Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/728

 ri2 EHODANUS. Lyon dowmvards is generally flat, but there are faeveral parts where the rocks rise right above the water, and in these places the railway from Lyon to Marseille is cut in the rocks close to the river. At St. Andeol, a small town on the west bank above the Ardiche, the plain country begins on the west side of the Rhone. On the east side the hills are seen in the distance. From one of the middle-age tgwcrs built on the amphitheatre of Arks, there is a view of the great plain which lies all round that city to the north, west, and east, and stretches south- ward to the coast of the Mediterranean. The two large affluents of the Rhone on the east side are the here (Isara) and the Durance (Druentia). The Rhone was earlier known to the Greeks and Romans than any other of the large rivers of Western Europe. The oldest notices of this river must have come from the Phocaeans and the Greeks of Mas- silia. What Avienus has collected from some source {Or. Marit. 623—690) is unintelligible. Pliny (iii. 4) very absurdly derives the name Rhodanus from a town which he names Rhoda ; but the name Rhodanus is older than any city, and, like the names of other European rivers, it is one of the oldest memorials that we have of the languages of the West. Polybius (iii. 47) supposed that the Rhone rose further east than it does, but he knew that it flowed down a long valley {avXwv) to the west, though he does not mention the Lake of Geneva. Ptolemy (ii. 10), the latest of the classical geo- graphers, had no exact notion of tlie sources of the Rhone, though the Romans long before his time must have known where to look for them. He makes the sources of the Arar come from the Alps, by which the Jura is meant, and in this statement and what he says of the course of the Arar and Dubis he may have followed Strabo (iv. p. 186), as it has been supposed. The blunders about the sources of this river are singular. Mela (iii. 3) mentions the Da- nubius and Rhodanus among the rivers of Germany; and in another passage he says that it rises not far from the sources of the Isterand the Rhenus (ii. 5). There is much difference in the statements about the number of the mouths of the Rhone. Timaeus, quoted by Strabo (p. 183), says that there were five outlets, for which Polybius reproves Timaeus, and says there were only two. Polybius (iii. 41) names the eastern branch the Massaliotic. Artemi- dorus, as cited by Strabo, made five mouths. Strabo does not state how many he supposed that there were. He says that above the mouths of the Rhone, not far from the sea, is a lake called Stomalimne, which some make one of the outlets of the Rhone, and those particularly do who enumerate seven out- lets of the river. But he .shows that this was a mistaken opinion. Caesar built ships at Arelate when he was going to besiege !Massilia, and he brought them down the river to that city, and by the eastern branch, as we may assume. The Rhone was navigated by the people on its banks at the time when Hannibal with his army came to cross it, and much earlier. Polybius is the earliest extant writer who has given us any precise information about this river. Hannibal (u. c. 218) crossed it at a point above the division of the stream, and of course higher than Aries, for we assume that the bifurcation was not higher than that city in his time, if it ever was. (Polyb. iii. 43.) He probably crossed the river at Beaucaire and below the junction of the Gardon. He then marched jiorthwards on the east side of the river to the In- KHODIA. .sula. [Insula Allobrogu.m.] JIuch has been written on this passage of Polybius and on Livy (xxi.), who also describes the same passage. (The March of Hannibal from the Rhone to the Alps, by H. L. Long, Esq., 1831 ; Ukert, Gallien, p. 561, &c. ; and the modern writers quoted by each.) Pliny (iii. 4)enumerates three mouths of theRhone. He calls the two smaller " Libyca" (if the reading is right) : one of these is the Hispaniense os, which we may assume to be the nearest to Spain; the other is Jletapinum, and the third and largest is the Massaliot. Some modern maps represent three mouths of the river. Ptolemy (ii. 10) mentions only a western and an eastern mouth, and he makes a mistake in placing the Fossae JMarianae [Fossae Mariaxae] west of the western mouth. The channels of the Rhone below Aries may have been changed in some parts, even in historical periods, and the bed of the river above Ai-les has not always been where it is now. But there is no evidence for any great changes in the river's course since the time when Polybius wrote, though it is certain that the alluvium brought down the river must have en- larged the Delta of the Rhone. The canal of Pdarius, which was on the east side of the eastern outlet of the Rhone, is described under Fossa Mariana; and the stony plain is described under Lapidei Campi. [G. L.] RHODANU'SIA. Pliny (iii. 4) mentions Rhoda in Gallia Narbonensis as a colony of the Rhodii He places it on the coast east of Agathe (Agde and says that it gave the name to the Rhodanus. [RiioDiVxus.] Hieronymus, in his Prologue to the Second Epistle to the Galatians, copies Pliny. This may be the place which Stephanas (s. v. 'PoSavovuia) names Rhodanusia, and calls "a city in JIassalia;"' by which the Massiliotic territory must be meant. The passage in Strabo (iv. p. 180) t?V 5e 'Prfjjv 'AyaOriv toIs, in which he intends to speak of one of the Massiliotic settlements, is corrupt. Casauboii (Comment, in Strab. p. 83) sometimes thought that we ought to read TT/f 5e 'PSSriv ical ^Aya6T]v rots. Groskurd (Strah. Transl. i. p. 310) thinks that Pliny has called this place Rhoda because he con founded it with Rhode or Rhodus in Iberia, which he does not mention. He observes that Scynmus (v. 208), Stephanus, and Sidonius Apollinaris (i 5) rightly name it Rhodanusia; and he has no doubt that Strabo wrote it so. But it is by no means certain that Strabo did write it so. Groskurd'.s ar- gument is this: there never was a town Rhoda in Gallia, and Strabo mentions the Iberian Rhode or Rhodus. Since then Strabo is acquainted with both places, he has not made a mistake like Pliny; rather must we with Vossius (A'oie on Mela, ii. 6) alter the corrupt 'P6i]v into 'Po^avovalav ; and Koray is mistaken in rejecting 'P6-i)v altogether as not genuine. We know nothing of this Gallic Rhode or Rhodanusia. The place is gone and has left no trace. [G. L.] RHODE. [Rhodanusia.] RHODE FLUVIUS. [Sagaris.] RHO'DIA ('PoSi'o: Eth. 'PoSieus), a town of Lycia, situated in the mountains on the north of Corydallus. (Steph. B. s. v. ; Ptol. v. 3. § 6 ; Phot. Cod. 176.) At the time when Col. Leake wrote his work on Asia ^Minor (p. 186) the site of this town was not yet ascertained, and Sir C. Fellows did not examine the district; but the inscriptions wjiich have since been found fix its site at the place now called Eski Hissar. (Spratt and Forbes, Tra-