Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/344

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STRABO.
CASAUB. 222.

Poplonium 270; and from Poplonium to Cossa[p 1] near 800, or as some say, 600. Polybius, however, says that there are not[1] in all 1330.[2] Of these Luna is a city and harbour; it is named by the Greeks, the harbour and city of Selene.[g 1] The city is not large, but the harbour[p 2] is very fine and spacious, containing in itself numerous harbours, all of them deep near the shore; it is in fact an arsenal worthy of a nation holding dominion for so long a time over so vast a sea. The harbour is surrounded by lofty mountains,[p 3] from whence you may view the sea[p 4] and Sardinia, and a great part of the coast on either side. Here are quarries of marble, both white and marked with green, so numerous and large, as to furnish tablets and columns of one block; and most of the material for the fine works, both in Rome and the other cities, is furnished from hence. The transport of the marble is easy, as the quarries lie near to the sea, and from the sea they are conveyed by the Tiber. Tyrrhenia likewise supplies most of the straightest and longest planks for building, as they are brought direct from the mountains to the river. Between Luna and Pisa flows the Macra,[3] a division which many writers consider the true boundary of Tyrrhenia and Liguria. Lisa was founded by the Pisatæ of the Peloponnesus, who went under Nestor to the expedition against Troy, but in their voyage home wandered out of their course, some to Metapontium,[p 5] others to the Pisatis; they were, however, all called Pylians. The city lies between the two rivers Arno[p 6] and Æsar,[4] at their point of confluence; the former of which, though very full, descends from Arretium[p 7] not in one body, but divided into three; the second flows

  1. ↑ Coray here reads οὗν for οὐκ. Kramer considers the passage corrupt.
  2. ↑ The French translation here gives 1460, and a note by Gosselin.
  3. ↑ Other writers mention a river Macra, but none of them, as it appears, a district in Italy bearing that name. Kramer supposes that Strabo wrote ποτάμιον, and not χωρίον, the reading of all MSS.
  4. ↑ Corresponding to the present Serchio, which discharges itself into the sea, and not into the Arno. The time when this change of direction took place is not recorded, but traces of the ancient name and course of the river remain in the Osari, which, after flowing a short distance through a marshy district, falls into the sea between the Serchio and Arno.
  1. ↑ Ruins near Ansedonia.
  2. ↑ The bay of Spezia.
  3. ↑ The mountains of Carrara.
  4. ↑ The Mediterranean.
  5. ↑ Near the mouth of the river Basiento.
  6. ↑ The ancient Arnus.
  7. ↑ Arezzo.
  1. ↑ Σελήνη, the moon.
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