Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt more deeply than at these distant outposts.

Athens in its good times had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the duties of a leading power--duties which certainly were specially brought home to the Athenians by their need of Pontic grain.

After the downfall of the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to themselves.

The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and Lysimachus sometimes attempted it; and the Romans, on whom with the conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of interest as well as of honour.

The fall of Sinope, the decline of Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the northern shore of the Black Sea.