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SCYMNUS
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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. _