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1 Placed by Forbiger near Lake Burmasaka, or near Islama.
2 The Dniester. The mountains of Macrocremnus, or the "Great Heights," seem not to have been identified.
3 According to Hardouin, the modern name of this island is Tandra.
4 Now called the Teligul, east of the Tyra or Dniester.
5 Now called Sasik Beregen, according to Brotier.
6 The modern Gulf of Berezen, according to Brotier.
7 Probably the modern Okzakow.
8 The modern Dnieper. It also retains its ancient name of Borysthenes.
9 We learn from Strabo that the name of this town was Olbia, and that from being founded by the Milesians, it received the name of Miletopolis. According to Brotier, the modern Zapurouski occupies its site, between the mouths of the river Buzuluk.
10 This was adjacent to the strip of land called "Dromos Achilleos," or the 'race-course of Achilles.' It is identified by geographers with the little island of Zmievoi or Oulan Adassi, the 'Serpents Island.' It was said that it was to this spot that Thetis transported the body of Achilles. By some it was made the abode of the shades of the blest, where Achilles and other heroes of fable were the judges of the dead.
11 A narrow strip of land N.W. of the Crimea and south of the mouth of the Dnieper, running nearly due west and cast. It is now divided into two parts called Kosa Tendra and Kosa Djarilgatch. Achilles was said to have instituted games here.
12 According to Hardouin, the Siraci occupied a portion of the present Podolia and Ukraine, and the Tauri the modern Bessarabia.
13 According to Herodotus, this region, called Hylæa, lay to the east of the Borysthenes. It seems uncertain whether there are now any traces of this ancient woodland; some of the old maps however give the name of the "Black Forest" to this district. From the statements of modern travellers, the woody country does not commence till the river Don has been reached. The district of Hylæa has been identified by geographers with the great plain of Janboylouk in the steppe of the Nogai.
14 For Enœchadlæ, Hardouin suggests that we should read Inde Hylœ, "hence the inhabitants are called by the name of Hylæi."
15 The Panticapes is usually identified with the modern Somara, but perhaps without sufficient grounds. It is more probably the Kouskawoda.
16 The Nomades or wandering, from the Georgi or agricultural Scythians.
17 The Acesinus does not appear to have been identified by modern geographers.
18 Above called Olbiopolis or Miletopolis.
19 The Bog or Bong. Flowing parallel with the Borysthenes or Dnieper, it discharged itself into the Euxine at the town of Olbia, at no great distance from the mouth of the Borysthenes.
20 Probably meaning the mouth or point at which the river discharges itself into the sea.
21 The modern Gulf of Negropoli or Perekop, on the west side of the Chersonesus Taurica or Crimea.
22 Forming the present isthmus of Perekop, which divides the Sea of Perekop from the Sea of Azof.
23 Called by Herodotus Hypacyris, and by later writers Carcinites. It is generally supposed to be the same as the small stream now known as the Kalantchak.
24 Hardouin says that the city of Carcine has still retained its name, but changed its site. More modern geographers however are of opinion that nothing can be determined with certainty as to its site. Of the site also of Navarum nothing seems to be known.
25 Or Buces or Byce. This is really a gulf, almost enclosed, at the end of the Sea of Azof. Strabo gives a more full description of it under the name of the Sapra Limnè "the Putrid Lake," by which name it is still called, in Russian, Sibaché or Sivaché Moré. It is a vast lagoon, covered with water when an east wind blows the water of the Sea of Azof into it, but at other times a tract of slime and mud, sending forth pestilential vapours.
26 It is rather a ridge of sand, that almost separates it from the waters of the gulf.
27 This river has not been identified by modern geographers.
28 According to Herodotus the Gerrhus or Gerrus fell into the Hypacaris; which must be understood to be, not the Kalantchak, but the Outlook. It is probably now represented by the Moloschnijawoda, which forms a shallow lake or marsh at its mouth.
29 It is most probable that the Pacyris, mentioned above, the Hypacaris, and the Carcinites, were various names for the same river, generally supposed, as stated above, to be the small stream of Kalantchak.
30 Now the Crimea.
31 It does not appear that the site of any of these cities has been identified. Charax was a general name for a fortified town.
32 Mentioned again by Pliny in B. vi. c. 7. Solinus says that in order to repel avarice, the Satarchæ prohibited the use of gold and silver.
33 On the site of the modern Perekop, more commonly called Orkapi.
34 Or Chersonesus of the Heracleans. The town of Kosleve or Eupatoria is supposed to stand on its site.
35 After the conquest of Mithridates, when the whole of these regions fell into the hands of the Romans.
36 The modern Felenk-burun. So called from the Parthenos or Virgin Diana or Artemis, whose temple stood on its heights, in which human sacrifices were offered to the goddess.
37 Supposed to be the same as the now-famed port of Balaklava.
38 The modern Aia-burun, the great southern headland of the Crimea. According to Plutarch, it was called by the natives Brixaba, which, like the name Criumetopon, meant the "Rain's Head."
39 Now Kerempi, a promontory of Paphlagonia in Asia Minor. Strabo considers this promontory and that of Criumetopon as dividing the Euxine into two seas.
40 According to Strabo, the sea-line of the Tauric Chersonesus, after leaving the port of the Symboli, extended 125 miles, as far as Theodosia. Pliny would here seem to make it rather greater.
41 The modern Kaffa occupies its site. The sites of many of the places here mentioned appear not to be known at the present day.
42 The modern Kertsch, situate on a hill at the very mouth of the Cimmerian Bosporus, or Straits of Enikale or Kaffa, opposite the town of Phanagoria in Asia.
43 In C. 24 of the present Book. Clark identifies the town of Cimmerium with the modern Temruk, Forbiger with Eskikrimm. It is again mentioned in B. vi. c. 2.
44 He alludes here, not to the Strait so called, but to the Peninsula bordering upon it, upon which the modern town of Kertsch is situate, and which projects from the larger Peninsula of the Crimea, as a sort of excrescence on its eastern side.
45 Probably Hermes or Mercury was its tutelar divinity: its site appears to be unknown.
46 Probably meaning the Straits or passage connecting the Lake Mæotis with the Euxine. The fertile district of the Cimmerian Bosporus was at one time the granary of Greece, especially Athens, which imported thence annually 400,000 medimni of corn.
47 A town so called on the Isthmus of Perekop, from a τάφρος or trench, which was cut across the isthmus at this point.
48 Lomonossov, in his History of Russia, says that these people were the same as the Sclavoni: but that one meaning of the name 'Slavane' being "a boaster," the Greeks gave them the corresponding appellation of Auchetæ, from the word αὐχὴ, which signifies "boasting."
49 Of the Geloni, called by Virgil "picti," or "painted," nothing certain seems to be known: they are associated by Herodotus with the Budini, supposed to belong to the Slavic family by Schafarik. In B. iv. c. 108,109, of his History, Herodotus gives a very particular account of the Budini, who had a city built entirely of wood, the name of which was Gelonus. The same author also assigns to the Geloni a Greek origin.
50 The Agathyrsi are placed by Herodotus near the upper course of the river Maris, in the S.E. of Dacia or the modern Transylvania. Pliny however seems here to assign them a different locality.
51 Also called "Assedones" and "Issedones." It has been suggested by modern geographers that their locality must be assigned to the east of Ichim, on the steppe of the central horde of the Kirghiz, and that of the Arimaspi on the northern declivity of the chain of the Altaï.
52 Now the Don.
53 Most probably these mountains were a western branch of the Ura- lian chain.
54 From the Greek πτεροφορὸς, "wing-bearing" or "feather-bearing."
55 This legendary race was said to dwell in the regions beyond Boreas, or the northern wind, which issued from the Riphæan mountains, the name of which was derived from ριπαὶ or "hurricanes "issuing from a cavern, and which these heights warded off from the Hyperboreans and sent to more southern nations. Hence they never felt the northern blasts, and enjoyed a life of supreme happiness and undisturbed repose. "Here," says Humboldt, "are the first views of a natural science which explains the distribution of heat and the difference of climates by local causes—by the direction of the winds—the proximity of the sun, and the action of a moist or saline principle."—Asie Ceatrale, vol. i.
56 Pindar says, in the "Pytha," x. 56, "The Muse is no stranger to their manners. The dances of girls and the sweet melody of the lyre and pipe resound on every side, and wreathing their locks with the glistening bay, they feast joyously. For this sacred race there is no doom of sickness or of disease; but they live apart from toil and battles, undisturbed by the exacting Nemesis."
57 Hardouin remarks that Pomponius Mela, who asserts that the sun rises here at the vernal and sets at the autumnal equinox, is right in his position, and that Pliny is incorrect in his assertion. The same commentator thinks that Pliny can have hardly intended to censure Mela, to whose learning he had been so much indebted for his geographical information, by applying to him the epithet "imperitus," 'ignorant' or 'unskilled'; he therefore suggests that the proper reading here is, "ut non imperiti dixere," "as some by no means ignorant persons have asserted."
58 The Attacori are also mentioned in B. vi. c. 20.
59 Sillig omits the word "non" here, in which case the reading would be, "Those writers who place them anywhere but, &c.;" it is difficult to see with what meaning.
60 Herodotus, B. iv., states to this effect, and after him, Pomponius Mela, B. iii. c. 5.
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- Cross-references to this page
(11):
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), AGATHYRSI
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CREMNISCI
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CRITHO´TE
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), HYPERBORE´I
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), ISSE´DONES
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), MAEO´TAE
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), MYRME´CIUM
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), NYMPHAEA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), O´LBIA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), PALA´CIUM
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), SAGARIS
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