(in anc. geogr.) now the Elbe, which divided ancient Germany in the middle, and was the boundary of the ancient geography of Germany, so far as that country was known to the Romans: all beyond they owned to be uncertain, no Roman except Drusus and Tiberius having penetrated so far as the Elbe. In the year of the building of the city 744, or about six years before Christ, Domitius Ahenobarbus, crossing the river with a few, merited the ornaments of a triumph; so glorious was it reckoned at Rome to have attempted the passage. In the following age, however, the river that before occupied the middle of ancient Germany, became its boundary to the north, from the irruptions of the Sarmate, who possessed themselves of the Transalpin Germany. The Elbe rises in the borders of Silicia, out of the Rifenberg, runs through Bohemia, Misnia, Upper Saxony, Anhalt, Magdeburg, Brandenburg, Danneberg, Launenburg, Holstein, and after being swelled by many other rivers, and passing by Hamburg and Glückstadt, falls into the German, or North sea, to both which places the river is navigable by large vessels.