Exposed on the extreme north-eastern rim of the classical Greek, and later of the hellenistic, world, was the Bosporan state, ruled from about 438 B.C. for 330 years by dynasts bearing Greek and Thracian names —Spartocus, Leucon, Satyrus, Paerisades. The ruler styled himself 'archon of Bosporus and Theodosia', and 'king of the Sindi, Toreti, Dandarii and Psessi', or sometimes 'king of all the Maeotians'. From the early fourth century B.C. the state comprised the eastern portion of the Crimea (Kerch) and the opposing part of the northern Caucasus (TamanPeninsula), separated by the sea current flowing through the then Cimmerian Bosporus (present-day Straits of Kerch). On the Asiatic side in Taman were once five islands in the delta of the Antikeites/Hypanis (now River Kuban); here the Sindi, agriculturally very productive, lay immediately inland of the Greek cities in the lower valley of the Hypanis.
In the Kerch Peninsula a native population of sedentary Scythians, and perhaps some remaining Cimmerians left behind from their wanderings of the late eighth century B.C., exploited the area's noted fertility.
The main cities in the area were three in the Kerch Peninsula, Panticapaeum, Nymphaeum, Theodosia, which last was annexed to Bosporus some years after 390 B.C., and three on the islands and in the Kuban delta to the east of the straits, Phanagoria, Hermonassa, and Gorgippia, in the hinterland of which lay the Sindi who were incorporated in Bosporus between 400 and 375 B.C. A number of other small townships flourished by the Bosporus, situated near salt-water lakes or
inlets (limans) or under rocky headlands — Porthmieus, Myrmecium, Tyritace, Cimmericum, Acra, Cytaea, and a lost Hermisium on the Crimean side.2 On Taman were Achilleum, Patraeus, Cepi, Tyrambe, Corocondame and another missing town called Stratoclia. In the fourth century the Bosporan state comprised some 5,000 sq. km. of territory, thirty towns large and small, and a population of approximately 100,000-120,000 citizens and subjects. It profited from a brisk trade upcountry with much of the Ukraine and the North Caucasus, then ranged and dominated by the nomad and 'Royal' Scythians.
Strabo (c. 64 B.C.—A.D. 21) gives the best ancient account of the natural resources of Bosporus and the prosperity flowing from them:
The Chersonesus [the Crimea], except for the mountainous area which extends along the sea as far as Theodosia, is everywhere level and fertile and is exceedingly productive of grain; it yields thirtyfold, whatever implement is used. In earlier times the Greeks used to import their corn from there and their salted fish from Lake Maeotis. Leucon is said to have once despatched 2,100,000 medimni of grain from Theodosia to Athens.
(Strabo vn.4.6)
Some four centuries before Strabo, and three quarters of a century before Leucon ruled on the Bosporus, Herodotus had noted the same basic items of trade at Olbia/Borysthenes on the joint estuaries of the Rivers Bug and Dnieper far away in the north-western corner of the Black Sea. He describes the unparalleled pastures by the great River Borysthenes (Dnieper), a river more bountiful than any but the Nile, providing excellent and abundant fish stocks (sturgeon), salt for their preserving, and in the surrounding steppe the deep soil ideal for growing grain. Some tribes grew this specifically for sale. Presumably this was marketed at Olbia/Borysthenes, the 'port of trade' (emporion), known to and visited by Herodotus.
Later both Panticapaeum and Phanagoria became great emporia on the proceeds of the above-mentioned products, to which should be added furs, hides and slaves (Strabo vii.4.5). In later hellenistic times at least, and probably much earlier, Panticapaeum was the great centre for goods
coming up from the Black Sea, and Phanagoria for trade with the Kuban River valley and the eastern shores of the Sea of Azov (Strabo xi.2.10; Appian Mith. 107—8). From the later fourth century there was also a Bosporan Greek trading settlement in the Don delta (River Tanais) at the native site of Eliza veto vskoye, but it had already been destroyed by c.250 B.C. Perhaps it was the 'settlement of mixed people', later given the name Alopecia by Strabo. At any rate it was overshadowed by the more regular emporion founded further west at Nedvigovka by the Bosporan rulers in the early third century B.C., which firmly took to itself the alternative names Tanais and Emporion (Strabo vn.4.5; xn.2.3). Yet another site, Theodosia, on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea, was developed into an emporion between c. 390 and 3 50 B.C. by Leucon (Dem. xx.3 3), and later had a harbour for a hundred ships (Strabo vn.4.4).
Taken together with Herodotus and Strabo (who gives information from Ephorus, Posidonius, Apollonides and other hellenistic writers), there are some forty ancient literary sources for Bosporan history of this period. They range from the sixth century B.C. (fragments of Alcaeus, Hipponax, Aristeas and Hecataeus) to the largely out-of-date material gathered in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus in the late fourth century A.D. (xxn.8.26-32) and in the Anonymous Periplus (Sailing
Manual) of the fifth century. A valuable insight into the conditions of trade and into the 'World of the Emporion' in the fourth century B.C. is afforded by several private speeches of the Attic orators (Lys. xvi.4; Isoc. Trap, m.5.7; Aeschin. 111.191-2; Dem. xx. In ILept. 20; 29-40; xxxiv In Phorm. 8536-7; Dinarchus, In Dem. 43).
Valuable circumstantial detail is provided by two very different works of the first century B.C. The first is a versified Periplus, which seems to owe its Pontic expertise to Ephorus, but also to local hellenistic writers, Demetrius of Callatis, and perhaps to writers about the origins of cities such as Dionysius of Chalcis and Polemo of Ilium ([Scymn.] A.d Nicomedem Regem 795-898). The second work is the Library of History by Diodorus Siculus, and to it we owe our knowledge of the chronological framework of Bosporan history between f.480 and 264 B.C. (Diod. XII.3i.i'; 36.1; xiv.9.3; xvi.36; xvi.52; xx.101.7). Essentially this is a list of rulers with the numbers of years they ruled.
There has been considerable detailed study by numismatists of the early silver coinage of Panticapaeum, thought to commence in the late sixth or early fifth century B.C., and of the smaller Bosporan cities of the second half of the fifth and early fourth century (Nymphaeum, Phanagoria,
Theodosia and the Sindi).14 These provide unexpected detail (and some ground for disagreement among scholars) about the political situation obtaining on the Bosporus before the unification enforced by Satyrus and Leucon. Some otherwise barely known bearers of the name Spartocus and Paerisades are given substance for us by the gold and silver 'royal' coins of the later third and second centuries-B.C. In addition political influences, hints at the staple products, and traces of economic trends can be divined from the types, symbols, countermarks, denominations and weight reductions of the Bosporan coins within the long period from the early fifth to the late second century B.C.
Lastly, a century and a half of excavation on the sites of some fifteen ancient Bosporan towns, and at hundreds of rural settlements and necropoleis and tumuli in the Kerch and Taman Peninsulas, has amassed a vast store of material and information. Trade is largely plotted by finds of imported wine amphorae, fine decorated pottery and metalwork. But studies of burial practices, the linear defences (ditches and walls), city fortifications, town planning, and the phases of construction and destruction, have all filled out the material side of life in the Bosporan state before the coming of the Pontic and Roman intervention. Most recently underwater excavations have revealed the submerged parts of cities (Phanagoria, Cepi) and of entire small towns (Acra), not to mention what are effectively small one-period sites — the ancient shipwrecks found in the Bosporus Straits or off the coasts of the Crimea.
Greeks probably first sailed into the Black Sea in the second half of the eighth century B.C., a feat which may have later been worked up into the legend of the voyage of the fifty-oared ship Argo. The first historical, though brief, colony at Sinope was that led by the Milesian Habron or Habrondas; the founder himself was killed and the settlement extinguished by the Cimmerians (995-4), who were to use the Sinope peninsula as a base for their ravages of Asia Minor (Hdt. iv. 12). This will have excluded the Greeks from the Pontic coast of Asia Minor for much of the seventh century. When the Milesians again looked to send colonies within the Black Sea area, after Abydus on the
Hellespont and Cyzicus on the Propontis had been secured, they turned at first to its west and north-west shores, probably to avoid the Cimmerians in Asia, despite the fact that the first stretch of coast northwards (Salmydessus) was harbourless and inhospitable. Some time later the Milesians
revived their settlement at Sinope, the Cimmerians perhaps having moved on from there to raid more lucrative targets. The area of the Cimmerian Bosporus, with its agricultural and fishery
resources, likewise did not fail to attract the Milesians. No dates, however, are given for the foundations. Panticapaeum, the later capital, was originally Milesian (Pliny HN iv.86), founded by driving Scythians out (Strabo xii.2.5; Ath. xn.26). Athenaeus comments in moralizing
mode (following Ephorus) that in general the Milesians bestrewed the Black Sea with famous cities, expelling the Scythians, until they succumbed to luxury. For the Bosporus the truth seems to be that those sites which had been occupied in the Early Iron Age — Panticapaeum, Tyritace, Myrmecium, Nymphaeum, Cimmericum and Phanagoria - had already been abandoned by the middle of the seventh century, and that the Greek settlers would have found empty sites, or have met
resistance from a weak remnant of the earlier inhabitants.
Panticapaeum/ Apollonia, Myrmecium, Tyritace, Cepi, and perhaps Hermonassa, may have formed under the hegemony of Panticapaeum a single Bosporan state, symbolized by the first silver coinage struck in the late sixth century, bearing a frontal head of a lion, the lion being a natural choice of coin type for the colony of Miletus.
Another city, Megarian Heraclea had her own colony, Chersonesus, on the south-western
tip of the Crimea, and this led to her intervention in the north Euxine in the early fourth century.
At some time close to 480 B.C. the cities of Bosporus fell under a dynasty, the Archaeanactidae, which then ruled for forty-two years, when, according to the entry in Diodorus for 438/7 B.C., they were displaced, but in circumstances unknown (Diod. xn. 31.1). It is supposed that they were Milesian in origin, or Mytilenean, on the ground that an Archaeanax is known to have been active in each of these East Greek states in the sixth century B.C. (Strabo XIII.I ,3B). Probably the preference
should be given to the Milesian family, in view of Miletus' stronger presence on the Cimmerian Bosporus. The Archaeanactidae were arguably a clan of tyrannoi, not unlike the Miltiades and Stesagoras dynasty on the Thracian Chersonesus.
According to Diodorus a certain Spartocus 'succeeded to the Archaeanactidae', leaving it open to speculation whether this was peaceful or otherwise. However, the mention elsewhere of exiles in Theodosia (Anon. Periplus 51) makes it likely that there was trouble leading to the change of dynasty. The date given is 438/7 B.C., but it could have been a year or two earlier, since several other events placed by Diodorus in that year are similarly misplaced. Spartocus is said to have ruled for seven years, which ought to have fallen in the 430s B.C. The date of the change-over of dynasty then was about the time of the revolt of Athens' reluctant allies, Samos and Byzantium, in 440B.C.,
which was put down in the following year by Pericles himself.
The question of the origin of Spartocus has been much debated. It can surely be discounted that he was Greek, or Sindian, or Sarmatian, or a descendant of the Cimmerian stock still remaining on the Bosporus. He was rather of Thracian origin, and not a mere mercenary, but a member of the Thracian royal family of the Odrysae tribe whose names were in several cases identical to those of the Spartocids — Spardocus, Berisades, Komosarye. King Shakes' brother was called Sparadocus (Thuc. 11.100). Perhaps then the Thracians, being at the height of their power, attempted to exploit a difficult situation by supporting the installation of one of their family in answer to an appeal from the Cimmerian Bosporus.
It seems at least possible that Pericles sailed across from Sinope to the Bosporus with the intention of resolving the disturbances there, and helping to power, or showing the flag to a recently installed Spartocus. Either way, the Athenians were strong enough to establish an outpost of
their own at Nymphaeum, which, being just beyond the Tyritace rampart and ditch, was not within the area protected from Scythian mounted raids, and had direct contact with the Scythians, as the burial mounds around it show. Nymphaeum was independent of the Bosporus until 405 B.C. and issued coins in the last quarter of the century.
On the Bosporus Spartocus was succeeded by his son Satyrus (Diod. xn. 36.1) after ruling for seven years. He had probably been archon (with special powers) of the Bosporus state, but nothing is known of his title. Nor did he give his name to the dynasty in ancient times; the line was known as Leuconidae (Ael. VH VI.I 3) or the 'house of Paerisades and Leucon' (Strabo vn.414). Satyrus probably ruled alone, though with some participation in the tyrannis on the part of his sons, Leucon,
Metrodorus and Gorgippus. By 394 'the Bosporan' was regarded as well disposed towards Athens and earned gratitude for granting special privileges to Athenian grain vessels (Isoc. XVII. 3—5). The political muscle of Satyrus' state had obviously grown with the acquisition of Nymphaeum, and it by now also included not only the Milesian Cepi, but also the other colonies on the Taman
Peninsula — Hermonassa and Phanagoria.
Satyrus' rule over the Bosporan state lasted until 389/8 B.C., when his son, Leucon, succeeded and ruled for a further forty years until 349/8 (Diod. xiv.93; xvi.31.6). Thereafter two of his sons ruled jointly for five years, Spartocus II and Paerisades I. After the death of Spartocus Paerisades ruled alone for a further thirty-three years. Diodorus presents the one as following the other Consecutively, adding five years to the total for the dynasty (Diod. xvi.52.10), but this is an error easily corrected with the help of the Athenian decree of 347/6 B.C. (IG II2 212; Tod no. 167; Harding no. 82)).67 On the death of Paerisades his three sons, Satyrus II, Prytanis and Eumelus, engaged in fratricidal war, drawing in allies from the Scythian and Sarmatian chiefs. Satyrus and
Prytanis ruled jointly for nine months, Prytanis alone only very briefly. Eumelus, the eventual victor, ruled alone for five years and five months, initiating ambitious policies which embraced the whole Black Sea area, 310/9—304/3 B.C. (Diod. xx. 100.7). A further period of stability ensued with the accession of Eumelus' son, Spartocus III, who ruled now as king over all parts of his domain until 284/3 B.C.68 By the end of this sequence the 'Leuconidae' and 'those starting with Paerisades and Leucon' had been handing down power within the family for over 150 years, through the time of the Peloponnesian War in Greece, Spartan and Theban ascendancy and the Second Athenian Confederacy, and the rule of Philip II, Alexander the Great and his first Successors, such as Lysimachus.
Leucon and Paerisades are usually labelled 'tyrants' and 'dynasts' by Athenian writers of the time, though by writers of Roman date, dependent on hellenistic ideas of kingship, they are often called 'kings'. Only Demosthenes (xx.26, 31) comes close to the official titulature, using the term archon, and at the same time reflects Athens' interest, describing him as kyrios tou sitou, 'in control of the corn supply'.
The earlier practice, then, seems to be one typical of a tyrannis - the sole rule of the archon for life, with participation by one or more sons, which explains the frequent references to Bosporan 'rulers' (plural). Brothers, brothers-in-law and sons-in-law (paradynastae), might also act
as governors of cities or regions without any actual political division of the state. Sopaeus, the father of a client of Isocrates, was just such a governor of a large territory and an army commander. He fell out of favour with Satyrus, who feared conspiracies, was returned to favour and married Satyrus' daughter {Trap. 3; 57). Gylon became governor of Cepi, and Stratocles may have given his name to the lost town, Stratoclia, as Gorgippus did to Gorgippia. By the end of Satyrus' life, his state was of considerable importance in the Greek world, and was still expanding to east and west.
Eumelus was for a brief space dominant on the Bosporus and pursued a wider policy spanning the Black Sea, freeing the sea of pirates, aiding Sinope, Byzantium and Callatis, and settling 1,000 refugees from the last city at a place on the Asiatic side called Psoa, perhaps because of
depopulation there caused by the warfare. He had proclaimed a return to the 'ancestral constitution', calling an assembly at Panticapaeum, no doubt to ratify his taking of power, and seeking to dampen down the unpopularity arising from the blood-bath which had surrounded his
route to power. What this 'ancestral constitution' was is unclear, but he was probably trying to stress the role of the citizens while retaining his own role as 'archon' of Bosporus. Perhaps Satyrus had tried to style himself king in the fashion of the new hellenistic monarchs, and this had proved unpopular. Neither this Satyrus nor Eumelus have left any coins or inscriptions in their name, but a later figure of the last decade of the third century B.C., one Hygiainon, was still using the title 'archon' on gold and silver coins rather than 'king'.
With the decline in the importance of Athens as a safe and sufficient market, Bosporan rulers kept a wide range of contacts in the Aegean. Sea power passed on this larger stage from Athens to Philip and Alexander, then to Antigonus and Demetrius of the immediate Successor kings, and on to the Ptolemies of Egypt and, in a more limited trading and policing sense, to Rhodes. Those states outside the Black Sea area which showed interest in it were Thrace under Lysimachus f.282 B.C., and
Ptolemaic Egypt and Rhodes (Dio Chrys. xxxi.103). Egypt was asufficient producer of grain for herself, overproducing massively for export, and was therefore in some sense a co-producer and could be a rival of Bosporus.
Alexandria sent a number of products, including pottery, to the north Black Sea area, but on one occasion a fleet of Ptolemy Philadelphus ventured into the Black Sea to intervene on behalf of Sinope against the king of Cappadocia/Pontus (f.275-270 B.C. Steph. Byzant. 'Ancyra' =
Apollonius of Aphrodisias). This was an even rarer intervention from outside for these times than Pericles' expedition had been in the fifth century. But the rulers of Bosporus in turn kept an interest in these major powers. Paerisades II sent an embassy to Ptolemy Philadelphus in 254 or
253 B.C.105 He also dedicated a silver bowl at Delos f.250 B.C., and Camasarye (CIRB 75) was responsible for making dedications at the shrine of Apollo of Branchidae near Miletus (178 and 177 B.C). An honorary decree for her and Paerisades was made at Delphi in c.160 B.C. Again a gold phiale was given to the Branchidae Temple in 15 4 B.C. TO be conspicuous for piety at the two Apollo shrines was an appropriate thing for rulers of a colony of Miletus, and a good advertisement among the Aegean Greeks.
Polybius summarizes for us the state of the Pontic economy with a list of imports into, and exports from, the Euxine generally at this time (iv.38.5). Slaves were a major item, with honey, wax and salted fish going into Greece, and wine and olive oil going the other way; grain was transported both ways, as need arose. The increased availability of grain from Egypt, and the reduction in produce, locally, due to instability among the peoples north of the Black Sea, had probably brought about
this changed situation. The importation of wine and oil into the Bosporus area is amply illustrated by the finds of thousands of fragments of bulk-carrying amphorae from such producers as Chios, Thasos, Samos, Mende, Heraclea, Sinope, Byzantium, Rhodes, Cnidus, Cos, and
others whose amphora stamps and distinctive shapes have been found in
lesser numbers. Recently the Egyptian connexion has been underlined by the find of a fresco in a shrine at Nymphaeum, dating to the third century B.C., on which was represented a ship sporting the name Isis.
The Bosporan troubles with the Scythians were often aggravated bythe Sarmatians pressing behind that people. But on occasion alliances would be made with the remoter people against the nearer. A vivid instance is told by Polyaenus about the difficulties experienced by the Chersonesites when beset by the Scythians (vin.56). They were aided by the Sarmatian queen Amage, who first ordered the Scythian king to desist, and then made a lightning foray on horseback with a small group
of cavalry over a distance of 200 km to his capital. She is said to have killed the king, restored land to the citizens of Chersonesus and to have handed the kingdom to his son. This episode entirely bypassed Bosporus, but similar events, set there at about the same time (c. 150 B.C.), were
worked up into historical romances, which illustrate themes of friendship or revenge among bands of horse-archers in the steppe country (Lucian, Toxaris; Papyrus Soc. Ital. vni.981). Somewhat later, towards 120 B.C., the Scythian king, Scilurus, is found minting coins at Olbia but with a fixed capital in the foothills of the Crimea, perhaps at Kermenchik near Simferopol, which was one of three such strongholds — Neapolis, Palacium and Chabum. He had up to fifty sons, one of whom, Palacus,
managed to unite under him the Tauri and to draw the Sarmatian Rhoxolani into an alliance. He attacked Chersonesus and had a kind of 'fifth column' in Panticapaeum as well.
Recently, with the find of an inscription made at Panticapaeum in 1978/9, a daughter of Scilurus called Dedmotis has been shown to have resided there, married to one Heraclitus, a Bosporan Greek. She dedicated an altar table to a Scythian goddess Dithagoea. Another
element in the confused situation on the Bosporus was the Scythian population of the Kerch Peninsula. A Scythian, Saumacus by name, was raised at the court of Paerisades V and apparently had some expectation of succeeding to his rule. His was probably a palace faction and a racial
group rather than the slave uprising some Soviet scholars have taken it to be. In this situation where the threatened Bosporan Greeks were opposed to this possibility, an appeal was made across the Black Sea to Mithridates VI of Pontus. Diophantus, his general and a native of Sinope, was sent in response. He repelled the Scythians from Chersonesus and later from the western coastlands of the Crimea, and went on to rescue Theodosia and Panticapaeum from the Saumacus faction [c. 111-
109 B.C.). Saumacus himself was sent in chains to Mithridates' court at Sinope. With this act Diophantus put an end to hopes of even an adoptee and pretender carrying on an independent state of Bosporus, where aseries of seventeen archons and kings had perpetuated the line of Leucon
and Paerisades since 438 B.C. A new phase in the history of the Black Sea area was being entered upon, with Mithridates turning the Euxine into a lake dominated by the empire of Pontus.
The dynasts of the Bosporus were, in the fourth century, regarded as barbarians, as we have seen, but accepted as kings in the new hellenistic milieu from the early third century, when classical Greek titles such as archon lacked their former cachet. But almost uniquely the same family went on into that new world undisturbed. One strand of their inheritance was certainly Thracian and probably from the royal family, the Odrysae. But they intermarried with Bosporan Greeks and occasionally
with the Sindi as well, though not, so far as we know, with Scythians, Maeotians or Sarmatians. The state, when it was fully formed, had a core of Ionian and Aeolian Greeks, with some citizens priding themselves on their origin (Panticapaites, Cepites, Nymphaites) Scythians were located
in many of the 200 agricultural and fishing, rural settlements in the Kerch Peninsula, especially in that part protected by the Cimmeric (Uzunlyarsk) bank and ditch; in addition there would be some Cimmerians, a remnant of their former subjects, left behind on the Bosporus. The Sindi of the Taman Peninsula had been incorporated in toto, but also some Maeotian and north Caucasus peoples had acceded to Bosporan overlordship.
Individuals, like Tychon the Taurian and Drysanis the Paphlagonian , who came as a mercenary, increased the racial mix. At the present time some 150 settlements are known from the Taman Peninsula, engaged in grain growing, fish-salting and cattlerearing. Local sculpture used on funerary monuments shows up a racial distinction here, where draped, half-length, rounded figures, replace the Bosporan relief stelae found elsewhere. Some large-scale sculpture is good Greek in style with only a slight provincial air, or exhibiting a concern with local subjects. There is a kouros head probably of the early fifth century from Cepi, a Hellenistic Aphrodite found in
1963 from the same site, and a newly found (1983 and 1985) Amazonomachy relief and grave stelae of the fourth century B.C. found in the northern part of the Taman Peninsula. A monumental temple in the Ionic order was found at Panticapaeum belonging to the middle of the fifth century. An Ionic column capital from Hermonassa of even earlier date exists to prove such public buildings there; at a later date Phanagoria and Gorgippia also were well appointed.
The cults were from the start the common Milesian ones of Apollo Ietros and Apollo Delphinios, but deities which had a strong native content soon appear strongly, Artemis Agrotera, and the several
centres of worship of Aphrodite Urania in and near Phanagoria and Cepi (Tod no. 115 B-C; 171 B-E).117 In the 1960s excavations in Panticapaeumproduced a Doric-style monumental building of the second century B.C., which has been identified as a prytaneum, and in the years leading up to
1980 strong fortifications (tower, curtain walls and bastions) were found on the north side of the acropolis, which dated to the period of Mithridates and his immediate successors.
Alongside the massive import of wine and oil containers already mentioned there is a great deal of fourth-century Attic red-figure and black pottery, including the class of 'Kerch' vases, the choice of which for the Bosporan market may be betrayed by popular subjects on them, especially Arimasps, griffins and Amazons. The burials of the ordinarily well-to-do Bosporans have a generally Greek look, though the inclusion of swords and 'Scythian-type' arrow heads in many graves modifies this
picture. The imposing corbelled vaults and Grower-approaches of the tombs of the nobility and rulers, however, have their best parallels in those of Thracian dynasts and the Macedonian kings, and are even reminiscent of the long-gone Mycenaean 'beehive' tombs. They are, in the main, cut into the ridges approaching Panticapaeum from the West, those on Jiiz Oba perhaps representing resting places of the Bosporan archons. That at Kul Oba and the 'Patinioti' burial will have belonged to Scythian kings of the fourth century B.C., who had been drawn towards Panticapaeum, as King Scyles once had been towards Olbia (Hdt. iv.77).
The Bosporan Greeks, their barbarian rulers and incorporated peoples, constructed a stable and original society and culture in their exposed position on both sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus. They had a unique population mixture, natural resources, and a geographical position on the European side (Kerch Peninsula), which was protected from the major threat of cavalry raids and migratory movements by the two rampart-and-ditch systems. They had durable and talented individual
dynasts in the late fifth and fourth centuries, who ruled for long periods and gave Bosporus a prestige which carried it through the rather more difficult times of the first half of the third and early second centuries. Sometimes the dynasty and state is compared with its contemporary, Syracuse, under its successive rulers, the Deinomenids, Dionysius and the family of King Hieron, which yielded to Rome in 212 B.C. (Aelian VH vi. 13). There is something parallel and similar in their development, but the great difference was the proximity of Syracuse to two major competing empires, Carthage and Rome. Bosporus was just beyond the reach of Persia's long arm, far beyond the domination of the major classical and hellenistic powers, which had an interest in the Black Sea area, and the Scythians were not interested in settling in towns in a restricted area like the Bosporus.
The idea of synoecism and communal defence of small cities behind defensive ramparts was in the air in the late sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. Pisistratus had attempted to unify mineral-rich areas of Thrace at Rhaecelus and near the gold mines of Mt Pangaeum, but gave the latter up to return to Athens. More significantly, perhaps, and in the approaches to the Black Sea, Miltiades the Elder answered the call of some Thracian Dolonci who lived in the Thracian Chersonesus and wished for protection from the more powerful Apsinthii who lived beyond the
isthmus (Hdt. vi.35-40; 103; 139-40). The Bosporan state may well have been conceived on the
model of that in the Thracian Chersonesus, but its very remoteness guaranteed it greater independence from Aegean states such as Athens, and from later Balkan powers such as Lysimachus or the Antigonid rulers of Macedon. It could only be absorbed by a state with a genuine
Black Sea power base such as that of Mithridates' Pontus. Whatever the origin of the idea of a Bosporan state, its history was a long one, with many original features, adapting the Greek way of life to local conditions, and having a long-range economic effect, and a certain cultural influence, on the metropolitan Greek states as well. It was even to have a second period of independence, though one of clientship to Rome, under the long dynasty (bearing once again Odrysian Thracian as
well as Sarmatian names). This last amounted to a period (over three centuries) of striking symmetry to that which we have already seen (438/7—109 B.C.) in the longevity of the
'Spartocid' dynasty
The Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus: the case for a new faction
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Re: The Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus: the case for a new faction
Very interesting. I also hope they will make it into EB2.
Re: The Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus: the case for a new faction
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