2 
PLIJfx's KATUHAL HISTOET. 
[Book VI. 
nature — that of tlie Hellespont/ being only eight hundred 
and seventy-five paces in width, while at the two Eospori ^ the 
passage across may be effected by oxen^ swimming, a fact from 
which they have both derived their name. And then besides,*^ 
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, ^ 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 Maeotis has been reckoned by some writers at 
fourteen hundred and thirty- eight miles ; Eratosthenes, how- 
ever, 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 Ehebas,^ by some writers called the Rhesus. We next 
come to Psillis,^^ the port of Calpas,^^ and the Sagaris,^^ a famous 
* Straits of the Dardanelles or of Gallipoli, spoken of in B. iv. c. 18, as 
eeven stadia in width. 
^ The Thracian Bosporus, now the Channel or Straits of Constanti- 
nople, and the Cimmerian Bosporus or Straits of Kaffa, or Yeni Kale. 
6 From PovQy an ox, and iropoQ^ a passage." According to the legend, 
it was at the Thracian Bosporus that the cow lo made her passage from 
one continent to the other, and hence the name, in all probability, cele- 
brated alike in the fables and the history of antiquity. The Cimmerian 
Bosporus not improbably borrowed its name from the Thracian. See 
.^sch. Prom. Vine. 1. 733. 
^ This sentence seems to bear reference to the one that follows, and not, 
as punctuated in the Latin, to the one immediately preceding it. 
^ It is not probable that this is the case at the Straits of Kaffa, which 
are nearly four miles in width at the narrowest part. 
^ Now the Biva, a river of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, falling into the 
Euxine north-east of Chalcedon. 
1" Probably an obscure town. 
1^ On the river Calpas or Calpe, in Bithynia. Xenophon, in the Ana- 
J^asis, describes it as about half way between Byzantium and Heraclea. 
The spot is identified in some of the maps as Kirpeh Liman, and the pro- 
montory as Cape Kirpeh. 
^2 Still known as the Sakaria. 
