320 Gocha R. Tsetskhladze
(IOSPEI^2 32). A similar relationship can be suggested for Chersonesus in the second
centuryBC(IOSPEI^2 352) and the western Black Sea (Histria and Mesambria: Avram
2011: 67–70).
Is there any evidence to take us beyond a relationship based on taxes and tribute to
demonstrate an actual Greek presence in local settlements? Herodotus recounts when
writing about the Scythians (Hdt. 4.108):
The Budini are a great and numerous nation.... They have a city built of wood, called
Gelonus. The wall of it is thirty furlongs in length on each side of the city; this wall is high
and all of wood; and their houses are wooden, and their temples; for there are among them
temples of Greek gods, furnished in Greek fashion with images and altars and shrines of
wood; and they honor Dionysus every two years with festivals and revels. For the Geloni
are by their origin Greek, who left their trading ports to settle among the Budini; and they
speak a language half Greek and half Scythian. But the Budini speak not the same language
as the Geloni, nor is their manner of life the same.There is no doubt that Greeks living in the coastal area could move into local settlements.
Gelonus has been tentatively identified with the Belsk settlement (Shramko 1987). It
was the largest local settlement on the Eurasian steppes. It is even possible that a small
sanctuary of the sixth–fourth centuriesBC, built with wooden columns, has been dis-
covered (Shramko 1987: 127–40). However, most remarkable is the finding of some
10,000 pieces of Greek pottery, dating mainly to the Archaic and Classical periods. Evi-
dence shows that there were Greek quarters within Kamenskoe settlements deep in the
Ukrainian steppes; and the local Elizavetovskoe settlement on the Don had a separate
quarter populated by Greeks, identified as a Greekemporion, in which a Greek temple,
built in the first half of the fourth centuryBCand destroyed in the 270sBC, was discov-
ered (Kopylov and Kovalenko 2012). Another settlement deserving mention is Tanais,
established as anemporionin the first quarter of the third centuryBCby the Bosporan
kings at a site on the Don at the fringes of their kingdom (Strabo 11.2.3). It was later
divided into two parts, one inhabited by Greeks and the other by locals. More reveal-
ing information comes from Thrace: the Pistiros inscription (359–352BC) tells us that
the Thracian king, Cotys I, invited Greeks to settle in the hinterland and offered them
protection (Tsetskhladze 2000, 2010: 47).
Further evidence of different ethnic groups coming together and collaborating is pro-
vided by the Greek Bosporan kingdom, based on the Kerch and Taman peninsulas with
its capital at Panticapaeum (Hind 1994; Tsetskhladze 1997, 2013). It was created as a
territorial state in 438/7BCwith the ascent to power of Spartocus I, founder of the
Spartocid dynasty—not in 480BC, as often assumed, with the Archaeanactid coup in
Panticapaeum. For our purposes, the kingdom’s incorporation over time, and mainly by
force, of the Greek cities of the Kerch and Taman peninsulas is less significant than its
gradual but peaceful territorial expansion to include numerous local peoples living hard
by the Taman peninsula and in the Kuban up to Lake Maeotis. We know this from the
inscriptions of the Bosporan kings. By the Hellenistic period, the Sindi, Toreti, Dan-
darii, Psessi, Thatei, Doskhi, and some others had been incorporated into the Bosporan
kingdom, whose rulers built residences in various local settlements. The policy of incor-
porating these locals, and many of them then settling in the kingdom’s Greek cities,