BOOK III. xvi. I2I-XVII. 124 



by the Nile in Egypt ; the triangle measures 250 

 miles in circumference. One is ashamed to borrow 

 an account of Italy from the Greeks ; nevertheless, 

 Metrodorus of Scepsis says that the river has received 

 the name of Padus because in the neighbourhood of 

 its source there are a quantity of pine-trees of the 

 kind called in the GalHc dialect padi, while in fact 

 the Ligurian name for the actual river is Bodincus, 

 a word that means ' bottomless.' This theory is 

 supported by the fact that the neighbouring town of 

 Industria," where the river begins to be particularly 

 deep, had the old name of Bodincomagum. 



XVn. The eleventh region receives from the river GaiUa 

 the name of Transpadana ; it is situated entirely Jaj^ta 

 inland, but the river carries to it on its bounteous 

 channel the products of all the seas. Its towns are 

 Seluzzo and Susa, and the colony of Turin at the 

 roots of the Alps (here the Po becoraes navigable), 

 sprung from an ancient Ligurian stock, and next 

 that of Aosta Praetoria of the Salassi, near the twin 

 gateways of the Alps, the Graian pass and the 

 Pennine,* — history says tliat the latter was the pass 

 crossed by the Carthaginians and the former by Her- 

 cules — and the town of Ivrea, founded by the Roman 

 nation by order of the Sibylline Books — the name 

 comes from the GaUic word for a man good at breaking 

 horses — , VercelH, the towTi of the Libicii, founded 

 from the Sallui, and Novara founded from Verta- 

 macori, a place belonging to the Vocontii and now-a- 

 days a village, not (as Cato thinks) belonging to the 

 Ligurians ; from whom the Laevi and Marici founded 

 Ticinum ^ not far from the Po, just as the Boians, 

 coming from the tribes across the Alps, founded Lodi 

 and the Insubrians Milan. According to Cato, Como, 



91 



