For most of the fifth century relations between the Black Sea cities and the Aegean were limited. Trade increased, particularly with Athens, but political involvements were avoided. The Aegean and Black Sea basins formed two relatively self-contained political universes, a situation that Athens recognized when it conceded the Black Sea to Persia in the Peace of Kallias (most commonly dated to 449). The situation changed, however, in the 430s when Perikles led a powerful Athenian fleet into the Black Sea. The evidence for this event is limited to a single passage in Plutarch’s Life of Perikles:
He once made a naval expedition into the Euxine Sea with a large and exceptionally well-equipped fleet, where he saw to it that the Greek cities got what they wanted and treated them kindly, made the surrounding non-Greek tribes and their kings and chieftains aware of the extent of Athenian power, proved their fearlessness and courage, in that they sailed wherever they wished and made themselves masters of the whole sea, and left thirteen ships along with Lamachus and troops to help the people of Sinope against their tyrant Timesilaus. Once Timesilaus and his supporters had been overthrown, he got a decree passed to the effect that 600 volunteers would leave for Sinope and settle there alongside the Sinopians, taking over the houses and estates which had previously belonged to the tyrant and his men. (Plutarch Perikles 20; trans. R. Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998) 163)
Plutarch’s source for his account of Perikles’ Pontic Expedition is unknown, but attacks on its historicity have not been convincing. More contentious has been the question of the expedition’s date and purpose. For over a century scholars have argued that it should be dated to 437/6 and connected to Spartokos’ assumption of power at Pantikapaion, maintaining that Perikles’ goal was to establish cordial relations between Athens and the new ruler of Pantikapaion and secure for Athens a privileged position in the Black Sea grain trade, similar to that enjoyed by the city in the fourth century. Despite its wide acceptance, this interpretation is seriously flawed. The problems are twofold: first, epigraphic evidence suggests a date later than 437/6 for the expedition (Clairmont 1979: 123-6); and, second, it rests on an anachronistic overestimation of Athenian dependence on Black Sea grain, retrojecting late fifth - and fourth-century conditions into the 430s, when Athens was able to import grain freely from a wide variety of Mediterranean sources (Noonan 1973: 231-42; Burstein 1999: 93-104). More probable is the explanation provided by Plutarch’s source, namely, that Perikles opportunistically responded to appeals for help from factions in the Black Sea cities. Certainly, the most tangible result of the expedition was an expansion of Athenian influence in the region with its center on the south coast at Sinope and Amisos, both of which received substantial bodies of Athenian colonists and the latter even renamed itself Peiraieus after Athens’ port.
Athenian influence in the Black Sea basin increased with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431. As the region did not become a significant theatre of military operations, references in the sources are few, but the trend is clear. The Assessment Decree (IG 13 71) reveals the existence in 425 of a Euxine district containing at least forty cities on the south, west, and north coasts of the Black Sea; and the fact that Nymphaion was still paying tribute and had an Athenian garrison throughout most of the Peloponnesian War indicates that doubts concerning the reality of the Euxine district are unjustified. It is likely, however, that as in the Aegean the reaction of Pontic cities to the growth of Athenian power was pragmatic.
Cities threatened by the ambitions of more powerful neighbors such as Theodosia and Nymphaion probably welcomed Athenian protection, while by the same token cities with expansionist aspirations of their own, such as Pantikapaion, Olbia, and Herakleia, were less enthusiastic, if not openly hostile. So the new Thracian rulers of Pantikapaion are described as ‘‘enemies’’ in Athenian sources. Likewise, Herakleia refused to pay her assessment, maintaining her long-standing policy of loyalty to Persia. The situation at Olbia is less clear, but the fact that the city had already given sanctuary to the exiled tyrants of Sinope in the 430s points to the existence of a desire to maintain Olbian independence (Vinogradov 1997d: 172-89). At the same time, however, numismatic and epigraphic evidence suggests that Olbia’s aristocrats took advantage of Athenian protection to escape from Scythian rule and replace the city’s Scythian governor with a native tyrant.
Athenian power in the Black Sea - as elsewhere - quickly declined after the Syracusan disaster. Although the details are unknown, the decision in 410 to raise revenue by levying a 10 percent toll at Chalkedon on shipping in and out of the Black Sea suggests that tribute collection in the region had effectively ceased. Athens’ final defeat and surrender in 404 left the remaining Athenians in the Black Sea to fend for themselves. Despite the peace treaty’s requirement that Athenian colonists and cleruchs return to Athens, some Athenians clearly decided to remain in the region. So Demosthenes’ maternal grandfather Gylon surrendered Nymphaion to Satyros, the tyrant of Pantikapaion, in exchange for the city of Kepoi on the Taman peninsula, while the fact that Amisos was still known as Peiraieus in the fourth century suggests that some of the Athenian colonists decided to stay there as well.
More important in the long run than the continued residence of a few Athenians in the region were the effects of Athenian intervention in the Black Sea on the life of the Black Sea cities. Some changes were cultural, such as the strong influence of Athenian sculptural and epigraphic styles on local workshops and the growing interest of local elites in intellectual developments in the Aegean, as indicated by Xenophon’s ( Anabasis 7.5.14) reference to books in the cargoes of ships wrecked on the west coast of the Black Sea about 400, and the appearance of evidence about the same time for students coming from the region to study at Athens. More fundamental, however, was the growth in trade between Athens and the Black Sea and its influence on the economic life of the Pontic cities.
Trade between Athens and the Black Sea Greek cities grew steadily during the fifth century, but for most of the century it was primarily a trade in luxuries, as is indicated by the prominence of Athenian painted pottery of all types and other manufactured goods in the archaeological record. As the Peloponnesian War turned against Athens, however, the city lost access to her traditional Mediterranean grain sources, becoming as a result increasingly dependent on Black Sea grain to survive. The result was a fundamental change in the nature of trade between Athens and the Black Sea cities. From a luxury trade it changed to a trade in staples with grain as its primary focus. Although the Spartan blockade of the Hellespont in 405/4 interrupted the growth of the grain trade, it quickly resumed its growth with the conclusion of peace, reflecting Athens’ continuing dependence on Black Sea grain. The Black Sea cities responded by increasing grain production to meet the new demand. Clear evidence of the changed character of Black Sea trade with the Aegean is provided by the sharp increase in the number of agricultural settlements in the cities’ hinterlands beginning in the late fifth and fourth centuries, as documented by archaeological surveys at Olbia, Chersonesos, and in the Kerch and Taman Peninsulas (Noonan 1973: 233-5; Saprykin 1994; Vinogradov & Kryzickij 1995: 67-74). Not surprisingly, it was the major cities such as Pantikapaion and Herakleia Pontike that most benefited from the new situation.
World History
