On the Propontis stood Lampsacus (adjoining the Hellespont) and Cyzicus, on an island connected with the continent by means of bridges. The latter town certainly was one of the most beautiful and flourishing cities of Asia; but this did not occur until the Roman age, and was in consequence of the fostering protection of the Romans.--Opposite to Cyzicus, on the Thracian coast, was Perinthus, subsequently called Heraclea; at the mouth of the Thracian Bosporus stood Byzantium, over against which was Chalcedon. The prosperity of all these towns affords sufficient proof of the skill with which sites were chosen for the establishment of colonies. HEYNE, _Antiquities Byzantina: Commentationes duae_, 1809. The first of which contains the fragments of the earlier history of Byzantium. The colonies of the Black sea were: on the southern coast of Bithynia, Heraclea, in the territory of the Maryandini. This place preserved its republican constitution amid frequent broils and revolutions, brought about by the oligarchic and democratic factions, until about B. C. 370, when the democrats having gained the upper hand, a path was opened to Clearchus, who became tyrant, and abrogated the senate, ([Greek: boule?]) the family of the tyrant continued for a long time in possession of power, after he himself had been murdered by two disciples of Plato.--In Paphlagonia was Sinope, the most powerful of all the Grecian settlements on the Black sea, of which it long held the sovereignty. The freedom and independence of this place lasted to about 100, when it fell under the dominion of the kings of Pontus, and afterwards under that of the Romans. The principal source from which it derived its wealth were the shoals of migratory fish ([Greek: pelamydes],) which, issuing from the Palus Maeotis, spread along the shore of the Black sea down to the Thracian Bosporus.--In Pontus was Amisus, the mother city of Trapezus, and which shared the fate of Sinope.--On the eastern coast stood the cities of Phasis, Dioscurias, and Phanagoria: this last was the principal mart of the slave trade, and, during the Macedonian period, the staple for Indian commodities imported across the Oxus and the Caspian sea.--In the Chersonesus Taurica stood Panticapaeum, capital city of the little Grecian kingdom of Bosporus, whose kings (among whom Spartacus, about 439, and more especially Leucon, about 350, are celebrated) remained in alliance with Athens till Mithridates the Great laid there the foundation of his dominion.--On the northern coast was the city of Tanais, on the mouth of a river of the same name at the bottom of the Palus Maeotis. Olbia was situated at the mouth of the Borysthenes. These two places, and Olbia in particular, were of the highest importance for the inland trade, which issuing from thence in a northern and easterly direction, was