MANUSCRIPTS. [PALEOGRAPHY.] MAP (Latin, maipa, a napkin ; French, mappcmonde, a map of the world). A map is a representation of the surface of a sphere, or a portion of a sphere, on a plane. The nape, however, is commonly applied to those plane drawings which represent, the form, extent, position, and other particulars of the various countries of the earth.
Maps, or delineations resembling them, we may reasonably con clude were coeval with the earliest geographid knowledge; but it is not possible to fix the time of the first attempts to construct maps. The geographical knowledge of the Greeks, as exhibited in the Homeric poems, comprehended only a small part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and there is not the slightest allusion in them to any mode of delineating or representing the surface of a country. In their maritime adventures the Greeks are said to have been assisted by the nautical maps of the Phoenicians; but however this may be, we have no account of anything deserving the name of maps before those of Anaximander the Milcsian, who is alleged to have been the first to construct a map of the world. Itinerary maps of the places of encampment were almost indispensable to the commanders of armies; Diognetus and Beton are mentioned ( Pliny,' Nat. Hist.' vi., 17) as the surveyors of the marches of Alexander, who was very care ful in examining the measures of his surveyors, and in obtaining his descriptions from the most skilful persons. The science of geo graphy made rapid advances under Eratosthenes [ERATOBTHENES, in Moo. Div.; GEOGRAPHY], who had the great merit of reducing geo graphy to a regular system, and of founding it upon solid principles. Ile introduced into his map a• regular parallel of latitude, which he accomplished by tracing a line over certain places whose longest day was observed to be of the same length. This parallel extended from the Strait of Gibraltar to the mountains of India, passing through the island of Rhodes ; and from its central position with respect to the principal ancient nations, it became a standard of reference in the maps of this period. Succeeding geographers made many attempts to determine the longitude of places by measurements of this line, but with no great success. Eratosthenes, in addition to the parallel above men
tioned and other parallels, undertook to draw a meridian from Meroe through Syene to Alexandria (' Strain); ii. 114), and also to determine the earth's circumference by the actual measurement of a portion of one of its great circles. These discoveries and improvements very materially affected the diuiensions of all the ancient maps ; and from this time the connection between astronomy and geography was so far established as to ensure an advantage to the latter by every advance of the former. This was eminently the case in the discoveries of Hip parchus, who fixed the construction of maps on a mathematical basis, and enabled the geographer to lay down his latitudes and longitudes upon certain principles.
Tu Strabe wo are chiefly indebted for our information respecting the state of geography in the Alignstan age. But the extent of the earth's surface known to this writer does not very much exceed that which was known to Herodotus four centuries earlier. His map of the world exhibits some remarkable errors. He supposed the Pyrenees to run north and south ; cuts off the projecting province of Brittany from France, places Ireland not to the west but to the north of Britain, and makes the Caspian communicate with the northern ocean though Herodotus had accurately described it as a lake.
The Roman Itineraries show that their surveys were made with con siderable care, although there are no traces of mathematical geography in those which have been handed down to us, the chief object in view being the clear direction of the march of their armies: All the pro vinces of the Roman empire had been surveyed when Ptolemy com posed his system of geography, which has happily been preserved to us. It is n rt so much to his more perfect acquaintance with the earth that Ptolemy owes his reputation as a geographer, as to his giving solidity and unity to the science by fixing its unconnected details on a mathematical basis and carrying into full practice and to greater perfection the system of latitudes and longitudes of Hipparchus, whose invention had been much neglected for upwards of 250 years.