Ancient Greek Views of the Black Sea

The Black Sea is Romania’s gateway to the wider world, giving Romanian ships and sailors access to seas across the globe.

Steliu Lambru, 12.10.2026, 12:00

The Black Sea is Romania’s gateway to the wider world, giving Romanian ships and sailors access to seas across the globe. Today, as in the past, it belongs to a cultural world described in the writings of the ancient Greeks, who viewed it both from afar and at close quarters.

Emanuel Petac, a historian, numismatist and archaeologist at the Romanian Academy Library, has examined how Greek authors perceived the Black Sea.

“We are familiar, of course, with the name Black Sea, but also with Pontus Euxinus. Was that always its name, though, or was it known by other names too? It was also called Pontus Axeinos, the name used by Pindar around the middle of the fifth century BC. The debate surrounding the Black Sea’s name centres on this contrast between a hospitable and an inhospitable sea. It begins as an inhospitable sea and eventually becomes a hospitable one, which is what Pontus Euxinus means.”

Things can look very different from a distance than they do close up. That is a familiar human experience, and the ancient Greeks were no exception. Emanuel Petac explains:

“Hospitable or inhospitable: we shall see why perceptions changed over time. Ultimately, there is a fundamental distinction here. Was this a region simply to pass through? Was it inhabited or uninhabited, civilised or uncivilised? Did it belong to the classical Greek world, which encompassed the eastern Mediterranean? Or did it belong to the world of the barbarians, particularly the Scythians? That is where this whole contrast comes from.”

At first, the Greeks viewed the Black Sea from afar. Emanuel Petac:

“Among the ancient literary sources that discuss the Black Sea, Pindar is particularly important, as is Strabo, through his geographical work. These two sources are separated by roughly five hundred years. Pindar was writing around 462 BC, and Strabo in the early first century AD. Yet they use the same terms and concepts. It is no coincidence that Pindar speaks of the Argonauts: a mythical story set in a mythical place, which is what the Black Sea was to the Greeks of his day. Pindar describes the Argonauts reaching the entrance to Pontus Axeinos, the inhospitable sea. They were entering a dark, unwelcoming region where it was unwise to venture. Yet Pindar also uses the term Euxine. He speaks of the Euxine Sea, where Achilles ruled over a shining island. These are all references to mythology and the distant past, which the authors approach in much the same way.”

For the Greeks of that time, the Black Sea was as much a cultural idea as a geographical reality. Emanuel Petac continues:

“Later, the name Pontus Euxinus became established, and that was no coincidence either. It reflected both Greek thinking about the region and the spread of Greek civilisation into it. This comes across very clearly in Strabo. He tells us that people in earlier times regarded the Pontic Sea much as they regarded the ocean beyond the Pillars of Heracles, what we now call the Atlantic Ocean. The Greeks did not venture into it, so it remained an unknown and somewhat dark place, inhabited by all sorts of demons that sank ships. It was somewhere best avoided. The Black Sea was seen in much the same way. So the Black Sea was understood through Greek philosophy and classical Greek culture, rather than in strictly geographical terms. The term Euxine, adopted into Greek, comes, significantly, from an Iranian language, Persian, from the word Axsaina, meaning dark and unfriendly.”

In time, however, the Greek view of the Black Sea changed, as  Emanuel Petac explains:

“We move from this inhospitable sea, this dark, harsh and austere place about which little was known, to the hospitable sea described by both Pindar and Strabo, the one we are familiar with today. Strabo offers the clearest explanation of this change. He says that things changed because the Ionians founded cities along the western coast of the Black Sea. Once again, the concept and the explanation take us back to classical Greek philosophy: it is the city, the polis, that brings civilisation to the Black Sea region. The foundation of these cities brought civilisation with it. This applies to all the Greek cities along the western shores of the Black Sea, from Olbia and Tyras in the north down to the coast of what is now Bulgaria. They brought the Black Sea region into the Greek cultural world, extending a civilisation that had previously been confined to the eastern Mediterranean.”

The Black Sea thus became part of the wider world of ancient Greek culture and civilisation. But its local peoples, too, had their own place in that history. (MI)