Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/133

 AMABI LACUS. H» CasfOZL It appean to be the Sejiilrvdj or Kml Ositm as it is otherwise called. As Ptolemy places the Amardi touimI the south coast of the Caspian and extending into the interior, wo maj suppose that tbej were ooce at least situated on and •boot thb river. [G. L.] AMAia LACUS (oi waepai Xlfivai, Strab. zvii. ])k804; Phn. Ti. 29. s. 33), were a cluster of salt- b^TCKitt east of the Delta, between the city of He- m^nhs mnd thedeeertof Etham — the modemScheib. Tht Bitter Lakes had a slight inclination from N. to E^ and their genend outline resembled the leaf of the sjcamore. Until the reign of Ptolemy Phila- delphos (b^ a 285 — 247), they were the termination cf the royal canal, by which the native mtmarchs and the Penian kings attempted, but inefiectually, to join the Pelosiac branch of the KHe with the Sed Sea. Philadelphus carried the canal through these lagoons to the city of ArsinoS. The mineral quaStaes of these lakes woe nearly destroyed by the iatrodoctiaD of the Nile-water. A temple of Se- npis stood ca the northern extremity of the Bitter Lakes. [W. B. D.] AMABYNTHUS CAfjutpvpSos : Eth. 'Afiapwetos, 7 stadia from Eretria, to which it belonged. It pos- sessed a celebrated temple of Artemis, who was hence called Amarynthia or Amarysia, and in whose boooar there was a festival of this name celebrated, both in Enhoea and Attica. (Strab. p. 448 ; Paus. L31. § 5 ; Lir. xxxv. 38 ; StepLB. «.9.; JHcLof AmL arL AwuaryiUkicL) AMASE'NUS, a small river of Latium, still called the Awtfoseno^ which rises in the Volsdan mountains above Privernum, and descends from thence to the Pontine manhes, through which it finds its way to the sea, between Tanadna and the Circeian pro- moBtofy. Before its course was artificially regdated it was, together with its omfluent the Ufens, one of the chief agents in the Ibnnatian of those marshes. Its name is not found in Pliny or Strabo, but is re- peatedly mentioned by Virgil (Aen. vii. 684, xi547). ^errioB, in his note (m the former passage, errone- oQsiy places it near Anagnia, evidently misled by the expreasioiK of Virgil. Vibius Sequester (p. 3) cor- rectly says " Anuuenus Privernatium." [E. H. B.] AMA'SIA ('A/ioacia, 'Afuuria : £th. 'Afuurws: AmaMj Amaiiak, or Amdnjfah% a town of Pon- toa, on the river Iris, or YetAU Ermak. The or^in of the city is unknown. It was at one time the residence of the princes of Pontus, and after- words mppean to have been a free dty under the n^wnmnm till thc timo of Domitian. It is said that aO the c«ins to the time of IkHnitian have only the epigTBph Amaseia or Amasia, but that from this time they bear the effigy and the name of a Boman emperor. The coins from the tune of Trajan bear the titie Metropolis, and it appears to have been the daef dty of Pontos. Amasia was the birthplace of the geographer Stnbo, who describes it in the following words (p. 561): "■ our dty lies in a deep and extensive gorge, thraogh which the river Iris flows; and it is wonder- &0y constructed both by art and by nature, being n^pfiri to serve the purpose both of a dty and of a fiarL For there is a lofty rock, steep on all ■des, and descending abruptly to the river; diis rock has ita wall in one direction on the brink of the rrrer, at that part where the city is connected with it; and in the other direction, the wall runs up the hHk OQ each side to the hdghts; and the heights AMASIA. 117 {Kopwpat) are two, naturally connected with one another, very strongly fortified by towers ; and within this enclosure are the palace and the tombs of the kings; but the heights have a very narrow neck, the ascent to which is an altitude of 5 or 6 stadia on each side as one goes up from the bank of the river and the suburbs; and from the neck to the hdghts there remains another ascent of a stadium, steep and capable of resisting any attack; the rock also contains (fx*^ i^ot intC) within it water-cis- terns (^Nipfia) which an enemy cannot get possession of (iycupaiptrttj the true reading, not &ya4>«peTcu), there being two galleries cut, one leading to the river, and the other to the neck ; there are bridges over the river, one from the dty to the suburb, and another from the suburb to the neighbouring country, for at the point where this bridge is the mountain terminates, which lies above the rock." This ex- tract presents several difikulties. Groskurd, in his (rerman version, mistakes the sense of two passages (ii. p. 499). Amasia has been often visited by Europeans, but the best description is by Hamilton (^Reiearchts in Asia Minor, ^. voL L p. 366), who gives a view of the place. He expliuns the remark of Strabo about the 5 or 6 stadia to mean ''the length of the road by which alone the summit can be reached," for owing to the steepness of the Acropolis it is necessary to ascend by a circuitous route. And this is clearly the meaning of Strabo, if we keep closely to his text. Hamilton errmeously follows Cramer (Asia Minor, voL L p. 302) in giving the version, " the summits have on each side a very narrow necJc of land f for the words " on each side ^ refer to the ascent to the " neck," as Groskurd correctly understands it. Ha- milton found two '* Hellenic towers of beautiful con- struction " on the hdghts, which he considers to be the Kopv^ of Strabo. But the greater part of the walls now standing are Byzantine or Turkish. In- deed we leam from Procopius (jde Aedif. iii. 7), that Justinian repaired this place. Hamilton ob- serves: " the Kopwfxxl were not, as I at first ima- gined, two distinct points connected by a narrow intermediate ridge, but one only, from which two narrow ridges extend, one to the north, and the other to the east, which last terminates abruptly close to the river." But Strabo dearly means two Kopvipai, and he adds that they are naturally united (avfjupvtis). It is true that he does not say that the neck unites them. This neck is eridently a narrow ridge of steep ascent along which a man must pass to reach the Kopv^ai, The Mpcta were cisterns to which there was ac- cess by galleries {avprfyts). Hamilton explored a passage, cut in the rock, down which he descended about 300 feet, and found a " small pool of clear cold water." The wall round this pool, which ap- peared to have been originally much deeper, was of Hellenic masonry, which he also observed in soma parts of the descent. This appears to be one of the galleries mentioned by Strabo. The other gallery was cut to the neck, says Strabo, but he does not fAy from where. We may ocmclude, however, that it was cut from the Kopvifiai to the ridge, and that the other was a continuation which led down to the well. Hamilton says : " there seem to have been two of these covered passages or galleries at Amasia, one of which led from the KopwfHxi or stinunits in an easterly direction to the ridge, and the other from the ri^go into the rocky hill in a northerly direction. The fonncr, however, is not excavated in the rock, I 3
 * Attap^aws% a town upon the coast of Euboea, only