old Greek city.

Diocletian, for signal services,

exonerated the citizens from paying tribute; and Constantine, on the same account, granted a perpetual exemption from all duties to their mercantile marine. Forty towns on the coast claimed their protection and exemplified their enterprise. But the parent city and its dependencies, in common with the civilised world, had large experience of crippled fortunes and changing circumstances from the irruptions of barbarian tribes. Cherson survived every storm to a comparatively late period, gradually losing much of its former importance, and comprising a very mixed population. Its name will again occur. we hear no more of the Bosphoran kingdom after the middle of the fourth century, when, having received a Sarmatian dynasty, the phantom sovereignty submitted to the Chersonites, with whom hostilities had been provoked. Panticapæum, the capital, and Theodosia were desolated at an earlier date.

But

Monuments of the old world in the Crimea are not numerous, if we except the tumuli. They perished largely in the stormy revolutions of the early Christian and the medieval age; and Russian Vandalism has contributed in no slight degree to complete the work of destruction. Theodosia," the gift of God," also called Ardanda, the "Seven Gods," stood at or near

the site of modern Kaffa, the "Infidel." The Emperor Alexander revived the ancient name, altered to Feodosia, the Russians pronouncing the Greek Th as F. Arrian, in his Periplus of the Black Sea, speaks of the old city as a deserted place in his time, the commencement of the second century. No remains of the Greek epoch are extant, except what have been brought from some distance by antiquarian zeal, collected in the museum of the present town. Panticapæum, a name probably compounded of two Greek words signifying "everywhere a garden," is represented in its locality by Kertch. "Alas," says

Demidoff," tell me the Greek for garden nowhere,' and you will have named Kertch. We cannot charge our memory with having seen a single plantation of the most meagre description." The town itself, almost entirely new, is handsomely built of the steppe limestone; and the traveller may have historic recollections stirred in it by putting up at the Bospheri Tractir, the Bosphorus Hotel. The environs are of special interest. Huge cones of earth stud the surface, the tombs of the wealthy and gay of the ancient capitol. For ages the mounds have been ransacked in the hope of discovering gold, silver, or other valuables. Funereal relics have been recovered in abundance, collections of which

are in the museum of Kertch, and the Hermitage Palace at St. Petersburg. They include male and female skeletons in a wonderful state of preservation, elegantly carved coffins of cedar wood, marble cenotaphs, with inscriptions in every variety of idiom, from pure Greek to distantly related dialects, bronze lamps, glass vessels, vases more or less of the Etruscan style, small statues, armlets, earrings, and other ornaments of gold, which attest the luxury of the old Milesian colonists. To a hill close to the town, and fronting the sea, popular tradition has assigned the name of Mount Mithridates, as the site of his palace, from which he gazed proudly upon his fleet on the waters. The Acropolis, the citadel of Panticapæum, may have stood upon the spot. The name of the Tomb of Mithridates is also applied to a tumulus in the neighbourhood, remarkable for its height and size, visible for many miles round. But history states, that his unnatural son, in order to conciliate Pompey, sent the body of his father to him, as the inveterate foe of Rome, who caused it to be buried at Sinope in the sepulchre of his ancestors.

The site of Cherson, a little to the south of Sebastopol, had very considerable remains of the old city while the Tatars were lords of the soil, who regarded them with wonder and reverence. They

The

included vestiges of the walls, the gates, the dwellings of the inhabitants, and their sepulchres, with three Byzantine churches, half buried in the soil, and shafts and capitals of columns strewn upon the ground. The walls were double, formed of two separate lines of thick masonry, the intervals between them being filled with a cement containing fragments of pottery and other coarse materials. Two strong towers were entire in 1794. Russians, on coming into the country, remorselessly swept away these monuments of the past as readymade materials for their own foundations. In 1818, the emperor Alexander, while on a visit to the peninsula, strictly enjoined the preservation of the remnants of ancient architecture. But the order came too late, as almost everything worthy of observation had previously been disposed of. Dr. Clarke saw an interesting memorial of a philosopher of Cherson, whose name, Theagenes, occurred in an inscription. This was a beautiful bas-relief of white marble, which had closed the entrance to his tomb. The sculpture represented the husband and wife; the philosopher had in his left hand a scroll; his feet were bound in sandals. The wife, in a Grecian habit, wore a long robe falling negligently in folds to the ground. From the style of the inscription, it

seemed to date at least two centuries prior to the Christian era. The traveller visited the tomb from which the marble had been abstracted, and found it a family vault, hewn in the rock, without the walls of the city. The interior had recesses for the bodies of the dead, and upon being first opened, the bones were still in a state of preservation. After an undisturbed repose of two thousand years, the few remaining relics of Theagenes were cast out of the sepulchre, and scattered among the adjoining ruins.

The old town of Eupatorium is not represented by the present Eupatoria. The latter is of comparatively modern date, and Tatar origin. While the Russians restored in some instances the names of ancient history to places which had lost them by change of masters, they transferred the names of others which had disappeared to fresh localities, giving that of Eupatoria to the maritime town of Koslof. The Tatars clung to the old denomination; and it is still most commonly used in ordinary language, though official documents only recognise the new title. Inkerman, at the extremity of the principal harbour of Sebastopol, answers to the situation assigned by historic notices to Eupatorium, founded by Diophantes, the general of Mithridates,