Setting sail with his small but veteran army, Ariobarzanes found on arrival at Chersonesos that its Hellenic colonists still proclaimed their independence. The Sauromatae invaders had, it seemed, captured the neighboring town of Pantikapaion instead. This change of plans irritated Ariobarzanes, who was already grumpy from the long voyage. Sailing along the coastline until he found the captured town, he landed and immediately besieged the Sauromatae invaders.
The ruler of Pantikapaion was Phidas, a young noble of the Saitae. Part of the great migration of horse-tribes from the east, he had abandoned his nomadic ways and settled in this province, seeing the chance of carving out a new life for himself and his descendants.
However, Phidas had only managed to train a handful of foot-archers to garrison Pantikapaion, whereas Ariobarzanes had brought an army expecting to face a much larger force. This was not to be a fair fight.
Not wishing to find out if the Saitae would send true horse-archers to support their settled kin, Ariobarzanes ordered an assault on the walled town as soon as ladders could be made. The promised assistance from the rebels of Chersonesos had not appeared, which only darkened his mood.
Despite the high walls of stone, the troops reported that the inside of the town was now reminiscent of a barbarian hill fort. And although they encountered no resistance on the walls itself, they were harassed from afar by Phidas and his bodyguards, who shot arrows at them from the safety of a central mound.
Only when the gates were opened and Pontic thureophoroi poured in did Phidas lead his bodyguards down the hill. For a time it looked as if they might push the spearmen back outside the walls, but Ariobarzanes had circled around with his own bodyguards, and now cut down Phidas in a charge from behind.
Dressing their lines and resting for a while, the thureophoroi then advanced up the hill, breaking into a final sprint as they came under arrow fire. On the square they fought the foot-archers, who could have done far more damage had they been placed on the walls. In hand-to-hand combat they did not stand a chance.
And thus were the people of Pantikapaion, in the province of the Bosporion Tyrranesis, saved by Pontos from the Sauromatae invaders. The town was now an odd mix, with older Hellenic structures intermixed with newer nomad attempts to learn the arts of pastoralism.
Ariobarzanes established a new form of rule in Pantikapaion, allowing the people to retain their old traditions and ties, with a Hellenic client ruler as their local king.
On the way back to Asia Minor, Ariobarzanes sailed around the borders of his new client lands, erecting watchtowers to give warning of any Sauromatae attempts to retake the town. When he reached a narrow inlet, the exiled rebels finally appeared out of nearby woods to offer their assistance - but only after their town had already been retaken. And their army was tiny, just a few levy hoplites led by a single noble.
Disgusted, Ariobarzanes paid the rebels a handsome sum to garrison Pantikapaion, and then sailed for home, swearing never to send Pontic forces across the wine-dark sea again.
[I finally triggered the rebel script, even though my faction leader was offshore in a fleet! The diplomat appears magically, so all you have to do is click on the rebels to bribe them - but they're really not worth it, at a cost of ~6,000 Mnai for an experienced general and two levy hoplites. The general also has an interesting bug in my game, being six months out of sync with the rest of the world. So when every other family member has the attribute "summer", he has the attribute "winter". ]
Chapter 11: Negotiating with Pyrrhos
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