A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Black Sea Ethnicities 317

Black Sea

Olbia

Berezan

Nikonion

Tyras K alos Limen

Chersonesus

Histria

Tomis

Callatis

Odessus

Mesembria

Apollonia

Byzantium Calcedon Heracleia

Panticapaeum

Tyritake

Myrmekion

Kepoi

Patraeus

Phanagoria

Cercinitis

Theodosia Toric

Gorgippia

Acra

Nymphaeum

Hermonassa

Porthmeus

Iluraton

Dioscuria

Cyenos

Phasis

Pichvnari

Tsikhisdziri

Trapezus

Cotyora

Cerasos

Sinope

Amisos

ACH

AEA

NS

HEN

IOCHI

CO

LC

H

IA

N

S

MAC

RONE

S

TIBA

RENI

CH

ALY

BES

MA

RIAN

DYNI

HT

AR

IC

AN

S

R. Danube

GE

TA

E

SCYT

HIANS

0

0

400

400

Miles

Kilometers

200

200

Map 21.1 The Black Sea.

Greeks in the Black Sea

Space permits only a brief sketch of the Greek colonization of the Black Sea (for details,
see Tsetskhladze 1994, 1998; Avram, Hind, and Tsetskhladze 2004). Miletus was the
principal colonizer in the Black Sea, Propontis, and elsewhere (Strabo 14.1.6). There
is no doubt that other Ionian cities participated as well: Ionian colonization can be
considered as forced migration prompted initially by Lydian aggression and then by
Achaemenid expansion. The first Black Sea colonies were contemporary with Byzantium
and Chalcedon in the Propontis: Berezan, then a peninsula, in the north, identified with
the Borysthenites, in the third quarter of the seventh centuryBC, and the Taganrog set-
tlement, now completely destroyed by the sea, a little later; Histria (ca. 630BC), possibly
Orgame (then or a little later), and Apollonia (ca. 610BC), in the west; and Sinope and
Amisos, both late seventh centuryBC, in the south.
Milesian activity burgeoned from the beginning of the sixth centuryBC. A new wave of
settlers in Berezan encouraged expansion onto the mainland and the spreading of multi-
ple settlements (chorai) along the Berezan and Dnieper-Bug estuaries: something similar
happened at Histria. In parallel with growth of existing colonies came the foundation of
new ones: Tomis in the west and Olbia, near Berezan, both in the 580sBC(Olbia also
founded over 100 rural settlements on the Lower Bug in the Archaic period); while in
580–560BC,the Kerch and Taman peninsulas were heavily settled by the establishment
of Panticapaeum, Nymphaeum, Theodosia, Myrmekion, Tyritake, Kepoi, Patraeus, Her-
monassa (jointly with Mytilene), and the city, since destroyed by the sea, to which the
Tuzlian cemetery belonged.