new
settlement of the Ukraine, soon became masters of the northern coast of
the Euxine: to the south of that inland sea were situated the soft and
wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all that could attract,
and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror.

[Footnote 94: See the lives of Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus, in the
Augustan History.]

The banks of the Borysthenes are only sixty miles distant from the
narrow entrance [95] of the peninsula of Crim Tartary, known to the
ancients under the name of Chersonesus Taurica. [96] On that inhospitable
shore, Euripides, embellishing with exquisite art the tales of
antiquity, has placed the scene of one of his most affecting tragedies.
[97] The bloody sacrifices of Diana, the arrival of Orestes and Pylades,
and the triumph of virtue and religion over savage fierceness, serve to
represent an historical truth, that the Tauri, the original inhabitants
of the peninsula, were, in some degree, reclaimed from their brutal
manners by a gradual intercourse with the Grecian colonies, which
settled along the maritime coast. The little kingdom of Bosphorus,
whose capital was situated on the Straits, through which the Maeotis
communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and
half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted, as an independent state, from
the time of the Peloponnesian war, [98] was at last swallowed up by the
ambition of Mithridates, [99] and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk
under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus, [100]
the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies of the
empire. By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across
the Isthmus, they effectually guarded against the roving plunderers of
Sarmatia, the access of a country, which, from its peculiar situation
and convenient harbors, commanded the Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. [101] As
long as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal succession of kings,
they acquitted themselves of their important charge with vigilance
and success. Domestic factions, and the fears, or private interest, of
obscure usurpers, who seized on the vacant throne, admitted the Goths
into the heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous waste
of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force,
sufficient to transport their armies to the coast of Asia. [102] This
ships used in the navigation of the Euxine were of a very si