¶1] VIII. It is fitting after this to describe here the width in miles of the Tyrrhenian sea. According to the envoys of Theodosius, the length of Syria begins at the south of Asia Minor, and ends where it touches Arabia and lower Egypt. They have given this distance as four hundred and seventy miles. This is the width of the Tyrrhenian sea beside Syria; its length from the islands of Cadiz as far as Syria is greater than the length of Europe or of Africa.
¶2] In the Cosmography the island of Cyprus is said to be one hundred and seventy-five miles in length, and one hundred and twenty-five miles in breadth, and Crete is said to be one hundred and seventy-two miles in length from east to west, and fifty miles in width.
¶3] Plinius Secundus says this of Sicily and of the width of the Tyrrhenian sea in his fourth book: But most famous of all is Sicily, called Sicania by Thucydides, and Trinacria by many writers from its triangular shape. Agrippa gives its circumference as six hundred and eighteen miles. Once it was attached to the territory of Bruttium, but was wrenched away by the pouring through of the sea, the strait being fifteen miles long, and one and a half wide at the Royal Column.
¶4] It was from this evidence of the yawning of the earth that the Greeks named the town on the Italian side Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria). In the strait is the rock Scylla, and also Charybdis amid the whirlpools, both famed for their ferocity.
¶5] In Sicily itself, which, as I have said, is triangular in shape, the cape facing Italy, opposite Scylla, is called Pelorum (Punta del Faro); that facing Greece is called Pachynum (Capo Passero), four hundred and forty miles distant from the Peloponnese; Lilybaeum (Capo Lilibeo) faces Africa, at a distance of one hundred and eighty miles from Cape Mercury (Cap Bon), and one hundred and ninety miles from Cape Caralis (Capo Carbonara) in Sardinia.
¶6] The following are the distances by land of the capes from one another and the lengths of the sides of the island; from Pelorum to Pachynum, one hundred and eighty-six miles; from there to Lilybaeum, two hundred miles, and from there to Pelorum, one hundred and fortytwo. In Sicily there are colonies and sixty-three cities and towns. Beginning from Pelorum, on the shore looking towards the Ionian sea is the town of Messina, whose inhabitants are Roman citizens, and called Mamertini; then Cape Drepanum (Sickle), the colony of Taormina, formerly called Naxos, the river Acesines (Alcantara), and Mount Etna, wondered at for its nightly fires. Its crater is twenty stadia in circumference, while the hot ash reaches as far as Taormina and Catania, and the noise to Le Madonie and the Twin Hills. Then come the three rocks of the Cyclopes (Scogli dei Ciclopi), the harbour of Ulysses (Ognina) and the colony of Catania.
¶7] So the distance from Cape Mercury to the town of Rhegium on the coast of Italy is found to be three hundred and twenty-three miles and over. But from Lilybaeum to Rhegium one does not sail directly northwards, since the line of measurement inclines towards the north-east; for I have not found a record of the mileage north to Italy.
¶8] In the fourteenth book of the Etymologiae I am surprised to find this statement on the circumference of Sicily: Its complete circumference amounts to three thousand stadia, which certainly is only three hundred and seventy-five miles. This, I think, was not the error of the author, but that of later scribes. I would say that Isidorus wrote five thousand stadia, which makes six hundred and twenty-five miles.
¶9] Iulius Solinus on Mount Etna: There are two openings in Mount Etna, called craters, through which vapour is vomited forth, after a preliminary roaring, which rolls with long bellowings through burning dark caverns within the bowels of the earth. The balls of flame do not shoot up without being preceded by the interior rumblings.
¶10] Servius, in his commentary on Virgil, where the poet relates in
¶11] Priscian, in his Periegesis, after his account of Sicily, speaks as follows about the two islands beside Africa, that is, beside the lesser Syrtis (Sand-bank): To the south is the Libyan sea and the sand-banks of the greater Syrtis, but if you go farther you may see the lesser Syrtis to the west; beside it shines the island of Meninx, and Cernina also, both clear to see on the Libyan station.
¶12] Iulius Solinus, speaking of the capes of Africa, and Cyrenaica in Libya, tells us the following: All Africa begins with the territory of Zeugitana, where Cape Apollo (Ras Sidi Ali el-Mekki) faces Sardinia, and Cape Mercury projects towards the coast of Sicily; then it extends towards two promontories, of which one is called White Cape (Ras elabiad, Capo Bianco), while the other, which is in the district of Cyrenaica, they call Red Cape.
¶13] Plinius Secundus, after writing on Italy in the fourth book of his Natural History, shortly afterwards writes this of Corsica: Corsica, which the Greeks called Cyrnos, lies in the Ligurian sea, but nearer the Tuscan sea, its line running from north to south. It is one hundred and sixty miles in length, fifty miles broad for most of its length, and three hundred and twenty-five miles in circumference; it is sixty-two miles from the shallows of Volaterrae. It has thirty-two towns, and also colonies.
¶14] The same author shortly afterwards says: Sardinia is less than eight miles from the end of Corsica. And again, shortly afterwards: The length of the east side of Sardinia is one hundred and eighty-two miles, of the west side one hundred and seventy-five. Its circumference is five hundred and sixty-five miles. Elsewhere: From Africa to Capo Carbonara is two hundred miles.
¶15] In the fourteenth book of the Etymologiae the following is written of the island of Sardinia: Sardus, son of Hercules, set out from Libya with a large band, occupied Sardinia and named the island after himself.
¶16] Therefore from Italy, that is from the shallows of Volaterrae, to Corsica is sixty-two miles; the length of Corsica is one hundred and sixty; from the end, that is the cape, of Corsica to Sardinia is less than eight; the breadth of Sardinia from north to south is forty; from Sardinia to Africa is two hundred. The addition of all these makes up a tale of four hundred and seventy miles. This is the width of the Tyrrhenian sea at that point.
¶17] The measure given by Plinius Secundus is correct, that it is less than eight miles from the end of Corsica to Sardinia, from the Corsican cape extending towards Sardinia; since the twenty miles given in the first book of Orosius and in the fourteenth of the Etymologiae refers, not to the capes, but to the common sides of both islands; the width of Corsica itself extends thirty-six miles, as we read in the first book of Orosius .
¶18] Iulius Solinus, when speaking of Spain, says the following of the gulf of Cadiz: The strait of Cadiz, named from the isles of Cadiz, sends the Atlantic swell into the Mediterranean by a splitting apart of the earth. For the ocean, which the Greeks name thus from its speed, breaking in from the west, brushes Europe on the left and Africa on the right, and splitting apart Mounts Calpe and Abinna, which they call the Columns of Hercules, flows between Mauretania and Spain, and to this gulf, whose length is fifteen miles and breadth scarcely seven, opens by a sort of door the threshold of the inner sea. The strait of Cadiz and that of Sicily have the same length.
¶19] On the width of the latter the following is written in the thirteenth book of the Etymologiae: The strait of Sicily is very narrow, dividing Sicily from Italy by the space of three miles, but beside the Column of Rhegium, as Plinius Secundus wrote, it is only one and a half miles wide, that is, exactly one league, or twelve stadia, since one stadium equals one hundred and twenty-five paces, and one pace is five feet.
¶20] Having measured the width of the Tyrrhenian sea four times, I shall try to turn my pen to the measurement of Britannia. Of it Iulius Solinus wrote as follows: The Gallic shore would have been the end of the world, only that the island Britannia, of whatever size it be, nearly deserved the name of another world, for it is eight hundred miles and more in length, and two hundred in breadth.
¶21] The same author, shortly afterwards: It has about it many islands, which are not unimportant, of which Hibernia is nearest to it in size, which otherwise is so rich in pastures as to endanger the cattle unless they are now and then removed from their feeding-grounds.
¶22] The same author, shortly afterwards: The sea between it and Britannia is rough and stormy all the year round, and is only navigable for a few days, and is one hundred and twenty miles wide. The sea is fifty miles wide between Britannia, where the town of Richborough is, and the Morini in Gallia Belgica, from where is the nearest and shortest crossing to Britannia; or, as some have written, it narrows down to four hundred and fifty stadia.
¶23] Iulius, again, a little later, says: The circumference of Britannia is four thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five miles. If anyone wishes to follow more easily the figure for the circumference given by Iulius, let him take it as four miles nine hundred times, or nine hundred times four miles. But if this reckoning does not satisfy any slow-minded person, let him visualize the mile-marks at the end of each mile, the mile-stones that is to say, and then who will doubt that a tale of thirty thousand six hundred stones is made up ?
¶24] Plinius Secundus in his third book says: Pytheas of Marseilles relates that the tide rises above Britannia by eighty cubits. In the Cosmography we read that Lake Salinae (Saltpans) in Africa, which is in the province of Tripolis and in the district of Bezatium, increases and decreases with the lunar month.
¶25] Plinius Secundus in his third book: Fabianus gives the deepest sea as of fifteen stadia. But who will believe that Fabianus could know the depth of all the oceans ?
¶26] The following is written in the Cosmography on the seven following matters: The eastern part has eight seas, nine islands, seven mountains, seven provinces, seventy-five towns, seventeen rivers, forty-four peoples.
¶27] The southern part has two seas, sixteen islands, six mountains, seventeen provinces, sixty-two towns, six rivers, twenty-four peoples.
¶28] The western part has eight seas, fifteen islands, fifteen mountains, twenty-five provinces, seventy-six towns, thirteen rivers, twenty-four peoples.
¶29] The northern part has eleven seas, thirty-one islands, twelve mountains, sixteen provinces, fifty-seven towns, nineteen rivers, twenty-four peoples.
¶30] The whole earth has twenty-nine seas, seventy-two islands, forty mountains, sixty-five provinces, two hundred and eighty-one towns, fifty-five rivers, one hundred and sixteen peoples.
¶31] But lest some schoolmaster reading this may object that I have spoken here of corporeal and visible things, let him accept the evidence