STAECHADES, five islands, now called the Hieres,
on the coast of
Provence.
STRATONICE, a town of Caria in the Hither Asia, so called after Stratonice, the wife of Antiochus.
SUEVI, a great and warlike people of ancient Germany, who occupied a prodigious tract of country. See Manners of the Germans, s. 38. and note a.
SUNICI, a people removed from Germany to Gallia Belgica. According to Cluverius, they inhabited the duchy of Limburg.
SWINDEN, a liver that flows on the confines of the Dahae. It is mentioned by Tacitus only. Brotier supposes it to be what is now called Herirud, or La Riviere d’Herat.
SYENE, a town in the Higher Egypt, towards the borders of Ethiopia, situate on the Nile. It lies under the tropic of Cancer, as is evident, says Pliny the elder, from there being no shadow projected at noon at the summer solstice. It was, for a long time, the boundary of the Roman empire. A garrison was stationed there: Juvenal was sent to command there by Domitian, who, by conferring that unlocked for honour, meant, with covered malice, to punish the poet for his reflection on Paris the comedian, a native of Egypt, and a favourite at court.
SYRACUSE, one of the noblest cities in Sicily. The Romans took it during the second Punic war, on which occasion the great Archimedes lost his life. It is now destroyed, and no remains of the place are left. Etiam periere ruinae.
SYRIA, a country of the Hither Asia, between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, so extensive that Palestine, or the Holy Land, was deemed a part of Syria.
SYRTES, the deserts of Barbary: also two dangerous sandy gulfs in the Mediterranean, on the coast of Barbary; one called Syrtis Magna, now the Gulf of Sidra; the other Syrtis Parva, now the Gulf of Cassos.
T.
TANAIS, the Don, a very large river in Scythia, dividing Asia from Europe. It rises in Muscovy, and flowing through Crim Tartary, runs into the Palus Maeotis, near the city now called Azoff, in the hands of the Turks.
TARENTUM, now Tarento, in the province of Otranto. The Lacedemonians founded a colony there, and thence it was called by Horace, Lacedaemonium Tarentum.
TARICHAEA, a town of Galilee. It was besieged and taken by Vespasian, who sent six thousand of the prisoners to assist in cutting a passage through the isthmus of Corinth.
TARRACINA, a city of the Volsci in Latium, near the mouth of the Ufens, in the Campania of Rome. Now Terracina, on the Tuscan Sea.
TARRACO, the capital of a division of Spain, called by the Romans Tarraconensis; now Taragon, a port town in Catalonia, on the Mediterranean, to the west of Barcelona. See HISPANIA.
TARTARUS, a river running between the Po and the Athesis, (the Adige) from west to east, into the Adriatic; now Tartaro.