Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/430

Rh 41& PLINIUS. upon them. He gives a few notices of the inliabit- ants of the different provinces, but no clear or comprehensive account of the population of the country generally, or any intelligible views even of its physical characteristics. After a similar account of Gallia Narbonensis, Pliny proceeds to Italy. His account of this country is, on the whole, the best of the kind that he has given. Following the division of Augustus, he enumerates the different provinces, going round the coast. The extent of coast line was of course favourable for defining the positions of places situated on or near it. Where the coast or river does not give him a convenient method of defining the position of places, he simply enumerates them, usually in alphabetical order. He lias been at considerable pains to specify a number of distances between mouths of rivers, headlands, and other salient or important points, but his numbers can scarcely ever be relied on. Many are egregiously wrong. This may be partly the fault of copyists, but there can be little doubt that it is mainly the fault of Pliny himself, from his misunderstanding the data of the authors from whom he copied. In connection with the more important sections of Italy he enumerates in order the races which successively inhabited them, and where the occasion presents itself men- tions not only the towns which existed in his own time, but those which had been destroyed. The Tiberis and Padus, especially the latter, he describes with considerable care. After tiie pro- vinces on the western coast of Italy, he takes the islands between SJ)ain and Italy, and then returns to the mainland. Leaving Italy he proceeds to the provinces on the north and east of the Adriatic sea, and those south of the Danube — Liburnia, Dalmatia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia ; and in the fourth book takes up the Grecian peninsula. His account of this is a good example of his carelessness, indistinctness, and confusion as a geographer. After the provinces on the western side of northern Greece (Epeirus, Acarnania, &c,), he takes the Peloponnesus, and then comes back to Attica, Boeotia, and Thessaly. His account excludes the Peloponnesus from Hellas or Graecia, which begins from the isthmus, the first country in it being Attica, in which he includes Megaris (iv. 7). His notices are of the most meagre description possible, consisting of hardly any- thing but lists of names. All that he says of Attica does not occupy twenty lines. After Thessaly come Macedonia, Thrace, the islands round Greece, the Pontus, Scythia, and the northern parts of Europe. Of the existence of the Hyperboreans he thinks it impossible to doubt, as so many authors affirmed that they used to send offerings to Apollo at Delos (iv. 12). Nor does he express any distrust when recounting the stories of races who fed upon horses' hoofs, or of tribes whose ears were large enough to serve as a covering for their bodies. His account of Britain, which he makes lie over against Ger- many, Gaul, and Spain, is very meagre. From Britain he proceeds to Gallia, in his account of which he mixes up Caesar's division according to races with the division according to provinces (Ukert, GeograpJde der Griechen und Homer, ii. 2. p. 238), and so, not unnaturally, is indistinct and contradictory. After Gallia he comes back to the northern and western parts of Spain and Lusitania. This sketch will give the reader an idea of the clumsy manner in which Pliny treats geography. PLIJsIUS. It is unnecessary to follow him in detail through the rest of this part of his work. It is carried on in much the same style. When treating .of Africa he mentions (apparently without disbelief) the monstrous races in the south, some without articu- late language, others with no heads, having mouths and eyes in their breasts. He accedes to the opinion of king Juba, that the Nile rises in a mountain of Mauritania, and that its inundations are due to the Etesian winds, which either force the current back upon the land, or carry vast quantities of clouds to Aethiopia, the rain from which swells the river. Of the races to the north and east of the Pontus and on the Tanais he has preserved a very large number of names. With regard to India he has some accounts which show that amid the conflicting, and what even Pliny calls incredible statements of different writers, a good deal of accurate information had reached the Romans. It is to be regretted that Pliny was deterred by the nature of these accounts from giving us more of them. It would have been interesting to know what Greeks who had resided at the courts of Indian kings (vi. 17) told their country- men. We could have spared for that purpose most of the rough and inaccurate statements of distances which he has taken the trouble to put in. Some in- tercourse which had taken place with the king of Taprobane in the reign of the emperor Claudius enables Pliny to give a somewhat circumstantial account of the island and people. Though of very small value as a systematic work, the books on geo- graphy are still valuable on account of the extensive collection of ancient names which they contain, as well as a variety of incidental facts which have been preserved out of the valuable sources to which Pliny had access. The five following books (vii. — xi.) are devoted to zoology. The seventh book treats of man, and opens with a preface, in which Pliny indulges his querulous dissatisfaction with the lot of man, his helpless and unhappy condition when brought into the world, and the pains and vices to which he is subject. After bespeaking some measure of belief for the marvellous accounts that he will have to give, and suggesting that what appears incredible should be regarded in its connection with a great whole {naturae vero rerum vis atque majestas in omnibus viomentis fide caret, siquis modo partes ejus ac non totam complectatur anivio he enumerates a number of the most astonishing and curious races reported to exist upon the earth : — cannibals, men with their feet turned backwards ; the Psylli, whose bodies produce a secretion which is deadly to serpents ; tribes of Androgyni ; races of en- chanters ; the Sciapodae, whose feet are so large, that when the sun's heat is very strong they lie on their backs and turn their feet upwards to shade themselves ; the Astomi, who live entirely upon the scents of fruits and flowers ; and various others almost equally singular. Haec, he remarks, atque ialia ex honiinum genere ludihria sibi, nobis miruculu, ingeniosa fecit nuticra. He then proceeds to a variety of curious accounts respecting the ge- neration and birth of children, or of monsters in their place. An instance of a change of sex he affirms to have come within his own knowledge (vii. 4). The dentition, size, and growth of children, examples of an extraordinary precocity, and remarkable bodily strength, swiftness, and keenness of sight and hearing, furnish him* with