Pseudo-Plutarch, De fluviis
Goodwin, Ed.

VI. ARAR.

ARAR is a river in Gallia Celtica, deriving the name from its being mixed with the river Rhone. For it falls into the Rhone within the country of the Allobroges. It was formerly called Brigulus, but afterwards changed its name upon this occasion. Arar, as he was a hunting, entering into the wood, and there finding his brother Celtiber torn in pieces by the wild beasts, mortally wounded himself for grief, and fell into the river Brigulus; which from that accident was afterwards called by his own name Arar.

In this river there breeds a certain large fish, which by the natives is called Clupaea. This fish during the increase of the moon is white; but all the while the moon is in the wane, it is altogether black; and when it grows over bulky, it is (as it were) stabbed by its own fins. In the head of it is found a stone like a corn of salt, which, being [p. 485] applied to the left parts of the body when the moon is in the wane, cures quartan agues;—as Callisthenes the Sybarite tells us in the Thirteenth Book of Gallic Relations, from whom Timagenes the Syrian borrowed his argument.

Near to this river stands a mountain called Lugdunum, which changed its name upon this occasion. When Momorus and Atepomarus were dethroned by Seseroneus, in pursuance of the oracle's command they designed to build a city upon the top of the hill. But when they had laid the foundations, great numbers of crows with their wings expanded covered all the neighboring trees. Upon which Momorus, being a person well skilled in augury, called the city Lugdunum. For lugdon in their language signifies a crow, and dunum ¹ any spacious hill.—This Clitophon reports, in his Thirteenth Book of the Building of Cities.