Pontus

What need is there to tell of the exhalations from the earth, or the breezes from the river?

For there is a high mountain covered with deep forest, watered toward the north by cold and clear streams.

For I must now depart for Pontus, where perhaps at last, God willing, we shall put an end to our wandering.

But there is nothing among the people of Pontus so barbarous and so dismal as that Marcion was born there:

For even though Moses, somewhat later, seems the first to have dedicated the God of the world in the temple of his own writings, the birthdays of His recognition are not therefore to be reckoned from the Pentateuch — since the whole pen of Moses does not establish the knowledge of the Creator, but, beginning from the very origin, recounts that He is to be reckoned from Paradise and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses.

Marcion's salvation, who so willed it — in what year of Antoninus the Elder the dog-star breeze breathed out of his Pontus, I have not cared to investigate.

From there they proceeded to Chrysopolis, in Calchedonia, and fortified it, established a custom house in the city, and proceeded to collect the tithe-duty from vessels sailing out of the Pontus;

Then, with this matter successfully arranged, and the cities in Asia in a favourable attitude on account of the King’s being a friend of the Athenians, he sailed to Byzantium and farmed out the tithe-duty on vessels sailing out of the Pontus.

The Lacedaemonians, on the other hand, learning that the tithe-duty on the vessels sailing out of the Pontus had been sold at Byzantium by the Athenians, that they were in possession of Calchedon, and that the other Hellespontine cities were in a favourable attitude toward them because Pharnabazus was their friend, concluded that they must attend to this situation.

But the story told by the Greeks who live in Pontus is as follows.

Nowhere are men so ignorant as in the lands by the Euxine Pontus (excluding the Scythian nation) into which Darius led his army.

for some of the Scythians make their way to them, from whom it is easy to get knowledge, and from some of the Greeks, too, from the Borysthenes port and the other ports of Pontus;

For they were inclined to wait the completion of the moles for the security of their harbours, and of the building of their walls and ships, and the arrival of all that was to come from the Pontus, namely, bowmen and corn, and whatever they had sent for.

Not long after, Lamachus, who had sailed into the Pontus, having anchored in the river Calex, in the territory of Heraclea, lost his ships in consequence of a rain in the interior, and the flood coming suddenly down upon them.

The same summer, when Antandrus was going to be strengthened by the Mytilenaeans, as they were planning [when we last mentioned them], Demodocus and Aristides, the commanders of the ships sent to levy contributions, being about the Hellespont, (for Lamachus, their third colleague, had sailed with ten ships into the Pontus,) became aware of the provisions made for the place, and thinking there was …

And Timasion the Dardanian and Thorax the Boeotian said to some Heracleot and Sinopean merchants who were there, that if they did not provide pay for the troops so that they would have provisions for the voyage from Cotyora, there would be danger of that great force remaining in Pontus.

At this time, as Xenophon’s eyes rested upon a great body of Greek hoplites, and likewise upon a great body of peltasts, bowmen, slingers, and horsemen also, all of them now exceedingly efficient through constant service and all there in Pontus, where so large a force could not have been gathered by any slight outlay of money, it seemed to him that it was a fine thing to gain additional territory …

When all of them had been prevailed upon, they continued the march with Seuthes, and, keeping the Pontus upon the right through the country of the millet-eating Thracians, as they are called, arrived at Salmydessus.

For if those think they attain something now who have seen the mouth of the Pontus and those straits through which passed the ship named Argo, "because chosen Argive men sailed in her to seek the golden fleece of the ram," or those who have seen those straits of Ocean "where the ravening wave divides Europe and Libya" — what spectacle, pray, do we think it will be, when it shall be permitted to be …

Of those who are led by heresy, we have mentioned Marcion of Pontus, who, because of his opposition to the Demiurge, refuses the use of worldly things.

The Agreement

Well then, the Generals are left.

What is it you would have, Lacritus?

Neither did I station anyone, seeing that I was in Pontus, nor did he forbid a man who was not in Athens.

When these transactions had been completed in the month of Elaphebolion in the archonship of Theophilus, I at once sailed away for Pontus, but the plaintiff and Evergus remained here.

I, men of Athens, lent to this man, Phormio, twenty minae for the double voyage to Pontus and back, on the security of goods of twice that value, and deposited a contract with Cittus the banker.

while I secured another pentecontarch and put out to sea to convoy the grain, and I stayed there forty-five days, until the vessels sailed out from Pontus after the rising of Arcturus.

when furthermore the merchants and shipowners were about to sail out of the Pontus, and the Byzantines and Calchedonians and Cyzicenes were forcing their ships to put in to their ports because of the scarcity of grain in their own countries;

Then, never lagging, crossed the Pontus mouth,

I should like to ask those who disapprove of me what they think about the students who cross the sea from Sicily, from the Pontus, and from other parts of the world in order to enjoy my instruction.

all who sail to the Pontus know that his relations with Satyrus are so intimate that he is ruler of an extensive territory and has charge of that ruler’s entire forces.

Now, men of the jury, when Stratocles was about to sail for Pontus, I, wishing to get as much of my money out of that country as possible, asked Stratocles to leave with me his own gold and on his arrival in Pontus to collect its equivalent from my father there, as I thought it would be highly advantageous not to jeopardize my money by the risks of a voyage, especially as the Lacedaemonians were t …

Two days later we met again and solemnly pledged each other to keep the affair secret, a pledge which he failed to keep, as you yourselves will learn as my story proceeds, and he agreed to sail with me to the Pontus and there pay me back the gold, in order that he might settle our contract at as great a distance as possible from Athens, and that no one here might know the nature of our settlement, …

That ether can flow thus steadily on, on,

With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves-

That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides,

Cnaeus Pompey first published abroad to Italy the cherry from Pontus.

In whom have the nations believed — the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, and those who dwell in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and those who inhabit Pontus and Asia and Pamphylia, those who reside in Egypt, and those who inhabit the region of Africa beyond Cyrene, Romans and resident foreigners, and then the Jews in Jerusalem, and the other nations — as now the various tribes of the …

Otherwise, if Liber is a god because he showed the vine, then Lucullus, who first introduced cherries from Pontus into Italy, was ill-treated, in that he was not therefore consecrated as the author of a new fruit, when he was its discoverer.

Where then was Marcion, the shipmaster of Pontus, the student of the Stoics?