The City of Olbia in the I–IV Centuries A.D.

Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views XXXIX, n.s. 14, 1995, 355-375 THE CITY OF OLBIA IN THE I-IV CENTURIES A.D. V. V. KRAPIVINA A great number of scientific works are devoted to the study of Olbia. However, the lengthy history of the city is covered unevenly, and the problems of the first to fourth centuries A.D. continue to be the least studied. This is so even though we have a considerable quantity of materials of various kinds from that period (fig. 1). The aim of this article is to illuminate the historical topography and the cultural and chronological stratigraphy of Olbia in these centuries. The author's own excavations in the Upper City of Olbia from 1977 to 1992 have helped promote solutions to these questions. According to Dio Chrysostom, the rhetor from Bithynia, who was in Olbia at the end of the first century A.D., the city then occupied only the southern part of its former territory (Or. 36.6). Archaeological research has confirmed this completely. The territory of the city was reduced to approximately one third of its size in the Hellenistic period. Roughly triangular in plan, it was bounded by Hare's Ravine in the west and the estuary in the east, while in the north the border followed the line of the Second Transverse Ravine (fig. 2). The territory of Olbia consisted of three parts: the Upper City, situated 30-42 m above the level of the estuary, the Lower City, 4-10 m above the estuary, and the Terrace, which linked the Upper and Lower cities. Today part of the Lower City is inundated by the waters of the estuary. To judge by the ruins of the northern fortification wall of the first centuries A.D. which were discovered here, the city stretched for 170-200 m to the east of the present bank of the estuary.l Evidently the eastern, western and southern borders of Olbia coincided on the whole with contemporary ones. The western border followed Hare's Ravine along its eastern slope. Here the ruins of the fortification walls were revealed in two places. The first was approximately in the centre of this border, where B.v. Farmakovskii discovered part of the wall with a tower;2 the second was at its 1 S.D. Kryzhitskii, Olviya. Istoriograficheskoe issledovaniye arkhitekturnostroitelnykh kompleksov (Kiev 1985) 42, 134. 2 B.V. Farmakovskii, "Raskopki v Olvii," OAK for 1903 (St. Petersburg 1906); for 1904 (1907) 1-41; for 1906 (1909) 1-50. 355 356 v V KRAPIVINA J1 Fig. 1. Plan of Olbia with the sectors where materials of the first centuries AD. were found He"poOOJlb 3lUf'1bJ16aJllca CeBepou6BJ1u !J;HTOJ\eJIb BepxoHnropo~ HIUKIIHnropo~ nHMaD OLBIA IN THE I-IV CENTURIES A.D. .IT Necropolis Hare·sRavine North Ravine Citadel UppcrCity Lower City Liman(Estuary) M }1 U 357 I Fig. 2. Plans of Olbia: I. Productive and household complexes of the first and early second centuries A.D. II. Productive and household complexes of the later second and the third century A.D. 1. territory of the city in the second and third centuries A.D. 2. kilns 3. wineries 4. granary 5. stores 358 v V KRAPIVINA northern end, where, in sector R 19, the boundary of the second century to third century AD. was discovered in the central heights. It more or less coincides with the present crest of the eastern slope of Hare's Ravine and lies approximately 5 m to the west of the boundary of the Hellenistic period.3 The southeastern boundary of the Upper City lay almost along the present crest of the slope of the right bank of the estuary. In this part of Olbia the ruins of the fortification wall were discovered, the external face serving in places as a breast-walI.4 This refutes the reconstruction of paleogeographic conditions, according to which this border ran 100-170 m to the southeast (fig. 3, pI. 1).5 The location of the northern boundary of Olbia in the first centuries AD. is precisely determined only in the Lower City, where the ruins of the fortification walls were revealed in situ. For...