Olbia in 218 B.C.

Olbia — Spring 218 BC · The Market of the Borysthenes.

Olbia — the city of plenty, Borysthenes, the great colony the Milesians planted above the firth where the Hypanis and the Borysthenes pour together into the Euxine. It is the chief market of the northern shore, the meeting-place of the Greek world and the Scythians of the steppe: through its harbour pass the grain and the salt-fish, the hides and the herds and the slaves of the inland plains, sent south to Greece in exchange for wine, oil and the wares of the Aegean. It is a free and democratic polis of old Hellenic manners — yet it lives hard-pressed, ringed about by Scythian, Thracian and Galatian peoples to whom it pays gifts and tribute for the right to survive. Achilles, Lord of the Black Sea, is honoured as its guardian upon the long spit men call his Race-course; and Olbia trades and treats with the Bosporan kingdom eastward and Byzantium at the gate of the Pontus.

Where the broad firths of the Hypanis and the Borysthenes meet and run out together into the Euxine, Olbia stands as the foremost emporion of these northern coasts — the door through which the wealth of the Scythian plains reaches the Greek world. Grain above all, but also hides and salt-fish, herds and slaves, are gathered here from the steppe and shipped south; and the Greeks send back wine, olive oil and the manufactured goods the nomads prize. Yet the city is no master of its hinterland. It is hemmed on every side by the peoples of the plain — Scythians, Thracians, and the Galatians men call the Sciri — and to none of them is it strong enough to say no. It buys peace and the passage of trade with gifts and a yearly tribute, and so endures: rich, polished, Hellenic, and altogether dependent on the goodwill of the kings who range the grasslands at its back. This is Olbia in its age of crisis.