The Danubian Lands between the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas (7th Century BC – 10th Century AD) Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities (Belgrade – 17-21 September 2013) edited by Gocha R. Tsetskhladze, Alexandru Avram and James Hargrave Archaeopress Archaeology Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED www.archaeopress.com ISBN 978 1 78491 192 8 ISBN 978 1 78491 193 5 (e-Pdf) © Archaeopress and the individual authors 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. Printed in England by Oxuniprint, Oxford This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com Table of Contents Principal Editor’s Preface ...................................................................................................... vii Gocha R. Tsetskhladze Message from the President of the Congress ....................................................................... ix Sir John Boardman Welcome by the Secretary-General....................................................................................... xi Gocha R. Tsetskhladze List of Illustrations and Tables ............................................................................................. xiii List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ xxi Opening Lecture Black Sea cultures and peoples ..............................................................................................3 Miroslava Mirković Section 1: The Black Sea Greek Colonies and their Relationship with the Hinterland Greeks, locals and others around the Black Sea and its hinterland: recent developments ...........................................................................................................11 Gocha R. Tsetskhladze Feasting and diplomacy in colonial behaviour in the northern Black Sea ............................43 Ivy Faulkner The Black Sea area in Xenophon’s Anabasis .........................................................................49 Luigi Gallo Hegemony and political instability in the Black Sea and Hellespont after the Theban expedition to Byzantium in 364 BC ...........................................................53 José Vela Tejada Femmes et pouvoir chez les peuples des steppes eurasiatiques .........................................59 Marta Oller The Bosporus after the Spartocid kings................................................................................63 Stefania Gallotta Leuce Island as a part of the Pontic contact zone: constructing a sacred Topos ..................67 Ruja Popova Sinope and Colchis: colonisation, or a Greek population in ‘poleis barbaron’? ...................73 Jan G. de Boer Greek colonies and the southern Black Sea hinterland: looking closer into a long, complex and multidimensional relationship ............................................................81 Manolis Manoledakis Phrygia and the southern Black Sea littoral..........................................................................91 Maya Vassileva i Perception and the political approach to foreigners of the West Pontic Greek colonies during the Hellenistic period ................................................................................................97 Alina Dimitrova The Greek colonisation of Abkhazia in the light of new archaeological discoveries: the palaeogeographic, ecological and demographic situation in Sukhum Bay ................. 101 Alik Gabelia New data on the dynamics of relations between Greeks and Barbarians at the mouth of the Tanais river in the final stage of Scythian history (5th-3rd centuries BC) ............... 105 Viktor P. Kopylov Greek colonisation of the European Bosporus .................................................................. 109 Viktor Zinko and Elena Zinko The Cimmerians: their origins, movements and their difficulties ..................................... 119 Ioannis K. Xydopoulos Section 2: The Danube and the Black Sea Region Verbindung zwischen dem Schwarzen Meer und der Adriatik durch Ozean und/oder Donau im Weltbild der archaischen Griechen................................................... 127 Alexander V. Podossinov Between the Euxine and the Adriatic Seas: ancient representations of the Ister (Danube) and the Haemus (Balkan mountains) as frames of modern South-Eastern Europe ..................................................................... 133 Anca Dan Cultural Transfers and artistic exchanges between the Adriatic and Black Seas, 4th century BC ................................................................................................................... 153 Maria Cecilia D’Ercole Celts in the Black Sea area................................................................................................. 159 Jan Bouzek Antonia Tryphaina im östlichen dynastischen Netzwerk ................................................... 169 Victor Cojocaru Wine for the Avar elite? Amphorae from Avar period burials in the Carpathian Basin..... 175 Gergely Csiky and Piroska Magyar-Hárshegyi Sur quelques inscriptions possiblement tomitaines.......................................................... 183 Alexandru Avram The ecclesiastical network of the regions on the western and northern shores of the Black Sea in late antiquity ............................................................ 189 Dan Ruscu Religion and society on the western Pontic shore............................................................. 197 Ligia Ruscu L’Europe du sud-est chez les géographes de l’époque impériale: continuités et ruptures ...................................................................................................... 205 Mattia Vitelli Casella Colonisation in the urban and rural milieu of Noviodunum (Moesia Inferior) .................. 213 Lucreţiu Mihailescu-Bîrliba Aquileian families through Pannonia and Upper Moesia .................................................. 219 Leonardo Gregoratti ii The city of Tomis and the Roman army: epigraphic evidence .......................................... 223 Snežana Ferjančić The imperial city of Justiniana Prima as a paradigm of Constantinopolitan influence in the Central Balkans ....................................................................................... 229 Olga Špehar Empreintes et originaux: les monnaies avec monogramme BAE ..................................... 235 Pascal Burgunder The Roman harbour of Ariminum and its connections with the Aegean and the Black Sea ............................................................................................................. 243 Federico Ugolini L’Istros dans l’horizon géographique ancien: un aperçu historique sur les traditions et les connaissances géographiques concernant son bassin ........................... 249 Immacolata Balena De la mer Égée jusqu’aux Carpates: la route du vin de Rhodes vers la Dacie .................. 255 Dragoş Măndescu Section 3: Roman and Byzantine Limes. Varia Women at the verge: Roman and Byzantine women on the Danubian Limes ................. 263 Il Akkad and Milena Joksimović Funerary images of women in tomb frescos of the Late Antique and Early Byzantine period from the Central Balkans ...................................................... 269 Jelena Anđelković Grašar Regarding the fall of the Danubian Limes with special reference to Scythia Minor in the 7th century ................................................................................. 277 Gabriel Custurea and Gabriel Mircea Talmaţchi Some East Pontic amphorae of Roman and Early Byzantine times .................................. 283 Andrei Opaiţ Some thoughts about Seleucid Thrace in the 3rd century BC .......................................... 293 Adrian George Dumitru Eastern Crimea in the 10th-12th centuries AD: similarities and differences .................... 299 Vadim V. Maiko Les Romains en mer Noire: depuis les villes greques au IIe siècle après J.-C. .................. 315 Livio Zerbini Castles made of sand? Balkan Latin from Petar Skok to J.N. Adams ................................ 323 Vojin Nedeljković Ancient coins on Bulgarian lands (1st century BC-5th century AD): the archetype of Dominance/Power–God/Emperor/King on a Throne ............................ 329 Sasha Lozanova Ceramics from the Danubian provinces on sites of the Chernyakhov-Sîntana de Mureş culture .............................................................................................................. 337 Boris Magomedov Section 4: New Excavations and Projects Thracia Pontica: Apollonia, Mesambria et al. A comparative archaeometrical approach .......................................................................................................................... 355 Pierre Dupont iii Old digs, new data: archaeological topography of the southern part of the acropolis of Istros during the Greek period (the Basilica Pârvan Sector) .......................................... 363 Valentin-Victor Bottez Stratégies coloniales et réseaux d’occupation spatiale gètes sur le littoral de la Dobroudja du Nord: les acquis du Programme ANR Pont-Euxin............................... 371 Alexandre Baralis et Vasilica Lungu Rock-cut monuments in Thrace and Phrygia: new perspectives from the Gluhite Kamani project ............................................................................................... 387 Lynn E. Roller Deultum-Debeltos: archaeological excavation of the street spaces and structures, 2004-13 .................................................................................................... 395 Hristo Preshlenov The civic centre of Archaic Borysthenes: a new approach to localisation ......................... 403 Dmitry Chistov Changes in the structure of faunal remains at the settlement on Berezan island (northern Black Sea) during its existence .................................................. 415 Aleksei Kasparov Using, reusing and repairing pottery: the example of two small Bosporan centres – Tanais and Tyritake (everyday life, economic status, wealth and the resourcefulness of the population) ............................................................................. 423 Marcin Matera Excavation of Ash Hill 2 in Myrmekion .............................................................................. 431 Alexander M. Butyagin Lesale, an unknown centre in western Colchis.................................................................. 437 Annegret Plontke Lüning Recent discoveries at Tios and its territory ....................................................................... 441 Sümer Atasoy and Şahin Yildirim The rescue excavation of the Selmanli tumulus in Kastamonu ......................................... 445 Şahin Yildirim New findings on the history and archaeology of the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey: the excavation of Cıngırt Kayası ........................................................................ 453 Ayşe F. Erol On settlement problems in north-western Anatolia (Zonguldak region) from the 7th century BC to the Roman period .................................................................. 463 Güngör Karauğuz Achaemenid presence at Oluz Höyük, north-central Anatolia .......................................... 467 Şevket Dönmez New data about Roman painted pottery discovered at Cioroiu Nou, Dolj county, Romania......................................................................................................... 475 Dorel Bondoc The cooking devices of Apollonia Pontica (Bulgaria): preliminary study of the specificities of the ceramic assemblage of this Greek colony ..................................... 481 Laurent Claquin The construction of Marcianopolis: local and imported stone production and the relationship with the West Pontic colonies during the Principate .............................. 491 Zdravko Dimitrov iv An architectural complex in the north-western part of the Chersonesian fortress belonging to the Chaika settlement in the north-western Crimea .................................... 495 Tatyana Egorova and Elena Popova Christian buildings in the fortress of Anacopia.................................................................. 505 Suram Sakania Appendix 1 Programme: Fifth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities .................................. 512 Appendix 2 Summaries of papers: Fifth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities ................... 518 Contributors/lead authors and contact details (published papers)................................... 561 v Copyright material: no unauthorized reproduction in any medium The Cimmerians: their origins, movements and their difficulties Ioannis K. Xydopoulos (Aristotle University of Thessalonica) Cimmerian invasions in Asia Minor, also making Homer a contemporary to Archilochos (688-685 BC). Theopompus thought that Homer had heard of these Cimmerians from Aristeas of Proconnesus, who was wrongly put in the same period as the poet (see below). It has been argued that this Aristeas had visited the Cimmerian lands and stayed there for some time,8 a hypothesis that cannot be sustained by the literary evidence that has come down to us. We know that Aristeas had been to the lands of the Hyperboreans, but the Cimmerians being identical to (or mixed with) the Hyperboreans is just an attractive hypothesis.9 Strabo thinks it is clear (after one has examined the references of Homer’s contemporary authors) that the poet was aware of the Cimmerian presence in Asia Minor (Strabo 1. 2. 9). Needless to say, this hypothesis cannot be based on any evidence, so it should be rejected. It has been long ago acknowledged that the main problem regarding the Cimmerians is that all the information we have regarding this people is either circumstantial or secondhand data. In the former belong the Akkadian cuneiform texts, written during the period when the Assyrians and the Cimmerians had very close contacts, i.e. in the late 8th up to the mid-7th century, as well as some references in the Bible.1 Archaeology has been heavily relied upon to fill many gaps. However, it provides little help to the identification of their origins, since we have no concrete evidence that the remains (tombs, settlements, walls) usually attributed to the Cimmerians actually belong to them.2 The latter category is made up of the ancient Greek sources. These are dated from the 7th century onwards, but the majority of them belong to a much later period. Our main effort in this paper is to outline the Cimmerians’ perception by the Greeks, as well as the reasons for this perception in the Greek authors of especially the Classical period. References to the historical Cimmerians are found already in the Akkadian sources (Gimirrai)10 as well as in the Bible (Gamer) (Genesis 10:2-3). They were a nomadic people, probably of Iranian origin, a war-like tribe, raiding to make a living and destroying the cities and populations in Asia Minor.11 So, it is highly probable that the Asia Minor Greeks were calling these raiders after a mythical name (Κιμμέριοι) already known to them through the epics, which sounded very close to the real name of this people known from the Akkadian sources.12 These Homeric verses serve (both to the author of the Odyssey and to his audience) as the exact opposite analogy to the picture of the Laestrygonians or the Aethiopians, also found both in the Iliad (1. 423; 23. 205) and in the Odyssey (1. 22). The Aethiopians reside to the East and they are friends with the gods, thus enjoying the light of the sun for the whole year. The context of a land being in the dark West, covered eternally by a thick fog and mist, is equivalent to the context of another mythical land, bright and shiny.13 The ethnic name ‘Cimmerians’ is then a ‘talking’ name (as that of the Aethiopians): it denotes those ‘living in the dark’, etymologically deriving from the Greek word kemmeros (mist).14 Something that seems to be at odds with the Homeric Cimmerians and their placement at the fringes of the world is the phrase ἔνθα δὲ [in the Ocean] Κιμμερίων ἀνδρῶν δῆμός τε πόλις τε. It has been noted The very first mention of the Cimmerians in the Greek literary sources is found already in Homer’s Odyssey (Book 11). Odysseus arrives at the dark and misty land of the Cimmerians, a land never reached by the sunlight and very close to the entrance of the Underworld (Homer Odyssey 12-19). The mention of the Cimmerians in the Homeric text is not a later interpolation3 and perhaps this only reference to them implies that the whole story of their presence in such a place was fictional, so any attempt to locate their lands would be in vain.4 It is true that the poet was influenced by the Argonautica epics and incorporated in his poem some information concerning the Cimmerians.5 It is a common topos in modern research that these Cimmerians belong to the world of mythical geography.6 Τhis sole reference to the Cimmerians by the author of the Odyssey has been taken as a hint for accurately dating both the poet and the epic.7 Towards the end of the Classical period, Theopompus was one of the first Greek intellectuals who tried to find the exact dates of Homer and the Trojan War by using this reference: Theopompus was sure that Homer himself had known the (historical) Cimmerians, so he placed the poet’s peak in the period of the von der Muehll 1959; Tokhtasev 1996, 4. For Aristeas’ visit to the lands of the Hyperboreans, see Athenaeus 16. 506c; Rohde 1903, 93, n. 1. 9 Jacoby 1964, 57. 10 Ivantchik 1993; Olbrycht 1998, 93; 1989, 78; Ivantchik 2012, 323. 11 See Ivantchik 2012, 323-24. 12 Heubeck 1963, 491; 1989, 79. Nylander (1965, 131-32) points out that even the reading Κιμμερίων in the Homeric verse is highly problematic. 13 Lesky 1959; Heubeck 1963, 491; Olbrycht 1998, 74. 14 Heubeck 1989, 79. Contra Nylander 1965, 131-32. 8 Ivantchik 2001, 307-08. 2 Ivantchik 2001, 308. 3 Ivantchik 2005, 84. 4 See, for example, Heubeck 1989, 78. 5 See Mühll 1959, 148; Heubeck 1963, 491; Olbrycht 1998, 74-75. 6 Already stressed by Heubeck 1963, 491. See also Tokhtasev 1996, 7-11; Olbrycht 1998, 74. 7 See, for example, Heubeck 1963; Olbrycht 1998, 73-74. 1 119 Copyright material: no unauthorized reproduction in any medium The Danubian Lands between the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas that this phrase is met in the Homeric poems twice for the Trojans in the Iliad (3. 50 and 24. 706) and another three times in the Odyssey (6. 3; 8. 555; 14. 43). In all cases it is closely connected to the way the Greeks understood a community.15 So, the Homeric Cimmerians seem to be a paradox, since they dwell close to the Underworld’s gates, being far away from the polis (city-state) world the Greeks were living in. Askold Ivantchik pointed out that this Homeric picture is an imaginary one, based on no historical reality, except for the use of the very name ‘Cimmerians’.16 He also mentions the passage in Hesiod’s Work and Days (527), where the same expression (δῆμός τε πόλις τε) is used for the ‘black people’, who lived in the far South or South-East. So, it would be logical to assume that the placement of those mythical Cimmerians at the fringes of the known – to the Greeks – world could mean that their reception as a distinct and exotic people (as far as the Odyssey’s poet and his audience were concerned) was natural. It is a perfect example of the so-called ‘geography of exclusion’ regarding all those people who were living outside the Greek world. As Ivantchik put it, 668 to 665 BC, since it was then that the Lydian king Gyges asked for help from the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal. However, there are some doubts regarding the hypothesis that the reference to the Cimmerian domination in the ‘Westland’, found in an Assyrian astrological text of 657 BC, is a reference to Lydia.23 The troubles seem to have started again in the mid-7th century, since we know that Gyges died in a battle against the Cimmerians (sometime between 650 and 644 BC) and his heir, Ardys, made a new appeal to the Assyrians for help. Apparently, the Cimmerians were for a long time a menace in Anatolia. Otherwise, we cannot explain the survival – in various versions – of the story regarding their raids in the area. This tradition was still alive and used as an historical argument much later, by the Hellenistic king Lysimachus, as we read in a 3rd century Greek inscription (283/2 BC) from Samos concerning land disputes between Samos and Priene.24 Callimachus (also in the 3rd century) wrote that Lygdamis tried to destroy the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, but the goddess punished him (Callimachus In Dianam [hymn. 3] 251-254). Strabo reports that Lygdamis, the king of the Cimmerians, after leading his army towards Lydia and Ionia, conquered Sardeis, but he was killed in Cilicia (Strabo 1. 3. 31). This report is in accordance with the evidence deriving from the Akkadian sources that Lygdamis (akkad. Dugdammi) died near the Assyrian frontier, somewhere in the eastern Asia Minor.25 Polyaenus in the 2nd century AD notes that the Cimmerians had ‘terrible and wild bodies’, when describing their attack against the Lydian king Alyattes. The latter made a desperate effort to defend his kingdom by using, among other means, ‘brave dogs that tore the barbarians apart’ (Polyaenus Strategemata 7. 2. 1). Alyattes’ struggle to keep his kingdom free and expel the Cimmerians from Lydia is mentioned both by Herodotus (1. 16. 4) and Strabo (3. 2. 12). The image of this people implied by the choice of words in their Homeric description not only contradicts reality as it is known to us thanks to other data, but also its image in the Greek tradition from the time the Greeks came into direct contacts with them.17 A surviving epic verse from the 7th century gives us a vivid picture of these contacts. This is a Greek source referring this time to the historical Cimmerians. Its author is the 7th century poet Callinus from Ephesus. His work, dated in the period 660-640 BC,18 was referring to a Cimmerian attack against the rich city of Sardeis, the capital of Lydia. The verse (‘now, however, the army of the ferocious Cimmerians is coming’: Callinus frg. 5[a], 1-2 [West]) is related to an event that seems to have stayed alive in the oral tradition of the Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor for a long time.19 In Classical times, Aeschylus is the first author who is referring to the ‘Cimmerian land’ in his Prometheus Bound (730). According to some modern scholars, Aeschylus was relying heavily on the geographical work of Hecataeus from Miletus.26 We believe that this hypothesis is based on a confusion: it is usually thought that the fragments referring to the ‘Cimmerian city’ or the ‘Cimmerian land’ belong to the Milesian Hecataeus.27 However, they come from the work of Hecateaus from Abdera (late 4th century BC). Otherwise, it could not make sense: if the fragments were from the so-called Periegesis Ges the Milesian Hecataeus wrote, this would imply that the Greeks living in the Black Sea area and the existing settlements of the late 6th and early 5th century had already named as ‘Cimmerian’ all those tombs and remains around them. If the author of this work wrote about the Cimmerians (Κιμμερίους) and not their ethnic (κιμμερικός), we would (and could) assume more easily that he had heard Homer’s verses and The actual chronology and the number of the Cimmerian invasions in Asia Minor have caused a major debate in recent scholarship. Many scholars sustain that there had been more than one raid; it seems that there is a general agreement about the chronology, dating the Cimmerian presence in the area in the first half of the 7th century.20 The Cimmerians appear in the Assyrian records as early as the 710s BC and we can assume that they inhabited most probably central Caucasia.21 While it must be taken as ‘dubious in any case’ that there had been a destruction of Gordion by the Cimmerians at 696 BC,22 it is estimated that the main period of the Cimmerian invasion(s) is from Ivantchik 2005, 84-87. Ivantchik 2005, 88. Ivantchik 2005, 95-96. 18 See Rankin 1977. 19 Tokhtasev 1996, 1. 20 Ivantchik 1993, 111; Olbrycht 1998, 92; DeVries 2011, 53; Ivantchik 2012, 323. 21 Ivantchik 1993, 26-36, 51-53; DeVries 2011, 53. 22 DeVries 2011, 53. I would like to thank Lynn Roller for the kind suggestion of the specific paper. 15 16 17 DeVries 2011, 53-55 and n. 3.16. Welles 1934, 46-49, no. 7; Ivantchik 1998, 311-12. 25 Tokhtasev 1996, 2. 26 Tokhtasev 1996, 16. 27 Olbrycht 1998, 77. 23 24 120 Copyright material: no unauthorized reproduction in any medium I.K. Xydopoulos: The Cimmerians: their origins, movements and their difficulties. that he was transmitting an oral tradition. This can also explain the absence of the term κιμμερικὸς in our sources until Herodotus’ times. On the other hand, Hecateus from Abdera, writing after 322 BC,28 could have all the information about the toponyms of the Black Sea from the sources available as well as a possible first-hand survey in the area under examination. His hometown (Abdera) was in Aegean Thrace and after Alexander’s campaign in Asia journeys may have become easier, and the Κιμμερὶς πόλις he is referring to may have been one of his ‘journey stations’.29 In any case, it is dubious whether this reference in Aeschylus’ Prometheus comes straight from Homer’s verses or it is derived from a tradition known to the Greeks dwelling in the Black Sea. as from his personal presence around the southern shores of the Black Sea. Whether Herodotus heard the story (or part of it) from the Greeks dwelling at those shores, in their effort to explain the presence of many unidentified ‘ancient’ tombs in the Sinope area by the fratricidal battle between the Cimmerians,33 is something that we cannot either prove or reject. Questions also arise with his claim that the Cimmerians tried to escape from the Scythian pressures by ‘the line which led along the sea-shore’ (of the Black Sea), since the coastline in that region is quite difficult for an army to pass, even for thousands of nomad warriors carrying women and children with them.34 This is another indication that the tradition of the Cimmerian raids in Asia Minor was still alive amongst Greek colonists: the specific route taken by the Cimmerians was one that could justify their presence in Asia Minor, although the natural way of escaping the Scythians would be to move southwards.35 Herodotus’ narrative seems to be using information based on this tradition, transmitted to him perhaps by the Greeks living in Sinope.36 This tradition of a Cimmerian attack against Sinope was alive not only in Herodotus’ times but also in the late 2nd and the early 1st century BC, as we clearly see from a manuscript under the name of Ps.-Skymnos (Ad Nicomedem regem [GGM I], 948).37 In this passage we read about Sinope that it ‘was named after one of the Amazons who were living nearby’, and that the Milesian Habron ‘seems that he was killed by the Cimmerians. After the Cimmerians, two Milesian exiles, Coos and Cretines, had the city re-built, when the Cimmerian army fell into Asia.’ This reference is part of the same tradition about the Cimmerian invasions, found in the 3rd-century inscription from Samos (see n. 24) and the Greek literary sources we have mentioned earlier. This same tradition can also be traced in Herodotus’ Histories, where we find a frustrating mix of accounts about the Cimmerians, ranging from plausible to the impossible. In Book 4 the historian gives a lengthy introduction of Darius’ deeds after the siege and capture of Babylon. According to Herodotus, the Great King of Persia, feeling pretty confident about his mighty power in men and money, decided to lead his armies against Scythia. The reason for this expedition was his wish to take vengeance on them, since the Scythians had invaded Media a long time ago. Herodotus writes that the Scythians had once been the strongest power in Upper Asia, a position that they had held for 28 years. They had invaded Asia when they were pursuing the Cimmerians (Herodotus gives no specific dates) and finally they destroyed the empire of the Medians, thus taking their place. Marek Olbrycht believes that Herodotus himself had got information about the Cimmerians from Aristeas of Proconnesus, a poet whom the Souda dates in the first half of the 6th century BC.30 The chronology of his life is a matter of debate, but whether or not Aristeas should be dated in the 7th century (thus being a contemporary to Homer, as Theopompus had calculated) or in the 6th century (as most scholars accept), Herodotus seems to have second thoughts regarding Aristeas and the credibility of his writings (4. 14). Since the Cimmerians are attested in the Assyrian sources already in the late 8th century, Aristeas could have had first-hand information on the Cimmerian movement or their raids against the Greek cities of the Black Sea only if he is to be placed in the early 6th century.31 Still, we must give some credit to Herodotus’ scepticism, since the latter placed the Cimmerians ‘by the southern sea’. Olbrycht has pointed out that the term ‘southern’ was never used by the Greeks to denote the Black Sea, therefore this ‘southern’ should be another one, maybe the Caspian Sea.32 Herodotus’ account must be a combination of the information he got from various sources (and not only from Aristeas) as well After Herodotus, the information we have about the Cimmerians is extremely circumstantial. For example, Hellanicus, another historian contemporary to Herodotus (480-400 BC), wrote that the Amazons marched against Athens only ‘when the Cimmerian Bosporus was frozen’, so they could walk their way into Greece (Hellanicus FGH 4, F 167a-c).38 Other authors fell into mistakes or misunderstandings: the Western Greeks identified the ‘Cimmerian land’ with the area in the proximity of Lake Avernus in Campania, in the Italian Peninsula. Since there was an oracle of the dead (Plutonion) and the lake had some strange qualities, it soon became known as the entrance to the Underworld (Starbo 5. 4. 5). Once again, the connection with the Homeric passage is evident.39 Strabo, quoting Ephorus, says: Olbrycht 1998, 80. Olbrycht 1998, 80. 35 As Jan Bouzek suggested when commenting upon my paper at the 5th International Congress on the Black Sea Antiquities, the Cimmerians who raided Sinope might have been a separate military detachment and not the main body. Still, this could be quite difficult, not just because of the geography of the region but also when one considers that the Cimmerians are attested in the Near Eastern sources in an early period. 36 Olbrycht 1998, 82. 37 See Ivantchik 1998. 38 The story is repeated in Plutarch’s Theseus 27. 2. 39 Tokhtasev 1991, 566. 33 34 Jacoby 1912. Jacoby 1964, 56. 30 The Souda makes Aristeas a contemporary of Croesus and Cyrus (560528 BC). It is generally accepted that Aristeas lived in the 6th century (see Bethe 1896; Selzer 1996). Burkert (1990, 11) refused to accept even the late 7th century for Aristeas, placing him in the early 6th century, a date proposed also by Romm 1994, 71. 31 Contra Olbrycht 1998, 75. 32 Olbrycht 1998, 76. 28 29 121 Copyright material: no unauthorized reproduction in any medium The Danubian Lands between the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas They [the Cimmerians] live in underground houses, which they call argillai, and it is through tunnels that they visit one another, back and forth, and also admit strangers to the oracle, which is situated far beneath the earth (…). Those who lived about the oracle have and ancestral custom, that no one should see the sun, but should go outside the caverns, only during the night; And it is for this reason that the poet speaks of them as follows: ‘and never does the shining sun look upon them’; But later on the Cimmerians were destroyed by a certain king (FGH 70, F 134a).40 were different (Strabo 1. 3. 21; 14. 1. 40).45 Despite this confusion, the impact of the Cimmerian invasions in Asia was still strong in Strabo’s times, as we can realise through one characteristic passage: In it, he is referring to all the invasions Asia Minor had suffered ‘after the Trojan War’, with the Cimmerians, the Treres, the Lydians, the Persians, the Macedonians and the Gauls being the protagonists (Strabo 12. 8. 7). Sergei Tokhtasev wrote that ‘Homer avenged the Cimmerians for their invasions in Asia Minor by placing them at the entrance of the Underworld’.46 Tokhtasev points out that Homer’s reference proves that the Cimmerians were located in the northern shores of the Black Sea, a suggestion supported also by Ivantchik’s detailed analysis of the pre-Homeric elements in the Odyssey.47 We can safely accept the hypothesis that the tradition placing the Homeric Cimmerians somewhere in the northern shores of the Black Sea emerged in the 7th century.48 The literary evidence we possess confirms this conclusion:49 for example, some details regarding Odysseus’ journey (the mention of Boreas in 10. 507 by Circe), according to which the Cimmerians should be placed somewhere in the North, if not particularly in the Sea of Azov area.50 Also, the belief that Bosporus was the Cimmerians’ base for their invasion in Asia Minor must have been a common topos in the literary tradition during the Hellenistic period, as we can infer from three passages in Strabo (1. 1. 10; 7. 4. 3; 11. 2. 5). It is definitely a mistake (since Ephorus in another of his fragment mentions the Cimmerian Bosporus: FGH 70, 159, 6), made also by another author, Poseidonius, who identified the Cimmerians with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe (FGH 87, F 44a), and wrote that these capable horsemen dwell by the shores of the outer sea, and their land is covered by shadows and that the forests are so thick, that the sunlight cannot come through (FGH 87, F 191 [Theiler]).41 Homer’s influence can be easily traced in this occasion too. The Cimmerians and the Cimbri were wrongly identified by some scholars as being the same people. The distinction between the two tribes became harder, since they both were ferocious and barbarian, causing disaster and death to the peoples they met, thus becoming not only equal but also identical in the traditions of the Eastern and the Western Greeks respectively. Strabo emphasises the impact the Cimbrian invasion had as far as Lake Maeotis, justifying in this way the misunderstanding on behalf of the Greeks (Strabo 7. 2. 2). The sameness of their names must have been another parameter leading to this mistake, something evident in one of Diodorus Siculus’ references to the Cimmerians (Diodorus 5. 32). Hecataeus from Abdera, also in the 4th century BC, apparently deriving his information from Homer and Aristeas,42 wrote about a ‘Cimmerian’ city. Jacoby thought that he did not mean the city at the Lake Maeotis’ entrance (known from other authors) (Ps.-Skymnos Ad Nicomedem regem [GGM I], 896), but that he had named like that the sacred city of the Hyperboreans, thus mixing the two peoples and giving more historical substance to the Cimmerians.43 Still, one cannot deny that Hecataeus’ account placed the Cimmerians at the fringes of the known world. Apollodorus even wrote that Odysseus had visited the Cimmerian lands during his wanderings in the outer world (FGH 244, F 157), a statement also placing this tribe in the grey zone of the mythical places, together with the Cyclopes and other monstous and non-civilised creatures. Finally, Strabo (5. 4. 5), another major source for the Cimmerians, projects a vivid picture of the ignorance the Greeks had about the Cimmerians. To give just an example, although he states that the Cimmerians were also named as Treres, a well-known Thracian tribe,44 a few lines later in the same passage he writes of these two peoples as if they In this paper we deal with the character of these Greek reports on the Cimmerians and the reasons for such a perception of this tribe. First, they are presented as a people strongly connected to the Underworld in the minds of the Greeks. They dwell near its entrance, as Homer mentions (a comment also repeated – even by confusion with the Cimbri or by mistake – in Posidonius and in Strabo, and an impression existing in Ephorus who named their community as the ‘Plutonion’ – the house of Pluton). The remoteness of their lands is depicted in Aeschylus, while Hellanicus connects the Cimmerian Bosporus with another semi-mythical tribe, the Amazons. The details in Herodotus’ account are extremely indicative of such an exotic perception: he writes that the Cimmerians were dwelling ‘by the southern Sea’ and that above them there were the Issedones, the one-eyed Arimaspians, the Hyperboreans and the ‘griffins, which were guards of the gold’. All these mythical elements are a strong indication that the Cimmerians were placed in the sphere of an outer, an exotic world. Herodotus’ account is probably based In all other references (11. 8. 4; 12. 3. 24; 12. 8. 7; 13. 4. 8), however, Strabo treats the Treres and Cimmerians as two different peoples. 46 Tokhtasev 1996, 4. This view was already expressed by von der Mühll 1959, 146 and it is based on a passage found in Strabo (3. 2. 12). 47 Ivantchik 2005. 48 Contra Tokhtasev 1996, 13. 49 Detailed analysis in Tokhtasev 1996, 4-23. 50 T. Bridgman (1998, 39) thinks that the climate described for this land of the Cimmerians in the Odyssey corresponds perfectly to the usual climate of the northern Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, thus placing the Cimmerians surely in that area. For the climate in the Black Sea, see Danoff 1962, 938-50. 45 Transl. Olbrycht 1998, 87. The passage is found in Plutarch Marius 11. 2-14. 42 Jacoby 1964, 56-57. 43 Jacoby 1964, 56-57. 44 See, for example, Thucydides 2. 96. 6. 40 41 122 Copyright material: no unauthorized reproduction in any medium I.K. Xydopoulos: The Cimmerians: their origins, movements and their difficulties. devries, K. 2011: ‘Textual Evidence and the Destruction Level’. In Rose, C.B. and Derbyshire, G. (eds.), The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion (Philadelphia), 49-57. heuBecK, A. 1963: ‘KIMMEPIOI’. Hermes 91, 490-92. heuBecK, A. 1989: Books IX-XII. In Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. 1989: A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, II: Books IX-XVI (Oxford). ivantchiK, A. 1993: Les Cimmériens au Proche-Orient (Göttingen). ivantchiK, A. 1998: ‘Die Gründung von Sinope und die Probleme der Anfangsphase der griechischen Kolonization des Schwartzmeergebietes’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. (ed.), The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area: Historical Interpretation of Archaeology (Stuttgart), 297-330. ivantchiK, A. 2001: ‘The Current State of the Cimmerian Problem’. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 7.3-4, 307-39. ivantchiK, A. 2005: ‘Le dêmos et la polis des Cimmériens dans l’Odyssée (XI, 14): le contenu de l’image épique’. In Kacharava, D., Faudot, M. and Geny, É. (eds.), Pont-Euxin et Polis: Polis Hellenis et Polis Barbaron (Besançon), 83-98. ivantchiK, A. 2012: ‘Cimmerians’. Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception 5, 323-24. jacoBy, F. 1912: ‘Hekataios’. RE VII.4, 2750-69. jacoBy, F. 1964: Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, Dritter Teil, a, Kommentar zu Nr. 262-296 (Leiden). lesKy, A. 1959: ‘Aithiopika’. Hermes 87, 27-39. von der mühll, P. 1959: ‘Die Kimmerier der Odyssee und Theopomp’. Muséum Helveticum 16, 145-51. nylander, C. 1965: ‘KIMMEPIOI-GIMIRAA’. Hermes 93, 131-132. olBrycht, M.J. 1998: ‘The Cimmerian Problem ReExamined: The Evidence of the Classical Sources’. In Ptsrusinska, J. and Fear, A. (eds.), Collectanea CeltoAsiatica Cracoviensia (Cracow), 71-99. ranKin, H.D. 1977: ‘Archilochos’ Chronology and some possible events of his life’. Eos 65, 5-15. rohde, E. 1903: Psyche. Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglauve der Griechen, vol. 2 (Tübingen). romm, J.S. 1994: The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought. Geography, Exploration, and Fiction (Princeton). selzer, C. 1996: ‘Aristeas’. Der Neue Pauly 1.1, 1094. theiler, W. 1982: Poseidonios. Die Fragmente, 2 vols. (Berlin/New York). toKhtasev, S.R. 1991: ‘Cimmerians’. Encyclopaedia Iranica 5.6, 563-67. toKhtasev, S.R. 1996: ‘Die Kimmerier in der antiken Überlieferung’. Hyperboreus 2.1, 1-46. welles, C.B. 1934: Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period: A Study in Greek Epigraphy (New Haven). on the information and the tradition derived from the Greek colonists in the Black Sea area.51 The Greeks in the colonies founded there could not have met the Cimmerians, since they had long left (a century ago) due to Scythian pressure, but considered the placement of the Cimmerians there as an old tradition, existing before the colonisarion era; therefore they named the area accordingly.52 Also, the Cimmerians were still existing in the Ionian tradition of the colonists’ mother-cities, since they had ravaged Asia Minor (i.e. the lands of the Ionian ancestors) in the 7th century. It is possible that both traditions, the one from the Ionians and that of the indigenous Greek populations in the Black Sea were intermingled, thus providing a solid ground for ethnic differentiation with the non-Greeks.53 This is clearly depicted much later (in the 2nd century AD), in Polyaenus’ description of the Cimmerians and their ‘terrible and wild bodies’, a typical description for those ‘barbarians’ (as he calls them) that seems to pass well with Allyates’ ‘brave dogs that tore the barbarians apart’. We cannot possibly know whether Polyaenus was repeating some classical tradition on the Cimmerians, but the use of the characterisation ‘barbarians’ may imply the existence of such a tradition. To sum up: the main picture we get from the ancient Greek literary sources referring to the Cimmerians is a fragmentary and a complicated one. The Cimmerians themselves, as a nomadic tribe, left no evidence of their existence. Difficulties grow bigger as modern historians try to find out through the available data more on their ethnic origin and their fate.54 Our sources, however, cannot help us in either of these quests. The Cimmerians seem to have been perceived by the ancient Greeks as barbarians. Both myth and reality have produced a perception familiar to Greeks, as far as those peoples living at the ‘end of the world’ were concerned: an exotic, barbarian ‘other’, who was lost in the course of History, leaving no trace behind them but whose deeds were very much alive in the Greek tradition. The Cimmerians had to be presented to Homer’s or any other author’s audience in a way the Greeks would understand. Hence, the mention of a Cimmerian polis and a demos by Homer. But, besides these characteristics – provided by Homers’ licentia poetica – the Cimmerians survived only as a name connected with the every day reality the Greeks around the Black Sea were encountering, being at the same time a tribe lost in the mist (κέμμερος) of its name. Bibliography Bethe, E. 1896: ‘Aristeas’. RE II.1, 876-78. BurKert, W. 1990: ‘Herodot als Historiker fremder Religionen’. Ιn Nenci, G. and Reverdin, O. (eds.), Hérodote et les peuples non-grecs (Geneva), 1-39. danoff, C. 1962: ‘Pontos Euxeinos’. RE Suppl. IX, 8661175. Tokhtasev 1996, 37; Ivantchik 2001, 322. Tokhtasev 1996, 32. 53 Tokhtasev 1996, 37-38. 54 As Olbrycht (1998, 92-93) points out, there can be no solid ground regarding their origins. 51 52 123