2 ON THE COAST OF THE EUXINE.
To complete the picture of the Hellenic world while yet in its period of full life, in freedom and self-action, or even during its decline into the half-life of a dependent condition—we must say a few words respecting some of its members lying apart from the general history, yet of not inconsiderable importance. The Greeks of Massalia formed its western wing; the Pontic Greeks (those on the shores of the Euxine), its eastern; both of them the outermost radiations of Hellenism, where it was always militant against foreign elements, and often adulterated by them. It is indeed little that we have the means of saying; but that little must not be left unsaid.
In my third volume (ch. xxii. p. 397), I briefly noticed the foundation and first proceedings of Massalia (the modern Marseilles), on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul or Liguria. This Ionic city, founded by the enterprising Phokæans of Asia Minor, a little before their own seaboard was subjugated by the Persians, had a life and career of its own, apart from those political events which determined the condition of its Hellenic sisters in Asia, Peloponnesus, Italy, or Sicily. The Massaliots maintained their own relations of commerce, friendship or hostility with their barbaric neighbors, the Ligurians, Gauls, and Iberians, without becoming involved in the larger political confederacies of the Hellenic world. They carried out from their mother-city established habits of adventurous coast navigation and commercial activity. Their situation, distant from other Greeks and sustained by a force hardly sufficient even for defence, imposed upon them the necessity both of political harmony at home, and of prudence and persuasive agency in their mode of dealing with neighbors. That they were found equal to this necessity, appears sufficiently attested by the few general statements transmitted in respect to them; though their history in its details is unknown. Their city was strong by position, situated upon a promontory washed on three sides by the sea, well-fortified, and possessing a convenient harbor securely closed against enemies.[1052] The domain around it however appears not to have been large, nor did their population extend itself much into the interior. The land around was less adapted for corn than for the vine and the olive; wine was supplied by the Massaliots throughout Gaul.[1053] It was on shipboard that their courage and skill was chiefly displayed; it was by maritime enterprise that their power, their wealth, and their colonial expansion was obtained. In an age when piracy was common, the Massaliot ships and seamen were effective in attack and defence not less than in transport and commercial interchange; while their numerous maritime successes were attested by many trophies adorning the temples.[1054] The city contained docks and arsenals admirably provided with provisions, stores, arms, and all the various muniments of naval war.[1055] Except the Phenicians and Carthaginians, these Massaliots were the only enterprising mariners in the Western Mediterranean; from the year 500 B. C. downward, after the energy of the Ionic Greeks had been crushed by inland potentates. The Iberian and Gallic tribes were essentially landsmen, not occupying permanent stations on the coast, nor having any vocation for the sea; but the Ligurians, though chiefly mountaineers, were annoying neighbors to Massalia as well by their piracies at sea as from their depredations by land.[1056] To all these landsmen, however, depredators as they were, the visit of the trader soon made itself felt as a want, both for import and export; and to this want the Massaliots, with their colonies, were the only ministers, along the Gulfs of Genoa and Lyons, from Luna (the frontier of Tuscany) to the Dianium (Cape della Nao) in Spain.[1057] It was not until the first century before the Christian era that they were outstripped in this career by Narbon, and a few other neighbors, exalted into Roman colonies.
Along the coast on both sides of their own city, the Massaliots planted colonies, each commended to the protection, and consecrated by the statue and peculiar rites, of their own patron goddess, the Ephesian Artemis.[1058] Towards the east were Tauroentium, Olbia, Antipolis, Nikæa, and the Portus Monœki; towards the west, on the coast of Spain, were Rhoda, Emporiæ, Alônê, Hemeroskopium, and Artemisium or Dianium. These colonies were established chiefly on outlying capes or sometimes islets, at once near and safe; they were intended more as shelter and accommodation for maritime traffic, and as depots for trade with the interior,—than for the purpose of spreading inland, and including a numerous outlying population round the walls. The circumstances of Emporiæ were the most remarkable. That town was built originally on a little uninhabited islet off the coast of Iberia; after a certain interval, it became extended to the adjoining mainland, and a body of native Iberians were admitted to joint residence within the new-walled circuit there established. This new circuit however was divided in half by an intervening wall, on one side of which dwelt the Iberians, on the other side the Greeks. One gate alone was permitted, for intercommunication, guarded night and day by appointed magistrates, one of whom was perpetually on the spot. Every night, one third of the Greek citizens kept guard on the walls, or at least held themselves prepared to do so. How long these strict and fatiguing precautions were found necessary, we do not know; but after a certain time they were relaxed, and the intervening wall disappeared, so that Greeks and Iberians freely coalesced into one community.[1059] It is not often that we are allowed to see so much in detail the early difficulties and dangers of a Grecian colony. Massalia itself was situated under nearly similar circumstances among the rude Ligurian Salyes; we hear of these Ligurians hiring themselves as laborers to dig on the fields of Massaliot proprietors.[1060] The various tribes of Ligurians, Gauls, and Iberians extended down to the coast, so that there was no safe road along it, nor any communication except by sea, until the conquests of the Romans in the second and first century before the Christian era.[1061]
The government of Massalia was oligarchical, carried on chiefly by a Senate or Great Council of Six Hundred (called Timuchi), elected for life—and by a small council of fifteen, chosen among this larger body to take turn in executive duties.[1062] The public habits of the administrators are said to have been extremely vigilant and circumspect; the private habits of the citizens, frugal and temperate—a maximum being fixed by law for dowries and marriage-ceremonies.[1063] They were careful in their dealings with the native tribes, with whom they appear to have maintained relations generally friendly. The historian Ephorus (whose history closed about 340 B. C.) represented the Gauls as especially phil-hellenic;[1064] an impression which he could hardly have derived from any but Massaliot informants. The Massaliots (who in the first century before Christ were trilingues, speaking Greek, Latin, and Gallic[1065]) contributed to engraft upon these unlettered men a certain refinement and variety of wants, and to lay the foundation of that taste for letters which afterwards became largely diffused throughout the Roman Province of Gaul. At sea, and in traffic, the Phenicians and Carthaginians were their formidable rivals. This was among the causes which threw them betimes into alliance and active co-operation with Rome, under whose rule they obtained favorable treatment, when the blessing of freedom was no longer within their reach.
Enough is known about Massalia to show that the city was a genuine specimen of Hellenism and Hellenic influences—acting not by force or constraint, but simply by superior intelligence and activity—by power of ministering to wants which must otherwise have remained unsupplied—and by the assimilating effect of a lettered civilization upon ruder neighbors. This is the more to be noticed as it contrasts strikingly with the Macedonian influences which have occupied so much of the present volume; force admirably organized and wielded by Alexander, yet still nothing but force. The loss of all details respecting the history of Massalia is greatly to be lamented; and hardly less, that of the writings of Pytheas, an intelligent Massaliotic navigator, who, at this early age (330-320 B. C.),[1066] with an adventurous boldness even more than Phokæan, sailed through the Pillars of Herakles and from thence northward along the coast of Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany—perhaps yet farther. Probably no Greek except a Massaliot could have accomplished such a voyage; which in his case deserves the greater sympathy, as there was no other reward for the difficulties and dangers braved, except the gratification of an intelligent curiosity. It seems plain that the publication of his “Survey of the Earth”—much consulted by Eratosthenes, though the criticisms which have reached us through Polybius and Strabo dwell chiefly upon its mistakes, real or supposed—made an epoch in ancient geographical knowledge.
From the western wing of the Hellenic world, we pass to the eastern—the Euxine Sea. Of the Pentapolis on its western coast south of the Danube (Apollonia, Mesembria, Kallatis, Odessus, and probably Istrus)—and of Tyras near the mouth of the river so called (now Dniester)—we have little to record, though Istrus and Apollonia were among the towns whose political constitutions Aristotle thought worthy of his examination.[1067] But Herakleia on the south coast, and Pantikapæum or Bosporus between the Euxine and the Palus Mæotis (now Sea of Azof), are not thus unknown to history; nor can Sinôpê (on the south coast) and Olbia (on the north-west) be altogether passed over. Though lying apart from the political headship of Athens or Sparta, all these cities were legitimate members of the Hellenic brotherhood. All supplied spectators and competitors for the Pan-hellenic festivals—pupils to the rhetors and philosophers—purchasers, and sometimes even rivals, to the artists. All too were (like Massalia and Kyrênê) adulterated partially—Olbia and Bosporus considerably—by admixture of a non-hellenic element.
Of Sinôpê, and its three dependent colonies Kotyôra, Kerasus, and Trapezus, I have already said something,[1068] in describing the retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks. Like Massalia with its dependencies Antipolis, Nikæa, and others—Sinôpê enjoyed not merely practical independence, but considerable prosperity and local dignity, at the time when Xenophon and his companions marched through those regions. The citizens were on terms of equal alliance, mutually advantageous, with Korylas prince of Paphlagonia, on the borders of whose territory they dwelt. It is probable that they figured on the tribute list of the Persian king as a portion of Paphlagonia, and paid an annual sum; but here ended their subjection. Their behavior towards the Ten Thousand Greeks, pronounced enemies of the Persian king, was that of an independent city. Neither they, nor even the inland Paphlagonians, warlike and turbulent, were molested with Persian governors or military occupation.[1069] Alexander however numbered them among the subjects of Persia; and it is a remarkable fact, that envoys from Sinôpê were found remaining with Darius almost to his last hour, after he had become a conquered fugitive, and had lost his armies, his capitals, and his treasures. These Sinopian envoys fell into the hands of Alexander; who set them at liberty with the remark, that since they were not members of the Hellenic confederacy, but subjects of Persia—their presence as envoys near Darius was very excusable.[1070] The position of Sinôpê placed her out of the direct range of the hostilities carried on by Alexander’s successors against each other; and the ancient Kappadokian princes of the Mithridatic family (professedly descendants of the Persian Achæmenidæ),[1071] who ultimately ripened into the king of Pontus, had not become sufficiently powerful to swallow up her independence until the reign of Pharnakes, in the second century before Christ. Sinôpê then passed under his dominion; exchanging (like others) the condition of a free Grecian city for that of a subject of the barbaric kings of Pontus, with a citadel and mercenary garrison to keep her citizens in obedience. We know nothing however of the intermediate events.
Respecting the Pontic Herakleia, our ignorance is not so complete. That city—much nearer than Sinôpê to the mouth of the Thracian Bosporus, and distant by sea from Byzantium only one long day’s voyage of a rowboat—was established by Megarians and Bœotians on the coast of the Mariandyni. These natives were subdued, and reduced to a kind of serfdom; whereby they became slaves, yet with a proviso that they should never be sold out of the territory. Adjoining, on the westward, between Herakleia and Byzantium, were the Bithynian Thracians—villagers not merely independent, but warlike and fierce wreckers, who cruelly maltreated any Greeks stranded on their coast.[1072] We are told in general terms that the government of Herakleia was oligarchical;[1073] perhaps in the hands of the descendants of the principal original colonists, who partitioned among themselves the territory with its Mariandynian serfs, and who formed a small but rich minority among the total population. We hear of them as powerful at sea, and as being able to man, through their numerous serfs, a considerable fleet, with which they invaded the territory of Leukon prince of the Kimmerian Bosporus.[1074] They were also engaged in land-war with Mithridates, a prince of the ancient Persian family established as district rulers in Northern Kappadokia.[1075]
Towards 380-370 B. C., the Herakleots became disturbed by violent party-contentions within the city. As far as we can divine from a few obscure hints, these contentions began among the oligarchy themselves;[1076] some of whom opposed, and partially threw open, a close political monopoly—yet not without a struggle, in the course of which an energetic citizen named Klearchus was banished. Presently however the contest assumed larger dimensions; the plebs sought admission into the constitution, and are even said to have required abolition of debts with a redivision of the lands.[1077] A democratical constitution was established; but it was speedily menaced by conspiracies of the rich, to guard against which, the classification of the citizens was altered. Instead of three tribes, and four centuries, all were distributed anew into sixty-four centuries; the tribes being discontinued. It would appear that in the original four centuries, the rich men had been so enrolled as to form separate military divisions (probably their rustic serfs being armed along with them)—-while the three tribes had contained all the rest of the people; so that the effect of thus multiplying the centuries was, to divest the rich of their separate military enrolment, and to disseminate them in many different regiments along with a greater number of poor.[1078]