y sixty miles distant from the
narrow entrance of the peninsula of Crim Tartary, known to the ancients
under the name of Chersonesus Taurica. On that inhospitable shore,
Euripides, embellishing with exquisite art the tales of antiquity, has
placed the scene of one of his most affecting tragedies. 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, was at last swallowed up by the ambition of
Mithridates, and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight
of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus, 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. 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. This ships used in the navigation of
the Euxine were of a very singular construction. They were slight
flat-bottomed barks framed of timber only, without the least mixture of
iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the appearance
of a tempest. In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly trusted
themselves to the mercy of an unknown sea, under the conduct of sailors
pressed into the service, and whose skill and fidelity were equally
suspicious. But the hopes of plunder had banished every i