Cercetae
Κερκεται
Cercetae (Κερκεται, Strab. &c.; Κερκέτιοι, Dion. Perieg. 682; Κερκεταῖοι, Hellanic. fr. 91), one of the peoples of Sarmatia Asiatica, who occupied the NE. shore of the Euxine, between the Cimmerian Bosporus and the frontier of Colchis, but whose relative positions are not very exactly determined: their coast abounded in roadsteads and villages. (Hellanic. l.c.; Strab. xi. pp. 496, 497; Ptol. 5.9.25; Steph. B. sub voce Mela, 1.19.4; Plin. Nat. 6.5.) Their name is now applied to the whole western district of the Caucasus, in the well known forms of Cherkas for the people, and Cherkaskaia, or Circassia, for the country.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.