[472] Herodot. iv, 11. Ἐστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος, ἔχων ὧδε, τῷ μάλιστα λεγομένῳ αὐτὸς προσκεῖμαι.
[473] Herodot. iv, 11.
[474] Herodot. iv, 1-12.
[475] Herodot. iv, 5-9. At this day, the three great tribes of the nomadic Turcomans, on the north-eastern border of Persia near the Oxus,—the Yamud, the Gokla, and the Tuka,—assert for themselves a legendary genealogy deduced from three brothers (Frazer, Narrative of a Journey in Khorasan, p. 258).
[476] Read the description of the difficult escape of Mithridates Eupator, with a mere handful of men, from Pontus to Bosphorus by this route, between the western edge of Caucasus and the Euxine (Strabo, xi, pp. 495-496),—ἡ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ Ζυγῶν καὶ Ἡνιόχων παραλία,—all piratical and barbarous tribes,—τῇ παραλίᾳ χαλεπῶς ᾔει, τὰ πολλὰ ἐμβαίνων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν: compare Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 34. Pompey thought the route unfit for his march.
To suppose the Cimmerian tribes with their wagons passing along such a track would require strong positive evidence. According to Ptolemy, however, there were two passes over the range of Caucasus,—the Caucasian or Albanian gates, near Derbend and the Caspian, and the Sarmatian gates, considerably more to the westward (Ptolemy, Geogr. v, 9; Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten Geographie, vol. ii, sect. 56, p. 55). It is not impossible that the Cimmerians may have followed the westernmost, and the Scythians the easternmost, of these two passes; but the whole story is certainly very improbable.
[477] See Niebuhr’s Dissertation above referred to, pp. 366-367. A reason for supposing that the Cimmerians came into Asia Minor from the west and not from the east, is, that we find them so much confounded with the Thracian Trêres indicating seemingly a joint invasion.
[478] Herodot. i, 6-15; iv, 12. φαίνονται δὲ οἱ Κιμμέριοι, φεύγοντες ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην τοὺς Σκύθας, καὶ τὴν Χερσόνησον κτίσαντες, ἐν τῇ νῦν Σινώπη πόλις Ἑλληνὶς οἴκισται.
[479] Kallinus, Fragment. 2, 3, ed. Bergk. Νῦν δ᾽ ἐπὶ Κιμμερίων στρατὸς ἔρχεται ὀβριμοεργῶν (Strabo, xiii, p. 627; xiv, 633-647). O. Müller (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. x, s. 4) and Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 716-635) may be consulted about the obscure chronology of these events. The Scythico-Cimmerian invasion of Asia, to which Herodotus alludes, appears fixed for some date in the reign of Ardys the Lydian, 640-629 B. C., and may stand for 635 B. C. as Mr. Clinton puts it; and I agree with O. Müller that the fragment of the poet Kallinus above cited alludes to this invasion; for the supposition of Mr. Clinton, that Kallinus here alludes to an invasion past and not present, appears to be excluded by the word νῦν. Mr. Clinton places both Kallinus and Archilochus (in my judgment) half a century too high; for I agree with O. Müller in disbelieving the story told by Pliny of the picture sold by Bularchus to Kandaulês. O. Müller follows Strabo (i, p. 61) in calling Madys a Cimmerian prince, who drove the Trêres out of Asia Minor; whereas Herodotus mentions him as the Scythian prince, who drove the Cimmerians out of their own territory into Asia Minor (i, 103).
The chronology of Herodotus is intelligible and consistent with itself: that of Strabo we cannot settle, when he speaks of many different invasions. Nor does his language give us the smallest reason to suppose that he was in possession of any means of determining dates for these early times,—nothing at all calculated to justify the positive chronology which Mr. Clinton deduces from him: compare his Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 635, 629, 617. Strabo says, after affirming that Homer knew both the name and the reality of the Cimmerians (i, p. 6; iii, p. 149),—καὶ γὰρ καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον, ἢ πρὸ αὐτοῦ μικρὸν, λέγουσι τὴν τῶν Κιμμερίων ἔφοδον γενέσθαι τὴν μέχρι τῆς Αἰολίδος καὶ τῆς Ἰωνίας,—“which places the first appearance of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor a century at least before the Olympiad of Corœbus,” (says Mr. Clinton.) But what means could Strabo have had to chronologize events as happening at or a little before the time of Homer? No date in the Grecian world was so contested, or so indeterminable, as the time of Homer: nor will it do to reason, as Mr. Clinton does, i. e. to take the latest date fixed for Homer among many, and then to say that the invasion of the Cimmerians must be at least B. C. 876: thus assuming it as a certainty that, whether the date of Homer be a century earlier or later, the invasion of the Cimmerians must be made to fit it. When Strabo employs such untrustworthy chronological standards, he only shows us—what everything else confirms—that there existed no tests of any value for events of that early date in the Grecian world.