[82] I cannot, with Detlefsen [1904, p. 48], find anything in this expression to show that Augustus gives the Greeks the credit for having penetrated beyond the Cimbrian Cape earlier.
[83] Cf. Müllenhoff, ii., 1887, p. 285, and iv., 1900, p. 45; Holz, 1894, p. 23; Detlefsen, 1904, p. 47.
[84] K. Miller [vi., 1898, p. 105] proposes to read “Gotorum rex” (the king of the Goths) instead of the “Botorum rex” of the MSS. The last name is otherwise unknown, and has also been read “Boiorum.” Pliny, who has the same story almost word for word [Nat. Hist., ii. c. 67, 170] says that the same Celer had the Indians from the king of the Suevi.
[85] This was a common idea among the Greeks about the Amazons [cf. Hippocrates, Περι ἀερων, etc., c. 17; Strabo, xi. 504; Diodorus, ii. 45]; it has even been sought to derive the name itself from this, since “mazos” (μαζός) means breast, and “a” (α) is the negative particle; this would therefore be “without breasts.” But other explanations of the origin of the name have been given, e.g., that they were not suckled at the breast. It is possible that the name meant something quite different, but that owing to its resemblance to the Greek word for breast it gave rise to the legend, and not vice versa. In Latin the Amazons were sometimes called “Unimammia” (one-breasted), but in Greek art they were always represented with well-developed breasts. Hippocrates says that the right breasts of the Scythian women were burned off by the mother with a special bronze instrument, while the girls were quite small, because “then the breast ceased to grow, and all force and development were transmitted to the right shoulder and the arm.”
[86] Cf. Herodotus, iv. cc. 116, 117.
[87] Cf. Herodotus, iv. c. 22.
[88] These are Herodotus’s “Argippæi” or “Argimpæi” [iv. c. 23], who lived in tents of felt in winter. They were bald, whereas those of Mela go bare-headed.
[89] To understand [like K. Miller, vi., 1898, p. 105] “vectæ” as the name of an island (“Vectis” == the Isle of Wight) seems in itself somewhat improbable, and is moreover excluded by Mela’s rhetorical style, which demands a clause following Hæmodæ to balance that attached to Orcades just before.
[90] These “Belgæ” are, of course, the same as the “Belcæ” already mentioned by Mela as the Scythian people in the northernmost part of Scythia (see above, [p. 89]). What people is meant is uncertain.
[91] Sophus Bugge [1904, pp. 156 f.] thinks that Codanus may come from an Old Norse word “Kōð,” which meant a shallow fjord or a shallow place in the water (equivalent to old Indian “gādhá-m”) and which according to him is akin to the root “Kað” in some Norwegian place-names. “Codanus sinus” (“Kōda,” accus. “Kōdan”) is then the shallow sea, or Cattegat, especially near the Belts. “Codan-ovia” is the island in “Kōdan.” Müllenhoff [1887, ii. p. 284] and Much [1893, p. 207] have connected “Codanus” with Old High German “quoden” (== femina, interior pars coxæ) from the same root as the Anglo-Saxon “codd” (== serpent, sack, bag), Middle Low German “koder” (== belly, abdomen), Old Norse “koðri” (== scrotum). It would then mean a sack-inlet or sack-bay, equal to the Frisian “Jâde,” or else a narrower inlet to an extended bay of the sea (the Baltic ?). The explanation does not seem quite natural. R. Keyser [1868, p. 82] derives the name from “Godanus,” i.e., the Gothic, although the Goths at that time were usually called “Gutones” by the Romans. Ahlenius’s suggestion [1900, p. 24] that Codanus might be an old copyist’s error for “Toutonos” (Teutons), because one MS. reads Thodanus, does not sound probable. Detlefsen [1904, p. 31] thinks that the name Codanus is preserved in Katte(n)-gat, which would mean the inlet (gat) to Codanus, which would then come to include the whole of the Baltic. If Bugge’s explanation given above is correct, it might however mean the shallow gat or inlet.