CHAPTER XIII. COLONIZATION AND TRADE.

The Euxine coast was the first El Dorado, the first mysterious land to draw adventurers across broad seas in search of fame and treasure. Heroes of old had won glory enough by voyages across the Aegean, but they would not have lived upon the lips of men whose wonderland had broadened with their knowledge, had not the poets set their feats ever beyond the bounds of new discoveries.

; and Odysseus on his way from Troy to Ithaca must pass through the dangers recounted by sailors returned from the Euxine. Later when the Greeks had dared Italian and Sicilian seas a yet wider scene for adventure was displayed. Even Jason must return by the West, faring up the Ister and down by its other branch into the Adriatic, yet for him the great field of his achievements remained Colchis, the city Cytais—Aea with its king Aeetes and his daughter, Medea the sorceress, skilled in herbs. Now, by the nature of things, Odysseus could not be brought through the Pontus to Ithaca. The winds that blow him into the Western sea have nothing impossible about them. But in the Western sea there was room for all the marvels of the world : if the hero could not sail the Euxine, the wonders of the Euxine could be put in his course through the West. Cities of Italy or Sicily became proud that at their straits, or bays,, or headlands, the hero had met adventures which nevertheless still bore every mark of Pontic scene.

A clear case is that of the Cimmerians. Their place was on the Cim­merian Bosporus, a land weird enough with its mud volcanoes and marshes to supply the groundwork for a picture of the Lower World. Yet the perpetual night in which they live, just like the long days of the Laestrygones, points to the far North: and the general build of the poem makes us think of them as far in the West upon Ocean stream.

about the fishermen ferrying souls over to Britain, but the fishermen are not called Cimmerian and I do not see how they come in.

and K. E. von Baer^{[987] [988] actually make the Black Sea coast the scene of the Odyssey. The latter not only sees the harbour of the Laestrygones in Balaklava Bay, but recognizes in a grovf of poplars on the Sea of Azov, near the mouth of the Protoka, the very grove of poplars and willows by which Odysseus lands. But mere descriptions of scenery have no bearing on the question. The Laestrygonian harbour, shut in by overlapping head­lands, is just the port a poet would describe as ideal without any need of Balaklava for a model. It might just as well be Dartmouth or Boscastle which lays claim to a resemblance: such a port is difficult for a sailing ship— we lost a frigate off Balaklava—and its white calm throws into relief the wildness of the inhabitants.}

The attempts to set the Nekyia in Campania are very much more forced: there is nothing to play the part of Ocean stream and the etymologies pro­posed do not help at all. Ephorus, to whom they go back, was kind to the patriotism of Circeii and other towns about, and moderns have developed his hypothesis with a perverse ingenuity⁸.

Another link with the Pontus is Circe with her island Acaea, own sister to Aeetes with his city Aea ; the account of the island sounds like a stray piece of Colchis, and the lady is skilled in herbs like her niece Medea. Strabo (i.

The view that Odysseus once sailed the Euxine is well stated by von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, who however puts the Laestrygones on the south coast of Asia Minor, but it is clear that the further north they are the better^[989].

\\ hen the Odyssey was coming into shape the Asiatic Greeks clearly knew a good deal about the Euxine, and the poet could use that knowledge to provide scenery for his poem. Even in the Iliad (xm. 5—7) we have the Mare-milkers mentioned, that is he had some idea of the Nomad’s life, but their acquaintance was not full and its mysteries were not yet fathomed.

When the mariners of the Aegean first sailed the Euxine and what men they were we cannot say: with our new knowledge of ancient sea powers we must put much further back the time of first exploration. If the pots of the Tripolje culture really point to Aegean influence, this may have been exerted by sea.

Certain spots are said to have once belonged to the Carians: Cios^[990], Caria and the Carians’ Harbour to the south of Callaris^[991], Amastris⁶, even the country about the mouth of the Tanais⁷, and this may be evidence of ancient settlements of Aegean peoples or may be due to mere coincidence of names. Of the presence of Phoenicians there is no real trace (pace M. Berard): if they did penetrate into the Euxine they were not the first to sail it. Indeed it is not quite certain that the sailing all came from the south: in the Middle Ages of Greece immigrants from Central Europe may, on striking the Euxine, have

Roscher’s Encycl. pp. 15—31.

⁴ Schol. Afr. Rh. 1. 1177.

⁵ Arrian, Peripl. 24. 3, also in Mela 11. 2 and Peri pl. Anonymi, 101 (75).

^G Schol. Ap. Rh. 11. 943.

⁷ Pliny, NIL vi. 20 (7). For all these see Neumann, Hellenen, p. 340: Burchner, p. 33.

taken as kindly to sea raiding as did the Goths in the mrd century a.d.

As we have seen the ordinary man in Greece never advanced much beyond this stage. He always had a vague feeling that the Euxine, even though no longer called ’’A^et'os, was dark and strange, he could never disabuse himself of the idea that the Sea of Azov joined the Caspian and the Caspian opened into the outer Ocean.

With the Milesian sailors it was otherwise. Navigation of the Euxine continued to be dangerous, but the dangers were known and the risks reckoned; sudden storms, rocky coasts, hostile tribes and pirates were to be set against the chance of carrying off valuable slaves or making a piratical seizure oneself. With time enterprise became more regular, instead of carry­ing off slaves men bought them from those who had taken them in war, and peaceful gains became worth winning, the gold of Phasis, the fish of the great northern rivers, in time the hides of the steppes, the corn of the lowlands by the river mouths, the gold of the far interior, Transylvania or perhaps the Altai. But this commerce depended on regular relations being established, such as could only be secured by the founding of factories. Such gradually sprang up round the whole coast wherever it was convenient for Milesian ships to put in for the night, wherever a defensible rock or island commanded a safe cove or a beach upon which the ships could be easily drawn up. Between these settlements a struggle for existence would be inevitable: where suitable topographical conditions occurred in a favourable geographical situation, some spot at which land and sea roads converged, the factory would attract the produce of a wide area and flourish: when communications with the Hinterland were difficult the spot remained a mere refuge for the night, and as skill in navigation increased perhaps it faded away.

We need not then Qredit the Milesians with a profound knowledge of the Hinterland of the Black Sea because the sites they chose have remained the commercial cities of the coast. The permanent settlements if not hap­hazard were dictated by the comparative success of the factories, and we have clear cases of their missing points of world importance because of local disadvantages. It seems to us a strange oversight that they should have allowed the Megarians to forestall them at Chalcedon and Byzantium, and no one has refrained from jeering at the blindness of the Chalcedonians them­selves : yet the disadvantages of Byzantium on the land side, where until Roman times its fields were open to Thracian inroads, went far to excuse those who preferred sites less suitable for the capital of the Eastern Mediter­ranean, but more favourable for an agricultural colony. Byzantium, in fact, had no value until the Milesians had called into existence a great Euxine trade: their mistake was in not appreciating what they themselves had done¹.

It is hard to know what meaning we can attach to the traditional dates given by Eusebius and Jerome for the foundation of the Pontic colonies. The case of Cyzicus which is given three times, b.c. 1267 (Anno Abrahae 747), B.c. 757 and b.c. 679 is perhaps instructive: the first figure representing the mythical foundation by the Argonauts, the second the real occupation, the last some important accession of population or break with the mother city²; whereas Sinope is only put down under 631 b.c.

There is no reason to doubt that during the vmth century the north coast of Asia Minor was studded with Milesian factories, and that during the vnth century they were spread more thinly along the Scythian coast. At the same time the circumstances of the mother city, want of land, pressure from Lydia and internal quarrels encouraged citizens to settle permanently in what had been mere trading stations. Inasmuch as a considerable number of citizens was necessary to establish a community that could stand by itself, the Milesians sometimes allowed men of other states to join in the enterprise. From the vith century the finds made upon the coast and in the interior prove the existence of a great trade between the settlers and the natives, but when hard times for the lonians set in, the market which Miletus had made passed to the Athenians, at any rate as regards pottery (v. supra, p. 339). On the other hand the Milesians seem to have set the taste of the natives in gold work so that, their imitations went on recalling rather the Asia Minor style of the vith century than the more developed products of later times.

Accounts vary as to the relations between the settlers and the natives. Ephorus⁴ says that until they fell into luxury the Milesians were victorious over the Scythians and settled the Euxine with famous cities: but it looks as if he were merely pointing a moral. On the whole relations after the end of the piratical stage seem to have been friendly. The new comers are generally represented as renting the site of their settlement from the natives. Of course unfair dealing was always apt to bring armed reprisals and ill- defended wealth would always be a temptation, but the choice of a site and speedy fortification made the Greeks fairly safe from mere raids, and both parties gained by intercourse being on a peaceful footing; the natives valued the wares brought by the strangers, and the latter recognized that it was not wise to provoke too far customers who were the masters of the land.

¹ v. Polybius, iv. xxxviii. i—5. ³ Beloch, Gr. Gesch. 1. p. 180, n. 1.

² v. Hasluck, Cyzicus, pp. 157, 163. ⁴ ap. Athenaeum, xu. 26.

Trade then was the origin of the Greek settlements on the north coast of the Euxine and each flourished and attracted population according to the commercial advantages of its position. Chersonese is a possible exception but it was trade that kept even Chersonese alive in later times. No doubt some of the colonists carried on agriculture and had their farms near by, but the main part of them exploited commercially the broad lands of which they had seized the gates.

In his accounts of the advantages and drawbacks of the site of Byzantium Polybius (1.c.) gives us a summary of the Euxine trade. The chief exports were cattle and slaves, less important were honey, wax and dried fish, of corn he says that according to the harvests it was imported and exported: to this list we must add hides (Sep/xara, v.l. Opep.p.aTa), also salt, timber, some precious stones including amber^[992], drugs^[993] and perhaps gold.

Of the slaves the greater part came from Asia Minor whose natives were peculiarly fitted for servitude; the Getae also furnished a large supply. Scythian slaves are not specially common; less adaptable than the Asiatics they would be more suitable for outdoor labour than for personal service. The best known instance of their employment is as policemen at Athens.

On the fish trade Koehler has written a whole disquisition called TAPIXOS. He comes to the conclusion that preserved fish of every quality from jars of precious pickle, which corresponded to our caviar or anchovy, to dried lumps answering to our stockfish : sturgeon, beluga, mackerel, tunny, mullet were all sent to Greece, and later to Rome, from the mouths of the Dnepr, the straits of Kerch, the fisheries of the Sea of Azov and the mouths of the Don. Of the cattle trade we do not hear so much, but it is not surprising in view of the Nomads living all about. Herodotus (v. io) tells of the bees beyond the Ister ; honey and wax were among the chief products of mediaeval Russia.

The men of Olbia made salt at the mouth of the Dnepr and the Cher- sonites later gained it from the same region; near Perekop too were great salterns. This salt was marketable both among barbarians and Greeks. Sadowski has described the old salt-way^[994], leading up towards the Amber coast, but as the salt has left no traces the way is purely hypothetical, the coins found at Schubin may just as well have come up from the head of the Adriatic, and Herodotus tells us of no nw. trade route though he describes so fully that leading ne. Constantine Porphyrogenitus^[995] and Pope Martin⁵ tell of the exchange of salt in Cherson against the corn of Asia⁶. The process of salt-extraction as practised in the xvmth century is described by PeyssoneP. The Crimean timber was not reckoned as good as that of the opposite coast, and of course in the steppes there was none to spare⁸.

These same raw materials meet us in any account of the trade at a Scythian port, e.g. Tanais exports slaves and hides, and nomadic products⁹.

As to gold there were many stories to attract enterprise, the gold worn by the Agathyrsi (this seems the most tangible, the Romans dug gold in

xm] Trade. Slaves, Fish, Salt, Gold, IFine 441

Transylvania, Constantine, l.c., speaks of a “Gold Coast” between the Dncstr and Dnepr), the sacred gold of the Scythians, the gold trappings of the Massagetae and later of the Aorsi, the gold of the griffins and Arimaspi. These added to the rich finds made in tombs—no proof that the gold was abundant, but only that the royal families hoarded it for generations—had made us all believe too easily in a naturally auriferous Scythian area. Now Bertier-de-La-Garde has shewn that there is no real evidence for this, but that gold flowed into Scythia from oversea to pay for exports (v. inf. p. 631).

As to the imports Polybius (l.c.) mentions wine and oil as the chief, but Strabo gives a better account when he says that Tanais received clothing and wine, and everything that belongs to civilized life. That this was just so is shewn abundantly in our earlier chapters.

Products of early Greek industry penetrated the interior (Ionian pots to the Middle Dnepr, p. 339¹, gold work even to Vettersfelde in Lusatia, p. 236), how far the Greeks themselves voyaged is another matter. I feel less and less inclined to doubt that there was some foundation for the circumstantial story that the Geloni were of Greek blood, and quite believe that Aristeas had wandered up into Asia to the land of the Issedones (v. p. 105 sqq.). He no doubt had heard tell of the gold in the Altai, and they had probably made themselves intermediaries in the fur trade between Permia and Iran, which brought into the far north so many Sassanian dishes. I can find no authority for the use of furs among the Greeks except perhaps those on the coast of the Euxine². Speck (1. p. 117) seems to think that the furs were the object of the ne. caravan route.

We have already seen (supra, p. 359) that the wine trade has left evidence of itself in the amphorae found all along the coast and even in the interior. Beside those of local manufacture we have the stamps of Rhodes and Thasos that occur in large numbers and those of Cnidos and Paros, which are com­paratively rare. It is clear that the custom of affixing stamps was not universal, for we know that other wines came into the Pontus. The speech of Demosthenes against Lacritus gives us an idea of the ways of Greek tramps in the second class wine trade, especially as it preserves the agree­ment made between Artemon of Phaselis, who wished to speculate in the Pontic trade, and Androcles of Athens who advanced him three thousand drachmae for the purpose. Artemon was to sail in the twenty-oared ship commanded by Hyblesius his fellow-citizen, and to take in three thousand jars of Mende wine at Mende or Scione, dispose of it on the Bosporus, or if he liked go on to Borysthenes, take in cargo from the Euxine and bring it all back to Athens on the same ship. Androcles could claim his money twenty days after the return of the ship. He was to have 22'5 per cent interest if the ship left the Pontus by midsummer, 30 if she were later. This high rate gives some idea of the profits Artemon might reasonably make, and inci­dentally of the risk run. As a matter of fact Artemon did not propose to run any risks. He raised a further loan on the same security, only took in 450 jars of Mende wine, carried it over to Bosporus and there sold it and

¹ Cf. Arch. Anz. 1911, p. 230, Pasterskoe Goro- Miscellany, St P., 1911, pp. 155—168. dishchc (Kiev); p. 235, f. 42, Nemirov, Podolia, ² Stele of Greek yowapiot (furrier), Kerch, vith cf. Spitsyn, “Scythians and Hallstatt,” Bobrinskoj cent. A.D., Trans. Od. Soc. XXIX. Minutes, p. 8.

M. 56 took on board eighty casks of sour Coan wine, ten or eleven pots of salt fish, a little wool, and two or three bales of goatskins: the wine and fish were for a farmer at Theodosia to give to his labourers. Lacritus, the defendant, who took the place of Artemon deceased in the meanwhile, represented that this consignment was destined for Athens, but that the ship had been wrecked between Panticapaeum and Theodosia, and all the goods lost. “As if,” said the speaker, “any one ever heard of wine being brought from Pontus to Athens: whereas it is sent there from these parts, from Peparethus and Cos and Thasos and Mende.” As a matter of fact the captain had met a Chian in Pontus, and had borrowed money from him under promise to bring the ship and everything it contained to Chios, strictly against the Athenian Navigation law—it was not even lawful to lend money for a voyage which should not bring corn to Athens. So now the ship was hidden in a thieves’ harbour, waiting to get safely to Chios, and Lacritus was trying to avoid paying his debts because she had been wrecked off Theodosia. Whether this complicated story be true or no it cannot have been contrary to possibility and gives us a vivid idea of what the Pontus trade was like. We have the same tale of rascality in the speech against Phormion, but the documents are not supplied so it is not so instructive. Here the defendant contends that he paid certain monies to the agent of the prosecutor, but that they were lost in a shipwreck. An interesting point is that the goods ex­ported from Athens did not always find an instant sale on the Bosporus. It is a pity that we are not told what they were. The shipwreck was caused by an extra consignment of hides on the deck.

Yet in spite of the high rate of interest charged by the moneylenders we must not imagine that the risk was as great as would appear from these private orations. Cases naturally arose out of shady transactions or unfortu­nate ventures and we do not hear of the normal and successful voyages. In the preliminaries there is no difficulty found in obtaining money for the Pontic trade and nobody thought much of its dangers until something went wrong.

Most interesting was the trade in corn which Polybius says that the Pontus exported or imported according to the yield of each harvest. Another important factor which varied more gradually was the degree of civilization in which at any given time the coast tribes might happen to be. When a fresh tribe had lately come to the front with a fresh reinforcement of savagery or when intertribal wars were specially disastrous, the coast strip from which the corn supply was drawn was rendered unavailable, and the limited area of land in the actual possession of the Greek states might be insufficient to supply their needs in a bad year. For a hundred years before the time of Herodotus the tribes of Scythia seem to have been in fairly stable equilibrium, and the Aroteres to the north of Olbia had, as he says (iv. 17), taken to growing wheat for export, and no doubt the same sort of thing arose in the Eastern Crimea. So the Euxine for the first time had surplus corn, and the Pisistratids found it worth while to secure this trade by their estab­lishment at Sigeum. It was this corn which paid for the black-figured vases and archaic gold and bronze work imported into Scythia. As far as Athens was concerned the Persian wars put a stop to this exchange, but the conditions in Scythia remained the same, and when Athens again obtained access to the

Scythian markets her population was increased and her demand still more^[996]. The coming of the Sarmatians seems to have upset the equilibrium. New tribes succeeded to the half-civilized ones, and the state of things shewn by the Protogenes decree (App. 7) would not encourage agriculture in the interior of the country; so too in the Crimea the relations of Greeks and natives were interrupted : even the cornlands of the Bosporan kingdom can hardly have given so full a return as before. Accordingly the time just before Polybius was unfavourable to corn production in Scythia, whereas in other parts of the Greek world it had spread and flourished. Hence the necessity of importing corn into what used to be the granary of Greece. Mithridates again secured {Mice : his opponents, Scilurus and Palacus, were also almost civilized, and the area under corn in the Crimea no doubt spread. About Olbia the Getae probably prevented much progress unless Scilurus was strong enough to give efficient protection. But Crimean agriculture, although burdened with heavy taxation, could provide in kind 180,000 medimni of corn as tribute and 200 talents in silver, the result of prosperous trading.

The Greek tombs dating from the early centuries of our era shew a fair prosperity all along the Scythian coast; even in a little town like Gorgippia the guild of shipowners could, under royal patronage, set up a temple and statues to Poseidon^[997]; but with the approach of fresh tribes things again changed for the worse. We know most of Chersonese, once an agricultural state, self-sufficient but not apparently exporting much ; with the loss of territory on the main peninsula and the impoverishment of its own stony soil it became absolutely dependent for all the necessities of life upon supplies drawn from the opposite coast^[998]; for these it paid with salt and the products of trade with the interior—a state of things just the reverse of what had been.

Little evidence is left that the Euxine coast traded with the far interior : amber mostly came to the Adriatic ; Greek and Roman things may have reached Siberia through Iran ; perhaps some of the China trade, interrupted in £outh-western Asia and travelling by the Oxus from which even if there were no direct water communication it could easily get to the Caspian, de­bouched at Tanais, though the more usual way was across the Transcaucasian isthmus to Dioscurias or Phasis. This was the trade on which Genoese Caffa and Venetian Tana flourished in the Middle Ages : they relied on very precious goods which could stand the very expensive land transit, not on the bulky raw materials that Bosporus and Olbia had exported : the slave trade was common to both periods ; but the Genoese had sometimes to send provisions to Caffa because the Tartars were not yet agricultural, or at any rate were not disposed to sell their corn to strangers with whom they were not on the best of terms. In the xvmth century the Crimea exported some sixty shiploads of barley a year to Constantinople. Though on a smaller scale, the trade described by Peyssonel is essentially similar to that of ancient times. The same would be true of modern times but for the influence of protected

159 sqq. shews that it was vital not only to Athens but to almost all states of Hellas : Pericles tried to make a corner in it and thereby exercise influence over cities Athens could not reach by arms, this was what they found most intolerable, p. 187.

² App. ^\=BCA. xxxvn. p. 38, No. 2.

³ Cf. Pope Martin l.c., Const. Porph. cc. 42, 53.

industries which lessen the import of manufactured articles. Also the export of wheat is drawn from a larger area instead of a narrow fringe along the Dnepr and Bugh, upon which Olbia had to draw; in 1903 Odessa sent out 2,200,000 tons of grain (in 1908 only 655,000), coming from the governments of Bessarabia, Kherson and Ekaterinoslav, besides what went from Nicolaev and Kherson : the central provinces feed Russia itself, the south-eastern use Taganrog—this had no counterpart in ancient times, as there was no agri­culture so far east and Strabo does not give corn as an export of Tanais.

Intercourse with other Mediterranean countries besides Greece and Asia Minor does not seem to have been frequent. In early days we have engraved gems from Western Asia; from the ist century b.c. we find Italian pots and bronzes with glazed pots, beads and charms from Egypt and Phoenician glass. The epitaphs of foreigners dying in Scythia and the foreign coins which have strayed there all tend to shew that the opposite coast was the land with which the people had most to do : other communications were merely fortuitous. Coins of the Scythian coast hardly occur outside their own region : men of the Euxine, though they did travel for business or pleasure or instruction, and in particular journeyed to Rome on state affairs, have not left many traces of their presence in foreign lands; one or two epitaphs, some dedications made by Bosporan kings and some names in lists of Delphic proxenies, make up the number. The dislocated grammar of the later inscriptions at Olbia and on the Bosporus, the pedantic adherence to Dorism of the Chersonesites, suggest that there was not much going to and fro. It was their place in the scheme of things to stay at home and export corn to feed the great centres of civilization or later to defend them against roving barbarians.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Colonization.

Neumann, K. Die Hellenen im Sky then lande, p. 335 sqq.

Biirchner, L. Die Besiedelung der Küsten des Pantos Euxeinos durch die Milesier, I. Teil. Kempten, 1885. Unluckily the second part which would have dealt with the N. coast has never appeared. Hertzberg, G. Kurze Geschichte der Altgriechischen Kolonisation. Gütersloh. 1892. pp. 24—28.

Trade.

Koehler, H. K. E. TAPIXOS, Mem. de l’Acad. des Sciences de St P. Sdr. vi., Sc. Polit. etc. T. 1. (1832), pp. 347—490.

Preller, L. Ueber die Bedeutung des schwarzen Meeres für den Handel und Verkehr der alten Welt. Dorpat, 1842..

von Sadowski, J. N. Die Handelsstrassen der Griechen und Romer an die Gestade des Baltischen Meeres: deutsch von Albin Kohn. Jena, 1877.

Perrot, G. “Le Commerce des Cereales en Attique.” Revue Historique, iv. (1877), pp. 1-73. Mishchenko, Th. G. “ Commercial Relations of the Athenian Republic with the Kings of Bosporus.” Kiev University Bulletin, No. 7 (1878), p. 477.

von Stern, E. R. “The Significance of Ceramic Finds in South Russia for elucidating the Cultural History of the Black Sea Colonies.” Trans. Od. Soc. XXII. (1900), p. 1.

----- “Die Griechische Kolonisation am Nordgestade des Schwarzen Meeres im Lichte archäologischer Forschung.” Klio, ix. (1909), p. 139.

Speck, E. Handelsgeschichte des Altertums. Vol. I. (1900) passim under the heads of various trade articles; Vol. II. (1901), pp. 445—458.

For mediaeval commerce, Heyd, W. Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen Age, tr. by Furey Rajnaud. Paris and Leipzig, 1886. Vol. II. pp. 156—215, 365—407.

For the xvmth century, Peyssonel, Tratte du commerce de la Mer Noire. Paris, 1787.