[2851] The modern Kaffa occupies its site. The sites of many of the places here mentioned appear not to be known at the present day.
[2852] The modern Kertsch, situate on a hill at the very mouth of the Cimmerian Bosporus, or Straits of Enikale or Kaffa, opposite the town of Phanagoria in Asia.
[2853] In C. [24] of the present Book. Clark identifies the town of Cimmerium with the modern Temruk, Forbiger with Eskikrimm. It is again mentioned in B. vi. c. 2.
[2854] He alludes here, not to the Strait so called, but to the Peninsula bordering upon it, upon which the modern town of Kertsch is situate, and which projects from the larger Peninsula of the Crimea, as a sort of excrescence on its eastern side.
[2855] Probably Hermes or Mercury was its tutelar divinity: its site appears to be unknown.
[2856] Probably meaning the Straits or passage connecting the Lake Mæotis with the Euxine. The fertile district of the Cimmerian Bosporus was at one time the granary of Greece, especially Athens, which imported thence annually 400,000 medimni of corn.
[2857] A town so called on the Isthmus of Perekop, from a τάφρος or trench, which was cut across the isthmus at this point.
[2858] Lomonossov, in his History of Russia, says that these people were the same as the Sclavoni: but that one meaning of the name ‘Slavane’ being “a boaster,” the Greeks gave them the corresponding appellation of Auchetæ, from the word αὐχὴ, which signifies “boasting.”
[2859] Of the Geloni, called by Virgil “picti,” or “painted,” nothing certain seems to be known: they are associated by Herodotus with the Budini, supposed to belong to the Slavic family by Schafarik. In B. iv. c. 108, 109, of his History, Herodotus gives a very particular account of the Budini, who had a city built entirely of wood, the name of which was Gelonus. The same author also assigns to the Geloni a Greek origin.
[2860] The Agathyrsi are placed by Herodotus near the upper course of the river Maris, in the S.E. of Dacia or the modern Transylvania. Pliny however seems here to assign them a different locality.