In the final section of his description of Ireland—Geography, Book 2, Chapter 2, § 10—Claudius Ptolemy records the names and coordinates of nine islands, five of which lie to the north of Ireland and four to the east. The five northern islands are called αἱ Αἰβουδαι [hai Aiboudai], or the Hebrides. The second of the four eastern islands is called Μονα νησος [Mona Island] (Latin: Mona Insula). On Ptolemy’s map, this island is the most southerly of all nine Irish islands. It lies quite close to the southeast corner of the mainland, where the Sacred Headland is situated.
In his 1883 edition of the Geography, Karl Müller records no variant readings of Μονα νησος, though he does record a minor variant in the latitude. In his 1838 edition of the Geography, Friedrich Wilberg does not record any variant readings in either the name or the coordinates. In his edition of 1845, Karl Nobbe’s coordinates agree with those of Müller and Wilberg.
| Source | Greek Latitude | English Latitude |
|---|---|---|
| Most MSS | νζ γοʹ | 57° 40' |
| H | νζ γʹ | 57° 20' |
H is a pair of 15th-century manuscripts among the Codices Parisini Graeci in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris: Grec 1407 and Grec 1411 respectively. These manuscripts contain copies of an epitome of Ptolemy’s Geography. Browsing through them, I was unable to locate Ptolemy’s description of Ireland. Müller’s text is difficult to read (I have only been able to find a single copy of it online) and it is possible that the siglum I read as H is actually Π. Either way, this variant reading can be safely dismissed as a simple clerical error.
Π This manuscript of Ptolemy’s Geography was formerly in the Library of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill in Rome. In 1872 the government of the recently established Kingdom of Italy confiscated the contents of the library, which were subsequently dispersed. Many of the volumes were expropriated by the Vittorio Emanuele II National Library of Rome.
It is curious that this is the only one of Ptolemy’s nine “Irish” islands that is actually qualified with the Greek word for island: νησος [nēsos]. Perhaps this was to distinguish it from Monaoida, which has a similar if not quite identical name.
Anglesey
As we saw in the previous article in this series, Ptolemy’s Mona has been identified since early times with the island of Anglesey, which lies just off the northwest coast of Wales. Its attribution to Ireland was probably due to the fact that Ptolemy’s source for the islands to the west of Britain was independent of the sources he drew on for the mainland features of Britain and Ireland. He chose to associate them all with Ireland, and the coordinates he assigns to them are probably largely arbitrary. His description of Albion (Geography Book 2, Chapter 3) includes no islands to the west of Britain.
Among the scholars confident that Mona is Anglesey, the following are worthy of mention:
Next to this, is Mona or the Isle of Anglesey. (Camden 1439)
Mona This island is very well known. Even today it is called Mon by us Welsh, but The Island of the Angles by the English, which is to say: Anglesey. (Baxter 179)
Μον [sic] νησος. This is evidently the isle of Anglesey in Wales, but by Ptolemy brought too near Ireland ... (Beauford 72)
Μόνα] today’s Anglesey. (Müller 81)
Ptolemy’s Mona, placed by him near the Wexford coast, is certainly not the Isle of Man, but Anglesey. (Bradley 384)
Finally, Μόνα [Mona] is Anglesey. Its latitude is not very incorrect relatively to England, though it is of course much too far from her shores. (Orpen 128)
Mona (Pliny’s Monapia), Anglesey, which it is surprising to see detached from Great Britain. One must supposed a western origin for the document from which Ptolemy learnt of it. It may have been discovered on a nautical itinerary departing from Monapia, with both its position and distance incorrectly stated. (Berthelot 247)
Berthelot is quite wrong to equate Pliny’s Monapia with Anglesey. Monapia, as we saw in the previous article, is the Isle of Man. Pliny mentions both Mona and Monapia in succession in Book 4, Chapter 30 of his Natural History (Pliny 351).
It is unnecessary to cite the ancient sources that support the identity of Ptolemy’s Mona and the Isle of Anglesey. Among them may be briefly mentioned the following: Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Pliny the Elder, the Ravenna Cosmographer, and Orosius.
Some scholars who have declined to identify Ptolemy’s Monaoida with the Isle of Man have instead identified Mona with the latter island. In the early 19th century, we have the Irish antiquarian Fr Charles O’Conor, who does not even mention Monaoida in his analysis of Ptolemy’s description of Ireland:
Mona Island: According to Bertius, in all the manuscripts of Ptolemy this is placed in longitude 15°, latitude 57° 40', but the order of the islands and its true position require this to be emended to longitude 17°, latitude 59° 40'—for after this the islands of Edrus and Limnus are indicated. Today’s Mann. The latter is ascribed to Ireland by Æthicus, Orosius, and by the language itself of Mann, which is Irish; and similarly by Ptolemy. (O’Conor lvi)
O’Conor was clearly influenced by Bertius, who also identifies Mona with the Isle of Man and Monaoida with Anglesey (Bertius 34). O’Conor does not mention the latter because he does not believe that it belongs to Ireland.
More recently, Louis Francis has also rejected the obvious identifications of these two islands:
§12 lists another group of islands not considered to be associated with one another, Monasida [sic], which could be Mull, ... and lastly, Mona which would seem to the Isle of Man. (Francis, Section 2)
Julius Caesar’s reference to an island called Mona halfway from Britain to Ireland can be cited in support of this identification, but The Gallic War is probably the only primary source that supports it.
Etymology
The analysis of this toponym on the website Roman Era Names was quoted in the previous article, but it is worth repeating:
Attested: Caesar (de bello Gallico 5,13) Mona; Pliny Mona (2,187 & 4,103); Tacitus Monam insulam (3x); Dio/Xiphilinus Μονναν, Μοννης [62:7]; Ptolemy 2,2,12 Μονα island; RC [Ravenna Cosmographer] Mona.
Where: Caesar’s Mona was in medio cursu ‘half-way’ from Britain to Ireland, which fits the Isle of Man, and the text of RC hints that Mona was well north. On the other hand, in Pliny, Tacitus, and Dio, Mona clearly meant Anglesey, since they wrote after the Roman military had campaigned in north Wales before Boudicca’s rebellion. Caesar’s information probably came from ship-borne traders who had sailed in the Irish Sea, including perhaps Pytheas of Massalia, so it is unnecessary to follow R&S in thinking he was mistaken. Ptolemy’s latitude coordinate for Mona is unhelpfully weird.
Name origin: Greek μονος ‘solitary, alone’, originally describing the isolation of the Isle of Man, seems to have later become applied to Anglesey, thereby creating 2x Mona, so that Pliny used the name Monapia, literally ‘far off Mona’ to label the Isle of Man. Ptolemy then mentioned two more possible Monas, Μοναοιδα or Μοναρινα, literally ‘swollen Mona’ and ‘Mona ness ’, respectively, which would make sense as the Isle of Arran and the Mull of Kintyre, respectively.
Notes: Confused? You should be! Ancient writers may have been as puzzled as modern ones by all the M-vowel-N names that lie near the interface between ancient Irish and Welsh people. Besides Mona, Monapia, Μοναοιδα, and Μοναρινα, there were Manna, Maiona, and Menapii, plus possibly Menevia, Gerald of Wales’ name for St David’s in AD 1188, and the modern Monach Islands. To explain Mona up to a dozen etymologies need to be explored, many of which can be tracked down via the PIE roots of English man, mane, money, monger, monitor, monk, month, and monument. The explanation most often cited, but rejected here, was offered by R&S thus: “Mona is simply ‘mountain’ or ‘high island’”. This is usually linked to PIE *men- ‘to project’, the source of Latin mons ‘hill’. Also attractive but rejected as a parallel is proto-Celtic *mon-ī ‘to go’, which Matasovic (2009:276) reconstructs from Welsh mynd, Breton mont, Cornish mones, and Irish muinithir. (Roman Era Names)
References
- William Baxter, Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum, sive Syllabus Etymologicus Antiquitatum Veteris Britanniae atque Iberniae temporibus Romanorum, Second Edition, London (1733)
- William Beauford, Letter from Mr. William Beauford, A.B. to the Rev. George Graydon, LL.B. Secretary to the Committee of Antiquities, Royal Irish Academy, The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 3, pp 51-73, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (1789)
- André Berthelot, L’Irlande de Ptolémée, in Revue Celtique, Volume 50, pp 238-247, Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, Paris (1933)
- Petrus Bertius, Gerardus Mercator, Abraham Ortelius, Theatri Geographiae Veteris Tomus Prior, in quo Cl. Ptol. Alexandrini Geographiae Libri VIII Graece et Latine, Jodocus Hondius, Amsterdam (1618)
- Henry Bradley, Ptolemy’s Geography of the British Isles, Archæologia, Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 379-396, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1885)
- Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, With an English Translation by Henry John Edwards, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA (1958)
- William Camden, Britannia: Or A Chorographical Description of Great Britain and Ireland, Together with the Adjacent Islands, Second Edition, Volume 2, Edmund Gibson, London (1722)
- Cassius Dio Cocceianus, Dio’s Roman History, Volume 8, Loeb Classical Library, Translated by Earnest Cary & Herbert Baldwin Foster, William Heinemann, London (1925)
- Ptolemy, Louis Francis (editor, translator), Geographia: Selections, English, University of Oxford Text Archive (1995)
- Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller (editor & translator), Klaudiou Ptolemaiou Geographike Hyphegesis (Claudii Ptolemæi Geographia), Volume 1, Alfredo Firmin Didot, Paris (1883)
- Karl Friedrich August Nobbe, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Volume 1, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845)
- Karl Friedrich August Nobbe, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Volume 2, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845)
- Charles O’Conor, Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres, Volume 1, Prolegomena, Pars I, John Seeley, Buckingham (1814)
- Goddard H Orpen, Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume 4 (Fifth Series), Volume 24 (Consecutive Series), pp 115-128, Dublin (1894)
- Pliny the Elder, John Bostock, Henry Thomas Riley, The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1, Henry G Bohn, London (1855)
- Pseudo-Æthicus, The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9661
- Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geography, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat Gr 191, fol 127-172 (Ireland: 138v–139r)
- Cornelius Tacitus, , The Annals and History of Tacitus: A New and Literal English Version, D A Talboys, Oxford (1839)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Wilberg, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographiae, Libri Octo: Graece et Latine ad Codicum Manu Scriptorum Fidem Edidit Frid. Guil. Wilberg, Essendiae Sumptibus et Typis G.D. Baedeker, Essen (1838)
Image Credits
- Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland: Wikimedia Commons, Nicholaus Germanus (cartographer), Public Domain
- Greek Letters: Wikimedia Commons, Future Perfect at Sunrise (artist), Public Domain
- South Stack, Isle of Anglesey: © 1997-2019 Celtic Trails, Fair Use
- Anglesey Island: © Showaround 2019, Fair Use
- The Isle of Man and the Calf of Man: Ericbobson (photographer), Public Domain
- The Isle of Anglesey: © Calendar Club Ltd 2001-2019, Fair Use
