With the exception of the coast where several originally Greek settlements subsisted--especially the important commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the empire--the country was still in a very primitive condition.

Not that it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also comparatively populous.

But there were hardly any towns properly so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these little royal forts.

We do not find that Mithradates materially contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated as he was,--in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite conscious, reaction against Hellenism,--this is easily conceivable.
Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates Colchis Northern Shores of the Black Sea He appears more actively employed--likewise quite in the Oriental style--in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor.

But nowhere did so free and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to give a really distinct idea of it.