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

i6o GREEK CITIES OF SOUTH RUSSIA
The sole owners of cultivated land appear to have been the king,
the city aristocracy, and the temples. I can hardly believe that a
peasant-farmer class, of the Greek type, existed or could exist in the
Bosphoran kingdom. Agricultural conditions did not lend themselves
to a system of small proprietors. The territory of the kingdom,
theoretically vast, since it covered the whole of the Crimea and the
Taman peninsula, was actually very modest. The Crimean plains
were in the hands of the Scythians, the mountains were inhabited by
the Taurians. The cultivable and cultivated portion of the Taman
peninsula was still smaller, for to judge from what we know of the
Aspurgians, the Sarmatians had seized the greater part of the country.
The precariousness of agriculture in the Bosphoran territory is illustrable
by archaeological evidence. Both from ruins, and from repre-
sentations of fortified cities on coins (pi. XXX, 3, second row, fig. 4),
we learn that in the Roman period the cities of the Bosphorus, large
aild small, were transformed into so many fortresses. A group
of small strongholds, belonging to the Roman period, has been
discovered in the Taman peninsula : these must have been fortified
refuges for the agricultural population. Moreover, the Bosphoran
kings, like the Chinese emperors, had to erect lines of forts, to
protect the cultivable land in the peninsulas of Kerch and of Taman.
Strabo mentions a wall constructed by Asandros : whether it is one
of those that still remain we cannot tell. It may be that this system
of defences dates from the change in Scythian policy towards the
Greek cities : but this is doubtful. In any case the three parallel
lines in the peninsula of Kerch, and a similar line in the Taman
peninsula, as far as they have been studied, seem to date from the
Roman period. Lastly, certain pictures in Panticapaean tombs of
the first or second century give us a good idea of agricultural life
at the time. The dead are frequently represented as heroized beings,
in the usual Greek schemes, the funeral repast, and the combat.
The Panticapaean artists, who painted the scenes on the walls of the
tombs, were not content merely to reproduce the old types : they
transformed them into scenes from the social life of the deceased. In
one of these tombs, which belongs to the first century a.d., the scene
is an idyllic one (pi. XXVIII, i). The dead man, armed, and followed
by a retainer, is riding towards his family residence, a tent of true
nomadic type. His household, wife, children, and servants, are
assembled in the tent and beside it, under the shade of a single tree ;
beside the tree is his long spear, and his quiver hangs from a branch.
The interpretation is easy : the gentleman is a landed proprietor, who
spends most of his time in town : in summer, during the harvest