Listed 4 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "SALMYDISSOS Ancient city THRACE AT PONTOS" .
SALMYDISSOS (Ancient city) THRACE AT PONTOS
Salmydessus (Halmudissos etoi Saimudessos, Ptol. iii. 11. § 4; Halmydessos,
Plin. iv. 11. s. 18; Mela, ii. 2. § 5), a coast-town or district of Thrace, on
the Euxine, about 60 miles NW. from the entrance of the Bosporus, probably somewhere
in the neighbourhood of the modern Midjeh. The eastern offshoots of the Haemus
here come very close to the shore, which they divide from the valley of the Hebrus.
The people of Salmydessus were thus cut off from communication with the less barbarous
portions of Thrace, and became notorious for their savage and inhuman character,
which harmonised well with that of their country, the coast of which was extremely
dangerous. Aeschylus (Prom. 726)1 describes Salmydessus as the
rugged jaw of the sea, hostile to sailors, step-mother of ships; and Xenophon
(Anab. vii. 5. § 12, seq.) informs us, that in his time its people carried on
the business of wreckers in a very systematic manner, the coast being marked out
into portions by means of posts erected along it, and those to whom each portion
was assigned having the exclusive right to plunder all vessels and persons cast
upon it. This plan, he says, was adopted to prevent the bloodshed which had frequently
been occasioned among themselves by their previous practice of indiscriminate
plunder. Strabo, (vii. p. 319) describes this portion of the coast of the Euxine
as desert, rocky, destitute of harbours, and completely exposed to the north winds;
while Xenophon (l. c.) characterises the sea adjoining it as full of shoals. The
earlier writers appear to speak of Salmydessus as a district only, but in later
authors, as Apollodorus, Pliny, and Mela, it is mentioned as a town.
Little is known respecting the history of this place. Herodotus (iv.
93) states that its inhabitants, with some neighbouring Thracian tribes, submitted
without resistance to Darius when he was marching through their country towards
the Danube. When the remnant of the Greeks who had followed Cyrus the Younger
entered the service of Seuthes, one of the expeditions in which they were employed
under Xenophon was to reduce the people of Salmydessus to obedience; a task which
they seem to have accomplished without much difficulty. (Anab. l. c.)
1 In this passage the poet, strangely enough, places Salmydessus
in Asia Minor near the Thermodon.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
(Salmudessos), called Halmydessus (Halmudessos), also in later times Midja or Midjeh. A town of Thrace, on the coast of the Euxine, south of the promontory Thynias. The name was originally applied to the whole coast from this promontory to the entrance of the Bosporus; and it was from this coast that the Black Sea obtained the name of Pontus Axinos, or inhospitable.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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