Pliny: Natural History, Vol. II

PLINY: NATURAL HISTORY | BOOK III. i. 5–7

half of the world, dividing the whole circle into two portions by a line drawn from the river Tanais to the Straits of Gibraltar. The ocean, pouring the Atlantic sea through the passage I have described, and in its eager progress overwhelming all the lands that shrank in awe before its coming, washes also those that offer resistance with a winding and broken coastline: Europe especially it hollows out with a succession of bays, but into four chief gulfs, of which the first bends in a vast curve from the Rock of Gibraltar, which, as I have said, is the extremity of Spain, right to Locri on Cape Spartivento.

Western Mediterranean.

6 The first land situated on this gulf is called Further Spain or Baetica roughly modern Andalusia, and then, from the frontier at Murgi, Hither Spain or the Department of Tarragon, extending to the chain of the Pyrenees. Further Spain is divided lengthwise into two provinces, Lusitania modern Portugal, excluding the region between the Douro and Minho extending along the north side of Baetica and separated from it by the river Anas the Guadiana. 7 This rises in Hither Spain, in the territory of Laminium, and now spreading out into meres, now contracting into narrows, or burrowing entirely underground and gaily emerging again several times over, discharges itself into the Atlantic Ocean. The Department of Tarragon adjoins the Pyrenees, running down along the whole of one side of the chain and also extending across from the Iberian Sea to the Gallic Ocean, and is separated from Baetica and Lusitania by Mount Solorius the Sierra Nevada and by the ranges of the Oretani, Carpetani, and Astures the Sierra Morena, Montes de Toledo, and the Asturian mountains.

Baetica, named after the river Baetis the Guadalquivir which cuts it in the middle...