Between the Chersonesus and Samothrace, at a distance of about fifteen miles from them both, is the island of Halonnesos, and beyond it Gethone, Lamponia, and Alopeconnesus, not far from Cœlos, a port of the Chersonesus, besides some others of no importance. The following names may be also mentioned, as those of uninhabited islands in this gulf, of which we have been enabled to discover the names: — Desticos, Sarnos, Cyssiros, Charbrusa, Calathusa, Scylla, Draconon, Arconnesus, Diethusa, Scapos, Capheris, Mesate, Æantion, Pateronnesos, Pateria, Calate, Neriphus, and Polendos.
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CHAP. 24.
THE HELLESPONT. — THE LAKE MÆOTIS.
The fourth great Gulf of Europe begins at the Hellespont and ends at the entrance of the Mæotis. But in order that the several portions of the Euxine and its coasts may be the better known, we must briefly embrace the form of it in one general view. This vast sea, lying in front of Asia, is shut out from Europe by the projection of the shores of the Chersonesus, and effects an entrance into those countries by a narrow channel only, of the width, as already mentioned, of seven stadia, thus separating Europe from Asia. The entrance of these Straits is called the Hellespont; over it Xerxes, the king of the Persians, constructed a bridge of boats, across which he led his army. A narrow channel extends thence a distance of eighty-six miles, as far as Priapus, a city of Asia, at which Alexander the Great passed over. At this point the sea becomes wider, and after some distance again takes the form of a narrow strait. The wider part is known as the Propontis, the Straits as the Thracian Bosporus, being only half-a- mile in width, at the place where Darius, the father of Xerxes, led his troops across by a bridge. The extremity of this is distant from the Hellespont 239 miles.
We then come to the vast sea called the Euxine, which invades the land as it retreats afar, and the name of which was formerly Axenus. As the shores bend inwards, this sea with a vast sweep stretches far away, curving on both sides after the manner of a pair of horns, so much so that in shape it bears a distinct resemblance to a Scythian bow. In the middle of the curve it is joined by the mouth of Lake Mæotis, which is called the Cimmerian Bosporus, and is two miles and a half in width. Between the two Bospori, the Thracian and the Cimmerian, there is a distance in a straight line, of 500 miles, as Polybius informs us. We learn from Varro and most of the ancient writers, that the circumference of the Euxine is altogether 2150 miles; but to this number Cornelius Nepos adds 350 more; while Artemidorus makes it 2919 miles, Agrippa 2360, and Mucianus 2425. In a similar manner some writers have fixed the length of the European shores of this sea at 1478 miles, others again at 1172. M. Varro gives the measurement as follows: — from the mouth of the Euxine to Apollonia 187 miles, and to Callatis the same distance; thence to the mouth of the Ister 125 miles; to the Borysthenes 250; to Chersonesus, a town of the Heracleotæ, 325; to Panticapæum, by some called Bosporus, at the very extremity of the shores of Europe, 212 miles: the whole of which added together, makes 1337 miles. Agrippa makes the distance from Byzantium to the river Ister 560 miles, and from thence to Panticapæum, 635.
Lake Mæotis, which receives the river Tanais as it flows from the Riphæan Mountains, and forms the extreme boundary between Europe and Asia, is said to be 1406 miles in circumference; which however some writers state at only 1125. From the entrance of this lake to the mouth of the Tanais in a straight line is, it is generally agreed, a distance of 375 miles.
The inhabitants of the coasts of this fourth great Gulf of Europe, as far as Istropolis, have been already mentioned in our account of Thrace. Passing beyond that spot we come to the mouths of the Ister. This river rises in Germany in the heights of Mount Abnoba, opposite to Rauricum, a town of Gaul, and flows for a course of many miles beyond the Alps and through nations innumerable, under the name of the Danube. Adding immensely to the volume of its waters, at the spot where it first enters Illyricum, it assumes the name of Ister, and, after receiving sixty rivers, nearly one half of which are navigable, rolls into the Euxine by six vast channels. The first of these is the mouth of Peuce, close to which is the island of Peuce itself, from which the neighbouring channel takes its name; this mouth is swallowed up in a great swamp nineteen miles in length. From the same channel too, above Istropolis, a lake takes its rise, sixty-three miles in circuit; its name is Halmyris. The second mouth is called Naracu-Stoma; the third, which is near the island of Sarmatica, is called Calon-Stoma; the fourth is known as Pseudo-Stomon, with its island called Conopon-Diabasis; after which come the Boreon- Stoma and the Psilon-Stoma. These mouths are each of them so considerable, that for a distance of forty miles, it is said, the saltness of the sea is quite overpowered, and the water found to be fresh.
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CHAP. 25.
DACIA, SARMATIA.
On setting out from this spot, all the nations met with are Scythian in general, though various races have occupied the adjacent shores; at one spot the Getæ, by the Romans called Daci; at another the Sarmatæ, by the Greeks called Sauromatæ, and the Hamaxobii or Aorsi, a branch of them; then again the base-born Scythians and descendants of slaves, or else the Troglodytæ; and then, after them, the Alani and the Rhoxalani. The higher parts again, between the Danube and the Hercynian Forest, as far as the winter quarters of Pannonia at Carnuntum, and the borders of the Germans, are occupied by the Sarmatian lazyges, who inhabit the level country and the plains, while the Daci, whom they have driven as far as the river Pathissus, inhabit the mountain and forest ranges. On leaving the river Marus, whether it is that or the Duria, that separates them from the Suevi and the kingdom of Vannius, the Basternæ, and, after them, other tribes of the Germans occupy the opposite sides. Agrippa considers the whole of this region, from the Ister to the ocean, to be 2100 miles in length, and 4400 miles in breadth to the river Vistula in the deserts of Sarmatia. The name “Scythian” has extended, in every direction, even to the Sarmatæ and the Germans; but this ancient appellation is now only given to those who dwell beyond those nations, and live unknown to nearly all the rest of the world.
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CHAP. 26.
SCYTHIA.
Leaving the Ister, we come to the towns of Cremniscos, Æpolium, the mountains of Macrocremnus, and the famous river Tyra, which gives name to a town on the spot where Ophiusa is said formerly to have stood. The Tyragetæ inhabit a large island situate in this river, which is distant from Pseudostomos, a mouth of the Ister, so called, 130 miles. We then come to the Axiacæ, who take their name from the river Axiaces, and beyond them, the Crobyzi, the river Rhodes, the Sagarian Gulf, and the port of Ordesos. At a distance of 120 miles from the Tyra is the river Borysthenes, with a lake and a people of similar name, as also a town in the interior, at a distance of fifteen miles from the sea, the ancient names of which were Olbiopolis and Miletopolis. Again, on the shore is the port of the Achæi, and the island of Achilles, famous for the tomb there of that hero, and, at a distance of 125 miles from it, a peninsula which stretches forth in the shape of a sword, in an oblique direction, and is called, from having been his place of exercise, Dromos Achilleos: the length of this, according to Agrippa, is eighty miles. The Taurian Scythians and the Siraci occupy all this tract of country.
At this spot begins a well-wooded district, which has given to the sea that washes its banks the name of the Hylæan Sea; its inhabitants are called Enœchadlæ. Beyond them is the river Pantieapes, which separates the Nomades and the Georgi, and after it the Acesinus. Some authors say that the Panticapes flows into the Borysthenes below Olbia. Others, who are more correct, say that it is the Hypanis: so great is the mistake made by those who have placed it in Asia.
The sea runs in here and forms a large gulf, until there is only an intervening space of five miles between it and the Lake Mæotis, its margin forming the sea-line of extensive tracts of land, and numerous nations; it is known as the Gulf of Carcinites. Here we find the river Pacyris, the towns of Navarum and Carcine, and behind it Lake Buges,
which discharges itself by a channel into the sea. This Buges is separated by a ridge of rocks from Coretus, a gulf in the Lake Mæotis; it receives the rivers Buges, Gerrus, and Hypacaris, which approach it from regions that lie in various directions. For the Gerrus separates the Basilidæ from the Nomades, the Hypacaris flows through the Nomades and the Hylæi, by an artificial channel into Lake Buges, and by its natural one into the Gulf of Coretus: this region bears the name of Scythia Sindice.
At the river Carcinites, Scythia Taurica begins, which was once covered by the sea, where we now see level plains extended on every side: beyond this the land rises into mountains of great elevation. The peoples here are thirty in number, of which twenty-three dwell in the interior, six of the cities being inhabited by the Orgocyni, the Chara- ceni, the Lagyrani, the Tractari, the Arsilachitæ, and the Caliordi. The Scythotauri possess the range of mountains: on the west they are bounded by the Chersonesus, and on the east by the Scythian Satarchæ. On the shore, after we leave Carcinites, we find the following towns; Taphræ, situate on the very isthmus of the peninsula, and then Heraclea Chersonesus, to which its freedom has been granted by the Romans. This place was formerly called Megarice, being the most polished city throughout all these regions, in consequence of its strict preservation of Grecian manners and customs. A wall, five miles in length, surrounds it. Next to this comes the Promontory of Parthenium, the city of the Tauri, Placia, the port of the Symboli, and the Promontory of Criumetopon, opposite to Carambis, a promontory of Asia, which runs out in the middle of the Euxine, leaving an intervening space between them of 170 miles, which circumstance it is in especial that gives to this sea the form of a Scythian bow. After leaving this headland we come to a great number of harbours and lakes of the Tauri. The town of Theodosia is distant from Criumetopon 125 miles, and from Chersonesus 165. Beyond it there were, in former times, the towns of Cytæ, Zephyrium, Acræ, Nymphæum, and Dia. Panticapæum, a city of the Milesians, by far the strongest of them all, is still in existence; it lies at the entrance of the Bosporus, and is distant from Theodosia eighty-seven miles and a half, and from the town of Cimmerium, which lies on the other side of the Strait, as we have previously stated, two miles and a half. Such is the width here of the channel which separates Asia from Europe, and which too, from being generally quite frozen over, allows of a passage on foot. The width of the Cimmerian Bosporus is twelve miles and a half: it contains the towns of Hermisium, Myrmecium, and, in the interior of it, the island of Alopece. From the spot called Taphræ, at the extremity of the isthmus, to the mouth of the Bosporus, along the line of the Lake Mæotis, is a distance of 260 miles.
Leaving Taphræ, and going along the mainland, we find in the interior the Auchetæ, in whose country the Hypanis has its rise, as also the Neurœ, in whose district the Borysthenes has its source, the Geloni, the Thyssagetæ, the Budini, the Basilidæ, and the Agathyrsi with their azure-coloured hair. Above them are the Nomades, and then a nation of Anthropophagi or cannibals. On leaving Lake Buges, above the Lake Mæotis we come to the Sauromatæ and the Essedones. Along the coast, as far as the river Tanais, are the Mæotæ, from whom the lake derives its name, and the last of all, in the rear of them, the Arimaspi. We then come to the Riphæan mountains, and the region known by the name of Pterophoros, because of the perpetual fall of snow there, the flakes of which resemble feathers; a part of the world which has been condemned by the decree of nature to lie immersed in thick darkness; suited for nothing but the generation of cold, and to be the asylum of the chilling blasts of the northern winds.
Behind these mountains, and beyond the region of the northern winds, there dwells, if we choose to believe it, a happy race, known as the Hyperborei, a race that lives to an extreme old age, and which has been the subject of many marvellous stories. At this spot are supposed to be the hinges upon which the world revolves, and the extreme limits of the revolutions of the stars. Here we find light for six months together, given by the sun in one continuous day, who does not, however, as some ignorant persons have asserted, conceal himself from the vernal equinox to autumn. On the contrary, to these people there is but one rising of the sun for the year, and that at the summer solstice, and but one setting, at the winter solstice. This region, warmed by the rays of the sun, is of a most delightful temperature, and exempt from every noxious blast. The abodes of the natives are the woods and groves; the gods receive their worship singly and in groups, while all discord and every kind of sickness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them only when satiated with life; after a career of feasting, in an old age sated with every luxury, they leap from a certain rock there into the sea; and this they deem the most desirable mode of ending existence. Some writers have placed these people, not in Europe, but at the very verge of the shores of Asia, because we find there a people called the Attacori, who greatly resemble them and occupy a very similar locality. Other writers again have placed them midway between the two suns, at the spot where it sets to the Antipodes and rises to us; a thing however that cannot possibly be, in consequence of the vast tract of sea which there intervenes. Those writers who place them nowhere but under a day which lasts for six months, state that in the morning they sow, at mid-day they reap, at sunset they gather in the fruits of the trees, and during the night conceal themselves in caves. Nor are we at liberty to entertain any doubts as to the existence of this race; so many authors are there who assert that they were in the habit of sending their first-fruits to Delos to present them to Apollo, whom in especial they worship. Virgins used to carry them, who for many years were held in high veneration, and received the rites of hospitality from the nations that lay on the route; until at last, in consequence of repeated violations of good faith, the Hyperboreans came to the determination to deposit these offerings upon the frontiers of the people who adjoined them, and they in their turn were to convey them on to their neighbours, and so from one to the other, till they should have arrived at Delos. However, this custom, even, in time fell into disuse.
The length of Sarmatia, Scythia, and Taurica, and of the whole of the region which extends from the river Borysthenes, is, according to Agrippa, 980 miles, and its breadth 717. I am of opinion, however, that in this part of the earth all estimates of measurement are exceedingly doubtful.
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CHAP. 27.
THE ISLANDS OF THE EUXINE. THE ISLANDS OF THE NORTHERN OCEAN.
But now, in conformity with the plan which I originally proposed, the remaining portions of this gulf must be described. As for its seas, we have already made mention of them.
(13.) The Hellespont has no islands belonging to Europe that are worthy of mention. In the Euxine there are, at a distance of a mile and a half from the European shore, and of fourteen from the mouth of the Strait, the two Cyanæan islands, by some called the Symplegades, and stated in fabulous story to have run the one against the other; the reason being the circumstance that they are separated by so short an interval, that while to those who enter the Euxine opposite to them they appear to be two distinct islands, but if viewed in a somewhat oblique direction they have the appearance of becoming gradually united into one. On this side of the Ister there is the single island of the Apolloniates, eighty miles from the Thracian Bosporus; it was from this place that M. Lucullus brought the Capitoline Apollo. Those islands which are to be found between the mouths of the Ister we have already mentioned. Before the Borysthenes is Achillea previously referred to, known also by the names of Leuce and Macaron. Researches which have been made at the present day place this island at a distance of 140 miles from the Borysthenes, of 120 from Tyra, and of fifty from the island of Peuce. It is about ten miles in circumference. The remaining islands in the Gulf of Carcinites are Cephalonnesos, Rhosphodusa, and Macra. Before we leave the Euxine, we must not omit to notice the opinion expressed by many writers that all the interior seas take their rise in this one as the principal source, and not at the Straits of Gades. The reason they give for this supposition is not an imp
robable one — the fact that the tide is always running out of the Euxine and that there is never any ebb.
We must now leave the Euxine to describe the outer portions of Europe. After passing the Riphæan mountains we have now to follow the shores of the Northern Ocean on the left, until we arrive at Gades. In this direction a great number of islands are said to exist that have no name; among which there is one which lies opposite to Scythia, mentioned under the name of Raunonia, and said to be at a distance of the day’s sail from the mainland; and upon which, according to Timæus, amber is thrown up by the waves in the spring season. As to the remaining parts of these shores, they are only known from reports of doubtful authority. With reference to the Septentrional or Northern Ocean; Hecatæus calls it, after we have passed the mouth of the river Parapanisus, where it washes the Scythian shores, the Amalchian sea, the word ‘Amalchian’ signifying in the language of these races, frozen. Philemon again says that it is called Morimarusa or the “Dead Sea” by the Cimbri, as far as the Promontory of Rubeas, beyond which it has the name of the Cronian Sea. Xenophon of Lampsacus tells us that at a distance of three days’ sail from the shores of Scythia, there is an island of immense size called Baltia, which by Pytheas is called Basilia. Some islands called Oönæ are said to be here, the inhabitants of which live on the eggs of birds and oats; and others again upon which human beings are produced with the feet of horses, thence called Hippopodes. Some other islands are also mentioned as those of the Panotii, the people of which have ears of such extraordinary size as to cover the rest of the body, which is otherwise left naked.
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