Geography

​Next after Gazelon is Saramene and Amisus, a noteworthy city, which is about nine hundred stadia distant from Sinope. Theopompus says that the Milesians were the first to found it, when the Cappadocians ruled, and that for the third time, after being colonised by Athenocles and the Athenians, it was renamed Piraeus. And the kings also held this city, and Eupator adorned it with temples and added a part to its building. Lucullus besieged this city too, and later Pharnaces after crossing over from the Bosporus; and although it had been freed by the deified Caesar, Antony delivered it to kings; then the tyrant Straton reduced it to a bad state; then it was freed again after the Actian war by Caesar Augustus, and now it is well established. And it possesses not only other fine territory but also Themiscyra, the abode of the Amazons, and Sidene.

​Themiscyra is a plain which on one side is washed by the sea, being about sixty stadia distant from the city, and on the other lies under a mountainous region well-wooded and well-watered by rivers that have their sources there. Now, filled from all of these, a single river called the Thermodon flows through the plain; and another river, equal to this, flowing from the place called Phanaroea, runs through the same plain; and it is called Iris. It has its sources in Pontus itself, and after flowing through the middle of the city of Comana the Pontic, and through the fertile plain of Dazimonitis towards the west, it then turns towards the north past Gaziura itself, an ancient royal seat, but now deserted; then it bends back again towards the east, receiving both the Skylax and other rivers, and, running past the very wall of Amaseia, our native city, which is a most strongly fortified city, it advances into Phanaroea. There, the Lycus River, which has its sources in Armenia, meeting it, becomes also the Iris; then Themiscyra receives its stream, and next the Pontic Sea. Because of this, this plain is always dewy and grassy, capable of feeding herds of oxen and horses alike, and it receives a very abundant, or rather inexhaustible, sowing of panic and millet; for the abundance of water is superior to any drought, so that not even once does famine touch these people; and the mountain-side yields so great an abundance of wild, self-grown fruit of the vine, pear, apple, and nuts, that at every season of the year those who go out into the forest have an abundant supply, sometimes with the fruits still hanging on the trees, and sometimes lying in the fallen foliage, which is deep and shed in great quantity. And there are also frequent hunts of all kinds of wild animals because of the abundance of food.

​After Themiscyra is Sidene, a fertile plain, though not watered in the same way, containing fortified places on the coast, namely Side, from which Sidene was named, and Chabaca and Phabda. As far as this, indeed, is the territory of Amisus. And there have been born here men worthy of memory for their learning: among mathematicians, Demetrius the son of Rhathenus, and Dionysodorus who bears the same name as the Melian geometer; and among grammarians, Tyrannion, whose lectures we ourselves attended.

​After Sidene is Pharnacia, a fortified small town, and after this Trapezus, a Greek city, to which the voyage from Amisus is about two thousand two hundred stadia; then from there to Phasis it is about one thousand four hundred, so that the whole distance from the Hieron to Phasis is about eight thousand stadia, or a little more or less. On this coast, as one sails from Amisus, first there is the Heracleium Promontory, then another promontory, Jasonium, and the Genetes, then Cotyora, a small town from which Pharnacia was colonised, then Ischopolis, now in ruins, then a gulf in which are Cerasus and Hermonassa, moderate settlements, then near Hermonassa is Trapezus, and then Colchis; and somewhere about here is also a settlement called Zygopolis. Now concerning Colchis and the coastline lying above it, we have already spoken.