CHAPTER 21
Black Sea Ethnicities
Gocha R. Tsetskhladze
Surveying Black Sea Cultures
Although Ionian Greeks entered the Black Sea and established colonies on its shores from
the last quarter of the seventh century to the early fifth centuryBC, the Black Sea remained
for a long timeterra incognita. It is only from the time of Herodotus that an attempt was
made to give concrete form to these mythical lands and peoples—for example, identify-
ing Aia in the myth of the Argonauts with Colchis (Hdt. 7.193); and even then Medea
remained for many centuries a Colchian “other,” not only a sorceress but slayer of her
own children. It is not surprising that the Greeks initially found the waters of the Black Sea
dangerous and unwelcoming: they contain no islands and some coastal-dwelling locals
practiced piracy for centuries. The Greeks referred to the region as the Euxine Pontus,
“the Friendly Sea,” and maintained that Greek colonization had transformed what was
originally inhospitable (“axine”) (Hdt. 1.72, Strabo 7.3.6). Once, this area was the edge
of the (Greek) known world, a land of myth and (semi-)mythical creatures—of the Ari-
maspeans, the Amazons, and destination of the Argonauts, etc.—whose remoteness and
“otherness” was summarized very well by Strabo when he wrote of people living there in
the past: that the Scythians sacrificed strangers, dined on their flesh, and used their skulls
as drinking vessels (Strabo 7.3.6).
The Thracian tribes of the western Black Sea (Triballi, Rhodopians, Dardani, Haemi-
ans, etc.—“Thracian” is a Greek term) were numerous, belligerent, non-urban, ruled by
various local dynasties, and were once practitioners of ritualized human sacrifice. They
had many names, each according to region, forming a diverse group, often difficult to
identify archaeologically (especially in the Early Iron Age). They occupied lands from
the Aegean to Transdanubia, and extended east across the Propontis to the Troad and
Bithynia. Thrace was rich in metals, timber (valued by Greeks for shipbuilding), and
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, First Edition. Edited by Jeremy McInerney.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.