The ancient city of OLBIA, once, as its name indicates, a wealthy town, was situated between Odessa and Oczakow; it was also termed _Borysthenis_ or _Borysthenopolis_, but the city is generally called Olbia, while its inhabitants are spoken of under the names of Βορυσθενοπολῖται, Ὄλβιοι, and Ὀλβιοπολῖται. It was a great emporium for the Greek corn trade with the countries about the Dniepr. That trade was carried on from two points, first from the Ukraine and the Dniepr, and secondly from Phanagoria, the Cimmerian Bosporus, the Don, and the Taurian Chersonesus. As apparently unimportant circumstances often supply the place of historical information, so the decay of Olbia justifies the inference that the commerce of the Dniepr, to which Olbia owed its greatness, must have been destroyed, and that too in consequence of the invasion of those countries by the Gauls on the one hand, and by the Sarmatians on the other. Agriculture must have been ruined, and nomadic tribes appear to have settled there. The Bosporanian towns retained their importance, but Olbia was insignificant compared with what it had been, and never rose again. When a place, after its destruction, continues to be inhabited, the stones and especially marble, are ill preserved: Olbia had received its death-blow, and though it continued for a time to be inhabited by the Greeks, it was afterwards completely destroyed by the barbarians, and never restored. Innumerable inscriptions are thus buried in the ground, from which we can gather information about the condition of Olbia; one of them[84] refers to the period preceding the appearance of the Sarmatae. From Dion Chrysostomus, we know that in Caesar’s time the Sarmatae came across the Dniepr, and took and destroyed Olbia. In his own time Olbia was a thinly inhabited and decayed place of large circumference. Afterwards it is no longer mentioned. From Herodotus, who himself visited the place, we can best see how great it was in his time. From Olbia, we proceed to the Crimea, the _Chersonesus Taurica_, in modern times sometimes called _Tauris_,—a name of which it has been justly remarked, that it was unknown to the ancients, but it does not follow that we too should not use it; only in writing Latin we should not employ it, but follow the practice of the ancients. The correct name is Ταυρική; and Ταυρίς, though correctly formed, does not occur, but the country was called from its inhabitants Ταῦροι, whence Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις, and not _in Tauride_. This Taurian Chersonesus consists of two halves which are separated nearly equally by a diagonal running from north-west to south-east. The southern half has an excellent range of hills, whereas the other is a steppe. The former was inhabited by Taurians, the latter by Scythians; the Taurians were, as Herodotus says, foreign to the Scythians. The Greeks formed settlements on the coast of the Taurian country, and also on the Cimmerian Bosporus.