Bosporan Kingdom in 218 B.C.

Bosporan Kingdom — Spring 218 BC · The Granary of the Greeks.

The Bosporan Kingdom — the Spartocid Greek monarchy of the Cimmerian Bosporus, set astride the strait where the Maeotic lake pours into the Euxine. Its lands gather the eastern horn of the Tauric Chersonese and the marshy peninsula of the Sindoi across the water, a realm of Milesian colonies grown into a single crown. The dynasty of the Spartocids has ruled here for a century and a half, since Spartokos first took the throne, and under it Greek and barbarian are joined: the kings style themselves archons over the Greek cities and kings over the Scythian, Sindian and Maeotian peoples of the interior. Above all the Bosporus is the granary of the Greek world — from the wharves of Pantikapaion and the corn-port of Theodosia the wheat of the Scythian plains is shipped out by the shipload to Athens and the cities of the Aegean. In 218 BC the realm rests in the hands of the house of Paerisades and Leukon, rich on grain and fish, mediating between the Hellene and the steppe.

While Hannibal musters in the West and the great kings contend over Syria and the Aegean, the Bosporus keeps to the quiet, immense business of feeding them all. No realm of the Greek world is so bound up with bread as this one. Each season the corn-ships crowd the strait, taking on the wheat of the Scythian black-earth at Pantikapaion and at Theodosia, whose great harbour was opened expressly for the grain trade, and bearing it across the Euxine to Athens and a hundred lesser cities that cannot live without it. The Spartocid kings sit at the heart of this commerce: archons of the Greek cities and kings of the inland nations, they hold both shores of the strait, levy the grain and the salt-fish and the trade in cattle and slaves off the steppe, and bind the Hellene merchant to the Scythian and Maeotian chief. It is a kingdom not of conquest but of plenty — a Greek house grown great on the harvest of the barbarian plains.