Paphlagonia Princedoms in 218 B.C.

Paphlagonia Princedoms — Spring 218 BC · The Highland Princedoms.

Paphlagonia — not a single kingdom but a patchwork of petty native principalities scattered through the rugged mountain country between Bithynia to the west and Pontus to the east, behind the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast. The Paphlagonians are an ancient people: in the old epic they marched to Troy under their chief Pylaimenes, and their native dynasts — the Pylaimenid line — still claim descent from him. They are famed horse-breeders and hardy mountaineers, ruled by local princes from hill-strongholds such as inland Kimiata. Coveted and hemmed in by their two great royal neighbours, who both encroach on the highlands, the Paphlagonian princes survive by their fastnesses and their famous horses while the world goes on around them.

Paphlagonia is a land of mountains and narrow valleys behind the Euxine shore, and its people have never been gathered under one crown. Where Pontus and Bithynia are ruled by ambitious dynasties that press outward on every side, Paphlagonia remains a scatter of native principalities, each prince holding his own stronghold and his own valley, fiercely particular and slow to obey any master. The Pylaimenid house, claiming descent from the Paphlagonian chief who fell at Troy, keeps its seat at inland Kimiata; other dynasts hold the highland towns and the coastal places. The two great kingdoms that border them — Pontus eastward, Bithynia westward — both reach into the hills and would swallow the whole if they could, and the Greek coast with Sinope and its colonies is a separate world altogether. For now the old highland people endure between the millstones, trading on their horses and their rough independence.