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

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GREEK CITIES OF SOUTH RUSSIA
They could not allow her to remain sole governor of the Bosphoran
kingdom. The risk was too great, that the story of Mithridates
would be re-enacted. But they did not venture simply to expel her :
she seems to have had considerable support from the subject population.
Accordingly they tried a compromise. They compelled
Dynamis to marry Polemon, a Greek of Asia Minor, in whose hands
the kingdoms of Pontus and of the Bosphorus were to be united.
Polemon was a forcible man who was not prepared to play Scribonius :
he quarrelled with Dynamis and married Pythodoris, daughter of
Pythodoros of Tralles. This marriage has been supposed to show that
Dynamis had died. I think not. Numismatical and epigraphical
evidence, which I have studied in a special memoir, proves that
Dynamis not only survived Polemon 's marriage, but deprived him
of his kingdom. It seems most likely that when the marriage took
place, she fled to the steppes of the Kuban ;
found support among the
Sarmatian and Maeotian tribes, who were probably kinsfolk of her
mother ; wedded a Sarmatian or Maeotian, Aspurgos, son of a native
prince, Asandrochos ; and possessed herself of a number of fortified
places in the Bosphoran kingdom. Polemon offered stout resistance,
but he was enticed into a trap and slain, by a tribe, probably Sarmatian,
which bore the significant name of Aspurgians and was probably
the tribe of Dynamis and of Aspurgos.
The disappearance of Polemon opens a new era in the history of
the Bosphorus. Dynamis had conquered, but she could not reign
without recognition from the Roman Government. Now Augustus,
in 9-8 B. c, was neither able to intervene with an armed force, nor
inclined to countenance a power which was not controlled by himself
and his agents. On the other hand, Dynamis could not make her
throne secure without Roman support : the principal resources of
the Bosphoran kingdom were the revenues from traffic with the
Aegean, and that traffic was impossible without the permission of
Rome. A compromise was effected. Dynamis was recognized, but
as a vassal queen, who must acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and
the independence of the Greek cities. This was the opening of a
period, in which the kingdom of the Bosphorus was virtually incorporated
in the Roman Empire, although it preserved its dynasty and
a nominal independence.
I have dwelt at some length upon the beginnings of Bosphoran
vassalage, first because the period has usually been misinterpreted by
our historians of the ancient world, and secondly, because unless we
understand it, we cannot understand the political and social life of
the Bosphoran kingdom in Roman times. I shall add a word or two