Читать книгу The Natural History of Pliny (Vol. 1-6) - Pliny the Elder - Страница 275

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THE Euxine1 Sea, which in former times had the name of Axenus,2 from the savage and inhospitable character of the nations living on its borders, by a peculiar whim of nature, which is continually giving way before the greedy inroads of the sea, lies between Europe and Asia. It was not enough for the ocean to have surrounded the earth, and then deprived us of a considerable portion of it, thus rendering still greater its uninhabitable proportion; it was not enough for it to have forced a passage through the mountains, to have torn away Calpe from Africa, and to have swallowed up a much larger space than it left untouched; it was not enough for it to have poured its tide into the Propontis through the Hellespont, after swallowing up still more of the dry land—for beyond the Bosporus, as well, it opens with its insatiate appetite upon another space of immense extent, until the Mæotian lakes3 unite their ravening waters with it as it ranges far and wide.

That all this has taken place in spite, as it were, of the earth, is manifested by the existence of so many straits and such numbers of narrow passages formed against the will of nature—that of the Hellespont,4 being only eight hundred and seventy-five paces in width, while at the two Bospori5 the passage across may be effected by oxen6 swimming, a fact from which they have both derived their name. And then besides,7 although they are thus severed, there are certain points on which these coasts stand in the relation of brotherhood towards each other—the singing of birds and the barking of dogs on the one side can be heard on the other, and an intercourse can be maintained between these two worlds by the medium even of the human voice,8 if the winds should not happen to carry away the sound thereof.

The length of the borders of the Euxine from the Bosporus to the Lake Mæotis has been reckoned by some writers at fourteen hundred and thirty-eight miles; Eratosthenes, however, says that it is one hundred less. According to Agrippa, the distance from Chalcedon to the Phasis is one thousand miles, and from that river to the Cimmerian Bosporus three hundred and sixty. We will here give in a general form the distances as they have been ascertained in our own times; for our arms have even penetrated to the very mouth of the Cimmerian Straits.

After passing the mouth of the Bosporus we come to the river Rhebas,9 by some writers called the Rhesus. We next come to Psillis,10 the port of Calpas,11 and the Sagaris,12 a famous river, which rises in Phrygia and receives the waters of other rivers of vast magnitude, among which are the Tembrogius13 and the Gallus,14 the last of which is by many called the Sangarius. After leaving the Sagaris the Gulf of the Mariandyni15 begins, and we come to the town of Heraclea,16 on the river Lycus;17 this place is distant from the mouth of the Euxine two hundred miles. The sea-port of Acone18 comes next, which has a fearful notoriety for its aconite or wolf’s-bane, a deadly poison, and then the cavern of Acherusia,19 the rivers Pædopides, Callichorus, and Sonautes, the town of Tium,20 distant from Heraclea thirty-eight miles, and the river Billis.