the mistake made by the Massilian Greeks in confounding the Ἴρις of the sailors with ιερά νῆσος,[1] the island of the West (Erse, iar or eir, Thurnam[2]) with Holy Island. After the invasion of Cæsar the attention of the geographers and historians was directed to the British Isles, and in A.D. 84 their circumnavigation was completed by a Roman fleet under the command of Agricola, which subdued the Orcades (Orkneys). The northern coast of Scotland had, however, been visited before 44 B.C., since Diodorus Siculus mentions the promontory of Horca (Dunnet Head) as the northern extremity of the island. The whole of the British Isles, with the exception perhaps of the Faröes, were well known by the year 120,[3] and there was no necessity for the further exploration of the coasts.
Physical Geography of Britain.
Britain, at the beginning of the Historic period, differed considerably from the Britain of to-day, although there is no reason to suppose that any vertical movements have altered the relation of sea to land. The dash of the waves for the last nineteen centuries has destroyed large tracts of land where the cliffs are composed of soft and incoherent materials. The inroads of the sea on the south coast have been so great in some places, such as Pevensey and Pagham, in Sussex, that it is by no means improbable that the Isle of Wight may have been united at low water to the adjoining coast during the Roman occupation.[4] Large tracts of
- ↑ Dr. Latham, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.
- ↑ Crania Britannica, i. p. 64.
- ↑ Claudius Ptolemæus, Geographia, Mon. Hist. Brit.
- ↑ It was an island in the days of Claudius. Suetonius, Mon. Hist Brit. 1.
