Tomis in 218 B.C.

Tomis — Spring 218 BC · The Emporion of the Getic Shore.

Tomis — a small Greek polis on the west coast of the Pontus, in the country of the Getae. The Milesians planted it, as they planted the older cities of this shore; in the beginning it was no city of its own but an emporion, a trading-post, of Istros up the coast. From that humble seed it has grown into a modest grain-trading town, shipping the corn of the Getic plains and the fish of the Pontus to the Greek world, and taking wine and oil and worked goods in return. So valuable was its little harbour that within living memory it became the prize in a war: Byzantium and Kallatis fought over the emporion of Tomis, each coveting the trade of this stretch of the Getic shore.

On the low west coast of the Pontus, where the Getae hold the plains behind the shore, stands Tomis — a modest Greek town that began as a trading-post and grew into a polis. The Milesians settled this whole coast generations ago, founding Istros first and then, as an offshoot of it, the emporion of Tomis; in time the emporion became a city in its own right. It is no great power: a single harbour, its fields and its trade, ringed by the Getae and overshadowed by the larger Greek cities to north and south, Istros above it and Kallatis below. Yet its harbour and its share of the Getic grain made it worth fighting for — and within the last generation Byzantium and Kallatis came to blows over which of them should master the trade of Tomis. In 218 it is a quiet grain-port of the Pontic-Getic shore, living by the corn-ships and the fishery.