Translated into English from the Latin of G. Parthey’s edition, Dicuili liber de mensura orbis terrae (Berlin, 1870). The text ends before the volume’s index. Dicuil’s treatise is a compilation: he sets out the measurements made by the surveyors whom the emperor Theodosius II sent through the provinces in 435–436, supplementing them from Pliny, Solinus, Isidore, Priscianus’s Periegesis, Servius, and a map-book (“cosmographia”) of the age of Julius Caesar; and he adds the eyewitness reports of travellers known to himself — the pilgrim Fidelis, the clerics who wintered in Thule, the priest who sailed among the northern isles, and his own experience of living in the islands of the northern sea. The manuscript letter-apparatus of the edition is omitted; the editor’s substantive notes are retained.

Prologue #

1. After I had gathered together my letter on the ten questions of the art of grammar, I resolved that a book on the measurement of the provinces of the world should follow it, according to the authority of those men whom the holy emperor Theodosius had sent to measure those provinces; and I wish to display their measurements, supplementing them in accordance with the distinguished authority of Pliny the Younger [Plinius Secundus].

2. But for two reasons I set the writings of Theodosius’s envoys before the words of Pliny the Younger in the order of my writing, contrary to the order of their times: because those envoys are held to have made their work more diligently than the ancients in the last twelve verses, and because I found that the manuscript copies of Pliny the Younger’s Natural History which I examined had been too much corrupted by the copyists of recent times.

3. Indeed, since the words of the aforementioned envoys have been copied very faultily, I shall take care to correct them so far as I can.

4. But where in the books of Pliny the Younger I come to know that numbers have certainly been corrupted, I shall for the present leave their places blank, so that, if I do not find reliable copies, whoever finds them may amend them. For where I shall have doubted whether the numbers are reliable or not, I shall retain them as reliable, so that the aforementioned reader, whoever has seen the true numbers, may correct them faithfully.

5. It ought to cause no one surprise when the number of miles disagrees between Pliny the Younger and the emperor’s envoys, since those men, as I have said before, testify that they carried out this work more carefully than the ancients.

The chapters are:

I. On Europe. II. On Asia. III. On Africa. IV. On Egypt and Ethiopia with their islands. V. On the length and breadth of the world and on the verses of the envoys. VI. On the five rivers and others. VII. On certain islands by name. VIII. On the breadth and length of the Tyrrhenian Sea. IX. On the six mountains.

Chapter One — Europe #

1. In the fifteenth year of the reign of the emperor Theodosius he ordered his envoys to measure the provinces of the world in length and breadth.

2. The orb of lands is divided under three names — Europe, Asia, Africa (Libya) — a division which the deified Augustus first of all displayed in a map of the world.

3. The starting-point for all will be, from Europe’s strait, at the place which the Greeks call the Pillars of Hercules (Heracleostelas). The three provinces of the Spains stretch from there to the Pyrenean mountains for 900 miles in length; the breadth is the same in the south, but where it narrows it is seen to be 300 miles nearest the Pyrenees.

4. Nearer Spain: the Corduban Baetica. The first province is bounded on the east by the Carthaginian pass and Aquitania, on the west by the ocean, on the north by the river Ana (Guadiana), on the south by the Celtiberian sea.

5. Spain, Lusitania with Asturica and Gallaecia, is bounded on the east by Nocantum, which lies in a straight line toward the ocean, on the west by Afflatacum, on the north by the ocean, on the south by the river Ana. It extends 480 miles in length, 450 in breadth.

6. Further Spain is bounded on the east by the Pyrenean pass, on the west by Noica which lies in a straight line to the ocean, on the north by the ocean, on the south by the Celtiberian sea. Length 500 miles, breadth 160.

7. Long-haired Gaul (Gallia Comata) with the British islands is bounded on the east by the river Rhine, on the west by the Pyrenees, on the north by the ocean sea, on the south by the Rhône and the Cevennes mountains. Length 1,228 miles, breadth 1,167. According to Pliny the Younger in the fourth book, in length 1,920 miles, in breadth 318.

8. The Narbonensian province is bounded on the east by the Alps, on the west by the Pyrenean pass, on the north by the territory of the Viennenses and the Cevennes mountains, on the south by the Gallic sea. Length 634 miles, breadth 188. According to Pliny the Younger in the same book, Agrippa recorded the length of the Narbonensian province as 370 miles, its breadth 348.

9. Italy is bounded on the east by the Ionian sea, on the west by the Alps and the river Tarus, on the north by the Adriatic sea and the river Arsia, on the south by the Tyrrhenian sea. Length 1,020 miles, breadth 410, and where it narrows 60 — according to Pliny the Younger in the same book.

10. Italy then: first its Liguria, next Etruria, Umbria, Latium — there the mouths of the Tiber and Rome, the capital of the world, at an interval of sixteen miles from the sea; afterwards the Volscian coast and Campania; then the Picentine and Lucanian and Bruttian territory, where Italy runs out farthest to the south from the nearly crescent-shaped ridges of the Alps into the seas. Then the coast of Greece, then the Salentini, Pediculi, Apuli, Peligni, Frentani, Marrucini, Vestini, Sabini, Picentes, Galli, Umbri, Tusci, Veneti, Carni, Iapydes, Histri, Liburni.

The same writer a little later: the length of Italy is 1,020 miles. The measure would be much greater as far as Lacinium, were it not that such a slant seems to turn aside into the breadth. Its breadth is various: 410 miles between the two seas, the Lower and the Upper, and the rivers Varus and Arsia.

11. Lesser Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, Illyricum, Dalmatia, Liburnia are bounded on the east by Dardania, on the west by the river Rhine, on the north by the river Danube, on the south by the Adriatic sea. Length 633 miles, breadth 321.

12. Epirus, Achaia, Attica, Thessaly: these are bounded on the east by the Aegean sea, on the west by the Adriatic sea, on the north by the mountains Cercetius, Olympus, Pelion, on the south by the Aegean-Tuscan sea, extending 410 miles in length, 375 in breadth. According to Pliny the Younger in the fifth book, 430 miles in length, 387 in breadth.

13. Macedonia, Thrace, the Hellespont and the left-hand part of Pontus: these are bounded on the east by the Pontic sea, on the west by the deserts of Dardania, on the north by the river Hister. They extend 712 miles in length, 381 in breadth, according to Pliny the Younger in the same book.

14. The promontory of the Golden Horn (Chryseon Ceras), on which stands the town of Byzantium of free condition, formerly called Lygos, is 711 miles from Dyrrachium. So great is the length of the lands between the Adriatic sea and the Propontis.

15. All Germany and Gothia are bounded on the east by the river Vistula, on the west by the river Rhine, on the north by the ocean, on the south by the river Danube, extending about 800 miles in length, 384 in breadth.

16. Dacia and Alania are bounded on the east by the deserts of Sarmatia, on the west by the river Vistula, on the north by the ocean, on the south by the river Hister, extending 1,000 miles in length; the breadth so far as it is known is 386, according to Pliny the Younger in the second book.

17. Agrippa recorded that whole tract from the Hister to the ocean at twice a hundred thousand paces (2,000 miles) in length, and 400,000 paces in breadth to the river Vistula from the deserts of Sarmatia.

18. Sarmatia, Scythia, Taurica are bounded on the east by the ridges of Mount Caucasus and the Caspian sea, on the west by the river Borysthenes, on the north by the ocean, on the south by the Pontic province. Length 980 miles, breadth 715.

19. Greater Armenia and the Caspian sea with the peoples dwelling about the ocean are bounded on the east by the Seric ocean, on the west by the ridges of Mount Caucasus and the Caspian sea, on the north by the ocean, on the south by Mount Taurus — 480 miles in length, 280 in breadth.

Chapter Two — Asia #

1. The nearer part of Asia is bounded on the east by the shores of Asia, on the west by Greece, on the north by the Aegean sea, on the south by the Cretan and Carpathian seas. Length 700 miles, breadth 400.

2. The upper part of Asia is bounded on the east by Lesser Armenia, on the west by the borders of Phrygia, Lycaonia and Pamphylia, on the north by the Pontic province, on the south by the Pamphylian sea which lies between Cyprus and Cilicia. Length 530 miles, breadth 320, according to Pliny the Younger in the fifth book.

3. And Agrippa divided the land properly called Asia into two parts. One he enclosed on the east by Phrygia and Lycaonia, on the west by the Aegean sea; its length he made 470 miles, its breadth 320. The other he bounded on the east by Lesser Armenia, on the west by Phrygia, Lycaonia and Pamphylia, on the north by the Pontic province, on the south by the Pamphylian sea — length 575 miles, breadth 325.

4. Syria is bounded on the east by the river Euphrates, on the west by the Egyptian sea, on the north by the sea which lies between Cyprus and Syria, on the south by Arabia which lies between the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Its extent stretches 470 miles in length, 175 in breadth.

5. Fortunate Arabia (Arabia Eudaemon), Phlecmea between the two gulfs, the Arabian and the Persian, and likewise Troglodyte Arabia this side of the Arabian Gulf nearest to Egypt — these are bounded on the east by the sun’s Persian Gulf, on the west by the Nile, on the north by Pharan and Vab Arabia, on the south by the Erythraean ocean. It extends 1,060 miles in length, 930 in breadth.

6. Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Chaldaea are bounded on the east by the river Tigris, on the west by the river Euphrates, on the north by Mount Taurus, on the south by the Persian sea. Length 900 miles, breadth 360: according to Pliny the Younger the measure is the same.

7. Media, Parthia and Persis are bounded on the east by the river Indus, on the west by the river Tigris, on the north by Mount Taurus, on the south by the Red Sea. Length 920 miles, breadth 421: according to Pliny the Younger the measure is the same.

8. Further India is bounded on the east by the river Ganges and the Indian ocean, on the west by the river Indus, on the north by Mount Taurus, on the south by the Indian ocean. Length 1,000 miles, breadth 330.

Chapter Three — Africa #

1. Gaetulia and Mauritania are bounded on the east by the river Ampsaga, on the west by the Atlantic ocean, on the north by the African sea, on the south by the Ethiopian ocean-sea — 462 miles in length, 360 in breadth. According to Pliny the Younger in the third book, the length of both Mauritanias is 480 miles, the breadth 268.

2. Numidia and Carthaginian Africa are bounded on the east by the Lesser Syrtis, on the west by the river Ampsaga, on the north by the African sea, on the south by the ocean. Length 580 miles, breadth 200: according to Pliny the Younger the measure is the same.

3. The same writer says in the sixth book: the length of Africa works out (taking a middle computation from all the diversity of the authorities) at 3,078 miles, and the inhabited breadth nowhere exceeds 250.

4. The measurement of the Tripolitanian province between the two Syrtes, and the measurement of Libyan Cyrenaica with its own Pentapolitan province, I have nowhere yet found written down according to Theodosius’s envoys.

Chapter Four — Egypt and Ethiopia #

1. Lower Egypt is bounded on the east by Scenite Troglodyte Arabia, on the west by the Libyan deserts, on the north by the Egyptian sea, on the south by Ethiopia. Length 363 miles, breadth 167, according to Pliny the Younger in the same book.

2. The length of Upper Egypt with its own Ethiopia Agrippa reckoned at 1,570 miles, the breadth of Ethiopia and Upper Egypt at 957 miles.

3. Ethiopia stretches from the eastern winter-sunrise to the western winter-sunset. Along its southern backbone forests of ebony flourish above all. From its middle part a lofty mountain overhanging the sea burns with everlasting fires, called by the Greeks Theon Ochema [the Chariot of the Gods], from which, at four days’ sailing, is the promontory called Hesperu Ceras [the Horn of the West], on the border of Africa near the Hesperian Ethiopians. Some also record that in that tract modest hills clothed with pleasant shade belong to the Aegipanes and Satyrs. Ephorus, Eudoxus and Timosthenes recorded that there are very many islands in all that sea, while Clitarchus reported to king Alexander […].

Chapter Five — the Length and Breadth of the World, and the Verses of the Envoys #

1. The same writer says in the second book: the part of our lands of which I speak, floating as it were upon the surrounding ocean, stretches farthest from east to west, that is, from India to the Pillars of Hercules consecrated at Gades — as Artemidorus would have it — 8,578 miles [the author’s arithmetic multiplies the figures].

2. The same says a little later: the breadth of the land from the southern point to the north is found to be about half less — 5,462 miles. From where it is plain how much the burning heat has taken away on the one side and the frozen moisture on the other. For I do not think that the lands are defective, or that the globe’s shape fails, but that on both sides they are uninhabitable and unexplored.

3. If we reckon the prescribed length from the eastern part of India to the isles of Gades by milestones — that is, counting one mile-marker stone to each single mile — there will be 8,630, and the breadth from the northern to the southern side 5,348, omitting the aforementioned parts of intolerable cold and heat.

Here ends the measuring of the world.

4. The twelve verses of the aforementioned envoys concerning the completion of this work under the emperor Theodosius begin thus:

This glorious work, wherein the sum of the world is held — the seas, and whereby mountains, rivers, harbours, straits and cities are marked out, that all may readily learn it — whatever lies hid anywhere, the gracious race, the renowned offspring, and pious through the ages, whom the whole world scarce contains — Theodosius the prince bade it be fashioned by his revered word, in the year when he opens it with thrice five fasces. We humble servants this, while one writes and the other paints, in brief months, following the monuments of the ancients, have restored the work to better and lifted the former fault, and have briefly comprised the whole world: yet this your wisdom, prince, has taught us.

5. It should not be wondered at that in the first foot of the seventh and eighth verses of these men an amphimacer [a long-short-long foot] is written, since, as I think, it was not from ignorance but on the authority of other poets — and above all of Virgil, whom in such cases our Sedulius followed — that they in their heroic verse seldom admitted feet outside that pattern.

Chapter Six — the Five Rivers, and Others #

1. As I said in the prologue, where Pliny the Younger’s numbers were corrupt I have now supplied the places I left blank, those readings having been found; but if anyone finds better copies, let him see that he be not sluggish to correct them, if it please him.

2. Pliny the Younger in the fifth book reports thus of the river Nile: next to Africa lies Egypt, which retreats inward toward the south until the Ethiopians extend behind it. The lower part of it the Nile, divided right and left, bounds in its embrace — on the African side at the Canopic mouth, on the Asian side at the Pelusiac mouth, at an interval of 270 miles. For this reason some have reckoned Egypt among the islands, since the Nile so divides itself as to make a triangular figure of the land; and for that reason many have called Egypt by the name of the Greek letter Delta. The measurement from the point where the channel first splits into branches to the Canopic mouth is 146 miles, and to the Pelusiac 266 miles. The uppermost part, bordering on Ethiopia, is called the Thebaid.

3. The Nile begins to rise at the new moon which comes after the solstice, gradually and moderately while the sun crosses Cancer, most abundantly in Leo, and it subsides in Virgo by the same degrees by which it rose. It is wholly recalled within its banks in Libra, on the hundredth day, as Herodotus reports. While it is rising it has been judged a sin for kings or prefects to sail upon it. Its increase is detected by the marks of measure in wells. The just increment is sixteen cubits. Lesser waters do not irrigate everything; greater ones detain the lands too long by withdrawing slowly. The one takes away the seasons of sowing, the soil being parched; the other gives them while the soil is moist: the province reckons both. In twelve cubits it feels famine, in thirteen it still hungers; fourteen cubits bring gladness, fifteen security, sixteen delights. The greatest increment in this age was eighteen cubits in the reign of Claudius, the least five in the year of the Pharsalian war — the river as it were averting the death of Pompey the Great by a prodigy. When the waters have stood still, the dykes are opened and the water is let in; as each field is freed, it is sown. This is the one river of them all that breathes out no airs.

4. Julius Solinus in his Collectanea reports of the same Nile: Egypt recedes inward toward the south until the Ethiopians catch it from behind. Its inner part the Nile flows round; being divided from the place whose name is Delta, it embraces river-girt spaces in the likeness of an island and is delivered down, running with a well-near unknown source, as we shall relate. It has its origin from a mountain of Lower Mauritania which lies near the ocean. This the Punic books affirm; this we are told king Juba handed down. At once then it forms a lake, which they call Nilides. They conjecture it to be the Nile even from there, because this pool produces herbs, fish and beasts no whit less than we see in the Nile. When Mauritania, from which it takes its rise, is watered by denser snows or more lavish rains, from there the increments of its inundation in Egypt are increased. But poured out from this lake it is swallowed up in the sands and hidden in blind tunnels; then, bursting forth in the Caesarian cave, it displays the same yet ampler tokens which we noted at its outset, and sinks again, nor does it give itself back until, after intervals of a long journey, it reaches the Ethiopians, where it comes out and makes the river Niger, which we said above is the boundary of the African limit. The peoples there call it Astapus — meaning, water flowing forth from the darkness.

5. It winds round many and great islands, of which most are so extensive and vast that a voyage of five days, however swiftly it may speed there, hardly passes them by. The noblest of them is Meroe, round which, divided, the right channel is called Astisapes, the left Astabores. Then too, having measured out great reaches, when it is first roughened by rocks in its way, it is lifted in such mighty surges among the opposing crags that it may be thought to fall headlong rather than to flow; and at last it is safe only after the last cataract — for so the Egyptians name certain barriers of it. Yet, this name left behind, which is called Giris, it soon flows unhindered; it is buried in seven mouths, received toward the north into the Egyptian sea.

6. Although we nowhere read in the books of any author that part of the river Nile goes out into the Red Sea, nevertheless a certain faithful brother related to my master Suibne in my presence (to whom, after God, I ascribe whatever progress I have made) that clerks and laymen [had sailed] from the city of Jerusalem for the sake of devotion … and they sailed as far as the Nile. Then, voyaging far upon the Nile, they saw from far away as though they were mountains the seven granaries which holy Joseph had made according to the number of the years of abundance — four in one place and three in another.

7. From there going toward the three granaries for the miracle’s sake, they found beside them a lion and eight people, men and women, dead. The lion had slain them by its strength; they with spears and swords had killed it — for both places are desert in which the seven granaries had been built.

8. After this, diligently considering the three granaries, they wondered again that from the foundation right up to the end of their height they were made entirely of stone, square in the lower part but round in the upper; and at the end of their height they have as it were a slender point. After this the aforementioned brother measured one side of one granary from corner to corner with four hundred feet of his own.

9. Next, entering the ships on the river Nile, they sailed as far as the entrance of the Red Sea. From that port to the eastern side as far as the way of Moses through the Red Sea is a small space. That measurer of the granary’s side wished to go to the port into which Moses with his people entered the sea, not only that he might enter the port, but that in it he might see the tracks of the chariots and the wheel-ruts of Pharaoh; those sailors did not consent. The breadth of the sea in that place seemed to him about six miles. From there in the western part of the Red Sea, that is, in the gulf extending far into the northern part, they sailed with all sail. That is the sea which hemmed in the murmuring people of Israel in the desert, lest they could return into the land of Egypt.

10. It is no wonder that one river is divided into various rivers, whose breadth in Egypt especially is compared to a great sea, as Priscian in his thirteenth book admonishes us, teaching by a parable: as if beholding the sea we should say that the Nile is such.

11. Today in the cosmographia which was made in the consulship of Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius, I have found written that a part of the Nile river goes out into the Red Sea near the city of Oliva [Clysma] and the camp of Moses (castra Mosei).

12. Whoever desires to know the length of the Nile, let him first know how many miles are reckoned from the western part of Africa to the eastern side of Egypt, and from there to the mouth by which part of it, near the camp of Moses and the city called Oliva, runs into the Red Sea; or if he wishes to go further, to the Pelusiac mouth, through which the other part of it enters the Tyrrhenian sea — or if he should reckon to almost the whole fullness of it, he will end at the Canopic mouth, but further at the Pelusiac. By how many miles the breadth of that river is extended, I have not found.

13. Julius Solinus in the same aforementioned volume teaches this about the Euphrates: Greater Armenia pours forth the Euphrates; its spring is above Zimara beneath the roots of the mountain which the inhabitants name Capotes, nearest to Scythia. This river, receiving into itself some brooks, grows strong and, hemmed in by the gathered waters, wrestles with the barrier of Mount Taurus, which it cleaves at Elegea, though it resists for a breadth of twelve miles — [its length] truly 862 […].

14. Pliny the Younger says of the same Euphrates in the fifth book: the Euphrates also increases after the manner of the Nile, differing by a little in the summer days, and floods Mesopotamia when the sun occupies the twentieth degree of Cancer. It begins to diminish when the Lion is passed, in Virgo; and it wholly returns within its banks in the twenty-ninth degree of Virgo.

15. The same Julius in the same book: of the Tigris also it is fitting to speak in this place. In the region of Armenia it raises its head, marvellously clear, a conspicuous spring in a lofty place which is named Elegos, nor is it at once whole from its outset. At first it flows sluggishly, not in its own name; but when it has been borne into the lands of the Medes, it is at once called Tigris — for so the Medes name an arrow. It flows into the lake Arethusa which sustains all weights, whose fishes never mingle with the channel of the Tigris, just as the river’s fishes do not pass over into the pool of Arethusa, through which it runs with different colour and swift course.

16. Soon, Taurus resisting, it plunges into a deep cavern, which slipping beneath it shoots forth on its other side at Azoma, drawing with it much weed and refuse. Then it is hidden again and again and again given back. It flows past the Adiabeni and the Arabs, embraces Mesopotamia, and receives the noblest river Coaspes. Its length is 2,595 miles; its breadth I have not read.

17. But Pliny the Younger calls the aforementioned pool by another name, which I now forget, and relates that the water of that pool is bitter while that of the river is sweet; therefore the river’s fishes avoid going into the pool, as the pool’s fishes avoid entering the river.

18. The same Julius after many things: the greatest rivers in India are the Ganges and the Indus. Of these, some contend that the Ganges rises from uncertain springs and swells after the manner of the Nile; others would have it spring from the Scythian mountains. The Hyphranes also is there a most noble river, which bounded the march of Alexander the Great, as the altars set on its bank prove. The least breadth of the Ganges stretches through eight miles, the greatest through twenty. Length 453 miles; depth, where it is most shallow, swallows the measure of a hundred feet.

19. The same a little later: in the Ganges there is a most populous island containing a most ample nation, whose king keeps in arms 50,000 foot and 4,000 horse. All indeed who are endowed with royal power conduct their military discipline not without a very great number of elephants, and of horse and foot besides.

20. The same a little later: the Ganges breeds eels up to thirty feet long; which Statius Sebosus says among its chief marvels to abound in worms, cerulean in name and colour. These have two arms apiece of a length not less than six cubits, and of such robust strength that they seize elephants coming to drink in their biting grasp and drag them into the deep.

21. There are besides in India one-horned oxen; but the most savage is the monoceros, a monster of horrid bellowing, with a horse’s body, cloven hairy feet like an elephant’s, and a stag’s head. A horn is stretched out from the middle of its brow, of wonderful splendour, to the length of four feet, so sharp that whatever it charges is easily pierced by its blow. It does not come alive into the power of men: it can indeed be killed, but cannot be captured.

22. There is a rhinoceros in Ethiopia, or of the same or a like kind, of which Julius Solinus long before speaks thus: before the games of Gnaeus Pompeius the Roman spectacles knew not the rhinoceros. That beast’s colour is boxwood-yellow; on its nostrils is a single curved-back horn, which it whets by rubbing against the rocks into a point, since it fights against elephants, equal to them in length, shorter in the legs, naturally aiming at the belly, which alone it knows is open to its blows.

23. There is another animal in Cyrenaic Africa, which we do not read is produced in any other land; of which the same writer begins thus, long ago: Africa also sends the hyena, whose neck is stiff with an unbroken spine; it can bend only by turning the whole body round. Many things about it are wonderful: first, that it follows the shepherds’ steadings and by assiduous listening learns the name by which it may express an imitation of the human voice, so that by guile it may savage a man called out by night. It counterfeits also human retching, and so devours the dogs enticed by false vomitings — which, if by chance they touch its shadow while hunting it, lose their bark and cannot give tongue. The same hyena digs up the tombs of buried corpses in its search for them. Moreover the male is the easier to capture, for a craftier cunning is inborn in the females. There is manifold variety in its eyes and changing of colour; in its pupils a stone is found, called the hyaenia, endowed with this power, that under whose person’s tongue it is placed, he foretells the future. But whatever animal the hyena has thrice gazed round cannot move itself: therefore men have pronounced that a magical knowledge is in it.

24. In a part of Ethiopia it mates with the lioness, from where is born the monster whose name is the corocotta. It too in like manner affects the voices of men. It never confines the range of its eyeballs, but strains forward in a gaze without winking. In its mouth is no tongue, but one continuous tooth which, that it may never be blunted, is naturally closed in the manner of little sheaths.

25. The same Julius, far earlier, says of the river Danube: the Hister rises in the German ridges, poured out from the mountain that looks down on Rauracan Gaul. It receives into itself sixty rivers, well-near all navigable. It flows into the Pontus by seven mouths: of which the first, Peuce, the second Naracustoma, the third Calonstoma, the fourth Pseudostoma, the fifth Borionstoma, and then Spilonstoma, are more sluggish than the rest; while the seventh, slow and marsh-like in aspect, has nothing that can be compared to a river. The former four are so great that for a length of 400 miles they are not mingled with the sea, and they keep their sweet draught with unconsumed savour. Its length is 1,423 miles.

26. These things have been written down together concerning the five rivers named in the title. From the following rivers will be excerpted, more briefly, only what has been aforementioned from the cosmographia which lately came into my hands:

27. The river Jordan rises under Mount Libanus; rounding it, it bends into the lake of Tiberias; going out of it to Citopolis [Scythopolis] which it cuts through the middle, and going out of it, it is poured into the Dead Sea. It runs for 722 miles.

28. The Hermus rises in the plains of Asia. It flows into the sea of the Cyclades. It runs for 519 miles.

29. The Maeander rises in the Asiatic plains with twin horns; it runs as it were in a curve, returning upon itself as into one. It flows into the sea of the Cyclades. It runs for 897 miles.

30. The river Eurotas rises in the plains of Phrygia. It flows into the Tyrrhenian sea. It runs for 825 miles.

31. The river Tanais rises in the Hyperborean Riphaean mount. Going out through the Maeotic marshes it flows into the Euxine Pontus. It runs for 653 miles.

32. The Borysthenes rises in the Hyperborean mount. It flows into the Pontic sea. It runs for 210 miles.

33. The Sperthius rises in a mountain of Macedonia. It flows into the Aegean sea. It runs for 602 miles.

34. The Alpheus rises in the plains of Achaia. It flows into the Tyrrhenian sea. It runs for 470 miles.

35. The Acheloüs rises in the plains of Epirus. It flows into the Ionian sea. It runs for 715 miles.

36. The Tiber rises in the Apennine mount. It falls into the Tyrrhenian sea. It runs for 495 miles.

37. The Rhine rises in the Apennine Alps. It falls into the western ocean; it runs for 642 miles.

38. The Rhône rises in the Cottian Alps. It flows into the Tyrrhenian sea. It runs for […] miles.

39. The Garonne rises in the plains of Aquitania. It flows into the western ocean. It runs for 409 miles.

40. The Baetis rises in the plains of Spain. It falls into the western ocean; it runs for 410 miles.

41. The Tagus rises in the plains of Spain. It falls into the western ocean; it runs for 302 miles.

42. The Minius rises near the Pyrenees. It turns in a circle so that it encloses the sea-town Brigantium, and so gathers itself into the western ocean. It runs for 310 miles.

43. The Hiberus (Ebro) rises under the Assyrian mountains of the Pyrenees, enlightening the neighbouring Spains. It pours itself into the sea near Tarraco. It runs for 304 miles.

All these things which I have said of the length of the rivers, I have taken from the cosmographia.

Chapter Seven — Certain Islands by Name #

1. Writing about Ethiopia which belongs to Africa, I have spoken briefly of many of its islands after Pliny the Younger, but have named none by name. Therefore I will display a few of them named, whose names I had read.

2. The same Pliny the Younger in the sixth book teaches that near the Ethiopians are the islands Aroterae, likewise the Bacchiae and Antibacchiae and Stratioton.

3. Priscian in the book which in Greek is named Periegesis — that is, a description of the world — which he had made in very fine metre, tells that the island Erythraea lies near Atlantic Ethiopia, saying:

The Ethiopians dwell in Erythraea, just of breast, near Atlas, the long-lived, within their bounds of old.

4. The island Gaulea lies in the southern ocean of western Ethiopia, whose name Isidore displays in the ninth book of the Etymologies.

5. The Fortunatae too, and the Gorgodes and Hesperides — which islands many report to lie in the western deep of Africa. The Gorgodes are farther from Africa than the Fortunatae, and the Hesperides than the Gorgodes. Since in the cosmographia the river Malva is said to rise beneath the island Fortunata, from this it is held to be near Africa. The Gorgodes are distant from the mainland by two days’ sailing, as Isidore says in the fourteenth book of the Etymologies.

6. We do not read that there are islands in the western or northern sea of Spain. Around our island of Ireland (Hibernia) there are islands, some small and some very small. Near the island of Britain there are many others — great, small and middling — some in the southern sea and some in the western, but they abound rather in the parts of the north-west and north of it. In some of them I have lived myself; some I entered, some I only saw, some I have read of.

7. Pliny the Younger in the fourth book teaches that Pytheas of Massilia relates that Thule is distant six days’ sailing to the north from Britain.

8. Of the same island — always deserted — Isidore begins thus in the fourteenth book of the Etymologies: Thule, the uttermost island of the ocean, between the northern and western region beyond Britain, having its name from the sun, because in it the sun makes the summer solstice.

9. Priscian says of the same island in the Periegesis more clearly than Isidore:

Here crossing the ocean’s plain by ship in the open, You come to Thule, which gleams by night as by day with the Sun’s rays, when he mounts with his chariot to the axle of the Sign-bearer, kindling the northern parts with his torch.

10. More clearly and fully than Priscian, Julius Solinus wrote thus of the same in the Collectanea, speaking of the Britains: Thule, the uttermost, in which at the summer solstice, when the sun makes his transit from the sign of Cancer, there is no night; and at the winter solstice likewise no day.

11. It is now thirty years since clerks who had remained in that island from the Kalends of February to the Kalends of August told me that not only at the summer solstice but in the days about it the sun, setting at evening, hides itself as it were behind a little mound — so that no darkness falls in that very small space, but whatever a man wishes to do, even to pick the lice from his shirt, he can do as though in the sun’s presence; and if they had been upon the heights of its mountains, perhaps the sun would never have been hidden from them at all. In the middle of that smallest space midnight is made in the middle of the world; and thus I suppose on the contrary that at the winter solstice and in the few days about it the dawn appears in the smallest space in Thule when it is midday in the middle of the world. And therefore they are deceived who lie, who have written that the sea around it is solid, and that there is continuous day without night from the spring equinox to the autumnal, and again unbroken night from the autumnal equinox to the spring — since those men, sailing there in the natural season of great cold, entered it, and remaining there always had days and nights in turn save at the solstice season; but at one day’s sailing from it to the north they found the sea frozen.

12. There are many other islands in the northern ocean of Britain, which can be reached from the northern islands of Britain in two days and nights of direct sailing with full sails and a steadily favourable wind. A certain religious priest told me that, sailing in two summer days with one night between in a little two-benched boat, he entered one of them. Those islands are some of them very small, and almost all of them are separated by narrow sounds; in them hermits sailing from our Ireland (nostra Scottia) had lived for nearly a hundred years. But as they had always been deserted from the beginning of the world, so now, emptied of anchorites by reason of the pirates of the Northmen, they are full of innumerable sheep and very many kinds of seabirds. We have never found these islands mentioned in the books of the authors.

13. Julius Solinus in the Collectanea, on Germany and its islands: in that tract and in the whole northern region the bison is very common — like a wild ox, shaggy at the neck, bristling with mane, swifter than bulls, and when captured it cannot be tamed to the hand. There are also uri, which the unlearned crowd calls bubali, though bubali are bred in Africa with almost a stag’s aspect. In those uri which we name, the bull’s horns are stretched out to such a degree that, taken off for their remarkable capacity, they become bearers of drink at the tables of kings. There is also the elk (alces), comparable to a mule, with so drooping an upper lip that it cannot feed unless stepping backward in its tracks. The island Gravia in the region of Germany produces an animal like the elk, whose houghs cannot bend; therefore they do not lie down when they must sleep, yet a tree cut through near the ground supports the drowsy creature, which, when it leans on the accustomed props, the beast makes its fall. So it is taken; otherwise it is hard to catch it, since in that stiffness it is swift in incomprehensible flight. Of the German islands Candinavia [Scandinavia] is the greatest, but nothing great is in it except itself.

14. Pliny the Younger in the fourth book on the northern ocean of Scythia and its islands: the northern ocean Hecataeus calls Amalchius, after the river Parapanisus which washes Scythia, whose name in the tongue of that people signifies the frozen sea; Philemon says it is called by the Cimbri Morimarusa, that is, the dead sea; from there as far as the promontory of Rubeas, beyond which it is called the Cronian sea. Xenophon of Lampsacus records that three days’ sail from the Scythian shore is an island of immense size, Balcia; Pytheas calls the same Basilia. Not far off are said to be the islands of the Oeonae, on whose seabirds’ eggs and wild-growing oats the inhabitants live; and others in which men are born with horses’ feet, called Hippopodes; and others in which their own huge ears cover their whole naked bodies.

15. The same Pliny the Younger on the islands of Germany: then begins a clearer report to be opened up — from the nation of the Inguaeones, which is first in Germany. There the mountain Saevo, immense and no less than the Riphaean ridges, makes a monstrous bay as far as the promontory of the Cimbri, called the Codanus, full of islands, of which the most renowned is Scandinavia, of undiscovered size; only a portion of it, so far as it is known, is inhabited by the nation of the Hilleviones in five hundred cantons, who call it another world. Nor is Epigia less in reputation. Some record that these lands are inhabited as far as the river [Vistula] by Sarmatians, Venedi and Sciri.

16. In the aforementioned cosmographia it is read that there is an island of the Sun which is called Perusa, where the Ganges enters the sea; and in the same eastern ocean, the Hipodes, and Silephantine, and Theras.

17. Pliny the Younger in the sixth book reports thus that there are islands in the Indian ocean: four satrapies a little further on, as we hasten in spirit to the island Taprobane. But first is Patale, which we have marked at the very jaws of the Indus, of triangular figure, 220 miles in breadth. Beyond the mouths of the Indus, Chryse and Argyre, fertile in metals as I believe — for what some have handed down, that their soil is gold and silver, I would not readily believe. From them in breadth twenty miles is Crocala; and from it twelve miles Bibaga, full of oysters and shellfish; then Coralliba, eight miles from the one aforementioned — and many ignoble ones.

18. Julius Solinus in the last part of that same book wrote: Thilos [Tylos] is an island of India; it bears palms, grows the olive, abounds in vines; it surpasses all lands in this one wonder, that whatever tree grows in it never lacks leaves.

19. The same Julius a little earlier: the Indian seas have whales beyond the space of four iugera in length, and also those which they call blowers (physeteres), which, huge beyond the mass of enormous columns, raise themselves above the yard-arms of ships and belch forth floods drawn up through their pipes in such wise that they often sink the hulls of sailors beneath a stormy deluge.

20. The same Julius a little later: the island Taprobane, before human daring had laid open belief in a wholly unexplored sea, men long thought to be another world — inhabited, indeed, as was believed, by the Antichthones. But the valour of Alexander the Great suffered the ignorance of the public error to remain no longer, but carried the glory of his name even into these secrets. Onesicritus therefore, commander of the Macedonian fleet, was sent and gave to our knowledge an account of the land itself — how great it is, what it bears, how it is inhabited. It extends 7,000 stades in length and 5,000 in breadth; it is cut by a river flowing through it, one part of which is filled with beasts and elephants much larger than India bears, while men hold the other part. It teems with pearls and all manner of gems. It lies between the east and west. From that sea the outstretched land of India begins; from the Prasian nation of the Indians the passage there was once of twenty-one days when it was made with papyrus and Nile boats, but afterwards, at the speed of our ships, the journey was made in seven days. A shallow sea lies between, of a depth not more than six paces, yet sunk in certain channels so deep that no anchors could ever reach the foundations of its depth.

21. There is no observing of the stars in sailing, where the Bears are nowhere seen and the Pleiades never appear. They see the moon above the land only from the eighth day to the sixteenth. There shines the star Canopus, bright and most ample. They have the rising sun on the right, the setting on the left; therefore since no means of navigation is at hand, men sailing to the destined place carry birds whose course they follow as their guides when the birds make for the land — and they regulate their course by them. No more than four months in the year are they navigated.

22. Priscian in the Periegesis says of the same island Taprobane and two others these following verses:

Hence turning his prow to the warm south-winds, the ship will come to Taprobane, which breeds great elephants through the bounds of Asia; it lies beneath the sign of Cancer. On whose shores leap the thickest sea-beasts, which the vast Red Sea feeds, level with the mountains; terrible over whose backs and shoulders stretches a spine, bearing ruin and fate beneath its savage mouth. For indeed they are accustomed to swallow alike the ship and the men: for the sea no less than the land brings evils to those who fear. If you should fare further, beyond the height of Carmanis Ogyris will meet you, which is said to be the tomb of the Erythraean king, who gave his names to the deep. From there the Persian Gulf is entered, and Icaron offers, an island which is said to placate Diana overmuch.

23. Even as Julius Solinus told the length and breadth of the island Taprobane in thousands of stades — it extends 7,000 stades in length and 5,000 in breadth — so Isidore afterwards displays the same length and breadth in miles in the fourteenth book of the Etymologies, saying: extending 875 miles in length, 625 in breadth.

24. And in like manner as the same Julius related that the elephants of the aforementioned island are much larger than the elephants of India, so, speaking of Mauritania, he reported that the elephants of Mauritania are smaller than those of India.

25. The same Julius spoke in these words of Cyrenaic Africa and its lions: lions mate backward, and not only they but the lynxes also and the camels and the elephants and the rhinoceroses and the tigers. And the lionesses at their first bearing rear five cubs, then in the following years they take away the number one by one, and at last, when the mother’s fertility has come down to one, they grow barren for ever. The years of lions are shown by the brow and the tail, as the tempers of horses are understood by the ears.

26. But the same Julius, in reporting of Germany and its islands, speaks one falsehood, saying that the elephant never lies down — for it most certainly lies down like an ox, as the peoples of the realm of the Franks saw in common in the time of the emperor Charles [i.e. the elephant Abul-Abbas, sent by Harun al-Rashid to Charlemagne]. But perhaps this was written of the elephant by a false conjecture, because its knees and houghs do not openly appear except when it lies down.

27. The same Julius reports of India: he had written that from Father Liber to Alexander the Great there were 6,453 years. The same wrote another incredible thing: that men who worship the spring of the Ganges have need of no food, but live only on the scent of woodland apples; and going further afield they carry the same as a protection, that they may be nourished by the smell; but if by chance they draw a fouler breath, it is certain that they die. Of the breadth of the river Ganges and of the Euphrates which he wrote in that book, doubting, I am silent.

28. The same Julius, speaking of Egypt and the Nile, relates the nature of the crocodile in these words, mingling a false thing with true: the crocodile, an evil quadruped, has power both on land and in the river alike; it has no tongue; it moves the upper jaw. And a little later: the eggs it broods upon are the size of a goose’s; it measures out the place with natural foresight, nor does it lay its brood elsewhere than where the waters of the rising Nile cannot reach. And a little later: in the water they see more dimly, on land most keenly. In winter they take no food; no, they spend four months in fasting from the onset of winter. The other things which he wrote of the nature of the crocodile I pass over here for this reason — that whoever wishes will find them in the twelfth book of the Etymologies.

29. In the things which follow I am not a believer in him who said a little before: in an island of the Nile dwell men of exceeding small stature, but so skilled in daring that they offer themselves against the crocodiles face to face; for they pursue those monsters when they flee, and dread them when they resist; and they are taken, and even under their own waters they serve, subdued, and so tame through fear that, forgetful of their ferocity, they carry their conquerors riding upon their backs. This island therefore and this race, wherever they perceive them by the judgement of smell, they flee from far away.

30. The same Julius in the same place, near the end of the aforementioned volume, displays certain islands of the Red Sea by name, saying: in the western sea of Persis there is a red island of the Sun, inaccessible to every kind of living thing, since it destroys every animal that lands upon it.

31. The same a little later, at the end of his book: among the Arabian islands which the Acsitan Arabs possess, they say there is an island that has got its name from its nature; for upon skins of buffaloes they lay planked wicker-frames and, carried on that kind of raft, they assail passers-by with poisoned arrows.

32. The burnt lands of Ethiopia too are said to be inhabited by Troglodytes and Ichthyophagi [fish-eaters]; among them stalks of the giant-fennel rise to the size of a tree, the great ones of which, when squeezed, yield a very bitter juice, which casts up again white waters fit even for drinking.

33. Another island they call Junonia, crowned at the summit by a paltry little shrine. A third is nearest to it, of the same name, bare throughout. In the fourth place is called Capraria, more full than the others of huge lizards. There follows Nivaria, with a misty and thick air and therefore always snowy. Then Canaria, full of dogs of most outstanding size, of which two were even exhibited to king Juba. In it the remains of buildings endure. There is a great plenty of birds, fruitful groves, palm-groves bearing dates, many a pine-nut, a lavish yield of honey, rivers abounding in silurus-fish. They tell also that sea-monsters are cast up upon it; then when those monsters rot with corruption, everything there is infected with the foul stench; and for that reason the character of the islands does not wholly answer to its name.

34. Isidore in the twelfth book of the Etymologies wrote of the phoenix, the bird of Arabia: the phoenix is called a bird of Arabia because it has the colour of purple (phoeniceus), or because in all the world it is single and unique — for the Arabs call a unique one a phoenix. Living beyond five hundred years, when it sees that it has grown old, it gathers sprays of spices and builds itself a pyre, and turning toward the sun’s ray it kindles a voluntary fire for itself by the beating of its wings; and so it rises again from its own ashes.

35. Julius Solinus, speaking of Arabia, wrote the following of the aforementioned bird: among the Arabs there is the phoenix, a bird of an eagle’s size, with an honoured head of feathers standing out into a cone, with crested cheeks, around the neck a golden gleam, purple in the hinder part save the tail, in which a cerulean brilliance is written in rose-red feathers. It is established that it endures 540 years. It builds itself pyres of cinnamon, which they are accustomed to heap upon the altars and burn near Panchaea in the City of the Sun.

36. The island Opazion of Arabia is reported in the fifteenth book of the Etymologies to exist, covered in mists. For we do not read that there are islands in the eastern ocean of Egypt and in the southern ocean of Ethiopia, just as neither in the Caspian sea.

37. A few small islands of the Tyrrhenian sea, which many have passed over without telling, Isidore here fitly disposed to relate in the ninth book of the Etymologies. He wrote that the island of Sardum lies, separated from the Phoenician shore by a narrow strait.

38. Priscian in the Periegesis sang the following verses:

Hence the sea spreads, and boils by the swelling Propontis to the north, and Proconesus flourishes with its rocks therein. There is also one smooth isle in the parts of the Euxine, which they call Leuce, facing the stream of Borysthenes, which pastures many birds with its snowy brightness. Here they say the souls of heroes mighty in glory dwell secure, by virtue’s fair reward. But if one shall go straight to the Cimmerian Bosporus, there is seen by him, on the right of the vast Maeotic water, an island standing with heavy mass, broad Alopecea; after Phanagoreia and Hermonassa which once the sons of the noble race of the Ionians held.

39. Julius on the Scythian islands: the island of the Apolloniatae is eighty miles from the Bosporus of Thrace, situated about the Hister, from which Lucullus carried off for us the Capitoline Apollo. Before the Borysthenes is the island of Achilles with a sacred shrine, which shrine no bird enters; and one that flies there by chance hastens a swift flight away.

40. The same Julius, speaking a little before of the river Borysthenes: among the Neuri the river Borysthenes rises, in which are fishes of excellent savour, which have no bones but only the tenderest gristle. But the Neuri, as we are told, are transformed into wolves in the summer season; then, the space appointed to this lot being finished, they return to their former shape.

Chapter Eight — the Breadth and Length of the Tyrrhenian Sea #

1. After these things it is fitting to write here in how many miles the breadth of the Tyrrhenian sea is extended, according to Theodosius’s envoys. The length of Syria begins from the southern part of Lesser Asia and, touching Arabia and Lower Egypt, ends there. In which space they wrote there are 470 miles. That is the breadth of the Tyrrhenian sea near Syria, whose length from the isles of Gades to Syria extends greater than the length of Europe or Africa.

2. The island of Cyprus is read in the cosmographia to have 175 miles in length and 125 miles in breadth; and Crete 172 miles in length from east to west, and 50 miles in breadth.

3. Pliny the Younger says this of Sicily and the breadth of the Tyrrhenian sea in the fourth book: but before all, renowned is Sicily — called Sicania by Thucydides, by many Trinacria from its triangular shape — stretching in circuit, as Agrippa states, 618 miles; once joined to the Bruttian field, then torn away when the sea ran between, fifteen miles in length of strait and one and a half in breadth beside the Pillar of Rhegium.

4. From this cleaving the Greeks gave the name Rhegium to the town set on the edge of Italy. In that strait is the rock Scylla, and Charybdis likewise — both famed for the voracity of a whirling sea. Of Triquetra [Sicily] itself, as we have said, the promontory called Pelorus looks toward Italy facing Scylla; Pachynum toward Greece, the Peloponnese being 440 miles from it; Lilybaeum toward Africa at an interval of 180 miles from the promontory of Mercury, and 190 from the Caralitan promontory of Sardinia. The promontories and sides are distant from one another by these spaces. By land journey from Pelorus to Pachynum is 186 miles, from there to Lilybaeum 200, from there to Pelorus 142. Colonies, cities or towns there are sixty-three. From Pelorus the Ionian sea looks upon the coast, with the town of Messana of Roman citizens who are called Mamertines; the promontory Drepanum, the colony Tauromenium which was formerly Naxos, the river Asines, Mount Etna wondrous for its nightly fires. Its crater is open in a compass of twenty stades; the glowing ash reaches as far as Tauromenium and Catina, while the roar reaches the Mauronian and Twin hills. The three rocks of the Cyclopes, the harbour of Ulysses, the colony of Catina.

5. Thus from the promontory of Mercury to the town of Rhegium set on the edge of Italy are found 323 miles and more. But from Lilybaeum to Rhegium the voyage is not stretched straight to the north; the measure declines toward the north-east. For I have not found written how many miles it is to Italy toward the north.

6. In the fourteenth book of the Etymologies I wonder that it is thus written of Sicily’s circuit: its whole circuit is enclosed at three thousand stades — which without doubt are only 375 miles. This I think to be not the author’s error but that of later scribes; for I suppose that Isidore wrote five thousand stades, which make 625 miles.

7. Julius Solinus on Mount Etna: on Etna there are two chasms, named craters, through which the belched vapour bursts forth, a rumbling going first before, which is rolled down with a long bellowing through the boiling recesses of the caverns within the bowels of the earth; nor are the balls of flame raised up before the inward noises precede them.

8. Servius in his commentary on the books of Virgil, where he relates in the third Aeneid, “The harbour itself is vast and unmoved by the winds’ approach, but hard by Etna thunders with horrid ruin” — teaches this: Etna, on the side from which the east-wind or the south-west-wind blows, is agreed to have caves full of sulphur and running down to the sea. These caves, receiving the waves into themselves, create wind, which, being stirred, begets fire from the sulphur — from which it is that the burning is seen. And this is proved to be true by this reasoning: that when other winds blow it sends nothing out of itself, and according to the measure of the blasts of the east- or south-west-wind it vomits forth now smoke, now hot ashes, sometimes fires.

9. Priscian in the Periegesis, after he had told of Sicily, reported this of two islands near Africa, that is, near the Lesser Syrtis:

Toward the south wind is the shoal Syrtis of the Libyan sea, the Greater; but if you go further, see the Lesser, the western; near which shines the island Meninx, and Cercina with it, lying in the Libyan roadstead.

10. Julius Solinus, on the promontories of Africa, speaking of Libyan Cyrenaica, teaches this: all Africa begins from the Zeugitan foot, facing the promontory of Apollo in Sardinia; the promontory of Mercury comes forth, fronting Sicania; from there extended into two headlands, of which one is called the Candidum [White] promontory, the other which is in the Cyrenaic region they call Phycus.

11. Pliny the Younger, after he had written of Italy in the fourth book of the Natural History, a little later wrote this of the island of Corsica: in the Ligustic sea is Corsica, which the Greeks called Cyrnos, but nearer to Etruria, stretched from north to south, 160 miles long, in circuit for the greater part 325 miles; it is sixty-two miles from the shoals of Volaterrae. It has thirty-two cities and colonies.

The same says a little later: Sardinia is less than eight miles from the extremities of Corsica. The same a little later: Sardinia extending on the east 188 miles, on the west 175.

12. Its circuit is 515 miles; it is distant from the Caralitan promontory of Africa 200 miles.

13. In the fourteenth book of the Etymologies it is thus written of the island of Sardinia: Sardus, begotten by Hercules, setting forth from Libya with a great multitude, occupied Sardinia and gave the island its name from his own name. This, in the African sea, in the form of a human footprint juts out broader toward the east than toward the west, with almost equal sides which turn to the south and north. From where before the commerce of the Greeks sailed there it was called Ichnusa [Footprint]. The land stretches 140 miles in length, 40 in breadth.

14. So from Italy, that is from the shoals of Volaterrae, to Corsica is 62 miles; the length of Corsica is 160; from its extremities, that is from the promontory of Corsica, to Sardinia is less than eight miles; the breadth of Sardinia from north to south is 40; from Sardinia to Africa is 200. Which all joined together complete 870 miles. That is the breadth of the Tyrrhenian sea in that part.

15. But when Pliny the Younger said that from the extremities of Corsica to Sardinia is less than eight miles — from the promontory of Corsica extending toward Sardinia — that measure is sure; since the twenty miles written in the first book of Orosius and in the fourteenth of the Etymologies pertain not to the promontories but to the common sides of both islands; for we read that the breadth of Corsica itself is stretched in the first book of Orosius at thirty-six miles.

16. Julius Solinus, reporting of Spain, relates this of the strait of Gades: the Gaditanian strait, named from the isles of Gades — the Atlantic flood sends into our sea the sundering of the world. For the ocean, which the Greeks so name from its swiftness, breaking in from the setting of the sun grazes Europe on the left, Africa on the right, and through the cloven mountains Calpe and Abinna, which they call the Pillars of Hercules, it pours between the Moors and Spain; and by that strait, whose length makes fifteen miles and breadth scarce seven, it opens the threshold of the inner waters by a certain gate. The strait of Gades and the strait of Sicily have the same length.

17. Of whose breadth in the thirteenth book of the Etymologies this is written: the strait of Sicily is very narrow, dividing Sicily from Italy by a space of three miles; but near the Pillar of Rhegium, as Pliny the Younger prescribed, it has in breadth only a mile and a half, that is one full leuga — that is, twelve stades, since one stade holds 125 paces, one pace is measured by five feet.

18. The breadth of the Tyrrhenian sea having been measured four times, I will try to turn my pen to the measuring of Britain. Julius Solinus wrote this of it: the coast of the Gallic shore would have been the end of the world, did not the island of Britain by whatever amplitude well-near merit the name of another world; for it holds in length 800 miles and more, in breadth 200.

19. The same a little later: it is surrounded by many islands not ignoble, of which Ireland (Hibernia) approaches it in greatness; it is so grassy otherwise that it drives its flocks to peril unless they are sometimes kept from the pastures.

20. The same a little later: but the sea which flows between it and Britain, billowy and restless, is navigable through the whole year only on a few days; and it is spread out over a breadth of 120 miles. Between Britain and the Morini in Belgic Gaul, where the town of Rutupiae is a harbour, from where into Britain the passage is nearest and shortest — fifty miles; or as some have written, the breadth of the sea is narrowed to 450 stades.

21. The same Julius a little later: the circuit of Britain is forty times eight times seventy-five [4,875 miles]. If anyone wishes to understand more easily the measure of its circuit written by Julius, let him know surely that it is 400 times 900, or the like [i.e. in the reckoning of counting-stones]. But if this computation satisfies no one of slow wit, let him imagine the milestone-marks at the end of single miles — for example, milestone-stones — of which thirty stones and six hundred simple stones are made, who can doubt?

22. Pliny the Younger says in the third book: Pytheas of Massilia is the authority that the tides swell eighty cubits beyond Britain.

23. In the cosmographia it is read that the lake of the Salinae in Africa, which is in the Tripolitanian province and in the region of Byzacium, waxes and wanes with the lunar month.

24. Pliny the Younger in the third book: Fabianus reports the deepest sea at fifteen stades. But who will believe that Fabianus could know the depth of the whole ocean?

25. Of the seven following things, this is written in the cosmographia:

The eastern part has 8 seas, 9 islands, 7 mountains, 7 provinces, 75 towns, 17 rivers, 44 nations. The southern part has 2 seas, 16 islands, 6 mountains, 17 provinces, 62 towns, 6 rivers, 24 nations. The western part has 8 seas, 15 islands, 15 mountains, 25 provinces, 76 towns, 13 rivers, 24 nations. The northern part has 11 seas, 31 islands, 12 mountains, 16 provinces, 57 towns, 19 rivers, 24 nations. The whole world has 29 seas, 72 islands, 40 mountains, 65 provinces, 281 towns, 55 rivers, 116 nations.

*26. But lest a grammarian censure me because I have here called them “things” (res) corporal and visible, let him receive the testimony of Priscian in the book which he wrote on the first twelve verses of the twelve books of the Aeneid. For, disputing on the first verse of the third of them, he treats it thus, saying: certain grammarians are accustomed to call things incorporeal; yet by true reason all things that are, whether corporal or incorporal, can be named res — as Virgil here said “the things of Asia” for “the riches of Asia”, and “res publica” and “res familiares” and “res uxoria”. And this divine utterance confirms among us in Exodus, where it says: you shall not covet the thing of your neighbour.

Chapter Nine — the Six Mountains #

1. After these things I shall lastly climb to the summits of the mountains. Julius Solinus, telling of Thessaly, so reported of Mount Olympus: they teach that Olympus is celebrated by Homer not through mere boldness — what things are visited in it! First, it rises with so excellent a peak that its summit the inhabitants call heaven. There is on its crest an altar consecrated to Jove, whose altars, if any entrails are offered, are neither blown away by windy gusts nor washed away by rains, but as the year rolls round they are found such as they were left; and whatever has once been consecrated to the god there is kept from all tempests and corruption of the airs.

2. In the fourteenth volume of the Etymologies this is said: Athos, a mountain of Macedonia, also higher than the clouds and so sublime that its shadow reaches to the island of Lemnos, which is separated from it by seventy-seven miles.

3. Julius Solinus in the Collectanea taught this of Mount Atlas: Atlas rises from the middle of the waste of sands and, raised toward the neighbourhood of the moon’s circle, hides its head beyond the clouds. Where it stretches to the ocean, to which it has given its name, it trickles with springs, bristles with woods, is made rough with crags, is parched with hungry soil, bare and grassless. Where it is turned toward Africa it is happy, with fruits springing of themselves, most shady with tall trees whose scent is heavy and whose cypress-like tresses are clothed with a down as precious as silken fleeces. On that side also the herb euphorbia is plentiful, whose juice flows clear for the eyes and defeats no mean force of poisons. The peak is always snowy. Its glades have been occupied by quadrupeds and serpents and wild beasts and with them elephants. It is wholly silent through the day, nor is it solitary without horror; it shines with nightly fires and rings round everywhere with the dances of Aegipans; songs of flutes are heard and clangs of cymbals.

4. Of the same Atlas Isidore wrote in the fourteenth book of the Etymologies: it is surnamed Atlas because by its height it seems to sustain as it were the frame of the heavens and the stars.

5. Julius Solinus here noted two things as it were contrary of Atlas: that it hides its head beyond the clouds where it stretches to the ocean, and that its peak is always snowy. If its peak is always snowy, it cannot always pass beyond the clouds; and if its height always exceeds the clouds, it cannot be not only covered but even touched by the snows. For snows and hails and rains and thunders and lightnings do not ascend from the clouds but always descend from the clouds.

6. In that which he suggests — that, raised toward the neighbourhood of the moon’s circle, it hides its head beyond the clouds where it stretches to the ocean — he plainly teaches that in some heights Atlas passes beyond the clouds, around whose sides I suppose the snows make as it were a crown. And since Isidore was silent that it passes higher than the clouds, I reckon that it scarcely exceeds them. And as Julius had written that its peak is always snowy, it is shown to be covered always by the aforementioned snows in certain parts lower than its height. Which two zones Virgil shows in the fourth Aeneid, saying:

He, trusting, drives the winds and flies through the storm-clouds: for now he marks the pine-crowned head and steep sides of hardy Atlas, who props the heaven with his peak — Atlas, whose head is girt ever with black clouds, buffeted by wind and rain; snow spread over his shoulders covers the sire; then torrents rush down his chin and his rough beard is stiff with ice.

7. In the third verse of the example set forth before, I suppose he spoke of the highest summits; in the others following I think he showed the lower parts.

8. Pliny the Younger in the second book of the Natural History tells of the highest mountain of Thessaly: Dicaearchus, a man of the first learning, at the kings’ charge measured the mountains, of which he declared the highest to be Pelion at 1,250 paces by the reckoning of the perpendicular. The height of the ascent of the Alps I have read to be fifty miles, but I do not recall in what book I found it.

9. Although Priscian in the Periegesis taught that the Pyrenean mount of Spain is too sublime in this verse, saying —

The Pyrenees, which touch heaven with their highest top —

nevertheless Isidore, bishop of the Spains, in the fourteenth book shows that the mount Solurius is loftier than the Pyrenees in these words: Solurius is named from its singularity, because it alone is seen higher than all the mountains of Spain.

10. I, Dicuil, taking these things handled by the authors, will speak a few verses in metre of the six high mountains:

Highest Athos; Atlas; Olympus passes the clouds, for which reason the high summits of these three are foul with dust. But on both mountains Olympus stands higher: Atlas is lower than the foresaid high mounts, from which a crown of snow girds his sublime head; the mountain between, stretching its tall summits to heaven, darkens seven miles eleven times with its shadows. Olympus keeps the entrails whole for a year for the god, holding the offerings spotless on its highest crest. We read that other mountains exceed not the winds. The fervid sun of the south-wind scorches high Atlas; already the north-wind’s cold burns the other two. The Africans hold Atlas, Argos Athos, the Greek Olympus; steep Atlas guards the western sands; the great ancestral land of Alexander keeps these. Cold is in the heights, the sun’s fervour in the depths, and the whole serene air warms the space between — the threefold Atlas pouring forth its winding streams toward the parts of east, of west, of north or of south. Mount Pelion, fifty once and a hundred twice miles above,* hides its head among the clouds; the five Alps pierce tenfold miles upward; Solurius, climbing heaven with its highest crest — I have not read the measure, how many miles complete it. The Thessalian and the Italian, the Spaniard possesses these.

When eight hundred and five and twenty years have run of the highest Lord of earth, of heaven and of the dark prison, beneath the dust of the field covered in the wheat-seed, at night rest is granted to the oxen at the end of their labour.

[Dicuil’s verses on the mountains and his closing colophon, dating the completion of the work to A.D. 825.]