Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/218

This page needs to be proofread.
184
PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY.
[Book III.

The circuit of the whole, from the Yarus to the Arsia, is 3059 miles[1].

As to its distance from the countries that surround it — Istria and Liburnia are, in some places[2], 100 miles from it, and Epirus and Illyricum 50 ; Africa is less than 200, as we are informed by M. Varro; Sardinia[3] is 120, Sicily 1½, Corsica less than 80, and Issa[4] 50. It extends into the two seas towards the southern parts of the heavens, or, to speak with more minute exactness, between the sixth[5] hour and the first hour of the winter solstice.

"We will now describe its extent and its different cities; in doing which, it is necessary to premise, that we shall follow the arrangement of the late Emperor Augustus, and adopt the division which he made of the whole of Italy into eleven districts ; taking them, however, according to their order on the sea-line, as in so hurried a detail it would not be possible otherwise to describe each city in juxtaposition with the others in its vicinity. And for the same reason, in describing the interior, I shall follow the alphabetical order which has been adopted by that Emperor, pointing out the colonies of which he has made mention in his enumeration. Nor is it a very easy task to trace their situation and origin; for, not to speak of others, the Ingaunian Ligurians have had lands granted to them as many as thirty different times.

CHAP. 7. or THE NINTH[6] REGION OF ITALY.

To begin then with the river Yarns ; we have the town of Nicæa[7], founded by the Massilians, the river Paulo[8], the Alps

  1. ↑ This distance is overstated : the circuit is in reality about 2500 miles.
  2. ↑ For instance, from Pola to Ravenna, and from ladera to Ancona.
  3. ↑ Sardinia is in no part nearer to Italy than 140 miles.
  4. ↑ Issa, now Lissa, is an island of the Adinatic, off the coast of Liburnia; it is not less than eighty miles distant from the nearest part of the coast of Italy.
  5. ↑ That is to say, the south, which was so called by the Romans: the meaning being that Italy extends in a south-easterly direction.
  6. ↑ Italy was divided by Augustus into eleven districts; the ninth of which nearly corresponded to the former republic of Genoa
  7. ↑ The modern Nizza of the Italians, or Nice of the French.
  8. ↑ Now the Paglione,
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.