What Did Ancient Greeks Mean by the ‘Cimmerian Bosporus’?
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doi: 10.2143/AWE.13.0.3038729 AWE 13 (2014) 29-48 WHAT DID ANCIENT GREEKS MEAN BY THE ‘CIMMERIAN BOSPORUS’? NATALIA GOUROVA Abstract The word ‘Bosporus’ in ‘Cimmerian Bosporus’ is usually perceived as the name for a unified state. However, this word was also used by ancient authors as a hydronym, for the strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov/Lake Maeotis and for denoting a specific territorial unit, as well as an alternate name for Panticapaeum. The use of Bosporus in written sources from the Archaic period to late antiquity followed a certain chronological sequence, which generally coincides with the periods of formation and transformation of the Bosporan state. Despite the interest of contemporary research in terminological interpretation and reinterpretation, we still take for granted some of the names used by ancient authors for denoting space and political entities. The meaning of these names, however, is not always clear, not only because of its possible multiplicity, but also because their meaning depends on the person who uses these names, on the specific circumstances of their use, on the historical context and the traditional vocabulary of the relevant period, as well as on their transformation over time. Moreover, the shift from the geographical meaning to the geopolitical one is often not easily identifiable. Additionally, as the interior structure of any political formation, with its different kinds of power, is also changeable through time, any reference to it requires a clarification with regards to the period in which each political entity existed. To provide a contemporary example: when talking about Russia, one can mean the Russian empire, or the Russian SFSR, part of the Soviet Union, or the contemporary Russian Federation. Further difficulties arise when we attempt to identify what kind of space the ancients referred to. The difficulty in tracing this is especially apparent in cases where the same name is used to denote space both in purely geographical terms, as a region, territory, a locus, as well as in political terms, denoting a political entity at a certain stage of its political transformation. By asking what the ancient Greeks meant by the ‘Cimmerian Bosporus’ I wish to explore the meanings of the name ‘Bosporus’ as referring to the region in the north-eastern Black Sea, and to argue that their transformations reflect in fact the stages of the formation and transformation of the Bosporan state. The chronological framework I am focusing on spans the 6th to the 1st centuries BC. 997030.indb7030.indb 2299 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 30 N. GOUROVA Etymologically, the name Bosporus is viewed as the result of Hellenisation of a non-Greek, most probably Thracian toponym denoting the homonymous region. Having probably been a synonym of bouporos or bouporthmos it was used for the straits which connected two sea basins. This perception, already established before the beginning of the colonisation of the northern Black Sea, seems to have facilitated the transfer of the name to a region with similar conditions, that of the Cimmerian Bosporus. The epithet Cimmerian was added to distinguish it from the Thracian Bosporus.1 In ancient sources the name Bosporus occurs variously as a hydronym denoting the straits that connected the Euxine Pontus and Lake Maeotis, a geographical territorial unit, an alternate name for Panticapaeum, a Milesian colony established in the northern Black Sea in the beginning of the 6th century BC,2 and as the name of the Bosporan state. While this multiplicity of meanings of the name Bosporus is generally accepted, its use for indicating a specific territory, as well as the Bosporan state, remains in most Bosporan studies chronologically restricted to the period of the Spartocid dynasty, who ruled the Bosporus from 438/7 BC to the end of the 2nd century BC. We are going to challenge this interpretation, focusing on the character of the political entity of Bosporus and the perception of this name both inside and outside it. In its purely geographical meaning, as the name of the straits, the word Bosporus was already known to Hecataeus of Miletus, who stated that Hermonassa is an island in the Cimmerian Bosporus, which had a polis.3 This information reflected the actual physico-geographical situation in the region, where in place of the modern Taman Peninsula several islands existed between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. In fact, the region of the straits during the period of the Greek colonisation of the Black Sea was a complex system of islands, anabranches and bypasses. In the time of Hecataeus, at the end of the 6th century BC, several Greek apoikiai were already established in the northern Black Sea: Panticapaeum, Myrmekion, Tyritake, Nymphaeum, Parthenion and Porthmeus on the Kerch Peninsula; Theodosia in the south-eastern Crimea; Phanagoria, Kepoi, Hermonassa and Patraeus in the territo- ries east of the straits.4 1 Tokhtasev 1999, 89, 90. 2 Blavatsky 1964, 15–16, 24; Noonan 1973, 80; Y.A. Vinogradov 2000, 230. 3 Ammianus Marcellinus 22. 8. 9–10 = FGH 1 fr. 197; Hecataeus FGH 1a, fr. 208. 4 The apoikiai of the Cimmerian Bosporus were founded mainly between the second and third quarters of the 6th century BC. For more precise dates of foundation of these apoikiai, see for Myrmekion: Y.A. Vinogradov 1999, 288; Butyagin 2000a; 2000b, 183; 2005, 302; for Tyritake: Gaidukevich 1949, 37; for Nymphaeum: Zinko 2001, 102; for Porthmeus: Vakhtina 2005, 109; 997030.indb7030.indb 3300 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 WHAT DID ANCIENT GREEKS MEAN BY THE ‘CIMMERIAN BOSPORUS’? 31 That Hecataeus meant the straits when he used the name Bosporus can be explained on the one hand by the fact that it was the straits that played the role of the border between Europe and Asia in accounts of early geographers. On the other hand, this region was also one of the areas of the Milesian colonisation, and Hecataeus’ work could have been used for various naval expeditions. It is also worth noting that in the time of Hecataeus the colonisation of the region was still in progress. Some decades after Hecataeus, the name Bosporus was used by Aeschylus (Prome- theus 729–735) in the same meaning: At these narrow portals of the sea you will reach the Cimmerian isthmus, which you should leave steadily, passing through the straits of Maeotis: and it will be forever a great mention of your route among mortals, and [the passing] will be called by the name Bosporus. As you leave Europe you will reach the Asian continent.5 It is interesting that Aeschylus named the straits also ‘Maeotean’, and the adjacent land, obviously the Kerch Peninsula, ‘the Cimmerian neck’ – isthmus. The adding of Maeotean to the geographical vocabulary can be seen as a reflection of the fact that in the 5th-century BC Greek settlers had already expanded into the Asian part of the Bosporus, enlarging the space of their habitation, and had come into contact with Maeotean tribes occupying territories around Sindike. Herodotus, who not only was familiar with the work of Hecataeus,6 but who was using the most reliable maps of his time,7 also used the name Bosporus as a hydronym (Herodotus 4. 28). Taking into account his travel to the Black Sea8 and his visit to at least Olbia, or Borysthenes as he preferred to call it (Herodotus 4. 17. 1, 78. 3, 79. 2), to the north-west of the Cimmerian Bosporus, Herodotus would also have had to be aware of the presence and the importance of the straits. The latter is evident not only from the measurements of the straits that he offered (3. 86), but also from the description of the peoples who lived west of it (3. 100). The fact that the straits were viewed as the border between Europe and Asia seems to have contributed further to Herodotus’ interest towards the Cimmerian for Theodosia: Katyushin 2003, 645; for Phanagoria: Kuznetsov 2008, 11, 42; for Kepoi: Nikolaeva 1977, 151; for Hermonassa: Zeest 1961; Korovina 1992, 33; Finogenova 2005, 433; and for Patraeus: Desyatchikov and Dolgorukov 1984, 86. 5 Here and elsewhere the translations from ancient Greek are my own. The date of Prometheus is disputed but in any case does not extend beyond the 5th century BC. For a discussion on the date and the authenticity of this play, see Flintoff 1989. 6 Heidel 1943, 260. 7 Harrison 2007, 44–45. 8 On Herodotus’ travel to the Black Sea, see Zhebelev 1953, 314–21; Armayor 1978; Neihardt 1982; Asheri et al. 2007, 7; Kim 2010. 997030.indb7030.indb 3311 22/09/14/09/14 008:288:28 32 N. GOUROVA Bosporus. The straits constituted a significant element of both the Herodotean bipolar world itself, a world divided into Europe and Asia, and of Herodotus’ perception of symmetry of this world. Both water borders, the Cimmerian and the Thracian Bosporus, were of a primary interest to him not only from a purely geo- graphical point of view, but also, more so, as significant geopolitical and strategic units. While the Thracian Bosporus was the border through which Persians could reach the Balkan Peninsula, the Cimmerian Bosporus, according to Herodotus’ Logos, was similarly the route of Scythian migrations from Europe to Asia. Of course, in Herodotus’ times, even before the rule of the first Bosporan dynasty, the Archaeanactids (480–438 BC), local political structures were already developed in the Bosporan region. There, at the end of the 6th century BC, the polis of Panticapaeum with its extended territories was formed. However, the Greek communities of the region did not interest Herodotus.