THE SIXTH BOOK 



HISTORY OF NATURE. 



WRITTEN BY 



C. PLINIUS SECUNDUS. 



CHAPTER I. 

 Pontus Euxinus. 



HE Pontus Euxinus, named in old time Axenos, 

 from its inhospitable wildness, is spread between 

 Europe and Asia, by a special Envy of Nature, 

 and an Eagerness to maintain the Sea in his 

 greedy and endless Appetite. It was not enough 

 for the Ocean to have environed the whole 

 Earth, and to have taken away a great part of it, with 

 exceeding Rage ; it sufficed not, to have broken through the 

 shattered Mountains, and also having torn Calpe 1 from 

 Africa, to have swallowed up a much larger space than it 

 left behind : nor to have poured out Propontis through the 

 Hellespont, 2 so again devouring the Land : from the Bos- 

 phorus also it is spread abroad into a large Space without 



1 Mouth of Gibraltar. 



8 The ideas of the ancients appear to have been confounded in the wide 



