Some (pseudo-Orpheus) supposed that the Argonauts had sailed up the river Tanais, passed into another river, and by it reached the North Sea, returning to the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules.
These tribes raised wheat, presumably in the river valleys, and sold it for export; in the eastern half from west to east were Georgi (perhaps the same as Aroteres) between the Ingul and the Borysthenes (Dnieper), nomad Scyths and Royal Scyths between the Borysthenes and the Tanais (Don).
The application of the name Tanais to the Syr seems to indicate a real confusion with Colchian Caucasus.
The ancient Tanais lay some f m.
The statement that he proceeded along the coasts of Europe "from Gades to the Tanais" is evidently based upon the supposition that this would be a simple and direct course along the northern shores of Germany and Scythia - Polybius himself, in common with the other Greek geographers till a much later period, being ignorant of the projection of the Danish or Cimbric peninsula, and the circumnavigation that it involved - of all which no trace is found in the extant notices of Pytheas.