In the opening chapter of his thirty-sixth oration, Dio Chrysostom tells his listeners how in the course of a journey ‘through the lands of the Scythians to that of the Getae’, he stopped over in the city of Borysthenes ‘in the summer after my exile’. Dio had been exiled by Domitian, probably in a.d. 83 or 84; since his exile ended after the death of Domitian in September 96, it is generally accepted that his visit to Borysthenes took place in (...) the summer of 97. (shrink)