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

i68 .GREEK CITIES OF SOUTH RUSSIA
Panticapaeum, at Olbia, at Tanais, at Phanagoria, at Gorgippia. It
would not be difficult to produce statistics, which would show the
rate at which, in the Roman period, native names gradually supplanted
the Greek names which predominated in pre-Roman times. But a
glance at the college lists and at the names of members of colleges on
tombstones, will suffice to prove that the population was losing its
Hellenic character. It is curious that the Bosphorans become less
and less inclined to substitute Greek names for their native names,
and that the reverse was probably the rule : native names were
substituted for Greek ones. The native names have been studied by
Vsevolod Miller : he shows that they are mostly Iranian, and explicable
by comparison with Ossetian. But I have lately drawn attention
to an equally significant fact : side by side with the Iranian, we have
a group of names which are undoubtedly Thracian, both in formation
and in type. Others are typical of Asia Minor : but these are very few.
It appears, therefore, that the Greek citizen population was gradually
submerged by Iranian and Thracian elements. The Iranians were
the Scythians of the Crimea and, even more, the Sarmatians : the
Thracians must have come from the Maeotian tribes, which as we
have seen, had been strongly Thracized by the Cimmerians, It was
unquestionably the aristocracy among the Sarmatians, Scythians and
Maeotians, which was attracted towards the former Greek centres.
Remember Lucian's descriptions of life at the Bosphoran court in
the Hellenistic and Roman periods : a kaleidoscopic picture of
Scythians, Sarmatians, and Bosphorans, intermarrying, making friends,
quarrelling. We may be sure that the citizen aristocracy acted like
the others, and that there was constant coming and going between the
cities of the Bosphorus and the neighbouring tribes, interrupted by
frequent but by no means sanguinary wars. The difference between
the Bosphoran kingdom, as I have already pointed out, and the
Scythian or Sarmatian kingdoms was not very great ; but the life
of the Greek cities had a strong fascination for the Iranians, who
came to trade, to make agreements, to visit kinsfolk, and the like.
It was natural, under these conditions, that the city population
rapidly became Iranized. It is unfortunate that we know very fittle
about the costume of the Panticapaeans in the pre-Roman period :
the stelai of this period are few, and they never bear the effigy of the
dead. But we have every reason to suppose that their costume was
Greek like their names and their tombs. In the Roman period the
material becomes very plentiful, especially in the first and second
centuries A. d. A series of carved and sometimes painted funeral
stelai (pi. XXX, 2), and an equally rich series of tombs with painted