Book 22
8.46
Now the entire Pontus throughout its whole circuit is misty,Cf. Mela, i. 19, 102, brevis, atrox, nebulosus, etc. has sweeterI.e. fresher. waters than the other seas,Cf. Sail., Hist. iii. 65, Maur., mare Ponticum dulcius quam cetera; Val. Flacc. iv. 719 ff. and is full of shoals, since the air is often thickened and condensed from the evaporation of moisture, and is tempered by the great masses of water that flow into it; and, because the many rivers that pour into it from every side bring in mud and clods, it rises in shoals that are full of ridges.
8.47
And it is a well-known fact that fish from the remotest bounds of our seaThe Mediterranean. come in schools to this retreat for the purpose of spawning, in order that they may rear their young more healthfully in its sweet waters, and that in the refuge of the hollows, such as are very numerous there, they may be secure from voracious sea-beasts; for in the Pontus nothing of that kind has ever been seen,Pliny, N.H. ix. 50 except small and harmless dolphins.
8.48
But the part of that same Pontic gulf which is scourged by the north wind and by frosts is so completely bound in ice, that neither are the courses of the rivers believed to flow beneath the ice, nor can men or animals keep their footing on the treacherous and slippery surface, a defect which an unmixed sea never has, but only one which is mingled with water from rivers. But since I have been carried somewhat farther than I expected, let us hasten on to the rest of our story.
