Chapter XXVII: (pp. 396-411)

The identity of Ireland with the _Insula Hyperboreorum_ is deduced from a description of the latter, copied by Diodorus Siculus from the writings of Hecatæus and from a compendium by Marcianus Herocleotes of the works of Artemidorus. Both Hecatæus and Artemidorus lived before the Christian era, and an allusion in the latter author to certain “round temples,” of which the officiating priests were called _Boreades_, that existed in “_Juvernia_, a British isle, bounded on the north by the ocean called the _Hyperborean_, but on the east by the ocean called the _Hibernian_,” coupled with the fact that (with the exception of those at Brechin and Abernethy) no remains of round temples are found in any of the British Isles save Ireland,[28] goes far to prove the identity in question, also the pre-Christian antiquity of the round towers, together with the existence of an exceptional, and therefore by natural inference an _imported_, civilisation in that island. The latter inference is strengthened by continually-recurring traces of the great proficiency of its inhabitants in the fine, or useful, arts at an era when the adjacent islands were still plunged in barbarism.