The history of the Black or Euxine Sea is ancient.  It is accepted that the Argonauts traveled there in search of the Golden Fleece, which was hidden in a land  located at the western end of the Caucasus Mountains.  The westernmost shores of the Euxine Sea were well known to the Greeks as early as the late Bronze Age ca. 1100 to 1300 B.C.E. and probably earlier.  This knowledge may have come from direct visual observations made during overland visits or by word-of-mouth   information.  Scholars are uncertain when the first Greeks actually penetrated the two narrow straits into the Euxine Sea.  There is excellent archaeological evidence that Ionain Greeks from the city state of Miletus, in western Asia Minor, pioneered settlement of the Euxine Sea’s coastal regions in the 8th century B.C.E.  The earliest surviving written account of the region, however, is by Herodotus.  Sometime at the end of the Late Bronze Age, the Greeks had established a small city called Byzantium on a strategically located point at the western end of the Bosporus  Strait near an even more ancient and famous city called Troy.  From this tiny settlement arose the successor of Rome; Constantinople, today called Istanbul.

Interestingly, until the late Bronze Age, mariners of all nationalities were unable to easily access the Black Sea.  The swift currents and steady prevailing winds blew in a westerly direction thwarting early navigators who had sailing ships with one sail and power by oar.  Ships with a single sail can only navigate against currents and winds if they have room to maneuver; something that the Bosporus, and the nearby Dardanelles straits do not have.  Further, the currents flowing out of the Black Sea were apparently sufficiently strong to prevent access by rowed galleys.  No one knows if the Greeks invented the jib sail; they  may have borrowed the concept from their neighbors.  We do know that, for several thousand years neither the Minoans or Phonecians, master sailors by anyone’s definition, did not penetrate into the Black Sea region.  And for the Greeks the region was a terra incognita until the settlements of the 7th century.  Subsequently, the western and northern coast and hinterlands from modern day Bulgaria to Odessa, the Crimea (in antiquity called Tauric Chersonese), and the Cimmerian Bosporus became a major grain and wine producing region.  By the  6th and 5th centuries Greek settlements were located on the eastern coast as well with major  trading stations at Sinope and Trapezus on the northern shoreline of Anatolia.  Sinope too was founded by Greeks from the Ionian city of Miletus.  Trapezus was a ancient city located  astride a major east-west caravan route but it wasn’t until the arrival of Greeks from Sinope that the city grew substantially in economic importance.

The were two main Greek settlements in the Tauric Chersonese.  Chersonesus and Panticapium.  The former was located on the north side of a  peninsula that lies closest to the Bosporus Strait.  The city may have been founded before the 5th century B.C.E., but the earliest firm date for Greek  occupation is 422/421 B.C.E.   Ponticapium, or Kerch, is located on the Strait of Kerch in the eastern Crimea at a  point where the Sea of Azor meets the Black Sea.  Panticapium was founded in ca. 600 B.C.E. by people from Miletus  on a site of any earlier settlement.  By the 5th century B.C.E. Panticapium had grown in importance and a small hinterland kingdom was established to resist the Scythians.  The Scythians were a people who inhabited the wide region between the Dneipr and Volga rivers.  The Greeks considered them to be a barbarian people, but then the Greeks considered all Greeks to be barbarians.  It is most certainly true that the Scythians  lacked a written language, and certainly, by Greek standards, they were less intellectual in their world view.  The Scythians have left us a marvelous record of artistic accomplishment ranging from beautifully-formed gold jewelry to ornate pottery and elaborate burial sites.  The Scythians were also superb horseman and superior warriors, and for a number of centuries they caused the more settled groups of Eastern Europe, especially the Greeks, nothing but problems.  For the Greek colonists living along the coast of the Black Sea, it was often expeditious to pay the Scythian king tribute rather than engage his troops in battle.  A chief city of the Scythians in the Tauric Chesoneses was Neapolis Scythia once located near Simpheropol (more on this city below).