[1492] The Menapii occupied Brabant.
[1493] General opinion places the port Itius at Wissant, near Cape Grisnez; Professor Airy, however, is of opinion that the portus Itius of Cæsar is the estuary of the Somme. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1852, vol. ii. No. 30, p. 198.
[1494] Cæsar passed twice into Britain: the first time he started about midnight, and arrived at the fourth hour of the day; the second time he started at the commencement of the night, and did not arrive until the following day at noon, the wind having failed about midnight.
[1495] The fleet consisted of 1000 vessels, according to Cotta. (Athen. l. vi. c. 21.) The great loss spoken of by Strabo occurred before the first return of Cæsar into Gaul. (Cæsar, l. iv. c. 28.) As to his second return, it was occasioned, to use his own words, “propter repentinos Galliæ motus.” L. v. c. 22.
[1496] Called by Cæsar, Hibernia; by Mela, Juverna; and by Diodorus Siculus, Iris.
[1497] This custom resembles that related by Herodotus (lib. i. c. 216, and iv. 26) of the Massagetæ and Issedoni. Amongst these latter, when the father of a family died, all the relatives assembled at the house of the deceased, and having slain certain animals, cut them and the body of the deceased into small pieces, and having mixed the morsels together, regaled themselves on the inhuman feast.
[1498] Strabo intends by φανερῶς what Herodotus expresses by μίξιν ἐμφανέα, καθάπερ τοῖσι προβάτοισι (concubitum, sicuti pecoribus, in propatulo esse).
[1499] Herodotus, (l. iv. c. 180,) mentioning a similar practice amongst the inhabitants of Lake Tritonis in Libya, tells us that the men owned the children as they resembled them respectively. Mela asserts the same of the Garamantes. As to the commerce between relations, Strabo in his 16th Book, speaks of it as being usual amongst the Arabs. It was a custom amongst the early Greeks. Homer makes the six sons of Æolus marry their six sisters, and Juno addresses herself to Jupiter as “Et soror et conjux.” Compare also Cæsar, lib. v.
[1500] An extremity to which the Gauls were driven during the war they sustained against the Cimbri and Teutones, (Cæsar, lib. vii. c. 77,) and the inhabitants of Numantia in Iberia, when besieged by Scipio. (Valerius Maximus, lib. vii. c. 6.) The city of Potidæa in Greece experienced a similar calamity. (Thucyd. lib. ii. c. 70.)
[1501] Pytheas placed Thule under the 66th degree of north latitude, which is the latitude of the north of Iceland.