previous next
[9]

As for the Paphlagonians, they are bounded on the east by the Halys River, which, according to Herodotus, “flows from the south between the Syrians and the Paphlagonians and empties into the Euxine Sea, as it is called;”1by "Syrians," however, he means the "Cappadocians," and in fact they are still today called "White Syrians," while those outside the Taurus are called "Syrians." As compared with those this side the Taurus, those outside have a tanned complexion, while those this side do not, and for this reason received the appellation "white." And Pindar says that the Amazons“swayed a 'Syrian' army that reached afar with their spears,
” thus clearly indicating that their abode was in Themiscyra. Themiscyra is in the territory of the Amiseni; and this territory belongs to the White Syrians, who live in the country next after the Halys River. On the east, then, the Paphlagonians are bounded by the Halys River; on the south by Phrygians and the Galatians who settled among them; on the west by the Bithynians and the Mariandyni (for the race of the Cauconians has everywhere been destroyed), and on the north by the Euxine. Now this country was divided into two parts, the interior and the part on the sea, each stretching from the Halys River to Bithynia; and Eupator not only held the coast as far as Heracleia, but also took the nearest part of the interior,2 certain portions of which extended across the Halys (and the boundary of the Pontic Province has been marked off by the Romans as far as this).3 The remaining parts of the interior, however, were subject to potentates, even after the overthrow of Mithridates. Now as for the Paphlagonians in the interior, I mean those not subject to Mithridates, I shall discuss them later,4 but at present I propose to describe the country which was subject to him, called the Pontus.

1 Hdt. 1.6

2 i.e., interior of Paphlagonia.

3 Cp. J. G. C. Anderson in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, p. 6.

4 12. 3. 41-42.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus English (H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., 1903)
load focus Greek (1877)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: