A Complete Good Works Translation from De Chorographia 3.12-19
Pomponius Mela gives a compact Latin geographical witness to Gaul: coastline, land, old human sacrifice, Druids as teachers of wisdom, the immortality of souls, funerary goods and debts sent to the dead, Long-Haired Gaul, Aquitani, Celts, Belgae, the Garonne, ocean-side peoples, Morini, and the Rhine. It is a Roman geographical account, not a native Gaulish voice, but it preserves an important non-Caesar source-unit on Druids and Gaulish religious imagination.
Translation
Section 12
Next comes the other side of Gaul. Its coast at first does not run out far into the deep, but soon it projects into the sea almost as much as Spain had drawn back, and it faces the Cantabrian lands. Then, bending in a great curve toward the west, it turns its shore in that direction. Afterward it turns north and again stretches out in a long straight line to the banks of the Rhine.
Section 13
The land is especially fertile in grain and pasture, and pleasant with enormous groves. Whatever among planted crops cannot bear cold it nourishes with difficulty, and not everywhere. It is healthy, and not much frequented by harmful kinds of animals.
Section 14
The peoples are proud and given to religious awe, and once they were even so savage that they believed a human being to be the best and most pleasing victim for the gods. Traces of that ferocity remain, though it has now been abolished. Even when they abstain from the final killings, still, when they bring those devoted to the altars, they make a ritual cutting. Yet they also have their own eloquence and the Druids as teachers of wisdom.
Section 15
The Druids profess to know the size and form of the earth and of the universe, the movements of the sky and the stars, and what the gods will. They teach many things to the noblest men of the people, secretly and for a long time, for twenty years at a time, either in a cave or in hidden groves. One thing from what they teach has flowed out among the common people: evidently so that they would be better for wars, they teach that souls are eternal and that there is another life among the dead. And so they burn and bury with the dead things suited to the living. In old times even the accounting of business and the collection of debt were deferred to the lower world, and there were some who willingly threw themselves onto the pyres of their own people, as if they were going to live with them together. The whole region they inhabit is Long-Haired Gaul. There are three chief names of peoples, bounded by great rivers. From the Pyrenees to the Garonne are the Aquitani; from there to the Seine are the Celts; from there to the Rhine belong the Belgae. The most distinguished of the Aquitani are the Ausci, of the Celts the Aedui, and of the Belgae the Treveri. The richest cities are Augusta among the Treveri, Augustodunum among the Aedui, and Eliumberrum among the Ausci.
Section 16
The Garonne, flowing down from the Pyrenees mountain, is long shallow and scarcely navigable unless it swells with winter rain or melted snows. But when it is increased by the meeting of the ocean's surging tides, and when those tides return backward and drive both their own waters and the river's, it becomes somewhat fuller; the farther it goes, the broader it becomes, until at last it is like a great strait. It not only bears larger ships, but, rising in the manner of a raging sea, it tosses those sailing on it violently, especially if the wind drives one way and the wave another.
Section 17
In it is an island named Antros, which the inhabitants think hangs suspended and is lifted by the growing waters. The reason is this: when the higher places seem to be what lies opposite it, once the flood has filled itself, it covers those places, while the island is only surrounded as before; and what the banks and hills had formerly blocked from sight then becomes visible as if from a higher place.
Section 18
From the mouth of the Garonne begins that side of the land which runs out into the sea and faces the Cantabrian shores. Other peoples inhabit its middle, bending from the Santones as far as the Ossismi. From them the front of the coasts again looks northward and stretches to the Morini, the last of the Gallic peoples; no harbor there is better known than the one they call Gesoriacum.
Section 19
The Rhine, falling from the Alps, makes two lakes near its source, the Venetus and the Acronus. Soon, flowing for a long time as a solid river in a fixed channel, not far from the sea it is scattered this way and that. On the left it remains a river and is still Rhine until it flows out; on the right, at first narrow and like itself, then, as the banks draw far and wide apart, when it has filled the fields it is no longer a river but a huge lake and is called Flevo. After embracing an island of the same name, it becomes narrower again and is sent out again as a river.
Colophon
This page translates Pomponius Mela, De Chorographia 3.12-19 from Latin for the Celtic continental expansion of the Good Work Library. Mela's account is Roman geographical prose; the translation keeps its outside frame visible while preserving the complete Gaul unit around the Druid passage.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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Source Text: Pomponius Mela, De Chorographia 3.12-19
Latin source text from The Latin Library's text of Pomponius Mela, De Chorographia, Book 3. This page gives Mela's bounded Gaul source-unit: the coast, land, religious customs, Druids, the three Gaulish peoples, the Garonne, the ocean-side peoples, and the Rhine.
Section 12
Sequitur Galliae latus alterum, cuius ora primo nihil progressa in altum mox tantundem paene in pelagus excedens quantum retro Hispania abscesserat, Cantabricis fit adversa terris, et grandi circuitu adflexa ad occidentem litus advertit. Tunc ad septentriones conversa iterum longo rectoque tractu ad ripas Rheni amnis expanditur.
Section 13
Terra est frumenti praecipue ac pabuli ferax et amoena lucis inmanibus. Quidquid ex satis frigoris inpatiens est aegre nec ubique alit, salubris, et noxio genere animalium minime frequens.
Section 14
Gentes superbae superstitiosae aliquando etiam immanes adeo, ut hominem optimam et gratissimam diis victimam crederent. Manent vestigia feritatis iam abolitae, atque ut ab ultimis caedibus temperant, ita nihilominus, ubi devotos altaribus admovere, delibant. Habent tamen et facundiam suam magistrosque sapientiae druidas.
Section 15
Hi terrae mundique magnitudinem et formam, motus caeli ac siderum et quid dii velint, scire profitentur. Docent multa nobilissimos gentis clam et diu, vicenis annis, aut in specu aut in abditis saltibus. Vnum ex his quae praecipiunt in vulgus effluxit, videlicet ut forent ad bella meliores, aeternas esse animas vitamque alteram ad manes. Itaque cum mortuis cremant ac defodiunt apta viventibus. Olim negotiorum ratio etiam et exactio crediti deferebatur ad inferos, erantque qui se in rogos suorum velut una victuri libenter inmitterent. Regio quam incolunt omnis Comata Gallia. Populorum tria summa nomina sunt, terminanturque fluviis ingentibus. Namque a Pyrenaeo ad Garunnam Aquitani, ab eo ad Sequanam Celtae, inde ad Rhenum pertinent Belgae. Aquitanorum clarissimi sunt Ausci, Celtarum Haedui, Belgarum Treveri, urbesque opulentissimae in Treveris Augusta, in Haeduis Augustodunum, in Auscis Eliumberrum.
Section 16
Garunna ex Pyrenaeo monte delapsus, nisi cum hiberno imbre aut solutis nivibus intumuit, diu vadosus et vix navigabilis fertur. At ubi obvius oceani exaestuantis accessibus adauctus est, isdemque retro remeantibus suas illiusque aquas agit, aliquantum plenior, et quanto magis procedit eo latior fit, ad postremum magni freti similis; nec maiora tantum navigia tolerat, verum more etiam pelagi saevientis exsurgens iactat navigantes atrociter, utique si alio ventus alio unda praecipitat.
Section 17
In eo est insula Antros nomine, quam pendere et adtolli aquis increscentibus ideo incolae existimant, quia cum videantur editiora quis obiacet, ubi se fluctus implevit, illa operit, haec ut prius tantum ambitur, et quod ea quibus ante ripae collesque ne cernerentur obstiterant, tunc velut ex loco superiore perspicua sunt.
Section 18
Ab Garunnae exitu latus illud incipit terrae procurrentis in pelagus et ora Cantabricis adversa litoribus, aliis populis media eius habitantibus, ab Santonis ad Ossismos usque deflexa. Ab illis enim iterum ad septentriones frons litorum respicit, pertinetque ad ultimos Gallicarum gentium Morinos, nec portu quem Gesoriacum vocant quidquam notius habet.
Section 19
Rhenus Alpibus decidens prope a capite duos lacus efficit Venetum et Acronum. Mox diu solidus et certo alveo lapsus haud procul a mari huc et illuc dispergitur, sed ad sinistram amnis etiamnum et donec effluat Rhenus, ad dextram primo angustus et sui similis, post ripis longe ac late recedentibus iam non amnis sed ingens lacus ubi campos implevit Flevo dicitur, eiusdemque nominis insulam amplexus fit iterum artior iterumque fluvius emittitur.
Source Colophon
The Latin source was captured from The Latin Library on 2026-05-13 and inspected on disk at Tulku/Tools/celtic/sources/continental_batch_2026-05-13/pomponius_mela_chorographia_3_latin_library.html. The English translation is a New Tianmu Anglican Church Good Works Translation made from the Latin source.
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