and the Thracians themselves were from an early date expert viticultural-
ists. It is therefore highly probable that from very early times the exports of
Greece to the Greek cities of Thrace and to Thrace itself consisted chieflyof
olive oil and manufactured goods. (Rostovtzeff,SEHHW, 111).
Rostovtzeff assumed that the principal driver in these economic relations
was the city of Athens:‘Athens supported, if not created, the Odrysian
kingdom, as it had the Bosporan kingdom’(ibid.). This argument needs
to be unpicked. The Athenians had the most powerful navy in the
Aegean after the Persian Wars, and continued to enforce policies favour-
able to themselves for much of the fourth as well as thefifth centurybc.
But there is no evidence that the Athenians helped to create the state
entities of Thrace and the Bosporan kingdom. This assumption, which
may have more to do with the experience of nineteenth-century imperi-
alist policies in the region than with ancient realities, has been shown to
be the weakest part of his interpretation.^36 On the other hand, his
appreciation of local ecologies, which included the native domestication
of vines and the production of wine, are only beginning to be re-
evaluated, with the scientific study of organic remains (see Chapters 6
and 7). He was right to draw attention to the intrinsic advantages of the
resource base that was available in the north, and of how these resources
were exploited, both independently and in conjunction with traders, who
were in many cases Greek traders. Here Rostovtzeff’s approach is most
clearly in tune with the tenor of current international research pro-
grammes in the Black Sea area.^37
Nevertheless, Rostovtzeff’s was a rather complex attitude to these
northern regions and his cultural interpretations changed as he moved
during the 1920s from his Russian origins, and university post at
St. Petersburg, to Yale, via a brief sojourn at Oxford. For Rostovtzeff
the Russian professor, the Bosporan kingdom was a deeply oriental place.
Subsequently, for Rostovtzeff the exile, it became a place imbued with the
Greek genius.^38 Yet the achievements he ascribed to an energetic‘bour-
geoisie’form the real focus of criticism by fellow historians, rather than
his assumptions about a generalized form of cultural superiority that has
yet to receive objective treatment.^39
(^36) Archibald 1998, Ch. 4; Archibald 2001, 380–5; Bresson et al. 2007; and esp. Müller
2010, 19–20; cf. 23–66.
(^37) Bresson et al. 2007 and other contributions to the same volume.
(^38) Müller 2010, 19 and nn.42–44, citing Bowersock 1993. Rostovtzeff also spent time at
the University of Wisconsin in Madison before moving to Yale. (I am grateful to Gary Reger
for this additional link in R’s North American itinerary).
(^39) Horden and Purcell, 32; Archibald 2001, 382; Müller 2010, 19.
Introduction 23