( 411 )
Many passages in Horace suppose the streets of Rome to be full of ice and snow[1]. Ovid assures us, that the Black Sea was frozen annually, and appeals for the truth of this to the governour of the province, whose name he mentions: he also relates several circumstances concerning that climate, which at present agree only with Norway or Sweden[2]. The forests of Thrace and Pannonia were full of ‘white’ bears and white boars, in like manner as now the forests of the North[3]. The northern
- ↑ See in particular lib. ii. sat. 3 et 6.
- ↑ Vid. Trist. lib. iii. eleg. 9. De Ponto. lib. iv. eleg. 7. 9. 10. Tournefort, a native of Provence, says in his Voyages, that there is no part of the world where the climate is more mild, nor the fruits more abundant than in Thrace; and that the Black Sea is now never frozen. Yet Pliny, Herodian, Strabo, and other authors expressly say, that Thrace is in a most frightful climate, that the inhabitants are forced to bury in the earth and to cover over with dung, during the winter, all the fruit-trees they wish to preserve. Ovid and Strabo agree in saying, that the countries about the Boristhenes and the Cimmerian Bosphorus are both uninhabited and uninhabitable by reason of the cold. Vid. Plin. lib. xv. c. 18. Herodian. lib. i. p. 26. Strabo 11. Ovid. Trist. lib. iii.
- ↑ Vid. Pausan. Arcad.
and that the Romans reckon it a very rigorous winter if the snow lies two days on the ground unmelted, and if there is any ice on the fountains which are exposed to the North.
