The ‘Hospitable Sea’ of Ancient Times

As the writer Neal Ascherson stated metaphorically, the Black Sea was a ‘birthplace for both civilization and barbarism’: it acted as a crucible for the disparate human populations that converged there.^[667] Among the earliest peoples to have sailed along its shore during the late Bronze Age (around the fifteenth century BCE), were presumably the Kaskians, who lived on the Anatolian coast and are depicted in Hittite records.^[668] Passing the Pontic Mountains into the Hittite-controlled heartlands and eventu­ally the Mediterranean, they may have contributed to the constellation of pirate ‘sea peoples’ that dealt a devastating blow to the ancient civilisa­tions of the Levant, shortly before the general collapse of the Bronze Age civilisation.^[669]

The ancient Greeks, at the turn of the first millennium BCE, consid­ered the Black Sea the upper limit of their known world.

These Straits were a strategic location from the outset.^[672] Two of the earliest texts to have survived, the Iliad, and the Odyssey attributed to Homer, recount the famous war fought by a coalition of Greek city­states against Ilion (Troy), located on the Asian coast at the mouth of the Dardanelles (thus controlling the entrance to the Straits). Archaeological excavations have uncovered a site overlooking the Aegean Sea, five kilo­metres from the southern entrance to the Dardanelles composed of nine cities successively built on top of each other, the first dating from 3000 BCE and the latest 500 CE.^[673] They do not, however, establish a certain connection between the Homeric myth and history.

The Greeks originally called the Black Sea Pontos Axeinos, the ‘inhos­pitable sea’, or simply Pontos. The dual valence of the sea - as both a fearsome obstacle and an essential means of travel - is contained in the double meaning of the word Pontos: while it signifies ‘(high) sea’ and ‘hostile space’ in poetic language, it is also related to the Indo-European root meaning ‘bridge’ or ‘path’, hence ‘navigable waterway for boats’. Over the course of various migrations, the negative connotation waned and reversed, as it came to be called Pontos Euxinos: the ‘hospitable sea’.^[674]

The Greek colonisation of the region was well under way by the eighth century BCE, beginning with Anatolia and the western coast. A century later, Greek ships reached the northern coast, founding the colony of Olbia at the mouth of the Dniester before continuing on to Crimea and finally reaching the mouth of the Don beyond the Sea of Azov.^[675] Two cities, Miletus in Asia and Megara near Athens, led a race for settlement that was concluded within two centuries. In the seventh century BCE the city of Byzantium - distant ancestor of Istanbul - was founded on the European side of the Straits, on a strategic finger of land extending eastward between the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, a curv­ing estuary at the mouth of Bosphorus. The economy of the Black Sea’s north coast was thus established: ports in the north exported grain and slaves, importing agricultural produce from the south, in particular olive oil, as well as manufactured goods. In what is today Georgia, they met with the Kingdom of Colchis around the River Phasis (Rioni), leading to its disappearance. Greek ships, by meeting the northern and eastern shores, had done away with the fancy of Europe and Asia as two ‘conti­nents’ surrounded by water: in the fifth century BCE, Herodotus noted that the division between Europe and Asia north of the Black Sea was conventionally placed on what is today River Rioni in Georgia, or some­times at the River Don and the Kerch Strait (in other words, it crossed the Sea of Azov).^[676] It was a topos that Colchis was ‘the farthest voyage’ and it is no wonder that the mythical Argonauts went to seek the golden fleece in that land.^[677]

The region around the Black Sea was unified for the first time under the Persian empire at the turn of the fifth century BCE and remained so until Alexander the Great defeated the Persians.

The Romans then established lasting control over the west coast of the Black Sea to the Danube and over Anatolia to the Caucasus, with Tomis (modern Constanta in Romania) as the main port city,^[679] not far from the delta of the great river.^[680] Yet this was at the cost of dividing the sea in two. The emperor Trajan (97-117), who extended Rome’s frontiers up to Dacia (modern Romania), briefly entertained the ambitious idea of invading the Black Sea’s entire northern coast. But the vast steppe, easily traversed by horse-mounted warriors, was never favourable terrain for Rome’s legions. The Romans therefore contented themselves with southeastern Crimea, easily reachable by sea, which they maintained as a client kingdom. Unsurprisingly, they placed their naval base at Korsun, near modern Sevastopol.

At the beginning of the fourth century, the emperor Constantine decided to found a new capital for the Eastern Empire, Constantinople, designed as a counterpart to Rome. For this he chose the site of Byzantium, which he completely reconstructed from top to bottom. Occupying the entire peninsula, the city was nearly impregnable: it was surrounded by water on three sides, a ring of double walls defending the fourth (the outer line was built under the reign of Theodosius, 408-50) making it impassable with the siege technologies of the time. Even today, the vestiges of these fortifications impress the onlooker with their sheer size and the quality of their anti-seismic construction. With such a loca­tion, a large population and a vast array of port installations to ensure its supply from the Aegean and Black Seas, complemented by a network of major land routes converging from Europe and Anatolia, the city became the trade hub of that part of the world during the high Middle Ages. Holding Constantinople and both sides of the Straits was a guarantee of safety but holding the shores did not allow the Empire to prevent passage of unwanted vessels through the Straits; that task had to be delegated to a fleet of galleys and thus the need for naval supremacy remained para­mount. Without it, the Byzantine Empire would be unable to prevent enemies or economic competitors from sailing to and fro between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.