The native tenants of this line of coast, upon whom the Greek
settlers intruded themselves (reckoning from the westward), were the
Bithynian Thracians, the Mariandyni, the Paphlagonians, the Tibarêni,
Chalybes, Mosynœki, Drilæ, and Kolchians. Here, as elsewhere, these
natives found the Greek seaports useful, in giving a new value to
inland produce, and in furnishing the great men with ornaments
and luxuries to which they would otherwise have had no access. The
citizens of Herakleia had reduced into dependence a considerable
portion of the neighboring Mariandyni, and held them in a relation
resembling that of the natives of Esthonia and Livonia to the German
colonies in the Baltic. Some of the Kolchian villages were also
subject, in the same manner, to the Trapezuntines;[197] and Sinôpê
doubtless possessed a similar inland dominion of greater or less
extent. But the principal wealth of this important city arose from
her navy and maritime commerce; from the rich thunny fishery attached
to her promontory; from the olives in her immediate neighborhood,
which was a cultivation not indigenous, but only naturalized by the
Greeks on the seaboard; from the varied produce of the interior,
comprising abundant herds of cattle, mines of silver, iron, and
copper in the neighboring mountains, wood for ship-building, as well
as for house furniture, and native slaves.[198] The case was similar
with the three colonies of Sinôpê, more to the eastward,—Kotyôra,
Kerasus, and Trapezus; except that the mountains which border on the
Euxine, gradually approaching nearer and nearer to the shore, left
to each of them a more confined strip of cultivable land. For these
cities the time had not yet arrived, to be conquered and absorbed
by the inland monarchies around them, as Miletus and the cities on
the eastern coast of Asia Minor had been. The Paphlagonians were at
this time the only indigenous people in those regions who formed
a considerable aggregated force, under a prince named Korylas; a
prince tributary to Persia, yet half independent,—since he had
disobeyed the summons of Artaxerxes to come up and help in repelling
Cyrus[199]—and now on terms of established alliance with Sinôpê,
though not without secret designs, which he wanted only force to
execute, against that city.[200] The other native tribes to the
eastward were mountaineers both ruder and more divided; warlike on
their own heights, but little capable of any aggressive combinations.
[197] Strabo, xii, p. 542; Xen. Anab. iv, 8, 24.
[198] Strabo. xii, p. 545, 546.
[199] Xen. Anab. v, 6, 8.
[200] Xen. Anab. v, 5, 23.
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