22 
plint's katueal histoet. 
[Book YI. 
of gates; they are just opposite to Harmastis, a town of the 
Iberi. 
Eeyond the Gates of Caucasus, in the Gordyaean Moun- 
tains, the Yalli and the Suani, uncivilized tribes, are found ; 
still, however, they work the mines of gold there. Beyond 
these nations, and extending as far away as Pontus, are nu- 
merous nations of the Heniochi, and, after them, of the Achsei. 
Such is the present state of one of the most famous tracts upon 
the face of the earth. 
Some writers have stated that the distance between the 
Euxine and the Caspian Sea is not more than three hundred 
and seventy-five miles ; Cornelius Nepos makes it only two 
hundred and fifty. Within such straits is Asia pent up in this 
second instance^' by the agency of the sea ! Claudius Caesar 
has informed us that from the Cimmerian Bosporus to the 
Caspian Sea is a distance of only one hundred and fifty^^ miles, 
and that Mcator Seleucus^^ contemplated cutting through this 
isthmus just at the time when he was slain by Ptolemy 
Ceraunus. It is a well-known fact that the distance from, 
the Gates of Caucasus to the shores of the Euxine is two 
hundred miles. 
CHAP. 13. (12.) THE ISLANDS OF THE EUXIKE. 
The islands of the Euxine are the Plane tae or Cyanese,^ 
otherwise called Symplegades, and ApoUonia, surnamed Thy- 
nias,^ to distinguish it from the island of that name^ in 
Europe; it is four miles in circumference, and one mile 
distant from the mainland. Opposite to Pharnacea^ is Chal- 
ceritis, to which the Greeks have given the name of Aria,^ 
®7 The first instance was that of the narrow isthmus to which the con- 
tinent of Asia is reduced from Sinope across to the Gulf of Issus, as men- 
tioned in c. 2. 
98 The shortest distance across, in a straight line, is in reality little less 
than 600 miles. 
The ancestor of the Seleucidae, kings of Syria, treacherously slain by 
Ptolemy Ceraunus, brother of Ptolemy Philadelphus. 
^ Already mentioned in B. iv. c. 27. 
2 Mentioned in c. 44 of the last Book. 
' The one lying at the mouth of the Danube, and mentioned in B. iv. 
c. 27, 
* Mentioned in c. 4 of the present Book. See p. 9. 
6 Or " Mars* Island," also called Aretias ; at this island, in the south of 
