34 GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOMERIC PERIOD. [CHAP.
taining; but Pliny's explanation of that part of it which relates
to the sisters is reasonable enough; for he refers it to the
custom of wearing amber necklaces, which still continued in his
time to be practised by the women in that region, partly for the
sake of ornament, and partly as a supposed remedy for the goitre,
and other evil results of drinking the water of Alpine streams1.
The belief that amber exuded from trees may perhaps have been
derived, along with the material, from its original home in
Northern Europe; but it is more probable that it was inferred
by observation from the analogy of the gum which was seen to
drop from pine trees, and which the amber resembled, both in its
appearance, and in its inflammable nature and its aromatic scent
when burnt. By the Greeks it was associated with the familiar
tree of North Italy, the poplar, though it was in reality totally
unconnected with it.
The origin of the name Eridanus is a still more perplexing
question. Kiepert would explain it by a Phoe-
Eridanu!Tr nician etymology, as if it were a perversion or adap-
tation of the word yarden (Jordan) ' river/ which
we have noticed as being found in Crete in the form lardanos*.
Others have thought, with greater probability, that it is connected
with the river-name Rhodanus, and perhaps also Rhcnus, and
that the early Greeks associated it at first with a great river in
north-western Europe, from which amber came; whence, after the
head of the Adriatic became a great centre of the amber trade, the
title was transferred to the principal stream of those parts, the
Padus8. The name of the little river Rhodaune, which flows into
the Baltic near Dantzig, has also been introduced in this con-
nexion. Still, as Herodotus observed4, Eridanus is a purely
Greek word; and as the myth with which it is associated is also
genuinely Greek, there is no need to go further afield to discover
1 Pliny, 37. 44. Pado vero adnexa fabula est evidente causa, hodieque
Transpadanorum agrestibus feminis monilium vice sucina gestantibus, maxume
decoris gratia, sed et medicinae, creditur quippe tonsillis resistere et faucium
vitiis, vario genere aquarum juxta Alpis infestante guttura hominurn.
8 v. supra, p. 5.
8 Bunburyin^V/. Geogr.> art. * Eridanus, 'and other authorities: cp. Herod.
3- «5-
* Herod, be. tit.