Amisos in 218 B.C.

Amisos — Spring 218 BC · The Free Port of the Themiscyran Plain.

Amisos — a great free Greek port on the southern shore of the Euxine, planted by the Milesians and afterwards held by Athens, who sent settlers under Athenocles and renamed it for a while Peiraieus after her own famous harbour. It is the second city of the Pontic coast after Sinope, a rich commercial town set where the Iris and the Halys spill into the sea, gateway to the broad and fertile plain of Themiscyra behind it. Through its quays pass the olive oil and wine of the Greek world, going inland to Cappadocia and the Pontic uplands, and coming back the corn, timber, hides, salt-fish and slaves of the interior. In this year Amisos is free and rules itself by its own laws and magistrates, beholden to no king — though the Mithridatid house rising in the hills of Pontus looks long upon so fine a harbour.

Amisos sits on the great southern bend of the Black Sea, where the rivers Iris and Halys lay down the rich black soil of the Themiscyran plain. After Sinope it is the foremost port of all this coast: a Milesian colony that Athens once peopled and called Peiraieus, grown wealthy on the carrying-trade between the Greek sea and the Cappadocian interior. Its hinterland is famed for its fertility — corn and orchards, olives that thrive where few others on the Euxine will, and pasture enough for the herds whose hides go south by sea. The city is free, governed by its own people, and so far untouched by the kings of the uplands; but it lies within easy reach of Pontus, whose Mithridatid line is gathering the lands at its back, and the freedom of so prized a harbour may not outlast the age.