Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/532

 516 PALAERUS. PALAERUS (noXoipos: Eth. TlaXaipivs), a town on the W. coast of Acarnania, on the Ionian sea, which is placed by Strabo between Leucas and Alyzia. Its exact site is unknown. Leake places it in the valley of Livddki. In the first year of the Peloponnesian War (b. c. 431) Palaerus was in al- liance with the Athenians ; and when the latter people took the neighbouring town of Sollium, which was a Corinthian colony, they gave both it and its territory to the inhabitants of Palaerus. (Thuc. ii. .30: Strab. x. pp. 450, 459.) PALAE.SCEPSIS. [Scepsis.] PALAESIMUNDUM (Plin. vi. 22. s. 24), a great town in the ancient Taprobane {Ceylon), an account of which was given to the Romans by Annius Plo- cainus, who spent six months there during the reign of the emperor Claudius. According to him, it was sitnale<l on a river of the same name, which, flowing from a great internal lake, entered the sea by three mouths. It is probable that it is represented by the present Trincomalee, in the neighbourhood of which are the remains of enormous ancient works for the resrnlatinn of the course of the river — now called the Mahavelln-Ganga. (Brooke, Geogr. Journ. vol. iii. p 223.) The name occurs under the form Palaesimun(lu in the Periplus Mar. Erythr., and in Marcian's Peripl. Marls Exteri as the name of the island itself. Thus the first speaks of vr)(Tos Ae- yofxfVTj noAai(n,uov55ou, but anciently Taprobane (c. 61, ed. MUller); and the second states that the island of Taprobane was formerly called Palaesi- mundu, but is now called Salice (c. 35, ed. Jliiller). Ptolemy, and Stephanus, who follows him, state that the island FlaAai jucv eKaXslro Si^dufSot;, vvv de 2aAi/<7) (vii. 4. § 1). It is very probable, however, that this is in both cases to be considered as an erroneous reading, and that the true name was Palaesimundum. Lassen considers that it is de- rived from the Sanscrit words Pdli-Simanta, the Head of the Holy Law. (^Dissert, de Insula Tapro- bane, p. 14.) [v.] I'ALAESTE, a town upon the coast of Chaonia in Epeirus, at the southern foot of the Acroceraunian peak, where Caesar landed from Brundusium, in order to carry on the war against Pompey in Illyria. (Luian, Phars. v. 460.) In this vicinity there is a modern village, called Paldsa ; and there can there- fore be little doubt that Lucan has preserved tlie real name of the place where Caesar landed, and that there is a mistake in the MSS. of Caesar, where the name is written Pharsalus. (Caes. B. C. iii. 6 ; comp. Leake, Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 5.) PALAESTI'NA {naXaiarivq : Eth. UaXai- artvds), the most commonly received and classical name for the country, otherwise called the Land of Canaan, Judaea, the Holy Land, &c. This name has the authority of the prophet Isaiah, among the sacred writers; and was received by the earliest secular historians. Herodotus calls the Hebrews Syrians of Palestine; and states that the sea-border of Syria, inliabited, according to him, by Phoenicians from the Red Sea, was called Palaestina, as far as Eirypt (vii. 89). He elsewhere places Syria Palaes- tina between Phoenice and Egypt; Tyre and Sidon in Phoenice: Ascalon, Cadytis, lenysus in Palaestina Syriae ; elsewhere he places Cadytis and Azotus simply in Syria (iv. 39, iii. 5, ii. 116, 157, i. 105, iii. 5). The name, as derived from the old inhabitants of the land, originally described only the sea-border south of Mount Carrael, occupied by the Philistines PALAESTINA. from the very earliest period, and during the time of the Israelite kingdom (Exod. xiii. 17); although it would appear that this district was partially occu- pied by the cognate branches of the Canaanites. {Gen. X. 14, 19.) It afterwards came to be used of the inland parts likewise, and that not only on the west of the Jordan, but also to the east, as far as the limits of the children of Israel ; and in this wider acceptation it will he convenient here to adopt it; although it deserves to be noted that even so late as Josephus the name Palaestina was occasionally used in its more restricted and proper sense, viz. of that part of the coast inhabited of old by the ' Philistines. (See the passages referred to in Reland, p. 41, who devotes the nine first chapters of his work to the names of Palestine, pp. 1 — 51.) I. General, Boundaries, Soil, Climate. The general boundaries of Palestine, in this wider acceptation of the name, are clearly defined by the Mediterranean on the west, and the great desert, now called the Hauran, on the east. [Hauran.] The country, however, on the east of Joi-dan was not originally designed to form part of the land of Israel ; which was to have been bounded by the Jordan and its inland lakes, (Numb, xsxiv. 6, 10 — 12; comp. xxxii.) The northern and south- ern boundaries are not so clearly defined; but it is probable that a more careful investigation and a more accurate survey of the country than has hitherto been attempted might lead to the recovery of many of the sites mentioned in the sacred books, and of natural divisions which might help to the elucidation of the geography of Palestine. On the south, indeed, recent investigations have led to the discovery of a well-defined mountain barrier, forming a natural wall along the south of Palestine, from the southern bay of the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean, along the line of which, at intervals, may be found traces of the names mentioned in the borders in the books of Moses and Joshua, terminating on the west with the river of Egypt ( Wady-el-Arish) at Rhinoco- rnra. {Numb, xsxiv. 3 — 5 ; comp. Josh. xv. 1 — 4 ; Williams, /Zo?!/ C%, vol. i., appendix i., note 1, p. 463 — 468.) On the northern border the mention of Mount Hor is perplexing; the point on the coast of " the great sea" is not fixed; nor are the sites of Hamath or Zedad determined. {Numb, xxxiv. 7, 8 ; comp. Ezek. xlvii. 15, 16.) But whatever account may be given of the name Hor in the northern borders of Palestine, the mention of Hermon as the northern extremity of the Israelites' conquests in Deuteronomy (iii. 9, v. 48) would point to that rather than to Lebanon, which Reland conjectures, as the mountain in question : while the fact that Sidon is assigned to the tribe of Asher {Judges, i. 21) would prove that the point on the coast must be fixed north of that border town of the Canaanites. {Gen. X. 19; Josh. xix. 28.) Tiie present Hamah, near to Horns (Eniesa), is much tuo far north to fall in with the boundary of Palestine, and it must be conceded that we have not at present sufiicient data to enable us to determine its northern limits. (Reland, lib.i. cap. 25, pp. 113—123.) To this it must be added that the limits of Palestine varied at different periods of its history, and according to the views of different writers (ib. cap. 26, pp. 124 — 127), and that the common error of confounding the limits of the possessions of the Israelites witb those assigned to their conquests has still further embarrassed the question. Assuming, howevei',