Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

70
THEGREEKSONTHE
position of Panticapaeum in the corn trade was an extremely impor-
tant one. Up to the time of Alexander it had hardly any competitors i
after Alexander's conquest of the Eastern world it had to contend
with Ptolemaic Egypt, with Asia Minor, and with Macedonia and
Thrace, but the competition was not ruinous. The prosperity of the
Greek world in the early Hellenistic period, the constant growth of
population, the continual foundation of new cities, and the general
development of industry, brought about an enormous increase in the
demand for the products of South Russia. A close examination of
the documents of the period shows that the difficulty for producers
was not lack of customers but insufficiency of output. The Ptolemies
would never have been able to exercise such powerful influence on the
cities of the Medrterranean if they had not employed their corn as a
political weapon. We have seen that Spartocos had already used his
corn to purchase a military alliance with Athens. No matter how
many offers of corn and fish were brought to the exchanges of Rhodes,
Delos, and Delphi, customers could always be found.
The decay of Panticapaeum, therefore, cannot have been occasioned
by the competition of other producers. The weakness of the
Bosphoran kingdom was due to other causes. The output became
smaller and smaller. Take the quantity of corn exported by Panticapaeum
in the fourth and third centuries : under Leucon I 400,000
medimni by or for Athens alone ; and how much besides for the
other Greek cities ! Compare this with what the whole Bosphoran
kingdom paid to Mithridates : 180,000 medimni all told. The
difference is enormous. The cause of the decrease was political
disturbance in the steppes of South Russia. The Scythian empire
was collapsing under the blows of the Sarmatians and of the Thracians.
As early as the beginning of the third century, the Gauls, accompanied,
it may be, by Germanic tribes, were advancing towards the Danube
and ravaging the outskirts of Olbia. Read the inscription of Protogenes,
and you will see how precarious was the situation of Olbia at the
beginning of the third century, and what anarchy prevailed in the
neighbouring steppes. The Bosphorus was in a sHghtly better
position. The Scythian kingdom held out in the steppes between
Don and Dnieper, as well as in the Crimea. The valley of the Kuban
had not yet been occupied by Sarmatian tribes. But even so the
existence of the Bosphoran kingdom, and of the city of Chersonesus,
which depended for its prosperity upon the Bosphorus, became more
and more uncertain. The Scythians, driven back towards the
Crimea, threatened the cities, demanded, as at Olbia, a heavier and
heavier tribute, and neither the Bosphoran kingdom nor Chersonesus