Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/251

 GRECIAN SETTLEMENTS ON THE EUXINE. 235 well as of the Pontic Herakleia, at a short distance to the east oi the Thracian Bosphorus, by the Megarians, is assigned to the 30th Olympiad, or 658 u. c. j 1 and the succession of colonies founded by the enterprise of Milesian citizens on the western coast of the Euxine, seem to fall not very long after this date, at least within the following century. Istria, Tyras, and Olbia, or Borysthenes, were planted respectively near the mouths of the three great rivers Danube, Dniester, and Bog: Kruni, Odessus, Tomi, Kallatis, and Apollonia, were also planted on the south- western or Thracian coast, northward of the dangerous land of Salmydessus. so frequent in wrecks, but south of the Danube. 2 According to the turn of Grecian religious faith, the colonists took out with them the worship of the hero Achilles (from whom, perhaps, the ockist and some of the expatriating chiefs professed to be descended), which they established with great solemnity both in the various towns and on the small adjoining islands : and the earliest proof which we find of Scythia, as a territory fa- miliar to Grecian ideas and feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alkfeus (about B. c. GOO), wherein he addresses Achilles 3 as " sovereign of Scythia." There were, besides, several other Mi- lesian foundations on or near the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction with the Scythians, 1 Raoul Rochette, Histoire cles Colonies Grccques, torn, iii, ch. xiv, p. 297. The dates of these Grecian settlements near the Danube are very vague and untrustworthy. s Skymnus Chius, v, 730, Fragm. 2-25. 3 Alkteus, Fragm. 49, Bergk ; Eustath. ad Dionys. Pericg. 30G. 'A^M/leii, 5 raf (}'"f, Schneid.) 2/ci>$iKuf fie/Seif. Alkman, somewhat earlier, made mention of the Issedoncs (Alkm. Frag. 129, Bergk ; Steph. Byz. v, 'loar/dovef, he called them Assedones) and of the Rhipnean mountains (Fr. 80). In the old epic of Arktinus, the deceased Achilles is transported to an elysium in the TLEVKT/ v>/aor (see the argument of the ^Ethiopis in DOntzer's Collection of Epicc. Poet. Groec. p. 15), but it may well be doubted whether ZevKij v)/ffof in his poem was anything but a fancy, not yet localized upon the little island off the mouth of the Danube. For the early allusions to the Pontus Euxinus and its neighboring inhab- itants, found in the Greek poets, sec Ukert, Skythien, pp. 15-18, 78; though he puts the Ionian colonies in the Pontus nearly a century too early, in my judgment.