Cerasus in 218 B.C.

Cerasus — Spring 218 BC · A Greek Port on the Wild Euxine.

Cerasus (Kerasous) — a small Greek colony set on the eastern shore of the Euxine, between Trapezus to the east and the town of Cotyora to the west. A daughter-colony of Sinope, it is a modest fortified port clinging to the wild Pontic coast, hemmed about by the tattooed Mossynoikoi and the Tibareni of the hinterland. Famous among the Greeks as one of the cities that the Ten Thousand reached on their long march down to the sea, and reputed to give its name to the kerasos, the cherry-tree that flourishes upon its slopes. A little Hellenic foothold on a half-barbarous coast, it lives by its harbour, its fishing and the carrying-trade of the eastern Euxine.

Far along the eastern Pontic coast, where the great forested mountains crowd down almost to the surf, Cerasus keeps its small Greek foothold among barbarian neighbours. Westward lies Cotyora; eastward, a hundred miles off, the free city of Trapezus stands shut in by its vast mountain. Between them the coast is the country of the Tibareni and the Mossynoikoi — the men of the wooden towers, who mark their bodies with tattoos — and of the Macrocephali, the long-heads. A colony of distant Sinope, Cerasus is a walled harbour-town living by the sea: a refuge for ships working the long, harbourless eastern Euxine, a market where Greek wares meet the timber, honey and slaves of the highland tribes. Its slopes are thick with the cherry-tree that bears its name, and its memory is bound up with the famous march of the Ten Thousand, who once came down weary to this shore.