Note 573 — Chapter I

The ancient geographers often speak of these kind of resemblances. They have compared the whole habitable earth to a soldier’s cloak or mantle, as also the town of Alexandria, which they styled χλαμυδοειδές. Italy at one time to a leaf of parsley, at another to an oak-leaf. Sardinia to a human foot-print. The isle of Naxos to a vine-leaf. Cyprus to a sheep-skin; and the Black Sea to a Scythian bow, bent. The earliest coins of Peloponnesus, struck about 750 years before the Christian era, bear the impress of a tortoise, because that animal abounded on the shores, and the divisions and height of its shell were thought to offer some likeness to the territorial divisions of the little states of Peloponnesus and the mountain-ridges which run through the middle of that country. The Sicilians took for their symbol three thighs and legs, arranged in such an order that the bended knees might resemble the three capes of that island and its triangular form.