Rivers and Mountains in Northern Italy
Such parts of both slopes of the Alps as are not too
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rocky or too precipitous are inhabited by different tribes; those on the north towards the
Rhone by the Gauls, called Transalpine; those towards the
Italian plains by the Taurisci and Agones and a number of
other barbarous tribes. The name Transalpine is not tribal,
but local, from the Latin proposition trans, "across." The
summits of the Alps, from their rugged character, and the
great depth of eternal snow, are entirely uninhabited. note Both
slopes of the Apennines, towards the Tuscan
Sea and towards the plains, are inhabited by
the Ligurians, from above Marseilles and the Junction with the
Alps to Pisae on the cast, the first city on the west of Etruria,
and inland to Arretium. Next to them come the Etruscans; and
next on both slopes the Umbrians. The distance between the
Apennines and the Adriatic averages about five hundred stades;
and when it leaves the northern plains the chain verges to the
right, and goes entirely through the middle of the rest of Italy, as
far as the Sicilian Sea. note The remaining portion of this triangle,
namely the plain along the sea coast, extends as far as the town
of Sena. The Padus, celebrated by the poets under the name
of Eridanus, rises in the Alps near the apex
of the triangle, and flows down to the plains
with a southerly course; but after reaching the plains, it
turns to the east, and flowing through them discharges
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itself by two mouths into the Adriatic. The larger part
of the plain is thus cut off by it, and lies between this river
and the Alps to the head of the Adriatic. note In body of water
it is second to no river in Italy, because the mountain
streams, descending from the Alps and Apennines to the plain,
one and all flow into it on both sides; and its stream is at its
height and beauty about the time note of the rising of the Dog
Star, because it is then swollen by the melting
snows on those mountains. It is navigable for
nearly two thousand stades up stream, the ships entering by
the mouth called Olana; for though it is a single main stream
to begin with, it branches off into two at the place called
Trigoboli, of which streams the northern is called the Padoa,
the southern the Olana. At the mouth of the latter there is
a harbour affording as safe anchorage as any in the Adriatic.
The whole river is called by the country folk the Bodencus.
As to the other stories current in Greece about this river,—I
mean Phaethon and his fall, and the tears of the poplars and
the black clothes of the inhabitants along this stream, which
they are said to wear at this day as mourning for Phaethon,—all
such tragic incidents I omit for the present, as not being suitable
to the kind of work I have in hand; but I shall return to them
at some other more fitting opportunity, particularly because
Timaeus has shown a strange ignorance of this district.
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