[19]
After the island1 that lies off the Borysthenes, and next towards the rising sun, one sails to the cape2 of the Race Course of Achilles, which, though a treeless place, is called Alsos3 and is sacred to Achilles. Then comes the Race Course of Achilles, a peninsula4 that lies flat on the sea; it is a ribbon-like stretch of land, as much as one thousand stadia in length, extending towards the east; its maximum breadth is only two stadia, and its minimum only four plethra,5 and it is only sixty stadia distant from the mainland that lies on either side of the neck. It is sandy,6 and water may be had by digging. The neck of the isthmus is near the center of the peninsula and is about forty stadia wide. It terminates in a cape called Tamyrace,7 which has a mooring-place that faces the mainland. And after this cape comes the Carcinites Gulf. It is a very large gulf, reaching up towards the north as far as one thousand stadia; some say, however, that the distance to its recess is three times as much. The people there are called Taphrians. The gulf is also called Tamyrace, the same name as that of the cape.
1 See 7. 3. 17.
2 Now Cape Tendra.
3 i.e.,, “a grove”; the word usually means a sacred precinct planted with trees, but is often used of any sacred precinct.
4 The western part (now an island) of this peninsula is called “Tendra,” and the eastern, “Zharylgatch” (or Djarilgatch”). According to ancient legends Achilles pursued Iphigenia to this peninsula and there practised for his races.
5 The plethron was one-sixth of a stadium, or 100 feet.
6 We would call it a “sand-bank.”
7 Now Cape Czile.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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