TENTAPOLIS ON THE EUXIXh 473 gle to shake off his yoke, obtaining assistance from some of the neighboring Thracians and Scythians, as well as from Antigonus })ut Lysimachus, after a contest which seems to have lasted three or four years, overpowered both their allies and them, reducing them again into subjection.^ Kallatis sustained a long siege, dis- missing some of its inefiective residents ; who were received and sheltered by Eumelus prince of Bosporus. It was in pushing his conquests yet farther northward, in the steppe between the rivers Danube and Dniester, that Lysimachus came into conflict with the powerful prince of the Getai — Dromichaetes ; by whom he was defeated and captured, but generously released.'^ I have already mentioned that the empire of Lysimachus ended with his last defeat and death by Seleukus — (281 b. c). By his death, the cities of the Pontic Pentapolis regained a temporary independence. But their barbaric neighbors became more and moi'e foi'midable, being reinforced seemingly by immigi'ation of fresh hordes from Asia ; thus the Sarmatians, who in Herodo- tus's time were on the east of the Tanais, appear, three cen- turies afterwards, even south of the Danube. By these tribes — Thracians, Getos, Scythians, and Sarmatians — the Greek cities of this Pentapolis were successively pillaged. Though renewed indeed afterwards, from the necessity of some place of traffic, even for the pillagers themselves — they were but poorly re- newed, with a large infusion of barbaric residents." Such was the condition in which the exile Ovid found Tomi, near the be- ginning of the Christian era. The Tomitans were more than half barbaric, and their Greek not easily intelligible. The Sar- matian or Getic horse-bowmen, with their poisoned arrows, ever hovered near, galloped even up to the gates, and carried off the unwary cultivators into slavery. Even within a furlong of the town, there was no security either for person or property. The ^ Diodor. xix. 73 ; xx. 25.
- Strabo, vii p. 302-305 ; Pausanias, i. 9, 3.
^ Dion. Chrysost. Orat. xxxvi. (Borysthenitica) p. 75, Reisk. ellov 6i nal TavTijv ('.Ml i:i) TiTai, Kol raf uA/laf Tuf kv Tolg upicrepOLg tov Hoitoij TToAEic;, /texpi- 'ATToA/laiviaf ■ oi?£p 6i/ Kal a^66pa Taneivu rii TrpayfiaTa KaTearri Tuv TCLvry E2.Ar/vuv' TtJv fiiv ovketi avvoiKLd^eiauv TcoJ.euv, tCjv c'e ^an/ldf, Kal Tuv TrXelffTUV jiapiSupuv eI^ ivtuq cru^i/SeoiTCJV. 40*
