Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/264

 243 HISTORY OF GREECE. nance to the /oungest brother of the three, 1 tlough in other ro spects, the names and incidents of the two are altogether different. The Scythians call themselves Skoloti. Such material differences, in the various accounts given to He- rodotus of the Scythian and Cimmerian invasions of Asia, are by no means wonderful, seeing that nearly two centuries had elapsed between that event and his visit to the Pontus. That the Cim- merians perhaps the northernmost portion of the great Thra- cian name, and conterminous with the Geto3 on the Danube were the previous tenants of much of the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mteotis, and that they were expelled in the seventh century B. C., by the Scythians, we may follow Herodo- tus in believing ; but Niebuhr has shown that there is great in- trinsic improbability in his narrative of the march of the Cimme- rians into Asia Minor, and in the pursuit of these fugitives by the Scythians. That the latter would pursue at all, when an ex- tensive territory was abandoned to them without resistance, is hardly supposable : that they should pursue and mistake their way, is still more difficult to believe : nor can we overlook the great difficulties of the road and the Caucasian passes, in the route ascribed to the Cimmerians. 2 Niebuhr supposes the latter 1 Herodot. iv, 5-9. At this day, the three great tribes of the nomadic Turcomans, on the north-eastern border of Persia near the Oxus, the Yamud, the Gokla. and the Tukn, assert for themselves a legendary genealogy deduced from three brothers (Fra/.er, Narrative of a Journey in Khorasan, p. 258). 2 Read the description of the difficult escape of Mithridatcs Eupator, with a mere handful of men, from Pontus to Bosphorus by this route, between the western edge of Caucasus and the Euxine (Strabo, xi, pp. 495-496), f/ ruv 'A^atwv itai Zvytiv nal 'Hvto^wv Trapa/U'a, all piratical and barbar- ous tribes, Tfj Trapahip ^a^ent^f rjsi, ~a 7ro/./l t/ifiaivuv TTI TJ/V &u7.aaaav : compare Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 34. Pompcy thought the route unfit for his march. To suppose the Cimmerian tribes with their wagons passing along such a track would require strong positive evidence. According to Ptolemy, how- ever, there were two passes over the range of Caucasus, the Caucasian or Albanian gates, near Derbend- and the Caspian, and the Sarmatian gates, considerably more to the westward (Ptolemy, Geogr.v, 9; Forbiger, Hand- buch der Alton Geographic, vol. ii, sect. 56, p. 55). It is not impossible that the Cimmerians may have followed the westernmost, and the Scythians th