Oestriminis
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Oestriminis".

In Latin poetry Oestreminis ("Extreme West") was a name given to the territory of what is today modern Portugal, comparable to Finis terrae, the "end of the earth" from a Mediterranean perspective. Its inhabitants were named Oestrimni from their location.

The fourth century CE Roman poet on geographical subjects, Rufus Avienus Festus, in Ora Maritima ("Seacoasts"), a poem inspired by a much earlier Greek mariners' periplus, records that Oestriminis was peopled by the Oestrimni, a people that had lived there for a long time, who had to run away from their native lands after an invasion of serpents. His fanciful account has no archeological or historical application, but the poetical name has sometimes been ambitiously applied to popularized accounts of the Paleolithic inhabitants of Atlantic Iberia.

The expulsion of the Oestrimni, from Ora Maritima:

The "serpent people" of the semi-mythical Ophiussa in the far west are noted in ancient Greek sources.

Notes

1. ^ The point being that ὄφις (ophis) means "snake" in Greek.

See also

• Lusitania
• Lusitanian mythology
• History of Portugal
• Timeline of Portuguese history - Pre-Roman Western Iberia (Before the 3rd century BC)

External links

• Ora Maritima (in Latin)
• Culto a la serpiente en el mundo Antiguo Serpent cult in the Ancient Word (in Spanish)
• Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)

This Portugal-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This article about ethnicity or ethnology is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This European history-related article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.