Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/313

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B. IV. C. V. § 5.
IRELAND. ICELAND.
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north, long, or rather, wide; concerning which we have nothing certain to relate, further than that its inhabitants are more savage than the Britons, feeding on human flesh, and enormous eaters, and deeming it commendable to devour their deceased fathers,[1] as well as openly[2] to have commerce not only with other women, but also with their own mothers and sisters.[3] But this we relate perhaps without very competent authority; although to eat human flesh is said to be a Scythian custom; and during the severities of a siege, even the Kelts, the Iberians, and many others, are reported to have done the like.[4]

5. The account of Thule is still more uncertain, on account of its secluded situation; for they consider it to be the northernmost of all lands of which the names are known. The falsity of what Pytheas has related concerning this and neighbouring places, is proved by what he has asserted of well-known countries. For if, as we have shown, his description of these is in the main incorrect, what he says of far distant countries is still more likely to be false.[5] Nevertheless, as far as astronomy and the mathematics are concerned, he appears to have reasoned correctly, that people bordering on the frozen

  1. ↑ This custom resembles that related by Herodotus (lib. i. c. 216, and iv. 26) of the Massagetæ and Issedoni. Amongst these latter, when the father of a family died, all the relatives assembled at the house of the deceased, and having slain certain animals, cut them and the body of the deceased into small pieces, and having mixed the morsels together, regaled themselves on the inhuman feast.
  2. ↑ Strabo intends by φανερῶς what Herodotus expresses by μίξιν ἐμφανέα, καθάπερ τοῖσι προβάτοισι (concubitum, sicuti pecoribus, in propatulo esse).
  3. ↑ Herodotus, (l. iv. c. 180,) mentioning a similar practice amongst the inhabitants of Lake Tritonis in Libya, tells us that the men owned the children as they resembled them respectively. Mela asserts the same of the Garamantes. As to the commerce between relations, Strabo in his 16th book, speaks of it as being usual amongst the Arabs. It was a custom amongst the early Greeks. Homer makes the six sons of Æolus marry their six sisters, and Juno addresses herself to Jupiter as “Et soror et conjux.” Compare also Cæsar, lib. v.
  4. ↑ An extremity to which the Gauls were driven during the war they sustained against the Cimbri and Teutones, (Cæsar, lib. vii. c. 77,) and the inhabitants of Numantia in Iberia, when besieged by Scipio. (Valerius Maximus, lib. vii. c. 6.) The city of Potidæa in Greece experienced a similar calamity. (Thucyd. lib. ii. c. 70.)
  5. ↑ Pytheas placed Thule under the 66th degree of north latitude, which is the latitude of the north of Iceland.
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