Note 203 — BOOK VI. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST, OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

It is difficult to say what chain of mountains, if indeed any in particular, he would designate by this name. Parisot remarks that these mountains would seem to belong rather to the region of poetry and fable than of fact, and states that it is pretty clear that the Balkan chain, the districts in which the Danube takes its rise, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Hercynian mountains, and even the chain of Taurus and Caucasus, have at different times been described or mentioned under the name of Riphæan Mountains. It was evidently Pliny’s belief that the great Northern or Scythian Ocean skirted the northern shores of Asia, a little above the latitude perhaps of the northern extremity of the Caspian. In B. iv. c. 26, we find him crossing these, perhaps imaginary, mountains, and then proceeding to the left, along, as he supposes, the extreme northern shores of Europe; here he seems to start from the same point, but turns to the right, and proceeds along the northern, eastern, and southern shores of Asia.