Location information

Bosporus

Bosporus, α name applied to a strait of the sea. There were two straits known in antiquity by this appellation, namely, the Thracian and the Cimmerian Bosporus; the former now known by the name of the Straits or Channel of Constantinople, the latter the Straits of Caffa or Theodosia, or, according to a later denomination, the Straits of Yenikale. It connects the Palus Maeotis with the Euxine. Various reasons have been assigned for the name. The best is that which makes the appellation refer to the early passage of agricultural knowledge from East to West (bous, an ox, and poros, a passage). Nymphius tells us, on the authority of Accarion, that the Phrygians, desiring to pass the Thracian strait, built a vessel, on whose prow was the figure of an ox, calling the strait over which it carried them boos poros, Bosporus, or the ox's passage. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Valerius Flaccus and others of the ancient writers Map of the Propontis and the Thracian Bosporus. refer the name to the history of Io, who, when transformed into a cow (bous) by Here, swam across this strait to avoid her tormentor. Arrian says that the Phrygians were directed by an oracle to follow the route which an ox would point out to them, and that on one being roused by them for this purpose, it swam across the strait. The strait of the Thracian Bosporus properly extended from the Cyanean Rocks to the harbour of Byzantium or Constantinople. It is said to be sixteen miles in length, including the windings of its course, and its ordinary breadth about one and a half miles. In several places, however, it is very narrow; and the ancients relate that a person might hear birds sing on the opposite side, and that two persons might converse across it. Here Darius is said to have crossed on his expedition against the Scythians.

This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks

Perseus: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Per...