Greek Crimea

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Greek colonies along the north coast of the Black Sea in the 5th century B.C. Greek colonies of the Northern Euxine Sea (Black Sea).svg
Greek colonies along the north coast of the Black Sea in the 5th century B.C.

Greek Crimea concerns the ancient Greek settlements on the Crimean Peninsula. Greek city-states first established colonies along the Black Sea coast of Crimea in the 7th or 6th century BC. [1] Several colonies were established in the vicinity of the Kerch Strait, then known as the Cimmerian Bosporus. The density of colonies around the Cimmerian Bosporus was unusual for Greek colonization and reflected the importance of the area. The majority of these colonies were established by Ionians from the city of Miletus in Asia Minor. [2] By the mid-1st century BC the Bosporan Kingdom became a client state of the late Roman Republic, ushering in the era of Roman Crimea during the Roman Empire.

Contents

Names

Fragment of a marble relief depicting a Kore, 3rd century BC, from Panticapaeum, Taurica (Crimea), Bosporan Kingdom Fragment of a marble relief depicting a Kore, 3rd century BC, from Panticapaeum, Taurica (Crimea) (12853680765).jpg
Fragment of a marble relief depicting a Kore, 3rd century BC, from Panticapaeum, Taurica (Crimea), Bosporan Kingdom

Taurica, Tauric Chersonese, and Tauris were names by which the Crimean Peninsula was known in classical antiquity and well into the early modern period. The Greeks named the region after its inhabitants, the Tauri: Ταυρικὴ Χερσόνησος (Taurikē Khersonesos) or Χερσόνησος Ταυρική (Khersonesos Taurikē), "Tauric peninsula" ("khersonesos" literally means "peninsula"). Chersonesus Taurica is the Latin version of the Greek name.

Greek colonies

The prytaneion of Panticapaeum, second century BC. Arkhitekturno-arkheologichnii kompleks <<Starodavnie misto Pantikapei>>.JPG
The prytaneion of Panticapaeum, second century BC.

The earliest Greek colony, Panticapaeum (Ancient Greek : Παντικάπαιον, romanized: Pantikápaion), founded in the late 7th or early 6th century BC, was established as an apoikia of Miletus (that is, a true colony and not a mere entrepot). [2] This important city was situated on Mount Mithridat on the western side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, in the present-day city of Kerch. During the first centuries of the city's existence, imported Greek articles predominated: pottery, terracottas, and metal objects, probably from workshops in Rhodes, Corinth, Samos, and Athens (a style of Athenian vase found extensively at the site is named the Kerch style). Local production, imitated from the models, was carried on at the same time. Local potters imitated the Hellenistic bowls known as the Gnathia style as well as relief wares—Megarian bowls. The city minted silver coins from the 5th century BC and gold and bronze coins from the 4th century BC. [3] At its greatest extent it occupied 100 hectares (250 acres). [4]

Greek Coin from Cherronesos in Crimea depicting beardless Heracles wearing the royal diadem . r., in exergue, KhER DIOTIMOU Chersonesus in Crimea. 2nd century BC. Odessa museum expo 12.jpg
Greek Coin from Cherronesos in Crimea depicting beardless Heracles wearing the royal diadem . r., in exergue, ΧΕΡ ΔΙΟΤΙΜΟΥ Chersonesus in Crimea. 2nd century BC.

Other Milesian colonies on the Crimean side of the Cimmerian Bosporus included Theodosia, Kimmerikon, Tyritake, and Myrmekion. Theodosia (Ancient Greek : Θεοδοσία), present day Feodosia, was founded in the 6th century BC according to archaeological evidence. It is first recorded in history as resisting the attacks of Satyrus, ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom, about 390 BC. His successor Leucon transformed it into an important port for shipping wheat to Greece, especially to Athens. [5] Kimmerikon (Ancient Greek : Κιμμερικόν) was founded in the 5th century BC on the southern shore of the Kerch Peninsula, at the western slope of Mount Opuk, roughly 50 kilometres (31 mi) southwest of Panticapaeum. Its name may refer to an earlier Cimmerian settlement on the site. Kimmerikon would become an important stronghold defending the Bosporan Kingdom from the Scythians. [6] Tyritake (Ancient Greek : Τυριτάκη) was situated in the eastern part of Crimea, about 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) south of Panticapaeum. It is tentatively identified with the ruins in the Kerch district of Kamysh-Burun (Arshyntseve), on the shore of the Cimmerian Bosporus. There are only few short mentions about Tyritake in ancient literary sources. Archaeological projects have established that the colony, founded about the mid-6th century BC, specialized in crafts and viticulture. In the first centuries, fishing and wine production became the economic mainstay of the town. Myrmēkion (Ancient Greek : Μυρμήκιον) was situated on the shore of the Cimmerian Bosporus, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) north of Panticapaeum. It was founded in the mid-6th century BC as an independent polis, which soon became one of the richest in the region. In the 5th century BC, the town specialized in winemaking and minted its own coinage. It was surrounded by towered walls, measuring some 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) thick. [7]

Nymphaion (Ancient Greek : Νύμφαιον) was founded by colonists from Miletus’ rival Samos between 580 and 560 BC. It was situated of about 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of Panticapaeum. There is no archaeological evidence for the presence of Scythians in the area before the city's founding. [8] The town issued its own coins and generally prospered in the period of classical antiquity from its control of the cereal trade. Athens chose Nymphaion as its principal military base in the region ca. 444 BC and Gylon, the grandfather of Demosthenes, suffered banishment from Athens on charges that he had betrayed Nymphaeum during the Peloponnesian War. It was annexed to the Bosporan Kingdom by the end of the century.

St. Vladimir's Cathedral overlooks the extensive excavations of Chersonesus. Chersonesos ruins.jpg
St. Vladimir's Cathedral overlooks the extensive excavations of Chersonesus.

In the 5th century BC, Dorians from Heraclea Pontica on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor founded the sea port of Chersonesos in southwestern Crimea (outside modern Sevastopol). It was a site with good deep-water harbors located at the edge of the territory of the indigenous Taurians. [9] During much of the Classical Period, Chersonesus was a democracy ruled by a group of elected archons and a council called the Demiurgi. As time passed the government grew more oligarchic, with power concentrated in the hands of the archons. Up to the middle of the 4th century BC, Chersonesos remained a small city. It then expanded to lands in northwest Crimea, incorporating the colony of Kerkinitida and constructing numerous fortifications. [10] In 2013, Chersonesus was listed as a World Heritage Site.

Kerkinitida is the earliest colony in northwestern Taurica, located near present-day Yevpatoria. It was founded around the turn of the 6th-5th centuries BC, possibly by Dorians of Heraclea Pontica, or by another unknown Ionian city-state. Until the middle of 4th century BC the city was a small independent city–state, before being incorporated into the city-state of Chersonesos. In the 2nd century BC Kerkinitida was captured by the Scythians, but later retaken in the second campaign of Diophantus. According to archeological finds, the city lasted until around the turn of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. [10]

In 2016, archaeologists discovered parts of an ancient Greek fortress near the village of Gornostaevka. [11]

In 2018, archaeologists discovered a previously unknown ancient Greek settlement of the 4th-3rd centuries BC near the town of Baherove. According to the researchers, the settlement was called Manitra. On the territory of the settlement the remains of a rectangular tower were discovered and near the settlement an unplundered necropolis. [12]

In mythology

Orestes and Pylades brought before Iphigenia by Joseph Strutt. Strutt Iphigenia.jpg
Orestes and Pylades brought before Iphigenia by Joseph Strutt.

According to Greek mythology, Crimea is the place to which Iphigeneia was sent after the goddess Artemis rescued her from the human sacrifice her father was about to perform. Artemis swept the young princess off to the peninsula, where she became a priestess at her temple. Here, she was forced by the Taurian king Thoas to perform human sacrifices on any foreigners who came ashore. According to other historians, the Tauri were known for their savage rituals and piracy and were also the earliest indigenous peoples of the peninsula. The land of Tauris and its rumored customs of killing Greeks are also described by Herodotus in his histories, Book IV, 99–100 and 103.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerch</span> City in Crimea

Kerch, also known as Keriç or Kerich, is a city of regional significance on the Kerch Peninsula in the east of Crimea. Kerch has a population of about 147,033 .

Cimmeria may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colonies in antiquity</span> Founding of colonies from a mother-city during the classical period

Colonies in antiquity were post-Iron Age city-states founded from a mother-city, not from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis remained often close, and took specific forms during the period of classical antiquity. Generally, colonies founded by the ancient Phoenicians, Carthage, Rome, Alexander the Great and his successors remained tied to their metropolis, but Greek colonies of the Archaic and Classical eras were sovereign and self-governing from their inception. While Greek colonies were often founded to solve social unrest in the mother-city, by expelling a part of the population, Hellenistic, Roman, Carthaginian, and Han Chinese colonies were used for trade, expansion and empire-building.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pantikapaion</span> Ancient Greek city in Crimea

Pantikapaion was an ancient Greek city on the eastern shore of Crimea, which the Greeks called Taurica. The city lay on the western side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, and was founded by Milesians in the late 7th or early 6th century BC, on a hill later named Mount Mithridat. Its ruins now lie in the modern city of Kerch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bosporan Kingdom</span> Greco-Scythian state near Sea of Azov (c.438 BC–c.527 AD)

The Bosporan Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus, was an ancient Greco-Scythian state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, centered in the present-day Strait of Kerch. It was the first truly 'Hellenistic' state, in the sense that a mixed population adopted the Greek language and civilization, under aristocratic consolidated leadership. Under the Spartocid dynasty, the aristocracy of the kingdom adopted a double nature of presenting themselves as archons to Greek subjects and as kings to barbarians, which some historians consider unique in ancient history. The Bosporan Kingdom became the longest surviving Roman client kingdom. The 1st and 2nd centuries AD saw a period of a new golden age of the Bosporan state. It was briefly incorporated as part of the Roman province of Moesia Inferior from 63 to 68 AD under Emperor Nero, before being restored as a Roman client kingdom. At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II inflicted a critical defeat on the Scythians and included all the territories of the Crimean Peninsula in the structure of his state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chersonesus</span> Ancient Greek colonial ruins in Sevastopol, Crimea

Chersonesus is an ancient Greek colony founded approximately 2,500 years ago in the southwestern part of the Crimean Peninsula. Settlers from Heraclea Pontica in Bithynia established the colony in the 6th century BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tmutarakan</span> Former human settlement

Tmutarakan was a medieval principality of Kievan Rus' and trading town that controlled the Cimmerian Bosporus, the passage from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, between the late 10th and 11th centuries. Its site was the ancient Greek colony of Hermonassa founded in the mid 6th century BCE, by Mytilene (Lesbos), situated on the Taman peninsula, in present-day Krasnodar Krai, Russia, roughly opposite Kerch. The Khazar fortress of Tamantarkhan was built on the site in the 7th century, and became known as Tmutarakan when it came under the control of Kievan Rus'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tauri</span> Ancient people inhabiting Crimea in the 1st millennium BC

The Tauri, or Taurians, also Scythotauri, Tauri Scythae, Tauroscythae were an ancient people settled on the southern coast of the Crimea peninsula, inhabiting the Crimean Mountains in the 1st millennium BC and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the Black Sea. According to the sources, the Tauri were the first inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula and never abandoned its borders. They gave their name to the peninsula, which was known in ancient times as Taurica, Taurida and Tauris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taman Peninsula</span> Peninsula in Russia

The Taman Peninsula is a peninsula in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, which borders the Sea of Azov to the north, the Kerch Strait to the west and the Black Sea to the south.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tyritakē</span>

Tyritáke was an ancient Greek town of the Bosporan Kingdom, situated in the eastern part of Crimea, about 11 km to the south from Panticapaeum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myrmēkion</span>

Myrmēkion or Myrmecium was an ancient Greek colony in the Crimea. The settlement was founded in the eastern part of the modern city Kerch, 4 km NE of ancient Panticapaeum on the bank of the Kerch bay near the cape Karantinny. The settlement was founded by Milesian in the first half of the 6th c. BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimmerikon</span>

Kimmerikón was an ancient Greek city in Crimea, on the southern shore of the Kerch Peninsula, at the western slope of Mount Opuk, roughly 40 kilometres southwest of modern Kerch. It was situated with its acropolis on the hills on the west side of the mountain. The town was founded by the Milesian colonists in the 5th century BC and flourished at the beginning of the Christian era. Its name may refer to an earlier Cimmerian settlement on the site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nymphaion (Crimea)</span>

Nýmphaion, also known as Nymphaion on the Pontus, was a significant centre of the Bosporan Kingdom, situated on the Crimean shore of the Cimmerian Bosporus. Today it is located near the resort town Heroivske/Geroevskoye. It lies at a distance of about 14 kilometers south of Kerch, which was the site of ancient Panticapaeum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Crimea</span>

The recorded history of the Crimean Peninsula, historically known as Tauris, Taurica, and the Tauric Chersonese, begins around the 5th century BCE when several Greek colonies were established along its coast, the most important of which was Chersonesos near modern day Sevastopol, with Scythians and Tauri in the hinterland to the north. The southern coast gradually consolidated into the Bosporan Kingdom which was annexed by Pontus and then became a client kingdom of Rome. The south coast remained Greek in culture for almost two thousand years including under Roman successor states, the Byzantine Empire (341–1204), the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461), and the independent Principality of Theodoro. In the 13th century, some Crimean port cities were controlled by the Venetians and by the Genovese, but the interior was much less stable, enduring a long series of conquests and invasions. In the medieval period, it was partially conquered by Kievan Rus' whose prince Vladimir the Great was baptised at Sevastopol, which marked the beginning of the Christianization of Kievan Rus'. During the Mongol invasion of Europe, the north and centre of Crimea fell to the Mongol Golden Horde, and in the 1440s the Crimean Khanate formed out of the collapse of the horde but quite rapidly itself became subject to the Ottoman Empire, which also conquered the coastal areas which had kept independent of the Khanate. A major source of prosperity in these times was frequent raids into Russia for slaves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asander (king)</span> King of the Bosporan Kingdom

Asander, named Philocaesar Philoromaios was a Roman client king of the Bosporan Kingdom. He was of Greek and possibly of Persian ancestry. Not much is known of his family and early life. He started his career as a general under Pharnaces II, the king of the Bosporus. According to some scholars, Asander took as his first wife a woman called Glykareia, known from one surviving Greek inscription, "Glykareia, wife of Asander".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek colonisation</span> Archaic Greek expansion across the Mediterranean and Black Sea

Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks, particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC, across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

The Crimean Peninsula was under partial control of the Roman Empire during the period of 47 BC to c. 340 AD. The territory under Roman control mostly coincided with the Bosporan Kingdom . Rome lost its influence in Taurica in the mid third century AD, when substantial parts of the peninsula fell to the Goths, but at least nominally the kingdom survived until the 340s AD. The Eastern Roman Empire, the eastern part of the Roman Empire that survived the loss of the western part of the empire, later regained Crimea under Justinian I. The Byzantine Empire controlled portions of the peninsula well into the Late Middle Ages.

Leucon I of Bosporus also known as Leuco, was a Spartocid ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom who ruled from 389 to 349 BC. He was arguably the greatest ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Kurgan</span> Kurgan in eastern Crimea, Ukraine

The Royal Kurgan or Tsarskiy Kurgan from the 4th century BC, is one of the most impressive tumuli (kurgans) of the eastern Crimea. The burial barrow is located in the present-day Kerch (Ukraine), which developed out of the ancient Greek town Panticapaeum (Παντικάπαιον) founded by Miletus.

Akra was an ancient Greek city at the Cimmerian Bosporus. The city is now underwater at the Kerch Strait, near the Naberezhne village in Crimea. It was flooded as a result of the transgression of the Black Sea and is now almost entirely immersed in the sea, with the exception of a small section at the Yanysh lake.

References

  1. ↑ Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond (1959). A history of Greece to 322 B.C. Clarendon Press. p. 109. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  2. 1 2 Twardecki, Alfred. "The Bosporan Kingdom". Polish Archaeological Mission “Tyritake”. Archived from the original on 8 April 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
  3. ↑ Sear, David R. (1978). Greek Coins and Their Values . Volume I: Europe (pp. 168-169). Seaby Ltd., London. ISBN   0 900652 46 2
  4. ↑ "Panticapaeum". Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  5. ↑ "Feodosiya". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  6. ↑ The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (eds. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, Marian Holland McAllister).
  7. ↑ "The official website of the Hermitage Museum archaeological expedition in Myrmekion" (in Russian). Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  8. ↑ Zin'ko, Viktor N. (2006). "The Chora of Nymphaion (6th Century BC-6th Century AD)". In Bilde, Pia Guldager; Stolba, Vladimir F. (eds.). Surveying the Greek Chora. The Black Sea Region in a Comparative Perspective. Black Sea Studies. Vol. 4. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press. pp. 289–308.
  9. ↑ "University of Texas at Austin Institute of Classical Archaeology Chersonesos project" . Retrieved 31 March 2014.
  10. 1 2 "History and the monetary business of the antique cities of Tauria". Odesa Numismatics Museum.
  11. ↑ Russia: 2,000-yo Ancient Greek fortress discovered in Crimea
  12. ↑ "Russian archaeologists said they discovered an ancient Greek settlement in Crimea". Archived from the original on 16 November 2018. Retrieved 16 November 2018.

Bibliography

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