Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/508

 47 G HISTORY OF GREECE. Olbia was in an open plain, with no defence except its walls and the adjoining river Hypanis, frozen over in the winter. The, hybrid Helleno-Scythian race, formed by intermarriages of Greeks with Scythians — and the various Scythian tribes who had become partially sedentary cultivators of corn for exporta- tion — had probably also acquired habits less warlike than the tribes of primitive barbaric type. At any rate, even if capable of defending themselves, they could not continue their produc- tion and commei'ce under repeated hostile incursions. A valuable inscription remaining enables us to compare the Olbia (or Borysthenes) seen by Herodotus, with the same town in the second century b. c.^ At this latter period, the city was diminished in population, impoverished in finances, exposed to constantly increasing exactions and menace from the passing barbaric hordes, and scarcely able to defend against them even the security of its walls. Sometimes there approached the bar- baric chief Saitapharnes with his personal suite, sometimes his whole tribe or horde in mass, called Sail. Whenever they came, they required to be appeased by presents, greater than the treasury could supply, and boi'rowed only from the voluntary help of rich ' This Inscription — No. 2058 — in Boeckh's Inscr. Graec. part xi. p. 121 seq. — is among the most interesting in that noble collection. It records a vote of public gratitude and honor to a citizen of Olbia named Protogenes, and recites the valuable services which he as well as his father had rendered to the city. It thus describes the numerous situations of difficulty and danger from which he had contributed to extricate them. A vivid picture is pre- sented to us of the distress of the city. The introduction prefixed by Boeckh (p. 8G-89) is also very instructive. Olbia is often spoken of by the name of Borysihenes, which name was given to it by foreigners, but not recognized by the citizens. Nor was it even situated on the Borysthenes river ; but on the right or western bank of the Hypanis (Bug) river; not far from the modern .OczakofF. The date of the above Inscription is not specified, and has been dftcrently determined by various critics. Niebuhr assigns it (Untersuchungcn iiber die Sky then, etc. in his Kleine Schriften, p. 387) to a time near the close of the second Punic war. Boeckh also believes that it is not much after that epoch. The terror inspired by the Gauls, even to other barbarians, appears to suit the second century b. c. better than it suits a later period. The Inscription No. 20.59 attests the great number of strangers resident at Olbia; strangers from eighteen different cities, of which the most remote is Miletus, the mother-city of Olbia.