[475] Herodot. iv, 5-9. At this day, the three great tribes of the nomadic Turcomans, on the north-eastern border of Persia near the Oxus,—the Yamud, the Gokla, and the Tuka,—assert for themselves a legendary genealogy deduced from three brothers (Frazer, Narrative of a Journey in Khorasan, p. 258). Such material differences, in the various accounts given to Herodotus of the Scythian and Cimmerian invasions of Asia, are by no means wonderful, seeing that nearly two centuries had elapsed between that event and his visit to the Pontus. That the Cimmerians—perhaps the northernmost portion of the great Thracian name, and conterminous with the Getæ on the Danube—were the previous tenants of much of the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis, and that they were expelled in the seventh century B. C., by the Scythians, we may follow Herodotus in believing; but Niebuhr has shown that there is great intrinsic improbability in his narrative of the march of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor, and in the pursuit of these fugitives by the Scythians. That the latter would pursue at all, when an extensive territory was abandoned to them without resistance, is hardly supposable: that they should pursue and mistake their way, is still more difficult to believe: nor can we overlook the great difficulties of the road and the Caucasian passes, in the route ascribed to the Cimmerians.[476] Niebuhr supposes the latter to have marched into Asia Minor by the western side of the Euxine, and across the Thracian Bosphorus, after having been defeated in a decisive battle by the Scythians near the river Tyras, where their last kings fell and were interred.[477] Though this is both an easier route, and more in accordance with the analogy of other occupants expelled from the same territory, we must, in the absence of positive evidence, treat the point as unauthenticated. [476] Read the description of the difficult escape of Mithridates Eupator, with a mere handful of men, from Pontus to Bosphorus by this route, between the western edge of Caucasus and the Euxine (Strabo, xi, pp. 495-496),—ἡ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ Ζυγῶν καὶ Ἡνιόχων παραλία,—all piratical and barbarous tribes,—τῇ παραλίᾳ χαλεπῶς ᾔει, τὰ πολλὰ ἐμβαίνων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν: compare Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 34. Pompey thought the route unfit for his march. To suppose the Cimmerian tribes with their wagons passing along such a track would require strong positive evidence. According to Ptolemy, however, there were two passes over the range of Caucasus,—the Caucasian or Albanian gates, near Derbend and the Caspian, and the Sarmatian gates, considerably more to the westward (Ptolemy, Geogr. v, 9; Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten Geographie, vol. ii, sect. 56, p. 55). It is not impossible that the Cimmerians may have followed the westernmost, and the Scythians the easternmost, of these two passes; but the whole story is certainly very improbable.