Pityous in 218 B.C.

Pityous — Spring 218 BC · The Place of Pines.

Pityous — a small Greek colony of the Milesians set on the far north-eastern shore of the Pontus, beyond Dioskourias at the very edge of the world the Greeks know. Its name, "the place of pines", is taken from the dark pine-woods that crowd the mountains down to the water; from them the colony cuts its timber and pitches its ships. A modest but well-built port and fishing-harbour, it lives by the sea-trade and by what it can win from the wild tribes of Colchis — the Colchians and the Abasgoi who hold the slopes of the great Caucasus behind it. Few Greek hands reach further along this coast: beyond Pityous lie only the harbourless shores and the pirate-peoples of the Heniochi.

Where the Caucasus comes down to the sea at the north-eastern corner of the Pontus, the pines stand thick to the water’s edge, and among them the Milesians long ago planted Pityous. It is the furthest of the Greek footholds on this coast — beyond Dioskourias, the great mart of the Colchians, and beyond it nothing the Greeks call a city, only the rocks and the raiding tribes of the Heniochi. A small place, but a real one: a sheltered harbour, a well-built town, and behind it the endless pine-forest that gives the colony its name and its trade. The Greeks of Pityous fish the rich Pontic waters, cut the timber and pitch that the shipwrights of the sea must have, and barter cloth, wine and worked goods with the mountain men of Colchis for hides, wax, honey and slaves. They live by the goodwill — or the wariness — of those tribes, a lonely island of Hellas ringed by the barbarians of the Caucasus.