11

STEPPE AND SEA:
THE HELLENISTIC NORTH IN THE BLACK SEA
REGION BEFORE THE FIRST CENTURY BC

David Braund

Alexander’s coruscating campaign across Asia had taken very much a southern route: the Black Sea region had not been touched. That is not to say, however, that his regime had no involvements there: complete neglect would seem most unlikely in the aftermath of Philip II’s campaign of 339 against Scythian Atheas and Zopyrion’s ravages on behalf of Alexander himself in 331, which reached at least as far as Olbia.¹ Alexander’s defeat of the Achaemenids probably had a substantial impact upon the region, for the Achaemenid empire had long maintained an active interest there. Of course, the south coast of the Black Sea was simply part of that empire. Much less well understood are the implications of that fact for the north coast of the Black Sea: that is for Greek cities like Tyras and Olbia in the north-west or Chersonesus in the Crimea, and for the Bosporan kingdom, which sat astride the narrow channel (the ancient Cimmerian Bosporus, now the Straits of Kerch) linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov (the ancient Maeotis) and gave access to the resources of the interior. The intimate links, especially economic, between the north and south coasts of the Black Sea are a recurrent feature of the ancient literary tradition, amply confirmed by the evidence of material culture in the form, for example, of amphora-finds.² Small wonder that Chersonesus was founded from Heracleia Pontica on the south coast just across the sea.³ In other words, the Achaemenid possession of the south coast immediately entailed a concern with the north coast also, although we remain lamentably short of conclusive details on the nature of that concern. Also worthy of consideration is the extent to which the Achaemenids’ control of Miletus encouraged them to look northwards, for example to Olbia, one of Miletus’ many colonies in the region.⁴ Nor should we suppose that the non-Greek peoples of the region were any less a part of that concern than were Greeks. A rare general insight is offered by the terms of the much-disputed Peace of Callias, according to which the Athenians agreed, c. 450, to complete Achaemenid control of the Black Sea into which their war-ships would not now sail.⁵ Meanwhile, further east in the Caucasus, archaeology has demonstrated the kind of influence that Herodotus’ account of Achaemenid power there in any case suggests: most important is the discovery of what may well be an Achaemenid administrative centre in Kakheti, eastern Georgia.⁶ Accordingly, the demise of Achaemenid power had a profound impact upon the whole region, made still more profound by the years of uncertain upheaval which followed.

Against that historical background the present discussion will seek to sketch the broad shape of the northern Black Sea region, and a little more besides, in the hellenistic period. The lack of sufficient literary evidence on the region obstructs any attempt to trace the flow of events there in balanced detail. It is particularly unfortunate that our Byzantine summary of part of the local history of Memnon of Heracleia Pontica exhibits very little interest in much beyond the city itself, and especially the local behaviour of its rulers. But there is enough literary evidence – and much archaeology, including some crucial inscriptions – to permit a general characterization of key factors at play in this ‘hellenistic north’.

The two dominant geographical features of the area offer a convenient interpretative framework: these are the sea (specifically the Black Sea itself, our Sea of Azov being always a ‘marsh’)⁷ and the steppe of the southern Ukrainian hinterland from the upper Crimea northwards.⁸ An approach in terms of geography is all the more appropriate in that much of ancient concern with the region was couched in terms of its peculiar geography. Indeed, the region had a special interest for ancient geographers, of whom Strabo and his historical forerunner Polybius will matter most in what follows.⁹

The steppe

Well before the hellenistic period the idea of the steppe had already gripped Greek writers and thinkers. The notion of a vast expanse of flat grassland, without landmarks, roads or settlements, had an evident power for the crowded denizens of mainland Greece and the Aegean world, with their premium on flat space and good grazing. The relatively cold, wet climate and especially the many great rivers of the world of the steppe further empowered the image, an uneasy mix of imagination and reality. For Greeks, the strange environment entailed also searching questions about the lifestyles of those who lived in this very different world. Both the main extant accounts of the region, for all their differences, coincide in presenting a harmony between the environment and the lifestyle which went with it.¹⁰Here in the north, conventionally termed Scythia, the tension between nature (physis) and human custom (nomos) was imagined at its weakest: the people of Scythia had customs and a lifestyle in tune with nature. By contrast, the Greeks of the region were seen as perching, exposed, on a coast which was the meeting place of the traditionalist, land-orientated Scythians and the world of Greek culture proper, orientated towards the sea. Already, well before the hellenistic period, Greek writers had wrestled with a central contradiction in this ‘Scythian mirage’,¹¹ which showed Scythians both as idealized peace-lovers and as bloodthirsty terrors, at once the exemplary acme and the threatening nadir of civilization.

However, in the hellenistic period the issue of Scythian lifestyle achieved a fresh and still greater significance in the context of philosophical debates within and between the new schools of philosophy. Scythian austerity, entailing also simple-but-wise bluntness and aversion from deceptive, flowery rhetoric, held a particular appeal for Cynics. It may be more than coincidence that two of the leading figures in early Cynicism emerge from the Black Sea world, namely Diogenes of Sinope himself and Bion of Borysthenes (alias Olbia). Moreover, the well-established tradition on Scythian Anacharsis is made to work hard for the cause of Cynicism, placing nature above custom.¹² Nor were the Cynics alone in their interest. Strabo, a self-advertising Stoic,¹³ enumerates a series of statements and views on Scythian lifestyle, often attributed to earlier authors, who include the voluminous Chrysippus himself. We may be sure that Dio Chrysostom was not the first Stoic to see philosophical opportunity in the Black Sea region, when he dilates, c. AD 100, from a Stoic perspective upon the theme of civic harmony in the context of Olbia’s embattled plight amid Scythian aggressors. ¹⁴ For Strabo himself not only collects the material but also presents his own preferred answer to the traditional contradiction on Scythian lifestyle, striving hard, as usual, to support Homer’s presentation of the region against his critics. On Strabo’s view the Greeks were responsible for the change: it was contact with the unsavoury and corrupting practices of Greek traders and the sea that had undermined traditional Scythian ideals.¹⁵

The abiding and developing vigour of such notions is all the more impressive in that they seem to have so little relevance to the actual experience of Greeks and Scythians on and around the steppe. They do however include one valuable warning, which has often gone unheeded: they indicate that hostility was not the only available Greek response to Scythians. The experience of the cities of the north coast of the Black Sea was far more complex than hostility. A key reason for that was the very inadequacy of the all-embracing term ‘Scythian’. It is quite clear that, rather as Herodotus had urged throughout his account of the region, there was a complex plurality of political and ethnic groupings among the non-Greek peoples there. This remained the messy reality, not a simple dichotomy of Greeks and Scythians, for which the term ‘Greeks’ too obscures the differences, tensions and sometimes outright hostilities between the various Greek communities of the Black Sea.

The most detailed snapshot of the experience of a hellenistic city on the north coast is provided by a decree from Olbia which honours Protogenes around 200 BC.¹⁶ The decree shows Protogenes very much at the pinnacle of Olbian society, holding a series of public offices and, most important, taking upon himself the practical and especially the financial burdens of his city. Protogenes had evidently inherited his status, his wealth and his beneficent role in the community, for the beginning of the decree alludes to the great practical and financial services which had been carried out by his father Hieroson too; it is less clear that his services had had as much to do with neighbouring peoples as Protogenes’ did, though it is tempting to think so. The decree sets out Protogenes’ actions in honorific detail, reviewing what is presented explicitly as a lifetime of service to Olbia. Accordingly, taking into account the time-scale envisaged by the decree and also (however cautiously) the activities of Protogenes’ father, the inscription offers a picture of local Olbian history which is not only detailed but also extends over much of the middle and later third century BC. Thanks to intensive archaeology in the civic territory of Olbia we know that it was precisely in these years that the villages which had once spread thickly even far afield from the city core were largely abandoned: there are often signs of fire and violent destruction.¹⁷ Accordingly, Protogenes’ activities are to be understood in the context of a sharply contracting civic territory. The decree in his honour further suggests a primary reason for the destruction of villages there: relations with some of the neighbouring peoples had broken down. Much of Protogenes’ activities involved attempts to manage those relations. Meanwhile, we find in the decree a plurality of such neighbours, with very different attitudes. In addition to other benefits to his community, Protogenes is said to have supported Olbia with regard to external problems on some seven occasions:

1. He paid King Saitaphernes 400 gold pieces¹⁸ when the public treasury lacked funds. It is clear that the king expected a regular payment from the city, apparently each time he passed, no doubt seasonally.

2. He paid the Saii the same sum when, in his priesthood, the treasury was again unable.

3. Having been elected as magistrate among the Nine, he loaned the city a large sum (1,500 gold pieces) ‘from which many chieftains were conciliated in good time and not a few presents were provided for the king (Saitaphernes?) advantageously’.

4. When the city was financially unable to provide the king (Saitaphernes?) with equipment for his palace, he, ‘seeing that the city was risking great danger, came forward himself to the assembly’ and offered the requisite sum (900 gold pieces).

5. ‘When King Saitaphernes came along to the other side of the river to receive favours and the magistrates called an assembly and reported on the presence of the king and on the fact that the revenues were exhausted, Protogenes came forward and gave 900 gold pieces, and when the ambassadors, Protogenes and Aristocrates, took the money and met the king, and the king took the presents but flew into a rage and broke up his quarters … ’

6. He greatly improved and augmented the city’s fortification-system at huge financial cost to himself. The decree explains the context in graphic terms:

Deserters were reporting that the Gauls and the Sciri had formed an alliance and that a large force had been collected and would be coming during the winter, and in addition that the Thisamatae, Scythians and Saudaratae were anxious to seize the fort, as they themselves were equally terrified of the cruelty of the Gauls. Because of this many were in despair and prepared to abandon the city. In addition many other losses had been suffered in the countryside, in that all the servile population and the half-Greeks who live in the plain along the river bank had been lost to us, no less than 1,500 in number, who had fought on our side in the city in the previous war, and also many of the foreigners and not a few of the citizens had left. Because of this the people met in an assembly in deep despair, as they saw before them the danger that lay ahead and the terrors in store, and called on all who were able-bodied to help and not allow their native-city, after it had been preserved for many years, to be subjected by the enemy.

Protogenes stepped forward and saved the day by financing defences.

7. He managed the civic finances expertly when ‘the affairs of the city were in a bad state because of the wars and the dearth of crops’.

The plurality of neighbours is striking. The dominant individual is King Saitaphernes, who seems to have appeared seasonally to the east of the city, beyond the River Bug (ancient Hypanis) or perhaps the Dnieper (the ancient Borysthenes, with which the city shared its name). He expected payments and, it seems, specific items for his palace from the city: evidently Olbia had been able to maintain such an arrangement over a period before Protogenes’ intervention, whether by use of civic revenues or through personal benefactions by others or a mixture of both. The king’s anger towards Protogenes and his fellow-envoy is left unexplained: it may have been caused by his displeasure at the quality or quantity of Olbia’s offering. However, the king was not the only external burden upon the city. The Saii too are mentioned as recipients: their name and perhaps the sum involved might encourage the notion that they are the subjects of Saitaphernes, but we cannot assume as much, for it would then be strange that the king himself is not mentioned whereas he appears elsewhere in the inscription. Note too the plurality of ‘chieftains’ who require conciliation. Moreover, the Thisamatae, Scythians and Saudaratae also seem distinct from the king, though little about them is clear. It is interesting to see the Scythians relegated here to but one among other peoples, but there is no indication of their usual relations with Olbia, no sign of regular hostility and no sign of payments, though all remains possible in their case. It is the Sciri and, above all, the Gauls who are the principal enemies of Olbia: it is their alliance which sends the city scurrying to fortify, not least to keep out the Thisamatae, Scythians and Saudaratae as they themselves seek refuge from the ferocity of the Gauls in particular. The identity of the Gauls is elusive: we might suppose a northern branch of the force which Nicomedes (reigned c. 279–c. 255 BC) had taken across the Hellespont into Asia Minor and thus a relatively new and unstable force around the north-west Black Sea, but we cannot claim to be at all sure about the meaning of the terminology in use at Olbia.¹⁹ The restricted local use of ‘Scythians’ counsels a measure of caution. King Saitaphernes has ceased to be a problem, it seems: perhaps he had died or had stopped coming from the east²⁰ to avoid the upheavals and the fearsome Gauls. Meanwhile, however, there had been a flight not only from the city itself but from the civic territory by what seem best understood as helots. These had been useful in ‘the last war’, while financial problems were traced to ‘the wars and the dearth of crops’. As the decree shows, the population of hellenistic Olbia lived in the shadow of war. Of course, the harvest might fail in any case, but war made that failure more likely and more deadly.

The only rational objective for the city was accommodation with local peoples, such as Olbia seems to have managed to a point with King Saitaphernes and others. But diplomacy required willing and stable leaders among neigbouring peoples. It also required the financial wherewithal that Olbia conspicuously lacked as a state. It is worth stressing, however, that the city survived. Protogenes had enormous private wealth, not least in agricultural produce and therefore land. Moreover, we should not suppose that Protogenes, for all his evident importance, was alone in his wealth at Olbia: it is the nature of honorific decrees to place the whole focus upon the individual honorand. The very fact that the broadly democratic structure persisted there tends to indicate that there were others too, who, we may assume, provided funds on other occasions when, for example, Saitaphernes came calling. The plausibly-named Aristocrates may well have been one such. And the rich epigraphy of Olbia throws up other names too: the martial Niceratus, for example, and the problematic Anthesterius.²¹ Even foreigners might play a crucial role: a Rhodian, Hellanicus, is honoured in an Olbian decree of the third century BC for providing presents for the kings of the territory.²² In that sense the public finances of Olbia had much the same structure as many another hellenistic city, depending upon indirect taxes and, in place of direct taxation, a culture of private beneficence which offered the wealthy an enhanced social status in return for their contributions. Davies sums up the broad picture of hellenistic civic finances very well: ‘empty treasuries are not far to seek, with consequential crises whenever extraordinary demands impinged, most notably for major public buildings, fortifications, the purchase of corn or the mounting of a military expedition’.²³

The cities of the hellenistic north depended upon the socially-enforced beneficence of wealthy individuals to cope with the costly demands of their neighbours in addition to the numerous burdens which could fall on any city. Olbia was by no means alone. Such individuals are known at much this time also at Histria on the west coast of the Black Sea.²⁴ Also through the later third century BC archaeology amply attests destruction of rural settlements outside Tyras, located between Olbia and Histria, and in the civic territory of the city of Chersonesus which extended far along the west coast of the Crimea from its core on the south-western corner of the peninsula.²⁵ Evidently all the cities of the north-west Black Sea experienced great difficulties through much of the hellenistic period, from c. 250 onwards. The common cause seems to have been their inability to maintain satisfactory relations with the other, non-Greek, inhabitants of the region, though other factors, such as food-shortage through adverse weather, cannot be ruled out.

Further east, in the Bosporan kingdom, there was a similarly complex local matrix of relationships, with Greek cities, numerous peoples and the superstructure of the kingdom itself. The very ethnicity of the Bosporan kings of the hellenistic period (the Spartocids) remains a matter of some dispute, as it was in antiquity, though there is every indication that they regarded themselves as Greek, at least when it suited them, even if that did not stop other Greeks from denying their Greekness from time to time.²⁶ As to the kings’ subjects, while much scholarly effort has been devoted to making fine ethnic distinctions within the population of the Bosporan kingdom, largely on the basis of insecure inferences from personal names, the key point about the kingdom as a whole is easily overlooked: for all its Greekness, it was so mixed as to facilitate relationships with all the peoples of the region.²⁷ That may help to explain why the kingdom seems not to have suffered the tribulations which overwhelmed Greek cities to its west: the Bosporan kingdom was better equipped to cope with non-Greek pressures, no doubt by virtue of its complex identity but also by virtue of a wealth and manpower which enabled the construction of long earthworks from north to south across the Crimea, restricting any threat from the west.²⁸

A fresh indication of political flexibility has recently been unearthed in the course of excavations on the acropolis of the main city of the Crimean side of the kingdom, Panticapaeum. In the later second century BC a sacrificial table was dedicated there in honour of the reigning Bosporan king (Paerisades V, the last of the Spartocids) by a woman who describes herself, in the inscription on the table, as the wife of Heraclides and daughter of King Scilurus.²⁹ She gives her husband no patronymic or office, which might (but need not) mean that he was a well-known figure of Panticapaeum, as would befit the husband of such a lady. By contrast her father is well known as the king of Scythian Neapolis in the central Crimea, where Scilurus had a fine residence, complete with Greek statuary.³⁰ The dedication from Panticapaeum gives a further indication of the cultural osmosis at work between these Crimean Scythians and the Bosporans. Nor was this an isolated instance. For another dedication from Panticapaeum, datable to the earlier second century BC, shows a Spartocid princess, Camasarye, married to a prominent individual called Argotus: a recent find seems to confirm the hypothesis that he was a ruler at Scythian Neapolis.³¹ However, that was no guarantee of peace. On the contrary, the military success of Scilurus and his sons caused the city of Chersonesus to turn for help to Mithridates Eupator. It was in the context of his inability to resist these same forces that Paerisades V, on whose behalf the dedication was made, also passed his kingdom to Eupator. Accordingly Mithridates’ generals could enter the region posing as the champions of Greek civilization against the forces of Scythian barbarism. That was certainly how Strabo, who displays much admiration for Eupator, saw the matter in the 20s AD. While there may have been some substance to such a claim in the north-west, where the city of Olbia, for example, had to deal with nomadic forces, the situation in the Crimea was rather different: the enemy there was distinctly settled, to the south of the steppe, with a taste for Greek sculpture and Greek (especially Rhodian) wine as well as a willingness to intermarry with Greeks.³²

The sea

The great strength of the Greek cities, and the Bosporan kingdom, was the sea. The Bosporan kingdom was built around the central waterway between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea itself, in an economic as well as a political sense. Panticapaeum, for example, stood in its own bay, with anchorage, and a high acropolis behind, dominating much of the strait and looking across the water to Myrmecium on the Crimean side or to the Taman peninsula visible opposite, with other Bosporan cities all around, notably Nymphaeum with its good harbour immediately south of Panticapaeum on the Crimean side.³³ The significance of the sea is strikingly illustrated in a hellenistic wall-painting (c. 275–50) recently excavated in the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Nymphaeum, depicting shipping, most notably a vessel named Isis, which is taken actually to have been sent by Ptolemy II Philadelphus to the court of Paerisades II.³⁴

Similarly, the modern visitor to Olbia, for example, is immediately struck by the whole orientation of the community towards the vast lagoon of the lower Bug: many of its buildings, not least through the hellenistic period, cling to a steep terraced slope, which leads down to (and now into and under) the water, while the political and religious centre of the community stands only a matter of yards inland on a triangular plateau defended along most of its other two sides by natural ravines equipped with man-made fortifications, such as Protogenes financed. However difficult its relations with the hinterland, the water offered communications, opportunities for trade and taxation and even an escape route in times of real trouble.³⁵ Again we should note an element of general truth in the idealizing notions of much ancient writing about the area, which makes the Scythians steppe-bound landlubbers, resistant to the corruption that came by sea. For it was indeed the case that while non-Greeks dominated much of the land, the Greeks had the sea, albeit not entirely to themselves.

It is in very much these terms that Polybius offers a thoughtful sketch of the location of Byzantium and its difficulties through the middle and later third century BC in particular; much in his account has a strong relevance to the situation further north. Polybius makes his own viewpoint very clear. For he is outspoken on the duty which he thinks the Greek world had to support the Byzantines against pressures from their hinterland, especially to ensure their own interest by allowing Byzantium to continue to protect and manage trade to and from the Black Sea. He stresses that it was Greek failure to help Byzantium which forced the city to impose taxes on that trade in order to deal with (indeed, pay off) the peoples of the hinterland. Rhodes then compounded its injustice, on Polybius’ view, by going to war against Byzantium over these taxes, when it should instead have helped earlier and assuaged the Byzantines’ need to impose them in the first place. In setting out this view Polybius offers an enormous amount of invaluable information, including a disquisition on the geography of some of the Black Sea region. The prominence of Rhodes in its concern with Black Sea trade is especially interesting in the light of archaeological evidence for Rhodian amphorae in the region.³⁶

Two aspects of Polybius’ analysis are most important for the present discussion. First, he offers a telling summary of the nature of the goods exchanged between the Black Sea world and the Mediterranean:

Whereas the Black Sea region has many of the good things used in life by mankind in general, the Byzantines are the masters of all those things. For, as to the necessities of life – livestock³⁷ and the mass of persons put to slavery – the places around the Black Sea provide the most plentiful and the most useful, by common consent. As to non-necessities, they supply us with honey, wax and salt-fish in abundance. And they receive goods which are in surplus among us – olive oil and every kind of wine. As to grain, there is exchange each way: sometimes they supply it, as opportunity arises, and sometimes they take it.

Polybius 4.38.3–5

Polybius is concerned to stress the magnitude of the service provided by the Byzantines in overseeing this trade, so a measure of exaggeration may be suspected. However, even if we allow for that, there is no reason at all to doubt his broad picture of the goods involved, their relative importance, as it seems, and their movement in and out of the Black Sea. In particular, his remarks on grain have startled those who have been impressed by Demosthenes’ rhetoric in support of his friends the Spartocids and their provisioning of Athens at times in the fourth century. Claims have often been advanced for a significant fifth-century grain-trade, even a ‘grain-route’, from the Black Sea to Athens. Polybius’ remarks are usually ignored, though they are all the more telling in that he is clearly maximizing the importance of the Black Sea region as a source of goods for the Greek world. Alternatively, and much more persuasively, Polybius’ evidence is taken to show the impact of the troubles of the Greek cities, so that his evidence illustrates a decline in the once-burgeoning supply of grain from the region. While this is not the place for extensive discussion of the matter, some observations should suffice to indicate that the hellenistic period was not one of sharply-reduced grain-supply from the Black Sea.

First, it must be allowed that the difficulties at Olbia, indicated by the decree for Protogenes and by concordant archaeology on its reduced civic territory, seem to have been shared by other cities of the north-west, and indeed by Byzantium. At the same time, however, it is far less clear why these difficulties should have had an impact upon grain and not upon livestock or hides, wax, honey and the rest. Second, the Spartocid supplies to Athens came from the Bosporan kingdom, not from Olbia. The Bosporan kingdom dealt with its problems rather well through the hellenistic period, at least until the late second century. Third, Polybius does not say that grain was not exported from the region, as would suit the notion of hellenistic decline in the trade under the pressure of ‘Scythians’. His point rather is that grain is exported on some occasions: that hardly suits a model wherein the agricultural base in the region had been undermined. In fact the whole issue is much clearer if Polybius is given the priority he deserves. His account of a Black Sea world sometimes supplying and sometimes importing grain would fit all our other evidence: we should expect occasional supplies of grain from the region, such as attested in the fourth century in particular, even annual supplies over particular periods. However, that is far from the notion of a ‘grain-route’, bustling over centuries. Meanwhile, though it is reasonable enough to suppose that the pool of grain available in the Black Sea was reduced by the attested upheavals in the north-west of the region, it is unclear to what extent that affected trade in grain out of the region, especially as Polybius attests recurrent export and says not a word about a decline in grain-supply, though that would have suited his case very well. Be that as it may, many a Third World situation shows us that the export of vital resources is not at all incompatible with shortage at home. Indeed, while the decree for Protogenes indicates shortages at Olbia, it also shows that some of its citizens – including Protogenes – had a vast amount of grain at their disposal, whether for disbursement within the city or for sale elsewhere.

Having described Byzantium’s seaward advantages, Polybius proceeds in rather dramatic terms to describe its landward difficulties, which again recall Protogenes, for relations with non-Greek neighbours are key to his analysis. He draws a sharp distinction between Byzantium’s experience before the arrival of the Gauls and after it. Throughout, the central problem for the city is not so much damage to its crops as difficulty in meeting the increasing threats of its neighbours to commit such damage:

The Byzantines … are engaged in permanent and grievous warfare against the Thracians. For they are unable to conclude hostilities once and for all by a well-prepared victory because of the number of tribes and chieftains. For if they get the better of one chieftain, three more awkward ones invade their territory; and if they give way and agree payments and a treaty, they do no better. For if they yield at all to one, that attracts five times the number of enemies. Accordingly, they are engrossed in permanent and grievous warfare. For what is more hazardous than war with neighbours and barbarians ? What is more terrible ? Indeed, striving with these evils by land, and quite apart from the other evils attendant upon war, they also suffer Homer’s version of the punishment of Tantalus. For, having the finest territory, when they have worked the land and the crops are at their best and most plentiful, the barbarians arrive, destroy some and harvest and carry off the rest. Then, quite apart from the labour and expense, the sight of the loss of their fine crops angers them and makes them bear the matter hard.

Nevertheless they withstood warfare with the Thracians, to which they were accustomed, keeping faith with the Greeks as they had from the first. But when the Gauls of Comontorius arrived, they were brought to the brink … ³⁸ These Gauls defeated the Thracians and placed the Byzantines in extreme danger. At first, when Comontorius, their first king, invaded, the Byzantines continued to give presents in the order of 3,000 and 5,000 and then 10,000 gold pieces in return for the Gauls not ravaging their territory. Finally they were forced to agree to pay 80 talents each year, until the time of Cavarus, when the kingdom was destroyed and the whole tribe wiped out by Thracians who had conquered them in turn. It was in this context, under the burden of the payments, that the Byzantines first sent envoys to the Greeks, asking for their help and for contributions towards the alleviation of their pressing difficulties. When most gave little heed, the Byzantines were compelled to exact dues from those sailing into the Black Sea.

Polybius 4.45.1-46.6

Even Polybius, arguing for the Byzantines, accepts that they had always had to cope with the depredations and demands of their non-Greek neighbours. However, they were used to the Thracians, and no doubt the Thracians were used to them: an accommodation of sorts was achieved and maintained (on this partial view, at least), which suited both Thracians and Byzantines well enough, even if, as Polybius dramatically observes, the Byzantines suffered the punishment of Tantalus when the arrangement broke down. The Gauls are blamed for upsetting this equilibrium: we may recall the panic at Olbia at the time of Protogenes when Gauls were thought to have formed an alliance with the Sciri against the city. Of course the equilibrium was always fragile; it was a difficult process of negotiation conducted in the shadow of outright war with ample room for mutual mistrust and misunderstanding and also, as Polybius observes, with many others hovering, ready to take advantage of perceived weakness. Such was the abiding problem, up to and through the hellenistic period, for Byzantium, Olbia and other cities of the region, each with their local stories.

However, the sea could be dangerous for Greeks too. The problems of weather, especially the sudden onset of storms, are a recurrent feature of ancient accounts of the Black Sea; they still occur.³⁹ The most striking example in the hellenistic period is probably the storm which sank Pleistarchus in 302. Cassander had sent him with a substantial force to join Lysimachus in Asia. Since passage of the Hellespont was denied him and Lysimachus’ army was penned in around Heracleia Pontica, Pleistarchus decided to sail his forces across to Heracleia from the city of Odessus on the west coast of the Black Sea. He divided his forces into three sections and despatched them as separate flotillas: the first crossed safely, the second was intercepted by hostile ships and the third, with Pleistarchus himself on board, was caught by a storm of such ferocity that it destroyed most of the flotilla and the troops on board it. Pleistarchus, we are told, survived by clinging to the wreckage: he reached his destination when the sea threw him onto the shore, half dead.⁴⁰

Piracy was at least as much a problem. According to Polybius the Byzantines had been concerned to prevent it by denying bases for piratical attacks upon traders entering the Black Sea.⁴¹ According to Strabo, the Bosporan kingdom was deeply involved in the economy of piracy in the region, particularly because it provided markets for pirates who came from the north-east Black Sea coast in particular.⁴² Although he completed his work in the 20s AD, Strabo seems to be describing a long-standing arrangement, ingrained in the economic pattern of the region perhaps for centuries. After all, the slaves whom Polybius regarded as a principal export from the Black Sea had to be found: piratical raids, whether against shipping or coastlands, produced part of the supply.⁴³ Epigraphy confirms the point, for it shows action against the Crimean Satarchae, who are said to have been ‘behaving as pirates’: the fog of Greek notions about Scythian landlubbers should not blind us to non-Greek exploitation of the sea in this region. On Strabo’s account, the corruption of the Scythian nomads had entailed their taking to the sea for piracy.⁴⁴ There is every reason to suppose that communities all around the Black Sea maximized their potential income by engaging in piracy when to do so was consistent enough with their broader ideology. Greeks too played their part. No doubt the likes of Olbia had moral and practical reasons for not seizing Greek traders, but we may wonder whether its citizens were particularly reluctant to enslave the crews of any non-Greek vessels which came their way. All the more so insofar as they shared in commonplace Greek notions about the behaviour of their non-Greek fellows in the region, whether the Salmydessian wreckers, the grisly Taurians, the piratical Heniochi, Zygi and Achaei, or the Satarchae and others besides.⁴⁵ Of course the identification of the pirate is a profoundly ideological matter in itself: one’s friends may be deemed heroic raiders, whereas one’s enemies may be deemed wicked pirates, although both behave in the same fashion.

Eumelus, ruler of the Bosporus at the end of the fourth century (310/9–304/3), projected himself as the champion of Greek trade and the terminator of pirates. It was at least convenient that his stance justified his imperialist expansion:

On behalf of those sailing the Black Sea he waged war upon the barbarians who were accustomed to commit piracy – the Heniochi, the Tauri and the Achaei besides – and made the sea clear of pirates, so that not only in his kingdom but also in almost all the inhabited world, when traders had spread word of his magnanimity, he received the finest fruit of beneficence, praise. And he took over much of the barbarian land bordering his own and rendered his kingdom far more famous. He sought completely to dominate all the peoples around the Black Sea and would soon have achieved his ambition if his life had not been cut short.

Diodorus Siculus 20.25.2

The claim to the suppression of piracy, however hollow,⁴⁶ accorded well with Eumelus’ beneficent diplomacy towards the Greek cities of the region: Diodorus picks out Byzantium and Sinope in particular, perhaps because of their general prominence in the region. He further mentions Eumelus’ specific act of generosity towards the people of Callatis, when they were hard pressed under siege by Lysimachus: he took in 1,000 of them and gave them land within his realm on which to have a new city, perhaps in the area of the Taman peninsula. The new city would be a useful source of order and probable loyalty.⁴⁷

Diodorus’ whole account of Eumelus, a rare narrative about the Bosporus in this period, encapsulates much of the hellenistic experience in the northern Black Sea region. Eumelus may have posed as the champion of Greeks during his reign, but his difficult accession shows a much more complex picture. On his father’s death he had to win a civil war, fought out between himself and his two brothers, Satyrus and Prytanis, each seeking the throne for himself. Eumelus’ strategy was to make an alliance with non-Greek neighbours: most important was Aripharnes, king of the Siraces, a people located on the upper eastern frontier of the Bosporan kingdom, to the east of the Maeotis.⁴⁸ Satyrus’ army consisted of Greek and Thracian mercenaries⁴⁹ and unspecified Scythians. Eventually, Satyrus was killed and Prytanis, who seems hitherto to have been quiet, took his place in Panticapaeum; he rejected Eumelus’ suggestion that the kingdom be divided, presumably with Eumelus on the eastern side and Prytanis on the western side of the Bosporus. However, Eumelus forced Prytanis’ surrender and shortly had him killed. Satyrus’ young son sought refuge with a Scythian king named Agarus. It was at this point that Eumelus turned to beneficence. The rich narrative offers much of cardinal importance, but the key point for the present discussion is the interaction of the Bosporan rulers and neighbouring ‘barbarians’. Each side in the struggle for power relies heavily upon non-Greek neighbours, while the Scythians can even appear as a safe haven for the ousted.

The purpose of this discussion has been to seek to proceed beyond easy generalizations about the northern Black Sea region and its Greeks and Scythians, not least when those are encouraged by ancient idealizing accounts. The sheer size of the region is warning enough that a range of local experiences is to be expected. All the more so, once full weight has been given to the complexities of its geography and its many peoples and lifestyles. However, worthwhile generalizations can be offered. For the Greek cities of the north-west and west of the region (as indeed Byzantium) had to cope with new twists in always-awkward relationships with some of their non-Greek neighbours in the hellenistic period. There is no sign that the demise of the Achaemenid empire had any direct bearing on these developments, but the long-term instability and extensive warfare which followed in Asia Minor and Thrace can only have made matters worse, while the arrival of Gauls from the west seems to have had a particular importance through the third century at Byzantium, and apparently at Olbia by c. 200 BC.

Throughout the hellenistic east the interaction of Greeks and non-Greeks was a principal concern. In the Black Sea region, as on coasts elsewhere, it already had been for centuries. In that sense in the northern Black Sea the hellenistic period was not so very different from previous centuries. In particular there is a striking shortage of evidence for close interest in the region by the Diadochi, though Lysimachus in particular must have had his ambitions, which Eumelus for one seems not to have welcomed, as we have seen in his help to the Callatians. The only state outside the region which shows a serious concern with it, and over an extended period, is Rhodes, perhaps the obvious candidate in view of its more general concern with seaborne trade.⁵⁰ By and large, the sources give the impression that the northern Black Sea was a backwater in the hellenistic period, despite trade and a measure of diplomacy, as instanced perhaps by the good ship Isis. Cities and rulers of the region and its environs certainly took a different view, but Polybius confirms the broad point. He is quite explicit that he does not expect his readers to know about the site of Byzantium because ‘it lies a little outside the visited parts of the inhabited world’ (4.38.11). A fortiori the north coast of the Black Sea was obscure indeed. Strabo shows as much. For he makes it clear that he himself had not crossed to the north coast, though he knew the south coast at first hand and had a geographical bent: the notorious weather and abiding piracy were no doubt disincentives. More important, he also presents Mithridates’ generals as making known the entire geography of the region, as if some of it had been unknown until their activities at the end of the second century BC.⁵¹In that regard at least the hellenistic period did mean something really new for the region: its closing years were graced by the dynamic Mithridates, with his principal city at Sinope and his strength substantially drawn from the Black Sea world.⁵² The Black Sea backwater was now the reservoir of resources for an ambitious Pontic empire until the north coast – specifically Panticapaeum – became the last refuge for its defeated king and the place of his death.

Epigraphical abbreviations

CIRB	Struve, V.V. et al. (eds.) 1965, Corpus Inscriptionum regni Bosporani, Moscow and Leningrad.
IOSPE	Latyšev, B. (ed.) 1885–1901, Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et Latinae, 3 vols., St Petersburg. Vol. I, 2nd edn, 1916.
SEG	Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.
Syll.3	Dittenberger, W., 1915–24, Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum, 3rd edn, 4 vols., Leipzig.

Notes

¹ For mention of a, perhaps the, Zopyrion in a contemporary ostrakon from Kozyrka II in the Olbian chora, see Vinogradov and Golovacheva 1990: ‘[Ni]cophanes, son of Adrastus, has given a horse to Zopyrion. Let him send to me in the city (sc. Olbia) and let him give the letter to him (sc. his envoy ?).’ On the Achaemenid empire, the Black Sea and Armenia, see Briant 1996, esp. 761–4.

² Garlan 1999a.

³ Saprykin 1997.

⁴ Schmitt 1969, no. 408 with thoughtful commentary.

⁵ Until Pericles: Braund 2001, 31.

⁶ Knauss 2001; on Colchis etc., Braund 1994.

⁷ It is appropriately shallow and surrounded, especially in the east, by wetlands. Note also the very saline Sapra Limne at its west.

⁸ I have discussed elsewhere the hellenistic Caucasus to the east of the Black Sea as far as the Caspian, with its complex of valleys and plains: Braund 1994.

⁹ See further Braund, forthcoming

¹⁰ That is, Herodotus’ Histories, esp. Book 4, and the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places. See further, Braund 2001.

¹¹ See Lévy 1981.

¹² Martin 1996, esp. 155 on the possible significance of Diogenes’ origin.

¹³ Clarke 1999, 216 on Strabo as philosopher.

¹⁴ Strabo, 7.3.8, where Chrysippus’ remarks are said to have concerned the Bosporan Spartocids in particular; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 36 with Schofield 1991, 57 (though mistakenly placing Olbia in the Crimea).

¹⁵ Marcaccini 2000 offers a sophisticated overview; Strabo’s account (7.3.7–10) shows the potential relevance of Scythians for Platonists, Pythagoreans and others besides.

¹⁶ IOSPE i² 32 = Syll.³ 495 = Austin 1981, no. 97, whose translation has been adapted here.

¹⁷ Belozerskoye at the eastern limits of Olbian territory on the Dnieper was abandoned by c. 250: Bylkova 2000. See in general Vinogradov 1989, 178–229.

¹⁸ For the use of gold, see Karyshkovskiy 1988, 86.

¹⁹ Cf. Pippidi 1983, 152–3, critical of assumptions on the matter, though not enough; also Vinogradov 1989, 181–3.

²⁰ From the Crimea even, where a palace of sorts developed at Scythian Neapolis beside modern Simferopol’ from c. 300 BC: Zaitsev 2001.

²¹ IOSPE i² 34 (Niceratus); on Anthesterius, Vinogradov 1984 with SEG 34.758; cf. Vinogradov 1989, 180 n. 12; cf. also Vinogradov 1994, 72, indicating co-operation between Tyras and Histria in the third century BC.

²² IOSPE i² 30, partially restored.

²³ Davies 1984, 311; cf. Préaux 1978, 489–524; Shipley 2000, 96–103.

²⁴ Préaux 1978, 520–4 offers a convenient summary of the evidence: e.g. Austin 1981, no. 98; cf. Pippidi 1983 and the literature he cites.

²⁵ Zubar’ 1993, 106–7 and the literature he cites.

²⁶ Gaidukevich 1971, esp. 65–7, making the most of flimsy indications of a Thracian origin, while suggesting that the Spartocids, like later Bosporan rulers, traced their ancestry to Heracles and Eumolpus, son of Poseidon (CIRB 53, with cautious discussion). On assaults upon the Greekness of Black Sea Greeks, see Braund 1997.

²⁷ The whole issue requires much work still; Maslennikov 1990 marks a major step forward, albeit with a focus on the Roman period; see now also Maslennikov 1998, embracing earlier evidence in addition.

²⁸ On these earthworks and Bosporan territory in the Crimea, see Maslennikov 1998.

²⁹ Vinogradov 1987, summarized in English in Vinogradov 1994, 67–8. Her name cannot be read with any confidence: Senamotis is suggested, but many of the letters are suspect.

³⁰ Zaitsev 2001.

³¹ CIRB 75. I am most grateful to the excavator, Yu. Zaitsev, for showing me an unpublished and fragmented inscription which he recently discovered at Neapolis; also, for discussion of the discovery, to Yu. Vinogradov, whose untimely death has been an incalculable loss to the epigraphy of the area and much besides.

³² For Mithridates’ ambitions in the region, see e.g. McGing 1986; Vinogradov 1987 seeks to trace the course of events. On Strabo’s perspective, Braund, forthcoming. Rhodian amphorae predominate among imported coarseware at Neapolis: Vysotskaya 1999.

³³ I am grateful to S. Saprykin and especially A. Maslennikov for showing me these sites.

³⁴ Vinogradov 1994, 68, with bibliography. See now also Nymphaeum 1999 for important further discussion. We know at least that Paerisades sent an embassy to Philadelphus: see Gaidukevich 1971, 89 with Huss 1976, 116 n. 63.

³⁵ The scholars who have done much of the substantial work on Olbia since the war have produced an excellent, but unfortunately scarce, compendium, which is now the starting-point for any consideration of the city: Kryzhitskiy 1999. I am grateful to S. Kryzhitskiy for discussion of the site; also to V. Krapivina and her assistants for taking time to show me the extensive site in some detail.

³⁶ Berthold 1984, 51, with excellent bibliography; Badal’janc 1999; cf. above, n. 30. Also CIRB 20 and the accompanying commentary; cf. Berthold 1984, 93–6 on Polybius, 4.56 (Sinope’s appeal to Rhodes); cf. 172–3.

³⁷ Or ‘hides’, perhaps better: see Walbank ad loc.

³⁸ Polybius explains that they had arrived with Brennus but not crossed into Asia.

³⁹ On storms in the modern Black Sea, see HMSO 1963.

⁴⁰ Diodorus 20.112, perhaps a little dramatic.

⁴¹ Polybius, 4.50.3; 8.22 shows even Cavarus the Gaul seeking to protect traders here; cf. De Souza 1999, 54–6.

⁴² Strabo,11.2.12; cf.17.3.25.

⁴³ Polybius, 4.50.3 resists interpretation but might mean that the Byzantines envisaged piratical slave-raids.

⁴⁴ Satarchae: IOSPE i² 672; Scythian nomads: Strabo, 7.3.7.

⁴⁵ On the Salmydessians, Xenophon Anabasis 7.5.8; on the Taurians, e.g. Herodotus, 4.102; on the Heniochi and their neighborus, e.g. Strabo, 11.2.12. See further, Braund and Tsetskhladze 1989.

⁴⁶ The claim was often made, but never really substantiated in fact: De Souza 1999, 184, who also observes Diodorus’ recurrent interest in this issue. Eumelus presumably put a stop to Bosporan help for pirates: Strabo, 11.2.12.

⁴⁷ Diodorus, 20.25.1, where the name of the place is hopelessly corrupt: Gaidukevich 1971, 163 n. 124 collects suggested locations, none particularly attractive, though a site on the more troublesome eastern side of the kingdom seems more likely than not. On Callatis’ trade with the Crimea, see Garlan 1999b, 137 n. 42.

⁴⁸ Cf. Desyatchikov 1977, supporting Mueller’s textual emendation here.

⁴⁹ On Bosporan mercenaries, see Vinogradov 1994, 68–70 and the works there cited.

⁵⁰ See above, n. 36.

⁵¹ These matters are treated at length in Braund, forthcoming. We may wonder how much Diodorus’ account of Eumelus and his ambitions (above) was influenced by thoughts of Mithridates Eupator.

⁵² Of course Mithridates was far from the first in his dynasty to be drawn north: e.g. Polybius, 25.2.12 with Walbank ad loc.

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