The fourth great Gulf of Europe begins at the Hellespont and ends at the entrance of the Mæotis2774. But in order that the several portions of the Euxine and its coasts may be the better known, we must briefly embrace the form of it in one general view. This vast sea, lying in front of Asia, is shut out from Europe by the projection of the shores of the Chersonesus, and effects an entrance into those countries by a narrow channel only, of the width, as already mentioned, of seven stadia, thus separating Europe from Asia. The entrance of these Straits is called the Hellespont; over it Xerxes, the king of the Persians, constructed a bridge of boats, across which he led his army. A narrow channel extends thence a distance of eighty-six miles, as far as Priapus2775, a city of Asia, at which Alexander the Great passed over. At this point the sea becomes wider, and after some distance again takes the form of a narrow strait. The wider part is known as the Propontis2776, the Straits as the Thracian Bosporus2777, being only half-a-mile in width, at the place where Darius, the father of Xerxes, led his troops across by a bridge. The extremity of this is distant from the Hellespont 239 miles.

We then come to the vast sea called the Euxine, which invades the land as it retreats afar, and the name of which was formerly Axenus2778. As the shores bend inwards, this sea with a vast sweep stretches far away, curving on both sides after the manner of a pair of horns, so much so that in shape it bears a distinct resemblance to a Scythian bow2779. In the middle of the curve it is joined by the mouth of Lake Mæotis, which is called the Cimmerian2780 Bosporus, and is two miles and a half in width. Between the two Bospori, the Thracian and the Cimmerian, there is a distance in a straight line, of 500 miles, as Polybius informs us. We learn from Varro and most of the ancient writers, that the circumference of the Euxine is altogether 2150 miles; but to this number Cornelius Nepos adds 350 more; while Artemidorus makes it 2919 miles, Agrippa 2360, and Mucianus 2425. In a similar manner some writers have fixed the length of the European shores of this sea at 1478 miles, others again at 1172. M. Varro gives the measurement as follows:—from the mouth of the Euxine to Apollonia 187 miles, and to Callatis the same distance; thence to the mouth of the Ister 125 miles; to the Borysthenes 250; to Chersonesus2781, a town of the Heracleotæ, 325; to Panticapæum2782, by some called Bosporus, at the very extremity of the shores of Europe, 212 miles: the whole of which added together, makes 13372783 miles. Agrippa makes the distance from Byzantium to the river Ister 560 miles, and from thence to Panticapæum, 635.

Lake Mæotis, which receives the river Tanais as it flows from the Riphæan Mountains2784, and forms the extreme boundary between Europe and Asia, is said to be 1406 miles in circumference; which however some writers state at only 1125. From the entrance of this lake to the mouth of the Tanais in a straight line is, it is generally agreed, a distance of 375 miles.

The inhabitants of the coasts of this fourth great Gulf of Europe, as far as Istropolis, have been already2785 mentioned in our account of Thrace. Passing beyond that spot we come to the mouths of the Ister. This river rises in Germany in the heights of Mount Abnoba2786, opposite to Rauricum2787, a town of Gaul, and flows for a course of many miles beyond the Alps and through nations innumerable, under the name of the Danube. Adding immensely to the volume of its waters, at the spot where it first enters Illyricum, it assumes the name of Ister, and, after receiving sixty rivers, nearly one half of which are navigable, rolls into the Euxine by six2788 vast channels. The first of these is the mouth of Peuce2789, close to which is the island of Peuce itself, from which the neighbouring channel takes its name; this mouth is swallowed up in a great swamp nineteen miles in length. From the same channel too, above Istropolis, a lake2790 takes its rise, sixty-three miles in circuit; its name is Halmyris. The second mouth is called Naracu-Stoma2791; the third, which is near the island of Sarmatica, is called Calon-Stoma2792; the fourth is known as Pseudo-Stomon2793, with its island called Conopon-Diabasis2794; after which come the Boreon-Stoma2795 and the Psilon-Stoma2796. These mouths are each of them so considerable, that for a distance of forty miles, it is said, the saltness of the sea is quite overpowered, and the water found to be fresh.