Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/377

 Chap. 27.] ACCOU^fT OF COUNTEIES, ETC. 843 here, the inhahitants of which live on the eggs of birds and oats ; and others again upon which human beings are produced with the feet of horses, thence called Hippo- podes. Some other islands are also mentioned as those of the Panotii, the people of which have ears of such extra- ordinary size as to cover the rest of the body, which is otherwise left naked. Leaving these however, we come to the nation of the In- gaevones the first in Grermany ; at which we begin to have some information upon which more implicit reliance can be placed. In their country is an immense mountain called Sevo^, not less than those of the Eiphaean range, and which forms an immense gulf along the shore as far as the Promon- tory of the Cimbri. This gulf, which has the name of the ' Codanian,' is filled with islands ; the most famous among which is Scandinavia^, of a magnitude as yet unascertained : the only portion of it at all known is inhabited by the nation of the Hilleviones, who dwell in 500 villages, and call it a second world: it is generally supposed that the island of has it, the Panotii, "all-ears") wore their hair very short, from which circumstance their ears appeared to be of a larger size than usual. ^ Tacitus spesks of three great groups of the German tribes, the In- gsevones forming the first thereof, and consisting of those wliieh dwelt on the margin of the ocean, the Hermiones in the interior, and the Istffivones in the east and south of Germany. We shall presently find that PHny adds two groups, the Vandih as the foiu-th, and the Peucini and Bastemse as the fifth. This classification however is thought to originate in a mis- take, for Zeuss has satisfactorily shown that the Vandili belonged to the Hermiones, and that Peucini and Basteruce are only names of individual tribes and not of groups of tribes. 2 Bi'otier and other geographers are of opinion that by this name the chain of the Doffrefeld mountains is meant ; but this cannot be the case if we suppose with Parisot that Pliny here returns soutli from the Scan- dinavian islands and takes his departure from Cape Rutt in the territory of the Ingsevoncs. Still, it is quite impossible to say what mountains he would designate under the name of Sevo. Parisot sugg(>sts that it is a form of the compound word " seevohner," " inhabitants of (lie sea," and that it is a general name for the elevated lands along the margin of the sea-shore. 3 Parisot supposes that under this name the isle of Funen is meant, but it is more generally thought that Norway and Sweden are thus de- signated, as that peninsida was generally looked upon as an island by the ancients. The Codanian Gulf was the sea to the east of the Cimbrian Chersonesus or Jutland, filled with the islands which belong to the modem kingdom of Denmark. It was therefore the southern part of the Baltic.