The Goths in the Black Sea and the Caucasus

In 137 CE, when the Roman legate Flavius Arrian set foot on the sandy mole of the military base of Sebastopolis, the Goths, one of the Germanic peoples, were beginning to make their presence increasingly felt on the historical stage of Europe. At that time, they lived in the Baltic region, having arrived there earlier from Scandinavia.

Uninvited Guests

In the first half of the third century CE, a Gothic wave swept across the vast territory between the Danube and the Don, eventually reaching the northern Black Sea coast.

A long series of Gothic raids on Roman possessions in Asia Minor and Colchis began. The historian Zosimus, writing in the second half of the fifth century, reported these events in his New History. In 253 CE, the Goths, whom he refers to as “Scythians”, “devastated the regions from Cappadocia, Pityus, and Ephesus”.

The rulers of the Bosporan Kingdom provided the Goths with ships, but after ferrying them across, they returned home. As the Goths began to ravage everything along their route, “the inhabitants of the Pontic coast” withdrew deep into Sanigia, where they took refuge in fortified places.

The Goths first attacked Pityus, “surrounded by an enormous wall and possessing a very convenient harbour”. The Roman garrison there was commanded by Succesianus, who repelled the Goths, inflicting heavy losses upon them near Pityus. The surviving Goths seized some foreign vessels and fled home. The coastal population, saved by the “skilful actions of Succesianus”, hoped that the Goths would never again dare to appear in their lands.

However, some time later, when Emperor Valerian (253–259 CE) recalled Succesianus and appointed him to a high court position, possibly as a reward for his victory, the Goths once again obtained ships from the Bosporans and reappeared off the coast of Colchis.

“Having retained the ships and not allowing the Bosporans, as before, to return home with them, they landed near Phasis, where, as they say, a sanctuary of Phasian Artemis had been built in the palace of Aeëtes. After making an unsuccessful attempt to seize the sanctuary, they marched straight on Pityus; taking the fortress without the slightest difficulty and slaughtering the garrison stationed there, they moved on.”

The same tragic fate befell Trapezus, whose soldiers were said to have been “given over daily to idleness and drunkenness”.

As archaeological confirmation of these events, among the coins discovered in the upper reaches of the Kelasuri River near Sukhum was a billon coin—a so-called “barbarian” (Gothic) imitation of a denarius of Marcus Aurelius. Three similar coins were also found in Pitsunda during archaeological excavations.

It is not impossible that the Sanigs, who possessed a deep-rooted tradition of maritime raiding inherited from the Heniochi, also took part in the devastating Gothic raids on the eastern and southern Black Sea coasts.

From Goths to Huns

In the third quarter of the third century, the Goths occupied Taurica (Crimea), but later concentrated only in its southern mountainous region, which became known as Gothia (the Tauric Goths). The Goths of the Azov region (Taman Peninsula) later became known as the Tetraxite Goths.

The Hunnic Wave

In 376 CE, a powerful Hunnic tide, originating in the distant Xiongnu world of northern China and Mongolia, later reinforced in the Ural region and the Pontic steppes by local Ugric and Sarmatian-Alan populations, flooded the vast Gothic territories. Thus began the era known as the Great Migration of Peoples.

Zosimus, and later the sixth-century Gothic historian Jordanes, recorded a legend about the first appearance of the Huns in Europe: a wounded stag showed hunters a ford across the Bosporus Strait, which the “horse-bound” Huns used to cross to the opposite shore. The Gothic king Ermanaric, revered by all the Germanic peoples, took his own life. The Visigoths largely fled into the Eastern Roman Empire, while the Ostrogoths remained under Hunnic domination and faithfully served their overlords until the death of Attila in 454 CE.

As a result of the Hunnic invasion—fortunately, the Caucasus Mountains shielded Abkhazia from it, the so-called Chernyakhov culture ceased to exist. Most scholars believe this culture lasted only two centuries (the third and fourth), corresponding chronologically to the existence of the Gothic tribal union in Eastern Europe. Likely emerging and disappearing together with the Goths, this culture united a diverse population within the Gothic alliance (Carpo-Dacians, Germanic groups, Sarmatian-Alans, Slavs, and others).

It is noteworthy that some of its iron smithing products (especially weapons), as well as bronze ornaments (fibulae, buckles), are typologically and technologically close to the synchronous assemblages of the Tsabal/Tsebelda (Apsilian) culture. This may indicate not only certain contacts between the Chernyakhov population and the ancient Abkhazians via the northern Black Sea region (along the Maeotian–Colchian route and by sea), but also the influence of the Roman cultural world, of which they formed a periphery. Moreover, burial grounds of both cultures contain graves with two different rites, inhumation and cremation, which may reflect their views of the afterlife.

Christianity, Goths, and Abkhazia

In 548 CE, in the twenty-first year of the reign of Justinian the Great, the Azov-region Tetraxite Goths, who bordered the Zichs, related to the ancient Abkhazians, learned that the emperor had appointed a bishop for the Abasgians. They therefore petitioned him to grant them a bishop as well. Their request was granted, and they received a bishop independent of Bosporus.

Speaking of Justinian, it should also be recalled that one of his famous commanders, Martin, distinguished himself in battles against the Goths for Rome (540 CE), against the Persians for Phasis (555 CE), and against the Misimians for Tsakhar (556 CE). Another commander, the Cappadocian John Dacicus, proved himself during the Gothic siege of Ariminum (538 CE) and later in the brutal suppression, under Martin’s command, of the Misimian uprising.

According to sixth-century sources, the “multi-ethnic” Byzantine armies (composed of mercenaries and allies) fighting against the Persians in Colchis included, alongside ancient Abkhazians and Kartvelians, Germanic groups (Goths, Vandals, Heruli, Gepids), Slavs, and others.

Further Connections

Church historians testify that the seeds of Christianity were brought to the Goths by captives from Cappadocia and Colchis during plundering maritime expeditions. It is possible that the first Christian community in the Caucasus already existed in Pityus at that time. Saint Basil the Great names one of these righteous men, Eutychius.

In 325 CE, Cadmus, Bishop of Bosporus, participated in the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea together with Stratophilus of Pityus and Domnus of Trapezus, where the dogmas of Christianity were established.

The origins of the Gothic diocese date back to the fourth century; “the path to it lay through Bosporus”. Its first representative was Unila, who received episcopal ordination from Patriarch John Chrysostom.

After Bishop Unila’s death, a Gothic prince appealed to Constantinople for the appointment of a new bishop. At that time (404 CE), John Chrysostom was in exile and, in a letter from Cucusus (Armenia) to Olympias, praised the deceased shepherd and asked that the appointment be delayed until his return. However, in mid-407 CE, the deposed patriarch died at Kaman/ai (near modern Sukhum) while en route to his final place of exile in Pityus. Thirty years later, the relics of John Chrysostom were transferred from Kaman, where a church dedicated to him now stands, to Constantinople.

If the Goths of Taurica maintained good relations with the patriarch, this suggests that they remained loyal to Orthodoxy at a time when the majority of their people adhered to Arianism, which had effectively become the national religion of the Germanic peoples.

The Gothic Diocese and Abkhazia

Information about the existence of the Gothic diocese in the eighth century and the fate of its bishop is preserved in the Life of Saint John of Gothia, written between 812 and 842 in Asia Minor. A native of Gothia, “from the market-town called Partenitai”, Saint John was originally from Asia Minor. When the population of Gothia refused to follow their bishop, who had sided with the iconoclasts at the council of 754, and that bishop received another see, John was sent to Jerusalem.

According to one view, on 26 May, after arriving in Pityus, he was ordained bishop by the Catholicos of Abkhazia, also named John. Pityus was the autocephalous church closest to Taurica that had not accepted the iconoclastic heresy, just as Gothia itself had not. At that time, the coastal part of Lazica (“Lower Iberia”) was fully incorporated into the Abkhazian principality of “King” David, son of Leon I, while in “Upper Iberia” (Georgia) Arab non-believers held sway (as recalled in the Martyrdom of Abo of Tbilisi), where episcopal ordinations were not permitted.

Around 787 CE, the population of Gothia rose up against the Khazars, led by Bishop John. The Goths succeeded in expelling the Khazar garrison from Doros, but soon afterwards treachery followed: the Khagan regained control of Doros and other mountain passes (clisurae), capturing both the bishop and the prince of Gothia. The prince’s life was spared, though “seventeen of his innocent servants” were executed, while Bishop John was imprisoned in the fortress of Fullae. He later escaped, crossed the sea to Amastris, and died there four years later. His body was immediately transferred to Partenitai and buried in the church of the Monastery of the Holy Apostles.

In the Life of Saint Stephen the Younger, who died a martyr’s death in 765 for the veneration of icons, regions are listed where iconodules could find refuge from persecution. These included the diocese of Zichia, the city of Nicopsia (the north-western borderland of the Abkhazian principality), and the neighbouring region of Gothia.

In the 820s, the army of Thomas the Slav, who led a rebellion and nearly seized the Byzantine throne, included Abasgians, Zichs, Goths, and others. In the biography of Cyril, the “apostle” of the Slavs, compiled after his death in 896, the Abasgians and Goths are likewise mentioned.