Sources for the History of the Greek Cities

The literary sources for the history of the Black Sea in the fifth and fourth centuries are limited in quantity and uneven in coverage. Although evidence exists for local historical traditions dealing with the Bosporan kingdom in the eastern Crimea and the Taman peninsula and the city of Herakleia Pontike and its colony Chersonesos, only fragments remain. References to the Black Sea cities occur also in numerous classical authors such as the historians Herodotos, Xenophon, and Diodoros, the geographer Strabon, and the Athenian orators, especially Isokrates and Demosthenes. Their value for the history of the Black Sea cities is limited, however, by their strongly Atheno-centric biases. As a result, while relatively full evidence survives concerning the dates, founding cities ( metropoleis), and founders of the Black Sea cities as well as the legends that were invented to connect them to the Heroic Age and to establish divine sanction for their foundation, the evidence for the fifth and fourth centuries primarily concerns issues related to Athenian history, such as the return of the Ten Thousand and the grain trade, rather than the internal history of the cities themselves.

Fortunately, archaeology has compensated for much of the deficiencies of the literary sources. Although excavation of the cities of northern Turkey has barely begun, there is a long and rich archaeological tradition dealing with those of the west and north coasts of the Black Sea. Almost a century of excavation of cities such as Istria, Olbia, Chersonesos, and Pantikapaion has produced a wealth of epigraphical and material evidence illuminating their society and economy, culture, institutions, and urban development. Moreover, since studying the Greek cities in their geographic and ethnographic contexts is a hallmark of the Black Sea archaeological tradition, archaeology has also involved the exploration of the cities’ hinterlands, producing a wealth of information about the structure and history of their choras (rural hinterlands) and their relations with their non-Greek neighbors, and illuminating basic trends in the history of the region as a whole.