Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/341

Chap. 18.] a distance of 555 miles; Agrippa, however, increases the length by sixty miles. The distance thence to Macron Tichos, or the Long Wall, previously mentioned, is 150 miles; and, from it to the extremity of the Chersonesus, 126.

On leaving the Bosporus we come to the Gulf of Casthenes, and two harbours, the one called the Old Men's Haven, and the other the Women's Haven. Next comes the promontory of Chrysoceras, upon which is the town of Byzantium , a free state, formerly called Lygos, distant from Dyrrhachium 711 miles, — so great being the space of land that intervenes between the Adriatic Sea and the Propontis. We next come to the rivers Bathynias and Pydaras, or Athyras, and the towns of Selymbria and Perinthus , which join the mainland by a neck only 200 feet in width. In the interior are Bizya, a citadel of the kings of Thrace, and hated by the swallows, in consequence of the sacrilegious crime of Tereus ; the district called Cænica , and the colony of Flaviopolis, where formerly stood a town called Cæla. Then, at a distance of fifty miles from Bizya, we come to the colony of Apros, distant from Philippi 180 miles. Upon the coast is the river Erginus ; here formerly stood the town of Ganos ; and Lysimachia in the Chersonesus is being now gradually deserted.

At this spot there is another isthmus, similar in name to the other , and of about equal width; and, in a manner