Europe according to the description of Mela
On north-western Europe Mela has much information which is not met with in earlier authors. The tin-islands, the Cassiterides, lay off the north-west of Spain, where the “Celtici” lived [iii. c. 6]. “Beyond (‘super’) Britain is Juverna [Ireland], nearly as large, with a climate unfavourable to the ripening of corn, but with such excellent pastures that if the cattle are allowed to graze for more than a small part of the day, they burst in pieces. The inhabitants are rude and more ignorant than other peoples of all kinds of virtue. Religion is altogether unknown to them.”
“The Orcades are thirty in number, divided from each other by narrow straits; the Hæmodæ seven, drawn towards Germany” (“septem Hæmodæ contra Germaniam vectæ”). This is the first time, so far as is known, that these two groups of islands are mentioned in literature. Diodorus, it is true, had already spoken of “Orkan” or “Orkas,” but not as a group of islands. As this name is probably derived from Pytheas, it is likely that the other, “Hæmodæ,” is also his. Possibly the groups were re-discovered under the emperor Claudius (about 43 A.D.) or more definite information may have been received about them; but on the other hand, Mela says that the knowledge of Britain that was acquired during this campaign would be brought back by Claudius himself in his triumph. It will be most reasonable to suppose that Mela’s thirty Orcades are the Orkneys—the number is approximately correct—and not the Orkneys and Shetlands together. The seven Hæmodæ, on the other hand, must be the latter, and can hardly be the Hebrides, as many would believe, since Mela mentions the islands off the west coast of Europe in a definite order, and he names first “Juverna,” then the “Orcades,” and next the “Hæmodæ,” which are “carried (‘vectæ’) towards Germany”[89] (cf. also Pliny later).
In his description of Germania [iii. c. 3] Mela says:
“Beyond (‘super’) Albis is an immense bay, Codanus, full of many great and small islands. Here the sea which is received in the bosom of the shore is nowhere broad and nowhere like a sea, but as the waters everywhere flow between and often go over [i.e., over the tongues of land or shallows which connect the islands] it is split up into the appearance of rivers, which are undefined and widely separated; where the sea touches the shores [of the mainland], since it is held in by the shores of the islands which are not far from each other, and since nearly everywhere it is not large [i.e., broad], it runs in a narrow channel and like a strait (‘fretum’), and turning with the shore it is curved like a long eyebrow. In this [sea] dwell the Cimbri and the Teutons, and beyond [the sea, or the Cimbri and Teutons ?] the extreme people of Germania, namely the Hermiones.”
The meaning of this description, which seems to be as involved as the many sounds he is talking about, must probably be that in the immense bay of Codanus there are a number of islands with many narrow straits between them, like rivers. Along the shore of the mainland there is formed, by the almost continuous line of islands lying outside, a long curving strait, which is nearly everywhere of the same narrowness. In this sea—that is to say, on the peninsulas and islands in this bay—dwell the Cimbri and Teutons, and farther away in Germania the Hermiones.
Island with Hippopod
or horse-footed man
(from the Hereford map)
In his account of the islands along the coast of Europe, Mela says further [iii. c. 6]:
Codanus