Phasis in 218 B.C.

Phasis — Spring 218 BC · The Far Gate of the Euxine.

Phasis — the Milesian Greek emporion planted where the great river Phasis pours into the eastern Euxine, the farthest landfall of Greek trade in the Black Sea and the fabled goal of the Argonauts, who rowed here for the Golden Fleece. It is the gateway from the sea into Colchis and the Caucasus, and by the river-road beyond toward the Caspian and the long trade of inner Asia. A cosmopolitan port set among lagoons and reeds, where (so the traders say) the peoples of the mountains come down in their many tongues to barter — linen and hemp and wax, hides and timber, and the gold the rivers of Colchis wash from the hills. The Colchian realm rings it about by land, and northward up the coast lies its sister-emporion of Dioscurias, busiest market of all the barbarian shore.

At the eastern end of the Black Sea, where the long voyage out of the Greek world finally meets the mountain-wall of the Caucasus, the river Phasis comes down broad and brown through a country of lagoons and reed-beds and empties into the sea. There the men of Miletus set their emporion, the last and farthest of the Greek trading-posts of the Euxine — the very shore, the poets say, to which Jason and his Argonauts rowed in quest of the Golden Fleece. Through Phasis the wares of the Greek world are carried inland to the Colchians and the tribes above them, and out of the hills come down linen and hemp, wax and pitch, hides, timber for ships, and the river-gold of Colchis. The river is the road: navigable far up for great vessels, it opens the way toward the inner sea and the trade of farther Asia. A wet and fever-haunted but wealthy place, Phasis lives by the carrying-trade and by the meeting of many peoples at its quays.