Clarke preserves a portion of an inscription found in the supposed ruins of Olbiopolis, and brought from thence by Mr. Kelsall, of Trinity College, Cambridge, which begins with the very singular title of Άχιλλεῖ Πονταρχῃ, to Achilles the Lord of the Sea, a title which may sere to throw some light upon the legend of his being the son of a sea-nymph: and a tongue of land near the mouth of the Borysthenes is still called Kilburun; which, as Burun signifies projecting land, (as in Aia Burun, Cape Aia, and many other places,) is clearly Achill-Burun, or Achilles Point, probably the identical δρόμος Αχιλλέως of antiquity. It is curious, indeed, to observe how the name of Achilles is connected with this seal and we may venture to add to the invaluable work of Major Rennell on the Geography of Herodotus, the reason of the appellation bestowed upon the remarkable tract in question, which he says is not told[1]. For we call to mind that Iphigenia, to whom Achilles was affianced, or who was rather brought to Aulis under that pretext, according to Euripides, when she was rescued from the impious sacrifice, is represented to have been transported to the temple of the Taurian Diana; and we may imagine these names to have been the vestiges of the subsequent pursuit of her disappointed lover. The Scholiast, indeed, upon Pindar, passage to which I have before referred, distinctly gives us this tradition[2]; and the classical student, who has leisure to through the obscurities of Lycophron, will find that this pursuit on the part of Achilles is expressly mentioned by that author; that he names the Island and the Dromos as two diffent places[3], and says, that the hero was fated to tread the soil of Scythia, through five years of grief, in quest of his betrothed—
χ᾿ ὡ μὲν πατήσει χῶρου αἰάζων Σχύθην
εἰς πέντε πον πλειῶνας, ἱμέιρων λέχονς.—Cassandra, 200.
Dio Chrysostom, too, in his Borysthenitic oration before cited, gives us a curious account of the inhabitants of that place, whom he visited in person, of their extraordinary attachment to the memory of Achilles, and on his account to Homer[4], whose poem they all knew by heart, to the exclusion of other literature.
- ↑ Vol. i. p. 85. 8vo. ed.
- ↑ ἐπεδιώχεν ἐρῶν ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς.
- ↑ In the Iphig. in Taur. v. 420. Euripides appears to confound the γῆσος and δρόμος—
τὰν πολυόρνιθον ἐπ᾽ αἶαν,
λευκὰν ἀκτὰν, Αχιλῆ-
ος δρόμους καλλίςαδίους,
Εὔξεινον κατὰ πόντον.And in the end of the Andromache, v. 1260, Thetis is made to prophesy to Peleus—
τὸν φίλτατόν σοι παιδ᾽, ἐμόι τ᾽, Ἀχιλλέα
ὄψει δόμους νάιοντα νησιωτικοὺς,
λευκὴν ἐπ᾽ ἀκτὴν εντὸς Εὐξείνου πόρου. - ↑ ὤςε οὐδὲ ἀκόυειν ὕπερ οὐδενὸς ἄλλου θέλουσιν ἤ Ὁμήρου. καὶ τἄλλα οὐκέτι σαφῶς
