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The ancients knew there was a big continent across the sea (or so it seems)
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I think I found an indication about it. I was going to post at the "Diogenes" thread and found a paragraph in greek which I tried to confirm, but couldnt.
Then I thought that the name of the writer was wrong so I searched in the net as well as in my old encyclopedia, but i couldnt find a reference on the specific text (or his work was "locked" for me- thinking of Aaron Swartz)
Anyway I managed to find the text in an english translation and here it is.
Dio Chrysostom (Dion of Prusa or Dio Cocceianus) Born 40ac –died 120ac) was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century.
One of his Discourses on Kingship (no 4 -p193/194) it is a docudrama on what Alexander the Great and the filosopher Diogenes talked about when they met. This can be a imaginary story but look what he writes at the end
The Fourth Discourse on Kingship
The king replied,
"Diogenes, you seem to be joking. If I capture Darius and the hand of the Indians to boot, there will be nothing to prevent my being the greatest king that ever lived.
For what is left for me when I have once become master of Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, and the Empire of the Indies?" 52
And the other, observing that he was aflame with ambition and that with all his heart he was being borne at full stretch in that direction, just as the cranes when flying stretch themselves out in whatever direction they are speeding, exclaimed, 53
"Nay, in the state of mind in which you are, you will have not one whit more than anyone else, nor will you really be a king, no, not even if you leap over the walls of Babylon and capture the city in that way, instead of breaking through the walls from without or sapping them from beneath, 54º
nor even if you imitate Cyrus and glide in like a water-snake by the river-route,22 and in the same way get inside the walls of Susa and Bactra, no, not even though you swim across the ocean and annex another continent greater than Asia."
[link to penelope.uchicago.edu]
Unfortunatelly i cant find the greek text there to see the exact words he uses, but still it is interesting that he mentions a continent bigger than Asia across the ocean.
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