The same trade was carried on in antiquity with the nations on and near Caucasus, from the seaport of Dioskurias at the eastern extremity of the Euxine (Strabo, xi, p. 506). So little have those tribes changed, that the Circassians now carry on much the same trade. Dr. Clarke’s statement carries us back to the ancient world: “The Circassians frequently sell their children to strangers, particularly to the Persians and Turks, and their princes supply the Turkish seraglios with the most beautiful of the prisoners of both sexes whom they take in war. In their commerce with the Tchernomorski Cossacks (north of the river Kuban), the Circassians bring considerable quantities of wood, and the delicious honey of the mountains, sewed up in goats’ hides, with the hair on the outside. These articles they exchange for salt, a commodity found in the neighboring lakes, of a very excellent quality. Salt is more precious than any other kind of wealth to the Circassians, and it constitutes the most acceptable present which can be offered to them. They weave mats of very great beauty, which find a ready market both in Turkey and Russia. They are also ingenious in the art of working silver and other metals, and in the fabrication of guns, pistols, and sabres. Some, which they offered us for sale, we suspected had been procured in Turkey in exchange for slaves. Their bows and arrows are made with inimitable skill, and the arrows being tipped with iron, and otherwise exquisitely wrought, are considered by the Cossacks and Russians as inflicting incurable wounds.” (Clarke’s Travels, vol. i, ch. xvi, p. 378.) [13] Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iv, 5, 2; ix, 7, 4: Pliny. H. N. xiii, 2; xxi, 19: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Coins of Epidamnus and Apollonia are found not only in Macedonia, but in Thrace and in Italy: the trade of these two cities probably extended across from sea to sea, even before the construction of the Egnatian way; and the Inscription 2056 in the Corpus of Boeckh proclaims the gratitude of Odêssus (Varna) in the Euxine sea towards a citizen of Epidamnus (Barth, Corinthiorum Mercatur. Hist. p. 49; Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 104). Nor was the intercourse between the Hellenic ports and Illyrians inland exclusively commercial. Grecian exiles also found their way into Illyria, and Grecian mythes became localized there, as may be seen by the tale of Kadmus and Harmonia, from whom the chiefs of the Illyrian Encheleis professed to trace their descent.[14] [14] Herodot. v, 61; viii, 137: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Skylax places the λίθοι of Kadmus and Harmonia among the Illyrian Manii, north of the Encheleis (Diodor. xix, 53; Pausan. ix, 5, 3).