Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/136

 EUPIUS LAC US. Ibeen identified with the ancient Zeagn^as of Samo- eata, Commagene, Birtha, and Thapaacof, respec- tively. In the line of the river Euphrates the limits of the upper district terminate to the W. at the hills of Mesjid Sandabiyah, and to the £. at the hilly district N. 6[ Fehtjah, inclading the PyhM of Xenophon. Here the Euphrates ("rapidns Eu- phrates," Stat Sih. ii. 3. 136) plunges into the low- lying level plains of Babylonia, with the force of its current much diminished; as in the alluvial depres- sions it is often not a mile an hour, while in its upper course it averages from three to four miles. The current of the Tigris, notwithstanding ita tradi- tionary fame for swiftness, does not average more than a mile and a half an hour. After passing* the ruins of Babylon, the river appears to become smaller than in its upper course, uid was eventually sup- posed to lose itself in the marshes of £am/tim (comp. Polyb. ix. 43), but, extricating itself from them, unites its waters with those of the Tigris at Kur- uAh; and the two streams, fisrming one channel by the name of ShaU-d-^Arab^ discharge themselves into the sea by the town of Basrah, Below the SkaiUeWArah, Pliny (vi. 29) notices 1. the point at which the month of the Euphrates had issued formerly into the gulf, ** locus ubi Euphmtis ostium fuit," D'AnviUe's "ancien lit de rEuphrate;** 2. Flumen SALfiTTM, the narrow salt-water channel which separates the low-lying island of Bodbian off the mouth of the old bed of the Euphrates from the mainland; 3. Pbomomtorium Ghaumnb, the great headland at the entrance of the bay of Dooat' tl-Kwrna, from the S. opposite Phelech$ island; and 4. a tract along a sea broken into gulfs, " vora- gini similins quam nuvi," extending for 50 M. P. as far as the river Achana (comp. Forster, HUt. Gwg. of Arabia, voL ii. p. 212). The permanent flooding of the Enphrates is caused by the melting of the snow on the mountains along the upper part of its course. This takes place about March, and increases till the end of May, when it is usually at its greatest height. (Colonel Ches- ney, Exped, Eup^irat. ; Ainsworth, Researches; Bitter, Erdhmde, vols. x. xi. ; Layard, Nineveh and Babyhn.) [E. B. J.] EUPILIS LACUS, a small lake in the N. of Italy, at the foot of the Alps, S. of the Lacus Larius, and nearly intermediate between its two arms. Pliny speaks of it as giving rise to, or rather receiving and transmitting, the river Lambrus, still called the Lambro, There are now two small lakes, called the Logo di Pusiano, and Logo d'Alserio, which com- municate with the Lambro, and are separated only by a low marshy tract, so that they probably in the days of Pliny constituted one larger lake. (Plin. iii. 19. s. 23; Cluver. lUd, p. 410.) [£. H. B.] EUPO'LIUM. [EuPAUUM.] EUPOIUA (Eviropfa), a city of Macedonia (Steph. B.), and a station mi the road from Heracleia to Philippi which passed round the S. side of Lake Prasias or Cercinitis; according to the Tabular Itinerary, 17 M. P. from Heracleia. This distance, combined with the name, seems to indicate that it stood at a ferxy across the lake; perhaps at the spot where the lake first begins to narrow three or four miles to the NW. of Amphipolis ; but more probably on the W. side of the lake, because Ptolemy (iii, 1:}. § 35) reckons it among the cities of Bisaltia. (I>eake, Northern Greece, vol. iii. p. 228.) [E. B. J.] EUPYRIDAE. [Attica, p. 326, a.] EURVPUS. [Chalcis; Eiokwa.] EUBOPA. 877 ECBO'MUS (Effpcv^f : Eth, Ebpcoftt^), a town in Caria, at the foot of Mount Grion, which runa parallel with Latmus, was built by one Enromus, a son of Idris, a Carian. (Strab. xiii. pp. 636, 658; Steph. B. a. v.; Polyb. xvii. 2; Liv. xxxii. 33, xxxiii. SO, xlv. 25.) Under the Roman dominion Euromua belonged to the conventns of Alabanda. (Plin. v. 28.) Ruins of a temple to the north-west of Ala- banda are considered by Leake to belong to Eu- romus. {Asia Min. p. 237.) [L. S.] EURCKPA {E,hfHlnni, Herod, et alii; Evpt^wfia, E&psnr/a (i). Soph, ap, Steph, B. : Eth, Ebptnrouos, fem. Eitpwrls,) Europe is that portion of the globe which constitutes the NW. division of the Old or Great Continent. Its proper boundaries are, to the N. and W., the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans ; to the S., the Mediterranean sea; while to tlie E.an imaginary line drawn through the Archipelago, the~StraIts of t^ Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Black sea, as &r as the western extremity of Mount Caucasus, is its conventional limit on the side of Asia. From thence the supposed line runs along the Caucasian chain, in an ESE. direction, crosses the Caspian sea, and follows the course of the river Ural and the Uralian Mountains until it terminates at the mouth of the river Kara. The most northern point of the mainUnd of Europe is in lat. 71^ 6' N., its most southern in 36° N.; or, respectively, C. Nord Kyn, and the Punta de Tarifa in Spain. Its most western point is in long. 9° W., and its most eastern in 60^ 20' E. ; w, respectively, C. St, Vincent, and a spot in the Uralian Mountains W. of Ekatarinberg, The 8ur&ce of Europe is calcukted at about 3,900,000 square miles; and a line drawn from C, St, Vincent to the mouth of the river Kara on the Frozen Ocean would measure a little above 3000 miles. These limits, however, apply to Europe at the present day, and include a space far exceeding any dimensions ascribed to it even by the best informed of ancient writers. In one respect, indeed, as r^ards this portion of the Great Continent, modem sdence and the imperfect knowledge of the early cosmographera singularly coincide. Herodotus and his contempo- raries considered, and perhaps rightly, the whole of the earth then known as one single continent, re- presenting Europe, Asia, and Africa as so many divisions of it. Science, on the other hand, looking to the geological oontinnity of the globe, considers the parts of the old continent as merely foiming one organic whole, separable indeed for political purposes, but really connected with each other by conmion structural and ethnological pro- perties. The tripartite division of the old continent, with which we are so familiar, was, as regarded the ancients, an arrangement of comparatively recent date. The earliest cosmographers believed that the terraqueous globe consisted of two nearly elliptical hemispheres, surrounded by the great river Oceanus. The Hebrews, even in the 1st century b. c, main- tained Palestine to be the centre of the world : and the Greeks ascribed a similar position to their oracles at Delphi or Dodona. By the former the regions west and nortli of the Great Sea — the Mediterranean — were denominated the Land of Javan and the Islands : and the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey does not include in his catalogue of countries the name of dther Asia or Europe. (Steph. B. «. v. Aeia,^ Asia, indeed, in Homer, signifies merely an alluvial district near the Lydlan river Cayster (//. ii. 461); and Libya is confined to a small portion of the NE.