Westward of the Chalybians on the Thermodon, the Iris, and the lower course of the Halys, dwelt a population which, setting aside any later admixture, were of Semitic origin. Herodotus calls the inhabitants of the land which reaches from Armenia on the east to the Halys on the west, from the coast of the Black Sea southwards as far as Cilicia, Syrians, and remarks that this was the name of the people in use among the Greeks.[756] Pindar speaks of "a spear-armed Syrian host" on the mouth of the Thermodon.[757] The Greek colony of Sinope west of the mouth of the Halys is said to have been founded in the land of the Syrians of noble stock.[758] A promontory running into the sea to the north of Sinope is called Syrias.[759] The Greeks derived the people in this district from Syrus, a son of Apollo.[760] Scylax of Caryanda names the coast of the Black Sea, from the Chalybians to Armene, westward of the promontory of Syrias, Assyria.[761] Strabo states that these Syrians, who extended from the Taurus northwards as far as the Pontus, were named Leuco-Syrians, i.e. white Syrians, to distinguish them from the true Syrians, and that the Cataonians (p. 538) spoke the same language with them.[762] The coins struck at Sinope (Sanab), Side and Kotyora (Gazir), in the fourth century B.C., have Aramaic legends, and we can trace on them the name and form of the god Baal.[763] The Persians called these people Cappadocians (Katapatuka), and extend the name to Cilicia also. If the Phrygians when marching westwards from Armenia not only traversed but took possession of the land, the Phrygians who remained in the country must have retired to the west before the Semitic tribe, which forced its way from Cilicia and the Upper Euphrates, or have been absorbed by them.
In the eighth century B.C. the Syrians between the Lower Halys and Armenia received a peculiar admixture. "On the shore of the Pontus, where the Scythians now dwell"—such is the account of Herodotus—"it is said that the territory of the Cimmerians lay, and in Scythia the Cimmerian Bosporus and Cimmerian walls and harbours remain, and a region which is called Cimmeria. When the Scythians who once dwelt in the east were driven out by the Massagetes or the Issedones, they came into the land of the Cimmerians. The latter took counsel on the river Tyras, and one part were inclined with the kings to fight against the Scythians, but the others wished to abandon the land. Thus a strife arose between the two parties, and those who wished to retire from the land defeated the king and all who were of the same opinion with him, and buried the slain on the Tyras, where their grave is still to be seen. Then the remainder fled before the Scythians along the sea to Asia, and settled on the peninsula, where Sinope, the city of the Greeks, is now built. But the Scythians took their land in possession, and, led by their king Madyas, they pursued the retreating Cimmerians, but missed them, as they took the upper road, which is far longer, and keeps the Caucasus on the right."[764]
We shall return to the Scythians again; for the present we may leave them out of the question. In Homer the Cimmerians, "miserable men, who are veiled in cloud, darkness, and night, and are never illuminated by the sun," dwell "at the end of earth and Oceanus, where is the opening of the entrance into the under-world."[765] As guardians of the under-world Aristophanes calls them after the dog of Hades, Cerberians.[766] Following the guidance of the Homeric poems, the Cimmerians were sought in the west, where the sun sinks, and the entrance to the under-world was supposed to be; they were placed in the neighbourhood of the Italic Kyme.[767] When the Milesians, about the middle of the eighth century, discovered the north shore of the Black Sea, they found in the extreme north, at the end of the earth, a nation whom the Greeks called Cimmerians. Thus the entrance into Lake Mæotis obtained among the Greeks the name of the Bosporus of the Cimmerians, in contrast to the Bosporus of the Thracians. At a later time the Cimmerians were identified with the Germanic Cimbri and the Celtic Kymri.
Hence the decision would seem to be correct that the Cimmerians ought to be struck out of history as a mythical nation and a mythical name, which was perhaps intended to correspond to the misty, wintry nature of some remote lands, did not the poet Callinus of Ephesus, whose date falls about the year 700 B.C., speak of "the approaching army of the Cimmerians, who achieved mighty deeds:" did not Herodotus himself tell us that the expelled Cimmerians "settled on the peninsula at the place where the Greek city of Sinope now stands"; and also narrate that the Cimmerians, while king Ardys ruled over the Lydians (654–617 B.C.), invaded Lydia, and captured Sardis, the metropolis, except the citadel; and that Alyattes king of Lydia (612–563 B.C.) first expelled the Cimmerians entirely out of Asia Minor:[768] did not Aristotle tell us that the Cimmerians had been settled for a hundred years in Antandros, on the Trojan coast, and Scymnus of Chius, that the Milesian Abron, who founded Sinope, was said to have been slain by the Cimmerians, that Coes and Cretines founded the city anew, "after the Cimmerians, when their array traversed Asia"?[769]
The Cimmerians then were not a legendary fiction: the Cimmerian Bosporus really owed its name to a people who called themselves, or were known to the Greeks, by this name, as also the hamlet of Cimmerikum on the Crimea, and Cimmerium on the peninsula of Kertch. Strabo, the best authority on the Eastern districts of Asia Minor, of which he was a native, says: "The wanderings of the Scythian Madys (it is the Madyas of Herodotus) and of Kobos the Trerian are unknown to most people. The Cimmerians, who are called Treres,[770] or a tribe of them, dwelt on the gloomy Bosporus. They came from a far distant region, and are said to have been driven out by the Scythians. They have often attacked the right side, i.e. the eastern side of the Pontus, and fought against the Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and Phrygians;[771] they crossed the Halys, and forced their way as far as the Ionian cities.[772] Their first invasion is placed by the chronologers in the time of Midas, who put an end to his life by drinking bull's blood, i.e. as we saw above (p. 528) in the period from 738 to 693 B.C., or according to others, in the time of Homer, or shortly before him.[772] But Lygdamis, with a horde of his own, forced his way to Lydia and Ionia, and conquered Sardis, though he remained in Cilicia.[773] Callisthenes says that Sardis was first taken by the Cimmerians, then by the Treres, and finally by Cyrus. The first capture is also proved by Callinus. At length the Treres, under Kobos, are said to have been driven out by the Scythians under Madys."[774]
From this account it is clear that the Cimmerians, or a part of them, were called Treres, a name also given to a Thracian tribe between the Skomius and Hebrus, on the Bistonian Lake;[775] that they made at least two invasions into the west of Asia Minor; that the second of these, which in Strabo is undertaken under the command of Lygdamis, is the same as the invasion of the Cimmerians which Herodotus places in the time of king Ardys of Lydia. In both writers this invasion extends to Sardis