Amastris
- a town in Paphlagonia, on the shore of the Pontus Euxinus, orig. called Sesamum, now Amasserah, Cat. 4, 13; Plin. 6, 2, 2, § 5; cf. Mann. Asia Minor, 3, 25 sq.
- —Hence, Ămastrĭă-cus, a, um, adj., of Amastris, Ov. Ib. 331.— Ămastrĭāni, ōrum, m., the inhabitants of Amastris, Plin. Ep. 10, 99.
AMASTRIS (Ἄμαστρις: Eth. Ἀμαστριανός, Amastrianus: Amasra, or Amasserah), a city of Paphlagonia, on a small river of the same name. Amastris occupied a peninsula, and on each side of the isthmus was a harbour (Strab. p. 544): it was 90 stadia east of the river Parthenius. The original city seems to have been called Sesamus or Sesamum, and it is mentioned by Homer (Hom. Il. 2.853) in conjunction with Cytorus. Stephanus (s. v. Ἄμαστρις says that it was originally called Cromna; but in another place (s. v. Κρῶμνα), where he repeats the statement, he adds, as it is said; but some say that Cromna is a small place in the territory of Amastris,w hich is the true account. The place derived its name Amastris from Amastris, the niece of the last Persian king Darius, who was the wife of Dionysius, tyrant of Heracleia, and after his death the wife of Lysimachus. Four places, Sesamus, Cytorus, Cromna, also mentioned in the Iliad (2.855), and Teion or Ties, were combined by Amastris, after her separation from Lysimachus (Memnon, ap. Phot. Cod. ccxxiv.), to form the new community of Amastris. Teion, says Strabo, soon detached itself from the community, but the rest kept together, and Sesamus was the acropolis of Amastris. From this it appears that Amastris was really a confederation or union of three places, and that Sesamus was the name of the city on the peninsula. This may explain the fact that Mela (1.19) mentions Sesamus and Cromna as cities of Paphlagonia, and does not mention Amastris. (Comp. Plin. Nat. 6.2.) There is a coin with the epigraph Sesamum. Those of Amastris have the epigraph Ἀμαστριάνων.
The territory of Amastris produced a great quantity of boxwood, which grew on Mount Cytorus. The town was taken by L. Lucullus in the Mithridatic war. (Appian. Mithrid. 82.) The younger Pliny, when he was governor of Bithynia and Pontus, describes Amastris, in a letter to Trajan (10.99), as a handsome city, with a very long open place (platea), on one side of which extended what was called a river, but in fact was a filthy, pestilent, open drain. Pliny obtained the emperor's permission to cover over this sewer. On a coin of the time of Trajan, Amastris has the title Metropolis. It continued to be a town of some note to the seventh century of our aera. COIN OF AMASTRIS.
[G.L](Ἄμαστρις). (1) The wife of Xerxes, and mother of Artaxerxes I. She was of a cruel and vindictive character. (Herod.vii. 61.)
(2) Also called Amastriné, niece of Darius, the last king of Persia. She married first Craterus; then Dionysius, tyrant of Heraclea in Bithynia, B.C. 322; and last Lysimachus, B.C. 302. She was drowned by her two sons about B.C. 288.
(3) A city on the coast of Paphlagonia, built by Amastris after her separation from Lysimachus.
Founded in the early 4th c. B.C. by Amastris, queen of Herakleia Pontica, by the synoecism of four small Ionian colonies on the coast E of Herakleia: (1) Tios, which soon seceded; (2) Sesamos, center of the new city, later named Amastris; (3) Kromna, 40 km to the E, on Zeytin Burnu, W of Kurucalile; and (4) Kytoros, now Gideriz, 25 km E of Kromna. Its tyrant Eumenes presented the city of Amastris to Ariobarzanes of Pontus in ca. 265-260 B.C. rather than submit it to domination by Herakleia, and it remained in the Pontic kingdom until its capture by Lucullus in 70 B.C.
The original nucleus of the city itself was a peninsula and adjacent island (now linked by bridge) on the W side of a sheltered bay which formed the main harbor. This part of the city is covered by Genoese fortifications and the modern Turkish town. In the Roman period Amastris also extended inland over the little valley behind this bay, and the suburbs covered some of the lower hills. Roman buildings can still be traced for 1.5 km inland from the sea. The most impressive are a temple, and a warehouse 115 m long and three stories high. Other buildings, no longer visible, were recorded in the mid 19th c. The stream, “nomine quidem flumen, re vera cloaca foedissima,” covered over by Pliny (Ep. 10.98), still runs beneath a Roman vault. Four ancient moles protect the main harbor. A lesser harbor W of the city provided refuge from E gales. Inscriptions and architectural fragments are housed in the municipal museum. Four km S-SW of Amasra, at Kuşkaya, the Roman road from Bartin (Parthenia) runs on a rock-cut terrace, with associated inscriptions and relief sculpture.
The site of Kromna is marked by occupation material but no surviving buildings. Construction of the harbor offices at Kurucaşile revealed columns which now adorn the administrative buildings at Bartin. At Kytoros the remains of impressive harbor buildings used to be indicated by columns along the seashore.
BIBLIOGRAPHYW. F. Ainsworth, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia (1842) I 54-58; X. Hommaire de Hell, Voyage en Turquie et en Perse (1860) IV 389-92; W. von Diest, “Von Pergamon über den Dindymos zum Pontus,” PM 20 (1889) 69-71P; E. Mendel, “Inscription de Kytoros,” BCH 26 (1902) 287-88; K. Lehmann-Hartleben, “Die antiken Hafenanlagen des Mittelmeeres,” Klio Suppl. 14 (=NF 1) (1923) 131-32, plan XX; A. Gökoğlu, Paphlagonia (1952) 23.
D. R. WILSON