Kerkinitis in 218 B.C.

Kerkinitis — Spring 218 BC · A Corn-Town of the Chersonesite Chora.

Kerkinitis — a small Greek polis on the western shore of the Tauric peninsula, set on the gulf that bears its name. Once a free city of its own, it is by this era a dependency of Chersonesos, a fortified farming-and-fishing town within the great grain-growing chora that feeds the metropolis. Its people till the corn-lands of the gulf-shore and draw fish from the shallows, and the walls about the town are no idle ornament: the Crimean Scythians press ever harder on the Chersonesite territory, and Kerkinitis, set out on the open plain at the chora’s northern edge, stands in the path of the Scythians before the city itself.

On the west coast of the Tauric peninsula, where a wide gulf bites into the low corn-lands, stands Kerkinitis — a little Greek polis grown into a dependency of Chersonesos, the great Dorian city of the southern cape. The chora of Chersonesos, the chequered grain-land that feeds the city and fills its export-ships, reaches up this western shore, and Kerkinitis is one of its fortified strong-points: a walled town of farmers and fishermen guarding the corn at the chora’s northern edge. But the open plain that makes the land rich also lays it bare. The Scythians of the peninsula push down on the Chersonesite territory year by year, and Kerkinitis, set out beyond the safety of the cape, feels their pressure first — a frontier post as much as a farming town.