie exhaustless riches of Tartessus, the mysterious Gades, and the dim Cassiterides. Behind him were the wild Thracians of the Balkan, with their tattooed bodies and bloody suttees. The nomade Scythians of the Russian steppes, maddened with strong wine or intoxicating smoke ; drinking from human skulls, scalping captives, or sacrificing living men to remorseless deities. Still farther on to the distant interior, merchant caravans reached the verge of the homes of griffins, but returned laden with barbaric gold. Before him, to the hot south, the ancient valley of the Nile stretched on like a panorama. The land of hoary Aegypt, and the shadowy realms of Aethiopia and Meroe. Massy pyramids and colossal temples ; antique writings and splendid festivals ; adoration of animals, and profound mysteries touching death and the soul, and the under- world ; solemn prayers to everlasting and unapproachable deities. Haughty priests, contemptuous as princes, but covetous of gold and offerings. A people strange and mysterious as the gloom of midnight, yet loving wine and feasting, wild mirth and lawless jesting. The black Aethiopians of the burning zone ; the fountain of the sun and the crystal sepulchres. From thence he caught faint glimpses of mighty Atlas and bright Hesperides, of fair Cyrene and jealous Carthage, of desert hordes and verdant oases. Such are a few of the scenes which that bold artist must depict, who seeks to represent the ancient world, ad mentem Herodoti.

XIV PREFACE.

Here the author would willingly conclude his preface, but whilst the present work has been passing through the press, a new attempt has been made to assail the credibility of Herodotus, and to detract from his renown as a traveller and historian. The genius of the great father of history has preserved his writings nearly intact for twenty-three centuries ; whilst his character for integrity has outlived the attacks of every discontented critic from Plutarch to Voltaire. His present assailant, Mr. Blakesley, is a scholar of a very different stamp from his predecessors.^ Actuated by no mean jealousy, and yielding to the influence of no scornful wit, he has been led by a profound love for abstract truth to pronounce somewhat too harshly against the straightforward narrative of the old Ionian. That much of Herodotus' s information is only to be received as secondary evidence, will be readily admitted by all ; but Mr. Blakesley would regard him as a mere pleasing compiler, like Oliver Goldsmith ; prevented from travelling by the exigencies of the time, and diflfering but very little, if at all, from the logographers who preceded him either in critical sagacity, diligent investigation, or historical fidelity ; blending together in one mass the yarns of merchant skippers, the tales current in caravanserais, the legends of the exegetae of temples, and the long details of veteran sailors and septuagenarian lioplites ; exercising but little discrimination in the selection of his facts, careless in stating his authorities.

^ Herodotus, with a Commentary, by J. W. Blakesley, B. D., 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1854. It is to the Introduction in this work that the reader is more particularly referred.

PREFACE. XV

laying claim to more experience and personal research than he was entitled, and, in fact, belonging to the same school as Charon, Hellanicus, Xanthus, Hecataeus, and others, from whom he largely copied without acknowledgment, and only exhibited perhaps a doubtful superiority in the style and treatment of his materials.

Mr. Blakesley's reasons for these inferences are by no means satisfactory. They are three in number. First, he asserts that the horror of the Greeks at originality, and their attachment to the social, political, and religious institutions in which they had been brought up, would have prevented even an intelligent and sagacious author, like Herodotus, from exercising the same kind of discrimination which we should look for in a modern historian. Secondly, he quotes doubtful passages from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, from Strabo, and from Thucydides, to prove that the successors of Herodotus only regarded him as a logographer, like his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. Thirdly, he rakes up the old accusation of Porphyry, that Herodotus has taken his descriptions of the crocodile, hippopotamus, and phoenix picture almost literally from the Periegesis of Hecataeus, and yet leaves his readers to infer that he had himself seen those objects, and was describing them as an eye-witness. These three reasons must be reviewed in detail.

First, as regards the Greek abhorrence of originality, and their attachment to their traditions, social, political, and religious. Herodotus flourished about B. c. 450. As far as concerns literature and the arts, the previous age had been marked by striking changes.

XVI PREFACE.

The real glory of the ancient epic had passed away with the hereditary monarchies. The poet no longer sung, in solemn and majestic hexameters, the heroic deeds of the ancestors of reigning princes. He sprung into new and independent life. He came before the people as a man with thoughts and objects of his own, and expressed himself in new and livelier metres. Hence arose the feeling elegy, the satirical iambus, / the fable and the parody, and last of all the impas- / *- sioned and impetuous lyric. Music had undergone similar changes. Terpander had added three strings to the harp; Olympus had taught fresh tunes for the flute. Choral singing and dancing had become more finished, more elaborate, and more significant. Sculpture had likewise reached its culminating j^oint in the sublime and mighty works of Phidias; the archaic had everywhere given way to the ideal. Painting was also fully developed by Polygnotus, and established as an independent art. Last of all, in the generation immediately preceding the birth of Herodotus, two still more important changes had taken place; — the ancient epic had ripened into prose history; the iambic, lyric, and chorus were transformed into the mighty drama. The social customs of the people had undergone similar variations. The manners and usages of the heroic age were essentially different from those in the historic times. At Athens the men had left off wearing armom-, and had become luxurious ; and again, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, the elders had discarded their linen tunics and golden grasshoppers.' The female fashions were no doubt as

^ Thucvd. i. 6.

PREFACE. XVll

changeable at Corinth and Ephesus as they now are at Paris; and it is certain that the more correct ladies of Athens wore first of all the Dorian chiton clasped to the shoulder, then, during the Persian war, the long and sleeved Ionian chiton,^ and lastly, in the age of Pericles, returned once more to the Dorian costume.^ In politics, the Greeks in the time of Herodotus seem to have only exhibited their attachment to their political traditions, by a succession of political revolutions. Oligarchies, tyrannies, and democracies were by turns adopted in every city ; and Herodotus himself having assisted in overthrowing the tyranny in Halicarnassus, fled from his ungrateful countrymen to seek for calm retirement at the distant settlement of Thurium. The religion of the Greeks had likewise passed through considerable modifications. The religious conceptions of Hesiod are far higher than those of Homer, whilst those of Aeschylus are still more lofty and spiritual. In Herodotus himself, who was undoubtedly a very religious man, we find a decided tendency to interpret the ancient mythes on rationalistic principles. In fact, free-thinking was already exercising considerable influence. The philosophers of Ionia, where Herodotus passed his youth, and of southern Italy, where he spent his declining years, were all, more or less, rejecting the popular notions of religion, and striking into new paths of speculation on sacred things. In short, a far greater degree of originality than that supposed by modern criticism to be evinced by Herodotus, was exhibited

- See the Excursus on Dress, in Becker's Charicles.

b

XVlll PREFACE.

in almost every direction ; and it may be easily inferred that the Ionian Greeks generally, like the Athenians in the days of St. Paul, spent a large proportion of their leisure time either in hearing or in telling of some new thing.

Secondly, the passages quoted by Mr. Blakesley to prove that Herodotus was not more faithful or industrious than his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, really prove nothing at all. The description of the ancient Greek historians by Dionysius of Halicarnassus points entirely, as Mr. Blakesley himself observes, ^' to the superior artistical skill which Herodotus displays in the choice of his subject, and the manner of treating it." The quotation from Strabo only proves that that geographer, like many later critics, was not disposed to put much faith in the stories of Herodotus. The passage in Thucydides requires a moment's notice. Thucydides, in comparing his own work with those of previous historians who sought for attractive language rather than truth, ^ is supposed by Mr. Blakesley to refer most undoubtedly to Herodotus. Thucydides however, in another passage,^ seems to have the same historians in his eye when he complains of the mistake made in supposing that Hipparchus, and not Hippias, had succeeded Pisistratus in the tp-anny; a mistake which was certainly not made by Herodotus.^ Indeed there is no reason for believing that Thucydides had ever read the history of Herodotus at all; he neither mentions his name in any part of his work, nor gives the slightest indication of being acquainted with either his life or labours.

1 Thucyd. i. 21. ^ Thucyd. vi. 54. ^ Herod, v. 55.

PREFACE. XIX

In short, the genius of Herodotus may be compared to that of Hume; and judging from extant fragments, his predecessors bore many points of resemblance to the old chroniclers, whilst his contemporaries were not much better than so many Tobias Smolletts. It was left for Grote and Macaulay, the Herodotus and Thucydides of modern times, to exhibit to the world a still happier treatment of a better selected and more thoroughly digested stock of sifted materials.

Thirdly comes Herodotus' s supposed piracy from Hecataeus. In the first place, Herodotus was certainly as likely to have seen the crocodile, the hijDpopotamus, and the phoenix picture as Hecataeus; and it is far more possible that some editor or transcriber interpolated his copy of Hecataeus with the descriptions from Herodotus, than that the latter should have borrowed such information concerning a country where he had evidently passed a considerable time, and from a writer whose geographical theories he held in contempt. But even taking it for granted that Herodotus did borrow from Hecataeus, it certainly does not prove that he had not seen the objects in question. He may have heard from some hoaxing priest that the crocodile had tusks, and that the hippopotamus was cloven-footed and had the hoofs of an ox ; and he may have found this story confirmed by Hecataeus, and accordingly adopted the account without attempting to confirm it by approaching the jaws of a crocodile, or the heavy toes of the hippopotamus. But even in this case he cannot be charged with dishonesty for omitting to mention the name of Hecataeus, for it was not at all

b 2

XX PREFACE.

the custom for an ancient author to check the flow of his style by introducing the names of authorities.

Last of all comes the u.n gracious question of whether Herodotus really did undertake those extensive travels which have been generally ascribed to him. Mr. Blakesley's observations upon this subject are not so valuable as might have been expected, for he has chiefly laboured to prove that Herodotus never went to Carthage, a city which very few critics could have ever supposed him to have visited. He however states, upon the authority of Polybius, that until the time of Alexander the seas swarmed with pirates ; thus totally ignoring the fact, that during the years when Herodotus must have performed his travels, namely, between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, the fleets of the Grreek allies, under the supremacy of Athens, had cleared the Aegean of pirate and Persian, from Attica to Asia Minor, and from the shores of Thrace to the mouths of the Nile. He also quotes the statements of Andocides, that the seas were covered with war-galleys and pirates; but this was the state of things at the latter end of the Peloponnesian war, and not during the time when Herodotus was undertaking his voyages. One thing is certain, that Herodotus must have sailed from Halicarnassus to Samos, from Samos to Athens, and fr-om Athens to Thurium. Mr. Blakesley will also admit that he might have visited Aegypt. Beside these countries the present author believes, from reasons which he has specified in the course of the present volume, that Herodotus sailed through the Hellespont, and across the Euxine, as far as the Greek port of Olbia,

PREFACE. XXI

and that he travelled along the great highway between Sardis and Susa ; and it was most probably during this or the return journey that he sailed down the Euphrates, and reached the great city of Babylon.^ One fact has been missed, not only by Mr. Blakesley, but by every commentator on the Geography of Herodotus whom the present author has consulted, namely, that the political relations of Halicarnassus with Persia were especially favourable to any wdll-accredited native of that city, who desired to visit the Persian capital. Halicarnassus was excluded from the Dorian confederacy, worshipping at Triopium, and at the time of the battle of Salamis, was united with the neighbouring islands of Cos, Calydna, and Nysirus, under the dependent sceptre of the celebrated Artemisia ; and the Carian queen gained so much upon the esteem of Xerxes, that after the defeat, he placed several of his natural sons under her care to be conveyed to Ephesus. Herodotus himself openly expresses his admiration of Artemisia, though she fought on the side of the Persians ; and the little kingdom continued faithfal to her and her family, even whilst Cimon the Athenian was frightening the whole Asiatic coast by his exploits. Herodotus no doubt belonged to a family of some consideration at Halicarnassus. At forty years of age he assisted in the popular revolution, which deprived the grandson of Artemisia of the tyranny. We may easily infer that he saw the so-called Indian ants preserved in the royal palace at Susa ; ^ and it is impossible to account for his acquaint-

^ See also Appendix I., " Travels of Herodotus," at the end of the present volume. 2 iii. 102.

XXU PREFACE.

ance with the Persian muster-rolls of the army and navy of Xerxes, unless this journey to Susa be admitted by the modern critic.

Thus far the present writer has endeavoured to do justice to the integrity and practical experience of Herodotus, without, as he hopes, doing injustice to the valuable and much-esteemed labours of Mr. Blakesley. If the theory which has been discussed had pertained to philology, the writer would have left it for abler critics to decide. If it had referred only to the history of Herodotus, he would have passed it over as not belonging to his subject. But it directly applied to the value of that geographical information which has been embodied and illustrated in the present volume, and therefore he has been compelled to investigate the question, and record and defend his opinions against so learned and eminent a commentator.

Here then the writer concludes his present labours. Years have passed away since he commenced his task, and much of it has been accomplished under circumstances but little favourable to literary composition; but however it may be received by the scholar, he can never regret a toil which has filled his mind's eye with vivid pictures of the ancient world, painted by the hand of the Homer of history. These pictures he hopes to reproduce in a more popular volume, which is ah^eady in preparation, and which he expects will shortly be submitted to the indulgence of the public.

London, Ay gust 28th, 1854.

Contents

GENEEAL INTEODUCTION.

Chapter I. Life And Education Of Herodotus

Page

Birth of Herodotus (b. c. 484) ....

Contemporary state of Greece ....

lb

Period of his travels .....

Halicarnassus, its history ....

ib

Herodotus removes to Thurium ....

Extent of his travels .....

ib

His general information .....

Previous state of geographical science .

Homer, his notions of the universe (b. c. 900)

ib

Extent of his geographical knowledge .

ib

Scylax of Caryanda .....

ib

Hecataeus of Miletus .....

ib

Conjectures of philosophers passed over by Herodotus

Review of his old age .....

CHAPTER n.

the world and its divisions.

The winds considered as fundamental powers of nature

Regarded as peculiar properties of countries