Phasis (town)
Encyclopedia
Phasis was an ancient and early medieval city on the eastern Black Sea
coast, founded in the 7th/6th century BC as a colony of the Milesian
Greeks
at the mouth of the eponymous river in Colchis
, near the modern-day port city of Poti
, Georgia
.
's Theogony
(c. 700 BC) as a name of the river, not a town. The first Greek settlement here must have been founded not earlier than the very end of the 7th, and probably at the beginning of the 6th century BC, and received its name from the river. Since Erich Diehl, 1938, first suggested a non-Hellenic origin of the name and asserted that Phasis might have been a derivative of a local hydronym
, several explanations have been proposed, linking the name to the Georgian-Zan *Poti, Svan
*Pasid, and even to a Semitic
word, meaning "a gold river." The collective use of the ethnic Φασιανοί, Phasians
, is attested in Xenophon
and Heraclides Lembus.
, particularly an Argonautic
cycle. Phasis is reported by Heraclides, Pomponius Mela
, and Stephanus of Byzantium
to have been founded by Milesians. Phasis is referred to as a polis
Hellenis in the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax
and Hippocrates
calls it an emporion
, "a trading place". According to the classical sources, Phasis had its constitution, including the Aristotelian corpus
of 158 politeiai
.
Phasis was probably a mixed Hellenic-"barbarian" city. It seems to have been a vital component of the presumed trade route from India
to the Black Sea, attested by the Classical
authors Strabo
and Pliny
. During the Third Mithridatic War
, Phasis came under the Roman
control. It was where the Roman commander-in-chief Pompey
, having crossed into Colchis
from Iberia
, met the legate
Servilius, the admiral of his Euxine fleet in 65 BC. After the introduction of Christianity
, Phasis was a seat of a Greek diocese one of whose bishops, Cyrus
, became a Patriarch of Alexandria
between AD 630 and 641. During the Lazic War
between the Eastern Roman and Sassanid Iranian empires (542–562), there was an unsuccessful Siege of Phasis
.
, who visited Georgia in the 1670s, tried, though vainly, to find the evidence of the ancient Greek polis
at the mouth of the Phasis (Rioni) river. The first attempt at a scientific identification, based on an analysis of the Classical and Byzantine authors and his own fieldwork, belongs to the Swiss
scholar Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux, who traveled to the area between 1831 and 1834.
Dubois’s principal conclusion – shared by modern mainstream scholarship – was that, owing to the geomorphologic changes of this locale, Phasis should be sought to the east of modern Poti, and that the ancient city was at various times at different places. Following Dubois, the majority of scholars have identified the fortress described by the ancient Greek scholar Arrian
with the ruins called by locals Najikhuri, literally meaning "the site of a former fortress". It had been exploited as one of the principal reference points. However, by the time when, early in the 1960s, the Georgian scholars Otar Lordkipanidze and Teimuraz Mikeladze began full-scale archaeological studies of the area, these ruins had already been demolished by the Soviet
authorities during the construction of an airfield between 1959 and 1960.
After many years of uncertainty and academic debate, the site of this settlement now seems to be established, thanks to underwater archaeology
under tough conditions. Apparently the lake which Strabo reported as bounding one side of Phasis has now engulfed it, or part of it. Yet, a series of questions regarding the town’s exact location and identification of its ruins remains open due largely to the centuries-long geomorphologic processes of the area as the lower reaches of the Rioni are prone to changes of course across the wetland. The section along the river Phasis was a vital component of the presumed trade route from India
to the Black Sea, attested by Strabo and Pliny
. Agathias
(c. AD 536-582/594) also allude to a nearby lake now identified with Lake Paliastomi
, which has been a scene of several underwater archeological expeditions. The 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti accords with this evidence, reporting that "to the south of Poti, close to the sea, is the large lake Paliastomi. Its canal enters the sea. Ships enter from here and anchor to rest in the lake. […] It is said there was once a city here, at present under water."
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
coast, founded in the 7th/6th century BC as a colony of the Milesian
Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
Greeks
Milesians (Greek)
The Milesians of Hellenic civilization were the inhabitants of Miletus, a city in the Anatolia province of modern-day Turkey, near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and at the mouth of the Meander River. Settlers from Crete moved to Miletus sometime in 16th century BC...
at the mouth of the eponymous river in Colchis
Colchis
In ancient geography, Colchis or Kolkhis was an ancient Georgian state kingdom and region in Western Georgia, which played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the Georgian nation.The Kingdom of Colchis contributed significantly to the development of medieval Georgian...
, near the modern-day port city of Poti
Poti
Poti is a port city in Georgia, located on the eastern Black Sea coast in the region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti in the west of the country. Built near the site of the ancient Greek colony of Phasis, the city has become a major port city and industrial center since the early 20th century. It is also...
, Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
.
Etymology
The names of ancient Phasis and modern Poti are apparently linked to each other, but the etymology is a matter of a scholarly dispute. "Phasis" is first recorded in HesiodHesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
's Theogony
Theogony
The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...
(c. 700 BC) as a name of the river, not a town. The first Greek settlement here must have been founded not earlier than the very end of the 7th, and probably at the beginning of the 6th century BC, and received its name from the river. Since Erich Diehl, 1938, first suggested a non-Hellenic origin of the name and asserted that Phasis might have been a derivative of a local hydronym
Hydronym
A hydronym is a proper name of a body of water. Hydronymy is the study of hydronyms and of how bodies of water receive their names and how they are transmitted through history...
, several explanations have been proposed, linking the name to the Georgian-Zan *Poti, Svan
Svan language
The Svan language is a Kartvelian language spoken in the Western Georgian region of Svaneti primarily by the Georgians of Svan origin...
*Pasid, and even to a Semitic
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
word, meaning "a gold river." The collective use of the ethnic Φασιανοί, Phasians
Phasians
The Phasians were a subdivision of the Colchian tribes located in the eastern part of Pontus. The Greek commander Xenophon, who encountered them during his march through Asia Minor to the Black Sea , places them on the river Phasis...
, is attested in Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
and Heraclides Lembus.
History
Phasis appears in numerous Classical and early medieval sources as well as the Greek mythologyGreek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, particularly an Argonautic
Argonauts
The Argonauts ) were a band of heroes in Greek mythology who, in the years before the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, the Argo, which was named after its builder, Argus. "Argonauts", therefore, literally means...
cycle. Phasis is reported by Heraclides, Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45.His short work occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing...
, and Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephen of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus , was the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica...
to have been founded by Milesians. Phasis is referred to as a polis
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
Hellenis in the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax
Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax
The Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax is an ancient Greek periplus that ranks among the minor Greek geographers, dating from 4th or 3rd century BC. The name of Scylax applied to the text is thought to be a pseudepigraphical appeal to authority: Herodotus mentions a Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek navigator...
and Hippocrates
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
calls it an emporion
Emporia (ancient Greece)
Emporia, sing emporion were places which the traders of one nation had reserved to their business interests within the territory of another nation. Famous emporia include Sais where Solon went to acquire the knowledge of Egypt, Elim where Hatshepsut kept her Red Sea fleet...
, "a trading place". According to the classical sources, Phasis had its constitution, including the Aristotelian corpus
Corpus Aristotelicum
The Corpus Aristotelicum is the collection of Aristotle's works that have survived from antiquity through Medieval manuscript transmission. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school...
of 158 politeiai
Politeia
Politeia is an Ancient Greek word with no single English translation. Derived from the word polis , it is an important term in Ancient Greek political thought, especially that of Plato and Aristotle....
.
Phasis was probably a mixed Hellenic-"barbarian" city. It seems to have been a vital component of the presumed trade route from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
to the Black Sea, attested by the Classical
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
authors Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
and Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
. During the Third Mithridatic War
Third Mithridatic War
The Third Mithridatic War was the last and longest of three Mithridatic Wars fought between Mithridates VI of Pontus and his allies and the Roman Republic...
, Phasis came under the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
control. It was where the Roman commander-in-chief Pompey
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
, having crossed into Colchis
Colchis
In ancient geography, Colchis or Kolkhis was an ancient Georgian state kingdom and region in Western Georgia, which played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the Georgian nation.The Kingdom of Colchis contributed significantly to the development of medieval Georgian...
from Iberia
Caucasian Iberia
Iberia , also known as Iveria , was a name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli , corresponding roughly to the eastern and southern parts of the present day Georgia...
, met the legate
Legatus
A legatus was a general in the Roman army, equivalent to a modern general officer. Being of senatorial rank, his immediate superior was the dux, and he outranked all military tribunes...
Servilius, the admiral of his Euxine fleet in 65 BC. After the introduction of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, Phasis was a seat of a Greek diocese one of whose bishops, Cyrus
Cyrus of Alexandria
Cyrus of Alexandria was a Melchite patriarch of the Egyptian see of Alexandria in the seventh century, one of the authors of Monothelism and last Byzantine prefect of Egypt; died about 641.-Biography:...
, became a Patriarch of Alexandria
Patriarch of Alexandria
The Patriarch of Alexandria is the Archbishop of Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt. Historically, this office has included the designation of Pope , and did so earlier than that of the Bishop of Rome...
between AD 630 and 641. During the Lazic War
Lazic War
The Lazic War or Colchic War, also known as the Great War of Egrisi in Georgian historiography, was fought between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia for control of the region of Lazica, in what is now western Georgia...
between the Eastern Roman and Sassanid Iranian empires (542–562), there was an unsuccessful Siege of Phasis
Siege of Phasis
The Siege of Phasis took place in 555–556 during the Lazic War between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia. The Persians besieged the town of Phasis in Lazica, held by the Byzantines, but failed to take it...
.
Search for Phasis
The search for the city of Phasis has a long history. Thus, the French traveler Jean ChardinJean Chardin
Jean Chardin , born Jean-Baptiste Chardin, and also known as Sir John Chardin, was a French jeweller and traveller whose ten-volume book The Travels of Sir John Chardin is regarded as one of the finest works of early Western scholarship on Persia and the Near East.-Life and work:Chardin was born in...
, who visited Georgia in the 1670s, tried, though vainly, to find the evidence of the ancient Greek polis
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
at the mouth of the Phasis (Rioni) river. The first attempt at a scientific identification, based on an analysis of the Classical and Byzantine authors and his own fieldwork, belongs to the Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
scholar Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux, who traveled to the area between 1831 and 1834.
Dubois’s principal conclusion – shared by modern mainstream scholarship – was that, owing to the geomorphologic changes of this locale, Phasis should be sought to the east of modern Poti, and that the ancient city was at various times at different places. Following Dubois, the majority of scholars have identified the fortress described by the ancient Greek scholar Arrian
Arrian
Lucius Flavius Arrianus 'Xenophon , known in English as Arrian , and Arrian of Nicomedia, was a Roman historian, public servant, a military commander and a philosopher of the 2nd-century Roman period...
with the ruins called by locals Najikhuri, literally meaning "the site of a former fortress". It had been exploited as one of the principal reference points. However, by the time when, early in the 1960s, the Georgian scholars Otar Lordkipanidze and Teimuraz Mikeladze began full-scale archaeological studies of the area, these ruins had already been demolished by the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
authorities during the construction of an airfield between 1959 and 1960.
After many years of uncertainty and academic debate, the site of this settlement now seems to be established, thanks to underwater archaeology
Underwater archaeology
Underwater archaeology is archaeology practised underwater. As with all other branches of archaeology it evolved from its roots in pre-history and in the classical era to include sites from the historical and industrial eras...
under tough conditions. Apparently the lake which Strabo reported as bounding one side of Phasis has now engulfed it, or part of it. Yet, a series of questions regarding the town’s exact location and identification of its ruins remains open due largely to the centuries-long geomorphologic processes of the area as the lower reaches of the Rioni are prone to changes of course across the wetland. The section along the river Phasis was a vital component of the presumed trade route from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
to the Black Sea, attested by Strabo and Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
. Agathias
Agathias
Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus , of Myrina , an Aeolian city in western Asia Minor , was a Greek poet and the principal historian of part of the reign of the Roman emperor Justinian I between 552 and 558....
(c. AD 536-582/594) also allude to a nearby lake now identified with Lake Paliastomi
Lake Paliastomi
Lake Paliastomi is a small lake near the city of Poti, Georgia, connected to the Black Sea by a narrow channel. Its surface area is 17.3 km² and the mean depth is 2.6 m. Some ancient pieces of Colchis have been found near and in the lake by archaeologists. It is also an important fishery site.The...
, which has been a scene of several underwater archeological expeditions. The 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti accords with this evidence, reporting that "to the south of Poti, close to the sea, is the large lake Paliastomi. Its canal enters the sea. Ships enter from here and anchor to rest in the lake. […] It is said there was once a city here, at present under water."