The principal rivers of Galicia have kept the names given to them by the ancients--because the land through which they flow was never, like the rest of Spain, conquered by the Moors. Galicia is the best-watered territory in the Peninsula. The river Limia, known to the ancients as Lethes, or Oblivionis, was mentioned by Pliny as running between the Miño and the Duero, and Silius Italicus said of it-- “Inique super gravios lucentes volvit arenas, Infernae populis referens oblivia Lethes.”[33] The name of Limia was thought by Florez to be derived from the Greek word λιμνη, a lake; Pliny called it Limæa, and said that some called it _Flumen oblivionis_--“river of forgetfulness.” This river rises in the lake of Antela in the province of Orense, and, after flowing through a fertile valley to which it has given its name, and receiving the waters of two smaller streams, the Ginzo and the Salas, enters Portugal at Landoso, and at length flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Vianna de Castello.[34] The Greeks and Romans seem to have persuaded themselves that this river had the power of making people forget, in a moment and for ever, everything connected with the past; they consequently regarded it with positive terror-- “Formidatumque militibus flumen oblivionis.”[35] Strabo tells how an allied army of Celts and Bætians who had joined forces for some particular expedition quarrelled after passing the Limia, and killed in the fray their common leader, after which they one and all, forgetting what was the object of their expedition and whither they were bound, became scattered, and each man returned home independently of the others.[36] Decimus Junius Brutus was the first Roman who dared to cross the river, and Livy relates that when Brutus ordered his soldiers to cross it they refused to do so, in fear lest by so doing they might lose all memory of their country; whereupon Brutus, seizing the flag from his standard-bearer, waded into the river alone, and, having reached the opposite bank, returned to his soldiers and entreated them to follow him across, which they, overcoming their superstition, eventually did. More than one Portuguese poet, charmed by the beauty of the Limia’s winding banks and by the gentle flow of its limpid waters, and above all by its historic name--“river of forgetfulness”--has crystallised the legend of its miraculous power in musical verse, such as-- “O’ que inveja vos hei a esse correr, Pola praia de Lima abaixo e’ arriba Que tem tanta virtute de esquecer!” Limia, in Portuguese, is spelt Lima, and the Lima of Peru was named after this river. Another point of interest in connection with this river of classic fame is the discovery that has recently been made by Dr. Marcelo Macias of the exact site upon which there once stood a great city, mentioned by Ptolemy as φορος λιμιχῶν and by later Roman writers as _Civitas Limicorum_.