Black Sea Ethnicities 321produced mutual cultural enrichment and influence: the art of the Bosporan kingdom
is rightly described as Greco–barbarian, and it is often hard to distinguish which fea-
tures betray which origin. By the late fourth centuryBC, the Bosporan state comprised
approximately 5,000 square kilometers, 30 towns of varying size, and a population of
100,000–120,000 (Hind 1994: 476).
The Achaemenids
The final component is the Achaemenids. Until recently, scholarship has focused on
their involvement in Thrace and along the southern Black Sea coast. This is not sur-
prising because these two regions are the source of the bulk of evidence. Nearly all
the local peoples living around the Greek cities of the southern Black Sea were incor-
porated into the nineteenth satrapy (Hdt. 3.94). The major Greek cities hereabouts
fell under Achaemenid rule too—Sinope even had a satrapal manufacturing center for
luxury objects. Some rock-cut tombs from the southern Black Sea display Achaemenid
features, and Achaemenid-type pottery is also found hereabouts (Burstein 1976: 26–8,
41–2; Summerer 2003, 2005; Dönmez 2007: 1211–2). Thrace, called “Skudra” by the
Achaemenids, fell under their rule from ca. 513–479BC(Rehm 2010). However, what
about the other regions of the Black Sea?
It is increasingly recognized that Colchis was also part of the Achaemenid Empire,
forming with Caucasian Iberia a lesser part of the Armenian satrapy (Hdt. 3.93; Tset-
skhladze 2010–11: 296–301). The northern Black Sea presents a problem of interpre-
tation. We know that the Achaemenids passed through the region in connection with
Darius’ Scythian expedition, adébâcle—or perhaps this is not the only interpretation to
be put on the sources, the chief of which is Herodotus (4.83–144). Prior to the Scythian
expedition, Ariaramnes, satrap of Cappadocia, under Darius’ orders, crossed the Black
Sea in ca. 519BC(Ctesias,History of PersiaF13.20):
...to take some men and women as prisoners of war. Ariaramnes crossed over with thirty
50-oared ships and took some prisoners of war. He even captured Marsagetes, the brother of
the Scythian king, whom he had found bound in chains by his own brother for mistreating
a family member. The Scythian king, Scytharches, was angry and wrote an abusive letter to
Darius. And Darius wrote back to him in a similar vein.The fortification walls of Myrmekion and Porthmeus date to the middle/second half of
the sixth centuryBC, and some other settlements of the Cimmerian Bosporus display
signs of fire and destruction at that time. This is all largely consistent with the Cappado-
cian satrap’s campaign: we may assume that the Greek cities resisted the Persians hotly,
though unsuccessfully. Other traces of fire and destruction, especially in the Greek cities
of the Kerch peninsula and dated to the end of the sixth/beginning of the fifth cen-
turyBC, can be connected to Darius’ Scythian expedition of 513BC, which, as we know
from Herodotus (4.120–22), reached the Tanais and beyond. In the broader context of
the Greco–Persian wars, the Persians may have sought to destroy the Milesian thalas-
socracy (Hdt. 6.7). Alternatively, during the wars, they may have temporarily withdrawn
from territories acquired by Ariaramnes and Darius, leaving a power vacuum filled by