Bosporus.If the Greeks had but sparingly settled on the mainland to the north of the Black Sea, the great peninsula projecting from this coast, the Tauric Chersonesus—the modern Crimea—had for long been in great part in their hands. Separated by the mountains, which the Taurians occupied, the two centres of the Greek settlement upon it were, at the western end the Doric free town of Heraclea or Chersonesus (Sebastopol), at the eastern the principality of Panticapaeum or Bosporus (Kertch). King Mithradates had at the summit of his power united the two, and here established for himself a second northern empire (iii. 298), which then, after the collapse of his power, was left as the only remnant of it to his son and murderer Pharnaces. When the latter, after the war between Caesar and Pompeius, attempted to regain his father’s dominion in Asia Minor, Caesar had vanquished him (iv. 439), and declared him to have forfeited also the Bosporan empire. Asander. In the meanwhile Asander, the governor left there by Pharnaces, had renounced allegiance to the king in the hope of acquiring the kingdom for himself by this service rendered to Caesar. When Pharnaces after his defeat returned to his Bosporan kingdom, he at first indeed repossessed himself of his capital, but ultimately was worsted, and fell bravely fighting in the last battle—as a soldier at least, not unequal to his father. The succession was contested between Asander, who was in fact master of the land, and Mithradates of Pergamus, an able officer of Caesar, whom the latter had invested with the Bosporan principality; both sought at the same time to lean for support on the dynasty heretofore ruling in the Bosporus and on the great Mithradates, inasmuch as Asander married Dynamis, the daughter of Pharnaces, while Mithradates, sprung from a Pergamene burgess–family, asserted that he was an illegitimate son of the great Mithradates Eupator—whether it was that this rumour determined the selection, or that it was put into circulation in order to justify it. As Caesar himself was called in the first instance to attend to more important tasks, arms decided between the legitimate and the illegitimate Caesarian, and once more in favour of the latter; Mithradates fell in combat, and Asander remained master in the Bosporus. In the outset—without doubt, because he had not the confirmation of the lord–paramount—he avoided assuming the name of king, and contented himself with the title of archon, borne by the older princes of Panticapaeum; but he soon procured, probably even from Caesar himself, the confirmation of his rule and the royal title.[212] At his death (737–738 U.C.)17–16. he left his kingdom to his wife Dynamis. So strong was still the power of hereditary succession and of the name of Mithradates, that both a certain Scribonianus, who first attempted to occupy Asander’s place, Polemon.and after him king Polemon of Pontus, to whom Augustus promised the Bosporan kingdom, conjoined with the taking up of the dominion a marriage–alliance with Dynamis; moreover, the former asserted that he was himself a grandson of Mithradates, while king Polemon, soon after the death of Dynamis, married a granddaughter of Antonius, and consequently a kinswoman of the imperial house. After his early death—he fell in conflict with the Aspurgiani on the Asiatic coast—his children under age did not succeed him; and even with his grandson of the same name, whom the emperor Gaius reinstated, notwithstanding his boyish age, in the year 38, into the two principalities of his father, the Bosporan kingdom did not long remain. In his place the emperor Claudius called a real or alleged descendant of Mithradates Eupator, and in this house, apparently, the principality thenceforth continued.[213]
The Eupatorids.Extent of the Bosporan rule.While in the Roman state elsewhere the dependent principality disappears after the end of the first dynasty, and from Trajan’s time the principle of direct government is carried out through the whole extent of the Roman empire, the Bosporan kingdom subsisted under Roman supremacy down to the fourth century. It was only after the centre of gravity of the empire was shifted to Constantinople that this state became merged in the empire at large,[214] in order to be soon thereafter abandoned by it and to become, at least in greater part, the prey of the Huns.[215] The Bosporus, however, in reality was and continued to be more a town than a kingdom, and had more similarity with the town–districts of Tyra and Olbia than with the kingdoms of Cappadocia and Numidia. Here, too, the Romans protected only the Hellenic town Panticapaeum, and did not aim at enlargement of the bounds and subjugation of the interior any more than in Tyra and Olbia. To the domain of the prince of Panticapaeum belonged the Greek settlements of Theudosia on the peninsula itself, and Phanagoria (Taman) on the opposite Asiatic coast, but not Chersonesus[216]—or at least only somewhat as Athens belonged to the province of the governor of Achaia. The town had obtained autonomy from the Romans, and saw in the prince its immediate protector, not its sovereign; as a free town, too, in the imperial period, it never coined with the stamp either of king or emperor. On the mainland, not even the town which the Greeks called Tanais—a stirring emporium at the mouth of the Don, but hardly a Greek foundation—stood permanently under subjection to the Roman vassal–princes.[217] Of the more or less barbarian tribes on the peninsula itself, and on the European and Asiatic coast southward from Tanais, probably only the nearest stood in a fixed relation of dependence.[218]
Military position of the Bosporus.The territory of Panticapaeum was too extensive and too important, especially for mercantile intercourse, to be left like Olbia and Tyra to the administration of changing municipal officials and a far distant governor; therefore it was entrusted to hereditary princes—a course further recommended by the circumstance that it might not seem advisable to transfer directly to the empire the relations which this region sustained to the surrounding tribes. The rulers of the Bosporan house, in spite of their Achaemenid pedigree and their Achaemenid mode of reckoning time, felt themselves thoroughly as Greek princes, and traced back their origin, after the good Hellenic fashion, to Herakles and the Eumolpids. The dependence of these Greeks on Rome—the royal in Panticapaeum, as the republican in Chersonesus—was implied in the nature of things, and they never thought of rising against the protecting arm of the empire; if once, under the emperor Claudius, the Roman troops had to march against an insubordinate prince of the Bosporus,[219] yet withal this region itself, amidst the fearful confusion in the middle of the third century, which especially affected it, never broke away from the empire even when it was falling to pieces.[220] The prosperous merchant–towns, permanently in need of military protection amidst a flux of barbaric peoples, held to Rome as the advanced posts to the main army. The garrison was doubtless chiefly raised in the land itself, and to create and manage it was beyond doubt the main task of the king of the Bosporus. The coins, which were struck on occasion of the investiture of such a king, exhibit doubtless the curule chair and the other honorary presents usual at such investiture, but also by their side shield, helmet, sword, battle–axe, and war–horse; it was no peaceful office which this prince undertook. The first of them, whom Augustus appointed, fell in conflict with the barbarians, and of his successors, e.g. king Sauromates, son of Rhoemetalces, fought in the first years of Severus with the Siracae and the Scythians—perhaps it was not quite without reason that he stamped his coins with the feats of Herakles. By sea, too, he had to be active, especially in keeping down the piracy which never ceased in the Black Sea ([p. 242]); that Sauromates likewise is credited with having brought the Taurians to order and chastised piracy. Roman troops, however, were also stationed in the peninsula, perhaps a division of the Pontic fleet, certainly a detachment of the Moesian army; their presence even in small numbers showed to the barbarians that the dreaded legionary stood behind these Greeks. In another way still the empire protected them; at least in the later period there were regularly paid from the imperial chest to the princes of the Bosporus sums of money, of which they stood in need, in so far as the buying off of the hostile incursions by stated annual payments probably became a standing practice here—in what was not directly territory of the empire—still earlier than elsewhere.[221]
Position of this vassal–prince.That the centralisation of the government had its application also in reference to this prince, and he stood to the Roman Caesar on a footing not much different from that of the burgomaster of Athens, is in various ways apparent; it deserves mention that king Asander and the queen Dynamis struck gold coins with their name and their effigy, whereas king Polemon and his immediate successors, while retaining the right of coining gold, seeing that this territory as well as the adjoining barbarians were for long accustomed exclusively to gold currency, were induced to furnish their gold pieces with the name and the image of the reigning emperor. In like manner from Polemon’s time the prince of this land was at the same time the chief priest for life of the emperor and of the imperial house. In other respects the administration and the court retained the forms introduced under Mithradates after the model of the Persian grand monarchy, although the chief secretary (ἀρχιγραμματεύς) and the chief chamberlain (ἀρχικοιτωνείτης) of the court of Panticapaeum stood related to the leading court–officers of the great kings, as the enemy of the Romans Mithradates Eupator to his descendant Tiberius Julius Eupator, who, on account of his claim to the Bosporan throne, appeared as a suitor at Rome at the bar of the emperor Pius.
Trade and commerce in the Bosporus.This northern Greece remained valuable for the empire on account of its commercial relations. Though these at this epoch were doubtless less important than in earlier times,[222] yet the mercantile intercourse continued very lively. In the Augustan period the tribes of the steppes brought slaves and skins,[223] the merchants of civilisation articles of clothing, wine, and other luxuries to Tanais; in a still higher degree Phanagoria was the depôt for the exports of the natives, Panticapaeum for the imports of the Greeks. Those troubles in the Bosporus in the Claudian age were a severe blow for the merchants of Byzantium. That the Goths began their piratic voyages in the third century by pressing the Bosporan vessels to lend them involuntary aid, has been already mentioned ([p. 244]). It was doubtless in consequence of this traffic, indispensable for the barbarian neighbours themselves, that the citizens of Chersonesus maintained their ground even after the withdrawal of the Roman garrisons, and were able subsequently—when in Justinian’s time the power of the empire once more asserted itself in this direction—to return as Greeks into the Greek empire.
CHAPTER VIII.
ASIA MINOR.