Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/209

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Chap. 5.]
ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, ETC.
175

rivers are the Tecum and the Vernodubrum[1] The towns are Illiberis[2], the scanty remains of what was formerly a great city, and Ruscino[3], a town with Latian rights. We then come to the river Atax[4], which flows from the Pyrenees, and passes through the Rubrensian Lake[5], the town of Narbo Martius, a colony of the tenth legion, twelve miles distant from the sea, and the rivers Arauris[6] and Liria[7]. The towns are otherwise but few in number, in consequence of the numerous lakes[8] which skirt the sea-shore. We have Agatha[9], formerly belonging to the Massilians, and the district of the Volcæ Tectosages[10], and there is the spot where Rhoda[11], a Rhodian colony, formerly stood, from which the river takes its name of Rhodanus[12]; a stream by far the most fertilizing of any in either of the Gallias. Descending from the Alps and rushing through lake Lemanus[13], it carries along with it the sluggish Arar[14], as well as the torrents of the Isara and the Druentia[15], no less rapid than itself. Its two smaller mouths are called Libica[16], one being the Spanish, and the

  1. Probably the Tech, and the Verdouble, which falls into the Gly.
  2. Probably the present Elne, on the Tech.
  3. The present Castel Roussillon.
  4. The Aude of the present day.
  5. The bodies of water now called Etangs de Bages et de Sigean.
  6. Now the Herault.
  7. Now called the Lez, near the city of Montpellier.
  8. Now called Etangs de Leucate, de Sigean, de Gruissan, de Vendres, de Thau, de Maguelonne, de Perols, de Mauguio, du Repausset; Marais d'Escamandre, de Lermitane et de la Souteyrane, and numerous others.
  9. Now the town of Agde. Strabo also informs us that this place was founded by the Massilians.
  10. This people seems to have inhabited the eastern parts of the departments of l'Arriége and the Haute Garonne, that of Aude, the south of that of Tarn, and of that of Herault, except the arrondissement of Montpellier.
  11. Dalechamp takes this to be Foz les Martigues; but the locality is doubtful. Most probably this is the same place that is mentioned by Strabo as Rhoë, in conjunction with the town of Agathe or Agde, and the Rodanusia of Stephen of Byzantium, who places it in the district of Massilia or Marseilles.
  12. Now the Rhone.
  13. Now the Lake of Geneva.
  14. The modern Saone.
  15. Now the rivers Isère and Durance.
  16. Most probably from Libici, a town in the south of Gaul, of which there are coins in existence, but nothing else seems to be known. At the present day there are four mouths of the Rhone, the most westerly of which is called the "Dead" Rhone; the next the "Lesser" Rhone; the third the "Old" Rhone; and the fourth simply the Rhone. D'An-