SCYMNUS  of

Chios, the name assigned to a Greek geographer of uncertain date, commonly taken to be the author of a fragmentary anonymous Paraphrasis in verse describing the northern coasts of the Mediterranean and the shores of the Black Sea, a work which in the first edition (Augsburg, 1600) was ascribed to Marcianus of Heraclea . Meineke showed that this piece cannot be by Scymnus . It is dedicated to a King Nicomedes, probably Nicomedes III. of Bithynia (91–76 B.c.), and so would date from the beginning of the 1st century B.C . Its most valuable portions relate to the Euxine regions and to the Hellenic colonies. of those shores as well as of the coasts of Spain, Gaul and Italy . See Meineke's edition (Berlin, 1846) ; C . Muller, Geographi Graeci minores, vol. i., where the poem is edited with sufficient prolegomena, (pp. lxxiv. lxxvii.) ; E . H . Bunbury, Ancient Geography, i . 99, 100, 102, 128, 183 ; H . 26, 69-74 .