Note 1139 — Chapter XCVIII · OUTLYING HELLENIC CITIES.

Diodor. xx. 24 The scene of these military operations (as far as we can pretend to make it out from the brief and superficial narrative of Diodorus), seems to have been on the European side of Bosporus; somewhere between the Borysthenes river and the Isthmus of Perekop, in the territory called by Herodotus Hylæa. This is Niebuhr’s opinion, which I think more probable than that of Boeckh, who supposes the operations to have occurred on the Asiatic territory of Bosporus. So far I concur with Niebuhr; but his reasons for placing Dromichætes king of the Getæ (the victor over Lysimachus), east of the Borysthenes, are noway satisfactory.

Compare Niebuhr’s Untersuchungen über die Skythen, etc. (in his Kleine Schriften, p. 380). with Boeckh’s Commentary on the Sarmatian Inscriptions, Corp. Ins. Græc. part xi. p. 83-103.

The mention by Diodorus of a wooden fortress, surrounded by morass and forest, is curious, and may be illustrated by the description in Herodotus (iv. 108) of the city of the Budini. This habit of building towns and fortifications of wood, prevailed among the Slavonic population in Russia and Poland until far down in the middle ages. See Paul Joseph Schaffarik, Slavische Alterhümer, in the German translation of Wuttke, vol. i. ch. 10 p. 192; also K. Neumann, Die Hellenen im Skythenlande, p. 91.