At the river Carcinites, Scythia Taurica[2840] begins, which was once covered by the sea, where we now see level plains extended on every side: beyond this the land rises into mountains of great elevation. The peoples here are thirty in number, of which twenty-three dwell in the interior, six of the cities being inhabited by the Orgocyni, the Characeni[2841], the Lagyrani, the Tractari, the Arsilachitæ, and the Caliordi. The Scythotauri possess the range of mountains: on the west they are bounded by the Chersonesus, and on the east by the Scythian Satarchæ[2842]. On the shore, after we leave Carcinites, we find the following towns; Taphræ[2843], situate on the very isthmus of the peninsula, and then Heraclea Chersonesus[2844], to which its freedom has been granted[2845] by the Romans. This place was formerly called Megarice, being the most polished city throughout all these regions, in consequence of its strict preservation of Grecian manners and customs. A wall, five miles in length, surrounds it. Next to this comes the Promontory of Parthenium[2846], the city of the Tauri, Placia, the port of the Symboli[2847], and the Promontory of Criumetopon[2848], opposite to Carambis[2849], a promontory of Asia, which runs out in the middle of the Euxine, leaving an intervening space between them of 170 miles, which circumstance it is in especial that gives to this sea the form of a Scythian bow. After leaving this headland we come to a great number of harbours and lakes of the Tauri[2850]. The town of Theodosia[2851] is distant from Criumetopon 125 miles, and from Chersonesus 165. Beyond it there were, in former times, the towns of Cytæ, Zephyrium, Acræ, Nymphæum, and Dia. Panticapæum[2852], a city of the Milesians, by far the strongest of them all, is still in existence; it lies at the entrance of the Bosporus, and is distant from Theodosia eighty-seven miles and a half, and from the town of Cimmerium, which lies on the other side of the Strait, as we have previously[2853] stated, two miles and a half. Such is the width here of the channel which separates Asia from Europe, and which too, from being generally quite frozen over, allows of a passage on foot. The width of the Cimmerian Bosporus[2854] is twelve miles and a half: it contains the towns of Hermisium[2855], Myrmecium, and, in the interior[2856] of it, the island of Alopece. From the spot called Taphræ[2857], at the extremity of the isthmus, to the mouth of the Bosporus, along the line of the Lake Mæotis, is a distance of 260 miles.