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Ἠριδανόν. Three stages may be noted in the use of this name: (1) It seems to have been a general name for rivers. Cf. the Rhodanus (and perhaps the Rhenus) and the Radaune near Dantzig. It may contain the root of the Greek ῥέω, while the ‘dan’ can be compared with Danube, Don, Dniester, &c. This is not inconsistent with H.'s remark that the name is Greek; in the form Ἠριδανός it fits into hexameter verse, and may be connected with ἦρι ‘early’, so that ‘it would be originally an epithet of the sun’ (Tozer, A. G. p. 35, who compares ‘Phaethon’, ‘the shining deity’; v. i. for his place in the myth). (2) Hesiod (Theog. 338) is the first Greek to use it, coupling it with the Nile and the Alpheus, but without locating it. Aeschylus (Plin. N. H. xxxvii. 32) made it = the Rhone, which he puts in Spain. (3) H.'s contemporary Pherecydes first made it the Po. This identification was probably due to two causes, (a) myth had connected the origin of amber from the tears of Phaethon's sisters with the Eridanus, (b) the amber route struck the Mediterranean at the head of the Adriatic, i.e. not far from the Po (cf. for amber route iv. 34 nn.). What H. refuses to accept is the Eridanus of legend and its connexion with the growth of amber; Strabo (215) is even more sceptical. ἐούσας is emphatic: ‘really exist.’ The Cassiterides are identified by Strabo (175-6) with the Scilly Isles, where there is no tin. Originally, however, the name ‘tin islands’ must at any rate have included Britain; it was afterwards applied to imaginary islands; cf. Rice Holmes, Anc. Britain, pp. 483-8, for a full account of the ancient evidence and of modern views as to it; a shorter one is in Tozer, u. s. pp. 37-8. H. declines to commit himself to any of the stories, which were the result of the ignorancc as to the islands. This ignorance was due to Phoenician exclusiveness; Strabo (176) tells how one of their merchants ran his ship on a shoal, to destroy his Roman pursuers. Cf. Diod. v. 22 (quoting Timaeus) for tin-mining in Britain and the tin route across Gaul; the metal was brought from Ictis (St. Michael's Mount) to Corbilo on the Loire (for this cf. Strabo 190), and thence ἐπὶ τῶν ἵππων, thirty days' journey to the mouth of the Rhone. The trade may be as old as the foundation of Massilia; cf. Rice Holmes, u. s. pp. 499-514.
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