Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/492

 460 HISTOHY OF GREECE. menidas)/ who ultimately ripened into the king of Pontus, h;id not become sufficiently powerful to swallow up her independence until the reign of Pharnakes, in the second century befoi'e Christ. Sinope then passed under his dominion ; exchanging (like oth- ers) the condition of a free Grecian city for that of a subject of the barbaric kings of Pontus, with a citadel and mercenary gar- rison to keep her citizens in obedience. We know^ nothing how- ever of the intermediate events. Respecting the Pontic Herakleia, our ignorance is not so com- plete. That city — much nearer than Sinope to the mouth of the Thracian Bosporus, and distant by sea from Byzantium only one long day's voyage of a rowboat — was established by IMega- rians and Boeotians on the coast of the Mariandyni. These na- tives were subdued, and reduced to a kind of serfdom ; whereby they became slaves, yet with a proviso that they should never be sold out of the territory. Adjoining, on the westward, between Herakleia and Byzantium, were the Bithynian Thracians — vil- lagers not merely independent, but warlike and fierce wreckers, who cruelly maltreated any Greeks stranded on their coast.2 We are told in general terms that the government of Herakleia was oligarchical ; ^ perhaps in the hands of the descendants of the principal original colonists, who partitioned among them- selves the territory with its Mariandynian serfs, and who formed a small but rich minority among the total population. We hear of them as powerful at sea, and as being able to man, through their numerous serfs, a considerable fleet, with wdiich they in- vaded the territory of Leukon prince of the Kimmerian Bos- porus.* They were also engaged in land-war with Mithridates. ' Polybius, V. 43. * Xenoph. Anab. vi. 6, 2. ^ Aristot. Polit. v. 5, 2 ; v. 5, 5. Another passage in the same work, how- ever (v. 4, 2), says, that in Herakleia, the democracy was subverted imme- diately after the foundation of the colony, through the popular leaders; who committed injustice against the rich. These rich men were banished, l)iit collected strength enough to return and subvert the democracy by force. If this passage alludes to the same Herakleia (there were many towns of that name), the government must have been originally democralical. But tiie serfdom of the natives seems to imply an oligarchy. Giconomic. ii. 9.
 * Aristot. Polit. vii. 5, 7; Polyaen. vi. 9, 3, 4; compare Pscudo- Aristotle