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In Le liber censuum de l'église romaine, Volume 6, pages 96-97, at the very end of the first and start of the latter, it says:

Illyricum Provinces

As I understand them, from all of what I've read and seen up until now, their distribution is as follows:

Locations

But there's one which I can't find anyone neither discussing, nor writing/saying "we don't know where it is" - i.e. Hermodontus.

So where is it?

Do we have any books or documents where it is mentioned apart from here?
If I would venture a guess, I would first discard Thrace, as it is given a section of its own right after Illyricum. And I think Dacia and Scythia are big enough to cover most of Romania.
Could it be today's Bosnia? I don't know if the Romans ever got all the way up to Slovakia, and I don't know if that counted as part of Illyricum.
The name sounds composed of "dont" from the suffix of "mastodon", which I guess means "tooth", and then the prefix sounds like the prefix from "hermaphrodite" i.e. "ἕρμα" = "stone heap", so it sounds like it would translate to "Stoneheap Teeth"? Sounds like it would refer to mountains, maybe the Dinaric Alps. Or maybe some rocky places in the Boeotia/Athens region.

I came across some old Spanish book (Graellsia - Volumes 29-31 - Page 82) mentioning the word "Ahermodontus" for some botanical species or insect as well, saying something like "... and this species is related to the one in Albania"(I think), but I can't read Spanish and I don't have access to the whole context.

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  • Your final paragraph is about a dung beetle and says that the genus name Ahermodontus has no systematic value. The species bischoffi was spotted in Albania near Orikum (historically Oricum). I doubt this helps
    – Henry
    Commented Jun 9, 2022 at 14:39

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There's an important hint in the footnote at the end of p. 96 - it tells that Albinus (Albinus pauperis scolaris / Albinus (cardinal)) included the list of Roman provinces by Polemius Silvius at that point of the Liber Censuum - in other words, you've cited the citation of an much older source. I'm not an expert in that matter, but for example, Mommsen in MGH Auct. ant. 9, 539 has "Haemimontus" instead of Hermodontus in his edition of Polemius.

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  • 5
    Yes, I found it just now as well. In the appendix of the book "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon, page 552, it says in a footnote there: "Polemius has put the right names Haemimontus and Scythia under the wrong diocese, Illyricum; in this place he substitutes Thracia Secunda and Scythia inferior. The list used by Polemius seems to have included the dioceses of Dacia, Macedonia and Illyricum under the head Illyricum." - I thought the inclusion of Scythia was a bit strange, and now we know it is for sure. Anyway, thanks for the reply!
    – user326964
    Commented Jun 8, 2022 at 22:18

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