Chap. 6.] ACCOITNT or COIJKTRIES, ETC. 
183 
ing on for the purpose of giving a general description of 
everytliing that is known to exist throughout the whole earth. 
I may premise hy observing that this land very much re- 
sembles in shape an oak leaf, being much longer than it is 
broad ; towards the top it inclines to the left\ while it termi- 
nates in the form of an Amazonian buckler^, in which the spot 
at the central projection is the place called Cocinthos, while it 
sends forth two horns at the end of its crescent-shaped bays, 
Leucopetra on the right and Lacinium on the left. It ex- 
tends in length 1020 miles, if we measure from the foot of 
the Alps at Prsetoria Augusta, through the city of Eome and 
Capua to the town of Rhegium, w^hich is situate on the 
shoulder of the Peninsula, just at the bend of the neck as it 
were. The distance would be much greater if measured to 
Lacinium, but in that case the line, being drawn obliquely, 
would incline too much to one side. Its breadth is variable ; 
being 410 miles between the two seas, the Lower and the 
Tipper^, and the rivers Yarns and Arsia"^ : at about the middle, 
and in the vicinity of the city of Kome, from the spot where 
the river Aternus^ flows into the Adriatic sea, ti the mouth 
of the Tiber, the distance is 136 miles, and a little less from 
Castrum-novum on the Adriatic sea to Alsium^ on the Tus- 
can ; but in no place does it exceed 200 miles in breadth. 
^ The comparison of its shape to an oak leaf seems rather fancifal ; 
more common-place observers have compared it to a boot : by the top 
(cacumen) he seems to mean the southern part of Calabria about iJrun- 
disium and Tarentum ; which, to a person facing the south, would in- 
chne to the coast of Epirus on the left hand. 
2 The ' Parma ' or shield here alluded to, would be one shaped like a 
crescent, with the exception that the inner or concave side would be 
formed of two crescents, the extremities of which join at the central pro- 
jection. He says that Cocinthos (now Capo di Stilo) would in such 
case form the central projection, while Lacinium (now Capo delle Colonne) 
would form the horn at the extreme right, and Leucopetra (now Capo 
dell' Armi) the horn on the extreme left. 
3 The Tuscan or Etrurian sea, and the Adriatic. 
^ The Yarns, as already mentioned, was in Gralha T^'arbonensis, while the 
Arsia, now the Arsa, is a smaU. river of I stria, which became the boundary 
between Italy and Illyricum, when Istria was annexed by order of Au- 
gustus to the former country. It flows into the Flanaticus Sinus, now 
Crolfo di Quarnero, on the eastern coast of Istria, beyond the town of 
Castel Nuovo, formerly Nesactium. ^ Now the Pescara. 
® Now Palo, a city on the coast of Etruria, eighteen miles from Portus 
Augusti, at the mouth of the Tiber. 
t 
