there is reason to believe the present Scandia is meant.  Denmark may probably be rcognised in the Dumnor of this author, and Norway in Noligen.  The mountain Soevo, which he describes as forming a vast bay called Codanus, extending to the promontory of the Cimbri, is supposed by some to be the mountains that run along the Vistula on the eastern extremity of Germany, and by others to be that chain of mountains which commence at Gottenburgh.  The whole of his information respecting the north seems to have been drawn from the expeditions of Drusus, Varus, and Germanicus, to the Elbe and the Weser, and from the accounts of the merchants who traded thither for amber.

Tacitus, who died about twenty years after Pliny, seems to have acquired a knowledge of the north more accurate in some respects than the latter possessed.  In his admirable description of Germany, he mentions the Suiones, and from the name, as well as other circumstances, there can be little doubt that they inhabited the southern part of modern Sweden.

The northern promontory of Scotland was known to Diodorus Siculus under the name of Orcas; but the insularity of Britain was certainly not ascertained till the fleet sent out by Agricola sailed round it, about eighty-four years after Christ.  Tacitus, who mentions this circumstance, also informs us, that Ireland, which was known by name to the Greeks, was much frequented in his time by merchants, from whose information he adds, that its harbours were better known than those of Britain:  this statement, however, there is much reason to question, as in the time of Caesar, all that the Romans knew of Ireland was its relative position to Britain, and that it was about half its size.

The emperor Trajan, who reigned between A.D. 98 and A.D. 117, was not only a great conqueror, carrying the Roman armies beyond the Danube into Dacia, and into Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, and thus extending and rendering more accurate the geographical knowledge of his subjects; but he was also attentive to the improvement and commercial prosperity of the empire.  He made good roads from one end of the empire to the other; he constructed a convenient and safe harbour at Centum Cellae (Civita Vecchia), and another at Ancona on the Adriatic:  he dug a new and navigable canal, which conveyed the waters of the Nahar-Malcha, or royal canal of Nebuchadnezzar, into the river Tigris; and he is supposed to have repaired or renewed the Egyptian canal between the Nile and the Red Sea.  He also gave directions and authority to Pliny, who was appointed governor of Pontus and Bithynia, to examine minutely into the commerce of those provinces, and into the revenues derived from it, and other sources.