[72] The name may have some connection with those of Habel and Appeland among the Halligen Islands on the west coast of Sleswick [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 60]. It also has some resemblance to “Sabalingii,” which is given by Ptolemy as the name of a tribe in Jutland. The name Abalus (Greek, Abalos) has a remarkable likeness to Avalon (the apple-island) of Welsh folk-lore, and it is possibly originally the same word (?).
[73] As to what we know of the work of this important geographer see in particular Berger [1880].
[74] According to Eratosthenes’ accurate calculation the Arctic Circle lay in 66° 9′ N. lat.
[75] Cf. Strabo, i. 63, ii. 114. More accurately it should be 37,400 stadia.
[76] Cf. Strabo, i. 5-6. Seleucus of Selucia on the Tigris lived in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., and was one of the few who (like Aristarchus of Samos, c. 260 B.C.) held the doctrine of the earth’s rotation and movement round the sun.
[77] Herodotus [iv. 26] says of the Issedonians in Scythia that “when a man’s father dies, all the relatives bring cattle; and when they have slain them as a sacrifice and cut the flesh in pieces, they also cut up their host’s deceased father; then they mix all the flesh together and serve it for the meal; but the head they decorate with gold, after having taken the hair off and washed it; and afterwards they treat it as an idol and bring offerings to it every year.” Such a cannibal custom, if it really existed, may have been connected with religious ideas. But Herodotus [i. 216] attributes to the Massagetæ the following still more horrible custom: “when a man grows very old, all his relatives assemble and slay him, and together with him several kinds of cattle; then they boil the flesh and hold a banquet. This is accounted among them the happiest end.”
[78] Cf. M. Schanz: “Geschichte der Römischen Literatur,” ii. p. 241, 1899; in I. Müller: “Handb. Klass. Altert.-Wiss.,” bd. viii. See also Müllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 47.
[79] Cf. Detlefsen, 1897, p. 197; 1904, p. 45. By his voyage in 12 B.C. with his fleet along the coast of the North Sea from the mouth of the Rhine and the Zuyder Zee to the mouth of the Ems, Drusus won fame as the first general who had sailed in the North Sea. The Romans, of course, were not great seafarers.
[80] The MSS. have “flamine” (winds); but it has been thought that “flumine” (streams) gives a better meaning [cf. Detlefsen, 1897, p. 198]. “Flamine” (winds) might, however, suit the ideas of the earth’s limits (cf. the description of Himilco’s voyage in Avienus, see above, [p. 37]).
[81] The text has here “alium liberis (or ‘libris’) intactum quærimus orbem,” which might be: “towards another world untouched by books,” that is, of which no book has said anything. As such an expression is quite at variance with the generally pompous style of the poem, Detlefsen [1897, p. 200, 1904, p. 47] has thought that “libris” here was “libra” == “libella,” that is, the level used by builders, with two legs and a plumb hanging in the middle, and the meaning would then be that this part of the earth’s circumference was not touched by the plumb of the level, but that the latter was obliquely inclined over the abyss at the end of the world. This explanation seems to make Pedo’s poem even more artificial than it is, and Detlefsen appears to think [1897, p. 200] that the builder’s level is used to find perpendicular lines, instead of horizontal. It is probable, however, that such an idea of a gulf or abyss at the end of the world was current at that time, as it was much later (cf. Adam of Bremen, and also the Ginnungagap of the Norsemen), even if it does not appear in this poem. It might be thought that “libris” was here used in the sense of sounding-lead, so that the meaning would be, “untouched by soundings,” in other words, a sea where no soundings had been made; but this meaning of “libris” would be unusual, and besides one would then expect some word for sea, and not “orbem.”