Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/263

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B. III. C. IV. § 19.
SPAIN.
249

19. Some, as I have said, state that this country is separated into four divisions; others, into five. It is not easy to state any thing precisely on these points, both on account of the changes which the places have undergone, and by reason of their obscurity. In well-known and notable countries both the migrations are known, and the divisions of the land, and the changes of their names, and every thing else of the same kind. Such matters being the common topics with everybody, and especially with the Greeks, who are more talkative than any other people. But in barbarous and out-of-the-way countries, and such as are cut up into small divisions, and lie scattered, the remembrance of such occurrences is not nearly so certain, nor yet so full. If these countries are far removed from the Greeks [our] ignorance is increased. For although the Roman historians imitate the Greeks, they fall far short of them. What they relate is taken from the Greeks, very little being the result of their own ardour in acquiring information. So that whenever any thing has been omitted by the former there is not much supplied by the latter. Add to this, that the names most celebrated are generally Grecian. Formerly the name of Iberia was given to the whole country between the Rhone and the isthmus formed by the two Galatic gulfs; whereas now they make the Pyrenees its boundary and call it indifferently Iberia or Hispania; others have restricted Iberia to the country on this side the Ebro.[1] Still earlier it bore the name of the Igletes,[2] who inhabited but a small district, according to Asclepiades the Myrlean. The Romans call the whole indifferently Iberia and Hispania,

    Superesse tæderet, et fortiter
    Pugnando invicem cecidere,
    Morte ad præsens optata jacent.
    Valete posteri.

    For the appalling means they adopted to hold out the city of Calaguris to the last, see Valerius Maximus, lib. vii. cap. vi.

  1. ↑ The country between the Ebro and the Pyrenees.
  2. ↑ These Igletes are the same which Stephen of Byzantium names Gletes, and by an error of the copyist Tletes. Herodotus places them between the Cynetæ, and the Tartessians, and Theopompus in the neighbourhood of the Tartessians. The position between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, which Asclepiades the Myrlean thus gives them, supports the opinion of those who reckon that Rosas was founded by the Rhodians, and that the people of Marseilles did not settle there till afterwards; it is more than probable that the Igletes were nothing more than Ignetes or Gnetes of the Isle of Rhodes.
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