Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1019

 SIGRIANE. the description of the remains tLemselves, see the Annali delV Instituto Archeologico for 1829, pp. 78 — 87, 357 — 360; Classical Museum, vol. ii. pp. 167—170; Abeken, JJiltel Italien, p. 140, &c.) The only other remains within the circuit of the walls are a temple (now converted into the church of S. Pietro) of Roman date, and built of regularly S'luared blocks of tufo; and nearly adjoining it a circular reservoir for water, of considerable size and lined with the " opus Signinum." (Annali, I. c. p. 82.) Several inscriptions of impei'ial date are also preserved iu the modern town. [E.H.B.] SILA, 999 GATE OF SIG^'IA. SIGPJA'NE (v ^.lyptavv, Strab. si. p. 525), a district of Media Atropatene, near the Caspian Gates. Ptolemy calls it ^lypiaviKT] (vii. 2. § 6). [V.] SI'GRIUM ('Siypiov), the westernmost promontory of the island of Lesbos, which now bears the name of Siffri (Strab. xiii. pp. C16, 618.) Stephanus B. (s. V.) calls Sigrium a harbour of Lesbos. [L. S.] SIGULO'NES (^lyovXaives), a German tribe mentioned by Ptolemy (ii. 11. § 11) as inhabiting the Cimbrian Chersonesus, to the north of the Saxones, but is otherwise unknown. [L. S.] SIGYNNES (liyvvves, Herod, v. 9 ; 'S.iyvvot, ApoU. Rhod. iv. 320; Orph. A7-(/. 759; 'Xiyivvoi, Strab. xi. p. 520). The only nanje of any Trans- Danubian population, other than Scythian, known to Herodotus was that of the Sigynnes, whom he seems to have described as the Thracians described them to either himself or his informants. The Thracian notion of one of the.se Sigynnes was that he wore a Median dress, and considered him.self a descendant of the Medes; though how this could be was more than Herodotus could say. " Any- thing, however, is possible in a long space of time." The horses of the Sigynnes were undersized — ponies, indeed, rather than horses. They were flatnosed and long-haired ; their coat being five fingers deep. They were too weak to carry a man on their back; but not too weak for harness. In chariots they were light and quick ; and in the drawing of chariots the Sigynnes took great delight. We must look on Sigynnes as a general and col- lective name for a large assemblage of populations; inasmuch aa their country is said to extend as far westwards as the Heneti on the Adriatic. Say that it reached what was afterwards the frontier of Pan- nonia. On the north it must really have been bounded by some of the Scythian districts. Iu the language of the Ligyans above Massilia, the word Sif/ynna means a vierchant, or retail-dealer, or car- rier. In Cyprus they call sjjears by the name Sirpjnna. The resemblance of this word to the name Zigeun^zGipsy has often been noticed. Word for word, it may be the same. It may also have been applied to the gipsies with the meaning it has in Ligyan. It does not, however, follow that the Sigynnes were gipsies. [R. G. L.] SIHOR (2tii5/)). 1. The torrent more commonly known as " the River of Egypt," the southern boundary of the Promised Land, identified by the LXX. with Rhinocorura, the modern Wady-el- Arish. [Rhinocorura.] {Joshua, xVu. 3; 1 Chron. jdii. 5; Jeremiah, ii. 18.) In the first cited passage, the LXX. read anh rjjs aoiKrjTOU ttjs Kara, trpdaai- ■Kov AiyvTTTuv; in the second, airh opicov Alyinrrov, and only in the last is a proper name retained, and there it is changed to Ttjcvv. St. Jerome ( Onoinast. s. v.), following Eusebius, describes it as before Egypt, and speaks of a village of the name between Aelia and Eleutheropolis, which it is difScuIt to imagine that they could have identified with the Sihor above named. St. Jerome says that he has said more on the subject " in libris Hebraicoruni quaestionum," but the passage is not to be found there. In his '' Epitaphium Paulae " he writes, " veniam ad Aegypti flumen Sior, qui interpretatur turbidus " (p. 677); but he here probably means the Nile, which is sometimes supposed to be called Sihor, as in the passage of Jeremiah above referred to. The village named by Eusebius and St. Jerome doubtless marked the site of the city of the tribe of Judah, situated in the mountains, and written Zior in the authorised version, but 'i]]>'i in the ori- ginal (Joshua, XV. 54), and in the LXX. 'S.liop, (al. 2copa/6). 2. Sihor or Shiiior Libnath (LXX. ^Ztiuv kuI AaSaudd), perhaps to be taken as two names, as by the LXX., Eusebius, and St. Jerome, who name " Sior in tribu Aser," without the addition of Libnath. It is mentioned only in the border of Asher. (Joshua, xix. 26.) The various conjec- tures concerning the place or places are stated by Bonfrerius (Comment, in loc"), but none are satis- factory, and the site or sites have still to be re- covered, [G. W.] SILA (r] 2i'Aa: Siki) was the name given in ancient times to a part of the Apennines in the S. of Bruttium, which were clothed with dense forests, and furnished abundance of pitch, as well as timber for ship-building. Strabo tells us it was 700 stadia (70 geog. miles) in length, and places its commence- ment in the neighbourhood of Locri. (Strab. vi. p. 261.) It is evident, therefore, that he, as well as Pliny (iii. 5. s. 10), who notices it in connection with Rhegium and Leucopetra, assigned the name to the southernmost group of the Apennines (the range of Aspromonte), S. of the isthmus which separates the Terinaean and Scylletic gulfs. At the present day the name of Sila is given only to the detached and outlying mountain group N. of that isthmus, and E. of Cosenza (Consentia.) It is probable that the name, which evidently means only '' the forest," and is connected with the Latin siliHi, and the Greek vKr], w;is originally applied in a more general sense to all the forest- covered mountains of this part of Calabria, though now restricted to the group in question. [E. 11. B.] 3 s 4