This volume presents ten papers on the Greek and non-Greek world of the Black Sea in the archaic, classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods. Five papers broach literary and historical topics. Four investigate material in Greek writers (Alcman, Aristeas of Proconnesus, Herodotus and Lucian) connected with Scythia and the North, while the fifth deals with the Bosporan Kingdom. Mediterranean Greek contact with, and reception of, the Pontic world play a significant role throughout. The other five papers concern pottery and metalwork (vessels and phalerae) from Colchis, the North Black Sea and elsewhere. Some new material for the West is published (from Vani and Picvnari) but light is also cast on familiar objects (Sarmatian gold vessels) and iconography (Amazonomachies). Contact between the Aegean and Pontus is again a recurrent theme.
Christopher Tuplin, D.Phil. (1982) in Literae Humaniores is Reader in Ancient History at Liverpool University. He is the author of Failings of Empire (Steiner, 1993), Achaemenid Studies (Steiner, 1996) and over fifty papers on Achaemenid, Greek and Roman history and literature.
Classical philologists, ancient historians and archaeologists, especially those concerned with the Black Sea, contact between Greco-Roman culture and the outside world, and Greco-Roman art and iconography.