Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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The port of Sinub is the ancient Sinope, the mother colony founded by Autolycus, a companion of Hercules, and the most important of all the Greek colonies on the Euxine or Black Sea. Here the cynic philosopher, Diogenes, was born. It was also the birthplace of Mithridates the Great, who ruled Asia Minor and all the country surrounding it several hundred years before Christ. During the time of Pericles, Sinope was the strongest and most important of all the colonies of Greece, having the only safe harbour on the southern coast. It was the terminus of the royal road which extended from the Persian Gulf through Mesopotamia, following the valley of the Euphrates to the shores of the Black Sea. Sinub is surrounded by high-wooded mountains which were occupied by the fabled Amazons, and upon the island called Adasi, there was a temple to Mars erected by and presided over by two Amazonian queens.

One of the stories connected with Sinub, which, however, I do not vouch for, is that Mithridates, the Greek emperor, put his wives and sisters to death with his own hands in the palace whose ruins we saw one morning to prevent their falling into the hands of Lucullus and his Roman invaders.