This victory transferred the dominions of the vanquished prince to Seleukus. At Herakleia too, its effect was so powerful, that the citizens were enabled to shake off their despotism. They at first tried to make terms with the governor Herakleides, offering him money as an inducement to withdraw. From him they obtained only an angry refusal; yet his subordinate officers of mercenaries, and commanders of detached posts in the Herakleotic territory, mistrusting their own power of holding out, accepted an amicable compromise with the citizens, who tendered to them full liquidation of arrears of pay, together with the citizenship. The Herakleots were this enabled to discard Herakleides, and regain their popular government. They signalized their revolution by the impressive ceremony of demolishing their Bastile—the detached fort or stronghold within the city, which had served for eighty-four years as the characteristic symbol, and indispensable engine, of the antecedent despotism.[1100] The city, now again a free commonwealth, was farther reinforced by the junction of Nymphis (the historian) and other Herakleotic citizens, who had hitherto been in exile. These men were restored, and welcomed by their fellow-citizens in full friendship and harmony; yet with express proviso, that no demand should be made for the restitution of their properties, long since confiscated.[1101] To the victor Seleukus, however, and his officer Aphrodisius, the bold bearing of the newly-emancipated Herakleots proved offensive. They would probably have incurred great danger from him, had not his mind been first set upon the conquest of Macedonia in the accomplishment of which he was murdered by Ptolemy Keraunus.
The Herakleots thus became again a commonwealth of free citizens, without any detached citadel or mercenary garrison; yet they lost, seemingly through the growing force and aggressions of some inland dynasts, several of their outlying dependencies—Kierus, Tium, and Amastris. The two former they recovered some time afterwards by purchase, and they wished also to purchase back Amastris; but Eumenes, who held it, hated them so much, that he repudiated their money, and handed over the place gratuitously to the Kappadokian chief Ariobarzanes.[1102] That their maritime power was at this time very great, we may see by the astonishing account given of their immense ships,—numerously manned, and furnished with many brave combatants on the deck—which fought with eminent distinction in the naval battle between Ptolemy Keraunus (murderer and successor of Seleukus) and Antigonus Gonatas.[1103]
It is not my purpose to follow lower down the destinies of Herakleia. It maintained its internal autonomy, with considerable maritime power, a dignified and prudent administration, and a partial, though sadly circumscribed, liberty of foreign action—until the successful war of the Romans against Mithridates (B. C. 69). In Asia Minor, the Hellenic cities on the coast were partly enabled to postpone the epoch of their subjugation, by the great division of power which prevailed in the interior; for the potentates, of Bithynia, Pergamus, Kappadokia, Pontus, Syria, were in almost perpetual discord—while all of them were menaced by the intrusion of the warlike and predatory Gauls, who extorted for themselves settlements in Galatia (B. C. 276). The kings, the enemies of civic freedom, were kept partially in check by these new and formidable neighbors,[1104] who were themselves however hardly less formidable to the Grecian cities on the coast.[1105] Sinôpê, Herakleia, Byzantium,—and even Rhodes, in spite of the advantage of an insular position,—isolated relics of what had once been an Hellenic aggregate, become from henceforward cribbed and confined by inland neighbors almost at their gates[1106]—dependent on the barbaric potentates, between whom they were compelled to trim, making themselves useful in turn to all. It was however frequent with these barbaric princes to derive their wives, mistresses, ministers, negotiators, officers, engineers, literati, artists, actors, and intermediate agents both for ornament and recreation—from some Greek city. Among them all, more or less of Hellenic influence became thus insinuated; along with the Greek language which spread its roots everywhere—even among the Gauls or Galatians, the rudest and latest of the foreign immigrants.
Of the Grecian maritime towns in the Euxine south of the Danube—Apollonia, Mesembria, Odêssus, Kallatis, Tomi, and Istrus—five (seemingly without Tomi) formed a confederate Pentapolis.[1107] About the year 312 B. C., we hear of them as under the power of Lysimachus king of Thrace, who kept a garrison in Kallatis—probably in the rest also. They made a struggle to shake off his yoke, obtaining assistance from some of the neighboring Thracians and Scythians, as well as from Antigonus. But Lysimachus, after a contest which seems to have lasted three or four years, overpowered both their allies and them, reducing them again into subjection.[1108] Kallatis sustained a long siege, dismissing some of its ineffective residents; who were received and sheltered by Eumelus prince of Bosporus. It was in pushing his conquests yet farther northward, in the steppe between the rivers Danube and Dniester, that Lysimachus came into conflict with the powerful prince of the Getæ—Dromichætes; by whom he was defeated and captured, but generously released.[1109] I have already mentioned that the empire of Lysimachus ended with his last defeat and death by Seleukus—(281 B. C.). By his death, the cities of the Pontic Pentapolis regained a temporary independence. But their barbaric neighbors became more and more formidable, being reinforced seemingly by immigration of fresh hordes from Asia; thus the Sarmatians, who in Herodotus’s time were on the east of the Tanais, appear, three centuries afterwards, even south of the Danube. By these tribes—Thracians, Getæ, Scythians, and Sarmatians—the Greek cities of this Pentapolis were successively pillaged. Though renewed indeed afterwards, from the necessity of some place of traffic, even for the pillagers themselves—they were but poorly renewed, with a large infusion of barbaric residents.[1110] Such was the condition in which the exile Ovid found Tomi, near the beginning of the Christian era. The Tomitans were more than half barbaric, and their Greek not easily intelligible. The Sarmatian or Getic horse-bowmen, with their poisoned arrows, ever hovered near, galloped even up to the gates, and carried off the unwary cultivators into slavery. Even within a furlong of the town, there was no security either for person or property. The residents were clothed in skins, or leather; while the women, ignorant both of spinning and weaving, were employed either in grinding corn or in carrying on their heads the pitchers of water.[1111]
By these same barbarians, Olbia also (on the right bank of the Hypanis or Bug near its mouth) became robbed of that comfort and prosperity which it had enjoyed when visited by Herodotus. In his day, the Olbians lived on good terms with the Scythian tribes in their neighborhood. They paid a stipulated tribute, giving presents besides to the prince and his immediate favorites; and on these conditions, their persons and properties were respected. The Scythian prince Skylês (son of an Hellenic mother from Istrus, who had familiarized him with Greek speech and letters) had built a fine house in the town, and spent in it a month, from attachment to Greek manners and religion, while his Scythian army lay near the gates without molesting any one.[1112] It is true, that this proceeding cost Skylês his life; for the Scythians would not tolerate their own prince in the practice of foreign religious rites, though they did not quarrel with the same rites when observed by the Greeks.[1113] To their own customs the Scythians adhered tenaciously, and those customs were often sanguinary, ferocious, and brutish. Still they were warriors, rather than robbers—they abstained from habitual pillage, and maintained with the Greeks a reputation for honesty and fair dealing, which became proverbial with the early poets. Such were the Scythians as seen by Herodotus (probably about 440 to 430 B. C.); and the picture drawn by Ephorus a century afterwards (about 340 B. C.), appears to have been not materially different.[1114] But after that time it gradually altered. New tribes seem to have come in—the Sarmatians out of the East—the Gauls out of the West; from Thrace northward to the Tanais and the Palus Mæotis, the most different tribes became intermingled—Gauls, Thracians, Getæ, Scythians, Sarmatians, etc.[1115] Olbia was in an open plain, with no defence except its walls and the adjoining river Hypanis, frozen over in the winter. The hybrid Helleno-Scythian race, formed by intermarriages of Greeks with Scythians—and the various Scythian tribes who had become partially sedentary cultivators of corn for exportation—had probably also acquired habits less warlike than the tribes of primitive barbaric type. At any rate, even if capable of defending themselves, they could not continue their production and commerce under repeated hostile incursions.
A valuable inscription remaining enables us to compare the Olbia (or Borysthenes) seen by Herodotus, with the same town in the second century B. C.[1116] At this latter period, the city was diminished in population, impoverished in finances, exposed to constantly increasing exactions and menace from the passing barbaric hordes, and scarcely able to defend against them even the security of its walls. Sometimes there approached the barbaric chief Saitapharnes with his personal suite, sometimes his whole tribe or horde in mass, called Saii. Whenever they came, they required to be appeased by presents, greater than the treasury could supply, and borrowed only from the voluntary help of rich citizens; while even these presents did not always avert ill treatment or pillage. Already the citizens of Olbia had repelled various attacks, partly by taking into pay a semi-Hellenic population in their neighborhood (Mix-Hellenes, like the Liby-Phenicians in Africa); but the inroads became more alarming, and their means of defence less, through the uncertain fidelity of these Mix-Hellenes, as well as of their own slaves—the latter probably barbaric natives purchased from the interior.[1117] In the midst of public poverty, it was necessary to enlarge and strengthen the fortifications; for they were threatened with the advent of the Gauls—who inspired such terror that the Scythians and other barbarians were likely to seek their own safety by extorting admission within the walls of Olbia. Moreover even corn was scarce, and extravagantly dear. There had been repeated failures in the produce of the lands around, famine was apprehended, and efforts were needed, greater than the treasury could sustain, to lay in a stock at the public expense. Among the many points of contrast with Herodotus, this is perhaps the most striking; for in his time, corn was the great produce and the principal export from Olbia; the growth had now been suspended, or was at least perpetually cut off, by increased devastation and insecurity.
After perpetual attacks, and even several captures, by barbaric neighbors—this unfortunate city, about fifty years before the Christian era, was at length so miserably sacked by the Getæ, as to become for a time abandoned.[1118] Presently, however, the fugitives partially returned, to re-establish themselves on a reduced scale. For the very same barbarians who had persecuted and plundered them, still required an emporium with a certain amount of import and export, such as none but Greek settlers could provide; moreover it was from the coast near Olbia, and from care of its inhabitants, that many of the neighboring tribes derived their supply of salt.[1119] Hence arose a puny after-growth of Olbia—preserving the name, traditions, and part of the locality, of the deserted city—by the return of a portion of the colonists with an infusion of Scythian or Sarmatian residents; an infusion indeed so large, as seriously to dishellenize both the speech and the personal names in the town.[1120]
To this second edition of Olbia, the rhetor Dion Chrysostom paid a summer visit (about a century after the Christian era), of which he has left a brief but interesting account. Within the wide area once filled by the original Olbia—the former circumference of which was marked by crumbling walls and towers—the second town occupied a narrow corner; with poor houses, low walls, and temples having no other ornament except the ancient statues mutilated by the plunderers. The citizens dwelt in perpetual insecurity, constantly under arms or on guard; for the barbaric horsemen, in spite of sentinels posted to announce their approach, often carried off prisoners, cattle, or property, from the immediate neighborhood of the gates. The picture drawn of Olbia by Dion confirms in a remarkable way that given of Tomi by Ovid. And what imparts to it a touching interest is, that the Greeks whom Dion saw contending with the difficulties, privations, and dangers of this inhospitable outpost, still retained the activity, the elegance, and the intellectual aspirations of their Ionic breed; in this respect much superior to the Tomitans of Ovid. In particular, they were passionate admirers of Homer; a considerable proportion of the Greeks of Olbia could repeat the Iliad from memory.[1121] Achilles (localized under the surname of Pontarches, on numerous islands and capes in the Euxine) was among the chief divine or heroic persons to whom they addressed their prayers.[1122] Amidst Grecian life, thus degraded and verging towards its extinction, and stripped even of the purity of living speech—the thread of imaginative and traditional sentiment thus continues without suspension or abatement.
Respecting Bosporus or Pantikapæum (for both names denote the same city, though the former name often comprehends the whole annexed dominion), founded by Milesian settlers[1123] on the European side of the Kimmerian Bosporus (near Kertsch), we first hear, about the period when Xerxes was repulsed from Greece (480-479 B. C.). It was the centre of a dominion including Phanagoria, Kepi, Hermonassa, and other Greek cities on the Asiatic side of the strait; and is said to have been governed by what seems to have been an oligarchy—called the Archæanaktidæ, for forty-two years[1124] (480-438 B. C.).
After them we have a series of princes standing out individually by name, and succeeding each other in the same family. Spartokus I. was succeeded by Seleukus; next comes Spartokus II.; then Satyrus I. (407-393 B. C.); Leukon (393-353 B. C.); Spartokus III. (353-348 B. C.); Parisades I. (348-310 B. C.); Satyrus II., Prytanis, Eumelus (310-304 B. C.); Spartokus IV. (304-284 B. C.); Parisades II.[1125] During the reigns of these princes, a connection of some intimacy subsisted between Athens and Bosporus; a connection not political, since the Bosporanic princes had little interest in the contentions about Hellenic hegemony—but of private intercourse, commercial interchange, and reciprocal good offices. The eastern corner of the Tauric Chersonesus, between Pantikapæum and Theodosia, was well-suited for the production of corn; while plenty of fish, as well as salt, was to be had in or near the Palus Mæotis. Corn, salted fish and meat, hides, and barbaric slaves in considerable numbers, were in demand among all the Greeks round the Ægean, and not least at Athens, where Scythian slaves were numerous;[1126] while oil and wine, with other products of more southern regions, were acceptable in Bosporus and the other Pontic ports. This important traffic seems to have been mainly carried on in ships and by capital belonging to Athens and other Ægean maritime towns; and must have been greatly under the protection and regulation of the Athenians, so long as their maritime empire subsisted. Enterprising citizens of Athens went to Bosporus (as to Thrace and the Thracian Chersonesus), to push their fortunes; merchants from other cities found it advantageous to settle as resident strangers or metics at Athens, where they were more in contact with the protecting authority, and obtained readier access to the judicial tribunals. It was probably during the period preceding the great disaster at Syracuse in 413 B. C., that Athens first acquired her position as a mercantile centre for the trade with the Euxine; which we afterwards find her retaining, even with reduced power, in the time of Demosthenes.