CHAPTER XI.

ON THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF THE CRIMEA.

The Cimmerii—The Tauri—Connexion of Greece with the Black Sea—Digression on the Crypts of the Crimea—B.C. 600: The Scythians—The Greek colonies, B.C. 650—Milesian emigration—Dorian emigration—Trade of these early times—Mithridates, reigned B.C. 120-63—A.D. 62: The Alans—A.D. 100-200: The Goths—A.D. 376: The Huns—Second attack of the Huns—Justinian, reigned A.D. 527-565—A.D. 679: The Khazars—A.D. 900-1000: The Petchenegues—About 1204: The Comans—1226: The Tatars—The Genoese—1473: Kaffa taken by the Turks—The Black Sea then shut up to European nations—Mixture of races in present inhabitants of Crimea.

Having had occasion to mention various nations who have occupied the Crimea, it will perhaps be useful to bring together in one succinct view the numerous revolutions which the peninsula has undergone, and the order in which the various races of its inhabitants succeeded one another from the earliest times.

First of all come the Cimmerians, who belong partly to history and partly to fable. The story in the ‘Odyssey’ describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean stream, plunged in darkness, and unblest by the rays of Helios (the sun). According to Herodotus, they originally occupied the Steppes of Southern Russia, or the country between the Borysthenes and the Tanais, and being expelled from their country by the Scythians, skirted the shores of the Euxine, and devastated, for a number of years, the highly civilized countries of Asia Minor. The poets of that age lament the destruction of every exquisite production of Greek genius by this barbarian people, who were nomadic “milkers of mares,” like the Scythians, and wandered in tents over their grassy Steppes. They had already disappeared in the time of Herodotus, at which time the tombs of their kings were shown near the Dniestr. They left their name in the Cimmerian Bosphorus, while the darkness in which they were supposed to have lived has perpetuated their memory down to our own times—

“In black Cimmerian darkness ever dwell.”

There was another people mentioned as early as the time of Homer, who, being mountaineers, were able to preserve their nationality for a very long period of time. These were the Tauri, who appear to have been a people of a most savage and unamiable character.

It has been already said that they sacrificed to a cruel goddess all shipwrecked mariners, and they sometimes not only made offerings but feasts of human victims. These habits have procured them an immortal infamy in the writings of the Greeks and Romans, and, through the story of Iphigenia, have made the Crimea associated with one of the most famous legends of the Greek mythology. Her history and that of her fate-urged family, connected with great events, abounding in scenes of concentrated action, laid in mysterious and wild countries—contained much matter calculated to rouse the passions, and have made it a favourite subject for poets both in ancient and modern times.

The works of almost every great poet of antiquity contain allusions to the tragic history of the Atridæ, and the fate of Iphigenia has occupied in modern times the pen of Racine and Göthe. It was also a popular subject with ancient painters, and Timanthes, having represented her just about to be sacrificed, after exhausting all his art in depicting the grief of the other bystanders, drew a veil over the face of her father as the best means of representing his inexpressible anguish.

The story of Iphigenia is not an isolated instance of the attention which the most ancient Greeks seem in numerous cases to have directed to the East, and the expeditions of Phrixus and Helle, of the Argonauts, the long wanderings of Ulysses on the coasts of Colchis, the Crimea, and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Achæans, who were said, in returning from Troy, to have settled on the Circassian coast,—all have the same tendency.

In the time of Herodotus the Tauri occupied the hill-country of the Crimea, and were in all probability the people who formed the numberless dwellings and towns cut in the solid rock, which are found in many parts of the country. The chalk or green-sandstone formation, easily wrought, homogeneous, with few fissures, and horizontal beds, was peculiarly adapted for this purpose; and wherever it crops out of the soil, there are sure to be found these subterranean dwellings.

These crypts are the most curious remains of antiquity in the Crimea, and abound chiefly in the south-western parts, forming perhaps the only relics of its most ancient inhabitants. Not that the use of crypts was confined solely to the most ancient times, for many Christian churches are found in them, and they must therefore have been inhabited at least down to the fourth or fifth centuries of the Christian era, when the inhabitants of the Crimea were converted to Christianity. Although there are few countries of the world in which they exist in such great numbers as in a portion of the Crimea, still this habit of living in subterranean dwellings was very common among ancient nations, and instances of it are familiar to all. The crypts are the only relics of those ages in the infancy of the world, when, according to mythic legends, men dwelt in caverns and were nourished on acorns.

A large portion of the populations of Asia, when they became fixed, began by burrowing out holes for themselves in the rocks. Caverns were then used as their temples and their sepulchres.

The rock temples scattered over various parts of India are some of them imperishable monuments of times on which history is silent.

Persia has its crypt tombs and cities, that have called forth the admiration of all travellers. Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia began by crypts, and the rock temples, palaces, and immense necropoleis (which were at first towns for the living) attest the art and industry of one of the most remarkable of ancient nations. The traditions of Greece point back to a time when caverns were common dwellings. In Sicily the rocks are pierced with crypt towns of very ingenious workmanship. In Magna Græcia and Etruria crypt tombs are common, and the labyrinth of Crete was the theatre of some of the earliest Greek myths. In Asia Minor, and even in Thrace, the same sort of works may be found.

Notices of them are also frequent in the Bible. The Kaphtorians or Phœnicians came from the southern coasts of the Red Sea, and disembarked at its northern extremity under Edom, who gave his name to the country, so that it is no wonder that we find the Idumæans or Edomites dwelling in caves down to a late period. The antique towns in the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea are crypt towns, like those of the Crimea, but executed by a people in a higher state of civilization. The Edomites or Phœnicians played a great part, before the arrival of the Hebrews in Egypt, and their commerce embraced the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. They extended their mercantile relations as far as Sidon and Tyre, and carried at the same time to the foot of Mount Lebanon their custom of excavation. The northern valley of the Jordan, the Ard el Hule, is pierced with crypt towns, of which the most remarkable are Hatsor and Bostra. Their inhabitants were proud of their dwellings in the rocks, which they regarded as impregnable, which made the prophet Jeremiah exclaim, ch. xlix. v. 16, “Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that boldest the heights of the hill, though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the hill, I will bring thee down, saith the Lord.” Every reader is familiar with the caves of Makeda, Adullam, and Engeddi, in the patriarchal history, and Jerusalem itself was surrounded with crypt tombs. In the country of Tubal, the modern Georgia, the ancestors of that ancient and chivalrous people dwelt in subterranean dwellings, such as are now to be seen at Ouphlitsikhé and Armasi. In Armenia, which enjoys the high privilege of having been the first Christian nation, and of having suffered more than any other for its faith, the art of the crypt has always been in great favour, and innumerable specimens are to be seen at Hrachegapert, and at the monasteries of Airivauk, Kieghart, and other places.[146]

On the banks of the Upper Kour, in Imeritia, a country adjoining on Georgia, there are many places, such as Vardsic and others, where these dwellings are to be found, and the termination “kvabi,” or cavern, in the names of places always indicates their existence.

In Mingrelia, the ancient Colchis, there are an infinity of grottoes on the banks of the Upper Phasis (modern Krivila), and one whole district, Semokvákana (the high dwellings), takes its name from them.

Lastly, in the centre of the Caucasus, in the valley of the Kouir, and near Kislavodsk and other places, are to be found the dwellings of the Troglodytes of Strabo.

Thus it appears how largely the crypt enters into the early history of mankind, and how much of human labour has been expended upon a species of dwelling which is so widely spread over the Crimea.[147]

Even among the modern Tatars in that country their habitations are seldom wholly detached from the rocks. They generally choose some shady sloping place for their villages, and supporting two sides of their houses by walls of brick or mud, with a little verandah in front, they let the other parts rest either in a niche cut in the earth, or against the side of a precipice. In Georgia it is often dangerous riding from the subterranean villages formed in the sloping sides of hills, the flat roofs of which look just like the common earth, and a person unused to the country might easily sink into the midst of an astonished family, did not the wreath of smoke generally prove a warning of the treacherous nature of the soil.

Returning from this digression to the history of the Tauri, I will only further remark that, from a similarity of manners, and other causes, they are considered to belong to the Tchud or Finnish race of nations, and thus to be related to the Lesghins and Tchetchens of the Caucasus, and the famous Finnish pirates who infested the shores of the Baltic down to the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The resemblance of the Virgin goddess of the Greeks and the cruel divinity of the Tauri, perhaps may arise from the fact of the Greek nation itself being composed of the two elements of an Indo-Germanic graft upon a primitive Finnish stock. When the Indo-Germanic wave of population rolled towards the West it drove the earlier races before it, or forced them aside into the mountains as the only secure resting-place. Thus the mountain chain of the Crimea played on a small scale the part of the Caucasus, and served as a refuge for the remnant of the Finns against the Indo-Germanic races who surrounded them, of which the most ancient known to us were the Kimmerians. The word Tauri probably means mountaineers.[148]

In B.C. 600 the Scythians, who were also a nation of Finnish origin, invaded the Crimea, and mixing with the Tauri formed the nation of the Tauro-Scythians, whose principal seat was in the valleys to the north of the Tauric chain.

A short time before the Scythian invasion, about B.C. 650, the Greeks, who, as I have said, had been before connected with these countries, began to plant colonies about which we have definite historical information. The Milesians first established themselves on the peninsula of Kertch, an open country of easy cultivation. Their agricultural prosperity was quickly known in Greece, and new and important emigrations took place. Theodosia, Nymphæum, Panticapæum, and Myrmékium quickly raised their heads on the shores of the little peninsula, and served as ports for the rich establishments of the colonists.[149]

Stimulated by the success of the Milesians, the Heracleans endeavoured on their side to found some colonies in the Crimea. They turned to the western part of the peninsula, and disembarked not far from the celebrated Cape Partheniké, and, having beaten and driven back into the mountains the savage Tauri, they fixed themselves in the Heracleotic Chersonese. Thus was founded the celebrated republic of Kherson, which, conquered for a moment by a Grand Duke of Russia in the tenth century, as has been related, became the point of departure of that great religious revolution which completely changed the character and destinies of the Russian Empire.

While the Heracleans were consolidating their power by their manufactures and commerce, the Milesian establishments on the Bosphorus were rising with extraordinary rapidity, and spread to the Asiatic side, where the towns of Phanagoria, Hermonássa, and Cépos were founded. At first, independent one of the other, all these different Milesian colonies were influenced by an inevitable chain of events, and, 480 B.C., their political union gave rise to the kingdom of the Bosphorus. As has been said, agriculture was the essential basis of the public wealth of the Milesians, and the attention of the new government was directed specially to this branch of employment.

As soon as Leucon ascended the throne he released the Athenians from the thirtieth, which they had hitherto paid as an export duty on grain. By this liberal measure the exportation of it increased enormously, and the Cimmerian or Panticapæan peninsula became the granary of Greece, and merchants flocked for grain to Theodosia and Panticapæum, where they also bought woollen cloths, furs, and the salted fish which still forms one of the staples of Southern Russia. The imports are little spoken of in history, but it is evident from the late excavations at Kertch that they must have consisted of articles of luxury.

The Bosphorians, then, no doubt received in return for their productions all the manufactured articles which luxury and riches had introduced into usage at Athens, and it is probably to the artists of Greece that are due the magnificent works of art which are admired in the Museums of Kertch and Petersburg, which prove that the agricultural colonists of the Crimea were not behind their kinsmen of the brilliant metropolis of Athens in their love for the arts and the refinements of civilised life. Materials for building must also have formed an important part of the imports. There is no trace of white marble in the Crimea, nor on the northern shores of the Black Sea, although immense quantities of it are found in the excavations at Kertch, and there is every reason to believe that the enormous pieces of sculpture which were employed there in the public and private buildings were brought ready worked from the quarries of Greece. Notwithstanding the dangerous neighbourhood of the Sarmatians, the kingdom of the Bosphorus enjoyed perfect tranquillity for more than three hundred years, and, thanks to a policy as firm as it was intelligent, it increased in riches and prosperity up to the moment when the conquest of Greece by the Romans upset all the commercial relations of the East.

At this epoch the Bosphorians attacked by the Scythians, and too feeble to resist them, threw themselves into the arms of Mithridates, who made their state a province of Pontus, and gave it as an appanage to his son Macharés.

After the defeat and death of her implacable enemy, Rome preserved to the traitor Pharnáces the crown of the Bosphorus; but the sovereignty of the new prince was only nominal, and the successors of the son of Mithridates, without power, and despoiled of their possessions on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, depended on the caprice of the Roman emperors.

In the sixty-second year of our era the Alans ravaged the country, and attacked the Tauri even in their mountains. They devastated the country, and utterly destroyed Theodosia, which offered them some resistance. They continued masters of the country, without changing their vagabond life, till they were conquered by the Goths in the middle of the second century.[150] The Goths, although they have undeservedly gained a bad reputation in Europe, were the only people who brought the germs of peace and civilization to this much-disputed peninsula; and they kept possession of it longer than any other people, for the remnant of them, and its name of Gothia, remained to it more than a thousand years—till nearly the end of the sixteenth century. They mixed intimately with the vanquished people, founded many colonies in the vast plains situated to the north of the mountains, and quickly gave themselves up to their taste for a sedentary and agricultural life. Then there began for the Crimea a new period of tranquillity, which might also have been one of agricultural prosperity; but, unfortunately, Greece, conquered by the Romans, was at this period rapidly falling, and Rome, become the capital of the world, was supplied with grain by Egypt, Sicily, and Africa. The Crimea, notwithstanding its efforts, could not rise from the obscurity to which it was condemned by the great political events which signalized the first century of the Christian era. In the midst of the first invasions of the barbarians, the little republic of Kherson, protected by its remote and inaccessible situation, preserved its independence. In the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, the Khersonites, who possessed nearly all the high country, had centered in themselves the commerce which existed between the Crimea and some parts of the shores of the Black Sea, and their republic was the most powerful state in the Crimea, until a war broke out between them and the Sarmatians, who had seized the kingdom of the Bosphorus, in which they were defeated. The struggle between the rival nations at the Bosphorus lasted nearly a century, until the Sarmatians were driven out, and the Bosphorians again enjoyed some years of liberty and internal prosperity.

This peace, however, was of short duration, and like a calm before a terrible tempest. After a few years, the Huns poured down from the interior of Asia, and at first occupied the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; then, crossing the Sea of Azof, they annihilated for ever the ancient kingdom of the Milesians, A.D. 375. The numerous colonies of the Goths, united with the Alans, were overcome, and all their agricultural establishments were reduced to ruins. Protected by their western position, the Khersonians alone escaped.

Fortunately for the Goths of the Crimea, the Huns only passed through the country, for they were attracted to the banks of the Dniestr and the Danube by the great events which were there taking place, after the death of Ermanrich the Ostrogoth, which had just removed the only obstacle to their progress. The Goths of the Crimea, who had yielded to the torrent and retired to the mountains, again spread themselves over the country. After the death of Attila the Huns again appeared, and this time Kherson was threatened, and implored the assistance of the Greek emperor. Justinian hastened to accede to their demand, and, being also friendly to the Goths, built long walls to protect their country against the nomades of the Steppes, and two fortresses, Aloushton and Gorzubita (Alouchta and Oursouf), on the southern coast of the Crimea. He built no towns or fortresses to the north of the mountains, because the Goths did not like to be shut up within walls, but to live freely in the open country.

They had at this time the reputation of being excellent warriors, laborious husbandmen, and the most hospitable of mankind towards strangers. They then occupied both sides of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and, becoming converts to Christianity, they sent four deputies to Constantinople to ask the emperor to send them a bishop in the place of their autistes, who had died.[151]

Near the end of the seventh century, A.D. 679, the Crimea was invaded by the Khazars, whose hordes at first accompanied the Huns, and afterwards established themselves in Lithuania (Bersilia), and constituted a kingdom independent even of Attila. The apparition of these new conquerors, already masters of a vast territory, made such a sensation at Constantinople, that the sovereigns of the East sought their alliance, and the court of Byzantium even asked in marriage the daughter of the Khakan, as the chief of the nation was called, for the son of the Emperor Leo.

The forebodings of the imperial government about the Khazars were quickly realized, and in the short space of 150 years, this people, who had given their name to the peninsula of the Crimea, founded a vast monarchy, the limits of which reached in Europe to the Danube, and in Asia to the foot of the Caucasus, while even the Caspian was known in the middle ages as the Sea of the Khazars.

After the Khazars, whose fall was in part hastened by the attacks of the Russians, and who then disappeared completely from history, the Petchenegues, or Patzinates, their conquerors, who are constantly mentioned in the annals of Constantinople and the early Russian history, succeeded to their dominions, with the exception of Kherson, which was incorporated in the empire of Constantinople. Under the rule of this people, who also came from Asia, the commerce and manufactures of the Crimea revived,—its relations with Constantinople increased, and its ports furnished to the merchants of the Greeks, purple, fine stuffs, embroidered cloths, ermines, and leopard skins, furs of all kinds, pepper and fine spices, which the Petchenegues bought on the south of the Kuban, and in the Trans-Caucasian countries, which extend as far as the Cyrus and the Araxes. Thus recommenced for this unhappy country, which had been so often devastated, the new era of a prosperity, which it had not enjoyed for several centuries. The empire of the Petchenegues lasted for about 150 years, and then they had to deplore similar calamities to those which they had inflicted on the Khazars. Attacked by the Comans, whom the extension of the Mongol power in Asia had expelled from their territory, they were vanquished in the struggle which ensued, and forced to retire into Asia. The Comans, a warlike people, took possession of the Crimea, and made Soldaya (Soudak) their capital. They had, however, hardly consolidated their power, when they were obliged to yield to other conquerors, and seek a refuge in more western countries.

With the expulsion of the Comans ceased all those temporary invasions, which for ten centuries desolated the Crimea. To all these different hordes, of whom the greater number have left no trace but their name, there succeeded two remarkable nations. One of these, the conqueror of Asia, was just founding the most gigantic empire of the middle ages; and the other, issuing from a merchant city of Italy, was destined to make Khazaria the centre and the point of junction of the commercial relations between Europe and Asia. In 1226 took place the memorable invasion of the Mongol Tatars, a notice of which has been already given, and from that moment the establishment of peace and security was sufficient to develope the great natural resources which this celebrated country possessed. Soldaya, taken from the Comans by the Tatars, and given back to the Christians, quickly became the most important port on the Black Sea, and a principal station in the commercial route between Europe and Asia. Soldaya, however, had but a short duration, and another people, as intelligent, and active as the Greeks, and endowed with a still bolder mercantile instinct, was, at this epoch, destined to enjoy a greater commercial grandeur than any since the time when the Milesians founded their first colonies on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Already masters of the important factories at Constantinople, the Genoese had long been able to appreciate the position of the Black Sea, and the immense resources which it placed at the disposition of enterprising men, who might there centralize the relations of Europe with Russia, Persia and the Indies.

The rivality which then existed between them and the Venetians accelerated the execution of their projects, and in 1280, after having acquired, partly by stratagem and partly by force, the territory of ancient Theodosia, they laid the foundation of the celebrated Kaffa, which secured to the republic the empire of the Black Sea and the exclusive command of its commerce. With the Genoese, the Crimea saw revived one of the most brilliant epochs of its history. Kaffa, by its size, its population, and its opulence, became the rival of Constantinople, and soon its consuls of Cerco (Kertch), Soldaya (Soudak), and Cembalo (Balaclava), rendered themselves masters of all the southern coast of the Crimea. At a later period, they gained, beyond the peninsula, other conquests, not less important. The galleys of the republic penetrated into the Sea of Azof, and Tana, situated at the mouth of the Don, was taken from the Tatars; a fortress was erected at the mouth of the Dniestr, in Modern Bessarabia, and numerous factories rose in Colchis and the shore of the Caucasus, while the imperial town of Trebizonde itself was obliged to allow the establishment there of one of the largest factories of the republic in the Black Sea. The Genoese colonies thus became a general entrepôt for the rich productions of Russia, Asia Minor, Persia, and the Indies, and during more than two centuries monopolising to their profit all mercantile exchanges between Europe and Asia, they presented a wonderful spectacle of prosperity and riches. The term of all this glory at last arrived. In 1453 the standard of Mahomet was displayed on the dome of St. Sophia, and the relations of the Crimea with the Mediterranean were broken. The destruction of the Genoese establishments became inevitable, and the republic itself, despairing of preserving, decided upon abandoning them to the bank of St. George on the 15th November, 1453. This cession, by politically detaching the colonies from the metropolis, naturally led to fatal results. A general discouragement took place in the colonies, each man thought only of himself, and the consular government, formerly so remarkable for its integrity and virtue, instead of making friends of the Tatars to defend them from the Porte, completely alienated them by their want of good faith, and by selling their assistance for gold to the various parties who at that time were desolating the Crimea. So many faults were followed by a fatal catastrophe. On the 6th of June, 1473, Kaffa was obliged to surrender at discretion to the Turks, and some months later, all the points occupied by the Genoese fell successively into the power of the Ottomans. After the disaster of the Genoese colonies, the great lines of communication with the Trans-Caucasian countries, the shores of the Caspian Sea, and those down the Volga, the Don, and the Kuban, deprived of their support, were broken up, and all commercial relations with Central Asia were momentarily suspended. The Venetians, who had obtained from the Turks the right of navigating the Black Sea, on the condition of paying 10,000 ducats a-year, endeavoured without success to take the place of their rivals. They were in their turn expelled, the passage of the Bosphorus was interdicted to the nations of the West, and the Ottomans, with the Greeks of the Archipelago, subjects of the Porte, had alone the right of navigating the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof. The commerce of the East then found for itself new débouchés by way of Smyrna, and the discovery of Vasco de Gama produced a complete revolution in the trade.

A slight sketch of the Crimea when it formed the seat of government of the khans of Little Tatary has already been given, and during all that period the Black Sea was unfrequented by the European nations. The English, however, always had the nominal right of navigating it; there are some vestiges of our having had a footing there in the days of Queen Elizabeth or James I., and when we ceased to frequent it is not ascertained. In the treaty made in 1675 between England and Turkey by Sir John Finch, there is an express article giving a general permission of ingress and egress into the Black Sea, “to enable English merchants and all under their banner to go by the way of the Tanais into Moscovia, and also to and from Persia, and to traffic by land and by sea through all their confines.” There is even a provision for the protection of English vessels should they be forced by stress of weather into Kaffa.[152]

This permission, however, remained a dead letter until the beginning of the present century, when our right to navigate the Black Sea having been claimed afresh and allowed, an active trade sprung up, which has been yearly increasing in importance.

It might naturally be expected, after so many different nations had occupied the Crimea, that its population would be of a very mixed character, and such indeed is the case. It is not, however, in the plains, which are inhabited chiefly by Nogai Tatars of late date, nor in any of the towns, that the remnants of the ancient inhabitants of the country are to be sought. The mountains are in every country the refuge of the oppressed, and it is in the mountains of the Crimea, among the so-called Tatars, who are, however, a very different race from those of the plains, that a people is to be found of very mixed origin.