Pomorie – Ancient Anchialos
The modern 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 the Bay of Burgas, at coordinates 42033′ north latitude and 27039′ east longitude. To the south, east and north-east the town is surrounded by the sea, and to the north by the Salt Lake, being connected only from the west–north-west, by a narrow isthmus very often flooded by the sea, with the broad Pomorie plain. Over the millennia the configuration of the terrain has changed, and for this reason the settlement has also shifted its location. Today the modern town of Burgas lies 20 km to the south, and 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, respectively, Nesebar to the north and Sozopol to the south. Until 14 August 1934 the town bore the ancient name of Anchialos, when by a special ministerial decree it was renamed Pomorie. 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) that the silence was broken, when he noted that “after [след Месамбрия] comes Anchialos, a small town [полихнион] of the Apollonians”. This brief text has been interpreted by all researchers to mean that Anchialos was founded as a colony of Apollonia (Sozopol) with the aim of establishing full control over the Bay of Burgas and its adjoining territory, of holding the salt pans, and of countering the influence of neighbouring Mesambria. Accepting this account without reservation, modern researchers had to seek a plausible date for the founding of the “small town of the Apollonians”. And since, by the time Strabo wrote his “Geography” (around 7 BC), Apollonia was already in considerable decline and could no longer found colonies of its own, it was natural to look for an earlier date for the establishment of the settlement – the 5th or 4th century, the period of its greatest flourishing. In this way Anchialos entered scholarship as a satellite within the system of Greek colonies whose orbit stretched along the entire length of the Black Sea coast. For a long time this claim was nothing more than a tempting hypothesis, exploited to varying degrees by the modern champions of ancient Apollonia, since for decades the old town remained silent, offering nothing to confirm its supposedly ancient existence.
In 1960, during excavations in the ancient city of Histria (on the Romanian Black Sea coast, near the mouth of the Danube), a large marble slab was discovered bearing, in forty lines, a preserved Decree of the People’s Assembly of Apollonia. This exceptionally interesting document makes it clear that in the 2nd century BC – and in any case in the middle of that century, the latest date to which the inscription can be assigned – Anchialos was a heavily fortified place [„фрурион“], with fortress walls, which had been seized by neighbouring Mesambria (present-day Nesebar), and that the navarch (admiral) Hegesagoras, son of Monimos, sent by Histria, had to attack it and, in the course of the battle, destroy the fortress walls of Anchialos, returning it once more into the hands of the Apollonians. In this way Strabo’s account is in a sense confirmed: the favourable geographical position of Anchialos on the northern shore of the present-day Bay of Burgas gave it exceptional importance, sufficient for Mesambria and Apollonia to dispute it at the price of armed conflict. It is difficult to define more precisely in what this importance of Anchialos consisted. As the history of Apollonia shows, during the Hellenistic period the city no longer played the major role in the life of the coast that it had held in the earlier period (5th–4th century).
Salt production has repeatedly been cited by modern researchers of the earliest history of Anchialos as an argument for the interest shown by Apollonia, or indeed by Mesambria. Salt production is usually placed at the heart of the explanation of the settlement’s name – Anchialos, from the Greek ‘anchi-’ = near, close by, and ‘hals-’ = salt, hence Anchialos – a settlement situated close to a place where salt is produced, ‘Salt Pans’, ‘Salt Grounds’, ‘Saltworks’ – while overlooking the possibility of a settlement situated close to the sea, from the rarely used poetic ‘hals-’ = ‘sea’, on the basis of which in 1934 the town was renamed Pomorie. What is strange in this case is that scholarship has not a single piece of evidence for salt production at Anchialos right up to the medieval period. If the exceptional value of the settlement had really lain in salt production, this would hardly have gone unremarked by the ancient authors, as it later would for the Middle Ages. To date, no traces of this earliest fortress of Anchialos have been found. Both popular tradition and archaeological research indicate that the remains of an old settlement lie at the beginning of the present-day Pomorie plain, beyond the peninsula, in the locality of Palaeokastro [от гръцкото ‘Палайос’ – стар, древен, някогашен и ‘кастро(н)’ – крепост], where a district of the town now stands. However, the long-running observations and the archaeological excavations carried out from 1966 onwards have so far shown no evidence of a settlement from that early period at this site. The remains date from a considerably later time, when these lands would come within the bounds of the Roman Empire.
The scant archaeological material adds nothing substantial regarding the location of the early settlement. Genuinely early finds have been made in various places and on various occasions: in the bay in front of the present-day town, underwater archaeological surveys have brought to light stone anchors from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, stone and lead anchor stocks of the type used in seafaring from the end of the 7th century to the end of the 1st millennium BC, amphorae from the 4th–3rd centuries, and so on. What was the fate of the early settlement during the turbulent times of the 1st century BC, when the coast was drawn into the campaigns of the Roman generals Marcus Lucullus (in the winter of 72/71), during which Apollonia was captured, burned and plundered, of Gaius Antonius Hybrida in 62/61, and of Marcus Licinius Crassus in 29/28, when the coast was finally brought under Roman rule?
The fortress wall, destroyed during the war between Mesembria and Apollonia, was rebuilt, for when in AD 9, on his way to exile in Tomis (today Constanța in Romania), Ovid, one of the three great poets of the “Age of Augustus” or the “Golden Age of Roman poetry”, sailed past Anchialos, he noted it as a settlement with a fortress wall. It is clear that the fortifications of Anchialos had been raised once more and that the “little town” continued to be one of the significant settlements on the Western Pontic coast. For during the first decades of the 1st century AD we find it functioning as the centre of a strategia. This fact, attested by several inscriptions, is highly interesting and presents the early history of Anchialos in a rather different light. The system of strategiai was probably introduced into the administration of ancient Thrace as early as the Hellenistic period. By the middle and second half of the 1st century BC they most certainly existed. When the Romans conquered Thrace and turned the Thracian kingdom into a Roman province, the latter was divided into some 50 strategiai. The Roman conquest of Thrace itself was a long and painful process. In the end, the last independent Thracian kingdom managed to preserve its independence by remaining in friendly alliance with Rome, becoming a vassal state. In this final period of its existence (11 BC – AD 45) the Thracian kingdom encompassed a broad territory stretching from the Sea of Marmara along the Maritsa to the Struma and along the Black Sea coast as far as the Danube. In administrative terms it retained the old division into strategiai, whose boundaries also included the Black Sea towns. From this period comes the record of a strategos of Anchialos by the name of Apollonius, son of Eptaikentos. We know his name from a series of inscriptions found both in Anchialos itself and in nearer or more distant regions. Two facts here are of particular interest: the strategos Apollonius, son of Eptaikentos, came from the ancient Thracian town of Bizye (today Vize, not far from Adrianople) – capital of the last Thracian dynasty, that of Rhoemetalces I. He had adopted the Greek name Apollonius, but his father retained the Thracian name Eptaikentos; his wife had likewise adopted a Greek name, Leonto, but her father bore the Thracian name Aulouzenes – a family known to us from another inscription from Anchialos. With a degree of conjecture it may therefore be assumed that the son of the Thracian Eptaikentos of Bizye became the son-in-law of the Aulouzenes family of Anchialos and in this way was accepted as strategos of the Anchialos district. The existence of a strategia with its centre at Anchialos is exceptionally interesting. The choice of Anchialos as the centre of a strategia within the Thracian kingdom of the dynasty of Rhoemetalces appears at first glance rather strange – a Greek town, as it is presented to us in Strabo’s account, serving as the seat of a Thracian provincial governor. We know of no other such case in the Thracian state.
Clearly, Anchialos served as a stronghold of the Thracian rulers thanks to the substantial Thracian element that populated it. The presence of Thracians in this coastal town remained its distinguishing feature in the later period as well, when Anchialos had been turned into a Roman town, so much so that it was expressly emphasised by the early Byzantine historian Procopius (6th century AD): “Thracians inhabit a coastal town on the Euxine Pontus, by the name of Anchialos.” The numerous Thracian burial mounds situated in the immediate vicinity of the old town, forming part of the territory of its necropolis, leave no doubt whatsoever as to the Thracian identity of its population. Beneath the mound of one such tumulus lies the celebrated Pomorie tomb, which is in fact a Thracian heroon of a later date. Three Thracian burial mounds, excavated during the third quarter of the last century and containing exceptionally rich grave goods, date from the time of the strategos Apollonius, son of Eptaikentos, or slightly later. In one of the mounds the burial of a wealthy Thracian woman was found, with a great deal of gold jewellery. On one of the ornaments the name of its owner is engraved – Leseskepra. The cult objects that accompanied her into the afterlife show that the old Thracian traditions were preserved among the Thracian aristocracy of Anchialos.
It becomes clear that Anchialos had a somewhat different origin – a Thracian settlement which was probably ceded to the territory of Apollonia. The Thracian character of the settlement is also suggested by another explanation of the origin of its name: from the Thracian (or pre-Greek Thracian) ‘Akhelon’, from ‘akhel – water’, which was the name of the nearby river Achelos, Achelon, later altered through association with the Greek Anchialos. What the layout of the settlement was during this early period we can only guess at, while awaiting new discoveries to shed the necessary light. The location of the town that served as the seat of Apollonius Eptaikentos remains unknown to us to this day. The Romans put an end to the independence of the Thracian kingdom and in AD 45 turned it into a Roman province headed by a Roman provincial governor. The ruling Thracian aristocracy adapted to the new situation and was drawn into the administration both of the province and of the settlement. Having been granted autonomy, Anchialos was proclaimed a city in the time of the Roman emperor Trajan (98 – 117), together with four other old Thracian settlements – Serdica (Sofia), Pautalia (Kyustendil), Nicopolis ad Nestum (near the town of Gotse Delchev) and Topeiros (now in ruins by the mouth of the Mesta). Trajan’s act in fact gave legal form to a process that had already taken shape in the preceding era. The newly recognised cities acquired the right and the obligation to bear the family name of the emperor – Ulpia.
The city was given the same organisation as the other West Pontic cities – all free citizens belonged to the People’s Assembly (Demos), which elected the governing body, the Council (Boule). Anchialos received its own territory, which after the time of the emperor Hadrian bordered to the west on the territory of Augusta Traiana (Stara Zagora) and reached the river Tundzha; to the north it bordered on the territory of Mesambria, and to the south it extended to the southern shore of what is now Burgas Lake, where the territory of the city of Deultum (now the village of Debelt, Burgas district) began. This extensive territory sets Anchialos significantly apart from the other West Black Sea cities, whose territories shrank during the period of Roman rule. After Trajan proclaimed it a city, Anchialos was laid out on a generous scale, like other Roman cities, according to the so-called “Hippodamian system”. The backbone of the city’s plan consisted of the two main streets – the “cardo maximus”, running north-south, and the “decumanus maximus”, running east-west. The remaining, narrower streets were laid out parallel to these two main thoroughfares.
Roman Anchialos was situated at the beginning of the present-day Pomorie plain, outside the peninsula, some 3 km west-north-west of the centre of the modern town of Pomorie, in the locality of Paleokastro. Many years of observation and archaeological excavations, combined with geophysical surveys, show that the Roman city occupied an area now bounded to the east and north by the Salt Lake, to the west roughly by the corner formed by the Pomorie–Sunny Beach and Burgas–Sunny Beach roads, and to the south by the line running from the monastery of St George to the sea. Within this territory Anchialos covered an area of more than 120 hectares, making it the largest city by area of the Roman period in ancient Thrace. The city was encircled by a sturdy fortress wall. The city gates were built at the four ends of the two main streets. As can be judged from one coin issue, a statue of the sea god Poseidon was placed above the gate leading to the harbour, standing upright, with a trident in one hand and a hippocampus in the other (a mythical creature – half horse, half fish). This is the so-called Poseidon Propylaios – guardian of the gates.
The city had a water supply, with water brought from afar (from the springs around the village of Rudnik) by means of a masonry aqueduct. The city’s necropolis lay outside the fortress walls. For the time being it can best be traced on the north-western and western sides, laid out on the high plateau. Here too are the numerous Thracian burial mounds, an indication of the active involvement of representatives of the wealthy stratum of the ancient Thracians in the political, economic and cultural life of the city. Traces of Thracian burial mounds, now greatly flattened as a result of constant ploughing, can also be seen to the north of
Paleokastro, immediately beside the road to Sunny Beach. Anchialos was adorned with statues of deities and deified emperors. Judging by the coins, these were statues of Poseidon, of Hades-Sarapis and of Concordia. The city erected statues of the emperors Caracalla and Alexander Severus, probably in honour of their visit to Anchialos.
All the evidence available to us so far shows that in the 2nd – 3rd centuries Anchialos enjoyed considerable prosperity. This was due both to its convenient harbour and to the city’s position at the crossroads of several routes linking Thrace with Moesia along the coast, as well as the interior with the sea.
The harbour of Anchialos was the largest import and export point of the Roman province of Thrace. It was also used to supply the Roman armies during the eastern trans-Balkan expeditions of the emperor Trajan. Its importance is emphasised again and again on the city’s coins.
The city reached considerable economic and cultural development during the time of the Severans. Probably in honour of the visit of the emperor Septimius Severus (around 209 – 211), the city organised special festivities, recorded on several coin issues as “SEVERIA NYMPHIA”. These were athletic competitions, organised in the manner of the world-famous Pythian Games at Delphi and a number of others. Such festivities were repeated periodically every few years. There are good grounds for believing that these games in Anchialos continued to be held right up to the time of the emperor Gordian III (235 – 238). The holding of these athletic competitions also implies the existence of a stadium, the discovery of which is still to be expected.
The name “Nymphia” is no accident. It stems from the great reverence shown in Anchialos for the nymphs – female deities, personifications of the springs, forests and mountains. In this case the Three Nymphs were venerated – patronesses of the mineral springs. The territory of Anchialos included the famous ancient Aquae Calidae (now the Burgas mineral baths), which at that time were also known as the Anchialos Baths. Everything suggests that the sanctuary of the Three Nymphs itself stood by the baths. Agriculture and viticulture occupied an important place in the livelihood of the population. Even in those distant times the people of Anchialos were renowned as fine vine-growers and winemakers – a reputation that accompanies the town’s inhabitants to this day. It appears that the town’s peaceful life continued until the middle of the 111 c. From the middle of the 111 c. onwards, considerable masses of Goths, Sarmatians and Carpi began crossing to the south of the Danube. In 250 large Gothic forces passed through Thrace and laid siege to Philippopolis (Plovdiv). In 254 and 255 Goths, Carpi and Burgundians once again crossed south of the Haemus. In 257–258 Tervingi and Carpi moved by sea 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 delighted in the baths of warm water, which lay at the twelfth milestone from the town of Anchialos and gush forth from the depths of their fiery spring”.
The exact fate of Anchialos is unknown. Yet it is evident that the numerous incursions of northern peoples into Moesia and Thrace over some 30 years brought about considerable economic, political and cultural change. These found expression in the reforms undertaken by Emperor Diocletian. There is evidence that Emperor Diocletian visited Anchialos and stayed there from 28 to 30 October 294.
Following the reforms begun by Diocletian and continued by Constantine the Great, an administrative and military reorganisation was carried out. Anchialos now became part of the newly formed province of Haemimontus, with Adrianopolis (present-day Edirne) as its principal city, and played a significant role within it. From then on, and especially after the transfer of the Empire’s capital to Constantinople, Anchialos began to play a major part in supplying the new capital with food. It would also take a central place in the struggles of the Eastern Roman Empire against the peoples invading from the north. A succession of events characterises the V and VI centuries, and their course did not pass Anchialos by.
In 476 the Gothic leader Theodoric set out with his troops from Marcianopolis, crossed the Haemus (the Balkan Mountains) and Anchialos, and headed for Adrianople.
In 513 the senior Byzantine commander Vitalian the Thracian raised a revolt against the Byzantine emperor Anastasius, managing within a short time to subdue the Black Sea coast and capture Odessos (Varna) and Anchialos. Around 200 ships from the ports of Odessos, Anchialos and Sozopol took part in the military operations against Constantinople. The revolt lasted until 515, when Vitalian was defeated and withdrew to Anchialos. During the great invasion of Avars and Slavs in 584, many towns in the interior of the Balkan Peninsula were captured, among them Anchialos. They tore down the walls of the Anchialos fortress and devastated and plundered the town itself and its surroundings. It was then that the Avar khagan Bayan ordered that the walls of the Anchialos Baths should not be destroyed, making Anchialos his residence for several months. Here he concluded yet another peace with the Byzantine emperor in return for a tribute of 100 000 gold coins.
Anchialos was once again at the centre of the Byzantine army’s preparations against the “barbarians” from the north in 585, when the Byzantine commander Comentiolus assembled an army there and formed three detachments for the war against the Avars and Slavs, and again in 591, when the Byzantine emperor Maurice prepared a campaign towards Anchialos, where he spent about 15 days.
This series of events did not cease even after the founding of the Bulgarian state in 681, when the role of Anchialos as an intermediate hub in relations between Byzantium and Bulgaria grew. Thus in 708 the Byzantine emperor Justinian II set out by land and sea against the young Bulgarian state, breaking the peace treaty concluded three years earlier with the Bulgarian Khan Tervel. He reached Anchialos, anchored his fleet and encamped his cavalry detachments in the plain of Anchialos. The Bulgarians attacked and routed the Byzantines. The emperor himself took refuge behind the fortress walls of Anchialos and, after a three-day stay, cut the hamstrings of his horses and secretly sailed off to Constantinople.
On 30 June 763, before the walls of Anchialos, the Bulgarian forces led by Khan Telets suffered defeat. The Byzantine emperor Constantine V Copronymus celebrated the victory with a great triumph. On 21 June 766 the same Constantine V organised a new campaign against the Bulgarians and dispatched 2600 heavy warships (chelandia) to Anchialos, laden with an enormous army. As the ships were dropping anchor a storm broke out and a large part of them sank, with most of the soldiers drowning. For this reason, on 17 July 766, the emperor was forced to return to the capital. Discovering the remains of this vast fleet is a temptation for any underwater archaeologist.
In May 783 the Byzantine empress Irene, guardian of her under-age son Constantine VI, made a demonstrative passage through Thrace. It was then that Anchialos, destroyed in the earlier battles, was rebuilt.
Anchialos, together with the other towns of the southern Black Sea coast, passed into Bulgarian hands for the first time in 812, during the reign of the Bulgarian Khan Krum. It is highly likely that it was then given the proto-Bulgarian name Tuthon, which never took hold. At that time Krum also settled a considerable number of Slavs and proto-Bulgarians in Anchialos. The Byzantine Empire managed to regain this part of the coast in 864. This chronological list could go on. Of particular note is the great battle between the Bulgarians, led by Tsar Simeon, and the Byzantines, led by their commander-in-chief Leo Phokas, on 20 August 917 on the plain before Anchialos. The Byzantines suffered a catastrophic defeat and the commander-in-chief himself barely managed to escape behind the walls of the Nesebar fortress. All these events demonstrate the great importance of the Anchialos fortress in the struggle for supremacy along the Black Sea coast and in the interior of the country during the Early Middle Ages (7th – 10th centuries).
Anchialos passed back into Byzantine hands after 971, when Bulgaria was conquered by Byzantium. For two centuries the town remained a Byzantine possession and its importance as a major port centre grew. After Bulgaria’s liberation from the Byzantines, the town continued to be one of the “bones of contention”, yet its importance seems to have begun to decline in favour of neighbouring Nesebar. The constant shifts of influence between Byzantines and Bulgarians continued, and the town would pass temporarily from one set of hands to the other, which ultimately had an adverse effect on its economic position.
In October 1366 Anchialos (like the other towns along the western Black Sea coast) fell into the hands of the Venetian knights of Amadeus VI of Savoy, who were acting in alliance with an already weakened Byzantium. It is clear that, to have stood at the centre of these constant conflicts and battles, Anchialos must have been heavily fortified. Where was the medieval town located? It has been suggested that this heavily fortified town was moved to the end of the peninsula, where the modern town of Pomorie stands, during Irene’s fortification works in 783. Observations to date, however, do not support such a suggestion. The settlement was most probably moved to the site of the modern town of Pomorie no earlier than after the 12th century. For now, traces of this new Anchialos survive only at the eastern end of the peninsula – remains of fortress walls from the 13th – 14th centuries, beneath the so-called Yavorov Rocks. Thus the Black Sea towns south of Haemus witnessed the first appearance of the Ottoman conquerors in October 1396. From then on, for half a century, Anchialos would pass now into Byzantine, now into Turkish hands, before being placed definitively under Ottoman rule in 1453, along with the conquest of the capital Constantinople.
The town now became the centre of a kaza (district) comprising three nahiyas – those of Anchialos, Sozopol and Ahtopol – which made it the largest administrative centre in south-eastern Bulgaria. Within these territorial boundaries, including the Karnobat region, Anchialos would also become the centre of a large diocese within the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This great importance of Anchialos as an economic, administrative and cultural centre remained unchanged right up to the beginning of the 19th century. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, Anchialos became the last refuge of a number of representatives of the Byzantine aristocracy on the eve of and after the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire: the Palaiologos, Doukas, Kantakouzenos, Chrysoverges, Vatatzes families and others. Some of them, such as Michael Kantakouzenos, would play a significant role in the economic and cultural prosperity of the Black Sea town.
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