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Out of the Balkans

by Jason C. Mavrovitis

Part 1: Out of the Balkans

Chapter 1:
Eleni and Evangelia: Out of Thrace and the Black Sea

Notes

  1. Photo of Sozopolis in 1930. Photo of Sozopolis in 2000. [Return to the text at note 1.]
  2. Eastern Rumelia was an autonomous province with a Christian governor chosen by, and vassal to, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Rumelia is also found spelled as Roumelia and Romania. [Return to the text at note 2.]
  3. Until the mid nineteenth century, there was no country or geopolitical entity known as Greece. In 1833, Greek-speaking people of the new Kingdom called themselves Ellines (Hellenes) and their country, Ellas (Hellas). The name "Greek" originated with an obscure tribe from Thessaly. [Return to the text at note 3.]
  4. Miletos (also spelled Melitus), today's Balat in Turkey, during ancient times was the most important and perhaps the largest of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor. See: Michael Grant, A Guide to the Ancient World : A Dictionary of Classical Place Names (Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson, 1986), 396. [Return to the text at note 4.]
  5. John Boardman, The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies and Trade, new and enl. ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 247. [Return to the text at note 5.]
  6. Iatros ('Ιατρος) in Greek means "one who heals," a medical doctor in Modern Greek. The Ionian Apollo represented in most Black Sea cities was Apollo the Healer. See: Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 122. [Return to the text at note 6.]
  7. The cities' ancient names are within parenthesis and in italics. See: Richard J. A. Talbert, Atlas of Classical History (London: Croom Helm, 1985). [Return to the text at note 7.]
  8. Skythia is also spelled Scythia. Thus Skythian is often spelled Scythian. [Return to the text at note 8.]
  9. Bosphorus has the meaning "ox-ford" and signifies the place that the mythological Io crossed the strait during the period of her wandering. See: M. C. Howatson and Paul Harvey, The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 298. Variant spellings include Bosphouros and Bosphoros. [Return to the text at note 9.]
  10. The word Pontos refers to the Black Sea, while Pontic refers to a particular region and people on the coast of the Black Sea. [Return to the text at note 10.]
  11. The Bosphorus is approximately 12.3 miles long. It has an average width of less than 1 mile and is only 0.435 miles wide at its narrowest point, where the surface current can reach 7-8 knots. In 490 B.C. the Persian King Darius crossed here over a pontoon bridge to begin his European conquests. The Bosphorus remains a treacherous route for ships. [Return to the text at note 11.]
  12. 1575-1000 B.C. The best known are the kingdoms whose palaces were located at Thebes (northwest of Athens), Mycenae and Tiryns (located between Nauplion and Corinth), and Pylos (located just north of the southwest finger of the Peloponnesus). [Return to the text at note 12.]
  13. The "Golden Fleece" may have represented sheepskins laid at the bottom of mountain streams by the people of Colchis to capture flecks of alluvial gold as it washed downstream; a technique that is still used in the region. [Return to the text at note 13.]
  14. For a representation of Jason's voyage see: Timothy Severin, The Jason Voyage : The Quest for the Golden Fleece (London: Hutchinson, 1985). [Return to the text at note 14.]
  15. Herodotus, Robin Waterfield, and Carolyn Dewald, The Histories (Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 269, 4:103. [Return to the text at note 15.]
  16. Hornblower and Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 719. [Return to the text at note 16.]
  17. Now the Ukraine. [Return to the text at note 17.]
  18. Herodotus, Waterfield, and Dewald, The Histories 263, 4:83-135. [Return to the text at note 18.]
  19. N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 322 B.C (Oxford,: Clarendon Press, 1959), 563., and N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia (Oxford,: Clarendon Press, 1972), 557. [Return to the text at note 19.]
  20. Pliny the Elder, 23/4 to 79 A.D. was a prolific writer, best known for an encyclopedia of all contemporary knowledge. He lived a full and active political and military life and died at the great eruption of Vesuvius. See: Hornblower and Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1197. [Return to the text at note 20.]
  21. The Capitoline was the center of the political, social and religious life of Rome. See: R. F. Hoddinott, Bulgaria in Antiquity: An Archaeological Introduction (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975), 41. [Return to the text at note 21.]
  22. Benjamin H. Isaac, The Greek Settlements in Thrace until the Macedonian Conquest (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 247,48. [Return to the text at note 22.]
  23. John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium, 1st American ed. (New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1997), 382,3. [Return to the text at note 23.]
  24. From approximately the twelfth century on, its Latin rulers named the Peloponnesos "Morea." The name refers to the Mulberry tree common to the Peloponnesos, and to the shape of the peninsula, that resembles a Mulberry leaf. See: William Miller, The Latins in the Levant a History of Frankish Greece (1204-1566) (London: J. Murray, 1908), 37n. [Return to the text at note 24.]
  25. Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium, 317. [Return to the text at note 25.]

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