XIIT.] DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD. 285

on account of the orgiastic rites performed in them by the women
in honour of Dionysus. These observances are also related on
the authority of Posidonius by Strabo1, who places these islands
off the mouth of the Loire, and calls the inhabitants Samnitae.
In Thule, which lies beyond Britain, the continuous duration of
daylight during the summer months is noticed. With regard to
the Arctic Sea, or Mare Pigrum, it is implied that there was un-
impeded navigation through it as far as the Eastern Ocean, for the
writer supposes a vessel to sail in that direction from Thule as far
as the island of Chryse. His conception of the position of the
last-named place, indeed, is vague enough, but he seems to mean
the Aurea Chersonesus "(Malay Peninsula). After this, Taprobane
(Ceylon) is introduced, with the usual exaggerated estimate of its
size; and the enumeration ends with two small islands in the
Persian Gulf, Ogyris and Icarus, the former of which is probably
the modern Ormuz2, and was famed as the burial-place of king
Erythras, the eponymus of the Erythraean Sea \ while the latter
contained a famous shrine of Artemis Tauropolos, which also is
mentioned by Strabo8.

In his account of Asia Dionysius rightly follows his predecessors
in regarding the continent as divided in t\vo parts
by the long chain of mountains, running from west
to east, to which they gave the name of Taurus. He starts from
the river Tanais and the Black Sea, and enumerates all the tribes
in the northern part of the country which lie to the eastward of
that line ; then he returns to Asia Minor, and afterwards treats of
Syria, Arabia, and the peoples that lie to the eastward of them as
far as India. He traces accurately the courses of the Euphrates
and Tigris, and repeats the story which we have noticed above,
and which had now become well established, of the latter of these
two rivers flowing through the Lake of Van, and afterwards passing

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