Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

Bordering on these regions are the Dahae, the fiercest of all warriors, and the Chalybes, by whom iron was first mined and worked. Beyond these are open plains, inhabited by the Byzares, Sapires, Tibareni, Mossynoeci, Macrones and Philyres, peoples not known to us through any intercourse.

A short distance from these are the tombs of famous men, in which are buried Sthenelus,[*](Val. Flacc. v. 89 f.) Idmon,[*](Id. v. 2 ff.) and Tiphys;[*](Id. v. 15 ff.) the first of these was a companion of Hercules, mortally wounded in the war with the Amazons, the second the augur of the Argonauts, the third the careful steersman of that same craft.

After passing the places mentioned, one comes to the grotto of Aulion and the river Callichorus,[*](Of beautiful dances.) which owes its name to the fact that Bacchus, when he had after three years vanquished the peoples of India, returned to those regions, and on the green and shady banks of that river renewed the former orgies and dances;[*](Val. Flacc. v. 75.) some think that this kind of festival was also called trieterica.[*](As celebrated every third year; cf. Virg., Aen. iv. 302.)

Beyond these

v2.p.229

territories are the populous districts of the Camaritae,[*](Bands of pirates, using small ships called camarae. ) and the Phasis in impetuous course borders on the Colchians, an ancient race of Egyptian origin. There,[*](Cf. Hdt. ii. 103-4; Val. Flacc. v. 418 ff.) among other cities, is Phasis, which gets its name from the river, and Dioscurias, well known even to this day, said to have been founded by Amphitus and Cercius of Sparta, the charioteers of Castor and Pollux, and founders of the nation of the Heniochi.[*](From ἡνίοχος, charioteer; Dioscurias is derived from Dioscuri, i.e. (διόσκουροι), the sons of Zeus, Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux).)

A short distance from these are the Achaei, who, after the end of an earlier war at Troy (not the one which was fought about Helen, as some writers have asserted), being carried out of their course by contrary winds to Pontus, and meeting enemies everywhere, were unable to find a place for a permanent home; and so they settled on the tops of mountains covered with perpetual snow, where, compelled by the rigorous climate, they became accustomed to make a dangerous living by robbery, and hence became later beyond all measure savage. About the Cercetae, who adjoin them, we have no information worth mentioning.