Note 1512 — BOOK III. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST OR FORMERLY EXISTED. INTRODUCTION.

Ovid, like many other writers, mentions Inarime as though a different island from Pithecusæ. See Met. B. xiv. l. 89. As is here mentioned by Pliny, many persons derived the name “Pithecusæ” from πίθηκος “an ape,” and, according to Strabo, “Aremus” was the Etrurian name for an ape. Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, loc. cit., confirms this tradition by relating the change of the natives into apes. The solution of its name given by Pliny appears however extremely probable, that it gained its name from its manufacture of πιθηκὰ, or earthen vessels. Virgil is supposed to have coined the name of “Inarime.”