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Book V, Chapter 1

Location of Pontus and Bithynia
(from the First Map of Asia)

No information has been added to Ptolemy's text as I have it, so there is almost no topographic data, and the courses of the rivers are only summarily unmapped: it cannot be assumed that towns appearing to be on them actually are. Exceptionally, I've marked Byzantium in red, and yes, the scale at that point is about right: the Bosporus is in fact narrower still.

The province of Pontus and Bithynia is terminated on the west by the mouth of the Pontus and by Thracia which is called the Bosphorus, and by a part of the Propontis. The seacoast is thus described:

The promontory of Bithynia which is at the mouth of the Pontus, in which are:

On the north it is bounded by a part of the Euxine Pontus, which is thus described: after the mouth of the Pontus and the Temple of Diana,

On the south it is bounded by that which properly is called the confines of Asia, along the line leading from the Rhyndacus river

On the east it is bounded by Galatia next to Paphlagonia along the line leading from the mentioned terminus near the town Cytorum on the Pontus.

The most noted mountains in this region are

The Chalcedoni occupy the seacoast from the mouth of the Pontus to the river Hyspius,b2 the Mariandyni from Heraclea as far as the town Cytorum; beyond the mountain Orminius are the Caucones, and the Timonitis region is below the Chalcedoni, and below this the Bogdomanis region, from which toward the east is Zygiana.

The following are the inland towns:

The islands near this region are:

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Thayer's Notes:

a The 1932 edition has 56*54 a modern typo, since Ptolemy sticks to 5‑minute increments thruout. And here I'm afraid I've caught Prof. Stevenson out. This smoking-gun typo appears in the Latin of Karl Müller's edition, for which the Greek gives the correct value.

As I became acquainted with the Müller edition, I was struck by the constant agreement of Prof. Stevenson's coördinates with it, despite great variation over the manuscripts, as one might expect, in the readings of numbers. It appears that Prof. Stevenson translated from Karl Müller's Latin, including copying the numbers from it rather than from a manuscript in the New York Public Library, then went back and changed the names of the towns to match the latter.

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b1 b2 b3 Hyspius appears twice — here and here — and Hypius once. The medieval map is no help: it seems to have an erasure here.

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