Marinos of Tyre (Μαρίνος ο Τύριος, fl. ca. AD 60-130?) was a Syrian[1] geographer and cartographer originally from Tyre, who has been speculated to have lived in Rhodes. Practically nothing is known of him beyond that his work was used as a source by Ptolemy for his Geographia. Apart from Ptolemy, Marinos is also cited by the Arab geographer al-Masudi. He was the first to use a "Meridian of the Isles of the Blessed (Canary Islands or Cape Verde Islands)" as zero meridian, and the parallel of Rhodes for measurements of latitude. Works used by Ptolemy include Marinos' Geography, as well as his "Corrected Geographical Tables", which are often dated to AD 114, though he may have been a near-contemporary of Ptolemy. Marinos estimated a length of 90,000 stadia for the parallel of Rhodes, corresponding to a circumference of the Earth of 33,300 km, about 17% less than the actual value. (Both numbers depend upon the length assigned to the Greek stade). A few of Marinos opinions are reported by Ptolemy. Marinos was of the opinion that the Okeanos was separated into an eastern and a western part by the continents (Europe, Asia and Africa). He thought that the inhabited world stretched in latitude from Thule (Shetlands) to Agisymba (tropic of Capricorn) and in longitude from the Isles of the Blessed to Shera (China). Marinos also coined the term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle.
References
- ^ George Sarton (1936). "The Unity and Diversity of the Mediterranean World", Osiris 2, p. 406-463 [430].
