Pomponius Mela Research Articles

Палеогеография, археология и античная топонимика и терминология Крымского Приазовья

The article was prepared within the framework of the project "Black Sea and Central Asian periphery of the ancient world and nomadic communities of Eurasia: at the crossroads of cultures and civilizations" № НИОКТР 122011200269-4. The article discusses ancient toponyms, terminology and relevant archeological realities of the Sea of Azov, but mostly their relevancy with paleogeology and paleogeography of the region in antiquity. The attention is mostly paid to the level changes of the Sea of Azov and the Chokrak Lake. The author uses the results of the latest archeological excavations and of some natural-scientific investigations. He analyzes both differences and similarities of the three groups of the sources. In the first “case” the author uses the results of the long-term excavations of the academic expedition led by him. The expedition investigates on the significant area and extent not only multi-temporal and multi-cultural sites of the Sea of Azov, but also relevant natural landscapes. Particularly, several periods of water level decline and rises of local bodies of water have been determined and chronologically confirmed, first and foremost those of the Sea of Azov and neighboring lakes and rivers, as well as of subsoil waters. There processes’ having had impact on the origin, location and state of conservation of settlement structures, demography and features of economic activities of the local population in the 6th century BCE to the 6th century ACE have been analyzed. These results serve to determine two or three periods which show either desolation or (vice-versa) prosperity of the lands in question. But it is important that the results have confirmed that a lot of our written sources are well informed and even objective. Sometimes they permit to better understand the sources or even to correct the former translations and, moreover, relevant comments. Thus, they emphasize again great degree of information in the works by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Scylax, Polybius, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Plinius Major, Claudius Ptolemaeus and in the less degree of other authors of various historical and geographical works, first and foremost, peripli, on the size and depth of the Sea of Azov, the quantity of settlements on its coasts, the direction of trade routes (proceeding from the main streams), local climate and its changes through centuries, historical events etc. In a number of cases archeology served to significantly clarify the chronology and scope of some changes, and (last but not least) to emphasize the importance of the complex approach for general and specific research of the ancient geographical legacy.

Удивительная Скифия Гая Юлия Солина

The lost ethno-geographic information of Hellenistic tradition and of the earlier one on the northern Black Sea and neighboring territories are partially preserved due to the compilations emerged in the epoque of the Roman Empire. Thus, “Collectanea rerum memorabilium”, the work by Gaius Julius Solinus, (the 3rd cent.), despite its “secondary” information, is a promising source for the researchers of the northern Black Sea’s ethno-geography. The article discusses Solinus’s information on peoples and tribes dwelling in the region of the northern Black Sea in antiquity, as well as other descriptions (mostly concerning hydronyms, local fauna and customs and the mode of life of Scythian tribes) drawing attention to the features of Solinus’s world picture. Solinus’s compilation’s chief sources were works by Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder. Exposing their texts, Solinus used rhetorical techniques and added paradoxography’s excursions to his predecessors’ information, i.e., inserted unusual facts and curious natural phenomena. Obviously, such a description should have made Solinus’s ethno-geographical stuff more attractive to ancient readers and contribute to “a popularization” of the science of ancient oikoumene, i.e., serve didactic targets. If mirabilia in ancient literature are used from the early times, “the miraculous examples” in the work by Solinus are put to the forefront. So, one can speak of his proximity to the literature of ancient paradoxographers. Conventional requirements of sophistics do not exclude the use of Solinus’s work as a historical source containing true facts and details, which not only remove complications in understanding of Solinus’s ethno-geographic map, but also add some evidence of history and culture of the northern Black Sea region in antiquity.

The Phoenix Complex

The Phoenix Complex

The Name ‘Palestine’ in Classical Greek Texts

This article provides a contextualised exposition of classical Greek texts, in chronological order, from Herodotus to Eusebius of Caesarea (5th century BC-4th century AD), with brief biographical reviews and in which the name ‘Palestine’ appears. A Latin text by Pomponius Mela is also included for its reference to Gaza which, with the exception of the Septuagint texts, predates Arrian, Arrian of Nicomedia, a Greek historian of the Roman period, by nearly a century. The selection of classical texts explored in this article is not intended to be exhaustive; however, the exploration of these texts in connection with Palestine has never been attempted before. While avoiding historical, philosophical or literary criticism of these texts, this article focuses on the specific considerations of the name ‘Palestine’ in the classical literature.

El Estrecho de Gibraltar (Gaditanum fretum) en Plinio: el problema de Traducta Iulia

Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela coincide, in general, in the description of the Strait of Gibraltar, having in some cases followed common sources from the 1st century BC. Both also coincide in the omission of the Betic city named Traducta. Mela omits it and, according to the reading and interpretation of most of the editors of the Chorographia, quotes Tingentera, his hometown, presumably in the same place, the cove of Calpe. Pliny also omits it and erroneously takes the identical toponymic form to the south bank of the Gaditanum fretum as the cognomen of Tingi, capital of Tingitana Mauritania. In this work, based on archaeological, numismatic and literary testimonies, we intend to endorse the unequivocal reduction of Iulia Traducta to the current Algeciras and seek an explanation for the reasons for the omission by Plinio in his description of the Betic shore and the error by taking her to the Mauritanian shore.

АРАВИЯ (АРАБИЯ) ПО ДАННЫМ ДРЕВНЕАРМЯНСКОГО ПАМЯТНИКА V – VII ВЕКОВ «АШХАРАЦУЙЦ»

The “Ancient Armenian Geography” (“Ashkharatsuyts”) places a special emphasis on the historical and geographical description of the Arabian Peninsula as a whole. Here, Arabia is considered as two countries of Universal Asia: the 25th and 28th countries are referred to as Arabia Petraea and Felix, respectively. The desert part of Arabia (Arabia Deserta) is also mentioned, but the authors (Movses Khorenatsi, Ananias of Shirak) only outline the boundaries of the peninsula. In addition to the geographical and historical information, the “Ashkharatsuyts” gives details on the socio-economic and cultural development of the population residing in the region. There is also a racial map, as well as the information about fossil resources, flora, fauna, etc. Similarly to the earlier works by other scholars (Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, et al.), the “Ashkharatsuyts” is focused on all sections and subcategories of geography (from anthropogeography, cartography, local history, physico-economic geography to military geography, plant geography, physical geography (orography and hydrography), etc.). In this paper, each fragment of the text devoted to Arabia is explained on the basis of hermeneutic principles. Toponyms are interpreted using historical and linguistic analysis. Controversial issues are considered in the perspective of comparison with data from other sources. The results obtained contribute considerably to the study of the Arabian Peninsula by appealing to historical sources along with archaeological data.

Liber chronicarum, Carta marina and other mappae mundi

Abstract. Published in 1493, Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel contains one of the most unique maps of that period. It shows a pantheon of monsters who were believed to inhabit the lands at the edge of the world known to people back then. Olaus Magnus, author of Carta marina, which was printed in 1539, adorned the water areas on his map with a variety of sea creatures, from those posing as islands to mythical creatures, such as the unicorn or Charybdis. Both these maps originate in the medieval mappae mundi tradition – illustrated compendia of the regions they present. A curious reader would perceive that they are heavily influenced by the works of antique and medieval cartographers: Pomponius Mela, Pilny the Elder, Bede the Venerable and Vincent of Beauvais. The phantasmagorical quality of the creatures on these maps is an interesting starting point from which to reflect on the following question: why, on a cognitive level, do these old maps – just as in fairy tales about the unknown, the mysterious and the dangerous – give their warnings in the metaphorical form of monsters? The similarity between mappae mundi and fairy tales is no accident. According to Marina Warner’s Once upon a Time, nannies told children fairy tales to familiarise them with everyday problems and dilemmas, to shed light on the complexities of interpersonal relations, and to explain the workings of the world.

Making Specimens in the Periplus of Hanno and its Imperial Tradition

The Periplus of Hanno is a short Greek description of Hanno’s voyage from Carthage along the west coast of Africa. In this article, I turn attention to Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, and Athenaeus’ reception of its final, infamous scene, in which Hanno kills and flays female “Gorillai” and brings their hairy skins back to Carthage. The Gorillai are called human beings (anthrōpoi) but also marked as nonhuman. Contrary to modern expectation, Roman writers did not interpret the Gorillai as monkeys or great apes. Rather, Mela, Pliny, and Athenaeus look to myth and other animal species to understand them. They also reinterpret Hanno, first as a marvel-collector and hero and then as a Roman general. Yet even in an age of poena post mortem and summa supplicia, these writers are hesitant to depict Romans flaying human women. Hanno the barbarian can skin a human being, but Hanno in his Roman guise only skins animals. In the Periplus of Hanno and its Imperial receptions, we see the interdependence of ethnicity, humanity, and animality.

Topos of Scythia in theMedieval Origogentis

The concept of ‘Scythia as an ancestral homeland’ played an important role in the Medieval Origogentis. The narratives about the origin of peoples aimed to contribute the construction of new identities in Europe after the Roman empire declined. Iordanes and Isidore of Seville considered Scythiaas either starting or passing point of the Gothic migrations. Bede the Venerable and anonymous authors of Lebor Gabála Érenn named Scythia as a homeland of the Picts and Scots, while in the IcelandicYnglinga sagait was considered as a native land of the Norse gods. It is widely accepted that the medieval intellectuals used the phonetic similarity of the ethnic and geographical terms Scythae/ Scythia, Gothi, Scotti, Svíþjoð (Sweden) and Scedenig (Scandinavia) to construct links between the new ethnic and political entities, Classical history and biblical genealogy of peoples. This supposition is undoubtedly correct, however, it tends to oversimplify the conditions of the Early Medieval historiography’s development. The aim of the article is to show that the reasons why Scythia became to be considered the ancestral homeland for the Medieval ethnic communities were much more complicated. The author uses methods of the intellectual historyto demonstrate that apart from the Bible, the authors of the Origogentis had to take into account at least two other important narratives. One of them was a still alive in the 8th century Anglo-Saxon Britain and 13th century Iceland epic tradition, which dealt with the presence of the Goths and other Germanic peoples in the North Pontic area. Greek and Roman geography was another narrative, which medieval authors had to regard. This hypothesis determines the scientific novelty of the paper. According to Pomponius Mela, Plinius the Elder and other Classical writers, the lands of Scythia, Scandinavia, mythical Hyperborea, Britain and Ireland made up a single region – northern periphery of the inhabited world. Visualization of Scandinavia as an island laying opposite to Scythia, coming from the Greek and Roman geography, explains why the description ofAsgard in the Ynglinga saga is to a large extent dependent on the Hyperborea’s depictions in the Classical cosmographies. Conclusions. To sum up, one should not consider the stories about the Scythian origin of some Northern and Western European peoples as a complete fiction for at least two reasons. Firstly, some of the Origogentis appealed to the folklore tradition, which, in its turn, preserved a reminiscence of the historically and archaeologically attested events (such as the Gothic migration from the Baltic littoral to the North Pontic area). Secondly, from the viewpoint of educated medieval Scandinavians, British and Irishmen, their own homelands were a part of a single region, neighboring Scythia and being closely connected with it.

De Finnis cornutis

<p><em>Horned Finns</em>. The ‘cornuti Finni’ mentioned in the <em>Historia Norwegiae</em> have not found their explanation, because the Latin word <em>cornu</em>, from which the adjective is derived, has been understood in the strict sense of ‘horn on the head’. The Latin word, however, also means ‘hoof’ of horses or ‘cloven hoof’ of cows and goats, even of the mythologic Faunus and Pan. In December 1913 Kai Donner saw in Dudinka Avam-Samojeds, who because of their cylindrically shaped reindeer winter boots, the front of which was hoof-shaped, were called ‘hoofed men’ (in Finnish ‘kaviolliset miehet’). In the extracts of Aristeas of Proconnesus, who as early as about 625 B.C travelled in North-Eastern Asia, the <em>Aigipodes</em>, men with goats feet, are mentioned as inhabitants of Northern Siberia. In the first century A.D., Pomponius Mela knows <em>Hippopodes</em>, men with horse’s feet, in the Northmost Sarmatia. The three names, <em>cornuti Finni</em>,<em> Aigipodes</em> and <em>Hippopodes</em> find their explanation in the reindeer boots, necessary in the arctic climate. Recent photographs of the Ngasani and Nenets Samojed show that this kind of boots are still used. The fact that some arctic peoples have since ancient times got their nickname from their boots, which made them look like hoofed animals, makes it necessary to reconsider the origin of the names Lapp and Finn, the etymology of which is unclear. As the Swedish <em>lapp</em>, earlier form of modern <em>labb</em>, is of Indogermanic origin and has in several languages the meaning of the foot of a quadruped animal, it seems that the name Lapp, considered as abusive by the Sami, belongs to the arctic names given to people who because of their boots looked like men with goat’s or horse’s feet and were called, as Donner heard it, ‘hoofed men’. It remains an open question whether the ethnonym <em>Fenni</em> / <em>Finni</em> may be of similar origin.</p>

The Ptolemaic Wall Map: A Lost Tradition of Renaissance Cartography

This article examines textual and visual evidence to show that in the second half of the fifteenth century manuscript Ptolemaic wall maps were produced, though no examples of the type survive today. These maps were a significant but heretofore unknown part of the cartographic reception of Ptolemy’s Geography. The Ptolemaic world map in the 1482 Venice edition of Pomponius Mela’s Cosmographia, and through it, the world map in Schedel’s Liber chronicarum, apparently derives from this tradition, and it is suggested that Henricus Martellus’s wall map now at Yale, and through it, Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map, were inspired by maps of this type.

Confronting Genocide: Latin America, adventure fiction and the moral crisis of British imperialism

Adventure fiction was widely employed by British writers during the nineteenth century to address serious questions of politics and morality, particularly those arising from the nation's imperial responsibilities. The nineteenth-century adventure tales that argued for or justified the extension of empire were, in Martin Green's well-worn phrase, 'the energising myth of English imperialism. They were, collectively, the story England told itself as it went to sleep at night, and, in the form of its dreams, they charged England's will with the energy to go out into the world and explore, and conquer and rule/1 By the mid nineteenth century, however, some of these adventure narratives, particularly those set in Latin America, were less likely to bring on a reassuring slumber than they were to engender nightmares of self-doubt before waking the sleeper with a nasty start. At a time when the popular literature of empire was slavishly heroworshipping or blindly propagandists and high culture all but refused to acknowledge the existence of an imperial frontier, adventure fiction set in Latin America furnished a unique critical and intellectual space within which the political, social and moral consequences of empire might be thought through or imaginatively enacted.2 This employment of Latin America in nineteenth and early twentieth-century British adventure fiction grows out of a long-established pattern of discursive relations between the two. J. H. Elliott identifies its precedents in the earliest European responses to the New World. Surveying a wide array of texts from the late sixteenth into the seventeenth centuries, Elliott observes: [I]t is difficult not to be impressed by the strange lacunae and the resounding silences in many places where references to the New World could reasonably be expected. How are we to explain the absence of any mention of the New World in so many memoirs and chronicles, including the memoirs of Charles V himself? How are we to explain the continuing determination, right up to the last two or three decades of the sixteenth century, to describe the world as if it were still the world as known to Strabo, Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela... The reluctance of cosmographers or social philosophers to incorporate into their work the new information made available to them by the discovery of America provides an example of the wider problem arising from the revelation of the New World to the Old. Whether it is a question of the geography of America, its flora and fauna, or the nature of its inhabitants, the same kind of pattern seems constantly to recur in the European response. It is as if, at a certain point, the mental shutters came down; as if, with so much to see and absorb and understand, the effort suddenly becomes too much for them, and Europeans retreat to the half-light of their traditional mental world. There is nothing very novel about the form of this sixteenth century response. Medieval Europe had found it supremely difficult to comprehend and come to terms with the phenomenon of Islam... Nor is this a matter for surprise for the attempt of one society to comprehend another inevitably forces it to reappraise itself. ..This process is bound to be an agonizing one, involving the jettisoning of many traditional preconceptions and inherited ideas. It is hardly surprising, then, if sixteenth-century Europeans either ignored the challenge or baulked at the attempt. There was, after all, an easier way out, neatly epitomized in 1528 by the Spanish humanist, Hernan Perez de Oliva, when he wrote that Columbus set out on his second voyage 'to unite the world and give to those strange lands the form of our own'.3 Elliott's vision of sixteenth-century Europeans dazzled by the prodigality of the New World, retreating to 'the half-light of their traditional mental world' from where they seek to understand 'those strange lands' by imposing on them 'the form of our own', furnishes a key image for the processes determining Britain's cultural relations with Latin America and the persistence of its seemingly perennial ignorance about the continent. …

GEOGRAPHY AS THE EYE OF ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY

Whilst Edward Gibbon's Memoirs of My Life comprise a notoriously complex document of autobiographical artifice, there is no reason to question the honesty of its revelation of his attitudes to geography and its relationship to the historian's craft. Writing of his boyhood before going up to Oxford, Gibbon commented that his vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to write, or to act; and the only principle, that darted a ray of light into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational application of the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography: from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology: the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher [sic] and Prideaux, distinguished the connection of events . . . This seems a fairly direct comment on Gibbon's attitude to geography as a historian in that it is confirmed by various of his working documents and commonplace book comments not aimed at posterity and by the practice embodied in his great work that was thus targeted, the Decline and Fall. Taking Gibbon's private documents, the first manuscript we have in his English Essays, for example, is a tabulated chronology from circa 1751 when Gibbon was fourteen years old, which begins with the creation of the world in 6000 BC and runs up to 1590 BC, this being exactly the sort of material which could be commonplaced from the likes of Ussher and Prideaux. Matching this attention to chronology is a concern with geography, and indeed the two are coupled together as in his comment in the Memoirs. Thus in his Index Expurgatoris (1768–9), Gibbon berates Sallust as “no very correct historian” on the grounds that his chronology is not credible and that “notwithstanding his laboured description of Africa, nothing can be more confused than his Geography without either division of provinces or fixing of towns”. In this regard, Gibbon the author of the Decline and Fall was a “correct” historian, in that he was careful to frame each arena in which historical events were narrated in the light of a prefatory description of the geography of the location under discussion. This is most readily apparent in the second half of the opening chapter of the work, where Gibbon proceeds on what his “Table of Contents” calls a “View of the Provinces of the Roman Empire”, starting in the West with Spain and then proceeding clockwise to reach Africa on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules, a pattern of geographical description directly mirroring ancient practice in Strabo's Geography and Pomponius Mela's De Situ Orbis. But this practice of prefacing a historical account with geographical description repeats itself at various points in the work, as when, approaching the end of his grand narrative, Gibbon reaches the impact of “Mahomet, with sword in one hand and the Koran in the other” on “the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern empire”. Before discussing the birth of Islam, Gibbon treats his readers to a discussion of the geography of Arabia, beginning with its size and shape before moving on to its soils, climate and physical–geographic subdivisions.

Oldtidsforfattere under arkæologisk kontrol – Om skriftlige kilder og materiel kultur i Sydskandinavien

Oldtidsforfattere under arkæologisk kontrol – Om skriftlige kilder og materiel kultur i Sydskandinavien

Mela's Phoenician Geography

The appearance in 1998 of F. E. Romer's English translation of Pomponius Mela's De Chorographia has helped to raise further the profile of this previously rather obscure author. Indeed, since the publication a decade previously of the Budé edition by Alain Silberman, interest in Mela seems to have grown quite steadily. Important contributions in German by Kai Brodersen have widened our appreciation of Mela's place within ancient geography as a whole, and his role within the history of cartography has been the subject of a number of shorter pieces.One element common to all these works, however, is a continuing tendency to disparage both Mela himself and the work he created. This is typified by Romer, for whom Mela was ‘a minor writer, a popularizer, not a first-class geographer’; one ‘shocking reason’ for his choice of genre was simply poor preparation, ‘insufficient for technical writing in geography’. Similar judgements appear in the works of Brodersen and Silberman. Mela's inaccuracies are, for these critics, typical of the wider decline of geography in the Roman period. Perhaps such negative views sprang initially from a sense of frustration: it was counted as one of our author's chief defects that he failed to list many sources for his work. For scholars interested in Quellenforschung it makes poor reading. Yet, quite clearly, the De Chorographia has also been damned by comparison. Mela's work has been held against the best Graeco-Roman learning on geography during antiquity—against Strabo, Ptolemy, or Pliny—and it has usually been found wanting. Set against the achievements of his peers, his work does not stand close scrutiny. Thus, for most scholars, the text has been read as a failed exercise in technical geography, or a markedly inferior document in the wider Graeco-Roman geographical tradition.

Ethnography's Freak Show: The Grotesques at the Edges of the Roman Earth

Blemyis capita absunt, uultus in pectore est. Satyris praeter effigiem nihil humani. Aegipanum quae celebratur ea forma est. haec de Africa.Pomponius MelaChorographia1.48The Blemyes lack heads: their faces are in their chests. There is nothing typical of humans about the Satyrs, apart from their superficial appearance. The Aegipanes have the shape described in stories. So much for Africa.How useful are Roman geographical texts? Outrageous claims like the one cited above have invited scepticism concerning the scientific value of geographies and ethnographies produced by Roman authors. To a large extent, the importance attributed to a geographical text will depend on what is being sought from that text. For example, O.A.W. Dilke tells us that, ‘We are fortunate in possessing all seventeen books of theGeographyof Strabo,’ and that Strabo ‘shows good critical power in assessing earlier geographical writers and giving us a verbal picture of the known world of the time.’ However, ‘a contrast with Strabo's work is provided by the very simple and popularChorographiaof Pomponius Mela,’ of which Dilke expresses die view that it would have been preferable had Juba II's work survived.

La villa romaine des Platanes à Saint-Tropez (Var)

In 1995 an emergency excavation was carried out on a Roman Villa known by researches dated back to 1930 but still unpublished. The synthesis of old and recent data allows to distinguish eight phases of evolution of the ancient living conditions on a period spreading out from the first century B.C. till the sixth century A.D. Though the study does not bring any evidence concerning the identification of Saint-Tropez as the town of Athenopolis mentionned by Pliny and Pomponius Mela, it is noticeable that the Plane Trees site was likely to be occupied since the second quarter of the first century B.C., that is to say before the « deductio » of the Frejus colony, and that is has yielded a Greek funerary inscription of the Imperial time. Another point needs to be underlined: the late phases shows a luxurious rural building which was occupied at least until the first quarter of the sixth century and was very likely provided with a paleochristian place of worship.

Military Geography at Rome

I. WHEN INTRODUCING his short treatise on world geography, Pomponius Mela declared that subject was not only arduous in itself but repugnant to style: facundiae minime capax. That impediment author went on to circum vent through precious or pointed phrases, not without recourse to manner of Sallust, whose digressions set a model for ever after. Whereas Greeks created a science of geography, with Romans description of lands and peoples became a branch of literature. In first place, ancillary to historical narrations, as in Sallust and Livy. After a time incipient authors discovered an attractive exercise. Seneca wrote both on Egypt and India. The specimen that survives is monograph of Tacitus, De origine et situ Germanorum. II. A single feature pervades, all way from Mela to Ammianus, namely traditional lore or fables concerning remote nations along or beyond north ern fringe of known world.' Topics went back to Homer and Herodotus, developing that sort of erudition which Pliny dismissed as portentosa Graeciae mendacia (NH V.9). A single Homeric line echoes down centuries: the consumers of milk and Abii, justest of mortals (II. XIII.6). In due course accrue unimpeachable Hyperboreans, of whom Pliny asserted nec dubitare licet (IV.91). Among latest to enter were silk people, Seres, situated

Geographical Perceptions of the North in Pomponius Mela and Ptolemy

The Greeks and Romans were rather slow to change their views of the North which they had developed over hundreds of years. ... [The author outlines what was and was not known of the Arctic in early times, particularly in the world of Mela and Ptolemy.]

Greek and Germanic Settlements in Eastern Languedoc: New Evidence from a Place Name Survey

Any comprehensive place name survey is likely not only to substantiate and supply further detail regarding patterns of settlement whose existence has long been known, but also to identify population movements and limited groups of settlements that have hitherto been unsuspected. Such is certainly the case of the survey I have carried out for the departement of Herault in southern France more specifically, in the eastern part of the province of Languedoc, generally styled Languedoc mediterraneen or bas Languedoc. The following pages attempt a brief synthesis of evidence, culled from my larger study I, c,,--nceming two of the lesser-known cultural and ethnic influences upon this region: Greek and Germanic elements, some previously detected and others newly discovered, will be reviewed in tum. Many generations of historians have recognized that the of Agde, situated at the mouth of the river Herault, was a link in the chain of Greek colonies and trading posts that extended along the western Mediterranean coast. Submarine archaeology has, in recent years, amply confirmed the references in Strabo, Pomponius Mela and Ptolomy; and a C.N .R.S. team under the leadership of Madame Monique Clavel-Leveque has revealed impressive evidence of a system of land-division in this area which is patently of Greek origin2. Stephen of Byzantium's explanation of the name by the phrase eX'Ycx8il TUX'll good fortune should, perhaps, be regarded with some caution: both ancient and medieval references leave room for interpreting the second element as a mundane 1T6AL~ city no less readily than by the more evocative TUX'll' 'fortune. As we shall see, this Hellenic outpost almost