Greeks and Romans referred to the current Kerch Strait as the Cimmerian Bosporus, the strait that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov, separating the Kerch and Taman peninsulas in the vicinity of Crimea. Today, this area is a war zone between Russia and Ukraine, but in antiquity, it was a region that, despite being considered the boundary between Europe and Asia by classical geographers (Posidonius, Strabo, Ptolemy), was highly Hellenized. A string of Ionian colonies was unified there in 438 B.C. by Spartocus I, a local chieftain who founded the Kingdom of the Bosporus.
During the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., the Ionian Greeks, especially the city-states of Miletus and Teos, but also the Dorians of Heraclea Pontica and possibly Athens to a lesser extent, expanded from the Aegean coast of Anatolia to the lands surrounding the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea) and established several colonies there, primarily distributed between the Tauric Chersonese (or Taurica, names given to the Crimean peninsula due to its indigenous people, the Tauri, considered savage) and the Maeotic Marshes (the lowlands near the aforementioned Cimmerian Bosporus).
In the former region were Theodosia, Eupatoria, Panticapaeum, Nymphaeum, Cimmericum, Tiritaca, Neapolis, Myrmecium, Kalos Limen, Chersonesus, and Cercinitis (the latter two being Dorian); in the latter region were Phanagoria, Cepoe, Hermonassa, Sindica, Gorgippia, Bata, and Toric. Further west, between the mouths of the rivers Istras (Danube), Tiras (Dniester), and Borysthenes (Dnieper), were Olbia, Tiras, Niconium, and Borysthenes; and in the northeastern corner of Lake Maeotis (the Sea of Azov), at the delta of the Tanais (Don), was Tanais.
That region was a crossroads, a point of connection between southeastern Europe and the Eurasian steppes, which facilitated trade relations by both land and sea, taking advantage of good ports and calm waters. Thus, they provided wheat, tuna, and furs to Greece in exchange for importing ceramics and metal. Additionally, since the Pontic-Caspian steppe was a vast temperate grassland, ideal for nomadic pastoralism, the colonies prospered, as evidenced by the fact that many even minted their own currency. However, the economy was not exclusively Hellenic.
There were also exchanges with the nomadic Scythians of the southern Dnieper, who eventually became sedentary and began practicing agriculture. The indigenous inhabitants, the Tauri, possibly a branch of the Cimmerians displaced by the Scythians, were held in very low regard due to their practice of sacrificing foreign prisoners and shipwrecked sailors by beating them to death in honor of their virgin goddess, which is why the myths of Iphigenia and Orestes are set in this region. Herodotus describes them as living “entirely by war and plunder,” that is, piracy, which they practiced from their base in Symbolon (present-day Balaklava), having also been marginalized at sea by the Greeks.
Who governed these colonies? Initially, they were independent, but in 480 B.C., according to Diodorus of Sicily, they were united by a strategos named Archaeanax to organize a defense against the growing Scythian pressure. Almost nothing is known about him, except that he established himself in power (which led to the departure of some city-states, like Theodosia and Nymphaeum), possibly had a connection with Semandrus of Mytilene, founder of the city of Hermonassa, and founded the Archaeanactid dynasty, in which Perisades, Leucon, and Saurgion succeeded one another, having been hereditary archons of the city-state of Panticapaeum, though their relationship is unknown.
This period lasted until 431 B.C., the year when Spartocus emerged. There is also no information about him, at least about his earlier life, although it is speculated that he was descended from the Odrysian monarchs (a kingdom in Thrace) based on his name. The fact is that, either peacefully or by force—likely through control of the army—he seized power and founded the Basileía tou Kimmerikou Bospórou, that is, the Kingdom of the Bosporus, with its capital located in Panticapaeum. It is worth noting the peculiarity of the state form—unique, one might say, in the history of Hellas—since, to the barbarians, it presented itself as a kingdom, while to the citizens, the kings were mere archons (in practice, tyrants, in the Greek sense of the term).
It was a mixed state, with a majority Greek population but also indigenous Iranian peoples who Hellenized their customs, as evidenced by the art, though they made linguistic contributions. The nobility was predominantly Scythian, as demonstrated by the preponderance of Iranian names over Greek ones. A similar situation occurred in the army, which had ten thousand horsemen and more than twenty thousand infantrymen, with only about two thousand Greeks and just as many Thracian mercenaries. And although some local cults were preserved in rural areas and gods were syncretized (for example, Zeus-Helios-Gea, Aphrodite Urania…), the general pantheon was the classical one.
However, there were some differences compared to Greece. Women, for example, enjoyed a higher status and had some unthinkable rights, such as property, inheritance, and even participation in politics and war, probably adopted from the surrounding Iranian societies. Likewise, with all the colonies under a single mandate, independent development and the proverbial rivalry between city-states were prevented. Furthermore, the Bosporan Kingdom pursued an aggressive foreign policy that led to territorial expansion, and although Spartocus only ruled for seven years, his successors continued this expansion, establishing the dynasty known as the Spartocids.
On the other hand, Spartocus I considered the Athenians to be above the rest of the Greeks, so he established a particularly close relationship with them, exporting fish (especially tuna and sturgeon), honey, furs, and slaves. He also exported grain in greater quantities than before due to the demand following the Peloponnesian War, receiving in return manufactured goods and silver, which ironically may have contributed to Athens’ decline. In contrast, the new Bosporan Kingdom entered a period of splendor that manifested in the construction of new temples and the replanning of urban areas.
In fact, some of those cities have survived to this day: Theodosia is now Feodosia; Borysthenes, Odesa; Chersonesus, Sevastopol; Gorgippia, Anapa; Hermonassa, Krasnodar; etc. They formed part of the legacy inherited by Satyrus I, who, according to Diodorus of Sicily, was the son of Spartocus when the latter died in 433 BC. Not all of these cities were dominated; Satyrus, for example, conquered Nymphaion and unsuccessfully besieged Theodosia, the latter highly coveted because its port did not freeze in winter, which was very useful for grain exports.
In reality, this king shared the throne with a certain Seleucus of the Bosporus, who is believed to have been his brother (Diodorus does not mention this), until the latter’s death in 393 BC, after which Satyrus continued alone for another four years before passing the throne to his son Leucon I in 387 BC. In the meantime, he fought Hecataeus, king of Sindos (the ancient name of the city of Gorgippia), which he incorporated into his kingdom. He demanded that Hecataeus marry his daughter, for which he had to kill his wife Tirgatao first. The monarch accepted Satyrus’s daughter but allowed his wife to escape, and she took refuge among the Ixomantes (a people of the Sea of Azov), from where she waged war against the Bosporus.
Demosthenes recounts in his Against Leptines that Leucon eventually managed to seize Theodosia, thus being able to send four hundred thousand medimnoi of wheat annually to Athens (about two and a quarter million hectoliters), which allowed the city to face the shortage resulting from the Social War of 357 BC and earned him Athenian citizenship. It seems that he co-ruled with his brother Gorgippus, to whom he gave the governance of the Asian part of the kingdom, and who had to request peace—gifts and all—from the vengeful Tirgatao.
Spartocus II, the eldest son of Leucon, succeeded his father in 349 BC and ruled for five years alongside his brother Perisades I, as shown by a stele found in Piraeus and dated to 346 BC. Spartocus died without an heir, and Perisades continued to rule, in the words of Strabo, “with much kindness and moderation and would have deserved divine honors.” The Athenians even granted him the privilege of enlisting sailors in Piraeus; this was shortly before a slight decline in relations due to the appearance of an unexpected factor.
That factor was Alexander the Great, during whose period the Bosporan Kingdom replaced the preferential treatment given to Athens in trade with others such as those given to the Cycladic island of Delos or Egypt. But, as we know, the life of the Macedonian hero was short, and things returned to normal. Perisades I married his cousin Camasaria (Gorgippus’s daughter), and they had several children, three of whom, upon their father’s death in 310 BC, became embroiled in a succession war.
Their names were Satyrus, Pritanis, and Eumelus. It seemed that the first had tipped the scales in his favor by winning the Battle of the Tates River, but he fell in the fight and thus was only in command for nine months. Pritanis was then appointed in his place, who rejected Eumelus’ offer to rule together and opted for arms; things did not go well for him, as he was defeated twice and eventually killed while fleeing. Thus, Eumelus took the crown, beginning a bloody reign of five years and five months, marked by the murders of nephews, relatives, and friends, with the only survivor being Perisades II, the presumed son of Satyrus II, who took refuge among the Scythians.
To win over his citizens, who were deeply displeased by the wave of crimes, Eumelus completely changed his policy: he reinstated laws, granted tax exemptions, aided neighboring populations in crisis, cleared the sea of pirates, and expanded the borders to bring almost all the peoples of the Pontus under his authority. Thanks to all this, he managed to change his image, which would have been even better if not for a bizarre accident that led to his demise.
Indeed, he was returning home from Sindos when the horses of his chariot reared and took off at a wild gallop that the charioteer was unable to control. Fearing that he might fall off a cliff, the king jumped from the moving vehicle, but his sword got caught between the spokes of a wheel, and he was dragged to his death, fulfilling the prophecy made by an oracle long ago that he would perish in a moving house. The inspections of foundations and doorposts he had conducted since then proved futile.
His son Spartocus III took over in 304 B.C. He was the first to use the title of basileus, likely in imitation of the Diadochi who had divided Alexander’s empire. Upon the death of one of them, Demetrius, he resumed trade relations with Athens—supplying it with wheat—which led the Assembly to approve the erection of a statue in his honor. He reigned for about twenty years, until 284 B.C., and was succeeded by the aforementioned Perisades II; as the part of Diodorus’ Historical Library from that date onward is lost, it is unknown whether he was the son of Satyrus II or of Spartocus III himself.
The lack of information also prevents us from knowing how his reign was, and those of the following rulers, beyond the scattered data provided by some sources and archaeology. In fact, we are not even sure of the order in which they ruled, as the names are confusingly repeated over the next fifty-nine years: Satyrus III, Spartocus IV, Leucon II, Hygiaenon, Spartocus V, Camasarye Philoteknos (as regent), Perisades III, and Perisades IV. We have to reach the last of the dynasty, Perisades V, to get a bit more information: he assumed power in 124 B.C. and held it until 108 B.C.
He faced the increasingly dangerous Scythian threat from King Saumacus, who in turn was being pushed by the pressure of the Roxolani Sarmatians. As this severely impacted the economic—and consequently the political—situation, Perisades made a decision that would slightly change the history of the Bosporus: he turned to Mithridates VI, king of Pontus (another Hellenistic state, founded in 281 B.C. after the Wars of the Diadochi, from Paphlagonia, a region bordering the Black Sea on the northern coast of Anatolia), offering him vassalage in exchange for military aid.
Mithridates accepted and sent an army under the command of General Diophantus, who in four campaigns managed to defeat and capture Saumacus, but during the operations, Perisades died. This marked the end of the Spartocid dynasty, with the Kingdom of the Bosporus being annexed to that of Pontus. The Pontic rule was never accepted, and during the first two Mithridatic wars, between 86 and 83 B.C., two successive insurrections took place; they did not succeed, and Mithridates replaced the government, which had until then been assigned to viceroys, with a monarch in the person of his eldest son, Machares.
In 66 B.C., the Third Mithridatic War broke out against the Roman Republic. Machares supported the enemy against his own father when he learned that the latter planned to supplant him in Crimea and was eventually killed by him. Mithridates was preparing to invade Italy when another son, Pharnaces II, was aided by Pompey to lead a mutiny in Panticapaeum, which proclaimed him king while his father took his own life. Pharnaces was confirmed by Rome as king of the Bosporus, though his proposal to marry Dynamis, one of his daughters, to Julius Caesar was rejected.
The outbreak of the Roman Civil War diverted attention and allowed Pharnaces, bypassing the agreements, to conquer Phanagoria, invade Colchis, and continue toward Galatia. By the time the Romans wanted to respond, it was too late, and their hasty expedition was defeated, enabling Pharnaces to continue adding territories: what remained of Pontus and Cappadocia. There, in Zela, Caesar stopped him (his famous “veni, vidi, vici”), forcing him to flee in a campaign that lasted barely five days. Pharnaces later died in combat against a former lieutenant, Asander, who married Dynamis to rule together.
They couldn’t. Caesar dethroned them, appointing one of his allies, Mithridates I of the Bosporus (also called Mithridates II), in their place. Unfortunately for him, the death of the Roman deprived him of a “godfather,” and Dynamis, who claimed the throne by appealing to her origin and a certain providentialism, achieved her goal accompanied by her husband. Cunningly, they negotiated an alliance with Rome, which not only authorized them to mint coins but also sent help when, in the time of Augustus, a usurper named Scribonius tried to take advantage of Asander’s death.
Once he was eliminated, Agrippa confirmed Dynamis but forced her to marry the man he had sent to assist her, Polemon I. She refused and organized a rebellion that failed, forcing her to go into exile; it would be her son Aspurgus who succeeded Polemon, changing his name to Tiberius Julius Aspurgus upon receiving Roman citizenship as a sign of loyalty, something that all his successors would do. Thus, the Kingdom of the Bosporus confirmed its client status, though it maintained autonomy and experienced a cultural and economic revival.
Nothing changed with the successors, Claudius Mithridates and Julius Cotys, except for a Romanization process that had a positive impact, combined—perhaps to a lesser extent—with a Sarmatian influence. The only critical moment was Claudius’ plan to unify the kingdoms of Pontus and the Bosporus by giving the throne to Polemon II, something that outraged Mithridates II and his people to such an extent that the emperor had to abandon the plan and compensate the former with Cilicia. Even so, Mithridates rebelled against Rome, and after losing, his brother Cotys I was put in his place. The deposed ruler returned with the help of the Siraces Sarmatians, but he failed again and ended up captive in Rome.
Cotys strengthened his relationship with the Romans, and in Nero’s time, he managed to have an entire fleet, the Classis Pontica, assigned to the Black Sea, which put an end to piracy while definitively subordinating the Kingdom of the Bosporus to Rome. However, it was a short-lived annexation because, upon the emperor’s death in 68 AD, Cotys’ son, Rescuporis I, regained the autonomy of his kingdom. He was succeeded by his son Sauromates I, a name that several other successors would bear, causing confusion, with numismatics being the only source shedding some light; unfortunately, no coins later than 341 AD have been preserved, and speculation must be relied upon to a great extent.
With the Jewish diaspora, some Hebrew communities had settled in the Bosporus, but it was the migrations of barbarians from the east, which began to abound in the third and fourth centuries, that initiated a process of change in the Black Sea region by demanding tributes and access to ports for piracy. The first, the Goths, sowed chaos, taking advantage of a succession war after the death of Rescuporis IV and a subsequent distancing from Rome. However, the Goths eventually integrated, and others arrived.
For example, an Ostrogothic branch, which had created its own state in Crimea, conquered the Kingdom of the Bosporus in 335, which disappeared as such though it continued to exist precariously under their rule. By then, some monarchs had probably reigned who were not directly linked to the legitimate dynasty but were instead Iranians, possibly Sarmatians, or perhaps Alans. Then came the Huns, whose nomadic nature prevented any attempt at assimilation, and they forever devastated Tanais and Panticapaeum in the last quarter of the fourth century.
From the late fifth and early sixth centuries, the Bosporus fell under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire, experiencing a political, economic, and cultural renaissance. Phanagoria became the capital of Old Great Bulgaria in the first quarter of the seventh century, and Tmutarakan (a city in the eastern part of the strait) became the capital of the eponymous principality, part of Kievan Rus’ (the finest of Bosporan archaeological heritage is preserved in the Hermitage Museum).
The Byzantines built fortresses in the Bosporus and granted it a bishopric, though by then it could no longer be called a kingdom but rather a territory that was part of their empire. Until then, the Kingdom of the Bosporus had been the longest-lasting Roman client kingdom, and therefore also the longest-lasting of ancient Greece.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on August 23, 2024: Reino del Bósforo, el estado griego más longevo de la Antigüedad
SOURCES
Heródoto, Los nueve libros de la Historia
Diodoro de Sicilia, Biblioteca histórica
Dion Casio, Historia romana
Plutarco, Vidas paralelas
Suetonio, Vidas de los doce césares
Estrabón, Geografía
María José Hidalgo de la Vera (et al.), Historia de la Grecia Antigua
Fernando Patxot Ferrer, Los héroes y las grandezas de la tierra
Valeriya Kozlovskaya, The Northern Black Sea in Antiquity
Wikipedia, Reino del Bósforo
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