Oestriminis
Encyclopedia
In Latin poetry Oestreminis ("Extreme West") was a name given to the territory of what is today modern Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, comparable to Finis terrae
Ends of the Earth
Ends of the Earth may refer to:* Ends of the Earth, another way of referring to the extreme points of Earth* Ends of the Earth , a Wonder Woman storyline* "Ends of the Earth," a song by Dirty Three from their 1998 album Ocean Songs...

, the "end of the earth" from a Mediterranean perspective. Its inhabitants were named Oestrimni from their location.

The fourth century CE Roman poet on geographical subjects, Rufus Avienus Festus
Avienus
Avienus was a Latin writer of the 4th century AD. According to an inscription from Bulla Regia, his full name was Postumius Rufius Festus Avienius.He was a native of Volsinii in Etruria, from the distinguished family of the Rufii Festi...

, in Ora Maritima ("Seacoasts"), a poem inspired by a much earlier Greek mariners' periplus
Massaliote Periplus
The Massaliote Periplus or Massaliot Periplus is the name of a now-lost merchants' handbook possibly dating to as early as the 6th century BC describing the sea routes used by traders from Phoenicia and Tartessus in their journeys around Iron Age Europe...

, records that Oestriminis was peopled by the Oestrimni, a people that had lived there for a long time, who had to run away from their native lands after an invasion of serpents
Serpent (symbolism)
Serpent in Latin means: Rory Collins :&, in turn, from the Biblical Hebrew word of: "saraf" with root letters of: which refers to something burning-as, the pain of poisonous snake's bite was likened to internal burning.This word is commonly used in a specifically mythic or religious context,...

. His fanciful account has no archeological or historical application, but the poetical name has sometimes been ambitiously applied to popularized accounts of the Paleolithic inhabitants of Atlantic Iberia.

The expulsion of the Oestrimni, from Ora Maritima:
Post illa rursum quae supra fati sumus,
magnus patescit aequoris fusi sinus
Ophiussam ad usque. rursum ab huius litore
internum ad aequor, qua mare insinuare se
dixi ante terris, quodque Sardum nuncupant,
septem dierum tenditur pediti via.
Ophiussa porro tanta panditur latus
quantam iacere Pelopis audis insulam
Graiorum in agro. haec dicta primo Oestrymnis est
locos et arva Oestrymnicis habitantibus,
post multa serpens effugavit incolas
vacuamque glaebam nominis fecit sui.
Back after the places we spoke of above,
there opens a great bay filled with water,
all the way to Ophiussa. Back from the shore of this place,
to the inland water, through which I said before that the sea insinuates itself
through the land, and which they call Sardum,
the journey extends for seven days on foot.
Ophiusa extends its side, being as large
as you hear the Island of Pelops
lying in the territory of the Greeks is. This land was originally called Oestrymnis
by those who inhabited the Oestrymnian countryside and region,
much later the serpent chased away the inhabitants
and gave the now empty land its name.


The "serpent people" of the semi-mythical Ophiussa
Ophiussa
Ophiussa, also spelled Ophiusa, is the ancient name given by the ancient Greeks to what is now Portuguese territory near the mouth of the river Tagus...

 in the far west are noted in ancient Greek sources.

See also

  • Lusitania
    Lusitania
    Lusitania or Hispania Lusitania was an ancient Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain . It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people...

  • Lusitanian mythology
    Lusitanian mythology
    Lusitanian mythology is the mythology of the Lusitanians, the Indo-European people of western Iberia, in the territory comprising most of modern Portugal, Extremadura and a small part of Salamanca....

  • History of Portugal
    History of Portugal
    The history of Portugal, a European and an Atlantic nation, dates back to the Early Middle Ages. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it ascended to the status of a world power during Europe's "Age of Discovery" as it built up a vast empire including possessions in South America, Africa, Asia and...

  • Timeline of Iberian prehistory
  • Timeline of pre-Roman Iberian history
    Timeline of pre-Roman Iberian history
    This section of the timeline of Iberian history concerns events from before the Carthaginian conquests .-Bronze Age:*2nd millennium BC** c. 1800 BC – The El Argar civilization appears in Almería, south-east of Spain, replacing the earlier civilization of Los Millares. The adoption of bronze...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK