Africa
(from the Punic
Frigi, a district on the north coast). A name used by the
ancients in two senses:
- 1. for the whole continent of Africa, and
- 2. for the portion of North Africa which the Romans erected into a province.
In the more general sense, the name was not used by the Greek writers; and its use by
the Romans arose from the extension to the whole continent of the name of a part of it. The
proper Greek name for the continent is Libya (
Λιβύη).
Considerably before the historical period of Greece begins, the Phœnicians
extended their commerce over the Mediterranean, and founded several colonies on the north
coast of Africa, of which Carthage was the chief. The Greeks knew very little of the country
until the foundation of the Dorian colony of Cyrené (B.C. 620), and the intercourse
of Greek travellers with Egypt in the sixth and fifth centuries; and even then their knowledge
of all but the part near Cyrené was derived from the Egyptians and
Phœnicians. who sent out some remarkable expeditions to explore the country. A
Phœnician fleet sent by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho (about B.C. 600) was said to have
sailed from the Red Sea, around Africa, and so into the Mediterranean: the authenticity of
which story is still a matter of dispute. We still possess an authentic account of another
expedition, which the Carthaginians despatched under
Hanno (q.v.) (about B.C. 510), and which reached a point on the west coast nearly, if
not quite, as far as latitude 10 degrees north. In the interior, the Great Desert (Sahara)
interposed a formidable obstacle to discovery; but, even before the time of Herodotus,
the people on the northern coast told of individuals who had crossed the desert, and had
reached a great river flowing towards the east, with crocodiles in it, and black men living on
its banks, which, if the story be true, was probably the Niger in its upper course, near
Timbuctoo. There were great differences of opinion as to the boundaries of the continent. Some
divided the whole world into only two parts, Europe and Asia, but were not agreed to which of
these two Libya (i. e. Africa) belonged; and those who recognized three divisions differed
again in placing the boundary between Libya and Asia either on the west of Egypt or along the
Nile, or at the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea: the last opinion gradually prevailed.
Herodotus divides the inhabitants of Africa into four races: two native, namely, the Libyans
and the Ethiopians; and two foreign, namely, the Phœnicians and the Greeks. The
Libyans, however, were a Caucasian race; the Ethiopians of Herodotus correspond to our Negro
races. The whole of the north of Africa fell successively under the power of Rome, and was
finally divided into provinces as follows:
1.
Aegyptus;
2.
Libya, including (
a) Libyae
Nomos or Libya Exterior, (
b) Marmarica, (
c）
Cyrenaïca;
3.
Africa Propria, the former empire of Carthage;
4.
Numidia;
5.
Mauretania, divided into (
a) Sitifensis, (
b) Caesariensis, (
c）
Tingitana: these, with
6.
Aethiopia, make up the whole of Africa,
according to the divisions recognized by the latest of the ancient geographers. The northern
district was better known to the Romans than it is to us, and was extremely populous and
flourishing. Africa Propria or Provincia, or simply Africa, was the name under which the
Romans, after the Third Punic War, B.C. 146, erected into a province the whole of the former
territory of Carthage. It extended from the river Musca, on the west, which divided it from
Numidia, to the bottom of the Syrtis Minor, on the southeast. It was divided into two
districts (
regiones), namely,
- 1. Zeugis or Zeugitana, the district round Carthage;
- 2. Byzacium or Byzacena, south of Zeugitana, as far as the bottom of the Syrtis Minor.
It corresponds to the modern regency of Tunis. The province was full of flourishing towns,
and was extremely fertile; it furnished Rome with its chief supplies of corn.
In the days of Strabo, the earlier knowledge possessed by the ancients of Africa was
little, if at all, improved. The Mediterranean coast and the banks of the Nile were the only
ports frequented by the Greeks. Their opinion respecting the continent itself was that it
formed a trapezium, or else that the coast from the Columns of Hercules to Pelusium might be
considered as the base of a rightangled triangle of which the Nile formed the perpendicular
side, extending to Aethiopia and the ocean, while the hypothenuse was the coast comprehended
between the extremity of this line and the straits. The apex of the triangle reached beyond
the limits of the habitable world, and was consequently regarded as inaccessible. The
knowledge of the day respecting the eastern and western coast of Africa appears to have
extended no farther than 12 degrees north latitude, or perhaps 12¡ 30'. The two
sides were supposed to approximate, and between the Hesperii Aethiopes to the west and the
cinnamomifera regio to the east, the distance was supposed to be
comparatively small. This intervening space was exposed to excessive heats,
according to the common belief, which forbade the traveller's penetrating within its
precincts; while, at a little distance beyond, the Atlantic and Indian oceans were brought to
unite. The hypothesis which we have here stated made Africa terminate at about one half of
its true length, and represented this continent as much smaller than Europe. On the other
hand, the opinion of Hipparchus, which united eastern Africa to India, remained for a long
period contemned, until Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy had adopted it. This adoption, however,
did not prevent the previous hypothesis from keeping its ground in some measure in the west
of Europe, where it contributed to the discovery of the route by the Cape of Good Hope.
Africa, according to Pliny (vi. 33), was three thousand six hundred and forty-eight Roman
miles from east to west. The length of the inhabited part of Africa was supposed nowhere to
exceed two hundred and fifty Roman miles. Whatever may be the discussions to which the very
corrupt state of the Roman numerals in the pages of Pliny are calculated to give rise, one
thing is sufficiently evident, that the Romans knew only a third part of Africa. See the
article
Geographia, with the maps there given.
