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

B. iv. c. v. 5. IRELAND. ICELAND. north, long, or rather, wide ; concerning which we further than that its inhabitan are _more savage than _the Britons, feeding; on human flesh, ami pnormnna ftatp.raj and (leeming it commendable to devour their deceased fathers, 1 as well as openly 2 to have commerce not only with other women, but ajso with their own mothers and sistS_. 3 But this we relate perhaps without very competent authority ; although to eat human flesh is said to be & Scy- thian custom ; and during the severities of a siege, even the Kelts, the Iberians, and many others, are reported to have done the likel* 5. The account of Tbule 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 Massagetae and Issedoni. Amongst these latter, when the father of a family died, all the relatives_^sjenibled at the house of the deceased, and having slain certain animals, cut them and the jjody of the deceased into small pieces, and having mixed the morsels together, re- galed themselves on" the inhuman feast. 2 Strabo intends by Qavep&e what Herodotus expresses by pi%iv ifi<^avea, KaQdrtep rolac 7rpo/3aroi(Ti (concubitum, sicuti pecoribits, in propa- tulo esse) . 3 Herodotus, (1. 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 Jbetween relations, Strabo in his 16thT3ook, speaks of it as being /usuaramongst the Arabs. It was torn amongst the early Greeks, fi omer makes the six sons of "^Tuno addresses herself to Jupiter as " Et soror ime of . /[ in his lyl a cus- / ' v_ conu TAn extremity to which the Gauls were driven during the war they sustained against the Cimbri and Teutones, (Caesar, lib. vii. c. 77,) and the inhabitants of Numantia in Iberia, when besieged by Scipio. (Va- lerius Maxim us, lib. vii. c. 6.) The city of Potidaea in Greece experi- enced 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.