KARKINITIS AND THE BAY OF KARKINITIS: TOWARDS AN EVALUATION OF THE CLASSICAL LITERARY TRADITION * VLADIMIR F. STOLBA Ancient Karkinitis (= Kerkinitis) numbers among the group of small Greek poleis on the north coast of the Black Sea, about which unusually meagre and fragmentary information is available in the Classical literary tradition. The information can be traced back to a variety of periods: as a rule, it is of a geographical character and provides no details of the city’s history. Yet even the few geographical details we have do not always provide us with a clear picture of the topography and hydrography of the area concerned. Attempts undertaken as far back as the 19 th century to locate Karkinitis on the basis of these meagre and, at first glance, contradictory data have given rise to considerable confusion. The existence of several variants of the toponym and also varying interpretations of the geographical landmarks cited in the sources have led scholars to look for two different cities with one and the same name: the first within the Crimea in the vicinity of modern Eupatoria (Κερκιν ιτις, Κορον ιτις) and the second beyond the isthmus of Perekop at the mouth of the Kalanchak River (Καρκιν ιτις, Carcine, Κ αρκινα). 1 Similarly, the well-known * The appearance of this article was to a large extent made possible by support from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation, the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and also the Research Support Scheme, to which I should like to express my profound gratitude. 1 For contributions to this discussion, see, for example: Friedländer 1845, 232-233; Spasskii 1850, 169-174; GGM I, 395-396; Koehne 1857, 107-109; Burachkov 1875, 119 ff.; Bonnel 1968, 100- 102; Oreshnikov 1892, 3-4; Oreshnikov 1915, 23-25; Danoff 1962, 1117 (cf. also 869-870 with a map-diagram of the Greek colonies on the Black Sea); Dovatur, Kallistov and Shishova 1982, 289 f., note 372; Kuklina 1985, 99-101; Kutaisov 1990, 6-11; Kutaisov 1992, 6-15. Most revealing in this connection is also the plotting of the city in the atlases of H. Kiepert, N. Hammond, and R. Talbert, see: Kiepert 1893, pl. II; Hammond 1981, pl. 8 Inset (in accordance with Kiepert’s data only Carcine is shown at the mouth of the River Kalanchak); Talbert 1991, 50 (along with Carcine near the Kalanchak River he also shows Kerkinitis [with a question mark] in the Crimea on the site of Eupatoria). A similar view is represented in the latest edition of the Atlas, see: Talbert 2000, map 23 G2-3, cf. also David Braund’s commentary on this map the Map-by-Map Directory to accompany the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World in Talbert 2000, vol. 1, 352: “The location of Karkinitis, Kerkinitis and Karkine constitutes an insoluble difficulty. The map follows the usual view that there was only one Karkinitis in the region (also known as Karkinitis), and that this is © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Ancient Civilizations 10, 1-2 Also available online – www.brill.nl