Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland – Part 64

Epidion

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 former are known collectively as αἱ Αἰβουδαι [hai Aiboudai], the Aiboudai. The fifth and most easterly member of this archipelago is called Ἐπιδιον [Epidion] (Latin: Epidium).

In his 1883 edition of the Geography, Karl Müller records just one variant reading of Ἐπιδιον. In his 1838 edition of the Geography, Friedrich Wilberg also records this variant.

Source	Greek	English
Most MSS	Ἐπίδιον	Epidion
Arg	Ἐπίδὶ	Epidi

Arg is the Editio Argentinensis, an early printed edition based on Jacopo d’Angelo’s Latin translation of Ptolemy (1406) and the work of Pico della Mirandola. Many other hands also worked on it—Martin Waldseemüller, Matthias Ringmann, Jacob Eszler and Georg Übel—before it was finally published by Johann Schott in Straßburg in 1513. Argentinensis refers to Straßburg’s ancient Celtic name of Argentorate.

The sole variant can probably be dismissed due to its unique nature. Is it a printing error? Both Müller and Wilberg tag this variant with (sic):

Epidi, Ἐπίδὶ (sic) (Müller 81)

I presume this qualification is being quoted from the Editio Argentinensis itself, but I cannot say for sure, as I have never come across this edition online.

Ptolemy’s Islands of Ireland (After Marcian)

I have spelt Epidion with the smooth breathing added to the initial vowel (Ἐ- rather than Ε-) to clarify that the pronunciation was [epidion] and not [hepidion]. The use of breathings was not fully regularized until the 9th century CE, after which all words that began with a vowel were systematically marked with the appropriate sign for “rough” (aspirated) or “smooth” (nonaspirated) breathing. (Gnanadesikan 220 ... 221).

I take this to imply that Ptolemy only explicitly indicated the breathing in cases where the correct reading was not already obvious to the reader. In other words, he probably did not include the breathing in common Greek words, as its presence in such words was already well known. In the case of foreign toponyms and ethnonyms, however, he probably did include it. Hence we have Ἐπιδιον rather than Επιδιον.

The Mull of Kintyre with Ireland in the Background

Identity

Although Epidion is listed as one of the islands of Ireland, it is generally identified with the Scottish promontory known today as the Mull of Kintyre, the closest point on the British mainland to Ireland. Ptolemy includes this promontory in his description of Britain, Geography Book 2, Chapter 3, § 1:

Greek	Latin	English	Longitude	Latitude
Ἐπιδιον ακρον	Epidium Promontorium	Epidion Promontory	23° 00'	60° 40'

Note that he assigns different coordinates to the “Irish” island of the same name:

Greek	Latin	English	Longitude	Latitude
Ἐπιδιον	Epidium	Epidion	18° 30'	62° 00'

This could imply that these are two distinct features that just happen to share the same name, or it could simply mean that the coordinates Ptolemy assigns to his nine Irish islands are artificial and not based on any of his sources—a point I made in an earlier article in this series.

Müller does distinguish between the two. His comment is worth quoting:

This island is related to Britain’s Epidion Promontory (Mull of Cantire), and so is either the small island of Sanda, adjacent to this promontory, or one of the more remote but larger islands, such as Gigha or Islay. This island is almost in the correct position on Ptolemy’s map, but the Epidion Promontory, on account of the faulty depiction of the British coast, has been moved far from it. (Müller 81)

Müller is referring to Ptolemy’s misalignment of the map of Scotland, which he has running from west to east instead of south to north:

Ptolemy’s Map of Scotland (After Müller)

Goddard Orpen generally follows Müller’s analysis, but in this case he takes his cue from Henry Bradley, whose paper on Ptolemy’s Geography was published in 1885, just two years after Müller’s edition came out:

Ἐπίδιον, as pointed out by Mr. Bradley, is probably the Mull of Cantire, called by Ptolemy Ἐπίδιον ἄκρον, over again. This duplication of the name was owing to the faulty eastern direction given to the map of Scotland. The point is here fixed relative to Ireland. (Orpen 127-128)

Henry Bradley had come to the same conclusion as I did above:

On reference to the accompanying map it will be seen that the outline of what we call England bears a very recognisable general resemblance to that of the country as now known. But instead of Scotland appearing, as it ought to do, as a continuation of England towards the north, it is twisted round sharply to the east. Ptolemy’s map of North Britain, in fact, looks like a map of Scotland turned over on its side ...

My own hypothesis in explanation of Ptolemy’s mistake is, that either he or one of his predecessors had before him three sectional maps, representing severally what we call England [and Wales], Scotland, and Ireland, and drawn approximately to scale, but without meridians or parallels. It was no doubt then, as now, usual for a map to be enclosed in a rectangular frame, with sides towards the four cardinal points. In fitting the three maps together, Ptolemy (or his predecessor) fell into the mistake of turning the oblong map of Scotland the wrong way ...

The Cape Epidium is evidently the Mull of Cantire. I venture to think that no doubt would ever have arisen with regard to this identification if the interpreters of Ptolemy had always based their investigations on a construction of the Ptolemaic map. The island Epidium, off the north coast of “Ivernia,” I believe to be Cantire over again—a duplication naturally resulting from Ptolemy’s having worked, in the manner previously suggested, from separate maps of Ireland and Scotland. A map of Ireland now before me shows in its upper right-hand corner the peninsula of Cantire and the islands of Islay, Jura, and Arran. (Bradley 382 ... 384)

Louis Francis identifies Epidion with the Kintyre peninsula, and not just the promontory at its southwestern tip (Francis Section 2).

Roman Era Names

The experts at Roman Era Names analyse the etymology of this name (and its two British relatives) but do not hazard a guess as to which island Ptolemy was referring to.

Attested: (1) Ptolemy 2,2,11 Επιδιον, one of 5 islands called Εβουδαι (2) Ptolemy 2,3,1 Επιδιον ακρον (3) Ptolemy 2,3,11 Επιδιοι people by Επιδιον ακρον.

Where: Presumably the Επιδιοι lived throughout Kintyre, with their ακρον ‘promontory’ at the Mull of Kintyre, whose southern tip is near NR618059.

Name Origin: Early names beginning with Ep- make many scholars think of horses, with particular attention paid to a goddess Epona, and to Welsh ebol ‘foal’. The argument is set out by Delamarre (2003:163)). However, there are huge problems with applying that logic to these people, in terms of zoology, ethnography, and archaeology. There is no obvious reason why horses were specially important in Kintyre, and a Punic word for ‘sheep’ has also been suggested. Επιδιοι is most simply explained as a compound of Greek επι ‘upon’ plus δυο ‘two’ or δια ‘through’, which would be an appropriate description of Gaelic people living on both sides of the North Channel.

Notes: It is conventional to date the entry of Gaels into Scotland after AD 300, when Scotti raiders started becoming troublesome, but extensive maritime contacts across the North Channel to Ireland must date back earlier in much the same way as contacts across the English Channel between Britain and France. See also about Ebio in [the Ravenna Cosmography]. (Roman Era Names)

It should be pointed out that the Gaelic [Goidelic] conquest of Ulster probably occurred in the late 4th or early 5th century (O’Rahilly 222 ff). Earlier cross-channel contact between Ulster and northern Britain would have involved pre-Goidelic Celts. Nevertheless, the name Epidion is clearly P-Celtic (Brythonic) and not Q-Celtic (Goidelic).

Sanda Island

Early Scholarship

In the 16th century, William Camden suggested that Ptolemy’s Epidion was the island of Islay:

The next [of the Aiboudai] is Epidium, which from the name seems to me (as well as to that excellent Geographer G. Mercator) to have lain near the promontory and shore of the Epidii. And seeing Ila, a pretty large Island, level and fertil, lies in this manner, I take it to be the Epidium, and the Isle of the Epidii; for sometimes it is read, Ἐπίδιων. (Camden 1462)

The Welsh scholar William Baxter believed that the island Ptolemy calls Epidion was properly called the Island of the Pepidii (Pepidiorum Insula), Pepidii being the correct name of the British tribe which Ptolemy calls Epidii. He identified this island with Jura. (Baxter 193).

Most of the early Irish scholars declined to identify Epidion, considering it more a British feature than an Irish one.

Islay and Jura, Viewed from County Antrim

Ptolemy’s Epidion is probably the Mull of Kintyre, if not the entire Kintyre Peninsula. The latter could easily have been mistaken for an island, being joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus barely 2 km long.

Alternatively, the British promontory of Epidion may have been duplicated as an Irish island because the southern tip of the peninsula appeared in the corner of Ptolemy’s source map of Ireland (after Marinus of Tyre), while the misalignment of his map of Scotland divorced it from its British namesake.

Davaar Island, The Mull of Kintyre

References

William Baxter, Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum, sive Syllabus Etymologicus Antiquitatum Veteris Britanniae atque Iberniae temporibus Romanorum, Second Edition, London (1733)
Henry Bradley, Ptolemy’s Geography of the British Isles, Archæologia, Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 379-396, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1885)
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)
Ptolemy, Louis Francis (editor, translator), Geographia: Selections, English, University of Oxford Text Archive (1995)
Amalia E Gnanadesikan, The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet, Blackwell Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester (2009)
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)
Thomas F O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin (1946, 1984)
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)
Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geography, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat Gr 191, fol 127-172 (Ireland: 138v–139r)
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
Ptolemy’s Map of Scotland (After Müller): William F Skene, Alexander MacBain (editor), The Highlanders of Scotland, Eneas MacKay, Stirling (1902), Public Domain

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