Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/450

 432 BBITANNICAE INSULAE. some commentators identifying his island with Rngen, and others with Heligoland, shows this. Now, the following are the reasons for believing that the BriUia of Procopus and the hland of the Sacred Grove of Tacitus, was neither Rugen exda- sively, nor Heligoland excluidTely; bat a iertwm guid^ 80 to say, arising out of a confusitm between the attri- butes of the twow The parts about the Lower Elbe were really in the neighbourhood of -two holy islands; «. e., Rugen was as truly a holy island as Heligoland, and vice versd, Heligoland, when the full light of history first illostrates its mythology, was the sacred isle of the Angles and Frisians, Germanic tribes whose worship would be that of the goddess Hertha, Rugen, when similarly illustrated, is just as sacred; sacred, however, not with the Germanic Angli, but with the Slavonic Vamahi^Varini)^ near neighbours of the Angles, and not distant ones of the Prulheni. Now this, in the case of so good a writer as Tacitus, and, a fortiori, with one hke Procopius, gives us the elements of a natural and excusable error, — since the holy islands with corresponding catta nemora were two in number, at no great distance from each other, and visited, respectively, by neighbouring na- tions. How easily would the writer, when he rec(^- nised the insular character of the two modes of culttUj refer them to one and the same island; how easily, when he knew the general fact that the Angli and Varini each worshipped in an island, be ignorant of the particular fact that each worshipped in a se- parate one. The htfpothesi»t then, that explains the Brittia of Procopius, separates it from Britannia^ identifies it with the island of the castum nemus of Tacitus, and sees in the latter an island so far real as to be either Heligoland or Rugen, but so far unreal as to be made out of a mixture of the attributes of the two. Lest the suggested confusion between the ancient names of Britain and Prussia be considered tmlikely, the reader is reminded that the m in the latter word represents the combination to, or Uh, as is shown by the name Bruteno, the eponymus of the ancient Prussians: — " duces fuere duo, nempe BrtUeno et Wudawutto, quorum alterum Bruteno sacerdotem crearunt, alterum scilicet Wudawutto in r^em ele- gerunt." {Fragment Jrom the Bomssorum Origo ex Domino Chriatiano, Voigt, vol. i. p. 621.) Again, when wc investigate the language in which the ultimate sources of the information of Tacitus lay, we find that it must have been either German or Slavonic. Now, in either case, the terms for British and Prussian would be alike, e.g.: — English, British, Prussian, German, Bryttisc, Pryttisc. Slavonic, . Britshaja, PnUskaJa. III. Authorities. The term British Isles is an older name than Bri- tannia f and the British Isles of the writers anterior to Caesar are the two large ones of Albion and Jeme, along with the numerous smaller ones that lie around and between them. Albion means England and Scotland; leme, /re-land. The distinction be- tween Britannia (= Great Britain), as opposed to leme, begins with Caesar; the distinction between Britannia (=: South Britain),as opposed to Caledonia, is later still. The Greek writers keep the general powers of the term the longest. Herodotus, as may be expected, is the earliest BBITANNICAE INSULAE. aiutlior who mentions any country that can pass for our island, writing, " that of the extremities of Europe towards the west " he " cannot speak with certain^. Nor " is he "^ acquainted with the islands called Cas- siterides, from which tin is brought" (iii. 115). A refinement upon this passage will be fbond in the sequel, embodying a reason, more or less valid, for believing that between the Azores and the British Isles a confusicKi may have arisen, — the one being truly the Cassiterides (or Tin Islands), and the other the Oestrymnides, a different group. However, as the criticism stands at present, the two words are sy- nonymous, and the knowledge of the one group implies that of the other, — the designation only being varied. Still, taking the text of Herodotus as it stands, the real fact it embodies is that the tin country of west- em Europe was known to him; though, whether all the statements that apply to it are unequivocal, is doubtful. His sources were, of course, Phoenician. So are those of Aristotle: — " Beyond the Pillars of Hercules the ocean flows round the earth; in this ocean, however, are two islands, and those very large, called Bretannic, Albion and leme, which are larger than those before mentioned, and lie beyond the Kelti ; and other two not less than these, Taprobane beyond the Indians, lying obliquely in respect of the main huid, and that called Phebol, situate over against the Arabic Gulf; moreover, not a few small islands, around the Bretannic Isles and Iberia, encircle as with a diadem this earth, which we have already said to be an island." (i>e Mimdo, c. 3.) Polybius' notice contains nothing that is not in* volved in those of Aristotle and Herodotus, special mention being made of the tin (iii. 57). The assertion that Herodotus is the first author who mentions the British Isles, merely means that he IS the first author whose name, habitation, and date are clear, definite, and unequivocal. Wliat if a notice occur in the Orphic poems, so-called? In such a case the date is earlier or later according to the views of the authorship. This may be later than the time of Herodotus, or it may not. It is earlier, if we refer the extract to any of the Onomacratean forgeries. Be this as it may, the ship Argo, in a so-called Orphic poem, is made to say (1 163): — NGv ykp 8j) Xirypp t« «ral iytitrp KOKSrirn "EpxofJMi f^y rfiffOKTUf *Up>fifuu, k.t.A. And again (1187):— tV *hpia Bu/jlot' iyixrcqi L.iiitirp6s. Now, nothing is more certain than that, when we get to notices of Britain which are at one and the- same time Roman in origin, and unequivocal in re- spect to the parts to which they apply, nothing ex- planatory of these Demeirian rites appears. And it is almost equally certain, that when we meet with them — and we dlo so meet with them — in writers of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, the passages in which the allusion occurs must by no means be considered as independent evidence; on the contrar)', they are derived from the same source with the Orphic extracts, and may possibly [see Cassitk- K1DE8 and Okstbymnides] have their application elsewhere. Strabo and Diodorus. though later than Caesar, are more or less in the same predicament. Their authorities were those of Herodotus and Aristotle. Caesar himself must be criticised from two points of view. It may be that, in nine cases oat of ten, ho