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H. gives further evidence for Cimmerians in Scythia, partly archaeological, partly that of names: it is curious that ‘Crimea’ has survived all the other names for the land.

The τείχεα are perhaps the still surviving dyke on the isthmus of Taman, i. e. on the east side of the straits. Strabo (494) says there was once a town, Κιμμερικόν, ‘closing the isthmus with a ditch and a dyke.’ The ‘straits’ are those of Jenikale, the narrowest part of the Cimmerian Bosporus, leading into the Sea of Azov.


The connexion of the Cimmerians and Sinope is well authenticated, and seems to have been early. In the poem that is attributed to Scymnus of Chios (apparently written circ. 100 B. C.) they are said (l. 948) to have ‘killed Habron the Milesian’ there. The main Cimmerian raid in the seventh century is mentioned later (l. 952). According to the chronologers, Trapezus, the daughter state of Sinope, was founded 756 B.C.; but Busolt (i. 465-6) thinks the Milesian colonization of the Black Sea belongs to the seventh century, although they had factories there already in the eighth. He argues with reason that the Greek towns on the Black Sea must be later than the foundation of Byzantium (657 B.C.). The ‘second’ colonization of Sinope was dated 630. We may conclude that a band of Cimmerians occupied Sinope in the latter half of the eighth century; the main body of the nation reached Asia Minor half a century later.

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