1. Merchants and Emporia

The term emporion denoting a colony or a type of settlement first appears in ancient literature rather late, during the 5^th cent. BC. According to some scholars, the emporion should be understood as the locale of the emporos (=merchant), i.e. the person who travels to buy and sell commodities.¹ The word emporos etymologically originates from the supposition en and the word poros, (=sea route). The derivative compound word emporos results from it. This word appears in the Odyssey of Homer² twice. In both these cases the epic poet obviously means a private individual who travels for professional reasons.³ So we could suppose that the word emporion originates from the word emporos, which apparently predates it. According to another view, emporos is the person who spends his whole life trading products he did not produce himself, but which he owns, and which he transports on a vessel that does not belong to him.⁴ The word emporos does not appear on Linear B tablets, and this is rather surprising, but it also leads to the obvious conclusion that this word was coined at a later time.⁵

Scholarship on the subject⁶ argues that the word or the term emporion (in the sense of a colony or settlement and not that of a simple commercial transaction or exchange of products) appears first in writing in the works of Herodotus in the mid-5^th cent. BC.⁷By the 4^th cent. BC the word is found on an inscription known as 'the inscription of Pistiros'⁸ which has been unearthed quite recently in a settlement of the modern day Bulgarian (ancient Thracian) hinterland, close to the settlement Vetren of Philippopolis. The said inscription caused such sensation and triggered scholarly debate pertaining to the use of the term emporion and its semantic content,⁹ for it forced scholars to revise their earlier views which now started to seem incomplete and outdated.

According to information coming from Herodotus’ fourth book of the Histories, the Black Sea was home to several emporia,¹⁰ which is the precise word the historian uses to define these settlements (we consciously avoid the use of terms such as trading ports or ports of trade,¹¹ as they evoke dangerous lines of reasoning and conclusions of perhaps outdated studies concerning the meaning of the Greek word).¹² As we know, Herodotus’ Histories fourth book is almost wholly dedicated to the description of ancient Scythia, i.e. the coasts and hinterland of the north Black Sea.

Herodotus, whishing to describe a situation that had arisen many years before his time, mentions the following: “For the Gelonians were in ancient times Greeks who left their emporia and settled among the Boudini in the land of the latter”.¹³ In another passage from the same book, Herodotus describes a settlement as an “emporion of the people of Borysthenes”, located in the middle of the Scythian coastline.¹⁴ Further down he mentions the “emporion called Kremnoi,”¹⁵ the “Borysthenes emporion” and the “other Pontic emporia”.¹⁶ Finally there is Tartessus, which was “a pure emporion”¹⁷ in modern Spain,¹⁸ i.e. it was obviously not open for business during the time of the Samian merchants’ visit.

All these references occur in the same book of the historian’s work. There are also more scattered references to emporia in the other eight books of Herodotus’ work, references which have attracted great scholarly interest. These are emporia located outside the Black Sea, and are situated in the Mediterranean.¹⁹ Of all these, the case of Naucratis causes puzzlement: the historian refers to it using both the terms emporion and polis (=city).²⁰ Many studies have dealt with this issue,²¹ but unfortunately we still can not determine the early nature of this settlement²² with certainty.

Taking into consideration the above, one could reasonably think that it is impossible to ignore the term emporion and omit the attempt to define and elucidate its semantic content. The term usually understood as its opposite²³ is apoikia (=colony), which is considered as a complete form of settlement in the model of the ancient Greek cities,²⁴ i.e. a settlement featuring a distinct form of political and social organization. A colony was a settlement obviously established in the context of a predetermined plan of action and was carried out under the auspices of a god (or gods) with every formality on the part of the metropolis, possessing an agricultural hinterland and its own coinage.²⁵

2. Emporia in the Black Sea

2.1. “Borystheneiteon emporion” and “emporion Borysthenes”

Let us now turn to the emporia of the Black Sea using Herodotus’ fourth book as our guide. First let us examine the cases of “emporion Borysthenes” and “emporion Borystheneiteon”. For many years archaeologists and historians puzzled over which specific settlement corresponds to the emporion mentioned in paragraphs 17 and 24 of Herodotus’ Histories. Some scholars believed that this emporion should be identified with the settlement at Berezan, while others substituted Berezan with the settlement of Olbia. A third view on the subject was expressed by V.V. Lapin, who in Herodotus’ “emporion Borystheneiteon” (=emporion of the people of Borysthenes) recognized not a specific settlement, but the wider area conquered by the Greeks in the Southern Buh (called Hypanis in Antiquity), which was often visited by Greek merchants and travellers.²⁶ A completely novel identification of the “emporion Borystheneiteon” has been proposed recently. During archaeological investigations in the region of modern Odessos in Ukraine (in the Primorskiy bulvar area), archaeologists uncovered the remains of an Archaic settlement, which can be apparently linked to the activities of Milesian colonists from Histria. According to archaeologists, the earlier pottery finds from the specific settlement date to the second half of the 7^th cent. BC. These finds, together with the other evidence unearthed in this site, have led to the conclusion that we should identify it with Herodotus’ “emporion Borystheneiteon”.²⁷ This view is completely rejected today, for as it has been demonstrated, it rests on completely flawed datings and measurements.

Having studied exhaustively the information in Herodotus, Виноградов came to the conclusion that the “emporion Borystheneiteon” was located on the mouth of the River Borysthenes, and more specifically on the Berezan Island. The second example found in the ancient author, that is the “emporion Borysthenes,” according to the same scholar, referred to the city of Olbia, which the Greeks started calling by this name because of the earlier existence of the better-known settlement in Berezan.²⁸

Judging on the basis of the available evidence, it appears that the view of the above mentioned scholar is the most likely for the following reasons. Firstly, because his conclusions rest on the analysis of the evidence, textual and archaeological, and, secondly, because no serious objections have been expressed against it. The recent studies by Solovyov and Tsetskhladze are an exception. The first one refers to Olbia and Berezan by the name ‘Borysthenes’ without providing any justification,²⁹ while the latter calls the settlement in Berezan ‘Borysthenites’ and Olbia ‘Borysthenes’.³⁰ Even in this way, however, the situation is not resolved. On the contrary it becomes more convoluted. Finally, according to a recently proposed view, the settlement of Berezan had a purely commercial function for it featured no agricultural hinterland, and as such is termed as an ‘emporion’. It was originally controlled by the metropolis, Miletus, but later came under the power of Olbia following the establishment of that colony.³¹ This view shares similarities with the theory proposed by Виноградов and further reinforces it.

2.2 Kremnoi

Another emporion mentioned by Herodotus is Kremnoi, whose identification has stirred intense debate among archaeologists and historians. Some believe this is the name of the settlement, whose remains were discovered under the modern city of Taganrog (Byzantine Taïganion) in Russia, while most of it is still submerged in the Sea of Azov (Maeotian Lake in Antiquity). This fact complicates archaeological research. Others, on the basis of reports in ancient authors, argue that Kremnoi could be located anywhere along the coast, from the mouth of the Don River (ancient Tanaïs) to the coast of the Crimean peninsula, and more specifically in the area of the mouth of the Korsak River. A new identification of the Kremnoi emporion has recently been suggested at the delta of the Molotsnaya River, with the further claim that the Taganrog settlement should be identified with Karoia mentioned by the ancient geographer Ptolemy. According to this view, Kremnoi was the first name of the settlement that later became Panticapaeum. This last identification has been criticized by some scholars in a recent study.³²

2.3. Gelonus

With connection to the paragraphs 108 and 109 of Herodotus’ ‘Scythian logos’, we should briefly mention an important hypothesis recently formulated by Russian and Ukrainian archaeologists. This is the identification of Gelonus, mentioned in Herodotus, with a settlement in the Scythian forest-steppe of Belsk, close to the middle course of the Vorskla River in Ukraine. Archaeologist Β.Α. Shramko has been conducting excavations on the site of this settlement for several decades and thanks to his efforts material found in Belsk has been communicated to the rest of the scientific community. Belsk bears impressive similarities to Gelonus as described by Herodotus. This is one of the basic arguments for the identification of this site as Gelonus. Its large dimensions could, up to a point, verify the ancient piece of information according to which there were many Greeks among the people inhabiting Gelonus, who up to then lived in the Pontic emporia. By the length of the palisades one could argue these could not have been built by a small population or even by an alliance of the various Budini tribes who inhabited this vast area. This, together with other archaeological evidence suggests this was a settlement of great financial importance, founded in the 7^th cent. BC.³³

2.4. Pontic emporia

Another important issue that arises from Herodotus’ passage is the identification of the Pontic emporia, which the Greeks abandoned³⁴ to settle in Gelonus. In all likelihood, these should be sought in the areas close to the Sea of Azov. This hypothesis was inspired by the harsh weather conditions and terrain prevalent in this area. It appears that, after first settling in the north and west coasts of the Sea of Azov, it was mainly they, and unlikely other Greeks of the Black Sea that were able to relocate among the Budini, for the Greeks of Azov had the opportunity to develop more immediate contacts with the Budini due to their proximity. Beyond this, of course, an equally compelling reason would have been provided by the gradual arrival of numerous nomadic tribes from the depths of Central Asia in the second half of the 6^th century BC. As they moved, they pillaged and destroyed Greek and barbarian settlements, smiting the entire dominion of the Cimmerian Bosporus.³⁵ A characteristic example of this is perhaps found in the history of one of these emporia, the settlement of Taganrog, which seizes to exist around this time (i.e. in the 530s BC). The presence of earlier archaeological finds indicates that the Greeks had contacts with the populations of the east forest steppe immediately after their arrival in the northern Black Sea.³⁶

2.5. Nemirovo

What has been said about Gelonus is more or less true about the settlement of Pistiros and its agricultural hinterland, where Greeks in emporia lived. We could say that the meaning of the term ‘emporion’ must have appeared, after all, quite some time before Herodotus, for the case of Gelonus is much earlier. During the same period, in the Scythian area of the forest steppe there was another settlement, Nemirovo, in which large quantities of imported Greek pottery have been unearthed, dating to the second half of the 7^th cent. BC.³⁷ For some archaeologists this can be used as evidence to support the view that Nemirovo was something like an emporion of the Greek inhabitants of the settlement on the island of Berezan during this period. Furthermore, one could argue that, as in the example of early Naucratis, for which Herodotus at start says it was the only emporion in Egypt, exactly the same is true for this emporion.³⁸ Exactly the same could apply for another settlement, this one quite far away, in the region of Andalusia (Spain), where during the late 5^th and the early 4^th cent. BC in one settlement of the hinterland, the Castulo, we can observe great concentration of Greek amphorae. It is believed that this settlement acted as a supplier of Greek products to the entire region of Andalusia.³⁹

3. Conclusions

Summing up, we can see that the view of the emporion as a simple place of exchange of products between Greek merchants and local populations does no justice to the full range of its functions. It emerges that the up to now expressed conclusions need to be supplemented by the view that, in some cases, the emporion may be characterized as a proto-polis or a proto-settlement, in the sense that it can act as the early stage in the establishment of a colony or a city.⁴⁰