Nomenclature
Greek Name:
Latin Name:
Toponyms:
Cultural Notes
Geographical Notes
The Ister rises in the land of the Celts, at the city of Pyrene (the Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles and are neighbours of the Cynesians who are the westernmost European people)
Citations in Herodotos
2.33 Niles and Ister comparison; 4.49 course of the Ister river
Key Passages in English Translation
[2.33] This is enough of the story told by Etearchus the Ammonian; except he said that the Nasamonians returned, as the men of Cyrene told me, and that the people to whose country they came were all wizards; [2] as to the river that ran past the city, Etearchus guessed it to be the Nile; and reason proves as much. For the Nile flows from Libya, right through the middle of it; and as I guess, reasoning about things unknown from visible signs, it rises proportionally as far away as does the Ister.1 [3] For the Ister flows from the land of the Celts and the city of Pyrene through the very middle of Europe; now the Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, being neighbors of the Cynesii, who are the westernmost of all the peoples inhabiting Europe. [4] The Ister, then, flows clean across Europe and ends its course in the Euxine sea, at Istria, which is inhabited by Milesian colonists.
English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. Retreived from <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu>
Key Passages in Greek
[2.33] ὁ μὲν δὴ τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου Ἐτεάρχου λόγος ἐς τοῦτό μοι δεδηλώσθω, πλὴν ὅτι ἀπονοστῆσαί τε ἔφασκε τοὺς Νασαμῶνας, ὡς οἱ Κυρηναῖοι ἔλεγον, καὶ ἐς τοὺς οὗτοι ἀπίκοντο ἀνθρώπους, γόητας εἶναι ἅπαντας. [2] τὸν δὲ δὴ ποταμὸν τοῦτον τὸν παραρρέοντα καὶ Ἐτέαρχος συνεβάλλετο εἶναι Νεῖλον, καὶ δὴ καὶ ὁ λόγος οὕτω αἱρέει. ῥέει γὰρ ἐκ Λιβύης ὁ Νεῖλος καὶ μέσην τάμνων Λιβύην, καὶ ὡς ἐγὼ συμβάλλομαι τοῖσι ἐμφανέσι τὰ μὴ γινωσκόμενα τεκμαιρόμενος, τῷ Ἴστρῳ ἐκ τῶν ἴσων μέτρων ὁρμᾶται. [3] Ἴστρος τε γὰρ ποταμὸς ἀρξάμενος ἐκ Κελτῶν καὶ Πυρήνης πόλιος ῥέει μέσην σχίζων τὴν Εὐρώπην: οἱ δὲ Κελτοὶ εἰσὶ ἔξω Ἡρακλέων στηλέων, ὁμουρέουσι δὲ Κυνησίοισι, οἳ ἔσχατοι πρὸς δυσμέων οἰκέουσι τῶν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ κατοικημένων: [4] τελευτᾷ δὲ ὁ Ἴστρος ἐς θάλασσαν ῥέων τὴν τοῦ Εὐξείνου πόντου διὰ πάσης Εὐρώπης, τῇ Ἰστρίην οἱ Μιλησίων οἰκέουσι ἄποικοι.
Other Testimonia
Other Commentary
Perseus Encyclopedia:
W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotos:
Κελτοί. H. derives his information, indirectly at any rate, from he Phoenicians, and therefore speaks of the Celts as being ‘outside the Pillars of Hercules’, where the Phoenicians found them.
The ‘Pillars of Hercules’ are not found in Homer, but in Pindar (Olym. iii. 44) they occur, as the limit of the world; by H.'s time they had been definitely fixed. For the legends connecting Heracles with the W. cf. iv. 8 seq. The name was partly due to the identification of Heracles with the Tyrian Melcarth, partly to the tendency (Tac. Germ. 34) to give him ‘quidquid ubique magnificum’. Strabo (169-72) discusses the legends as to them; but Pomponius Mela (i. 5. 27), as befits a Spaniard, is the first to give an accurate account of them. So far as they are a reality, they correspond to Calpe and Abila (i.e. Gibraltar and the African Ceuta).
Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):
Disambiguation
No information available at this time.