See PRÆTORIAN GUARDS: A. D. 312.
HERCYNIAN FOREST, The.
"The Hercynian Forest was known by report to Eratosthenes and
some other Greeks, under the name Orcynia. The width of this
forest, as Caesar says (B. G. vi. 25), was nine days' journey
to a man without any incumbrance. It commenced at the
territory of the Helvetii [ Switzerland] … and following the
straight course of the Dunube reached to the country of the
Daci and the Anartes. Here it turned to the left in different
directions from the river, and extended to the territory of
many nations. No man of western Germany could affirm that he
had reached the eastern termination of the forest even after a
journey of six days, nor that he had heard where it did
terminate. This is all that Caesar knew of this great forest.
… The nine days' journey, which measures the width of the
Hercynian forest, is the width from south to north; and if we
assume this width to be estimated at the western end of the
Hercynia, which part would be the best known, it would
correspond to the Schwarzwald and Odenwald, which extend on
the east side of the Rhine from the neighbourhood of Bâle
nearly as far north as Frankfort on the Main. The eastern
parts of the forest would extend on the north side of the
Danube along the Rauhe Alp and the Boehmerwald and still
farther east. Caesar mentions another German forest named
Bacenis (B. G. vi. 10), but all that he could say of it is
this: it was a forest of boundless extent, and it separated
the Suevi and the Cherusci; from which we may conclude that it
is represented by the Thüringerwald, Erzgebirge,
Riesengebirge, and the mountain ranges farther east, which
separate the basin of the Danube from the basins of the Oder
and the Vistula."
_G. Long,
Decline of the Roman Republic,
volume 4, chapter 2._