In the Epitome of Strabo, the name Macedonia is used in a very singular sense, for it is made to include Illyricum. He considers Macedonia as a parallelogram, of which mount Scardus forms the northern, and the river Hebrus the eastern side; in the south is the _via Egnatia_, a line drawn from Epidamnus to Thessalonica. This outline excludes southern Macedonia, and embraces many countries which do not belong to it. He may have regarded this as the extent of the Roman province; but it never had such boundaries. No one can say what his thoughts were; but it is possible that he made a mistake in copying. We know, on the contrary, that Thessaly was added to Macedonia as part of the province. When I come to the survey of the Roman state, I shall speak of the boundaries and the differences of the provinces at different times, a subject which must not be overlooked, because on this point great errors still prevail. The extent which Macedonia acquired under the Antigonids,[99] (that is, from the time of Antigonus Gonatas and his successors until the reign of Perseus, a period of about a hundred years), with tolerably natural boundaries, embraced the countries as far as the ridge of the high mountains, but Orestis, though situated beyond the chain of these mountains, also belonged to it. The geography of these countries has as yet been very little inquired into by Europeans, whence the maps are still as confused as they were about fifty or sixty years ago. No modern traveller, as far as I know, has yet visited all the countries on the side of Skupi (Uskup?) and the high mountains. The notices contained in the ancients of these countries, cannot be applied with certainty, the names of the mountains being too indefinite; those countries are quite beyond the reach of classical literature, and we know mounts Orbelos and Rhodope scarcely more than by name. These north-western mountains may be most correctly conceived as a western continuation of mount Haemus, which is itself a continuation of the Alps. The Alps pass through Carniola close by the Adriatic, and enter into southern Bosnia; another branch runs through Styria to the north; on the borders of Hungary its breadth is not great, and it forms a hilly country until it disappears in the great plain of Slavonia and Lower Hungary; but in Bosnia the mountains again extend as far as the Save. All Bosnia and Servia is a mountainous country, while Slavonia opposite has rich and fertile plains and but few mountains. In the neighbourhood of Belgrade, the mountains approach the Danube, extend again, and occupy nearly the whole space between the Danube and the Adriatic; they then, shutting in the Danube, extend to the territory of Widdin, retreat into the splendid country of the Bulgarians, and there leave an extensive and extremely fertile space between the river and mount Haemus. From Illyricum and Dalmatia the mountains proceed, so as to form a hilly country in the neighbourhood of Scutari.