Chersonese, Tauric

▪ ancient region, Ukraine

      ancient region comprising the Crimea and, often, the city of Chersonesus, located three miles west of modern Sevastopol, Ukraine. The city, founded on the Heracleotic Chersonese (or Chersonesos Micra [Small Chersonese]) by Ionian Greeks in the 6th century BC, probably as a trading factory, was refounded in the 5th century by Megarian Greeks from Heraclea Pontica and became a Dorian city. Prosperous from the 4th century BC, it maintained a free constitution of the Greek type and fought for its continued independence against the Scythians of southern Russia, against the native Tauri of the southern Crimea, and against the kings of Bosporus in the west. It traded with Athens and cities on the Pontic coast in the early period and with Delos, Rhodes, and Delphi in the Hellenistic Age. About 110 BC it turned to Pontus for protection against the Scythians and was subsequently incorporated into the Pontic Empire of Mithradates VI (Mithradates VI Eupator). Under the Roman Empire, Chersonese was treated as a free city protected by the Bosporan client king; a Roman military station guarded its considerable grain trade. The city continued to flourish in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD and again under the Byzantine Empire. Uninhabited since the 14th century, the site of the city contains the remains of a wall from the 4th century BC and also a wall and many churches of Byzantine times.

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