Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/162

 FLEVO LACUS. Established; sod the distance between Albanianae and Fletio is 19 M. P. Fletio is Vleuten, accord- ing to D'Anville and others who have followed his opinion. [G. L.] FLEVO LACUS, and FLEVUM OSTIUM. Dm- Bus, the son of Livia, and the brother of Tiberias, when he held a command on the Bhine, employed his men in making a canal to join the Rhine and the YsseL This canal, called the Fossa Drusiana or Fossae Dnisinae, commences below the separation of the BAine and WatUf and joins the Tatel near Doesburg. (Tac. Ana. ii. 8; Suet (TZotid. 1.) Germanicus, the son of Drasos, passed with his ships from the Rkme^ throogh this canal, into the lakes and the ocean, and as &r as the mouth of the Amisia (^Emi), The water of the Rhine being thus partlj diverted into the Teeel made a new outlet for that river, which outlet Plinj (iv. 15) calls Flevum. He says ' Uiat Helium and Flevum are tlte names of the two mouths into which the Bhine is divided, on the north flowing into lakes, on the west into the river Mosa; it preserves by an outlet intermediate between the two a moderate channel for its own name." The Helium Ostium is the outlet of the Moot, which now receives the Vahalis ( Waal), The outlet of the Flevum Ostium was into a lake, which Mela (iii. 2) thus describes: ** The Bhine not far from the sea is distributed in various directions, but to the left the Bhenus is a river even then and until it enters the sea; on the right it is at first narrow and like unto itself, afterwards the banks recede from one another far and wide; and now, no longer a river but a large lake, it is called Flevo where it has filled the ^ins; and surrounding an island of the same name it becomes again more contracted, and flows out again in the form of a river.*' Mela here mentions only two mouths, but Ptolemy (iv. 9), be- sides the outlet which he calls the Mosa [Mosa], enumerates a western outlet of the Bhine, a middle outlet, and an eastern outlet; the last ought to corre- spond to the Flevum. The lake which Mek describes corresponds to the Zuider Zee. Ukert {GaUien, p. 151) observes that Mela does not say that the Flevum enters the sea; and he translates the hist words, ** iterumque fluvius emittitur," " and comes as a river out of the lake.** He admits, however, that Mela assumed that the Flevum entered the sea; and nobody can doubt that, when Mela says it flows out again in the form of a river, he means to say that it enters the sea in a form like the other branch, though its course had been made different by passing through a great lake. Geographers have attempted to determine Mela*s island, which is a useless attempt, for the lake has undergone great changes since Mela's time; and, besides that, his description may not be exact. It is certain that there were huge lakes, or a large hike, near the outlets of the Rhine ; for, besides the passage of Tadtos already mentioned, he says that Germanicus, on a previous occasion (Attn, i. 60), after sending Caecina through the country of the Bructeri to the Amisia, and appointing Pedo, who had the charge of the Frisian country, to command the cavalry, embarked four legions and Uwk them through the lakes. Infantry, cavalry, and fleet all met at the Amisia. These lakes Uien were navigable in the Boman period; and it is an erroneous, though com- mon statement, Uiat the Zwder Zee did not exist then. The enlargement that the Zuider Zee has received by the encroachment of the sea has probably been FLOBENTIA. 908 chiefly on the west side, where the coast is flat and the water is shallow. Along the east side there is deeper water. In 1219 the sea is said to have broken in and to have carried away the dikes; and another invasion, in 1282, which did great damage, is also recorded. It seems probable that the outlet of the Zuider Zee is the part that has been chiefly enlarged, the part that lies north of the channel between Stavoren and MedenbUk^ for it is said that old Stavoren was swallowed up by the sea. It is conjectured by Walckenaer that the Nabalia of Tacitus (^Hist v. 26) is the Teselj and that the Fossa of Drusus, ^m Amheim to the Ysael at Doethurgy formed, with the course of the Yaeel into the lake or lakes, the north-eastern limit of GauL He farther conjectures that the name Flevum was given to the stream which flowed out of the lake into the North sea. Accordingly, ho supposes that the Castellum Flevum (Tadt Awn, iv. 72) may have been at the outlet qS the Flevum, which channel completed the north-eastom limit cf Gallia. He further supposes that the ishuod of VlieJand^ one of the four which lie in front of the Zvider Zee, and form a barrier against the ocean, may represent the Flevum Cas- tellum. (Walckenaer, G£og. det Gardes, vol. ii. p. 294.) Thus the Vlie'Stroomy between the islands of Vlieland and SeheUmgy may represent the old mouth of the Flevum, as it subsisted before the great flood -of the 13th century enhirged the lake Flevo, detached the islands of Schdlmg and Ameland from the main, and buried in its watere the nume- rous vilhiges of the district of Stavor&L (Walckenaer, vol. ii. p. 201.) [G. L.1 FLEVUM, a fortress mentioned by Tacitus {Ann. iv. 72), of which the probable position is given in the preceding article. [L. S.] FLEXUM (^^oy)f a town of some importance in Pannonia, in the south of Carmuntum. Accord- ing to Ptolemy (ii. 15. § 3) it was the head-quarters of the 14th legion, while the Notitia Imperii de- scribes it only as the station of a division of cavalry. (Comp. Jtin. Ant. pp. 247, 267.) [L. S.] FLCBENTIA. 1. (♦Awpeyrfo, Ptol.: £th. Flo- rentinus : Florence ; in Italian, Firemen but in old writers Fiorenza)^ a city of Etruria, situated on the river Amus, about 3 miles S. of Faesulae. Though celebrated in modern times as the capital of Tuscany, and in the middle ages as an independent republic, it was not a place of much note in antiquity. No trace of its existence is found in Etruscan times; and it is probable that it derived its first origin as a town from the Boman colony. The date of the esta- blishment of this is not quite clear. We learn from the Liber Ooloniarum that a colony was settled there by the triumvirs after the death of Caesar {Lib. Colon, p. 213); but there seems some reason to believe that one had previously been established there by Sulla. There is indeed no direct authority for this fact, any more than for that of the new town having been peopled by emigrants who descended from the rocky heights of Faesulae to the fertile banks of the Ajnus; but both circumstances are in themselves probable enough, and have a kind of tra- ditioiury authority which has been generally received by tho Florentine historians. (Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 135.) A passage of Floras also (iiL 21. § 27), in which he enumerates Florentia (or, as some MSS. give the name, Fluentia) among the towns sold by auction by order of Sulla, is only intelligible on the supposition that its lands were divided among new 3m4