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As one sails out of the gulf, one comes, on the left, to a small city and another harbor1 belonging to the Chersonesites. For next in order as one sails along the coast is a great cape which projects towards the south and is a part of the Chersonesus as a whole;2 and on this cape is situated a city of the Heracleotae, a colony of the Heracleotae who live on the Pontus,3 and this place itself4 is called Chersonesus,5 being distant as one sails along the coast6 four thousand four hundred stadia from the Tyras. In this city is the temple of the Parthenos, a certain deity;7 and the cape8 which is in front of the city, at a distance of one hundred stadia, is also named after this deity, for it is called the Parthenium, and it has a shrine and xoanon9 of her. Between the city and the cape are three harbors. Then comes the Old Chersonesus, which has been razed to the ground; and after it comes a narrow-mouthed harbor, where, generally speaking, the Tauri, a Scythian tribe, used to assemble their bands of pirates in order to attack all who fled thither for refuge. It is called Symbolon Limen.10 This harbor forms with another harbor called Ctenus Limen11 an isthmus forty stadia in width; and this is the isthmus that encloses the Little Chersonesus, which, as I was saying, is a part of the Great Chersonesus and has on it the city of Chersonesus, which bears the same name as the peninsula.
1 Corais, from a conjecture of Casaubon, emends “another harbor” to Fair Harbor.” But since Ptolemaeus 3.5.2 refers to a Kalos Limen on the opposite coast, the present translator conjectures that Strabo wrote “another Fair Harbor.” It is known that there were two settlements of the Chersonesites north of the great bay on which the city of Chersonesus was situated and that their names were “Cercinitis” and “Kalos Limen.” See Latyschew, and the inscription is S. Ber. Akad. Berl. 1892, 479; and Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. “Bosporus,” p. 772 and s.v. “Chersonesos,” p. 2265.
2 Also called the “Great Chersonesus” (the Crimea), as distinguished from the “Little Chersonesus.” Strabo means that the cape in question and the Little Chersonesus are identical. The cape (or peninsula) was bounded on the north by the isthmus (later mentioned), and this isthmus was marked by a wall and trench (see 7. 4. 7) which connected Ctenus Harbor (now the Harbor of Sebastopol) with Symbolon Limen (now the Harbor of Balaklava).
3 In the Paphlagonian city called Heracleia Pontica (now Erekli).
4 The “city” just mentioned.
5 “New Chersonesus,” which is now in ruins near Sebastopol. “Old Chersonesus” (in ruins in Strabo's time) was near the isthmus of the little peninsula which terminates in Cape Fanary.
6 That is, including the entire circuit around the coast of Karkinit Bay.
7 “Parthenos” (“Virgin”) usually means Athene; but in this case it means either the Tauric Artemis (see 5. 3. 12 and Diod. Sic. 4.44), or (what is more likely) Iphigenia (see Herodotus, 4. 103). In saying “deity,” and not “goddess,” Strabo seems purposely non-committal as between the two.
8 Now Cape Fanary.
9 See 4. 1. 4, and footnote.
10 “Signal Harbor”; now the Harbor of Balaklava.
11 “Comb Harbor” (now the Harbor of Sebastopol); probably so called from the sharp indentations in the coast.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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