Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 1007

CASPAR MEYER

Bard Graduate Center

River in Scythia (modern Dnieper) flowing into the EUXINE (Black) Sea, named after a river god. Herodotus uses “Borysthenes” also to refer to a city (4.78.5) and trading‐port (4.24.1) whose inhabitants called themselves citizens of OLBIA (Olbiopolitai).

Herodotus (4.53) ranked the Borysthenes (BA 23 F2) as the third largest river in the world after the ISTER (Danube) and the NILE, and second only to the latter in its benefits for human habitation, supplying drinking‐water, pastures, farmland, salt, and abundant fisheries. It shared its estuary with the HYPANIS (Southern Bug). The river was navigable for forty days from the seashore (4.53.4), crossing the HYLAEA (Woodlands), the territory of the Scythian farmers, and a DESERT vaguely known to Herodotus (4.18). His omission of the rapids above Zaporizhia (first mentioned in the tenth century CE by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio 42) suggests that the middle Dnieper region was reached on alternative routes, probably the Ingulets (see PANTICAPES).

Herodotus used the toponym Borysthenes (4.78.5) and the city‐ethnic Borysthenitēs (4.17.1, 53.6, 78.3, 79.2–4) synonymously with Olbia and Olbiopolitēs, whereas local Greeks reserved Borysthenitai for the Scythian farmers (4.18.1), possibly to stress their Milesian origins (4.78.3). Borysthenes was most likely the original name of the seventh‐century BCE settlement on the island Berezan in the Dnieper‐Bug estuary, which was subsequently absorbed into Olbia. Borysthenes is epigraphically attested on Berezan in the sixth century BCE; from the fourth century on, Borysthenitēs is applied interchangeably with Olbiopolitēs.

SEE ALSO: Colonization; Fish; Geography; Miletus; Rivers; Scythians; Trade