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The Hercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched eastward from the Rhine River across southern Germany and formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of antiquity. The ancient sources〔Aristotle, ''Meteorologia'' i.13.20; Caesar, vi.25; Tacitus, ''Germania'' 28 and 30 and ''Annales'' ii.45; Pliny, (as "''Hercynius jugum''", ) iv.25, as "''Hercynius saltus''" x.67; Livy, v.24; Ptolemy, ii.11.5; Strabo, iv.6.9., vii.1.3, 5, etc.〕 are equivocal about how far east it extended. All agree that the Black Forest, which extended east from the Rhine valley, formed the western side of the Hercynian. Across the Rhine to the west extended the ''Silva Carbonaria'' and the forest of the Ardennes. All these old-growth forests of antiquity represented the original post-glacial temperate broadleaf forest ecosystem of Europe. Relict tracts of this once-continuous forest exist with many local names: the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest"), Odenwald, Spessart Rhön, Thüringerwald (Thuringian Forest), Harz, Rauhe Alb, Steigerwald, Fichtelgebirge, Erzgebirge, Riesengebirge, the Bohemian Forest, and the forested Carpathians.〔Walter Woodburn Hyde noted these designations in, "The Curious Animals of the Hercynian Forest" ''The Classical Journal'' ''13''.4 (January 1918:231-245) p. 231. ==Etymology== (詳細はProto-Celtic derivation, from ''perkuniā'', later ''erkunia''. Julius Pokorny〔Pokorny, ''Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch'' (''Indo-European Etymological Dictionary'') 1959, 1059:822-23.〕 lists Hercynian as being derived from *' "oak" (compare ''quercus''). He further identifies the name as Celtic. Proto-Celtic regularly loses initial ' preceding a vowel, hence ''Hercynia '' (the ''H-'' being prothetic in Latin, the Latin ''y'' signifying a borrowing from Greek). The corresponding Germanic forms have an ''f-'' by Grimm's Law: Old English ''firgen'' = "mountains", Gothic ''faírguni'' = "mountain range".〔Winfred Philipp Lehmann, Helen-Jo J. Hewitt, Sigmund Feist, ''A Gothic Etymological Dictionary'', ''s.v.'' "fairguni",〕 The assimilated ' would be regular in Italo-Celtic, and Pokorny associates the Celtiberian ethnonym ''Querquerni'', found in Hispania in Galicia.〔''Quarqueni'', a Venetic ethnicon, appears in M.S. Beeler, ''The Venetic Language'' (University of California Publications in Linguistics 4) 1949.〕 It is possible that the name of the Harz Mountains in Germany is derived from Hercynian, as ''Harz'' is a Middle High German word meaning "mountain forest." Also, the Old High German name ''Fergunna'' apparently refers to the Erzgebirge and ''Virgundia'' (cf. modern Virngrund forest) to a range between Ansbach and Ellwangen. The name of Pforzheim (''Porta Hercyniae'') in southwest Germany and the tiny village of Hercingen〔Noted by Hyde 1918:232.〕 are also derived from "Hercynian". Hercyne was the classical name (modern Libadia) of a small rapid stream in Boeotia that issued from two springs near Lebadea, modern Livadeia, and emptied into Lake Copais.〔John Lemprière, Lorenzo Da Ponte, John David Ogilby, ''Bibliotheca classica, or a dictionary of all the principal names and terms relating to the Geography, Topography, History, Literature...'', (1838) ''s.v.'' "Hercyne". 〕 It did not have any geographical association with the Hercynian Forest, so, logically, it may have been a parallel derivation from similar etymology. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hercynian Forest」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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