Part 22

The ancient city of OLBIA, once, as its name indicates, a wealthy town, was situated between Odessa and Oczakow; it was also termed _Borysthenis_ or _Borysthenopolis_, but the city is generally called Olbia, while its inhabitants are spoken of under the names of Βορυσθενοπολῖται, Ὄλβιοι, and Ὀλβιοπολῖται. It was a great emporium for the Greek corn trade with the countries about the Dniepr. That trade was carried on from two points, first from the Ukraine and the Dniepr, and secondly from Phanagoria, the Cimmerian Bosporus, the Don, and the Taurian Chersonesus. As apparently unimportant circumstances often supply the place of historical information, so the decay of Olbia justifies the inference that the commerce of the Dniepr, to which Olbia owed its greatness, must have been destroyed, and that too in consequence of the invasion of those countries by the Gauls on the one hand, and by the Sarmatians on the other. Agriculture must have been ruined, and nomadic tribes appear to have settled there. The Bosporanian towns retained their importance, but Olbia was insignificant compared with what it had been, and never rose again. When a place, after its destruction, continues to be inhabited, the stones and especially marble, are ill preserved: Olbia had received its death-blow, and though it continued for a time to be inhabited by the Greeks, it was afterwards completely destroyed by the barbarians, and never restored. Innumerable inscriptions are thus buried in the ground, from which we can gather information about the condition of Olbia; one of them[84] refers to the period preceding the appearance of the Sarmatae. From Dion Chrysostomus, we know that in Caesar’s time the Sarmatae came across the Dniepr, and took and destroyed Olbia. In his own time Olbia was a thinly inhabited and decayed place of large circumference. Afterwards it is no longer mentioned. From Herodotus, who himself visited the place, we can best see how great it was in his time.

From Olbia, we proceed to the Crimea, the _Chersonesus Taurica_, in modern times sometimes called _Tauris_,—a name of which it has been justly remarked, that it was unknown to the ancients, but it does not follow that we too should not use it; only in writing Latin we should not employ it, but follow the practice of the ancients. The correct name is Ταυρική; and Ταυρίς, though correctly formed, does not occur, but the country was called from its inhabitants Ταῦροι, whence Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Ταύροις, and not _in Tauride_. This Taurian Chersonesus consists of two halves which are separated nearly equally by a diagonal running from north-west to south-east. The southern half has an excellent range of hills, whereas the other is a steppe. The former was inhabited by Taurians, the latter by Scythians; the Taurians were, as Herodotus says, foreign to the Scythians. The Greeks formed settlements on the coast of the Taurian country, and also on the Cimmerian Bosporus.

The great town called CHERSONESUS was situated on the promontory of a small island, as the isthmus could easily be defended by fortifications; it had an excellent harbour, for which reason it had been chosen as the site of a colony. The town was a colony of Heraclea in Bithynia, whose greatness belongs to the period previous to the Mithridatic wars; its vicissitudes are manifold; it must have been founded after the time of Herodotus, as he does not mention it. The passage in which he speaks of those countries, shows that he would have noticed it, if it had existed. But whenever it may have been founded, it became important at an early period, and was known under the name of Ἡρακλεία ἐν Χερσονήσῳ, or simply Χερσόνησος. In consequence of attacks from barbarous tribes, it was obliged to place itself under the protection of Mithridates Eupator. This was the beginning of happy times for the Greeks in those parts; the whole of the Crimea was united under one government, and the barbarians were excluded by fortifications on the isthmus. The kings of Bosporus, descendants of Mithridates, governed the peninsula as a splendid little kingdom under the protection of the Romans, who never introduced their provincial institutions there, but were satisfied with the recognition of their supremacy and presents. Under this government the Chersonesus retained its importance, and when the kingdom of Bosporus was broken up, Chersonesus, which now assumed the name of _Cherson_, became a republic. As such it existed not only in the reign of Justinian, when the Romans protected the inhabitants as their allies and in that of the descendants of Heraclius, but even afterwards under Constantine Porphyrogenitus (see his detailed article Χερσῶν in the work _De Administrando Imperio_). The constitution of this republic cannot be satisfactorily ascertained, but its magistrates were called πρωτεύοντες. The place was then still Greek, and Greek was spoken there, and national chronicles were kept in the Greek language, which the author of the work just mentioned made use of. Afterwards the peninsula was taken by the Russians under their prince Wladimir, the first great conqueror who aimed at the possession of Greece. The town was not indeed destroyed on that occasion, but many things of value were carried away, as for example, the bronze gates of the churches. Soon after, the Chazars and other barbarians came and took possession of the town, which then disappears from history. In 1784, when the Russians took the Crimea, the town no longer existed, but only extensive ruins. Regular and systematic excavations might have led to important discoveries, but the Russians built a harbour for their navy; everything was rudely demolished for the purpose of using it as building material; all the iron was torn away, and the bricks employed elsewhere, so that at present not a trace appears of what forty years ago promised certain reward for suitable exertion. Inscriptions, as far as I know, have not been found; but a large number of coins of the Byzantine period have been brought to light, from which we see that the town, like Venice, even then had its own right of coinage under the protection of Constantinople.

Larger or smaller Greek settlements existed near most of the harbours. THEODOSIA or THEUDOSIA in the neighbourhood of Kaffa, formed the western frontier of the kingdom of Bosporus. At present the name Theodosia (in Russian, Feodosia), has been transferred to Kaffa, but I believe that those are right who consider this transference to be without foundation.

PHANAGORIA, in the eastern part of the Crimea, was situated on an eminence, and was the chief Greek city in those parts. Although the antiquities there have been destroyed in a barbarous manner, the place still is an inexhaustible mine, and the remains show a degree of beauty which excites our astonishment; the Bosporan coins are beautiful, and the vases, statues, and the like are exquisite. Phanagoria was a very ancient Greek colony of Miletus; it rose to greatness at an early period, and was governed by a γένος bearing the name of Archaeanactidae, so that its form of government was at first aristocratic. The Archaeanactidae were probably succeeded by a democracy, and this by a tyrannis. Among the tyrants, Leucon is of some interest to us, because Demosthenes, in his speech against Leptines, speaks of an honorary right conferred upon him for having done service to Athens. He was succeeded by Satyrus and others, who completely undermined the republican constitution, which was perhaps not suited to those countries. The Greek inhabitants were really much indebted to those princes for preserving their wealth and happiness in the midst of impetuous barbarians. Their names show distinct traces of a connection with Persia; thus we often meet with the name Parysades, which is nothing else than Perisades, the son of a fairy (Peri); according to the Greek pronunciation the resemblance is stronger than according to ours.

The kingdom of Bosporus embraced the whole of the eastern Crimea as far as Theodosia, and the opposite island of _Taman_, _Tamacan_, or, as Strabo calls it _Tamyrace_. It formed settlements also on the Palus Maeotis and on the Euxine. In the time of Mithridates Eupator, it was governed by king Parysades, who, being unable to check the invading Sarmatae, surrendered his kingdom to Mithridates; the latter then undertook an expedition into the Crimea, partly for the purpose of extending his empire, and partly for that of training his army for the war against the Romans. As long as he lived, Bosporus was his province; it then passed into the hands of his family, which, like himself, had become completely hellenized, though they were of Persian origin. We can trace the names of the princes down to the fourth century from their coins, the later ones of which show on one side the head of the reigning emperor of Rome, and on the other that of the Bosporan king.

I cannot at this moment give you an accurate account of the towns in the island of Taman, but they were without importance. The town of TANAIS, which may have been very ancient, was situated at the mouth of the river Tanais.

This small kingdom, ever since the time of Mithridates, comprised the whole of the Crimea; across the isthmus, a line of fortifications had been constructed to defend the Crimea against the northern barbarians.

An ancient Περίπλους περὶ Πόντον Εὔξεινον, the beginning of which is lost, is a compilation from the earlier Greek Περίπλοι and from the work of Scymnus of Chios, and contains the distances. But it is very doubtful when it was composed; I believe that it is a late production, perhaps of the time of Justinian, or even later, for all the distances are given in stadia and Roman miles, and the town of Chersonesus is called Cherson.

Greek towns existed not only there, on the coast south of mount Kuban, about the promontory of mount Caucasus, but even in the easternmost corner of the Black Sea. On the eastern coast we find COLCHIS, which exported the products of those parts, which are extremely wealthy, and form one of the most fertile countries in the world. In the upper part it contains wide and beautiful valleys, but the land is too high and not as rich as in Mingrelia. DIOSCURIA, a port town on a gulf, PHASIS, and several other places on the south coast of the Euxine, were likewise founded by Greek colonists.

If we proceed further west in this direction, we come first to TRAPEZUS, a place well known from Xenophon’s Anabasis, to which it owes its celebrity; afterwards it is not prominent again, until the time when a dynasty of the Comneni established itself there, which even survived the fall of the empire of Constantinople. In the earlier times it is not very important. It did not belong to Cappadocia, but was situated in the country now occupied by the Lazes, a people speaking a peculiar Caucasian language. At Trapezus, the Greek language has maintained itself among the Christians, while otherwise it is almost extinct in Asia Minor. The statement made in the oral traditions of the Greeks, that the Doric dialect was spoken there, is very doubtful.

AMISOS, a Milesian colony[85] on the Euxine, the birth-place of Strabo, was an important Greek town in Cappadocia proper. It is strange that such a distant corner of the Greek world should have given birth to a Strabo; the number of faults that can be pointed out in his Greek diction is very small, and even these may be only dialectical; otherwise he writes excellently, for he thinks correctly; the loss of his history is ever to be lamented, for it was assuredly a first-rate work.

The whole country of Trapezus rests on rough Armenian mountains; it is a beautiful country, and to us northern people it would appear excellent, but it is, nevertheless, very different from the blessed fields of Asia Minor. The district containing Amisos and Sinope, on the other hand, is a paradise; its fertility even in antiquity reached a height which we can scarcely imagine in an ideal land, and such is the whole of the north coast of Asia Minor as far as Constantinople. The winters, however, are comparatively severe; the south winds from the Armenian mountains are indeed bracing, but do not much impede the growth of the most exquisite fruit of the south. All Greek towns in that part were free and independent, until the kings of Pontus became powerful and subdued them all, even Amisos.

SINOPE, north-west of the mouth of the Halys, and geographically within the boundaries of Paphlagonia, was in ancient times the greatest Greek town in those parts. Its site is one of those which must be noticed on account of its great excellence; it was situated on a peninsula connected with the main land by a narrow isthmus; the coast in the neighbourhood is rocky, so that foreign ships cannot easily land. The peninsula was of considerable extent, so that the town embraced large districts, which were used by the inhabitants as gardens, vineyards, and fields, and which in time of war furnished means of subsistence. The tunny fish from the sea of Azow arrive there first, and the Sinopians have the first advantage; these fish always pass along the coast, and in the end, as I have already remarked, go into the harbour of Byzantium. The advantages of its situation made the town great and prosperous, and its inhabitants maintained their independence till towards the end of the Hannibalian war, when Pharnaces, king of Pontus, took possession of it. From that time it was the capital of Pontus; the kings resided in it, and Mithridates Eupator adorned it with splendid buildings of every kind. It was then conquered by Lucullus, and though it was not destroyed, its fate was terrible. Under the Romans it was again a wealthy provincial town of considerable importance.

The Greek towns CYTOROS, CROMNA, TION, and SESAMOS anciently existed on the west of Sinope. Amastris, a daughter of a brother of the last Darius, and the wife of Dionysius of Heraclea (she was afterwards married to Lysimachus), united all these towns into one, which she called AMASTRIS, and which became Greek, although she herself was a barbarian. Tion afterwards revived as a separate town.

HERACLEA, a colony of Megara, and consequently a Dorian place, was founded at an early period in the country of the Mariandynians, who afterwards became the serfs of the Heracleotae, and stood to them in the same relation as the Helots did to the Spartans. The city ruled over an extensive and fertile country, took an active part in the navigation of the Black Sea, and founded the town of Chersonesus. During the Persian dominion it maintained its independence, and the satraps were unable to exercise much influence upon it. The later history of Heraclea is the same as that of all other towns, of which the constitution was not modified according to the exigencies of the time: the ancient forms could not be maintained, and the town fell into the hands of tyrants, who governed it uninterruptedly until the Macedonian period. Several of these tyrants were extremely mild, as, for example, Clearchus in the time of Plato, whose mind was cultivated by the study of philosophy, and several members of his family afterwards reigned in the same spirit. Amastris, too, ruled there for a long time, and through her the town became subject to Lysimachus. Afterwards a republican constitution was again established there, and remained until the time of the Romans. Heraclea was allied with Rome at an early period, and was favoured by her; but in the war against Mithridates, Heraclea unfortunately declared itself in his favour, in consequence of which it was taken and cruelly treated by Cotta, and the Romans even sent a colony to it, a measure which otherwise they never adopted in those countries. Thenceforth it always remained a considerable town, as is still attested by its ruins. We know the history of Heraclea from the extracts made by Photius from the local history of Memnon, whose work was based on that of Nymphis.

EPIRUS.

Epirus is one of the few names which, being originally adjectives, have by accident become proper names. Ἤπειρος, as is well known, occurs in the Odyssey as opposed to the Cephallenian islands. In this sense the meaning of the name is almost of indefinite extent, but afterwards, and ever since the Macedonian period, a definite usage, of which traces are found even before, became established; such a trace occurs particularly in Xenophon’s Hellenica, where the name Epirus is applied to the country north of the Ambracian gulf. But in the earlier times, and even in Thucydides, it comprises a tract of country of far greater extent, at least as far as the entrance to the Corinthian gulf; nay, it even reaches beyond, embracing Aetolia and the country of the Ozolian Locrians. This indefiniteness arises from the fact, that the towns in those districts were so far removed from the other Greeks, and were accordingly very little known to them. In all great nations consisting of many tribes, some of which form the real centre, there are others which are scarcely noticed at all; and such also was the case with the Greeks in those parts, as well as in Apulia in Italy. This is proved by the colonization of those coasts, which I have already mentioned, just as if they had been inhabited by barbarians; I need only recall to your recollection the colonies of Anactorium, Leucas, Alyzia on the Acarnanian coast, and Chalcis on the Aetolian. Those nations were even more foreign to the Greeks than the Thessalians, so that the Aetolians and Acarnanians did not belong to the Amphictyonic league, though it included even Malians, Dolopians, Aenianians, Magnetes, and others. These are antiquarian points, to which we must direct our attention, in order to obtain a clear and distinct view.

We shall speak of Epirus in its narrower sense. Its new and narrower frontiers were formed especially at the time when the great Pyrrhus became king of Epirus, and when the kingdom founded by him gained consistency. In later times it was of a still more limited extent. As those tribes, when they did speak Greek, spoke in the Doric dialect, they called themselves Ἀπειρῶται, as we see from their coins, both regal and republican. This form also remained the most familiar to the Romans, and has been preserved down to our own time in the word _apricots_ (_mala Apirotica_); in like manner, we find in Plautus _Alis_ and _Alii_ for _Elis_ and _Elii_. Later writers indeed used _Epirus_ and _Epiroticus_, but these are changes of the literary language, while the genuine and more ancient form continued to be used in the popular and spoken language. The Epirots must also have had a real national name of their own; and this name has been preserved by Mnaseas, a pupil of Aristarchus, in a scholion on the Odyssey. It was Siceli, like that of the Oenotrians in Italy, and of the inhabitants of Sicily. I have published a short essay on this subject in the _Rheinisches Museum_,[86] and have shown that the Siceli mentioned in the Odyssey must be those of Epirus, that the ancient grammarian is perfectly right in this respect, and that for this reason the last rhapsody of the Odyssey is of quite a different origin from the rest. Satisfactory results in the higher kind of criticism, regarding the age of authors, may be arrived at in many cases either by mere grammatical, or by mere historical philology, but it is infinitely better if both can be combined, and such is the case here, the one supporting the other. Bentley’s investigations on the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of Aesop are models of inquiries, in which historical and grammatical philology go hand in hand. Much that is excellent has already been done for the Homeric poems; but there is still much to be removed, and all the details must be treated of in connection with one another. I am not speaking here of that which has already been done by Wolf.

The name Siceli, as I said before, is ancient; but how long it was in actual use is a different question. The correctness of the statement, however, cannot be doubted. Another statement, from Theopompus, a writer who notwithstanding many faults contains much that is instructive, declares the Epirots to be Pelasgians. As regards the Pelasgian nations, I think I may refer you to what I have said elsewhere;[87] I will defer the discussion of this subject until I have made more progress in these Lectures; I should like here to explain my views, but the time would thereby become too short for the task I have proposed to myself. I will therefore compress what I have to say in few words. The Pelasgians were a race distinct from the Hellenes, but sprung from the same root as they, and essentially and nearly allied to them. The difference was not distinctly understood in the earliest times, whence many nations are called by one author Hellenes, and by another Pelasgians. The statement that the Hellenes in the Iliad are not yet mentioned by a common name, that Hellenes and non-Hellenes were first properly distinguished by Thucydides, refers to the difference existing between the Hellenes and Pelasgians. Thus, e.g., Dodona in the Homeric Catalogue is called Hellenic, and Herodotus calls the Molottians and Thesprotians Hellenes, and so also the Epirots, as he was guided by their religion. But Thucydides, who judged from the language of a nation, considers the Epirots as different from the Hellenes, nay, he expressly calls them barbarians. We understand by Epirots the nations extending from the frontier of Illyricum as far as upper Macedonia (without as yet deciding upon the name Macedonia), and then along mount Pindus as far as the Achelous. To these nations we shall apply the name Epirots. I will first mention what points they have in common, and then determine which of them are to be regarded as Epirots and which not. These nations, at least their educated classes, had so far adopted the Greek language, as to employ it everywhere in public and written transactions. This accounts for Polybius always distinctly including them among the Greeks; and he does so even in regard to those who lived beyond the boundaries of Epirus fixed by Pyrrhus: though on one occasion he makes Philip, the son of Demetrius, say of the Aetolians, that they ought not to boast too much of their Hellenic character, nor to distinguish the Macedonians from the Hellenes, since the greater part of them were descended from non-Hellenes and barbarians. And the nations there spoken of were Epirot tribes. In this manner, Polybius somewhat contradicts himself. But it is only critics fond of hair-splitting that can attach any weight to such a contradiction; an author like Polybius, even without scrupulously weighing his words, can not mislead a sensible reader.