V.] GEOGRAPHY OF SCYTHIA. 8$
the Scythians and its disastrous conclusion. The historian had
himself visited the country, where he took up his
abode at Olbia near the mouth of the Hypanis;
and he tells us that he proceeded up that stream for
four days' voyage as far as a place called Exampaeus or "the
Sacred Ways1.11 Hence he shews a familiar acquaintance with the
features and products of the neighbouring districts; he expatiates
on the ice of the Palus Maeotis and the Cimmerian Bosporus,
which became as proverbial in antiquity as a * Crimean winter' has
become in the present century; and he mentions the capture and
salting of the sturgeons, which were found in great numbers at the
mouths of the rivers2: these at the present day are the great source
of caviare, which is made from the roe of that fish. The Crimea
itself, or Tauric Chersonese, he knew to be a projecting tract of
land, but he was not aware that it was joined to the continent
behind by a narrow isthmus, for he compares its Itg ghft e
shape to that of the extremity of Attica and to the
heel of Italy8. He conceived of Scythia as forming a square, the
southern side of which was bounded by the Euxine between the
mouth of the Ister and the Palus Maeotis, and the eastern side by
the last-named sea4; so that it represents the area which is inter-
sected by the lower courses of the rivers of South Russia—the
Dniester, the Bug and the Dnieper. These he describes with
considerable accuracy, but his account of the streams east-
ward of the Dnieper is incorrect. Within the territory which is
thus defined he places the various Scythian tribes
in their respective positions—the agricultural part ™£Jnhabit"
of the population in the rich plains on either
side of the Borysthenes, further to the east the nomad Scythians,
and beyond them again, bordering on the Maeotis, the royal tribe.
1 4. 52, where the distance of the place from the sea is given; 4. 81, where
his presence there is implied in his statement that an object which he describes
had been shewn to him there.
8 4-53.
8 4- 99-
4 4. lor. As regards the Ister Mr Macan remarks with some probability
(Herodotus^ vol. n. p. 32), " It seems more than possible that a confcsion
between the Fruth and the Danube has taken place, and that the Pruth marks
the western limit of Scythia in the fifth century B.C."