“EMPORION – POLIS” in Ancient Black Sea Region
Authors: Saprykin Sergey J. ,   Moscow Lomonosov State University
Published: May 2023

The article deals with the definition “emporion” in ancient sources about the Black Sea Coast. The author gives different points of view on the character of Greek colonization of the Black Sea region, paying attention to the urbanization in this area and to the process of turning the apoikiai into polis states. He argues with the earlier suggested ideas concerning the emporion stage of colonization, its bilateral character and the possible common participation of barbarians and Greeks in founding colonies. The background position of the author is as follows: apoikia is not a polis in common sense. Apoikiai and poleis belong to different social-economic and social and political definitions. Аpoikia is a community of colonists whose social development was still much lower than that of the polis state while the Greek polis achieved a high level of civic community with a developed system of power, governing and administration. Тrading activity could be carried out through the apoikia, i.e. it could take the function of emporion but exclusively as private initiation of commercial people – emporoi. Though it was not emporion as a settlement. Polis trade was always under control of civic administration and the traders (merchants, emporoi) were defended by the state and its legislative system – polis laws, including asylia, ateleia, politeia etc. That is why emporia in poleis were functioning as city blocks, quarters, markets, piers, harbours as parts of polis (city state) or as separate units – harbours, ports, minor towns, komai etc. outside the city territory but indispensably on polis chora – adjacent or distant. The term emporion has different sence though always concerns trade and commerce. It is often used in relation to the large cities – poleis like Phasis, Tomae, Dioscurias, Panticapaeum, Phanagoreia which were engaged in active intermediary trade and export-import exchange. Such cities used their own harbours and ports to carry goods to local inhabitants and back from them to Aegis or Pontus through sites on chora or at a distance from their own places. Such kind of settlements were founded or created in course of developing polis structures like reclaiming chora and forming state administration. The Hellenic poleis in West Pontic region often founded trading stations and commercial sites at a distance from their own territories, That is why we find no kind of emporia there but other terms to be used for attributing these sites though they were functioning like classical emporia. But in case with Panticapaeum, for example, we come across some emporia in the Lower Don area and the greatest among them called Tanais. Named initially as Emporion (?) it became autonomous and turned into a kind of civic community with ancient emporion to be included into its structure of polis type. So, the term “emporia” was embraced on ports, markets, harbours, places for trading operations and committing commercial agreements, separated blocks for traders’ everyday life etc. They could have been arranged in large cities and minor poleis. We find the term “emporion” as relevant to the colonists’ communities which didn’t achieve the level of apoikiai and poleis as well as in terms of harbours in far-distant lands or at a close distance from the cities in barbaric hinterland like Pistiros in the Kingdom of Odryssae. On the Southern Coast of the Black Sea empoiria were founded chiefly on the polis chora of Heraclea Pontica, Sinope or Trapezous. They were incorporated into polis structure but not earlier than these cities obtained agrarian periphery. The main reason of this research is that emporia could hardly been arranged before the Greek colonies appeared in the region, they were created already after their foundation mostly during the process of polis development.