Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/204

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190
STRABO.
BOOK II.

is the distance according to some mariners, others avow distinctly that it amounts to 5000 stadia; while he himself, from observations of the shadows indicated by the gnomon, calculates it at 3750.

That part of the Mediterranean Sea which washes the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia together with the right side of the Euxine, the Propontis, and the sea-coast beyond this as far as Pamphylia, form a kind of extensive Chersonesus, the isthmus of which is also large, and reaches from the sea near Tarsus[p 1] to the city of Amisus,[p 2] and thence to the Themiscyran[1] plain of the Amazons. In fact the whole region within this line as far as Caria and Ionia, and the nations dwelling on this side the Halys,[p 3] is entirely surrounded by the Ægæan and the aforementioned parts of the Mediterranean and Euxine Seas.[2] This is what we call Asia properly,[p 4] although the whole continent bears the same name.

25. To speak shortly, the southernmost point of Our Sea is the recess of the Greater Syrtes;[p 5] next to this Alexandria in Egypt, and the mouths of the Nile; while the most northerly is the mouth of the Dnieper, or if the Mæotis be considered to belong to the Euxine, (and it certainly does appear to form a part of it,) the mouth of the Don. The Strait at the Pillars is the most westerly point, and the most easterly is the said recess, in which Dioscurias[p 6] is situated; and not, as Eratosthenes falsely states, the Gulf of Issus,[p 7] which is under the same meridian as Amisus[p 8] and Themiscyra, and, if you will have it so, Sidene as far as Pharnacia.[3] Proceeding thence in an easterly direction to Dioscurias, the distance by sea is above 3000 stadia, as will be seen more plainly in my detailed account of those countries. Such then is the Mediterranean.

  1. ↑ Tarsous.
  2. ↑ Samsoun.
  3. ↑ Kizil-Ermak.
  4. ↑ Asia Minor, or Anadoli.
  5. ↑ The Sidra of the moderns.
  6. ↑ Iskouriah.
  7. ↑ The Gulf of Aïas.
  8. ↑ Samsoun.
  1. ↑ Themiscyra, a town of Cappadocia at the mouth of the Thermodon, (now the Termeh,) belonging to the kingdom of the Amazons. The territories around it bore the same name. The plain is now comprehended in the modern Djanik.
  2. ↑ Lit. the before-mentioned parts of the sea on either side.
  3. ↑ The ruins of this city are said to be called by the modern Greeks Φερνάκη or Πλατένα indiscriminately.
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