Ireland and Juvenal ii 160
Journal: أطراس
Year: 2024

Like any authority, A. E. Housman’s edition of the Roman satirist Juvenal remains a source for research, including notes in The Housman Society Journal on Rutupiae in the fourth satire or ‘Thule’ in the fifteenth. The former is Richborough, Kent; the latter seems to be Iceland, for ‘Thule’ is apparently a corruption of Greek Thymele ‘altar-slab’. It implies that the explorer Pytheas discovered Iceland in about 306 BCE, the island’s volcanoes and block-like appearance reminding him of fire on an