De Mithridate VI à Arrien de Nicomédie : changements et continuités dans le bassin de la mer Noire entre le Ier s. a.C. et le Ie

The Black Sea, colonized by the Greeks since the 7th century BC, witnessed the development of cities that maintained their independence except for the Bosporan Kingdom. Mithridates VI was the first to master briefly nearly all of this area through his control of its shores around 100 BC. Less than two centuries later, almost the whole of this coastline was subject to Rome, as Arrian recalls in his Periplus of the Euxine Sea. These two centuries (100 BC–100 AD) lie at the crossroads of Greek and Roman history. The former sees this period as the end of the Hellenistic period in its regional version, the latter as the beginning of Roman control over the Black Sea. The present state of historiography attests to the difficulty of thinking of these two centuries in a joined-up way. After the pioneering publications, such as those of François de Callataÿ on the Mithradatic wars, it is often broader divisions that have recently been put forward in studies centered on the hinterland populations, as in the Russian, Bulgarian or Romanian works of the 2010s, while the end of the 1st century BC is sometimes also studied as a prologue to the imperial period. Several important events reveal a change: Burebista’s attack on the West and Northwest around 48 BC, the reign of Aspurgos in the Bosporan Kingdom from 8 BC, the annexation of the Greek cities of the Western coast of the Black Sea at the beginning of the 1st century AD, the creation of the Province of Moesia in AD 15, the end of the Thracian Kingdom in AD 46, and the annexation by the Romans of the Pontus Polemoniacus in AD 64. But continuities also exist in the various political, economic, social and cultural fields. This question of change and continuity is therefore the common thread running through the whole volume, together with a reflection on the Pontic specificities of the periodization.