18.

The whole of this country, which reaches to the sea-coast extending from the Dnieper2701 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,2702 which washes the isthmus2703 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 phænomena which are [Pg 472]
[CAS. 307] common in the neighbourhood of the embouchure of the Palus Mæotis;2704 for the passage from Panticapæum,2705 across to Phanagoria,2706 is at times performed in waggons, thus being both a sea passage2707 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,2708 nearly the size of a dolphin. It is related that Neoptolemus, the general of Mithridates,2709 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,2710 who carried on war against Philip,2711 the son of Amyntas, had the rule over most of the barbarians of these parts.