Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/508

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

490 OAMERTES. understood of so limited ^district as the mere territory of Gamerinam. Perhaps the foct of the tecarrenoe of the name ia different forms among the modern towns and villages of this part of Italy — Camero near FoUgna, CamercUa between Todi and AmeUa, &c.| — may be a remnant of this wider extension cf the Gamertes. The GAMBRnn mentioned by Valerius Mazimns (▼i. 5. § I) as having been conquered and reduced to captivity by P. (?) Glaudins can be no other than the people of Gamerinnm; but it is difficult to recon- cile his account with the rest that we knsjw of their history. Probably Appius Glaudins, the consul of B. a 268| who reducol the neighbouring province of Picenum, is the person meant [£. U. B.] GAMERTES. [Gamkrinum.] G AMIGUS (K<i/uirbs), a city or fortress of Sicily, which, according to the mythical history of that is- land, was constructed by Daedalus for Gocalns, the king of the Sieanians, who made it his royal resi- dence, and deposited his treasures there, the situation being so strong and so skilfully fortified as to be al- together impregnable. According to the same l^end, it was here also that Minos, king of Grete, who had pursued Daedalus to Sicily, was treacherously put to death by Gocalus, and secretly buried ; his bones were said to have been discovered in the time of Theron. (Diod. iv. 78, 79 ; Strab.vi. pp.273— 279; Arist. Pol, ii. 10; Steph. Byz. v. KafuK6sy Tzetz. Chil i. 606—510.) The same story is alluded to by Herodotus (vii. 170), who tells us that the Cretans sent an expedition to Sicily to avenge the death of Minos, and besieged Gamicus for five years, but without success. It was also chosen by So- phocles as (he subject of one of his tragedies, now lost, called the Ka/ii/irioi(Athenae.iii. p. 86, ix. p. 888; Soph. fr. 299 — ^804, ed. Dind.). From the words of Herodotus it has been erroneously inferred that Gamicus oocn{»ed t^e site on which Agrigentum was afterwards founded, and the citadd or acropolis of that city has been regarded by many writers as the fortress of Daedalus. (Smyth's Sicily ^ p. 204 ; Swinbumes TVavelSj vol. ii. p. 273.) Bat we find mention in historical times of a fortress named Gamicus, as existing in the territory of Agrigentum, but quite apart from the city. It was occupied by Hippocrates and Gapys, the cousins of Theron, when they were expelled by him from Agrigentum (Schol. ad Pind. PytK vi. 4.), and is again mentioned among the fortresses reduced by the Romans in the First Punic War, after the conquest of Agrigentum. (Diod. xxiii. Exc. Hoesch. p. 503.) We are told also that it was situated on a river of the same name (Steph. Byz. v. 'Awp^fyof ; Vib. SequesL p. 7), which is suppraed by Gluverins to be the one now called Fiume dtlle Canine^ which flows into the sea about 10 miles W. of Girgeniif and the fortress may probably have stood in (he neighlK)urhnod of the modem town of SictUiana^ but its precise site is unknown. (Gluver. SicU. p. 221 ; Serra di Falco, Ant. della Sicilia, vol iii. pp. 76, 80; Siefert, Akra- gag, pp. 17, 18.) [E. H. B.] GAMISA {rh KdE^va), a fortress of Camisene or Gomisene (comp. Strab. xi. p. 528) in Lesser Ar- menia, which was destroyed in Strabo's time (xii. p. 660). [E. B. J.] GAMISE'NE(Ko/xMnii^). Strabo mentions Culu- jpene or Galupene and Gamisene as bordering on the Lesser Armenia, and he includes them within his Pontus Rock-salt was dug in these districts, and there was a strong place Gamisa, which was ruined GAMPANI4. in Strabo*8 time (p. 560). In another place (p. 646) he says that the Halys rises in Great Gappadocia, near Pontice, and in Gamisene (Kofitf^Mr^n) in Casaubon's text). Gamisa was on the road from Sebastia to Nioopolis, and 24 Roman miles from Sebastia {SevoM). The Gamisene, then, is in the upper basin of the Halys or KixU Ermak, [G. L. J GAMMANE'NE (Ko^Mton}!^), a division of Gappadocia. (Strab. pp. 534, 540.) Ptolemy (v. 6), who enumerates six places in the division, calls it Gamroanene. 2^ama, one of the towns, is on the road from Tavium to Uazaca or Gaesareia. [6. L.] GAMPAE (KifJotoL, Ptol.), and Gambe in tiie Table, is in the Praefectora Gilidae of Gappadocia, 16 miles N. or NW. of Mazaca or Gaesarea; it has been conjectured to be a place called Enba. [G. L.] GAMPA'NIA (Ko^voyta), a province or region of Gentral Italy, bounded oo the N. by Latinm, on the E. by the mountains of Samnium, on the S. by Lucania, and on the W. by the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its exact limits varied at different periods. The Liris appears to have been at first recognised as its north-» ern boundaiy, but subsequently the district south of that river, as far as the Massican hills and the town of Sinuessa, was included in Latinm, and the boun- daiies of Gampania diminished to the same extent. (Strab. V. p. 242.) Ou the S. also, the territory between the Silarns, which formed the boundaiy of Lucania, and the ridge of the Apennines that bounds the Gulf of Posidonia cm the N., was occnpied by the people called Picbntini (a branch of the inlu^ bitants of Pioenum on the Adriatic), and lias not reckoned to belong to Gampania, properly so ealled, though united with it for administrative purposes. Originally, indeed, the name of Gampanians appears to have been applied solely to the inhabitants of the great plain, which occupies so large a portion of the province; and did not include tiie people of the hill country about Suessa, Gales, and Teanum, which was occupied by the Aurund and l^didni. But Gampania, in the sense in whidi the term is used by Strabo and Pliny, was bounded on the N. by the low ridge of the Massican hills, which extend from the sea near Sinuessa to join the more lofty group of volcanic mountains that rise between Suessa and Teanum, and comprised the whole of the latter range. Venafrum and the territory annexed to it, in the valley of the Vulturous, which had been originally Samnite, were afterwards induded ia Gampania; though Strabo appears in one passage (v. p^ 238) to assign them to Labium. The eastern frontier of Gampania is clearly marked by the first ridges of the Apennines, the Mohs Galucui.a N. of the Vnl- tumus, and the Mons Tifata S. of that river, while other ranges of still greater elevation continue the mountain barrier towards the SE. to the sources of the Sarnns. Near this latter pdnt, a side arm or branch is suddenly thrown off from the main mass of the Apennines, nearly at right angles to its genei-al direction, which constitutes a lof^y and narrow moun- tain ridge of about 24 miles in length, terminating in the bold headland called the Promontory of Mi- nerva, but known also as the Surrentine Promcmtory. It is this range which separates the Gulf of Gumae or Grater, as the Bay of Naples was called in an- cient tiroes, from that of Posidonia, and which con- stituted the limit also between Gampania in the stricter sense of the term, and tho territ<»7 of the Picentini. The latter occupied the district & of this rai^e along the shores of the Posidonian Gulf, as &r as the mouth of the Silarus.