Note 31 — Chapter I · ADVANCE OF THE ROMANS TO THE FIRTHS OF FORTH AND CLYDE.

Pomponius Mela (A.D. 45) mentions them—‘Triginta sunt Orcades, angustis inter se ductæ spatiis: septem Hæmodæ, contra Germaniam vectae’ (De s. orb. iii. 6). Eutropius has ‘quasdam insulas etiam ultra Britanniam in Oceano positas Romano imperio addidit (Claudius) quae appellantur Orcades’ (Hist. Rom. lib. iv. c. 13). It is difficult to reconcile this statement with that of Tacitus, that Agricola first made the Orcades known. That any conquest took place in either case is unlikely, and they were probably annexed to the Roman Empire in the sense in which an island in the Pacific, when first observed, is declared to belong to Britain, and named Victoria. The existence and position of the Orkneys may have become known under Claudius, and first actually seen under Agricola.