Contents
- Chronology
- “The little town of the Apollonians”
- The slab from Histria
- Salt in the town’s name
- Where was the earliest settlement?
- A Thracian town under a Greek name
- Ulpia Anchialos — the largest Roman port of Thrace
- Goths, Avars and emperors
- Anchialos between Bulgaria and Byzantium
- The last refuge of Byzantium
Today’s town of Pomorie lies on a narrow rocky peninsula of the same name, jutting 3.5 km into the Black Sea on the north-western shore of Burgas Bay (42°33′ N, 27°39′ E). To the south, east and north-east the town is surrounded by the sea, to the north by the Salt Lake, and only to the west-north-west a narrow isthmus, often flooded by the sea, links it to the broad Pomorie plain. Over the millennia the terrain has changed, and with it the location of the settlement.
Burgas lies 20 km to the south, Nesebar 18 km to the north; the modern history of Pomorie unfolds between these two towns. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages its rivals were Nesebar and Sozopol respectively. Until 14 August 1934 the town bore its ancient name Anchialos, when a special ministerial decree renamed it Pomorie.
In brief
- The name comes from the Greek — “anchi” (near) and “als” (salt): the settlement beside the salt pans. A Thracian origin is also possible.
- In the Roman era Anchialos was the largest port and the largest town by area in the province of Thrace — over 120 ha.
- Great battles between Bulgarians and Byzantines were fought beneath its walls — under Khan Tervel, Khan Telets, Khan Krum and Tsar Simeon.
- After 1453 it became a refuge for Byzantine aristocratic families and the centre of the largest kaza in south-eastern Bulgaria.
Chronology
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 5th–4th century BC | Probable founding of the settlement; later a possession of Apollonia (Sozopol) |
| 2nd century BC | A fortified site, captured by Mesambria and returned to Apollonia |
| AD 9 | The poet Ovid passes by the fortress on his way into exile |
| AD 98–117 | Emperor Trajan grants Anchialos the status of a town — Ulpia Anchialus |
| c. AD 270 | The Goths take the town |
| AD 584 | The Avars take Anchialos; Khagan Bayan concludes peace with Byzantium |
| AD 708 | The Bulgarians rout the army of Justinian II near Anchialos |
| AD 766 | A storm sinks much of the fleet of Constantine V — 2,600 ships |
| AD 812 | Khan Krum annexes Anchialos to Bulgaria |
| 20 August 917 | Tsar Simeon routs the Byzantines on the plain before Anchialos |
| 1366 | The town is taken by the knights of Amadeus VI of Savoy |
| 1453 | Finally under Ottoman rule |
| 14 August 1934 | Anchialos is renamed Pomorie |
“The little town of the Apollonians”
Of all the settlements along the western Black Sea coast, Anchialos seems to guard the secrets of its past most jealously. The ancient authors, traditionally sparing in their accounts of the lands around the Western Pontus, long paid no attention to this town. It was not until the Roman geographer Strabo (63 BC – AD 19) broke the silence to note that “next, after Mesambria, comes Anchialos, a little town [полихнион] of the Apollonians”.
All researchers interpret this brief text in the same way: Anchialos was founded as a colony of Apollonia (Sozopol) to secure its complete dominance over Burgas Bay and the surrounding territory, to control the salt pans and to shield it from the influence of neighbouring Mesambria (Nesebar).
Accepting this account without reservation, modern researchers had to look for a plausible date for the founding of “the little town of the Apollonians”. By the time Strabo was writing his “Geography” (around 7 BC), Apollonia was already in marked decline and could not have established colonies. An earlier date was therefore naturally sought — the 5th or 4th century BC, the period of its greatest flourishing. And so Anchialos entered scholarship as a satellite within the system of Greek colonies whose orbit encompassed the entire Black Sea coast.
For a long time this claim was no more than an alluring assumption, drawn upon to varying degrees by modern admirers of ancient Apollonia — for decades the old town remained silent, offering nothing to confirm so early an existence.
The slab from Histria
In 1960, excavations in the ancient city of Histria (on the Romanian coast, near the mouth of the Danube) uncovered a large marble slab bearing, in forty lines, a decree of the People’s Assembly of Apollonia. This remarkable document makes it clear that in the 2nd century BC — by the middle of the century at the latest — Anchialos was a heavily fortified site (a “phrourion”) with defensive walls, captured by neighbouring Mesambria. The navarch (admiral) Hegesagoras, son of Monimos, sent from Histria, attacked and during the battle destroyed the fortress walls of Anchialos, returning it to the hands of the Apollonians.
Strabo’s account is thus confirmed in a certain sense: the favourable position of Anchialos on the northern shore of Burgas Bay gave it such importance that Mesambria and Apollonia contested it by force of arms. It is hard to say more precisely what that importance consisted of — as the history of Apollonia shows, by the Hellenistic period it no longer played the major role it had held in the 5th–4th centuries.
Salt in the town’s name
Modern researchers have repeatedly pointed to salt production as the reason for the interest of Apollonia or Mesambria in Anchialos. The explanation of the name is usually based on salt production too: from the Greek “anchi-” — near, and “als-” — salt, that is, “a settlement located near the place where salt is produced” — “Salt Pans”, “Saltworks”, “Salt Town”. The possibility of “a settlement near the sea” is overlooked, from “als-” — sea, rarely used outside poetry. It is precisely from there that the new name came in 1934 — Pomorie.
Curiously, scholarship has not a single record of salt production in Anchialos right up to the Middle Ages. If the settlement’s greatest asset had truly been salt, this would hardly have escaped the notice of the ancient authors — as indeed happened later, in the Middle Ages. Today the old tradition lives on in the Salt Museum and in the salt pans, the source of Black Sea lye.
The salt pans and the town of Anchialos, 1907 (public domain)
Where was the earliest settlement?
No traces of the earliest fortress of Anchialos have been found to date. Folk tradition and archaeological research suggest that the remains of an old settlement lie at the edge of the Pomorie plain, beyond the peninsula, in the locality of Paleokastro (from the Greek “palaios” — old, ancient, and “kastro(n)” — fortress), which today is a quarter of the town. However, the long years of observation and the excavations conducted since 1966 have revealed no settlement there from that early period — the remains date from a much later time, when these lands formed part of the Roman Empire.
The scant archaeological material sheds no further light either. Early finds have been made in various places and on various occasions: underwater surveys in the bay in front of the present-day town have yielded stone anchors from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, stone and lead anchor stocks used in navigation from the end of the 7th century to the end of the 1st millennium BC, amphorae from the 4th–3rd century BC and others.
The fate of the settlement during the turbulent 1st century BC is likewise unclear, when the coast fell within the campaigns of the Roman commanders Marcus Lucullus (the winter of 72/71 BC, when Apollonia was conquered, burned and plundered), Gaius Antonius Hybrida (62/61 BC) and Marcus Licinius Crassus (29/28 BC), after which the coast passed definitively under Roman rule.
The fortress wall, destroyed in the war between Mesambria and Apollonia, was rebuilt. When, in AD 9, on his way to exile in Tomis (present-day Constanța), Ovid — one of the three great poets of the “Golden Age of Roman poetry” — sailed past Anchialos, he noted it as a settlement with a fortress wall. Clearly, the “little town” continued to be one of the significant settlements on the Western Pontic coast.
A Thracian town under a Greek name
During the first decades of the 1st century AD Anchialos was the centre of a strategia — a fact attested by several inscriptions, which casts its early history in a different light. The system of strategiai was probably introduced into the administration of Thrace as early as the Hellenistic period, and by the middle and second half of the 1st century BC it certainly existed. When the Romans turned Thrace into a province, it was divided into some 50 strategiai.
The conquest of Thrace itself was a long and painful process. The last independent Thracian kingdom retained its independence in a friendly alliance with Rome as a vassal state. In this final period (11 BC – AD 45) it covered a broad territory — from the Sea of Marmara along the Maritsa to the Struma and along the Black Sea coast to the Danube — and preserved the old division into strategiai, whose bounds also included the Black Sea towns.
From this period comes the record of a strategos of Anchialos named Apollonius, son of Eptaikent, known from a series of inscriptions from Anchialos itself and from places both nearer and further afield. He came from the ancient Thracian city of Bizye (today Vize, not far from Edirne) — capital of the last Thracian dynasty of Rhoemetalces I. He took the Greek name Apollonius, but his father retained the Thracian name Eptaikentos; his wife also bore a Greek name — Leonto, but her father bore the Thracian name Aulouzenes, a family also known from another inscription from Anchialos. It may therefore be assumed that the son of the Thracian from Bizye became the son-in-law of the Anchialos family of Aulouzenes and was thus accepted as strategos of the Anchialos region.
The choice of Anchialos as the centre of a strategia within the Thracian kingdom seems odd at first glance — a Greek town, according to Strabo, serving as the seat of a Thracian regional governor. No other such case is known in the Thracian state. Evidently Anchialos was a stronghold of the Thracian rulers because of the significant Thracian element within it.
The Thracian population remained a distinctive feature of the town later on as well, when it was already Roman — the early Byzantine historian Procopius (6th century) expressly emphasises: “Thracians inhabit a coastal town on the Euxine Pontus, named Anchialos.” The numerous Thracian mounds in the immediate vicinity of the old town, within the territory of the urban necropolis, leave no doubt as to the Thracian identity of the population. Beneath the embankment of one such mound lies the famous Pomorie Tomb — in fact a Thracian heroon of a later date.
Dating from the time of the strategos Apollonius or a little later are three Thracian burial mounds, excavated in the third quarter of the last century, containing exceptionally rich grave goods. In one of them a burial of a wealthy Thracian woman with many gold ornaments was discovered; on one of them her name was engraved — Leseskepra. The cult objects accompanying her into the afterlife show that the old Thracian traditions were preserved among the Thracian aristocracy of Anchialos.
It thus becomes clear that Anchialos had a different origin — a Thracian settlement, probably later ceded to the territory of Apollonia. Another explanation of the name also points to its Thracian character: from the Thracian (or pre-Greek Thracian) “Akhelon”, from “akhel” — water, as the nearby river Acheloy was called, later altered through assimilation to the Greek Anchialos. What the layout of the settlement was in this early period can for now only be guessed at — and new discoveries awaited.
Ulpia Anchialos — the largest Roman port of Thrace
The site of the town — the seat of Apollonius — is still unknown. In AD 45 the Romans put an end to the independence of the Thracian kingdom and turned it into a province headed by a Roman governor. The Thracian aristocracy adapted and was drawn into the administration of both the province and the settlement. Granted autonomy, Anchialos was proclaimed a city under Emperor Trajan (AD 98–117), together with four other old Thracian settlements — Serdica (Sofia), Pautalia (Kyustendil), Nicopolis ad Nestum (near Gotse Delchev) and Topirus (today in ruins at the mouth of the Mesta). Trajan’s act legitimised a process that had already taken shape in the preceding era. The new cities received the right and the obligation to bear the emperor’s family name — Ulpia.
The city was granted the same constitution as the other West Pontic cities: all free citizens sat in the Popular Assembly (Demos), which elected the governing Council (Boule). Anchialos was also given its own territory, which after Emperor Hadrian bordered to the west on the territory of Augusta Traiana (Stara Zagora) and reached the Tundzha River, to the north on Mesambria, and to the south extended to the southern shore of today’s Burgas Lake, where the territory of Deultum (present-day Debelt) began. This extensive territory set Anchialos apart from the other western Black Sea cities, whose lands diminished during Roman times.
After being proclaimed a city, Anchialos was laid out on a generous scale, like the other Roman cities, following the so-called Hippodamian plan. The backbone of the layout was formed by the two main streets — the cardo maximus (north–south) and the decumanus maximus (east–west) — with narrower streets running parallel to them.
Roman Anchialos stood at the edge of today’s Pomorie plain, outside the peninsula, some 3 km west-north-west of the centre of the modern town, in the locality of Paleokastro. Excavations and geophysical surveys show that the city occupied an area bounded to the east and north by the Salt Lake, to the west roughly by the junction of the Pomorie – Sunny Beach and Burgas – Sunny Beach roads, and to the south by the line between St George’s Monastery and the sea. Anchialos covered over 120 hectares — the largest city by area from the Roman period in ancient Thrace.
The city was encircled by a solid fortress wall, with gates at the four ends of the two main streets. Judging by one coin issue, a statue of the sea god Poseidon stood above the gate leading to the harbour — upright, holding a trident in one hand and a hippocampus (a mythical creature, half horse, half fish) in the other: the so-called Poseidon Propylaios, protector of the gates. Water was brought from far away — from the springs near the present-day village of Rudnik — along a masonry aqueduct.
The necropolis lay outside the walls. So far it can best be traced to the north-west and west, on the high plateau, where the numerous Thracian burial mounds are also to be found — evidence of the active involvement of wealthy Thracians in the political, economic and cultural life of the city. Traces of burial mounds greatly flattened by ploughing can also be seen north of Paleokastro, beside the road to Sunny Beach.
Anchialos was adorned with statues of deities and deified emperors — the coins point to statues of Poseidon, Hades-Sarapis and Concordia. The city also erected statues of the emperors Caracalla and Alexander Severus, probably in honour of their visits.
In the 2nd–3rd centuries Anchialos enjoyed great prosperity, thanks to its convenient harbour and its position at the crossroads of the routes linking Thrace with Moesia along the coast and the interior with the sea. Its harbour was the largest import and export point in the province of Thrace and supplied the Roman armies during Trajan’s eastern trans-Balkan campaigns. Its importance was emphasised time and again on the city’s coinage.
The city reached a particular peak under the Severan dynasty. Probably in honour of the visit of Emperor Septimius Severus (around AD 209–211), festivities were organised that are recorded on several coin issues as “Severeia Nymphia” — athletic games modelled on the famous Pythian Games at Delphi. They were held periodically and probably continued right up to the reign of Emperor Gordian III (AD 238–244). Their staging implies a stadium, which has yet to be discovered.
The name “Nymphia” was no accident — it comes from the great reverence shown in Anchialos to the nymphs, personifications of springs, forests and mountains. The Three Nymphs, patronesses of mineral springs, were especially venerated. The territory of Anchialos included Aquae Calidae, famous in antiquity (today the Burgas mineral baths), then also known as the Anchialos Baths; it seems the sanctuary of the Three Nymphs stood at the baths themselves. Agriculture and viticulture held an important place in the local economy — even then the people of Anchialos were renowned as fine vine growers and winemakers, a reputation that stays with them to this day.
Goths, Avars and emperors
The city’s peaceful life continued until the middle of the 3rd century. From then on, great masses of Goths, Sarmatians and Carpi began to cross south of the Danube. In AD 250 the Goths passed through Thrace and laid siege to Philippopolis (Plovdiv); in 254 and 255 Goths, Carpi and Burgundians again crossed south of the Haemus; in 257–258 Tervingi and Carpi sailed along the western coast of the Black Sea and reached as far as Asia Minor. According to one account, the Goths attacked Anchialos — probably in 270 — and “swiftly took it”. They remained there “many days and enjoyed the baths of hot water, which lie at the twelfth milestone from the city of Anchialos and gush forth from the depths of their fiery spring”.
The exact fate of Anchialos at that time is unknown, but nearly thirty years of northern peoples marching through Moesia and Thrace brought about major economic, political and cultural changes, which found expression in the reforms of Emperor Diocletian. There is a record that Diocletian visited Anchialos and stayed there from 28 to 30 October AD 294.
With the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine the Great, Anchialos became part of the new province of Haemimontus, with Adrianople (today Edirne) as its capital, and played a significant role within it. After the capital was moved to Constantinople, the city became important for supplying it with food and occupied a key place in the struggles of the Eastern Roman Empire against the peoples from the north. The 5th and 6th centuries brought a succession of events that did not pass Anchialos by:
- AD 476 — the Gothic leader Theodoric set out from Marcianopolis, crossed the Haemus (the Balkan Range) and Anchialos, and headed for Adrianople.
- AD 513–515 — the senior Byzantine commander Vitalian the Thracian rose in revolt against Emperor Anastasius, briefly subdued the Black Sea coast and captured Odessos (Varna) and Anchialos. Some 200 ships from the harbours of Odessos, Anchialos and Sozopol took part in the operations against Constantinople. The revolt lasted until 515, when the defeated Vitalian withdrew to Anchialos.
- 584 AD — during the great invasion of the Avars and Slavs, many towns in the interior of the peninsula were captured, Anchialos among them. The walls of the fortress were destroyed and the town and its surroundings laid waste. The Avar khagan Bayan, however, ordered that the walls of the Anchialos baths be spared and made Anchialos his residence for several months. It was here that he concluded yet another peace with the Byzantine emperor in return for a tribute of 100,000 gold coins.
- 585 AD — the Byzantine commander Comentiolus assembled an army at Anchialos and formed three detachments for the war against the Avars and the Slavs.
- 591 AD — Emperor Maurice, preparing for a campaign, reached Anchialos and spent around 15 days here.
Anchialos between Bulgaria and Byzantium
After the founding of the Bulgarian state in 681 AD, the role of Anchialos as an intermediate hub in relations between Byzantium and Bulgaria grew:
- 708 AD — Emperor Justinian II broke the peace concluded three years earlier with Khan Tervel and set out by land and sea against the young Bulgarian state. He reached Anchialos, anchored his fleet and encamped his cavalry in the plain. The Bulgarians attacked and routed the Byzantines. The emperor took refuge behind the fortress walls and, after three days, hamstrung his horses and sailed secretly back to Constantinople.
- 30 June 763 AD — before the walls of Anchialos the Bulgarian forces led by Khan Teletz suffered a defeat; Emperor Constantine V Copronymus celebrated the victory with a great triumph.
- 21 June 766 AD — the same Constantine V organised a new campaign and sent 2,600 heavy warships (chelandia) with an enormous army towards Anchialos. As they anchored, a storm broke out, a large number of the ships sank and most of the soldiers drowned. On 17 July the emperor was forced to return to the capital. Finding the remains of this vast flotilla is a temptation for any underwater archaeologist.
- May 783 AD — the Byzantine empress Irene, regent for the underage Constantine VI, made a demonstrative progress through Thrace and rebuilt Anchialos, which had been destroyed in the earlier battles.
- 812 AD — for the first time Anchialos, together with the other southern Black Sea towns, passed into Bulgarian hands under Khan Krum. It was probably then that it received the proto-Bulgarian name Tuthon, which never took hold. Krum settled a considerable number of Slavs and proto-Bulgarians in the town. Byzantium regained this part of the coast in 864 AD.
- 20 August 917 AD — the great battle between the Bulgarians led by Tsar Simeon and the Byzantines under commander-in-chief Leo Phokas, fought in the plain before Anchialos. The Byzantines suffered a catastrophic defeat, and the commander himself barely escaped behind the walls of the Nesebar fortress.
These events demonstrate the great importance of the Anchialos fortress for supremacy along the Black Sea coast and in the interior of the country during the early Middle Ages (7th–10th centuries).
After 971 AD, when Bulgaria was conquered by Byzantium, Anchialos once again became Byzantine. For two centuries the town remained a Byzantine possession, and its importance as a major port centre grew. After Bulgaria’s liberation the town continued to be a bone of contention, but its significance gradually gave way to that of neighbouring Nesebar. The constant change of rulers — the town passing temporarily into one set of hands and then another — had an adverse effect on its economic position. In October 1366 Anchialos, along with the other towns of the western Black Sea coast, fell into the hands of the Venetian knights of Amadeus VI of Savoy, allies of a weakened Byzantium.
To stand at the centre of these constant conflicts, Anchialos was heavily fortified. Where was the medieval town situated? It has been suggested that it was moved to the tip of the peninsula, where Pomorie stands today, during Irene’s fortification works in 783 AD. Observations to date, however, do not confirm this — the settlement most likely moved onto the peninsula no earlier than after the 12th century. So far, traces of this new Anchialos exist only at the eastern end of the peninsula: the remains of fortress walls from the 13th–14th centuries beneath the so-called Yavorov Rocks.
The last refuge of Byzantium
And so the Black Sea towns south of the Haemus awaited the first appearance of the Ottoman conquerors in October 1396. For half a century Anchialos passed alternately into Byzantine and Turkish hands, until in 1453, with the capture of Constantinople, it finally fell under Ottoman rule.
The town became the centre of a kaza (district) with three nahiyas — those of Anchialos, Sozopol and Ahtopol — and grew into the largest administrative centre in south-eastern Bulgaria. Within these boundaries, together with the Karnobat region, Anchialos also became the seat of a large diocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Its importance as an economic, administrative and cultural centre remained unchanged right up to the beginning of the 19th century.
After the fall of Constantinople, Anchialos became the last refuge of a number of representatives of the Byzantine aristocracy — the Palaiologos, Doukas, Kantakouzenos, Chrysoverges, Vatatzes and other families. Some of them, such as Michael Kantakouzenos, played a major part in the economic and cultural flourishing of the Black Sea town.
Source: pomorietown.wordpress.com
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