NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2n-iS. VI. 131., Julys. '58. 



found in antiquity. Pliny, however, adds a state- 

 ment of a more precise and satisfactory character. 

 Amber was, he says, brought from the shores of 

 Northern Germany to Pannonia : the inhabitants 

 of this province passed it on to the Veneti, at the 

 head of the Adriatic, who conveyed it further 

 south, and made it known in Italy. The coast 

 where it is found had (he says) been lately seen 

 by a Roman knight, who was sent thither by Ju- 

 lianus, the curator of the gladiatorian shows for 

 the Emperor Nero, in order to purchase it in large 

 quantities. This agent visited the coast in ques- 

 tion, having readied it by way of Carnuntum, 

 the distance from Caruuntura to the amber district 

 being nearly GOO miles ; and he brought back so 

 large a supply, that the nets in the amphitheatre 

 for keeping ofi' the wild beasts were ornamented 

 with amber at the interstices ; and the arms, the 

 bier, and all the apparatus for one day were made 

 of the same material. He brought with him one 

 lump 13 lbs. in weight (x.xxvii. 11.). 



Carnuntum was a town of Upper Pannonia, on 

 the southern bank of the Danube, between the 

 modern Vienna and Presburg ; and after the re- 

 duction of Pannonia, it would without difficulty 

 have been reached from the head of the Adriatic. 

 From Carnuntum to the coast of the Baltic the 

 distance (as Cluvier has remarked, Germ. Ant. p. 

 692.) is not more than 400 miles. Hiillmann has 

 pointed out that in the Middle Ages there was 

 a commercial route from the Upper Vistula to 

 Southern Germany, which, passing through Thorn 

 and Breslau, reached the river Waas, and thus 

 descended to the Danube (Handelsgeschichte der 

 Gi-iechen, p. 77.). A Roman knight, with a suffi- 

 cient escort of slaves, would doubtless have etlccted 

 this journey without serious difficulty. The large 

 piece of amber which Pliny reports him to have 

 brought is exceeded in size by a mass of 18 lbs. 

 which is stated in M'^Culloch's Commercial Dic- 

 tionary to have been found in Lithuania, and to 

 be now preserved in the Royal Cabinet at Berlin. 

 It appears from Tacitus that Claudius Julianus 

 had still the care of the gladiators under Vitellius 

 in 69 A.D. {Hist. iii. 57. 76.). He was murdered 

 in the struggle which accompanied the downfal of 

 that emperor. 



Hiillmann (/Z). p. 76.) justly poiitts out the im- 

 probability that the Plioenician navigators, how- 

 ever enterprising they may have been, should have 

 sailed through the Sound, and have carried on a 

 trade with the southern coasts of the Baltic. He 

 makes the remark that, in very early times, trade 

 with remote regions was always conducted, not by 

 sea, but by land. This opinion is doubtless well 

 founded : one reason was the helplessness, timi- 

 dity, and unskilfulness of the ancient navigation ; 

 but another, and a more powerful one was, that 

 land- traffic could be carried on by native travel- 

 ling merchants, such as those mentioned by Livy 



as visiting different parts of Italy (iv. 24., vi. 2.) : 

 whereas navigators were foreigners, who came in 

 a foreign ship, and were as such liable to all the 

 dangers and disadvantages to which this class of 

 persons were exposed in antiquity. 



Briickner, in his Histoi-ia IteipubliccE Massilicn- 

 sium (p. 60.), adopts the view that amber was 

 brought by an overland journey to the Mediter- 

 ranean ; but he conceives Massilia to have been the 

 point with which the connexion was established. 

 It seems, however, much more probable that the 

 more direct route to the head of tiie Adriatic was 

 preferred ; and that even in the time of Homer 

 amber had reached the Mediterranean, and had 

 been diffused over the Grecian world by this 

 channel. The Phoenicians were probably the in- 

 termediate agents by which this diffusion was 

 effected. An embassy from the iEstii, on the 

 scmthern shores of the Baltic, who visited Theo- 

 doric in the sixth century, and who brought him 

 a present of amber, appears to have travelled to 

 Italy by this route. (See the king's curious re- 

 script of thanks, Cassiod. Var. v. 2.) 



Dr. Vincent, whose learned and judicious re- 

 searches into the voyages of the ancients give 

 great weight to his opinion, conceives it " to be 

 agreeable to analogy and to history, that mer- 

 chants travelled beibre they sailed;" and he refers 

 to the transport of silk by land for a distance of 

 more than 2800 miles. (Commerce and Naviga- 

 tion of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, 1807, 

 vol. ii. pp. 363. 589.) 



Gibbon remarks, with respect to the ancient 

 caravan trade in silk, that " a valuable merchan- 

 dise of small bulk is capable of defraying the 

 expense of land-carriage" (c. 40.). This obser- 

 vation applies with peculiar force to amber, which 

 combines a great value with a small bulk and a 

 small weight. 



The Eridanus was originally, as Herodotus per- 

 ceived, a purely poetical stream, without any geo- 

 graphical position or character : its locality was at 

 first unfixed ; and ^Eschylus called it a river of 

 Iberia. At an early period, however, the Eridanus 

 became identified in the minds of the Greeks with 

 the Po and the Adriatic (see Polyb. ii. 16, 17.) ; the 

 Roman poets willingly adopted the fable, whicli 

 ennobled the north of Italy with ancient mytholo- 

 gical associations. Strabo indeed rejects it as 

 groundless (v. i. 9), and Lucian ridicules it in a 

 short piece (7)e Electro), in which he describes 

 himself as having been rowed up the Po, and 

 having in vain inquired of the wondering boatmen 

 if they could show him the poplars which distilled 

 amber. But the identification of the Eridanus 

 with the Po was doubtless not accidental. If the 

 head of the Adriatic was the channel through which 

 tLe Prussian amber found its way to the Greeks, 

 it was natural that the story of the tears of the 

 Heliades and the poplars which grew on the river 



