Note 1155 — BOOK III. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST OR FORMERLY EXISTED. INTRODUCTION.

Or “Great Greece.” This is a poor and frivolous argument used by Pliny in support of his laudations of Italy, seeing that in all probability it was not the people of Greece who gave this name to certain cities founded by Greek colonists on the Tarentine Gulf, in the south of Italy; but either the Italian tribes, who in their simplicity admired their splendour and magnificence, or else the colonists themselves, who, in using the name, showed that they clung with fondness to the remembrance of their mother-country; while at the same time the epithet betrayed some vanity and ostentation in wishing thus to show their superiority to the people of their mother-country.