DOI: 10.53084/22209050_2024_30_142

S.Yu. Saprykin
Сalos Limen in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography

Abstract: Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography (II c. AD) detailly informs about the localization of several geographical points inside Taurica and outside it on the coastal zone between Dnieper and the isthmus of the Crimea. Among them Calos Limen and Cercinitis – “polis Carcine” which Ptolemy places off Taurica on the coast west of the peninsula between the river of Borysthenes and the isthmus which led to the Crimea. Such localization contradicts to what we know about these poleis. All sources, particularly epigraphy, put them in the North-West Crimea on the coast as places of Tauric Chersonesus’ chora. Author of this article is thoroughly analyzing all sources and concludes about their localization by Ptolemy on the continent to the west from Taurica to be not accident. Hecataeus and Herodotus in the 6–5th c. BC considered Cercinitis and the Western Crimea to be a border of Scythia in the south because the Tauri – local Crimean inhabitants – were living further on along the coast and after them the country was called “Taurica”. The same situation was in course of Chersonesus’ domination in the North-West Crimea. When this city lost a part of its chora there in the second half of the 2nd c. BC, Calos Limen along with Cercinitis fell into the hands of the Late Scythian kingdom of the Crimea, being in power of the Tauro-Scythians. Since then the division of the peninsula in two parts – Scythia and Taurica – got military and political color. After the wars of Diophantus with the Crimean Scythians (late 2nd c. BC) Calos Limen was temporary returned to Chersonesus, but by the 2nd c. AD was again ceased by Tauro-Scythians. They justified their power over the region by the fact that it was a part of “Scythia”. After their victorious war with Bosporus in the 130s AD the Tauro-Scythians embraced power to the region outside Crimea to the west on the continental part of Scythia up to Olbia and Borysthenes. In sources of that particular period this region was called “Scythia” and this term got more political than geographical sense. Ptolemy who had reworked a great amount of sources, dated to the eve of our era and to the early Imperial time, particularly the peripli and Roman itineraries, came across Calos Limen in Scythia as geographical and administrative-political unit. That is why he put it on his map, and Cercinitis as well, as cities inside the borders of geographical Scythia, because “Scythia” – a state of the Tauro-Scythians – at that time dominated over the coastal region from Borysthenes to Tauris. The same is relevant to Cercinitis or “polis Cercina” (under the name oppidus or urbs Carcine it is also mentioned by Pliny and Pomponius Mela). By the 2nd c. AD it stopped functioning as being ceased by the Scythians. Very soon it was turned into a small point or a harbor on the place of the early Greek polis and got a new name Coronitis, The city Cercinitis disappeared from sources of that period, including Roman official documents, that is why Ptolemy had to use the Archaic tradition where it marked a south border of Scythia.

Keywords: Claudius Ptolemy, Calos Limen, Cercinitis, Scythia, Taurica, peripli, Arrian, Anonym, Chersonesus

To cite this article: Saprykin S.Yu. Сalos Limen in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography. Aristeas XXX (2024): 142–168.

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Author:
Sergey Yu. Saprykin