Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/336

 HISPANU. ill. p. 153.) About the same time, Ephorus, who devoted the 4th book of his work on geography to the W. of Europe, assigns a vast extent of country to the Celts, and carries them on the W. as far as Gades; while he confines the name of Iberia to the r^ion W. of Gades, and, if we are to believe Jo- sephus, even fell into the error of making Iberia a cttif with a comparatively small territory. He relates some absurd fables about these regions. (Strab. iii. p. 153, iv. p. 199, vii. p. 302; Joseph, c. Apion, i. 12; Ilian,ad£phar. Frag, p. 142.) The Periplut of ScYugc, which abio belongs to about the same period, is vexy vague as to the shores of Spain. He makes special mention of the commercial settlements of the Carthaginians outside the Pillars, and of the tides and shoals which characterise that sea: a great sandbank stretches across firom the Sacred Promon- tory {C. S. FmcetU) to the promontory of Hermaeum in Lybia. The Iberians are the first people in Europe; and there is the river Iber, and two islands called Gadeira [Gades]; and then comes the Greek dty Emporium. Probably there is here a gap in the text; for he passes over the whole coast from the Pillars to the Pyrenees, the voyage along which, he says, occupies 7 days and nights. (Scylax, pp. 1, 51, ed. Hudson, pp. 1 — 3, 123, ed. Gronov.) Next to the Iberians, he places the Ldgurians (Aiyvts) and the '* mixed Ibenans " (^19iip*s lAiydSts) as far as the Rhone. In the Pseudo-Aristotelian work de Mirab. Atuctdt, (86), the peoples of Western Europe are mentioned in the following order, from W. to K : Iberes, Celtoligyes, Celtae, as far as Italy. Hb- RODORUS tells us that the Iberians, who dwell on the shores of the Straits, though belonging to one race, have various names, according to their several tribes. (Fr. ap. Const. Porphyr. de Admin. Imp. ii. 23.) Those most to the W. are called Cynetes (Steph. B. 8. V. KvvriTueSy); N. of them are the Gletes (Steph. B. «.'«. PA^rcr; comp. Strab. iil p. 166, who says that the countiy E. of the Iberus was formerly called after the Ioletes, a great and poweHnl nation, who dwelt in it); then the Tar- TES8II; then the Elrtbinu; then the Mastiaki and the Calpiani, as &r as the Rhone. (This enumeration, and the order of it, might b^ made to throw much light on the names and positions of the Spanish peoples, if the argument were not some- what too speculative for this article). We likewise find a vast amount of error and c(hi- fusion among the geographers of this age respecting the distances and bearings of the shores of the W. Mediterranean. Eudoxus states that a person sailing through the Straits into the Inner Sot has imme- diately on his left hand the Sardoan, Gahitian (Galtic), and Adriatic Sea, on the right the bay of the Syrtes (Arist de Muad. 3); and Dicaearchus es- timates the distance from the Sicilian Strait (JStraUt o/Meuma) to the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) at only 7000 stadia. (Strab. ii. p. 105.) 7. Age of Alexander and the Ptolemies, — The reign of Alexander the Great forms an epoch in the geography of W. Europe. While his Mowers were adding by their own direct observations to the know- ledge of the extreme East, we are told that from the opposite end of the known world his fame attracted the envoys of numerous nations, and among the rest from the Celts and the Iberians, whose dress was then for the first time seen, and their language first heard, by the Greeks and Macedonians. (Arrian, Anab. vii. 15.) From these and other sources, the HISPANIA. 1077 learned men of Alexandria, under the Ptolemies, ob • tained the infonnation which is recorded in the works of Eratosthenes, his contemporaries, and his fdlowers. It appears that Eratosthenes was in- debted for much of his knowledge to Timosthenes, the admiral of Ptolemy Phihidelphus, and the au- thor of a large geographical work; but the views of botli on the W. of Europe in general, and on Iberia in particular, are severely criticised by Strabo and Marcian. (Screb. ii. pp. 92 — 94.) Eratosthenes describes 3 peninsulas as running out S. from the mainland of Europe; the one that which ends with the Peloponnesus, the second the Italian, and the third the Ligtirian (ArywrruHitf); and these con- tain between them the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian gulfs. (Strab. vii. p. 92.) In another passage, the wes- ternmost of these 3 peninsulas is described as that which extends to the Pillara, and to which Iberia belongs. (Strab. ii. p. 108.) Of thb peninsula he assigns a large part to the Celts (TaXarai), whom he makes to reach as far as Gadeira. (Strab. ii. pp. 107, 108.) He pUces the Colnnms of Hercules on the Straits [Herculis Columsae], to the W. of which he represents the peninsula as running out into several large promontories. Of these, the first is the Sacred Promontory (C S, Vincent)^ which he placed at the greatly exaggerated distance of 5 days* voyage from Gades. (Strab. ii. p. 148.) The other chief promontory is Uiat of Calrium, about which dwelt the Ostidamnu; and opposite to it lay several islands, of which Uxisama, the furthest to the W., was distant 3 days* voyage from Calbium : in this part of his description he follows Pytheas. (Strab. L p. 64.) The region ad- jacent to Calpe he calls Tartessis, and places there the ** happy island" of Erytheia. Besides Gades, he mentions the town of Tariiaco (Tarragona), and adds that it has a good roadstead, a statement contradicted by Artemidoms and Strabo. (Strab. iii. p. 159.) He makes the Pyrenees the E. boundary. [Pyremaei.] In general, his knowledge seems not to have extended beyond the coast. 8. We are now brought do?m to the time of the Firat Punic War, and to the eve of the period when the imperfect, and often merely speculative, notions of the Greeks respecting Spain were superseded by the direct information which the Romans gained by their military operations in the country. But befora passing on to the Roman period, a few words are necessary on the extent oflberia^ a* understood by the Greik geographers. While, as we have already seen, many of them gave the greater part of the peninsula to the Celts, and confined the Iberians either to the part W. of the Straits, or to the Mediterranean shore; othera extend the name of Iberia as far E. as the Rhone, and even as far K.E. as the Rhine, and so as to in- clude the peoples on both sides of the Alps. Thus Aeschylus, if we are to believe Pliny, took the Eri- danus to be another name for the Rbodanus, which he placed in Iberia. (Plin. xxxvii. 2. s. 1 1.) Non* nus applies the epithet Iberian to the Rhine. (Dionys. xxili. p. 397, xliii. p. 747.) Plutarch places Iberian tribes in the Alps. {MarcelL 3.) In fine, Strabo sums up these opinions as follows : — includes all the country beyond the Rhone and the Isthmus which is confined between the Gallic Gulfs (i. e. the Bag of Biscagy and the Gulf of Lyon) : but those of the present tL%e assign M. Pyrene as its boundary, and called it indifferently Iberia and Hi»< 3z 3
 * The name of Iberia, as used by the earlier writers^