There were many other Grecian colonies on the Bosphorus and the adjacent seas. Panticapeum, built by the Milesians, according to Strabo, the capital of the European Bosphorus, with which, as has been already mentioned, the Athenians carried on a considerable trade. Theodosia, also mentioned before, was likewise formed and colonized by the Milesians: its port could contain 100 ships. Tanais, on the Cimmerian Bosphorus; Olbia and Borysthenes, both situated near the mouth of the river from which the latter took its name; Panagorea and Hermonassa on the Bosphorus, and several others. Besides these colonies in this part of the world, the Greeks founded others, for the express purposes of commerce; as Syracuse, in Sicily; Marseilles, in Gaul, the mother of several colonies established on the neighbouring coasts, and, as we shall afterwards notice, a place of very considerable wealth, consequence, and strength, derived entirely from commerce, as well as the seat of the arts and sciences; Cyrene, an opulent city in Africa, and Naucratis, situated on one of the mouths of the Nile. They likewise formed settlements in Rhodes and Crete, in the islands of the Egean Sea, on the opposite coasts of Asia, &c.; most of which were of importance to the mother country, from the facilities they offered to the extension of its commerce. The war between the Romans, and Philip king of Macedon, which intervened between the second and third Punic war, first afforded the former an opportunity and an excuse for interfering in the affairs of Greece. Till the time of Philip, the father of Alexander, Macedonia does not appear to have had any connexion with the rest of this celebrated portion of the ancient world; the Greeks, indeed, regarded its inhabitants as savages; but from that period, Macedonia became the most important and influential state in Greece. Its boundaries varied at different periods of its history: it seems originally to have been bounded on the east by the Egean Sea; on the south by Thessaly and Epirus; on the west by the Ionian Sea; and on the north by the river Strymon, at the mouth of which, as has been already mentioned, the Athenians founded one of their most flourishing and useful colonies. The princes of Macedonia viewed with jealousy, but for a long time were unable to prevent the states of Greece from forming colonies in the immediate vicinity of their dominions: their union, however, with the king of Persia, when he first fixed his ambition on Greece, was rewarded by a great accession of territory, which enabled them to contest the possession of the sea-coasts with the most powerful of the Greek republics. They then extended their territories to the Eastern Sea, but there were till the reign of Philip, the father of Alexander, several nations between them and the Adriatic, all of which were subdued by him; and thus this sea became their western boundary.