Strabo, Geography (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [Str.]. | ||
<<Str. 7.3.14 | Str. 7.3.18 (Greek English(2)) | >>Str. 7.4.2 |
Next is the Dnieper, [Note] a river navigable to the distance
of 600 [Note]
Indeed the whole of the northern regions with which we are acquainted, from Germany to the Caspian, is an extended plain. Whether any dwell still farther than the Roxolani is unknown to us. However, the Roxolani fought against the generals of Mithridates Eupator. Their leader was Tasius. They came as allies of Palacus, the son of Scilurus, and were considered good soldiers, but against the serried and well- armed phalanx every barbarous and light-armed tribe is ineffective. Thus they, although numbering fifty thousand men, could not withstand the six thousand arrayed by Diophantus, the general of Mithridates, but were almost all cut to pieces. They make use of helmets and breastplates made of untanned ox-hide. They bear wicker shields; and as weapons, lances, the bow, and the sword, such as most of the other barbarians do. The woollen tents of the nomades are fixed upon their chariots, in which they pass their lives. Their herds are scattered round their tents, and they live on the milk, the cheese, and the meat which they supply. They shift their quarters ever in search of pasture, changing the places they have exhausted for others full of grass. In the winter they encamp in the marshes near the Palus Mæotis, [Note] and in the summer on the plains.
7.3.18The whole of this country, which reaches to the seacoast extending from the Dnieper [Note] to the Palus Mæotis, is subject to severe winters; so also are the most northern of the districts bordering on the sea, as the mouth of the Palus Mæotis, and farther that of the Dnieper and the head of the Gulf of Tamyraca, or Carcinites, [Note] which washes the isthmus [Note] of the Magna Chersonesus. The intense cold of the districts inhabited, notwithstanding their being plains, is manifest, for they rear no asses, as that animal is too susceptible of cold; some of their oxen are without horns by nature, of the others they file off the horns, as a part most susceptible of injury from cold. Their horses are diminutive and their sheep large. Their brazen vessels are split with the frosts, and their contents frozen into a solid mass. However, the rigour of the frosts may be best illustrated by the phenomena which are
common in the neighbourhood of the embouchure of the Palus Mæotis; [Note] for the passage from Panticapæum, [Note] across to Phanagoria, [Note] is at times performed in waggons, thus being both a sea passage [Note] and an overland route [as the season may determine]. There are also fish which are taken in the ice by means of a round net called a gangama, and especially a kind of sturgeon called antacæus, [Note] nearly the size of a dolphin. It is related that Neoptolemus, the general of Mithridates, [Note] defeated the barbarians during summer-time in a naval engagement in this very strait, and during the winter in a cavalry action. They say that about the Bosphorus the vine is hidden away in the earth in winter, great mounds of mould being piled over it [to preserve it from the frost]. They also report that the heats are excessive, [this may be accounted for in several ways,] perhaps men's bodies not being accustomed to them, feel them the more; perhaps the plains are at that time unrefreshed by winds; or perhaps the thickness of the air is heated to a great degree, similar to the way in which the misty air is affected in times when a parhelion is observed.
It appears that Ateas, [Note] who carried on war against Philip, [Note] the son of Amyntas, had the rule over most of the barbarians of these parts.
7.3.19After the island [Note] situated opposite the mouth of the Dnieper, in sailing towards the east, we arrive at the cape of the Course of Achilles. [Note] The district is quite bare, notwithstanding that it is termed a wood. It is sacred to Achilles. Then we arrive at the Course of Achilles, a low peninsula; for it is a certain tongue of land about a thousand stadia in length, running out towards the east, and its width is but two
stadia [Note] in the broadest part, and but four plethra [Note] in the narrowest. It is distant from the main-land, which runs out on
both sides of the neck, about 60 stadia. It is sandy, but
water is obtainable by digging. About the midst of the
Course of Achilles [Note]
Strabo, Geography (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [Str.]. | ||
<<Str. 7.3.14 | Str. 7.3.18 (Greek English(2)) | >>Str. 7.4.2 |
