headquarters, seized merchant ships exiting the Straits: 6.5.26). Yet, at
the start of the period covered in this book, the northern Aegean offered
singular opportunities to various people, which outweighed the evident
risks of maritime mishaps. The north lured southerners because of its
rich potential in terms of land, timber, and mineral resources. The recent
publication of a corpus of nearly two hundred graffiti on pottery, includ-
ingfine wares as well as transportamphorae, almost all of the period
c. 725 – 680 bc, from a huge pit of unknown purpose on the akropolis of
Methone, situated just south of where the River Haliakmon would have
flowed into the Aegean Sea at that time, gives an unexpected insight into
the scale of maritime exchange before we have any narrative descriptions
of such contacts.^5 What is more, not one but two cases of inscriptions in
Carian script have been identified at Karabournaki/Mikro Karabournou,
on the Thermaic Gulf, dating either to the late sixth or earlyfifth century
bc.^6 One of these examples consists of three Carian names, or parts of
names, on three fragments of a closed vessel, while the other is a piece of
roof tile, inscribed with what appear to be numbers in an acrophonic
system. We have seen how merchants from a wide variety of originating
centres penetrated deep into the north Aegean landmass. They went
because they discovered opportunities. Yet the success of these later
adventures is not something that could have been anticipated from
what we know about conditions in the coastal regions in the sixth and
early decades of thefifth centurybc.
The success of Byzantion was exceptional because the convoying of
ships through the Straits and Bosporus was a valuable service to mari-
time traders, and because the recipients of these services were prepared
to pay the additional costs that had to be factored into the risks of sea
travel. Real expertise was required to manoeuvre in the winds, tides, and
natural bottleneck created by the Straits. Nevertheless, the risks inherent
in longdistance travel meant that the gatekeepers needed trusted net-
works to provide a steady stream of reliable clients during the convoying
season. If we consider the willingness of agents to cooperate from a
purely pragmatic angle, then the prerequisite for a trusted string of
clients was an asset not shared by those outside the network. One such
asset was the remission of tolls—ateleia. The Rhodians enjoyedateleiain
all Seleukid ports and operated as the‘most favoured’partners of the
Byzantines. The remission of tolls was built into their assumptions about
Black Sea exchange and is a prominent aspect of the provisions set out
(^5) Besios et al. 2012.
(^6) Adiego et al. 2012; Baralis (2008, 110–12) discusses theories of Phoenician settlement;
see now Muller (2010, 218–19) and further below.
The lure of the northern Aegean 251