HERODOTUS. [CHAP.

allowing for this, the inaccuracy of the details which he from time
to time introduces would seem to shew that the acquaintance of
the Greeks with those lands had made but little advance since the
time of Hecataeus. He knows that Gades or
feet Know- Gadeira is " without the Pillars of Hercules upon
ledge of them. ^ Ocean1," but he is unaware that the western
coast of Spain is bounded by the sea. He mentions the Ombrici
or Umbrians in Northern Italy, and the Eneti or Venetians at the
head of the Adriatic, but he does not imply that there was any
great mountain barrier which enclosed them towards the north.
The names, indeed, of three of the principal chains in Europe
occur in his writings, but curiously travestied in their application.
That of the Pyrenees appears in the city of Pyrene, far away to the
west in the land of the Celts near the sources of the Ister8; while
the Alps and the Carpathians are represented by two streams
called Alpis and Carpis, which are tributaries of that river, flowing
in a northerly direction8. He enumerates also a number of its
other affluents in the lower part of its course j but the Iron Gate
of the Danube near the modern Orsova, with its formidable rapids,
which formed a bar to further navigation, seems to have been the
limit of accurate information in that quarter. With regard to
Thrace, however, he has more to communicate, and he extended
the limits of that country as far north as the Ister, including the
Getae, who dwelt in that neighbourhood, among the Thracian
tribes. This accounts for his exaggerated idea of the numbers of
chat race, for he speaks of them as exceeding in multitude every
other people in the world, with the exception of the Indians4.
f ~ In strong contrast to the imperfect acquaintance with the rest
scythia. of Eur°Peğ e3K*ptthe Parts about the Mediterranean
Sea, which Herodotus thus betrays, is the elaborate
account which he has given of Scythia. The subject was one in
which he knew that his readers would be interested, partly because
of the number of their fellow-countrymen who were engaged in
trade with that region, but still more on account of the attention
that had been attracted to it by the inroad of the Cimmerians from
Scythia into Asia Minor, and by the expedition of Darius against