Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/368

 834 plint's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book IV. Megarice, being the most polished city throughout all these regions, in consequence of its strict preservation of Grecian manners and customs. A wall, five miles in length, sur- rounds it. Next to this comes the Promontory of Par- thenium the city of the Tauri, Placia, the port of the Sym- bolic, and the Promontory of Criumetopon^, opposite to Carambis^, a promontory of Asia, which runs out in the middle of the Euxine, leaving an intervening space between them of 170 miles, which circumstance it is in especial that gives to this sea the form of a Scythian bow. After leaving this headland we come to a great number of harbours and lakes of the Tauri'. The town of Theodosia*^ is distant from Criumetopon 125 miles, and from Chersonesus 165. Beyond it there were, in former times, the towns of CytsB, Zephyrium, Acras, Nymphseum, and Dia. Panticapaeum', a city of the Milesians, by far the strongest of them all, is still in existence ; it lies at the entrance of the Bosporus, and is distant from Theodosia eighty-seven miles and a half, and from the town of Cimmerium, which lies on the other side of the Strait, as we have previously^ stated, two miles and a half. Such is the width here of the cliannel which separates Asia from Europe, and which too, from being generally quite frozen over, allows of a passage on foot. ^ The modern Felenk-burun. So called from the Parthenos or Yirgia Diana or Artemis, whose temple stood on its heights, in which human sacrifices were offered to the goddess. 2 Supposed to be the same as the now-famed port of Balaklava. 3 The modern Aia-burun, the great southern headland of the Crimea. According to Plutarcli, it was called by the natives Brixaba, which, like the name Criumetopon, meant the " Ram's Head." considers this promontory and that of Criumetopon as dividing the Euxine into two seas. ^ According to Strabo, the sca-hne of the Tauric Chersonesus, after leavmg the port of the Symboh, extended 125 miles, as far as Theodosia. Pliny would here seem to make it rather greater. ^ The modern Kaffa occupies its site. The sites of many of the places here mentioned appear not to be known at the present day. 7 The modern Kertsch, situate on a hill at the very mouth of the Cimmei'ian Bosporus, or Straits of Enikale or Kaffa, opposite the town of Phanagoria in Asia. ^ In C. 21 of the present Book. CLxrk identifies the town of Cim- merium with the modem Temruk, Forbiger with Eskiki'imm. It is again mentioned in B. vi. c. 2.
 * Now Kerempi, a promontory of Paphlagonia in Asia Minor. Strabo