River
Fl. Phasis?
Rioni
Listen to the story
Beyond this long, unnamed river the map shows no more towns or roads, only wild Sarmatian peoples, and it is probably meant to be the Phasis, the Rioni in Georgia. Greek writers treated the Phasis as a frontier, sometimes even as the boundary between Asia and Europe, and it was the river of the Argonaut legend. The Roman writer Pliny praised its long navigable course and its hundred and twenty bridges. Oddly, most stations drawn along it bear the names of rivers that flow into the Black Sea, and the town of Phasis sits near its source rather than at its mouth.