Orcades
Ὀρκάδες νῆσοι
Orcades (Ὀρκάδες νῆσοι, Ptol. 2.3.31), a group of small islands lying off the northern extremity of Britannia Barbara. According to Ptolemy (l.c.) and Mela (3.6.7) they were 30 in number; Pliny (4.16. s. 30) reckons them at 40; Orosius (1.2) at 33, of which 20 were inhabited and 13 uninhabited. This last account agrees very nearly, with that of Jornandes (B. Get. 1), who makes them 34 in number. See also Tacitus (Agric. 10) and the Itinerary (p. 508). The modern Orkney and Shetland Islands.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.