Tyras in 218 B.C.

Tyras — Spring 218 BC · The Greek Mouth of the River Tyras.

Tyras — a colony of the Milesians at the mouth of the broad river of the same name, on the north-west shore of the Euxine between Olbia and the delta of the Ister. The older Greeks knew the place as Ophiussa, the "Snake-isle place". It is a modest free polis of the frontier, one of the chain of Milesian foundations strung along this barbarous coast, living by the carrying-trade between the Greek sea and the grain-growing tribes of the steppe. From its harbour go out corn and salt-fish, hides and the produce of the river; into it come the wares of the Greek world for the Scythians and the Tyregetai of the inland banks. It strikes its own coin, governs itself by its own laws, and keeps its small freedom among the wandering peoples of the river-mouth.

Where the broad river Tyras empties into the western Euxine, the Milesians long ago planted a town the older Greeks called Ophiussa, and which now bears the river’s own name. It sits on the frontier between two worlds: behind it stretch the open lands of the Scythians and the Tyregetai, herdsmen and grain-growers of the river-banks; before it lies the sea-road that joins the Pontic colonies to the Greek world. Tyras is no power. It is a single polis with its strip of coast and river-mouth, a daughter of Miletus like Olbia up the shore, living not by conquest but by exchange — taking the corn, fish and hides of the steppe and passing them south for the oil, wine and wares of the Aegean. It mints its own coin and holds its own counsel, a small free city keeping its place among peoples far stronger than itself by being useful to them.