Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/343

Chap 18.] front of the Chersonesus, which is called Æolium, there is the city of Elæus. Advancing thence towards the Gulf of Melas, we have the port of Cœlos, Panormus, and then Cardia, previously mentioned.

In this manner is the third great Gulf of Europe bounded. The mountains of Thrace, besides those already mentioned, are Edonus, Gigemoros, Meritus, and Melamphyllos; the rivers are the Bargus and the Syrmus, which fall into the Hebrus. The length of Macedonia, Thrace, and the Hellespont has been already mentioned; some writers, however, make it 720 miles, the breadth being 384.

What may be called a rock rather than an island, lying between Tenos and Chios, has given its name to the Ægean Sea; it has the name of Æx from its strong resemblance to a goat, which is so called in Greek, and shoots precipitately from out of the middle of the sea. Those who are sailing towards the isle of Andros from Achaia, see this rock on the left, boding no good, and warning them of its dangers. Part of the Ægean Sea bears the name of Myrtoan, being so called from the small island [of Myrtos] which is seen as you sail towards Macedonia from Geræstus, not far from Carystus in Eubœa. The Romans include all these seas under two names, — the Macedonian, in those parts where it touches the coasts of Macedonia or Thrace, and the Grecian where it washes the shores of Greece. The Greeks, however, divide the Ionian Sea into the Sicilian and the Cretan Seas, after the name of those islands; and they give the name of Icarian to that part which lies between Samos and Myconos. The gulfs which we have already mentioned, have given to these seas the rest of their names. Such,

2 In the present Chapter; where he says that the distance from Byzantium to Dyrrhachium is 711 miles. See p. 305307 [sic].

3 Αἲξ, "a goat." Other authors give other derivations for the name of Ægean, — from the town of Ægæ in Eubœa, or from Ægeus, the father of Theseus, who threw himself into it; or from Ægrea, a queen of the Amazons, who perished there; or from Ægæon, a god of the sea; or from the Greek αίγἰς, "a squall," on account of its storms.