Let us, however, despite of Diodorus, establish the veracity of the antiquarian Hecatæus. Then behold the situation of this island, just opposite to France,--in size as large as Sicily,--at once corresponding to the locality and size of Ireland, and subversive of the claims of those who would fain make England, Anglesea, or one of the Hebrides, the island specified. Considering further the prolificacy of its soil, and with that compare what the old poet has affirmed,--and what we know to be true,--of our own country, viz.:-- “Illic bis niveum tondetur vellus in anno Bisque die referunt ubera tenta greges.” Then bring its propinquity to the “arctic pole,” and the high northern latitude which Strabo[452] and other ancients have assigned to Ireland, into juxtaposition with “Hyperborean,” the name given to its inhabitants from the very circumstance of their lying so far to the north, and the identity of the isle with that in which each true Irishman exults is infallibly complete when I quote from Marcianus Heracleotes--who wrote in the third century, and who, as he himself avows, only drew up a compendium from the voluminous works of Artemidorus, who flourished in the hundred and sixty-ninth Olympiad, or 104 years before Christ--the following description of this sacred island, viz. “Iuvernia, a British isle, is bounded on the north (ad Boream) by the ocean called the Hyperborean; but on the east by the ocean which is called the Hibernian; on the south by the Virginian ocean. It has sixteen nations and eleven illustrious cities, fifteen remarkable rivers, five remarkable promontories, and six remarkable islands.” Here the sea, encompassing Ireland on the north, is called the Hyperborean Ocean;[453] and when we are told that the priests officiating at the round temples of Apollo were called Boreades, we can readily understand the origin of the name, as derived from _Boreas_, the deity who presided over the north-east wind, to which they offered their vows,--just as we find the Emperor Augustus erecting a temple at Rome, many centuries after, to the wind called Circius. To this deification of the energies of nature, which, as before affirmed, was but part and parcel of that form of worship called Sabaism, the author of the Book of Enoch has alluded in the following mysterious episode:--