d ruled the peoples on the east coast
of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and had commanded
the Black Sea with their fleet; but Panticapaeum was no longer what
it had been. Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt
more deeply than at these distant outposts. Athens in its good times
had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the duties of a
leading power--duties which certainly were specially brought home to
the Athenians by their need of Pontic grain. After the downfall of
the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to
themselves. The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene
seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and
Lysimachus sometimes attempted it; and the Romans, on whom with the
conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation
of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point
where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of
interest as well as of honour. The fall of Sinope, the decline of
Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the northern
shore of the Black Sea. A vivid picture of their position with
reference to the roving barbarians is given to us by an inscription
of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from the mouth of the Dnieper), which
apparently may be placed not long before the time of Mithradates.
The citizens had not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp
of the barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he encamped
before the town or even simply passed by, and in a similar way to
buy off minor chieftains and in fact sometimes the whole horde with
presents; and it fared ill with them if the gift appeared too small.
The treasury of the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the
temple-jewels. Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging without in
front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers
were dragged away en masse, and, what was worst of all, the weaker
of their barbarian neighbours, the Scythians, sought, in order
to shelter themselves from the pressure of the more savage Celts,
to obtain possession of the walled town, so that numerous
citizens were leaving it and the inhabitants already contemplated
its entire surrender.

Mithradates Master of the Bosphoran Kingdom

Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters, when his
Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the Caucasus descended into
the valleys