III.] COLONIES IN THRACE. 49
this, they planted their colony of Panticapaeum (Kertch) on
the western shore of the Bosporus Cimmerius, the
narrow strait by which that sea is entered, while
on the opposite side another warder was estab-
lished by the foundation of the sister city of Phanagoria. At last
they penetrated to the inmost recesses of those shallow waters,
which were ice-bound during several months of the year, and
formed a settlement in the delta of the Tanais. The eastern
coast of the Pontus, again, was occupied by the cities of Phasis
and Dioscurias, where the Greeks were brought in
contact with the wild races of the Caucasus, and
the warlike Iberian nation, that dwelt between the Euxine and
the Caspian. In this way lines of traffic were opened out in
various directions—by the Borysthenes to the north of Scythia,
by the Tanais towards the Ural mountains, and through Dios-
curias into Armenia. Thus it came to pass that, at the expiration
of two centuries from the first sending out of the settlers to
Sinope, Miletus found herself the mother of about eighty colonies.
Meanwhile another Ionian city on the opposite side of the
Aegean had been extending Hellenic influence Chaicidic
along the coast of Thrace. This was Chalcis, the Colonies in
situation of which place on the narrow strait of the race*
Euripus, with spaces of sea extending from it in two directions,
marked it out from the first as a starting-point for maritime
enterprise. The neighbouring and rival city of Eretria in Euboea
had already established a colony at Methone, on the Pierian
shore of the Thermaic gulf, but the chief field of the activity of
the Chalcidians was that strange peninsula which advances into
the north of the Aegean—at first in a broad mass of hilly
country, and afterwards in three narrow projections that resemble
the prongs of a trident—and which from them has received the
name of Chalcidice. Here and in the neighbouring region they
found extensive forests to supply timber, and metals beneath the
soil; and in order to obtain these, and at the same time to
provide themselves with a refuge from the wild storms of the
Thracian coast and the no less ill-famed barbarians of Thrace,
they built and fortified a number of towns in convenient places
by the shore. Of these Torone, which lies towards the extremity
T. 4